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The first week of September marks the beginning of the new academic year, and for many pupils it will mean starting a new school. This is always a big moment, both for the students and their families. This week though, the 120, year seven pupils at the Turner Free School in Cheriton have the added distinction of being the first to attend a brand-new institution.
When the decision was made to close the former Pent Valley school, it was at a time when parents and students were choosing to go elsewhere and the number of new pupils enrolling to study was too low to make the school sustainable. At that time, the Department for Education promised that a new secondary school to replace Pent Valley would open in September 2018, and this has now been delivered. I would like to send my congratulations to the Chief Executive of Turner Schools, Jo Saxton, and the Principal of the new school, Kristina Yates, and her team, on all their hard work to make sure that they have been ready to open this week. It is also good to see that the level of local interest in the new school is such that it was oversubscribed for pupils seeking to start this term. The Turner Free School is one of 53 new free schools across the country that will open for the first time this week. The creation of these new schools is giving more choice to parents and opportunities for students. This week also sees the sixth form of the Folkestone Academy return to the same site as the rest of the school, and in a new building. Again, there has been a huge amount of work undertaken during the summer holidays to make this move possible, and I would to congratulate everyone at the Academy who has been involved in this project. The Glassworks building in Folkestone, which is owned by the Creative Foundation and had previously accommodated the Academy's sixth form students, will now be available for new creative and digital businesses looking to locate in the town. This additional space will help to further consolidate Folkestone's reputation as a growing centre for this innovative and fast-growing business sector.
Last Friday I visited the Dungeness Nature Reserve, run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The site manager, Gareth Brookfield, was able to show me some of the recent conservation work to support the habitats and breeding sites for the many species of migratory birds that can be seen at Dungeness. The unique landscape of Dungeness, which is the largest shingle peninsular in Europe, also makes it home to many uncommon varieties of plants and insects. There has been considerable success as well at Dungeness with the re-introduction of rare species of bumblebee. As always, the reserve, which is the oldest in the country managed by the RSPB is well worth a visit. They have also taken over the 70-hectare site of the Lade Pits and Denge Sound mirrors to be managed as a nature reserve.


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I'm not much of a "juice cleanse" type of girl, so when I'm wanting to detox my body I go straight for the foods that I know do the trick! Cucumber and strawberries are wonderful natural detoxifying foods that help flush your system and leave you feeling vibrant and refreshed. I use cucumber daily – sliced thin as "chips" or hummus and dips, noodled, diced to add crunch to a salad, or just simply chopped up with a bit of sea salt and cracked pepper. It's extremely low calorie and can be eaten in abundance, so if you're looking for a crunchy hydrating snack it's definitely one to go to!
This recipe couldn't be easier! It's one I do often because the flavors are sweet and subtle, and the hint of mint from the fresh mint leaves gives it such a fresh airy flavor.
2 cucumbers
5 strawberries
1 handful of grapes
5 large fresh mint leaves
Noodle your cucumbers (I use a Vegetti, you can purchase one on Amazin for very cheap – it works great!), slice you strawberries and your grapes, and add everything to a container.
Mix with your mint leaves and store sealed in the refrigerator for about 2 hours, so the flavors have time to set together.
Toss, drain as needed (the cucumbers may have sweated a little water), and remove your mint leaves. Serve cold. If you like extra sweetness, you can sprinkle on a little pure stevia and mix it in!
I hope you try and enjoy! Have a blessed day everyone.
xo Sarah

subset: commoncrawl


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Uche Jombo celebrates son's birthday
NollyWood actress, Uche Jombo's son, Matthew Rodriguez has turned 2 years old on Sunday, May 28, as his mom couldn't hold back her excitement.
The star actress and her husband, Kenny Rodriguez celebrated their son's day with a mini birthday party.
Uche shared a cute photo of her son with remarkable words. She wrote: "I Can't believe it's 2years already!
I'm so thankful for you Matthew, you light up my world in the most incredible way.
Happy birthday Matthew chinedu Rodriguez, my heart and soul can barely contain how much love I have for you."


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Attorney Joseph Rem is pleased to announce that he will be teaching a unique CLE course with attorney and author Robert Ramsey. The course will take place on December 7 from 8-10 am at the Holiday Inn Hasbrouck Heights and will be a two-for-one course, covering both DWI defenses and whether the government can strip birthright citizens of their rights. The courses will offer 2 CLE credits total.
"Cop Along Cassidy" – 1.0 CLE credits (substantive)
How to use the Supreme Court's decision in State v. Cassidy to structure winning defenses to past and current DWI cases. Presented by DWI defense attorneys Joseph P. Rem, Jr., Certified Criminal Trial Attorney and Robert Ramsey, author New Jersey Drunk Driving Law (Thomson-Reuters).
"But I Was Born Here!" – 1.0 CLE credits (substantive)
Can the federal government suddenly strip your clients of their birthright citizenship overnight? How can you protect your clients if this occurs? Is it legal? Are your clients who were born here to undocumented immigrants U.S. citizens? What is the law on this issue? Presented by constitutional law attorneys Joseph P. Rem, Jr., Certified Criminal Trial Attorney and Robert Ramsey, author New Jersey Arrest, Search & Seizure Review (Thomson-Reuters).
To learn more about the course or to sign up, click here.


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Gentlemen's Tea Set
Rs. 8,500.00
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Referencing BIS data, Lettieri emphasized the danger of a systemic crash, due to the gigantic derivative bubble in which banks and hedge funds are involved. Lettieri recounted how "American economist and politician Lyndon LaRouche has for some time analyzed the causes of the systemic crisis and promoted a reorganization of the entire world financial and monetary system, through a new Bretton Woods." It is necessary therefore to move towards an operational G8 meeting, with participation of other countries, to discuss fundamental rules for a new financial and monetary system able to prevent a financial collapse and reactivate the real economy, said Lettieri, a member of the center-left opposition "Margherita" party.
Lettieri said, "In 1944, when the first Bretton Woods conference was convoked, we were coming out of a war. Today, we have the duty to wage with determination a war against poverty in the world." This is not an ideological issue, but an issue unifying majority and opposition, beyond the party lines, Lettieri said, calling for a bipartisan approach in the debate. "We have no time to lose, to avoid a systemic threat that could provoke a crisis even worse than the 1929-33 one," he concluded.
Deputy Paola Mariani, from the opposition Left Democrats (Democratici di Sinistra—DS), intervened, focussing on the responsibility of the IMF in the systemic crisis and in the various "local" crises such as the Argentinian bankruptcy. Quoting at length Joe Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, Mariani supported the Lettieri motion, stating: "The time has come to build a new financial architecture that protects the real economy, and therefore to an international conference similar to the conference that took place in 1944 at Bretton Woods."
Finally, at the end of the first debate session, Deputy Sandro Delmastro delle Vedove, from the government party Alleanza Nazionale (AN) intervened. Delmastro delle Vedove stressed how this is "absolutely the most important issue" to be debated today. He exposed the deafening cowardly silence" from the news media on the issue. Recalling that the financial economy is in the hands "of a few hundred men who have not been elected by anyone and who elevated speculation to a system." the AN Deputy supported the proposal for "a new Bretton Woods, as we hear more and more often." Motivating his support, he stated that "the situation is on the verge of a collapse. In particular, the U.S. crisis is most serious, independently of whoever is at the White House—Democrat or Republican—and his efforts to cover it up. The U.S. deficit is literally frightening, and puts America in a situation in which it has lost power over the financial system."
"There is the unpleasant feeling of being on the deck of the Titanic," Delmastro delle Vedove concluded, and called for "a return to a productive economy," to obtain through "new rules that allow the development of the real economy."
The archived video and audio of the Italian Parliament debate can be found at http://www.camera.it/audiovideoSeduta numero 601 di Lunedi 14 marzo 2005—Ore 11,30
Click here for New Bretton Woods campaign archive


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USPS responds to claims of its handling of late mail
The United States Postal Service (USPS) has responded to criticism from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) about its handling and recording of delayed mail. While USPS has acknowledged some concerns in the audit, it disputed other aspects.
The Washington Post reported on the written response from USPS' Vice President for Network Operations, Robert Cintron. While he admitted the need for "required training for staffers involved in mail counts and for managers" to ensure data accuracy, he also noted "a serious disagreement with the inspector general."
This response comes at the heels of an audit report conducted by OIG that concluded USPS "has been inaccurately reporting delayed mail across a number of facilities."
In a response to a FreightWaves story posted yesterday, a member of the Postal Service Corporate Communications team sought to clarify the issue.
"We consider any allegations of the mishandling of mail very seriously. We take issue that the OIG subjectively selected eight plants out of our postal network of more than 250. It also mischaracterized our plants as rural or urban entities. The OIG's flawed methodology results in conclusions that are both inaccurate and susceptible to misinterpretation.
"What the OIG found in its August 10th report was that some employees did not properly record delayed mail and needed additional training on that issue. We agreed with that conclusion and will complete employee training on the proper procedures for recording mail delivery by next week.
"The audit also wrongly concluded that mail arriving late to our processing centers will be delivered late or delayed. This is not true. Mail can arrive at a mail processing center after the acceptance deadline and still be processed and delivered on time.
"Please note that while the Postal Service does not discuss employee discipline or personnel decisions, the actions of a very few employees does not reflect on the 640,000 dedicated men and women of the Postal Service. The Postal Service investigates allegations of wrongdoing by its employees and takes corrective action as warranted, based on the facts of each investigation."
Cintron noted his objections to the audit report, particularly "the OIG's suggested monetary impacts of $85.1M."
Cintron wrote to the Post, "It is not clear from the audit how the late arriving mail from eight judgmentally selected (targeted plants) is a statistically valid representation of all plants in the Postal Service Network."
The audit report said that of the eight P&DCs analyzed through on-site visits over two days, five of them "did not accurately count on-hand delayed mail." OIG said one-third of late mail failed to get recorded correctly. OIG attributed this to the lack of supervision and training "in counting and reporting delayed mail".
OIG noted that "when mail condition reports are not accurate, management uses incorrect information to make decisions on staffing, mail processing equipment use, preventive maintenance, and the transportation of mail."
Deputy Assistant Inspector General Christopher P. Cherry claimed the employees were aware of the lapses in following protocol and wrote to senators who questioned USPS following the report.
"Four employees admitted to failing to report delayed mail," he wrote. "We learned that parcels were scanned as undeliverable to stop the clock. One of the four employees admitted to swiping employees' time cards and manipulating … data at the direction of Postal Service management. Postal Service management denied directing clerks to scan the PO Box section barcode early."


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When you invest over a period of time, compound interest is your best friend. In effect, it means you are earning interest not just on your own capital, but also on the interest you've already earned. Over the long term, this might be phrased as "interest on interest on interest on interest on interest …" or more simply, "free money"! So how do you get this free money? This is how…
A simple start
Imagine you place $100 in an investment that earns 10% pa. At the end of one year, you've earned $10. Then you spend all the interest you receive. At the end of each year, your investment amount is back to $100. That's simple interest. At the end of 10 years, you will still have your $100, and you will have received a total of $100 in interest.
I = P(1+r)n-P
Don't worry, we'll do the maths for you, but this little formula contains a power that Albert Einstein is attributed to labelling "the most powerful force in the universe". It calculates your net profit when you earn interest on the interest. That's what compounding is all about.
Going back to our first example - if you re-invest the interest on your original $100, at the end of the first year you will have $110. Leaving it invested at 10% pa, you will earn interest of $11 in the second year, bringing the total in the account to $121. If you keep going for 10 years, your investment will grow to $270.70 – that's your original $100 plus $170.70 in interest.
Time is money – literally
This example may not seem so impressive, but the power of compound interest really shines over the long term. Looking at our simple situation and taking the interest out each year for 30 years, you will earn a total of $300 in interest. But relying only on the compounding of the interest (ie. no other deposits are made), the total interest earned over the same time would be $1,883.74.
A child born today could easily live to 100. Simple interest on a $100 investment would amount to $1,000 over their lifetime. Left to compound untouched at 10%, that same investment would grow to $2,113,241! Even on such a small initial investment, that's an incredible difference!
The other critical factor is the actual rate of earnings. If the earnings rate dropped just 1% to 9% pa, a one-hundred-year investment would grow to only $783,548
A couple of drags
But don't forget to take into account tax and inflation. They act as drags on investment performance.
Let's assume investment earnings remain at 10% pa and are fully taxable. What will your $100 grow to over 30 years at different tax rates?
0% Tax
(Allocated Pension)
15% Tax
(Super Fund)
34.5% Tax
(Average Taxpayer)
49% Tax*
(Top Tax Rate)
* Includes 2% Medicare Levy and 2% Temporary Budget Repair Levy.
As for inflation, although we are currently experiencing very low inflation, nobody knows how long this will last. If it reaches the Reserve Bank's target of 3%pa, you will need $2.43 in 30 years' time to buy something that costs $1.00 today.
There are many ways of minimising the effects of tax and inflation. Picking the right tax environment is clearly important. Capital gains are only taxed when an investment is sold, so growth assets have an advantage over those that only produce income. They also cope better with inflation.
Investment risk
Always remember, seeking higher returns generally involves taking higher risks but some of those risks can be managed with an effective and professionally constructed investment strategy.
If you want to take advantage of "the most powerful force in the universe", talk to your licensed financial adviser.
Assumption on calculations: interest is compounded monthly.
This article contains information that is general in nature. It does not take into account the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular person. You need to consider your financial situation and needs before making any decisions based on this information. If you decide to purchase or vary a financial product, your financial adviser, Coral Coast Financial Services and other companies within the AMP Group may receive fees and other benefits. The fees will be a dollar amount and/or a percentage of either the premium you pay or the value of your investment. Please contact us if you wantmore information.
Coral Coast Financial Planning Pty Ltd ABN 18 108 580 794 Coral Coast Financial Planning Pty Ltd ABN 18 108 580 794 is an Authorised Representative and Credit Representative of Hillross Financial Services Limited ABN 77 003 323 055, AFSL 232705.


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The Rise of Illumin8 Active Intelligence
Natural Language Processing and Generation (NLP, NLG), Personalized KPIs, Alerts, and Chatbots
By: Scott Stratton, Pulse8's Chief Data Scientist and Vice President, Product Analytics
My Data Systems Should Help Me, Not Drown Me
Today's systems mostly help Jerry Maguire: "Show me the money!" Packaged as snazzy dashboards with various charts, tables, and filters, such systems remain passive. You must click, filter, and sort to find what you need. You must find context to interpret what you see. You must decide who needs to know about or to act on this – and, ultimately, you must select, package, and alert them. The insights themselves may be great, but the effort needed to find them can be demanding, much less the effort required to turn the data into action. Out of the office or away from your laptop? You hope to find someone in the office who can respond – which too often happens too late and at times with not what you requested. As the amount of data explode, so do the demands on your time. Current technology worsens your plight.
Enter the era of Active Intelligence. These are technologies that summarize, contextualize, and highlight what you need to know on your behalf. Technologies that will find the differences that truly make a difference and merit attention. Technologies that translate verbal requests into textual and visual results, within moments at any time, any place. Data are harnessed, transformed, and empowered to drive actions. Pulse8's new business intelligence platform unifies and unleashes the benefits of these technologies.
Give Me the Headlines and the Context to Understand Them
Unless you work with your data daily, it's difficult to decide when a number or trend warrants action. You need a knowledgeable analyst to walk you through the metrics and key context, but analysts can differ in how they view and interpret what they see, and they are seldom available when you most need them.
Natural Language Generation (NLG) is an "analyst in a box" that interprets those data, highlighting central tendencies, trends and rates of change, extreme values, and even volatility among the data. This "analyst" is available 24/7 and interprets the data in a consistent manner.
Along with being a huge time-saver, our NLG technology brings many more benefits:
- Doesn't fatigue or bore: every time you filter, sort, or alter related items it reinterprets automatically
- Just the facts, ma'am: Pithy paragraphs or bulleted lists distill the data's essence, and export easily with the graphics into reports and slide decks
- Go paperless: Why bother with static reports and slides when you can use the live dashboards to present and explore your findings in real-time with the larger group?
- Cater to your inner nerd: Headlines or geeky regression and other stats? Choose, change, learn.
Alert Me When Action Is Warranted
If you don't look at normal dashboards each time they refresh, you won't know what needs attention. Can't machines learn what's important to you and alert you only when you need to know? The Illumin8 Active Intelligence platform can!
Pulse8's new intuitive Illumin8 platform brims with key performance indicators (KPIs), but the value and level of detail at which action is needed varies by your role and level in the organization. Click that KPI and add it to a custom dashboard. Set, for example, a low "concern" value and a high "target" value – or tell Illumin8 to "learn" what is normal variation and to alert you when amiss. Depending on your role, you can define one for each group practice, product, medical condition, or whatever you need. This environment acts as a one-stop shop for your key metrics. Focus your newfound time on higher-value activities. Cascade KPIs and alerting through your chain of command so all work smarter and in concert. Welcome to true Active Intelligence.
I Need to Know This Now
Important questions often arise at odd times and places. Too often they occur when you are far from your laptop or somewhere that doesn't allow for calling necessary colleagues to retrieve the answers you need. When having precious data here and now can make a big difference, one needs an agent who can fetch what you need, 24/7, wherever you may be. Meet the Illumin8 "chatbot."
Chatbots combine NLP, NLG, and data query/BI technologies, and can function off one's laptop, mobile phone, or other smart device. Dictate or type in a request for the latest MA closure rates and RAF yield by Risk Factor Type, contract, and benefit plan. The bot's NLP technology "reads" this English request, translating it into a database query that the BI/secure communications component transmits to and receives from the platform. The chatbot displays the results in table form, graphs, and even bullets or text using the NLG technology. But all of that is essentially irrelevant to you. What you care about is getting the answer to your plain language question, in a readable format, as soon as possible.
The chatbot delivers all this and more. If you happen to know the name of the dashboard on which the desired data appear, you can request, "display plan member summary for payment year 2017 for the ACA Small Group market," and the bot will return the dashboard objects optimized to display on whatever device you're using. Perhaps more useful, the chatbot can go "behind" the dashboards, querying the underlying data — security-permitting — all without needing to first find an idle SQL programmer. The same capability applies to "paperless" meetings when you need data beyond what's on that dashboard. Welcome to real-time active intelligence.
The Bottom Line of Active Intelligence Technologies
Pulse8 loves innovative technologies, but they must ease your chain of pain to solve real-world problems. These game-changing technologies, applied thoughtfully, can transform plentiful and powerful data into active intelligent agents that provide focused responses to near-time data (KPI alerting), assist in the translation of the results (NLG), and understand normal speech rather than code-like prompts (chatbots). This is truly the next-generation of information-driven action.
About Scott Stratton
Scott Stratton is an industry leader in the design, development, and adoption of innovative analytic products. He has received Computerworld's Global Best Practices in Business Intelligence and Analytics for his RationalIQ® product for Fortune 100 clients at Medco; URAC award for applying Six-Sigma analytics to reduce diabetes medication errors (also Medco); Creative Excellence Award from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans for the nation's first urban CHIP program (GHI, in the South Bronx). For over 20 years, RightTrack® has enabled the U.S. and 85 other countries to plan and manage all Phase II-IV human clinical drug trials for Pfizer. Scott was Symmetry's first client of Episode Treatment Groups (ETGs), which he used for risk-adjusting provider analytics and as the foundation for his co-founding of Oxford's global fees-oriented specialty management subsidiary, a forerunner of today's CMS Bundled Payments for Care Initiative. Other innovations include segmentation models and analytics to improve quality and costs of cardiac revascularizations at CV-Sight and outcomes analytics for Medco's RationalMed® drug safety program based on integrated data for >10 million lives. His MPH thesis was part of the development of Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs) at Yale, now used by CMS to reimburse SNF care.
Scott has served as co-founder of CV-Sight, Vice President with Medco Health Solutions, Director at both Pfizer and Oxford Health Plans, and Assistant Vice President with GHI (now Emblem). Scott earned a Master's Degree in Public Health from Yale's School of Epidemiology and Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Carleton College. Additionally, Scott has been honored to serve on various state and national commissions, and was a founder of Yale's John D. Thompson Fellowship Committee. CIO, American Demographics, and other periodicals have profiled him and he has published in the New England Journal of Medicine and most recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
About Pulse8
Pulse8 is the ONLY Healthcare Analytics and Technology Company delivering complete visibility into the efficacy of your Risk Adjustment and Quality Management programs. We enable health plans and providers to achieve the greatest financial impact in the Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and ACA Commercial markets as well as with Value-Based Payment models for Medicare. Pulse8 has developed a suite of uniquely pragmatic solutions that are revolutionizing Risk Adjustment, Quality, and Pharmacy Program Management. Our advanced analytic methodologies and flexible business intelligence tools offer real-time visibility into member behavior and provider performance. Pulse8's products are powered by our patent-pending Dynamic Intervention Planning to deliver the most cost-effective and appropriate interventions for closing gaps in documentation, coding, and quality. For more company information or to schedule a demo, please contact Scott Filiault at (732) 570-9095 or email@example.com


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Google announces Android platform
The long expected Google announcement last week was for many an anti-climax. Not a special 'Google Phone' was announced but the mobile platform Android.
This platform hopes to set an open handset standard, uniforming the mobile software, independent of operator and mobile manufacturer, and this way accelerating the development of mobile services.
Reactions to the announcement were mixed. Some believe that Android will benefit the consumer by setting a new level of openness. Others, including Proximus, fear it will fragmentize the market even more. Base thinks that Android will make the mobile data traffic more accessible, which will generate more revenue for the operators.


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Israeli military aircraft fired at two groups of Palestinians launching incendiary balloons from the Gaza Strip, the army said on Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Forces said its aircraft shot at two separate groups launching balloons from the northern and southern Strip.
There were no immediate report of casualties in Gaza.
According to the Ynet news site, some clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops were also reported near the border in northern Gaza.
At least 11 Gazans were injured in the border demonstrations on Tuesday, according to Palestinian sources.
A protest flotilla was also makings its way toward the maritime border with Israel in the north of the Strip.
For a year, Gaza protesters have launched hundreds of incendiary kites and balloons into Israel, sparking fires that have destroyed forests, burned crops, and killed livestock. Over 7,000 acres of land have been burned, causing millions of shekels in damages, according to Israeli officials. Some balloons have carried improvised explosive devices.
On Monday, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip resumed nighttime protests along the border between Israel and the coastal enclave, a week after halting them. Pictures and videos posted on Twitter showed Palestinians in several locations in the border area, setting off small explosions, lighting tires on fire, and pointing lasers at Israeli security forces.
A day earlier, Israel's high-level security cabinet met to discuss efforts to restore calm and prevent an escalation of violence with the Palestinian enclave ahead of the April 9 elections, Channel 13 news reported.
The meeting came after an escalation of violence was sparked by two rockets shot from Gaza at Tel Aviv last Thursday evening, in what the army now believes to have been an accident. Israel carried out over 100 airstrikes in response overnight Thursday-Friday. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said four people were injured in the IDF attacks.
Israel holds Hamas, the de facto ruler of Gaza, responsible for any attacks emanating from the coastal enclave. Responding to the air raids, Hamas fired seven rockets at southern Israeli towns, six of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, and the last landing in an open area.
Since last March, the Gaza border has seen large-scale weekly clashes on Fridays, smaller protests along the northern Gaza border on Tuesdays, as well as periodic flare-ups between the Israeli military and Palestinian terror organizations. Protesters have been gathering along the frontier in often-violent protests calling for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to be allowed to return to former homes now inside Israel.
Israel says that Hamas has orchestrated the protests as cover for border attacks which have included bombs, grenades, Molotov cocktails, shootings, and breaches of the boundary fence.
Tensions along the volatile border have calmed since the flare-up late last week, though Israel fears they may ratchet up again toward the end of the month, especially as Hamas comes under increasing domestic pressure from rare street protests against the cost of living in the Strip.
Hamas, an Islamist terror group which seeks to destroy Israel, seized control of Gaza in 2007 from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Following the Hamas takeover, Israel imposed a blockade of the Strip which it says is aimed at preventing the smuggling of weapons and military materials into Gaza. Goods arrive at Israeli ports and are trucked into the Palestinian territory. The measures include a naval blockade which has restricted the distance Gazan fisherman can sail out to sea.


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okay, so I am posting pictures of us going to the courthouse, since I had a few requests. I really had no idea what it would entail. So we went down to the courthouse with a few family members on Friday afternoon. First we had to go to the office where you can get your marriage and pistol license at the same time. We filled out the forms and paid our $56 and then they sent us upstairs to see the judge. Once we go there, there was quite a line, so we were settling into our seats when a judge came out and asked if anyone wanted the "express lane". The following picture is what happened next.
So we got into line with everyone else. The "express lane", it turns out, is when the judge asks "Avis, do you want to marry Vince?" and then "Vince, do you want to marry Avis?" And then he shook our hands and said "congrats". This made me really happy because I was a little nervous about what they would make me say. As you might be able to tell, I'm not really into the whole wedding thing, so I was hoping to say as little as possible and I think I got my wish.
And then we went outside to take pictures.
the end. happy v-day.


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Refresh your bedroom décor with our Canne Comforter! This popular Suzani print comes to life in the color Canne, and is just right for creating the ultimate ensemble with shams, a bed skirt, decorative pillows, and window treatment.
Visit the Related Products tab to view the complete Canne Collection, and to request fabric swatches. See the Description tab for more product information. Check out the Diagrams tab to view bedding variations.
This style is an RLF Home original design.
- Products
- Description
- Diagrams
- Related Products
Canne Comforter
Canne Comforter
- Our comforters are filled with 100% polyester batting between the top and bottom layers.
- Back: Natural lining
- Quilt Pattern: Hand-tacked
- Knife-edged all around or Cord-trimmed on 3 sides
- Fabric Content: 100% Cotton
- Comforter Sizes: Twin: 69" x 90" | Full: 84" x 90" | Queen: 90" x 96" | King: 106" x 96"


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I recently switched to a new Windows 10 computer. Since then, Irfanview cannot recognize images or do batch processing. At first, the error message that would pop up says "ghostscript is not installed, please install it here or use the PDF plugin."
After installing Ghostscript, the same message pops up. This is using IV and GS 64 bit. I uninstalled and reinstalled to no avail, then tried IV & GS 32 bit (again, to no avail). The message that pops up under 32 bit is "postscript.dll not recognized."
These messages happen when trying to open a PDF file in Irfanview, and again when I try processing them. Every associated program is up-to-date, files work properly when opened on other programs... any advice is appreciated.


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TRAFFIC is backed up on the A34 after a vehicle has broken down close to Abingdon.
Reports are showing severe delays heading northbound towards the junction for Abingdon, with queues back to the Milton Interchange at Didcot.
The breakdown has blocked one lane of the dual carriageway between the Marcham Interchange and Hinksey Hill Interchange.
Average speed is being reported as 15mph.
Expect delays on the #A34 due to broken down vehicle near #Radley Recovery taking place #OxonTravel pic.twitter.com/B9u0JjaChR— Oxfordshire County (@OxfordshireCC) June 6, 2019


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Pure Goldwater (Hardcover)
Palgrave MacMillan, 9781403977410, 399pp.
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Other Editions of This Title:
Paperback (10/13/2009)
Pre-Recorded Audio Player (7/1/2009)
Compact Disc (6/1/2008)
Compact Disc (6/1/2008)
Barry Goldwater is a defining figure in American public life, a firebrand politician associated with an optimistic brand of conservatism. In an era in which American conservatism has lost his way, his legacy is more important than ever. For over 50 years, in those moments when he was away from the political fray, Senator Goldwater kept a private journal, recording his reflections on a rich political and personal life. Here bestselling author John Dean combines analysis with Goldwater's own words.
With unprecedented access to his correspondence, interviews, and behind-the-scenes conversations, Dean sheds new light on this political figure. From the late Senator's honest thoughts on Richard Nixon to his growing discomfort with the rise of the extreme right, "Pure Goldwater "offers a revelatory look at an American icon--and also reminds us of a more hopeful alternative to the dispiriting political landscape of today.
About the Author
Praise For Pure Goldwater…
"An invaluable chronicle of the times."--Publishers Weekly (starred review, Web Pick of the Week) "Of all the books on 'Mr. Conservative,' Pure Goldwater might provide the most realistic insights into his character and thinking. After the birth of Barry Jr., Goldwater started a private journal...that journal is the basis of Pure Goldwater — so, in effect, it is a book written by the senator himself, capturing his most intimate thoughts for those closest to him."--The National Review "It's a fitting tribute to a real straight talker, a fine Senator, and one of the most influential conservatives of the past 50 years."--The National Review
"A sprawling treasure trove . . . Goldwater is worth rediscovering . . . Conservatives--and liberals, too--take note."--Washington Post Book World "A field guide to the presidential and legislative politics of the middle to late 20th century. Reading Goldwater's descriptions of everything from behind-the-scenes dealings in the Senate or his interactions with Richard Nixon... will provide a literary fix for even the hardest core political junkies... By compiling his writings and publishing many of them in Pure Goldwater, the editors have performed a great public service."--The Washington Times "The policy thought on display here and throughout the book will by turns delight and infuriate every part of the political spectrum . . . No Goldwater fan can do without a copy . . . readers can get their fix of the unscripted, unghosted conscience of a conservative from Pure Goldwater."--Daniel McCarthy, Reason "Goldwater's own words are readable, agree with him or not... entries are thoughtful, informed, even scholarly."--Theo Lippman, Jr., The Baltimore Sun "An engaging memoir... [Goldwater's writings] include funny, salty remarks that add to the folksy style... The editors show Goldwater's ultimate success as being remembered as he hoped to be: 'an honest man who tried his damndest.' Recommended."--Karl Helicher, Library Journal "Particularly interesting."--Arizona Republic "Pure Goldwater provides new insights into the man viewed by many as a founding figure in modern American conservatism. There's plain talk on a range of political issues here, but also personal glimpses... the journal entries about President Richard Nixon and Watergate are particularly eye-opening."--The Desert Sun Praise for Conservatives without Conscience:"A detailed . . . powerful case in a riveting book."--Los Angeles Times"Searing . . . an angry indictment."--The Washington Post"Dean has again amassed evidence of a cancer growing on the presidency."--The New York Times Book Review


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How We Do Church (4): Be Wise
Message by Ptr. Allan Rillera.
Scripture Passage
Ephesians 5:15-16
Lifegroup Discussion Questions
1. What are the "evil termites" that could ruin God's Temple? Has your life, family, and relationship with God been "infested by termites"? How can we avoid being infected by evil termites?
2. Paul begins with an urgent command to "Be careful." How do we take care of our life?
3. How important is it to soak in the Word of God? How does the Word of God help you?
4. How do we make the most of our time? How do we know if we are making good use of our time? How can you make better use of your time?
5. Do you see serving God as an opportunity or a calamity?
6. What would motivate you to live wisely?


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Dear Community Supporter:
The Santee School District Foundation will hold its 5th annual Santee Aloha 5K Fun Run & Walk on Saturday March 23, 2019 at Town Center Community Park in Santee.
The Foundation has contributed over $200,000 in recent years for visual and performing arts andenhanced technology for students of the Santee School District, the future of our community. We couldn't achieve our level of success without our participants, volunteers, and most importantly ourcherished sponsors. Your event sponsorship directly enriches our Santee School district students.
For 2019, we are setting our goals even higher! We are anticipating over 600 race participants, and aimto raise $30,000 for Santee students. We hope you will join us in supporting our mission and become asponsor of the 2019 Santee Aloha 5K Fun Run & Walk.
Our Sponsors enjoy the great benefit of receiving increased exposure of their business, products, andservices by reaching a very targeted audience of consumers within the local community of Santee, andsurrounding San Diego county communities. By becoming a sponsor, your business will have a strongpresence at the event providing a direct connection with participants.
Please submit your Sponsorship Application & Booth Agreement with your donations by February 22, 2019.
Please start by clicking "Register Now" button. Check payment by mail is preferred or pay online.
Santee School District Foundation, Attn: 5K
9625 Mission Gorge Road, Suite B2-PMB333 Santee, CA 92071
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IN-KIND DONATION SPONSOR – Provide products or services valued at $200 or greater in exchange for sponsor support you will be able to have a presence at the event and receive the basic Benefits mentioned above. Donation examples: • Bottled water, sports or recovery drink (coconut water) • Energy gels or bars • Electrolyte tablets • Refueling food (fruit, bagels, etc.) • Specialty finish line treats (sno-cones, etc.) • Photo or video services • First aid volunteer personnel


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Didn't know I was in for a two-for-one deal in company class this morning.
Either someone accidently someone turned the heat on, or something was wrong with the A/C. That's not a good thing for a ballet class in Alabama, where it was already humid outside. It was so humid my shoes were sticking.
The heat evidently played a roll with everyone's pirouettes (although mine were better today than they had been all week). Mrs. O asked us why our pirouettes were a bit off …and she got comical answers and demonstrations from the company kids about hot it was.
"We're melting" was the phrase I gave an amen to. But I won't complain too much. I'm pretty sure I left some calories behind when I left the studio.
Despite the heat, it turned out to be the best class of the week, which was good since this was my first class with Mrs. O since she called me out during petite allegro last week. Even my brises (one of the scourges of my dancing existence) looked cleaner than they normally look in a combination I fared much better at than I thought I would. It probably helped that the brises didn't come with any vole's.
After being called out last week, I made sure I finished every combination today, and most were extremely fun. That included a combination that included an arabesque turn (also one of those scourges of my existence). Went right into the turn, know problems at all.
And I managed to go the right direction every time during our grande allegro combination that included going from a fouette to a tour jete. The only glitch was coming out of the sisonne into the chasse' assemble' part of the combination … but I can live with that since I went the right direction on the fouette-tour jete.
Maybe someone should turn on the heat every day if I'm going to have a class like that.
I'll be honest, I love the Saturday morning company class more than any other class I take. I'll miss it during summer session.


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Let's face it: living in the Republic of Gilead sucks.
Of course, it's worse for some than others, but even the most powerful don't have that great a time of it. So why sugarcoat something so awful? Even the most beautiful, flowery language wouldn't be able to disguise the way things are—it would just be another form of deceit. There's already enough of that.
And for a character like the narrator, stuck in a society that's taken so much away from her, it would be adding insult to injury to use language to mask or hide her situation, which is already so empty. Even though the narrator says at one point, "I wish this story were different [...] I wish it were about [...] sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow" (41.1), she can't put in things that aren't there. She can't add frippery or positive imagery.
The narrator needs to tell her story like it is, as far as she can. There's already so much she doesn't know, and so much we readers will never find out.
The Handmaid's Tale seems to fit well into the genre of science fiction, with its new social caste system, alternate view of the future, and abandonment of technology for primitive ceremonial systems. Case closed, right?
The author herself disagrees with this characterization. In 2005 Atwood presented the argument that her work is speculative fiction rather than science fiction, and that the two genres are really super-different:
I like to make a distinction between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. (Source)
Many of the book's plot elements also fit neatly into the genre of dystopian literature. In a dystopia, we usually find a society that has become all kinds of wrong (in direct contrast to a utopia, or a perfect society).
Like many totalitarian states, the Republic of Gilead starts out as an envisioned utopia by a select few: a remade world where lower-class women will provide upper-class couples with children, so the human race can feel confident about producing future generations. Yet the vast majority of the characters we meet are oppressed by this world; its strict attention to violence, death, and conformity highlight the ways in which it is a totally miserable place.
Atwood points to this idea of utopia or dystopia specifically in an exchange between the narrator and Moira:
[The narrator] said there was more than one way of living with your head in the sand and that if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. (28.7)
Female characters are often told in The Handmaid's Tale how much safer, more protected and better off they are. By themselves, those are utopian characteristics... but in this context, they're anything but.
If you skip ahead and turn to the back of the book, the way you might to find out whodunit in a murder mystery—not that we at Shmoop would know anything about that!—you find a brief, scholarly interpretation of the title, "The Handmaid's Tale."
According to the "Historical Notes" section, this wasn't the original title. Not only that, the book wasn't even originally a literary text; it was a story recorded on audiotapes. The scholar, Professor Pieixoto, gives us this explanation:
[…] what we have before us [the majority of The Handmaid's Tale] is not the item in its original form. Strictly speaking, it was not a manuscript at all when first discovered and bore no title. The superscription "The Handmaid's Tale" was appended to it by Professor Wade, partly in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer […]. (Historical Notes.12)
So what the Professor would like us to believe is that what we just read are transcriptions he and another scholar made of these tapes, which they then put in a specific order. Then they gave the tapes this title partly as an allusion to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
In Chaucer's famous medieval work, some people are taking a pilgrimage on horseback, which is taking forever. To pass the time they each tell a story, which are named things like "The Miller's Tale" or "The Reeve's Tale" after the main character's role in society. So the title "The Handmaid's Tale" makes sense according to this formula; the narrator is a Handmaid. That's her role in society.
Obviously, though, the Professor is just a made-up character. But that doesn't mean that the reference to Chaucer doesn't apply. The Professor goes on to make some archaic scholarly (but still dirty!) jokes about puns in the title. He's focusing on the "Tale" bit here, suggesting both a "vulgar signification" (you know, like "getting some tail") and also the "bone [...] of contention [...] in Gileadean society" (Historical Notes.12). This last phrase could mean that sex was the biggest problem for the Gileadeans.
But we can also think about the use of the word "Tale" in the title as meaning a "story": something, perhaps, that's not totally real—a fiction or an allegory. Like when the narrator says,
I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. (7.32)
Actually, there are plenty of hints sprinkled throughout the book that suggest we may not be hearing about things the way they actually happened, that the "Tale" is not what it seems to be. (For more about this, see the "Reading, Writing, and Storytelling" theme and "What's Up With the Ending?")
You know the saying: is the glass half empty or half full? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Well, your natural level of optimism or pessimism is probably going to influence what you think happens at the end of this book.
The Handmaid's Tale doesn't provide a definitive answer about its heroine's fate. If you're feeling positive when you hit the end of the book, you might walk away thinking, "Phew. She totally made it." If you're feeling negative, you might just think, "Uh oh." So how do both of those options play out?
Well, we've got two mini-endings going on. In the first, which closes off the narrator's story, the heroine gets into a black car with men who are either there to arrest her for treason or to smuggle her to safety. Oh, that's comforting.
She has—and we have—no way of knowing which it is. If Nick's as trustworthy as he says he is, then the men are there to rescue her and take her to safety. He addresses the narrator by her actual name, which could be proof that he's genuine—or proof that he's really working for The Man. If he's not trustworthy, this has been a giant conspiracy to weed out traitors, and the narrator's going to suffer the consequences.
As she says, "Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped" (46.41). A "new beginning" would mean freedom, a regained identity, and being allowed to think again. Yet it seems like even death would be preferable to the stagnant, imprisoned life of a Handmaid.
The second mini-ending can also be taken two ways. It's a "partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies" (Historical Notes.1) and it takes place more than two hundred years after the events of the novel. In this "transcript," scholars discuss a series of audiotapes that recorded the narrator's story, which we've just read.
They try to make assumptions about who the narrator was, where she was, and who else she was talking about. They can't figure out her identity or what happened to her, although the fact that the tapes were made suggests she at least made it to a safe house on her way out of Gilead.
After that, who knows? She could have gained freedom or been recaptured and killed. As one of the fictional scholars says at the end of his talk, "As for the ultimate fate of our narrator, it remains obscure" (Historical Notes.43). The odds of surviving would have been against her, but she at least escaped for long enough to preserve her story.
In an interview with the New York Times, Atwood said:
The central character—the Handmaid Offred—gets out. The possibility of escape exists. A society exists in the future which is not the society of Gilead and is capable of reflecting about the society of Gilead in the same way that we reflect about the 17th century. Her little message in a bottle has gotten through to someone—which is about all we can hope, isn't it? (Source)
So the rest of the narrator's story is left to the reader's imagination. Is your glass half empty or half full?
The Handmaid's Tale takes place in a city in what used to be in the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead. In this alternative future state, the democratic government has been overthrown and replaced by a totalitarian one. What makes Gilead so scary is that it still looks pretty much the same... but its government and society are totally alien from our own. Gilead seems to be without freedom or choice.
One of the most terrifying things about Gilead is how it seems to permeate everyone's psyches. The narrator first hears this when she's being reprogrammed at the Women's Center: "The Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you" (5.2). Yikes.
We mean, even if you lived somewhere really nice, would you want the city to be inside you? There's no getting away from this society's beliefs, ever. They're always with you, because they're "within you."
The narrator describes the city she lives in as follows:
The lawns are tidy, the façades are gracious, in good repair; they're like the beautiful pictures they used to print in the magazines about homes and gardens and interior decoration. There is the same absence of people, the same air of being asleep. The street is almost like a museum, or a street in a model town constructed to show the way people used to live. As in those pictures, those museums, those model towns, there are no children.
This is the heart of Gilead, where the war cannot intrude except on television. (5.1-2)
Sounds kind of like Stepford, right? It also sounds like the terrifying city on the planet Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time. It's fair to say that Gilead resembles both of those places in that the people have become eerily homogeneous in behavior and appearance.
But the difference is that there aren't any children. Children bring life and energy to a place, and without them Gilead seems dark and empty. Notice that throughout the book we meet very few children, even though creating them is the object to which all adults aspire. Terrible wars are supposedly raging outside the city (the narrator only hears about this in snippets on television, which may be complete propaganda), but inside the city people are safe from the outside forces of death and destruction. It's the ones inside they have to worry about.
Gilead is based on Cambridge, MA, specifically the Harvard area, outside Boston. According to an interview she gave to the New York Times, Atwood made this choice because of the region's Puritan background and history of intolerance:
You often hear in North America, "It can't happen here," but it happened quite early on. The Puritans banished people who didn't agree with them, so we would be rather smug to assume that the seeds are not there. That's why I set the book in Cambridge. (Source)
Atwood has a personal connection to this too, since one of her relatives, to whom The Handmaid's Tale was partially dedicated, nearly died by hanging at the hands of the Puritans (source). Even with that personal connection aside, it's easy to see how the idea of something so frightening "not happening here" can so easily be proven wrong.
So, this book has three epigraphs, which in itself is kind of confusing. (Way to be an overachiever, Margaret Atwood!) Let's take them one at a time.
First, we've got Genesis:
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?
And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. (Genesis 30:1-3)
Hard to go wrong with a Biblical quotation right out of the gate, right? It sort of promises an instant legitimacy and seriousness in the book to come. This is a discussion between Jacob and Rachel about how she can't give him children so he should go get her maid pregnant so Rachel can claim them as her own kids. This seems to set the tone for a solemn discussion about infertility and marriage.
The phrase "Give me children or else I die" is going to be key for the rest of the text. If you're looking closely, the desire for children seems to set up a kind of sanctioned adultery within marriage as long as the ultimate goal is to make children.
Of course, Jacob had another wife, Rachel's sister Leah, who had plenty of kids. If you've read Genesis, you may remember that Rachel was Jacob's favorite wife, even if Leah gave him more sons. The issue of privilege and favoritism seems to be rearing its big, ugly head.
Our next epigraph's author is from Jonathan Swift, master of satire:
But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal... (Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal)
Here we've got an excerpt from Swift's famous piece of satire "A Modest Proposal." (By the way, if you haven't read "A Modest Proposal" yet, you might want to go check it out. We're about to spoil it, and it's a lot more fun if you figure it out yourself. Go on, it's short. We'll wait.)
The subject of this satire, although you can't tell from this quotation, is children. Yet while the Genesis quotation is concerned with the absence of children, Swift's is in reference to waaay too many kids. (The full title is actually A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.)
Swift is writing about Ireland at a time when there wasn't enough food and people were having more children than they could feed. He proposes that people should raise their children like cows or other farm animals and sell them to be eaten. Don't freak out—he's just kidding! What's scary about it, though, is how easy it is take the idea seriously, and how Swift can manipulate language to make his crazy ideas sound like rational solutions to what was, after all, a very real problem.
So we've moved from the ultra-serious to the ultra-sarcastic in the first two epigraphs, and it's up to the third to break the tie.
In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. (Sufi proverb)
Hmm…. This one is a real head-scratcher. Unlike the first two epigraphs, most Western readers probably aren't familiar with it, and at first glance it doesn't make a ton of sense. Unlike the other epigraphs, this quote is not about children.
This Sufi proverb presents us with a negative: there's no sign, but if there were one it would say "don't eat stones." Well, if there's no sign, maybe it's because the rule is super obvious: of course you shouldn't eat stones, let alone stones in the desert. Sheesh.
Maybe this epigraph is pointing to the fact that some things simply aren't acceptable (like breeding women), no mater how desperate the situation. Some rules don't have to be written down; they should be obvious. But that's just our take on this mysterious epigraph. What do you think?
While The Handmaid's Tale isn't James Joyce's Ulysses, it's still a pretty complicated book. It's going to be tough for anyone squeamish about infertility or tricky narrative structures, and it asks readers to commit to a world all the more frightening because it resembles our own. It's a gnarly ride, but we think it's worth it.
Blunt and opaque? Isn't that like saying "hot and cold" or "black and white"? Yes, in the normal world. But remember that the world of The Handmaid's Tale is far from normal.
This is a tricky one—even though narrator speaks plainly and bluntly throughout the book, much of the time her words seem to cloak or obscure what really happened. The contrast between what's being revealed and what's being hidden is formally emphasized by the slippage between what characters say and what they think.
From a technical standpoint, we can see this in the absence of quotation marks to separate speech from thoughts and feelings, particularly in memories. For example, consider this excerpt, in which the narrator flashes back to a disagreement she had with Luke when she tried to explain to him how being stripped of her agency in society has made her feel:
You don't know what it's like, I said. I feel as if somebody cut off my feet. I wasn't crying. Also, I couldn't put my arms around him. (28.86)
This conversation takes place in the narrator's mind, so we have to take her word for it that this is how it went down. Here the book moves rapidly between what the narrator says to Luke, first "You don't know what it's like," then "I feel as if somebody cut off my feet."
The second statement could be an internal thought, since it overlaps with "I wasn't crying." The narrator then immediately shifts to what her body can't do: "put [her] arms around him." She can't put into words "what it's like" for her, and she can't act on her feelings. Her body is defined by what it can't do: cry or hug her husband.
So there are facets of this argument that we can't see. Its lines are blurry, and the narrator reinforces that blurriness, but she also doesn't shy away from the tough moments in her text.
The novel is peppered with frequent allusions to different parts of the Bible. The most obvious is the reference to Genesis 30:1-3 (Epigraph), with its catchy phrase, "Give me children or else I die." That text, with its focus on bringing a "maid" or Handmaid into a childless marriage to create heirs, is the fundamental idea behind the Republic of Gilead. (For more on this, see "What's Up With the Epigraph?" or "Shout Outs.") Specific parts of the Bible that glorify marriage, that absolve men of adultery for the purposes of childbirth, and that convict women of it, have been cherry picked from the text and made into law. Other parts, such as the ones that emphasize meekness and humility, have been used to dictate behavior to the Handmaids. (It goes without saying that there's only one authorized religion permitted in Gilead, the one promoted by the state.)
Obviously a variety of Western monotheistic religions rely on versions of the Bible in different ways, and the Bible is often seen as a moral weight in society. But in the United States, Biblical law is separate from state and federal law. You don't have to abide by what your neighbor says is in the Bible if you have a different interpretation of it (and vice versa). In Gilead, what the government has decided should be taken from the Bible has become absolute law. The authority the Bible already has becomes even more powerful.
Strange, small pieces of Biblical text show up frequently throughout the book. This is particularly evident in place names and propaganda. For example, there's Gilead itself. Within it, all the stores the Handmaids are allowed to shop at have Biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Lilies. The hotel where the prostitutes are kept is called Jezebel's. Whenever the narrator remembers a piece of dialogue or something that happened at the Center, it usually includes a piece of Biblical content. These references, though, have been bastardized or altered in some cases to further the goals of the Republic, so even if knowledge of the Bible is excellent, you might not catch them all.
"Eyes" are the spies who work for the government and are situated throughout Gilead. Anyone could be an Eye, and the assumption is that characters are always being watched. It's really interesting that the visual aspects of spying are emphasized when you consider that the Handmaids, in particular, are supposed to be kept from both seeing and being seen. As reproductive objects, they must not be sexualized, and one of the freedoms Gilead is supposed to provide them is freedom from the lascivious male gaze. But the watching the government does, through the Eyes, is even more invasive.
Gilead rose to power in large part because no one was making babies any more. Even though baby-making is a two-person process, society has shifted all the blame for infertility onto women:
There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that's the law. (11.18)
Gilead's solution to this problem is to parcel out the few fertile women left to powerful men and their wives. In order to make this seem legitimate and proper, the government has made people follow Ceremonies and read the Bible before engaging in a very particular kind of sex. Presumably, in order to make it seem like a baby born to a Handmaid will really belong to the wife, the man and the Handmaid are required to have businesslike, non-erotic sex with the wife present. The Handmaid lies between the wife's legs while the man has sex with the Handmaid. This arrangement is echoed in childbirth, should any household be so lucky as to get to that point: the wife sits with her legs around the Handmaid as she endeavors to give birth.
Despite all these arrangements, nothing is working and not enough babies are being born. Everybody is secretly breaking the rules. We're constantly reminded of the lovelessness and absence of eroticism in this society, as well as the absence of choice and free will. (For more on fertility, see "Flowers" and "Eggs" in this section.)
Throughout the book, the narrator makes references to or compares women to flowers. For example, the Commander and Serena Joy's house is completely doused in floral imagery: there's a "watercolor picture of blue irises" (2.4) in the narrator's room; the bathroom is "papered in small blue flowers, forget-me-nots" (12.1); the master bedroom is decorated with "a starry canopy of silver flowers" (31.46). The first thing the narrator finally works the nerve up to steal is a daffodil from one of Serena Joy's arrangements. Even Jezebel's, where the Commander takes the narrator, is decorated with flowers. Flowers are also used to disguise things that are ugly or terrifying; the narrator compares the bloody mouth of a hanged man, for example, to the "red of the tulips" in Serena Joy's garden (6.26).
Flowers are often considered symbols of beauty or fertility. In The Handmaid's Tale they're given special attention as objects that can bloom and grow at a time when few women can. From a technical standpoint, flowers are also the part of a plant that hold the reproductive organs. They're constant reminders of the fertility that most women lack.
It seems the older Wives are seeking to hang onto their attractiveness and fertility by decorating themselves with flowers and tending gardens: "Many of the Wives have such gardens, it's something for them to order and maintain and care for" (3.2). Serena Joy takes a bizarre pleasure in mutilating flowers: when the narrator sees her chopping them awkwardly, she wonders, "Was it [...] some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genitalia of the flowers? The fruiting body" (25.25). Perhaps these are attacks Serena Joy would like to make on the Handmaid, who can be seen as a flower living in her house.
The idea of eggs comes up frequently in the book. With each mention we're reminded that they're part of a human woman's reproductive cycle, even though usually what the narrator is doing is eating them. She usually has them for breakfast, eating eggs so she can make her own healthy eggs. When, one night, she falls asleep in her closet and terrifies Cora into dropping her breakfast the next morning, it's an egg that falls to the ground and has to be thrown away.
One day at breakfast the narrator thinks, "I think that this is what God must look like: an egg [...] To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure" (19.11, 12). She adds that she is living "The minimalist life. Pleasure is an egg. Blessings that can be counted, on the fingers of one hand. But possibly this is how I am expected to react. If I have an egg, what more can I want?" (19.15). The narrator's attitude toward eggs alludes to what eggs symbolize in Christianity:
The egg is a wonderful symbol of birth and rebirth, an apparently lifeless object out of which comes life. [...] It is a symbol of Christ's Resurrection. [...] The egg represents the Creation, the elements, and the world itself, with the shell representing the firmament, the vault of the sky where the fiery stars lie; the thin membrane symbolizing air; the white symbolizing the waters; and the yolk representing earth. (source)
If the egg can be seen to contain God and pleasure, a whole world, the narrator wonders, perhaps she should not desire anything else. In her next thought, however, she worries that she's been given the egg and these feelings so she won't want anything else. Even philosophical abstraction and meditation has been undermined by Gilead.
See our discussion in "Character Clues: Clothing."
See our discussion in "Setting."
What information we get about Gilead, we get from the woman currently known as Offred—even though she's only allowed a really limited view of the world. And we mean that literally: she's not allowed to make eye contact with most people.
We see Gilead as "Offred" sees it; we interpret it as she interprets it; and our only knowledge of it comes from the tidbits she gives to us. From a dramatic or plot standpoint, we only discover the narrator's history and the events that led up to the foundation of the Republic of Gilead as she reveals them, almost as an aside to her narrative about what's happening to her at her third posting (the Commander's home).
We have to trust her about Gilead and what happens to her. At the same time, that trust is continually undermined by her comments about how she wishes she could change the direction of her story and admissions about how she has changed it, as well as constant evasions and the use of pseudonyms. She even says at one point, "This isn't a story I'm telling," before turning around in an about-face and saying, "It's also a story I'm telling, in my head, as I go along" (7.34-35).
Frustrating? Sure. But not nearly as frustrating as being stuck in Gilead.
The narrator is not alone in her capture and brainwashing; she is part of a select group of fertile women whom this new government has chosen to be molded into child-bearing vessels for the upper classes. Their identities are removed and their personalities gradually scrubbed away.
The narrator realizes that her situation could be worse: she could be in the Colonies or even dead. She uses her memories to take herself out of her body, away from the demeaning circumstances that constrict her, and relies on them to remind herself of her intelligence and capacity for love. By holding onto these things, she manages to grit her teeth and bear it as a Handmaid. She has opportunities to kill herself and doesn't take them. She finds ways to take small pleasures and satisfactions from her situation.
The narrator enters into several different relationships, each of which is illegal and dangerous. She can no longer rely on her flashbacks to distance herself from her situation. She can't ignore how precarious her situation is or how close she is to losing the very little she has left. She's trapped in a cycle of non-pregnancy, unable to achieve the one thing that could keep her safe. Time is running out.
The delicate balance the narrator had been trying to achieve comes crashing down after she has to watch a terrible execution. One of her only friends and allies disappears, and Serena Joy is furious with her for her betrayal. The narrator fears she has lost her place and must wait for a punishment she can't imagine.
The narrator's removal from the Commander's house is a redemption of sorts: she's taken away from a place where she's been marking time. Yet the redemptive qualities of this rescue (or arrest, depending on your point of view) are purposefully left ambiguous. We don't know if the narrator is really being redeemed or if she's been damned by her flirtation with the resistance.
This is pretty straightforward: the narrator arrives at a new location while explaining both her position in society and how she got to it. It's kind of like the first "exposition" scene in a show like Law and Order, where the characters toss out a lot of backstory with straightforward dialogue.
The whole point of the narrator's role in the Commander's house is as a sexless vessel to be impregnated. He's not supposed to enjoy being with her, and she's not supposed to threaten his relationship with his wife.
So when the Commander wants to enjoy some one-on-one time, he's getting his rocks off and putting the narrator in jeopardy. The fact that he wants to play Scrabble at first is way less predictable than his eventual desire to go to Jezebel's.
Clearly, breaking one rule isn't enough. Now the narrator has to get involved with another man, Nick, while keeping that part of her life from the Commander. It seems like she has a different private arrangement going on with everyone she knows. If that's not complicated, what is? This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Just as the narrator may be starting to carry a new life, she has to go observe death. While pregnancy should be a ticket to safety, the fact that she wants to be with Nick is only going to get the narrator into more trouble. As if on cue, she has to go to a Salvaging and see the terrible punishments that happen when women break the rules. This is reinforced when she sees Ofglen stand up for another person in the resistance. She begins to worry about how so little in her world is what it seems.
In what we like to call an "uh-oh" moment, Ofglen stops coming to their rendezvous. Another woman is there saying she's Ofglen. The narrator just saw the other Ofglen that morning—what's happened while she's been having lunch?
This stage in the book is full of different kinds of waiting. First the narrator has to wait to find out what happened to the real Ofglen (she killed herself) and whether this new one is also in the resistance (doesn't seem like it).
While she's trying to figure out whether she's in danger as a result of what the old Ofglen knew about her, the Commander's Wife confronts her about secretly spending time with the Commander. Now the narrator also has to wait to find out what revenge the Commander's Wife is going to take on her—which could be really, really bad. Only bad stuff seems to lie down this path.
This "unwinding" of events is remarkably ambiguous and suspenseful. The narrator says she doesn't know whether this event represents the end of her story or a new beginning. We never find out. In a neat inversion of the "Initial Situation" stage, the narrator is removed from her house and sent to a different posting of some kind, the likes of which we, and she, can only imagine.
For the scholars who speak in this section, the ideas here continue to be ambiguous. We can gather from the fact that the scholars are having the conference and discussing the Republic of Gilead as a thing of the past that at least the society that put the narrator through all that stuff is over. The chairperson of the conference is a woman, so obviously women can write, think, and participate in the world again.
The effects of the terrible Gileadean society are now studied from a safe historical distance, the way we might study the French Revolution. Yet these scholars, looking through their historic lenses, can't tell us what happened to the narrator, whether she made it, or even who she was. They can only guess that she managed to get out long enough to pass her story down to us.
The narrator begins working as a Handmaid to a Commander and gradually becomes more involved with him, while also trying to find her way into the resistance and battling with flashbacks from her past.
The narrator's secret relationship with the Commander switches from being about Scrabble to being about sex. When she's with him at Jezebel's she runs into an old friend, Moira, whose experience shows that their society is tough on all women at that point. She also begins having sex with the house chauffeur, Nick.
Each of these relationships is illegal and secret—the Commander's Wife can't know about her relationship with the Commander and the Commander can't know that his Wife is making her sleep with Nick. The narrator realizes that she may be pregnant with Nick's child.
The narrator has to attend a Salvaging (execution), where her friend Ofglen, also in the resistance, is compromised. Ofglen disappears and the narrator learns that she killed herself. The narrator realizes that she too may be in danger. We learn that the Commander's Wife has found out about the narrator and the Commander. The narrator is waiting for the axe to fall when some men dressed as government agents come to arrest her. Nick says they're from the resistance, but who knows? The narrator goes with them and we never find out what happens to her.


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If we cannot become observant to our inner world than we lose our self to its thoughts, feelings or sensations and fall into the state of identification. In this workshop we will explore the mechanics of identification and see how we can struggle against it.
The recording of this workshop is available for BePeriod students only


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NatMags' latest foray into the teen market is a weekly digital magazine linked to the CosmoGirl! brand.
With more teenagers going online to get entertainment, celebrity gossip and style tips – and the teen lifestyle press taking a resulting hit in the latest ABC figures published in February – digital media is becoming an increasingly important medium with which to reach teenage consumers.
Against this backdrop, the recently launched digital venture, called Jellyfish, will compete with the websites of teen girl titles such as Sugar and Bliss.
Jellyfish is one of three strands of CosmoGirl! – sitting between the print title and the website cosmogirl.co.uk. Jellyfish concentrates specifically on entertainment.
For PROs, the development of websites linked to print magazines as well as digital-only magazines such as Jellyfish offers a variety of creative opportunities to target teenage girls.
Websites are different
The editors of such sites stress that websites are different from print titles and need to be targeted accordingly.
'Although we have the same brand values, we are a separate entity from the magazine', says Anna Wakeford editor of www.mybliss.co.uk.
'We link into the magazine's features. For example, if there was a feature about friendships in the magazine, we may put a "BlissWorld" box at the bottom directing readers to the website, where we may have a section about celebrity friendships. But we don't copy any editorial.'
Websites are clearly more visual, faster moving, thus more topical, and encourage greater user-interactivity than their print versions.
And PROs should not assume that the sites have an unlimited amount of space. So how should PROs tailor their pitches for the web?
Celia Duncan, editor of www.Jellyfishmag.co.uk says: 'We try to bring our readers the best of the web every week. We want to know about virtual performances, the availability of early downloads and amazing games or virals.' Duncan also urges high-street fashion PROs to contact websites when products are available to buy online.
She says she welcomes approaches from PROs with promotional offers and discounts but stresses that opportunities to supply copy are minimal.
Wakeford agrees. 'PR people provide us with too much copy and this really doesn't work online,' she says. 'If users have to click down the page to continue reading, they often won't bother. Make it short and think instead about the visual elements websites offer.'
The shorter attention span of the average consumer might reduce opportunities for copy but PROs are advised instead to think about the additional assets that websites provide – such as video clips, audio content, games, images and interactive polls.
Wakeford adds: 'Offering a Q&A with a celebrity is not really that useful. Far better for us is a face-to -face interview that we can put on the site.'
This interactivity is something that really sets the sites apart from print. They have online polls, post celebrity videos and there are style pages where you can dress mannequins in different products.
Emma Hoddinott, editor of sugarmagazine.co.uk, says: 'We really put the emphasis on the user, letting them be famous and having their own personal page within the site.
'We are not just restricted to copy. We can be far more creative with audio and visual interaction and react to more topical news and events.'
A recent example of such creativity was the Teenage Cancer Trust facilitating backstage footage of Russell Brand at the Albert Hall gig for Jellyfish. The content is exclusive to the site and carries a link to donate to the Trust at the bottom of the footage. Six PR also promoted Wrigley's chewing gum online, where they produced a formula for 'the perfect snog'. They used a spokesperson in a mock-up of a TV studio and streamed a live web chat over 17 sites, gaining a large amount of coverage.
PROs also need to be wary of sites' deadlines. Excepting Jellyfish, which is a weekly, the sites are updated daily and are keen to put interesting stories up immediately. But they all plan themes and features between two to four weeks in advance. Jellyfish needs any fashion and beauty contact by the previous Friday and the deadline for news is the end of the day on Monday.
Getting the tone right
The editors also emphasise the importance of really engaging with the target audience and the websites themselves to ensure a relevant, well-pitched idea.
'Companies often take a clunky approach to teenagers and get the wrong tone, be it patronising or just embarrassing,' says Six PR associate director Lucy Freeborn. 'The same level of insight and thinking is required here as in any campaign. Teenagers have a different way of communicating.'
Like their paper counterparts, the teen sites also require competition prizes and review copies. Matthew Bagwell, editor of www.mykindaplace.com, says: 'If we are going to review music then we need copies and if we are going to review films we need screening invites.'
He argues that his users are also socially aware and says that the site will use material surrounding health issues, for example. As Freeborn says: 'PR companies are not just limited to competitions. There is definitely scope for other interaction such as campaigns. Teenagers are far more issues-aware than people give them credit for.'
Editor Matthew Bagwell E firstname.lastname@example.com
Best to contact via email
Editor Emma Hoddinott E firstname.lastname@example.com
Deputy editor Alex Zagalsky email@example.com
Best to contact via email
Editor Anna Wakeford E firstname.lastname@example.com
Best to contact via email
Editor Celia Duncan E email@example.com
Best to contact via email


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Have you ever craved thick, sweet and salty peanut butter? I've always loved it and often use it for my smoothies, as a nice addition to my porridge, cookies (that's a winner!) and simply as a snack – a quick teaspoon full of peanut butter followed by another one 🙂 I used to buy peanut… Continue reading Homemade Peanut Butter Recipe
9 things I've learnt during #PlasticFreeJuly
A whole month, with a great ambition to use as little single use plastic as possible, 31 days, 744 hours – some of those spent on cycling frantically across London to find stuff without plastic… So, here's what I have learnt: There is sooo much plastic! I have always considered myself as environmentally conscious and… Continue reading 9 things I've learnt during #PlasticFreeJuly
Vegan soft toast bread
This is an absolute winner! I have long tired to achieve this kind of softness and taste so that we can (finally!) completely ditch the bread sold in plastic bags. I prefer my sourdough bread but it was a journey to satisfy my daughters with their fine taste buds and I MADE IT 🙂 This… Continue reading Vegan soft toast bread
The Best Energy Balls
Ingredients: 50g almonds 50g walnuts 8 dates, stones removed 2 T of cocoa powder 1 T peanut butter 1 T coconut oil Method: Place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until nuts are nicely crushed but not still crunchy and everything is well mixed. You may want to stop and scrape the mixture… Continue reading The Best Energy Balls
Recycling has that calming effect on me when it comes to "doing my part for the world." At least is has for a really long time. Shop, unpack, use up, put in the recycling bin. Simple, right? If only. There's been more and more information out about recycling. From Tree Hugger blog, to BBC War… Continue reading Recycling
Vegan 'scrambled eggs'
Ingredients: 1 tbsp. olive oil 250g tofu, crumbled 1 tsp curcuma / turmeric a pinch of salt and pepper Optional: tomatoes vegan sausage Method: Heat the olive oil on a frying pan, add tofu and turmeric. Fry until light golden and season. Add any vegies you like; I usually add tomatoes or left over salad… Continue reading Vegan 'scrambled eggs'
We went for a 9 mile walk in Surrey today. Because it's Saturday, and because it makes my week so much better. I genuinely cannot wait for Saturdays to come now, and even a thought of our little stroll outside of the big city makes me want to start skipping rather than walking 🙂 It… Continue reading Foraging


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"I want to celebrate that we've come so far in my life from not having words for our experience -- 'the love that dare not speak its name' -- to being able to celebrate it." Boston psychotherapist Steve Cadwell is speaking about his new one-man show Wild and Precious, a few days after performing it on Friday evening, June 6, in the tenth-floor auditorium of Boston's Fenway Health, the largest LGBT health care and research organization in the world.
Wild and Precious traces Cadwell's life journey from sissy farm boy -- one of six brothers -- in rural Vermont, through the wild and crazy 1960s, the early gay rights movement of the seventies, the devastation of AIDS in the eighties, and his biggest role ever as an out and proud gay man married and raising a son of his own with his longtime partner -- now legally wed husband -- Joe.
Jon Vincent, director of Fenway Health's Prevention, Education, and Screening division, told me that Wild and Precious fit naturally into the organization's "Living Well" program. He said the mission of the 25-year-old program -- originally created as a holistic living program for HIV-positive people before the advent of antiretroviral therapy -- includes exploring some of the most challenging personal and social issues in the age of HIV, and reclaiming what is ours.
In opening the show, Cadwell said his personal mission includes reclaiming his own story and telling it his own way. "My story is not that unusual," he told me in a phone interview. "It's a fairly ordinary 'every boy's story.' " Yet like all noteworthy art, the particulars of one man's life become the touchstones of common experience for so many of our lives.
Through his original music, poetry, costumes, and a series of photographs projected onto a screen behind him, Cadwell told me he wants audiences to share the range of feelings he evokes in the show -- anger, sadness, joy, even some hate. "All that is channeled through it with hope that those who are engaged with me, the audience, also feel this bath of warm, engaged possibility," he said.
Although he's a white gay man, Cadwell is clear that struggling with being "different" isn't unique to gay men or other sexual minorities. He said Wild and Precious is for anyone who is oppressed, "outside and in," by any of the phobias and "isms" that people turn against one another -- and upon ourselves -- because of our differences. He aims to help others feel hope -- "whatever the difference is, whatever the minority experience is." Put a bit differently, he said the show "is about this core xenophobia that is 'different-o-phobia' out of our own internal terror about our own difference."
Cadwell doesn't shy from plumbing the depths of his own painful experience as a gay youth coming to grips with being different. One of his poems, "POEMemoir Noir: WILD Howls inside the Cage," describes his experience of being committed to a state mental institution due to his emotional breakdown triggered by his being homosexual -- considered until 1973 to be a mental illness.
Again in "AIDS Trilogy Part II: Requiem for the Boy Next Door," he mines his and so many of our heartache over the losses of friends and lovers in the dark pre-antiretroviral years:
Kiss this boy who makes me cry.
Mark my words. Tell you why:
Tender is his "might have been."
Ache to hold him...gather him in...
all these bones
and thin...thin...skin.
Rock-a-bye, baby...goodbye
But Wild and Precious is much more than a sentimental journey down a memory lane of pain and sadness. The show's final triumphant image is a great blue heron taking flight, rising slowly, majestically, off the water. It ends with Cadwell draped in the rainbow flag. His takeaway message: Inner peace comes of accepting our own differences, and a life of integrity comes from integrating all our parts.
"It's right here, under this rainbow," said Cadwell in our interview, "not over the rainbow, Judy Garland and Wizard of Oz. It's right here under the rainbow of our smiles, affirming, loving, accepting -- not the hate and pushing away." Or, as he concludes in Wild and Precious, "Dare to be different. Make a difference. Be the difference. Be wild! Stay precious! We're only as free as our least are free."


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