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Born and raised in Paris, Royale Belleville is an artist painter who lives and works in Amsterdam, NL.
Self taught artist, he developed into two different types of expression through all the years.
One, very graphic and colorful, based on the depiction of Japanese flowers that gave its name to the Serie entitled "OsakA' Mazza 1881".
The second, much darker, for which the artwork is more narrative and depicted as allegories that are mainly declined in monochrome and black & white paintings.
Royale Belleville makes also recurrent use of the numbers from the Smorfia or "book of dreams". This coding process, which has its origins in Naples and dates from the 18th century, translates every object, action or person into a dedicated number that goes from 1 to 90.
Those numbers and other symbols are present in most of the artist work and became soon an identification mark of his artworks.
In 2010, Royale Belleville founded the "Studio Inferno III", an art and design studio based in Amsterdam.


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There And Back: Lazy 5 Ranch
If you take Main Street east from downtown Mooresville, it becomes a two-lane country road. A few miles down, you'll see some camels grazing behind a fence just a few yards from the pavement. That's how the Lazy 5 Ranch started. In the late 1980s, a guy who liked to collect exotic animals would let school groups peer at the critters from his driveway, but as interest grew, he decided to let people get up close. It's become very popular.
"All right everybody, let's go out; let's go have some fun," says wagon driver Jim Ray.
You can drive yourself through, but several signs warn: "enter at your own risk." The one piece of advice I got before visiting Lazy 5 was don't take your own car, unless you want, say an ostrich to drag its beak in your paint. So, I opted for the horse-drawn wagon ride, and I have to say, I think that was good advice. Along with me on the ride are about a dozen people.
The big draw is the ranch's giraffes. Most of the animals have free reign of the 185 acre property. You see water buffalo living alongside Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs and white deer from the Alps with emus from Australia.
"Emus are the first animals to have babies; they do it in summertime, which is November or December Australia," Ray says. "So they stay on their calendar."
The ranch's population of about 800 animals will double this year after all the babies are born. Ray says they'll sell some or barter with other exotic animal parks and zoos to bring in new animals. And the summer is a good time to catch some little ones running around. Two-year-old Harper Price thought it was cool.
"I like the baby pigs," she says.
The experience of seeing and touching the animals up close really seems to draw kids in. Harper's 5-year-old brother Jude started out a little shy, but by the end he was eagerly holding his hand out for a llama.
"I think the animals liked me, he says, "because I'm nice to them. You have to be really soft with the animals because maybe they'll kind of bite you"
Jude didn't get bitten, and our driver Jim Ray says those kinds of mishaps are rare, especially if you follow his instructions:
"Hold your fingers out straight and make sure your hands down low so animals can get to the feed. If you happen to curl your fingers up, the animals like that, because that means they can nibble on those fingers. Straighten them out and continue feeding," he advises.
The animals aren't shy at all. They know that when they see a car or wagon coming, they're going to get fed, and they walk right up
So when a Brahma cow shuffled up—you know, those intimidating-looking ones with the hump behind their head—I decided to try my hand at feeding him.
(The Brahama snorts)
Turns out, that means he likes me. So, I successfully fed the big cow, and I kept all my fingers at the Lazy 5 Ranch.
Join us for "There & Back: Day Trips From Around The Charlotte Region" most Saturdays this summer on WFAE
If you have an idea of someplace we should check out, email us at news@wfae dot org, find us on facebook, or send us a tweet @wfae or @wfaeduncan.

subset: commoncrawl


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Reporting to you live from Toronto Pearson International Airport, where I am currently waiting for my boarding group to be called! Despite getting hit with a 70-Euro Uber charge on my way to Charles de Gaulle and barely being able to lug my two severely overweight suitcases across the threshold, I made it. My U.S sim card is back in my phone, the woman checking my boarding pass said, "thank you" instead of "merci," and water fountains can be spotted at every corner.
While I am definitely happy to hear English again and can't wait to see my friends and family, my last day in Nantes and final day in Paris were filled with hard goodbyes and moments of deep reflection. As cliché as it sounds, I can honestly say that my semester in France has affected the way I see the world. However, I think that my experience living in a host family affected me most poignantly. I think back to when I was selecting my lodging and am so grateful that I decided against living in a university apartment. I owe so much of my language progression, cultural immersion, and comfort to my host mom, Helene, my host brothers, Matthieu and Thomas, and all of the other family members I had the pleasure of meeting.
When I first embarked on this journey, I couldn't have even imagined some of the experiences I would get to drink in. I've never had so many "I can't believe I'm here right now" moments in my life. In just four months, I got to go paragliding in the Swiss Alps, learn about wine culture and cultivation in Bordeaux, and walk through the streets of Munich in a dirndl. It is moments like these that I have Temple to thank for. I can promise, I was not paid to say this, but I would genuinely not have been able to undergo this adventure of a lifetime without the gracious donors and liberal arts staff at Temple University. For trusting me to make the most out of this experience and use what I learned to not only enrich my life but also the lives of others, I thank you.
What I learned this semester cannot be summed up in a blog post or even sixteen. However, what I can say for sure is that, in my fourteen years of taking French classes in America, I never learned as much about the French language and culture as I did in the four months I spent in the eclectic, charming, welcoming city of Nantes, France. Don't get me wrong. It was challenging often. There were moments when I felt completely out of my comfort zone and wanted to shut down. But I didn't. I took five classes in French all taught by French professors, I managed the public transportation systems of five different countries, and I managed to revive my liquid-damaged laptop from near death all while remaining (mostly) sane. Of all the challenges I've endured in my life, this is the feat I'm most proud of. If I could go back, I wouldn't change anything about it.


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Alton Ellis – Godfather of Rocksteady
Artist Info
Alton Ellis O.D. 1938-2008
Career: Solo artist | Duo with Eddy Parkins | Duo with John Holt | member of The Flames | Producer
Selective Discography
- Mr. Soul Of Jamaica
- Sings Rock and Soul
- The Best Of Alton Ellis
- Sunday Coming
- Cry Tough (aka Greatest Hits)
- Still In Love
- A Love To Share
- Showcase
- Soul Groover
- Slummin'
- Mr. Skabeana
- More Alton Ellis
- Man From Studio One
- Here I Am
- The Legendary
- A New Day
- Daydreaming
- 25th Silver Jubilee
- Continuation
- Jubilee Volume 2
- Sets A Better Example
- At Studio One (with Hortense Ellis)
- All My Tears
- Alton Ellis Sings, Heptones Harmonise
- Arise Black Man
- Be True To Yourself
- Get Ready For Rock Reggae Steady
- Many Moods Of Alton Ellis
- My Time Is The Right Time
- Reggae Valley Of Decision
- Reggae Chronicles
- Be True To Yourself
- Jetstar Reggae Max
Plus countless single releases on record labels such as Studio One, Treasure Isle, Bamboo, Coxsone, R&B, New Beat Records, Techniques, Alltone Records, Matador, Upsetter, Aquarius, Impact and many many more.
Alton Ellis O.D. ((born Alton Nehemiah Ellis on September 1, 1938) has died at the age of 70 in London, England. Officials at Hammersmith Hospital announced Sunday morning October 12th 2008 that Ellis, who had cancer of the lymph glands, died peacefully Saturday morning 4:45 AM after he had been hospitalized for several weeks.
Alton Ellis, dubbed the Godfather of Rocksteady, was one of Jamaica's all-time favorite vocalists. The singer came to prominence in the late 1960s when the frantic Ska beat slowed awhile to allow soulful crooners, such as Alton, to come to the fore. Like so many other talented singers, he got his start and gained valuable experience under the tutelage of producer and Studio One label founder, sir Coxsone Dodd. However before trying to establish a career as a singer, Alton was a dancer. It was with his then-partner Eddy Parkins that he did his first commercial oriented recording session for Coxsone Dodd at Federal Studio in 1959. The duo cut the moving prison ballad "Muriel" with Clue J's Blues Blasters backing them. Not long after cutting the follow-up "My Heaven", Parkins left to try a solo career in the United States, leaving Ellis a solo act.
It wasn't until the fast paced tempos of Ska slowed down and riddims became more emphatic, that Alton Ellis became one of the major stars of Rocksteady and Early Reggae. During the transitional period — from early 1965 to 1967, the year of Rocksteady domination — the so-called rudeboy music was popular. Alton Ellis always refused to glorify the rudies — the violent bad boys. He and his group The Flames (consisting of his brother Leslie Ellis, David "Baby G" Gordon and Winston Jarrett) consistently took an anti-rudie stand on record which can be heard on five classic singles for producer Duke Reid, "Don't Trouble People", "Dance Crasher", "Cry Tough", "Blessings Of Love", and "The Preacher". He then decided it was safer to concentrate on more romantic concerns, including many of the most masterful interpretations of US Soul material to emerge from Jamaica. Some five years later he returned to warning the rudeboys with the exceptional "Big Bad Boy" for Keith Hudson's Mafia label.
Alton Ellis popularized the Rocksteady genre, which relies on vocal harmonies and has a slower tempo and heavier bass than Ska, with his song "Rock Steady". During the brief flowering of the genre — between the autumn of 1966 and the summer of 1968 — he moved between Brentford Road (Studio One) and Bond Street (Treasure Isle) and recorded many classic records with Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, all of them being chart toppers in Jamaica. Among his best-known recordings were "I'm Just A Guy", "Let Him Try", "Ain't That Loving You", and "Girl I've Got A Date", the latter of which became his biggest hit and signature song.
Not satisfied with the fact that he was still living in the ghetto despite having all these hit tunes under his belt, and seeing that the producers' studios were getting bigger and bigger, he left Jamaica and went to Canada in early 1969. But he came back in 1970 and continued to provide both Dodd and Reid with important hits. Some were in the gloriously romantic strain with which he had been successful before, but he also proved to be equal at home with the type of socially conscious material that was to become increasingly popular in the 1970s. Most notable among these were such as "African Descendants", "Set A Better Example", and the incisive "Blackish White", all recorded at Studio One. Furthermore he recorded noteworthy tunes for producers like Clancy Eccles, Lloyd "Matador" Daley, Herman Chin-Loy, Vincent Chin, and Bunny Lee.
After having toured England in early 1967 he went back there again in 1971, and during a brief stay he recorded a few songs including "Don't Care", "True Born African", "Keep On Yearning", and "I Can't Find Out". In 1972 he returned to Jamaica and tried to break through as a producer, but with little success. He then decided to return to Canada. During his seven-months stay he teamed up with old musical friends Lyn Taitt and Jackie Mittoo for various gigs. Alton then moved again, this time back to England, where he has based himself (intermittently) ever since. There he has worked with local producers like Lloyd Coxsone, Phil Pratt, Junior Lincoln, and Ephraim Barrett on assorted projects. Promising deals with Island Records and A & M Records failed to pan out, but Alton Ellis continued to produce his own material including the excellent self-produced album "Still In Love" (1977). Furthermore he was involved in the beginnings of Janet Kay's career and a cover version of "I'm Still In love With You", formed the basis for Althea & Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking" – a UK number 1 in 1978. He also opened up the Alltone record shop in Brixton, London, and started a record label of the same name.
Even though he had moved to England, he occasionally recorded for Jamaican producers such as Sonia Pottinger, Sugar Minott, Henry "Junjo" Lawes, and King Jammy. With these recordings he didn't enjoy the success he had in his Rocksteady and early Reggae years, however it didn't prevent him from recording new material including albums such as "Love To Share", "Sets A Better Example", "Mr. Skabeana", "More Alton Ellis" and "Man From Studio One". In an interview with Dr. Buster Dynamite he says about that period in his career… "I was working very hard – doing stage shows in England, Germany, USA, and Japan. But instead of going on tour doing fifteen shows, I was only offered mostly one-off shows. So I came back home with little earnings. Also a problem I had to face was that I wasn't consistent anymore in writing new songs. It's really a creative problem, because when I was young I could write a top song instantly. Now when I'm older my way of thinking has changed."
In the past 15 years, with the revival of the rocksteady trend in Europe, he began performing again. Besides stage shows he also headlined several festivals in the US and Europe. In December 2007, he was admitted to hospital in London for treatment of cancer of the lymph glands, but he returned to live performance after receiving chemotherapy. One of the last shows he did was on August 10th 2008 at London's Jazz Cafe, where he was joined by his son Christopher. Varese, a contributor to the "CHATTY MOUTH : REGGAE, RANTS AND REASONING" discussion board, was there and reported…
"Alton was very tired and had to be helped off stage to have a breather for a couple of songs while Chris sang the tunes. He seemed upset to have to do that, and seemed generally unhappy with his performance and voice. Luckily the crowd that was there would have loved it even if he'd merely smiled at them, and there was a lot of love towards him as well as a fair bit of concern… He said he'd just got back from JA the day before, where he'd been singing a lot- something like 10 gigs and TV appearances and recording 40+ specials. He said he didn't think he should really be doing the gig at the Jazz Cafe and also muttered darkly about having to fulfill contracts at various places."
In 1994, Alton Ellis was awarded the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican government in recognition of his vital contribution to the island's popular culture, and in 2006, he was inducted into the International Reggae and World Music Awards Hall Of Fame.
Ellis, who lived in the London suburb of Northolt, is survived by his wife, more than 20 children from different relationships,including reggae singers Noel Ellis and Christopher Ellis, and many grandchildren.
(Sources: "The Rough Guide To Reggae", Dr. Buster Dynamite's sleevenotes of "Get Ready For Rock Reggae Steady", and www.roots-archives.com.)


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Loeb & Loeb LLP is proud to sponsor the 2013 California Tax Practitioners' Conference, where partner Christopher W. Campbell will be participating on a panel titled "Procuring Attorney's Fees in Tax Litigation Cases" and partner Linda N. Deitch will be participating on a panel titled "Recent Developments in Trust and Estate Planning."
From the conference website:
The 2013 California Tax Practitioners' Conference promises to attract California's most powerful and respected tax professionals for a day of continuing educational seminars and interactive dialogue. This program features presentations by top government officials and leading practitioners in all fields of taxation: Federal, Accounting, Franchise, Trusts & Estates, Property, Sales, and City taxes.
Additional Details
For more information, including how to register, please see the Los Angeles County Bar Association website.


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International Spirits Distributor Renames Product
Evidencing a futile desire to break into the highly profitable bogus theme park rumor category, the Absolut company released a new product called "Absolut Reliable Booze & Vodka."
"We taght dis waz gonna bee a goot ting," says Absolut spokesperson Gunta Hildawater. "We shape bottle to look like Drop Zone, Tower of Terror and many
otter Amercan trill park attractions."
When contacted about the new product at the Absolutely Reliable Towers in midtown Manhattan, ARN&R's unnamed CEO exclaimed, while throwing his pen across the room, pushing papers on the floor and jumping clear over his desk, "They stole my flippin' idea! I was the one who came up with mixing alcohol with bogus theme park rumors!"
"We hat ideea since Andy Warhol design first bottle," Gunter counter claims. "You, Mr. ARN&R Dude, were still in baby clothes."
"I was not! I was not! I was not!"
While enthusiasts worldwide praised ARN&R for obtaining a domain licensed solely in its name, an official investigation has been ordered to ensure all writers and
contributors to ARN&R are of legal drinking age even if they do not touch the stuff themselves.
Thursday, November 28, 2002
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used overhould Pad Printers
in top conditions directly available
Made-to-measure workpiece mountings round out our product palette. All we need are some sample parts to make a 3-D drawing of the necessary mounting. On the basis of this drawing, you will receive a quote for the workpiece carrier. If you have CAD data, send this to us and we will make an offer on this basis.
If you have no 3-D data, we can have the parts scanned, and draw up a surface reconstruction, followed by a 3-D model.
Finally, this data is used to manufacture the carrier.


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Top 10, leading companies offering robust eCommerce platforms.
ECommerce platforms for companies that need productivity, advanced integrations with different platforms or ERP systems, and have a transaction volume greater than 5,000 transactions per month.
Oracle Commerce
Oracle Commerce Cloud is everything you need to succeed in the next era of commerce, now with retail and B2B in a single SaaS platform.
Our world-leading cloud commerce solution gives you the power to quickly deliver unified, intelligence-driven experiences across all channels.
IBM WebSphere Commerce, support all selling business models, including B2C, B2B, and B2B2C, through one ecommerce implementation.
SAP Hybris
Superior omnichannel commerce experience, speed your time-to-value, and reduce your total cost of ownership to win business and build loyalty.
Shopify Plus
Version enterprise ecommerce by Shopify, with the freedom to grow, adapt, and evolve.
Based on an open-source ecosystem, it extends from B2C to B2B, and predictive intelligence to create any shoppable experience.
Platform for High Volume Stores, the most scalable, secure and powerful enterprise ecommerce solution.
Drive conversion and offer an outstanding customer experience, even in complex scenarios, with an API first, modern cloud infrastructure.
Big Commerce
Highly-extensible open SaaS platform offering you a world of possibilities with enterprise-class integrations.
E-commerce tools to create customizable templates that sell your products, services, or subscriptions..
Difference between an essential eCommerce platform and a corporate platform?
An eCommerce platform must be chosen for the specific needs of each company that are associated to the moment that is living technologically and linked to the strategic objectives of the medium and long term.
Corporate platform: They are developed with the operational structure in mind, guaranteeing integration and responsiveness to large transaction volumes.
Its graphical interface can be similar to those offered by the essential platforms but with many processes that connect the entire company in a single screen.
Behind a corporate platform there is a specialized multidisciplinary team with defined roles.
A corporate platform has an administrative or backend panel that is continuously monitored and is governed by the analysis of metrics or KPIs that measure the performance of the entire operational chain of the platform.
Essential platform: It is highly recommended for a company that wants to make the learning curve in the world of electronic commerce; It is essential to have presence and sell quickly, but it has a limitation and it is the connectivity with services such as an ERP that all companies usually use to centralize the information of the company.
When a company has a low transactional volume, it is easy to control the entire operational ecosystem, but when the volume begins to grow it can become a challenge that is only covered with connectivity and automation and there the essential platforms fall short.
Things to look out for when evaluating a platform:
- Ability to adapt and evolve to a changing customer landscape
- Level of control over your experience
- Ability to setup and manage several sites under a single admin (Multi-brand, multi-country)
- Need for stage and preview
- Integration with other systems
- Technical considerations
Some dilemmas facing the company when implementing a new eCommerce platform:
- Increase conversion rate
- Increase AOV
- Increase approved orders
- Faster time to market
- Organic traffic increase
- Landing page to checkout
- Connexions with other partners
- Connexions inside, CRM, ERP, Etc.
5 Things to consider when choosing the right eCommerce Platform
- Being in control of your own data
- Scalability and flexibility of the platform
- Features available out the box
- Product Roadmap
- Size of partner and developer ecosystem
Note: Before making the investment is essential to have a situational diagnosis to determine among others:
- Integration between the company's internal systems (ERP) and the eCommerce platform
Logistic chain and fulfillment
- Integration with other third party sales systems such as Marketplace and affiliate systems
- Web services vs in-house services
- Needs of human resources and training objectives
Is it time to migrate to a new eCommerce platform?
When our business model has sufficient maturity and we have gone through a process of learning tests, errors and success, we see that we are falling short with current technology and it is time to make the technological leap and usually we come to the dilemma :
Wow, I have to change everything to get where I want to go!
If this is the case, usually when a company wants to make a transition because it has already exhausted its technological resources, it must prepare itself to start again because it is more likely that the solutions that meet its needs will come with an ecosystem of connections that will require it make a total change.
At Ecommerce Fantastic we know the importance of taking this step to reach the big leagues and for this we have prepared ourselves by identifying the most solid companies that can catapult us to success in the short term.
Advertising Disclosure: This site is a free online resource that strives to offer helpful content and comparison features to its visitors. Please be advised that the operator of this site accepts advertising compensation from companies that appear on the site, and such compensation impacts the location and order in which the companies (and/or their products) are presented, and in some cases may also impact the rating that is assigned to them. To the extent that ratings appear on this site, such rating is determined by our subjective opinion and based on a methodology that aggregates our analysis of brand market share and reputation, each brand's conversion rates, compensation paid to us and general consumer interest. Company listings on this page DO NOT imply endorsement. Except as expressly set forth in our Terms of Use, all representations and warranties regarding the information presented on this page are disclaimed. The information, including pricing, which appears on this site is subject to change at any time.
Disclaimer: We strive to provide accurate, up-to-date content. We recommend that you consult always with a professional for relevant business decisions. Our main focus is the eCommerce ecosystem, however, some areas are not our competence and we make recommendations for the comments of other professionals or consumers who leave their comments on various websites. Product or company names, logos, and trademarks referred to on this site belong to their respective owners.


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DISCLAIMER: This article was written when Covid-19 was still affecting physical stores around the world. Today, we're looking at different challenges. Find out more about how to advertise through times of crisis in the article below:
In this expert interview we discuss the impact the corona virus pandemic has had on the retail industry. Luckily, every cloud has a silver lining – and so many retailers are now finding new ways to improve their retail game and make every customer feel like the store was created with them in mind.
From the way we interact and behave around each other to the way we shop for goods and run our businesses, the corona virus pandemic has turned the world upside down.
Get an overview from our Customer Experience Guide
Right now, many retailers are suffering from huge declines in sales and have been forced to shut down their brick-and-mortar stores. As more consumers realize that they can get what they need without setting foot in a physical store, retailers without a rock-solid online marketing strategy are struggling to survive.
Because consumer behavior is changing, retailers are now forced to find new ways to keep driving revenue, remain relevant and keep up with competitors.
We had a virtual sit-down with our CCO, Rune Lawaetz Haaning, and a close friend of the house, Experiential and Retail Designer, Dion Guldbjerg, to discuss how retailers can navigate the crisis and seize the opportunities it has created.
The magic link between online and offline sales
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, many retailers depended on offline marketing channels, such as conferences, face-to-face meetings and the distribution of physical sales materials, in order to drive revenue and convert prospects into paying customers.
But as social distancing has forced people to stay at home and replace offline activities with online solutions, it's safe to say that technology has played an essential role for those retailers who have managed to keep their businesses alive. Rune comments:
Clearly, there is a great deal of uncertainty about all of this, but from our side of the desk, we're seeing that many retailers suffer from closed shops, postponed conferences and canceled production of marketing materials via physical photo shoots. And they don't have a plan B. These businesses can no longer afford to put all their eggs in one basket. They need to realize that there's an increasing necessity to take their online activities to the next level and create a mix of offline and online sales activities in order to meet the changing demands of consumer behavior.
According to Rune, retailers need to create a stronger link between their online and offline store activities:
We have to keep in mind that the physical store is far from dead, and it's not just about moving all sales activities online. It's just as much a matter of using digital sales tools to provide an extraordinary experience once the customer steps into the physical store. In this way, retailers will meet the terms of their customers – both online and offline.
Dion Guldbjerg also believes that the brick-and-mortar store indeed has a bright future ahead:
It's very simple: No bricks, no clicks. Retailers need to realize that online and offline sales are no longer necessarily two separate and distinct options. By using the data and insights from the online store to build convenient and relevant experiences, both online and offline, retailers are able to offer seamless shopping experiences. This, in turn, leads to better customer acquisition and retention.
The race for relevance
Covid-19 has not only shown how our everyday lives can be changed in a split second. It has also made us more aware of our most important resource: time.
According to Dion Guldbjerg, retailers are now – more than ever – fighting for their customers attention:
None of us know what will happen tomorrow, and that's why we pay close attention to what we trade our valuable time with. That's why relevance has become more important than ever. If retailers are able to push the 'reset button' and offer their customers a relevant shopping experiences that suits their way of living, they are more likely to navigate successfully through the crisis. This is a race towards remaining relevant. A race that retailers simply can't afford to lose.
Moving trust to the forefront of the retail agenda
As retailers are adjusting to this new reality, they need to accept the fact that e-commerce is new to many of their customers. As a result, they need to prioritize customer trust. Rune explains:
There's no doubt that online shopping will become the new normal for everyone – even those who up until the outbreak were reluctant, now have no choice. Retailers need to make their customers comfortable with purchasing online by equipping them with all the knowledge they need to make well-informed decisions.
One way that retailers can serve their customers is by providing the right digital sales tools:
If you sell physical products, 3D visualization and augmented reality can enchant your customers through detailed product and environmental experiences. In that way, you generate a somewhat in-store experience for your prospective customers,
Rune explains, and adds:
Detailed information does not only ensure a good online experience, it also activates the desire to see and feel the product in physical form, which will ultimately attract more visitors to the physical store.
Rethinking inventory management
As more and more businesses seize the digital opportunities of the world we now live in and shift to experience-oriented retail, many companies have chosen to rethink the purpose of their brick-and-mortar stores:
Today, most of the customer's buying process takes place at home – not in the physical store. And on top of that, customers want personalized shopping experiences. So, instead of having one of each product in your inventory, focus on identifying your customer's buying habits and then creating a seamless user experience based on their prior online and offline activities.
According to Rune, this presents new inventory management questions to retailers:
Basically, retailers only need one of each item in stock in the physical store, enabling the customer to see, feel, smell and hear the product in its physical form. In our opinion, the rest of the shopping experience should take place through virtual reality or digital showroom solutions, where the customer can interact with their custom-made version of the product and see how it looks in their own environment. In this way, retailers will not only cater to the desire for a personalized shopping experience but will also save a lot of store space and will no longer be bound by costly inventory.
Dion has a different perspective, namely that retailers do not necessarily need to save store space, but they need to consider how they're able serve their customers with premium experiences from the square footage they have available:
Brick-and-mortar stores now have a golden opportunity to create meaningful brand experiences through a carefully designed space with brand educated staff. But great experiences require space. So, instead of cutting down on store space, it's all about creating bigger and better experiences with the available square footage. Remember: The greater the consumer experience, the greater the potential for revenue growth, Dion concludes.
Are you ready to seize the opportunities? Once you adapt to the new ways in which consumers behave, you'll be equipped to serve each customer in a unique, personalized way – both online and offline.


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Body Contouring Polls
important resources
online poll center
Welcome to the Liposuction Question of the Week
Home of LipoSite's Online Poll
This is the place to make your voice heard and to see how your vote compares to those of other visitors. Each week we'll ask a question for our visitors to answer. After you vote, you'll get to see the vote tally and results in both numeric and graphical format.
Some weeks the question will be for everyone to answer. Other weeks, it will be directed only at a specific subset of our visitor population, such as men or women, or pre-op or post-op.
In order to make the results as accurate as possible, we ask that you only answer each question only once during the course of each week's voting.. That way the results will be as accurate as possible. If you're not a part of the group being polled during a particular week, just wait until the end of the week when we show you the results of the final previous week's poll.
We'll report progress periodically throughout the week, so please - No double voting just to see the results! If you want to
see the results without voting, click here
We also have results from old polls. The colors don't match out new site design, but the results are still interesting.
To see the old liposuction poll results, click here
© Advice Media


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{ abby try again }
i love these beautiful prints from abby try again.
Wow, her work is beautiful. I really like her "rain boots" print.ReplyDelete
I've had my eye on one of her prints for a while... I can't wait to get one of my own!
Friends, Thank you so much for reading + supporting my blog, and for taking the time to leave me a comment. Your comment support truly means so much to me. Have a lovely day! xo, danni


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Lindenwood's Student Government Association is planning to branch out by working with the local non-profit organization Youth in Need, according to an announcement made during the LSGA Black and Gold Gala on April 12.
LSGA President Regan Cole said that she is excited for the organization to step out into the community, and is looking forward to the new opportunity.
Cole also announced that Lindenwood junior advertising/public relations: corporate communications major Nick Stone would be taking over as the LSGA president for the 2017-2018 year.
Stone said that the idea to partner with a charity organization came from Cole to help give LSGA a "bigger name on campus."
"Part of the way she wanted to do that [was to] have a charity so we can work together with other student organizations," said Stone. "Because it's not just LSGA doing this; we're hoping that other kids will do it with us."
Youth In Need helps at-risk youth through emergency sheltering, counseling services, foster-care management services and more to "build on the strengths of children, youth and families so they find safety, hope and success in life," according to the organization's website.
Stone also wants to tackle the "suitcase culture" on campus by working to get students more involved on campus.
"I really want to push for more and bigger events on the weekends," Stone said. "I want to try to make the dorms as comfortable as possible. And one of the ideas that I know is being talked about is longer visitation on the weekends; that way, people can spend more time with their significant other in the dorms."
Joining Stone on the LSGA executive board are Posy Durr as vice president, Benito Luongo Vegas as secretary and Kelsee Davis as treasurer.
[su_divider top="no" size="4″]Women's Soccer[/su_divider]


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I am thankful for boys.
I am thankful for boys. My boys bring laughter and frustration all in the same moment… Basketball in the rain is fun, but muddy shoes on the carpet is not. Funny boy jokes are cute, but not when I discover the topic. Friendship… Good friends are easy to find, but great friends, are difficult to come by. It takes a lot of going out on a limb and stretching out of your comfort zone, and essentially being vulnerable to create lasting friendships.
thankful this week for creatures that spark curiosity and imagination in my children. yesterday we were playing outside (it was a gorgeous day!) and this little frog jumped
I am so incredibly thankful for God's amazing creation! This past week has been a tough one for me emotionally. But God knew exactly what I needed


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MOLD, MILDEW AND ROT – Water can easily seep between siding or wood panels causing mildew, rot and mold. It can also settle into your insulation causing it to rot and decrease the energy efficiency of your home.
INSECT OR ANIMAL INFESTATION – A mosquito bite now carries the risk of disease or illness. The number one way to avoid this? Eliminate pools of water around your house. These pools attract mosquitoes, as well as other insects and animals that can infest your property and house.
FOUNDATION – We walk on it every day and never give it a second thought. But over time, water around your foundation can create devastating results. Not just cracks, but literally a shifting of your foundation that jeopardizes the structural integrity of your house.
ROOF PROTECTION – While your roof sits above the gutter line, it is still susceptible to water damage especially the gutters are installed incorrectly. Gutters that are clogged with debris can pool water and rot the wood around your roofline.
FLOODING – While most Central Texas homes do not have basements, they are still susceptible to flooding. A simple leak from water run off can go from a drip to a sudden fire hose especially during major storms.


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Read more
For Home or Small/Youth Groups
In the wake of swarming bands fighting for a musical footprint in a scene flooded with genres that mimic one another -- Sumerlin stands apart by blending the importance in being both culturally relevant and spiritually significant.
Sumerlin's successful EP Motives included rock standout tracks "The Fallback" and "Just A Dream," which collectively spent nearly 40 weeks on the Billboard Chart in 2013. Sumerlin's debut into the radio charts was with "Just A Dream" gaining top 15 success. "The Fallback" followed up and landed Sumerlin at number 2 on the Billboard Rock Chart. 2014 brought Sumerlin's full-length debut, Runaways, on DREAM Records/Capitol Christian.
Runaways is a record about knowing what you're running from and what you're running towards. Our mission is to be relative and relatable to all of our listeners. You're better than what holds you back. We are the RUNAWAYS.
Sumerlin's passion for music has always been at the forefront of what they do. Hailing from Wilmington, NC, the band has extensively toured over the last few years and is gearing up for another busy year supporting Runaways.
Runaways was produced and mixed by John Harrell (Sent By Ravens, Divided By Friday, Set It Off) and mastered by Brad Blackwood (Maroon 5, Anberlin, POD). The songs on Runaways are polished and bold with driving guitars, meaningful, hope-filled lyrics, and infectious melodies. Runaways provides fans with the same power as their previous releases with added depth that is evident in such tracks as "You Always Were."
The depth of Runaways continues on both of the lead singles "Voices" and "Breaking Out." "Suicide prevention and awareness has always been a huge part of my personal ministry," DiGiovanni says. "I have been personally impacted by this with someone very close to me and 'Voices' was written to be an anthem to speaking out and letting people know that their voice can be heard and that there is always love."
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第259課: Intransitive & Transitive: Part 3
In this third lesson on verbs with both intransitive and transitive usages, we'll continue to uncover peculiarities in Japanese at the individual word basis.
する, 増す, 働く, 引く
する is the most important verb in the Japanese language as we have already learned due to how many usages it has and how important those usages are to the entirety of the language. Unsurprisingly, its usages can be classified as either being intransitive or transitive in nature.
As an intransitive verb, する can demonstrate a sense being sensed, in some state (often with onomatopoeia), show the worth of something (as in price), or the elapse of time (with time phrases).
1. アテモヤは砂糖で煮詰めたリンゴのような味がします。
The atemoya has a flavor like that of an apple boiled down in sugar.
Spelling Note: Ringo is seldom spelled as 林檎.
2. 目がぐるぐると回るような眩暈がした。
I got dizzy as if my eyes were spinning.
3. 耳鳴りがするとお化けが側にいるって本当ですか。
Is it true that a ghost is next to you when your ears ring?
4. 背後に強烈な爆発音がした。
There was the sound of an intense explosion in the background.
5. しばらくしてから行きましょう。
Let's go after a little while.
Spelling Note: しばらく is sometimes written as 暫く.
6. このネックレスはいくらしたの?
How much was this necklace?
Spelling Note: いくらis seldom spelled as 幾ら.
7. 狭くて息が詰まるような感じする。
I feel cramped.
8. 日焼けしちゃった。
I got sunburned.
As a transitive verb, its primary meaning is "to do." Aside from its complex grammatical usages that happen to be transitive, it can be used to show occupation, mean "to play (a game/sport/etc.)," "to wear (an accessory)", or even "to be…(shaped)/to have a…(face)/etc." when describing appearances.
9. 何をしたらいいでしょうか。
What should I do?
10. ここは、代々パン屋をしている老舗です。
This here is an old bakery past down for generations.
11. 手袋をしなさい。
Please wear your cloves.
12. 彼は長い髪をしている。
He has long hair.
13. 買い物でもしようか。
How about we shop or something?
14. 僕の勤めている会社にパチンコをする人が数人いました。
There were several people who play pachinko at the company where I work.
15. 惑星ってどんな形をしているんですか。
What sort of shape do planets have?
16. 変な顔しないでよ。
Don't make weird faces.
Spelling Note: 為る may very well be the Kanji for "to do," but it is no longer used in regular writing. If, though, you feel compelled to know how in its truly transitive sense of "to do" is spelled in Kanji, then this is how.
増す is a literary verb that means "to increase." In this regard, it is very similar to the intransitive/transitive verb pair 増える and増やす. 増える, unlike 増す, is commonly used in both the written and spoken language. It, though, can have emotion attached to it whereas 増す is only used in an objective sense. However, unlike 増す, it cannot be used to express (dramatic) increase in degree (See Exs. 17, 18, and 21).
17. プミポン国王の喪失で、タイの将来への不安が増している。
With the loss of King Bhumibol, suspense over Thailand's future is massing.
18. 極右政党が勢いを増している。
The far right political party is gathering strength.
19. 日本では高齢者の人口が増している。
In Japan, the elderly population is increasing.
20. 前日の大雨で川の水嵩が増して、川が氾濫した。
In the heavy rain the other day, the river's banks enlarged, causing the river to inundate.
21. 地震波は、深さと共に速度を増している。
The seismic waves are increasing in depth as well as speed.
22. 研究人の人数が増えた。
The number of researchers has increased.
23. 交通事故の数が増えているのは何故だろうか。
Why is that the number of traffic accidents is increasing?
24. 強盗が増えてきているため、宝石店などでは厳重な防犯対策が必要です。
Because robberies have risen, strong crime prevention measures are necessary at places such as jewelry stores.
増やす is used in the sense of "to increase the number of (resources)." When used in the sense of "to increase (fortune/animals/plants)" as in promulgation, it is often spelled as 殖やす. When this meaning is used in an intransitive sense, 殖える can be used.
25. 相続財産が{増えて・殖えて}いきます。
Your inheritance will increase.
26. 商品の種類を増やすことで、カナダでの売り上げを伸ばしたいと思います。
By increasing the variety of merchandise, I would like to expand sales in Canada.
27. 生物の種類を殖やしていきたいと思います。
I would like to increase the diversity of living things.
28. 不動産を活用して財産を殖やす。
To increase assets by utilizing real estate.
As an intransitive verb, 働く means "to work" or "to function." As a transitive verb, it means "to perpetrate."
29. 中国では、出稼ぎ労働者の多くは、工場などで働いているようです。
In China, a lot of migrant workers seem to work at places like factories.
30. 上司が不正を働いていることにたまたま気づいてしまいました。
I've incidentally noticed that my boss is committing fraud.
Spelling Note: たまたま is seldom spelled as 偶々.
31. 悪事を働いても何も感じないという人は少ない。
There are few people who don't feel anything from having committed an evil deed.
32. 息子が盗みを働いているとは考えたくなかった。
I didn't want to think that my son was committing robberies.
As a transitive verb, ひく can mean a variety of things with just as many ways to spell it. 引く just happens to be the most basic way to spell it. As an intransitive verb, it simply means "to ebb/fade."
33. くじを引いてみました。
I tried drawing a lot.
Spelling Note: くじ may also be spelled as 籤.
34. 参加者の目を惹いていました。
It had been drawing the participants' attention.
Spelling Note: When used to mean "to attract/captivate," ひく is usually written as 惹く.
35. 先日、風邪を引きました。
I caught a cold the other day.
36. {まっすぐに線・直線}を引いてください。
Please draw a straight line.
Spelling Note: まっすぐmay alternatively be spelled as 真っ直ぐ.
37. 辞書を引いてください。
Please consult a dictionary.
38. 3から2を引くと、1になります。
When you subtract 2 from 3, you get 1.
39. カードを引いてください。
Please draw a card.
40. 熱が引いてから2、3日は外出を控えてください。
Refrain from going out for two to three days after the fever has receded.
41. 潮が引いたら歩いて渡れます。
You can walk across once the tide has ebbed away.
42. 孫氏は長年、政治の表舞台を{引退している・退いている/退いている}。
Mr. Sun has retired from the center stage of politics for many years.
Spelling Note: When used to mean "to draw back/retire," ひく is often written as 退く but it becomes indistinguishable from the verb しりぞく, which is far more common and used for the same purpose.
43. 挽き肉を自分で挽きたいのですが、どんな肉を用意すればいいでしょうか。
I'd like to mince ground meet by myself, but what sort of meat should I prepare?
Spelling Note: When used to mean "to saw/mince," ひくis usually written as 挽く.
44. コーヒー豆を{挽く・碾く}と、いい香りがします。
Coffee grains have a good scent when you grind them.
Spelling Note: When used to mean "to grind/mill," ひくis often written as 挽く. It may also be traditionally written as 碾く.
45. 抹茶はなぜ石臼で{挽く・碾く}んですか。
Why is it that you grind matcha in a stone mortar?
Culture Note: 抹茶 is powdered green tea.
46. 私が自転車に乗って直進していたところ、前からきた左折する車に轢かれました。
As I was riding straight ahead on my bicycle, I was knocked down by a car turning left which had come from ahead.
Spelling Note: When used to mean "to run over (with a vehicle)", ひく is usually spelled as 轢く.
47. ピアノを弾けますか。
Can you play the piano?
Spelling Note: When used to mean "to play (a string instrument)", ひくis spelled as 弾く.
Spelling Notes: ひく may seldom be spelled as 曳く with a nuance of "to tow." This is especially the case with towing boats, which may be expressed alternatively with the verb 曳航する. When used to mean "to pull/drag ahead," ひく may seldom be spelled as 牽く. In this sense of "traction/hauling," the verb 牽引する would be far more common.


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How to Plant Tomatoes
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Plant your tomatoes the right way, and you'll have a bigger harvest, plus fewer pests and problems to contend with throughout the season. Here's what you need to know to tackle the job like a pro.
Start With Small Tomato Plants.
If you're buying your tomato plants, choose short, healthy-looking plants. If you're growing your own from seed, start them six weeks before the average last frost date for your area, so they don't have a chance to get too tall before you transplant them. Plants that grow tall while they're in their seed pots tend to have weak root systems. You want your tomatoes to do most of their rooting when they're in the ground and have lots of room to spread out.
Choose the Right Spot.
Tomatoes need at least eight hours of direct sun each day to do well. In northern states, they need near continuous sunlight to do well, but in southern states, tomatoes actually benefit from receiving some shade in the afternoon. It helps them to cope with the heat. If it gets too hot (above 90 degrees), they'll stop producing temporarily. That being said, be sure to choose a spot that receives full sun in the morning. Tomato plants need that early sun to dry the dew off their leaves, so they don't succumb to disease.
Plant your tomatoes in late spring, after the last risk of frost has passed. Tomatoes can't take the cold.
Bury Your Tomatoes Deep.
Most plants should be planted even with the soil line in their pot, but that's not the case with tomatoes. They need to be planted much much deeper. If you want your tomatoes to do well, you should actually bury two-thirds of the plant. This will leave just the top few leaves showing above the soil. And while that may seem crazy, it really is the very best thing you can do for your tomatoes. Roots will grow all along the buried stem, resulting in a much stronger root system, which means more nutrient and water uptake for your plants. And that ultimately translates into more fruit and better heat tolerance.
Another good reason to plant your tomatoes deep? With less plant sticking up above the ground, you won't have to worry about those strong spring winds snapping your young tomato stems.
Get the Spacing Right.
Plant your tomatoes two feet apart from each other, so there will be plenty of room for air to circulate. This will help to keep diseases at bay, and ensure that your plants get plenty of sunlight. If you're planting your tomatoes in a square foot garden, plant one per square.
Pro Tip: Plant your tomatoes on an overcast day, so they'll have time to acclimate before being exposed to lots of sun and heat.
Stake Your Tomato Plants.
Stake or cage your tomato plants as soon as you plant them. If you wait for them to get big, you risk damaging their roots. Determinate bush varieties of tomatoes may not need to be staked or caged, but indeterminate varieties definitely need to be.
Water Consistently.
Water your tomatoes deeply when you plant them. Then, continue to water them deeply and regularly throughout the growing season. Consistent watering helps to prevent blossom end rot and cracking, which occurs when you allow the soil to dry out between waterings. Tomatoes need an inch of rain each week, so be prepared to step in when Mother Nature falls behind. But avoid watering in the evening. Wet leaves encourage fungal growth. For this reason, it's also important to water the base of the plants, and not the foliage.
Once the soil has warmed for the season, mulch around your plants to help with water retention and prevent soil splash (a common cause of fungus).
Prune Your Tomato Plants.
Once your tomato plants are two or three feet tall, remove the leaves and suckers from the bottom foot of each plant. If you're not familiar with suckers, they're the little branches that form between the main stem and an existing branch. These will grow into full-size stems, if left in place; and you don't want any stems or leaves touching the ground, where they could pick up a fungal disease from the soil. This early pruning also serves to improve air circulation around the base of the plants, so fungus is less likely to take hold.
Some gardeners continue to pinch off tomato suckers throughout the growing season because they believe they take energy away from the main plant. Others leave them because they feel they contribute to a larger harvest. You'll be in good company, no matter which side you choose.
Fertilize Your Tomatoes Regularly.
Tomatoes plants are heavy feeders. Fertilize your tomatoes when you plant them. Then, fertilize them again when they set fruit. Continue to fertilize your plants regularly throughout the season. A balanced fertilizer is best. Adding crushed egg shells to the soil will provide a calcium boost, and help to prevent blossom end rot.
If your tomato plants have lots of leaves and little fruit, add more phosphorous.
Companion Plants for Tomatoes
Increase your harvest, and make caring for your tomatoes easier, by planting them next to beneficial plants. Here are some winning combinations to try.
To Deter Pests, Plant Your Tomatoes With …
- chives, onions, garlic, leeks or shallots (they'll repel aphids and other pests)
- nasturitums (they'll repel aphids and whitefly)
- borage, marigolds or petunias (they'll repel hornworm)
- asparagus (it'll repel nematodes)
- borage (it'll increase disease resistance)
To Attract Pollinators, Plant Your Tomatoes With …
- basil
- mint
- bee balm
- borage
To Improve Growth and Flavor, Plant Your Tomatoes With …
- basil
- parsley
- chives
- mint
- bee balm
- borage (it's a good source of calcium, so it'll help with blossom end rot)
All of the above companions will also serve to shade the soil, keeping it cooler and minimizing evaporation.
Do Not Plant Tomatoes With …
- potatoes, eggplant and peppers (they're in the same family, so they'll build up blight in the soil)
- corn (it attracts similar pests)
- dill (when mature), kohlrabi, fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and other members of the brassica family, (they'll inhibit growth)
How Many Tomatoes Should I Plant?
Under the right growing conditions you can expect to get around 25 pounds of tomatoes per plant. Plan on 2-4 plants for each person in your household. Increase this number, if you intend to do a bunch of freezing and canning.


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Friday, February 28, 2014
Fairly girl
What a super cute photo of the lovely Miss Amy! I love her fairy girl outfit and how adorable she looks wearing it. Here's hoping that a little magic comes into your life!
Posted by Mistress Kika at 6:10 AM
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check it out
Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of "robber baron" industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities and the halls of Congress. But there were also serious problems in rural America, where most of the population lived. And many small farmers turned to social movements and politics to remedy those ills.
For example, during the 1880s, the population of Nebraska doubled to one million, a faster rate of growth than that of any other state in the Union. Taking advantage of cheap land offered by the railroads, Civil War veterans and European immigrants rushed in to start farms or launch small businesses to supply all the new residents, whether they lived on the land or in cities like Lincoln and Omaha.
Then, near the end of the decade, a nasty mix of calamities put an end to the boom. A massive blizzard in 1888 killed stock animals across the northern plains, ruining Nebraskans who had invested nearly everything they had in pigs and cattle. Then in 1889, a bumper harvest of corn—Nebraska's largest crop—resulted in the lowest prices in memory. Some farmers resorted to burning their corn for fuel instead of selling it to buy coal. City newspapers blamed the crisis on too many ears chasing too few buyers; they blandly predicted the market would readjust itself in time. But a hundred weekly papers from the rural counties told a more dramatic story, and skilled lecturers from the Farmers Alliance helped drive it home. A year later the worst drought since the Civil War destroyed millions of acres of corn, wheat, and oats. The health of Nebraska's urban economy depended upon the bounty of its farms. Bankrupt businesses and unfinished buildings scarred the streets of Lincoln and Omaha.[1]
A growing number of Nebraskans had already begun to rail at a human scourge as deadly as the elements. They called it by a variety of names—"monopoly," "the money power," "Wall Street," or "organized wealth." But their indictment was simple enough: A powerful conspiracy was robbing small farmers of the fruits of their labors. They accused the railroads of imposing sharp and unfair hikes in freight rates, bankers of committing a legal form of usury, and the political establishment of serving the rich and the cities at the expense of productive families in the countryside. Men and women who had broken the prairie sod, expecting it to yield them an independent life, if not always a comfortable one, were forced to mortgage their farms and sometimes even their plows and animals to stay in business.[2]
Children who sensed their parents' anger began to sing:
Since 1880, a state branch of the Farmers Alliance had been attempting to mobilize these discontents. Like its counterparts in states to the north and south, the Nebraska Alliance did not begin as a political insurgency. Organizers launched cooperative stores and sold hail insurance and life insurance at rates lower than commercial firms were offering. For most of the decade, good crop prices and the rush of optimistic newcomers kept its membership in the low thousands, but by 1890, the Farmers Alliance boasted over two million members nationwide.
Similar events and a similar kind of outrage were present in farming states all across the South and Great Plains. Foreign competition and commodity speculators at home were driving down prices for cotton, wheat, and corn. Neither major party, wedded to a doctrine of laissez-faire, was willing to do anything much about it. And many wage earners had their own reasons to protest: railroad companies, mine operators, and big manufacturers routinely fired men for trying to organize unions, making it difficult to win either job security or a living wage. The nation's largest union group, the Knights of Labor, sympathized with the agrarian rebellion.
Thus, in 1892, farmers and labor insurgents came together in Omaha to organize a new People's Party, also known as the Populists. "We believe," proclaimed Ignatius Donnelly, a 61-year-old former congressman from Minnesota who also dabbled in science fiction, "that the powers of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded . . . as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land." Most of the party's rank-and-file belonged to the Farmers Alliance, whose huge network of local papers and lecturers who stumped through rural America gave it a base that no other third party in US history could match.
But the Populists also knew they would never transform the nation from the agrarian hinterland alone. Their Omaha Platform proposed a number of ways to restrain and regulate corporate America so that "the plain people" would once again feel the government was standing up for their interests: a graduated income tax, a "flexible" currency based on silver as well as gold, the nationalization of the railroads and the telegraph, the initiative and referendum which allowed voters to place their own measures on the ballot or vote down a bill already passed by the state legislature, and a ban on aliens owning land targeting wealthy European investors. The Omaha Platform also preached that "the interests of rural and civil labor are the same; their enemies are identical" and backed it up with demands for an eight-hour day for public workers and abolition of the Pinkerton Agency, a notorious strikebreaking firm.
With such proposals, Populists won the votes of large numbers of miners in the Rocky Mountains and urban craftsmen in the cities of the Mississippi Valley and the Far West—as well as from small farmers in the South and West. From 1892 to 1896, as an economic depression wracked the nation, the new party elected forty-five congressmen and six senators, as well as governors and a majority of state legislators in Colorado and Kansas, and a mayor of San Francisco. Populist candidates were competitive nearly everywhere outside the industrial Northeast. In 1892, the Populist James Weaver ran a courageous campaign for president, braving rocks and rotten eggs in the Democratic South and a blackout of coverage by Republican papers in the Midwest. Despite such animus, he gained over a million ballots—almost 9 percent of the total—and twenty-two electoral votes.
The involvement of women in the movement put the older parties to shame. Female Populists organized camp meetings on the prairies and the fields, spoke widely at rallies, and wrote for the movement press. The veteran reformer Mary Elizabeth Lease became famous for allegedly telling Kansans in 1890 to "raise less corn and more hell." When Populists took charge of Colorado's government in 1892, one of their first acts was to place a referendum on woman suffrage before the voters. It passed easily, with big majorities coming from the same counties that had recently delivered the state to the insurgent party.[4]
The Populists also moved, in halting steps, from their white core to the black periphery. They first welcomed the formation of a separate Colored Farmers Alliance—only to shun it in 1891 when thousands of black cotton-pickers staged a strike at harvest time against employers who included members of the white Alliance. Still, African Americans joined the People's Party in states from North Carolina to Kansas, and the party's ability to persuade black men to switch from the Republican Party was crucial to electing scores of third-party candidates, all of them white, in the former Confederacy. During the 1892 campaign in Georgia, two thousand white supporters rushed to stop the lynching of the Reverend Henry S. Doyle, a black Populist leader. "We propose to wipe the Mason and Dixon line out of geography," stated Ignatius Donnelly, "to wipe the color-line out of politics." For a few exhilarating years, it did not seem impossible.[5]
Most Populists wrapped their aspirations in the Social Gospel, a theology that held that Christians should apply their faith to such worldly problems as poverty, war, and the exploitation of labor. Given the size and range of the movement, quite different versions of the worldly faith commingled within it. Southerners of both races, reared in Biblical literalism, tended to believe that "God has promised to hear the cry of the oppressed," and insisted that "No man in this nation can live a consistent Christian life" unless he threw himself into the agrarian insurgency. Black Populists were usually faithful church members, and ordained ministers became the most trusted and eloquent leaders of the "colored" insurgency. But no one attempted to bar believers in evolution, spiritualism, or freethinking from taking part in the smaller Populist parties that sprouted in the urban West and Northeast. For Populists, the virtue of one's motivation eclipsed the details of one's theology. Such an ecumenical attitude was notable at a time when the Supreme Court was unanimously hailing the United States as "a Christian nation" that respected the Sabbath and financed "Christian missions in every quarter of the globe."[6]
But the heyday of the People's Party was brief. Its first presidential campaign in 1892 was its last as a serious contender. Part of the reason is that the Populists drew fear and hostility from economic elites and well-placed conservatives. "The present assault upon capital is but the beginning," warned Supreme Court Justice David Field in 1894. "It will be but the stepping stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political conditions will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war growing in intensity and bitterness."[7] Field was opposed to such Populist ideas as a guaranteed income tax. But he was also alarmed by inflammatory remarks made by such figures as Davis Waite, the Populist governor of Colorado. In 1893, Waite had declared, "It is better, infinitely better that blood should flow to the horses' bridles rather than our national liberties should be destroyed." No wonder the prospect of the third party gaining power, alone or in fusion with a faction of a major party, horrified the custodians of social order.
In 1896, the People's Party split apart over the question of whether to endorse William Jennings Bryan for president. The young, charismatic Bryan was already the Democratic nominee for president, and he was sympathetic to many of their ideas and had campaigned for James Weaver four years earlier. But if the Populists fused with the Democrats, they would no longer pose a radical alternative to the two-party system. In the end, a majority of delegates to the Populist convention supported Bryan, in the hope that his election would be the first step toward liberating the nation from the rule of big business.
But Bryan was a reform-minded Democrat, not a Populist. He wanted to cleanse the system of the corrupting influence of big money, not destroy it and build a new one. Still, his presidential campaign, one of the most dramatic in US history, provoked the business establishment and most big-city newspapers to warn that victory for the "Popocrats" would lead to "anarchy" and bankrupt the nation. Bryan's loss to Republican nominee William McKinley doomed the third party to a slow but certain demise.
The Democrat from Nebraska did achieve one lasting success: he effectively remade his party into a strong supporter of union rights and the strict regulation of corporations. On Labor Day, 1896, Bryan offered a crowd of fifteen thousand workers and their families a metaphor for what would become the progressive approach to business from his campaign. Bryan recalled that, during his youth in southern Illinois, he had been in charge of tethering the family swine so they would not tear up the land. "And then it occurred to me that one of the most important duties of government is to put rings in the noses of hogs."[8]
So the eclipse of the People's Party opened the way for a different kind of triumph. The powerful critiques of "monopoly" and "the money power" voiced by the populist insurgency helped persuade major-party presidential nominees from Bryan to Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson—and the thousands of candidates who followed their lead—to put an end to the freebooting capitalism of the nineteenth century. Some did so because they feared a failure to act could lead to a revolution. Others sympathized with discontented Americans and believed, as had the Populists, that a strong national government would be the best protector of the welfare of small farmers and wage earners. The policies they enacted included crop subsidies, the protection of union organizers, and the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for an income tax. Thus was born an enduring truism of twentieth-century American politics: the disruptive potential and moral critique of radical movements helped powerful progressives to transform the nation.
[1] For succinct accounts of these events and their relationship to the growth of the state, see James C. Olson and Ronald C. Naugle, History of Nebraska, 3rd edition (Lincoln, 1997).
[2] For rich accounts of these charges, see Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (NY, 1976); Robert McMath, American Populism: A Social History (NY, 1993); Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (NY, 2007).
[3] Quoted by a woman who remembered the song from her childhood on a farm in Lancaster County. Mary Louise Jeffery, "Young Radicals of the Nineties," Nebraska History 38 (March 1957): 31. On the Nebraska Farmers Alliance, see Olson and Naugle, History, 221–225.
[4] Rebecca Edwards, "Mary Elizabeth Lease: Advocate for Political Reform," in John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History, ed. Virgil W. Dean (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 127–139; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 124–158.
[5] On Doyle and black populism generally, see Omar Ali, Black Populism in the New South (forthcoming, University of Mississippi Press), 138–140. Donnelly quote from ibid., 159.
[6] Quotes from Robert C. McMath Jr., Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 68; Joseph W. Creech Jr., "Righteous Indignation: Religion and Populism in North Carolina, 1886–1906," PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2000, 230–231; Postel, Populist Vision, 264; Holy Trinity v. United States 143 US 457 (1892).
[7] Field quoted in Josephson, The Politicos, 57
[8] William Jennings Bryan, The First Battle (Chicago, 1896), 378.
Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent magazine. He is the author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011); A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006); The Populist Persuasion: An American History (1995); Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (1987), co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (fourth edition, 2012), and editor-in-chief of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History (2010).


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Cleaning: what to think of4 points
information loss
Cleaning: what to think of
Cleaning jewellery can be so satisfactory! To see those layers of grime and dirt dissolve and the soft shine of silver reveal itself…and seeing your newly acquired item for the first time in all its splendor! Cleaning jewellery is necessary from a maintenance point of view: it will help you prevent corrosion and subsequent damaging of your item. But, before you give your piece that first deep clean, here are a few thoughts that might help you enjoy your new acquisition even more!
Information loss
Those dirty patches and accumulations may actually contain part of the history of your piece. Take these two Maria Theresia Thalers shown above for example: they have spent a lifetime together, which is visible in their wear pattern. Halfway the lower coin, a trace of blackish patina follows the curve of the upper coin. It allows you to place them exactly as they would have sat together, tightly pressed together. I found these two in Jordan, and they have most likely been part of a Palestinian headdress: even though only these two coins remain, their wear pattern bears testimony to the piece they once belonged to.
Another example is this plait ornament from the Draa Valley, Morocco. The coral beads on top (look on the left and the right top beads of the ornament) still show patches of brownish paste. This would have been scented paste, used to style and fragrance the hair for festive occasions. It no longer bears any fragrance, but its presence adds a visible memory of an invisible aspect of personal adornment that is all too easy to discard, and eventually forget, if you are not familiar with its existence in the first place.
Quick tip: documenting
The simplest way to document these bits and pieces of information is to take a picture before and after cleaning. That can be as easy as taking a snap with your smartphone (when you carry these five items in your handbag, you're prepared!). You can include these in your documentation: it's always useful to have a record of any treatment of your pieces. Note down anything else you'd want to record, for example if the layer you want to remove is sticky or dry, grainy or fine, its colour…Finally, add a few notes on how you have cleaned it, with which products and utensils. This may come in handy later, for example in the unhappy event your new jewellery starts to show a reaction to cleaning: having a record of what has been done with it, is instrumental in attempting any follow-up treatment.
Silver content
Especially for older pieces, a guaranteed silver content is not standard. The percentage of actual silver can vary greatly, and so do the components of copper, nickel or other materials. Silver was obtained by melting down older pieces (with their variable compositions) and coins. The first silver coin to have a guaranteed percentage of silver was the Maria Theresia Thaler, which grew wildly popular precisely because of its reliability. Hallmarks indicating sterling silver (925), 800 or 600 are only a century old. All this is important when cleaning jewellery with no hallmarks or known silver content: you will want to know how your cleaning method will affect other metals in the mix, and how in turn this will impact your piece in general. This is why I generally avoid the toothpaste-method or the squeezed lemons-method: both can lead to too aggressive results and damage the jewellery. Who knows what exactly is in toothpaste these days, anyway?
Know your materials
Having said that, there is more than just the silver content to be aware of when cleaning jewellery. If your piece consists of other materials, be sure to familiarize yourself with their properties and to identify their vulnerabilities. Coral cabochons on a bracelet for example, or coral beads in a necklace. Coral is a porous animal product (see more here), not to be confused with solid material like stones: the properties of this material bring a new set of parameters to the table. Traditional jewellery from the Arab world can contain a plethora of materials that all come with their own challenges: teeth, horns, claws, wood, scented paste beads, textile backings, and not to forget the stringing itself. When you come across a composite piece, it's usually a good idea to have a good look at all elements before attempting to clean it. You may either want to take it apart completely and reassemble it later, or bring it to a professional restorer instead.
With these few pointers, I hope you will enjoy a new look at what stories your jewellery holds, and how to make sure they remain a part of its history!
Wondering how to clean and what method will yield the best results? Read this post on cleaning jewellery: 3 methods with their pro's and con's!
More practical tips on managing your collection? Browse them all here!
Sigrid van Roode
Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.


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29 Jan 2020
RZ India strategy for melon development in Haryana
Rijk Zwaan India is set to improve the melon grower's income in the state of Haryana by introducing the new ways of melon cultivation. To achieve this objective a training cum networking program was organized at Govt. Horticulture Training Institute, Karnal, Haryana in close coordination with the Department of Horticulture, Govt. of Haryana.
This program brought together officials from the Horticulture Dept. of Haryana, 85 growers & retail chain companies i.e. Reliance Fresh, Big Basket & Sahyadri Farm, etc.
Our technical team from North India shared the knowledge about low tunnel cultivation practices to the growers and strengthen the connection between growers & retail chains.
It was great participation & enthusiasm from all stakeholders in this training program.
Following are the key highlight of the session;
- The retail chains applauded the commitment of RZ India for providing the best technology & quality seeds. They were very positive to maintain healthy business relations with the company & our growers.
- A very welcome step was observed from the Govt. of Haryana in recognition of the contribution given by RZ India to introduce the new ways of melon cultivation in the state of Haryana and to improve the grower's income. B. S. Sehrawat, MD of Horticulture Dept. Haryana informed, "If any progressive grower wants to learn more about new technologies of cultivation outside India, Haryana Govt. will bear the expense of grower's training."
"Thanks to our colleagues for sharing their expertise & making this event successful. Growers & customers were happy & confident about RZ products." Pratap Singh Rana (Area Manager, Haryana & Nepal)


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I know that some people find it easier to put the tinsel away before the end of the holidays so the house is tidied up ready for the new year to begin in earnest. Maybe I'm a traditionalist at heart, but I'm a big believer in keeping my tree up for the full 12 days of Christmas. Here are five reasons why:
- The build up to Christmas is huge. As soon as Hallowe'en is over, the shops are full of cards and merchandise. The lights are often switched on in town centres from mid-November and advent starts 4 weeks before the big day - so why end the festivities prematurely? If you're going to celebrate in style, you may as well see it through until the end.
- And talking of endings, Christmas doesn't end until the Feast of the Epiphany, when the three kings arrived at the stable (it was a long journey and they were on camels). The tradition is that if you took your decorations down before then, the wise men would not be able to find their way as the Christmas lights represent the star of David.
- January is depressing enough - so I like to keep reminders of the festive joy up until the last moment. What better way to remind yourself of your loved ones than seeing all their cards still up around the house through the first week of January.
- Although the longest night was just before Christmas, January is still cold and dark. I love the way the Christmas lights and tinsel add a bit of sparkle and light to life.
- It's a way of delaying the New Year's resolutions. Most resolutions are broken in the first week of January. But by easing yourself into the new year and keeping Christmas going for its full duration, you have an excuse to start your resolutions again on 7th January, when Christmas is put away.
When do you take your Christmas decorations down?


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Gardeners plant cover crops to improve the soil by bulking it up with organic matter along with preventing erosion, suppressing weeds, and boosting microorganisms. There are many different cover crops, but we're going to focus on canola as a cover crop. While commercial farmers are more likely to plant winter cover crops with canola, planting canola cover crops for home gardeners can be quite beneficial. So what is canola and how can canola be used as a cover crop?
What is Canola?
You've probably heard of canola oil but did you ever stop to think about where it comes from? Canola oil does indeed come from a plant, which contains about 44% oil. Canola is derived from rapeseed. In the 60's, Canadian scientists bred out the undesirable traits of rapeseed to create canola, a contraction of "Canadian" and "ola." Today, we know it as the oil with the least saturated fat of all the culinary oils.
Canola plants grow from 3-5 feet (1 to 1.5 m.) in height and produce tiny brownish-black seeds that are crushed to release their oils. Canola also blossoms with a profusion of small, yellow flowers that brighten up the garden at a time when few plants are in bloom.
Canola is in the same family as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and mustard. It is used all over the world but primarily grown in Canada and Australia. Here in the United States, canola is commonly grown outside of the Midwest.
On commercial farms, winter cover crops of canola seeded in early September produce the most growth and ground cover and amass the most nitrogen in the aboveground biomass and may be combined with other cover crops such as lentils. Canola, a broadleaf plant, does a better job than wheat in protecting the soil from erosion since the leaves die off during the winter but the crown stays alive in a dormant state.
Canola Cover Crops for Home Gardens
Canola is available in both winter and spring varieties. Spring canola is planted in March and winter canola is planted in the fall and over winters.
As with most other crops, canola does best in well-drained, fertile, silt loam soil. Canola can be planted either in a tilled garden or no-till. A finely prepared, tilled seedbed allows for a more uniform seeding depth than a no-till bed and can also help incorporate fertilizer into the roots of the plant. That said, if you are planting canola cover crops when there has been little rainfall and the soil is dry, no-till may be the better way to go, as this will help retain seed moisture.


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Many of you know that I took my advanced rudiments exam on the 9th of December. It's been one long month waiting for the results. I almost didn't want to look- scared!! But I did, and this is what I saw:
95- First Class Honours with Distinction
I'm dying to know what I missed- probably something I'm going to kick myself for! But I'm also soooo happy with the results.
THANK YOU to all of you who have cheered me on in this endeavour. Now on to music history!
Posted by Leah@Piano Playground


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Willow trees (Salix spp.) are fast-growing beauties that make attractive, graceful ornamentals in a big backyard. In the wild, willows often grow by lakes, rivers, or other bodies of water. Although willows are not sickly trees, a few diseases and pest infestations do attack and cause willow tree problems. If willow tree bark is falling off, you may need to take action.
Common Willow Tree Problems
Willows are not picky trees, and most thrive in almost any kind of soil as long as there is adequate sunlight. They grow best in sites with full sun. However, the tree is vulnerable to several diseases and pests, including a few that cause willow tree bark peeling.
A few of the most serious willow tree problems do not cause peeling willow bark. These include infestation by gypsy moth caterpillars, willow leaf beetles, and bagworms that will defoliate the tree.
The worst willow diseases include:
- Crown gall, which causes stunting and dieback
- Willow scab, which causes olive green spore masses along the underside of leaves
- Black canker, causing dark brown spots on the tree's leaves.
These are not your tree's problem if your willow tree bark is falling off.
Reasons for Peeling Bark on Willows
Peeling willow bark can be caused by insects. If your willow tree bark is falling off, it could be a sign of borer insects. Both poplar and willow borers can tunnel through the inner layer of the willow bark. This causes peeling bark on willows.
Your best bet if your willow tree has borers is to clip out all diseased branches. Then you can spray the willow tree with permethrin to kill borers.
Another possible reason for willow tree bark peeling is too much sun. Willows most often get sunscald in winter when the sun reflects off the bright snow. The sunlight heats the tree bark, causing the tree cells to become active. As soon as the temperatures plunge, the cells freeze and rupture.
If your willows have yellow or red patches on the tree trunk, this may be the result of sunscald. Those spots can also crack and peel as time passes.
The tree will heal from sunscald, but you can protect your willows by acting before winter. Paint the trunks with diluted, white paint in early winter to prevent sunscald.


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Tricks, tips, tutorials, pictures and words
ohh! Skippy was never broadcasted in the US?
Skippy, the most annoying series evah, did you all miss this? Google tv barely knows it's a kangaroo. How could you ever miss someting as cool as Skippy?
This post may have to do something with the Hairless Potter kiddie book. If that's cool you just didn't check out the full wrath of Skippy the bush Kangaroo.
click here !! (yes now!)


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HOUSTON - (Sept. 24, 2018) - The ability of metallic or semiconducting materials to absorb, reflect and act upon light is of primary importance to scientists developing optoelectronics - electronic devices that interact with light to perform tasks. Rice University scientists have now produced a method to determine the properties of atom-thin materials that promise to refine the modulation and manipulation of light.
Two-dimensional materials have been a hot research topic since graphene, a flat lattice of carbon atoms, was identified in 2001. Since then, scientists have raced to develop, either in theory or in the lab, novel 2D materials with a range of optical, electronic and physical properties.
Until now, they have lacked a comprehensive guide to the optical properties those materials offer as ultrathin reflectors, transmitters or absorbers.
The Rice lab of materials theorist Boris Yakobson took up the challenge. Yakobson and his co-authors, graduate student and lead author Sunny Gupta, postdoctoral researcher Sharmila Shirodkar and research scientist Alex Kutana, used state-of-the-art theoretical methods to compute the maximum optical properties of 55 2D materials.
"The important thing now that we understand the protocol is that we can use it to analyze any 2D material," Gupta said. "This is a big computational effort, but now it's possible to evaluate any material at a deeper quantitative level."
Their work, which appears this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano, details the monolayers' transmittance, absorbance and reflectance, properties they collectively dubbed TAR. At the nanoscale, light can interact with materials in unique ways, prompting electron-photon interactions or triggering plasmons that absorb light at one frequency and emit it in another.
Manipulating 2D materials lets researchers design ever smaller devices like sensors or light-driven circuits. But first it helps to know how sensitive a material is to a particular wavelength of light, from infrared to visible colors to ultraviolet.
"Generally, the common wisdom is that 2D materials are so thin that they should appear to be essentially transparent, with negligible reflection and absorption," Yakobson said. "Surprisingly, we found that each material has an expressive optical signature, with a large portion of light of a particular color (wavelength) being absorbed or reflected."
The co-authors anticipate photodetecting and modulating devices and polarizing filters are possible applications for 2D materials that have directionally dependent optical properties. "Multilayer coatings could provide good protection from radiation or light, like from lasers," Shirodkar said. "In the latter case, heterostructured (multilayered) films -- coatings of complementary materials -- may be needed. Greater intensities of light could produce nonlinear effects, and accounting for those will certainly require further research."
The researchers modeled 2D stacks as well as single layers. "Stacks can broaden the spectral range or bring about new functionality, like polarizers," Kutana said. "We can think about using stacked heterostructure patterns to store information or even for cryptography."
Among their results, the researchers verified that stacks of graphene and borophene are highly reflective of mid-infrared light. Their most striking discovery was that a material made of more than 100 single-atom layers of boron -- which would still be only about 40 nanometers thick -- would reflect more than 99 percent of light from the infrared to ultraviolet, outperforming doped graphene and bulk silver.
There's a side benefit that fits with Yakobson's artistic sensibility as well. "Now that we know the optical properties of all these materials - the colors they reflect and transmit when hit with light - we can think about making Tiffany-style stained-glass windows on the nanoscale," he said. "That would be fantastic!"
Editor's note: A link to a high-resolution image for download appears at the end of this release.
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The work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the Robert Welch Foundation. Computing resources were provided by the National Science Foundation-supported DAVinCI cluster at Rice, administered by the Center for Research Computing and procured in partnership with Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology, the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program and the Department of Energy Office of Science's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.
Read the abstract at https:/
This news release can be found online at http://news.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Related materials:
Yakobson Research Group: https:/
Rice Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering: https:/
George R. Brown School of Engineering: https:/
Image for download:
Rice University researchers modeled two-dimensional materials to quantify how they react to light. They calculated how the atom-thick materials in single or stacked layers would transmit, absorb and reflect light. The graphs above measure the maximum absorbance of several of the 55 materials tested. (Credit: Yakobson Research Group/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,970 undergraduates and 2,934 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.


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PERIL ISLAND—Big-game hunter Baron Hugo von Urwitz conceded Tuesday that his theory that human beings are the most cunning and challenging of quarry is seriously flawed.
"Perhaps I gave my fellow man too much credit," said von Urwitz, looking on as his servants carried three lifeless human beings bound to poles by their hands and ankles. "Admittedly, there are fewer kills today than yesterday, but only because the herd is thinning."
Bored with netting such elusive and dangerous prey as Bengal tigers, white rhinos, and Cape buffalo, the 51-year-old adventurer said he had thought it would be "capital sport" to hunt humans on his uncharted, densely forested private island.
"My huntsman's heart thrilled at the prospect of bringing down a live human, who alone in the animal kingdom has the capacity to outwit and even best his enemies through sheer intellect," von Urwitz said. "What I neglected to consider is that man is also alone in the capacity to tumble straight into quicksand while fleeing from a swarm of yellow jackets after trying to steal honey from their nest."
Von Urwitz chanced upon his stock of prey Saturday, after a chartered luxury yacht ran aground in the shoals surrounding his island. The yacht's 29 passengers and five crew members were promptly invited to lodge in the baron's imposing fortress.
At dawn Sunday, von Urwitz roused his guests to announce his shocking intent to hunt them. Allowing them only small knives and the clothes on their backs, he anticipated that his human prey would elude him in inventive and clever ways—and perhaps even make their hunter the hunted himself.
Yet in the first night alone, eight tourists died of exposure.
"I'm not sure I even need to be here, really," von Urwitz added.
"At the very least, I assumed they would take to the trees and hills in desperate flight," he said. "Instead, many of them just milled about like peahens within the confines of my estate, periodically rattling the backdoor knob to ensure that it hadn't been unlocked since they last checked."
The baron theorized that the grave danger simply didn't register with most of the humans. "Look at this one," von Urwitz said, as a cellar meat locker revealed an overweight, middle-aged male bearing a single gunshot wound to the forehead. "I bagged him in the courtyard as he sipped vitamin water, after I had given him a four-hour running start. Where's the sport in this?"
Von Urwitz said three vacationers brazenly approached him with strange questions.
"They asked about grand prizes and something they called an 'immunity challenge,'" von Urwitz said. "I had my men slit their throats."
Those who had the wherewithal to hide did so in obvious places, such as in the toolshed, under the car, or behind bushes. Von Urwitz said his hounds "made short work of them."
A few did flee to the jungle, including one man who raced in the direction of a pit trap dug by von Urwitz's men. From a hunting blind close to the trap, von Urwitz said he watched with "immense excitement."
"Would [the man's] eyes catch the carpet of dead, flattened leaves in the clearing, noticing their rather unnatural distribution, and quickly surmise, through reason and intuition alike, that something was dreadfully amiss?" von Urwitz said. "Or would he blindly stumble into the pit and be finished off by our arrows?"
Ultimately, the man did neither. Before coming within 20 yards of the pit, he was knocked cold by a low-hanging tree limb.
With 22 kills by nightfall Tuesday, the baron recognized the need to amend his strategy. "I had snared a couple of tourists, but they were so obviously feebleminded that I threw them back into the brush," von Urwitz said. "If I leave them alone, perhaps in a few weeks one or two of them will have developed survival tactics besides uncontrolled weeping and involuntary defecation."
Hinting that his ruthlessness was quickly turning to pity for the pathetic, fragile creatures, von Urwitz also mused about rounding them up in an island game preserve. "I am reminded of Theodore Roosevelt, with his hunter's love of nature," von Urwitz said. "Perhaps future generations of von Urwitzes can enjoy the humans' comical antics, and if their numbers increase sufficiently, perhaps hunt some of the—one would hope—increasingly fit adults from time to time."
"On the other hand, I could always put out some large glue traps," von Urwitz added.


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i think sedan has a lot to offer its just not so visible as yet but if you look we have a lot going on
c russell
Sedan Explorations
Learn more about Sedan by following the links below:
Sedan Floral Inc
405 S. School Street
Email Address: firstname.lastname@example.com
About this Exploration:
We have been in the greenhouse business for more than 65 years. We specialize in Annuals, Perennials, Vegetables, Herbs, Greenery, Sweet Potato Vine, Purslane, Grasses and more.
Deliver wholesale plants within 500 miles of Sedan in all directions.
Sue Kill
P. O. Box 226
Sedan, KS 67361
Phone: 620.242.1918