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Curious trivia about playwright Christopher Marlowe
1. Christopher Marlowe was a pioneer of the Elizabethan theatre. He influenced Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's biographer Jonathan Bate has even suggested that Marlowe and Shakespeare became locked in a competition, where each influenced the other. Marlowe was just two months older than Shakespeare: he was born in Canterbury in February 1564, the son of a shoemaker. Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great (part one of a two-parter) is thought to be one of the first English plays written in blank verse – that is, unrhymed iambic pentameter.
2. Christopher Marlowe didn't exactly die in a tavern brawl, as is widely believed. The circumstances surrounding Marlowe's death are a little more complicated. It's often said that he died when he was stabbed in a bar brawl over the bill, but in fact the house in which the playwright met his end was a dining-house (not a tavern) owned by a woman named Eleanor Bull, and the men he was with were somewhat sinister and suspicious figures – it's even been suggested that he was deliberately killed on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster Francis Walsingham.
3. Marlowe's atheism got him into hot water with the authorities – and indirectly led to the early death of a fellow playwright. Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy (and possibly the original Hamlet play on with Shakespeare based his masterpiece), was tortured into giving them information about Marlowe's beliefs. A broken man, Kyd died, probably of his wounds, within a year.
4. Marlowe may have been a government spy. Numerous rumours have grown up around Marlowe, and it has been speculated that he was a spy for Francis Walsingham, who worked for Queen Elizabeth I. Certainly it's suggestive that the government intervened when the University of Cambridge seemed on the brink of withholding Marlowe's Master's degree from him (on the grounds that he was suspected of going to Rheims to train as a Roman Catholic priest following the awarding of his degree); the government referred to unspecified 'affaires' in which Marlowe had assisted the state.
5. Christopher Marlowe's work has inspired some memorable book titles. Aldous Huxley's 1923 novel Antic Hay borrows its title from Marlowe's history play, Edward II: 'My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, shall with their goat feet dance the antic hay'. More recently, Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novel The Wench Is Dead took its title from a phrase uttered in The Jew of Malta.
If you enjoyed these fascinating Christopher Marlowe facts, you might like our book crammed full of 3,000 years of interesting bookish facts, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History, available now from Michael O'Mara Books.
Image: Portrait dated 1585 and thought to be of Christopher Marlowe, via Wikimedia Commons.


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I'm off to Anthocon 2013! If you're up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, come on by…it's the official debut of the anthologies Wicked Seasons and Canopic Jars, which contain my stories "To Chance Tomorrow" and "Jarring Lucas," respectively. Plus, it's just a jumpin' great time! Later!
Blog Archives
"To Chance Tomorrow" now in WICKED SEASONS
My new story "To Chance Tomorrow" is now available in the New England Horror Writers' anthology WICKED SEASONS.
In a future where life is eternal, teen-aged Mich struggles to accept her father's abandonment. Her much-older boyfriend's unorthodox birthday gift seems to provide some comfort—until his jilted admirer shows up. In the tradition of "The Light of Other Days" and "Obstinate Uncle Otis" comes a tale of grief…and what it truly means to be broken.
The tale is alongside many others, including from James A. Moore and Christopher Golden, but I can tell you Robert J. Duperre's "The Basement Legs" and Addison Clift's "Furious Demon" are must-reads. They're both all kinds of creepy amazing.
Want to know more? Check out the trailer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f3XAtxhvp0. Want to purchase? Print http://amzn.com/0615918832 and Kindle http://amzn.com/B00GJVWOY4
Just ahead: WICKED SEASONS. Watch the Trailer!
Wicked Seasons, the NEHW Press anthology containing my story "To Chance Tomorrow," is due out in November. I'm not only excited about having my work in such a great volume with so many cool stories, I'm excited to present the trailer! After you watch Read the rest of this entry

subset: commoncrawl


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Winnipeg Jets forward Mark Scheifele will perform off the ice December 30 for a walk-on role in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of the Nutcracker.
Scheifele is among 17 chosen Winnipeggers for this year's Nutcracker walk-on roles.
Walk-on roles are typically reserved for Act 1's famous Party Scene, but Scheifele's skating skills will be put to use during the opening scene's shinny hockey game on a frozen pond.
"The purpose of walk-on roles is to highlight notable members of the Winnipeg community," said RWB's artistic director André Lewis. "We are thrilled with the enthusiasm and participation from this year's walk-on role guests."
Tickets for the 1 p.m. performance are available starting at $29 for adults and $25 for children at RWB.org, in person through the RWB customer service office at 380 Graham Avenue or by calling (204) 956-2792.
The Nutcracker runs December 22-30 at the Centennial Concert Hall.
— Staff


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A nice treat so you don't have to miss out on chocolate cake!
Not recommended until phase 2 onwards
These low carb chocolate balls are a real treat! It's an easy snack for those following a low carb lifestyle. Enjoy them just as a little snack or with a hot cup of tea!


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David Olusoga: "Thousands of Britons opposed abolition – because they owned slaves"
Thousands of 'ordinary' Britons profited from the slave trade – and, says David Olusoga, they weren't about to accept abolition without a fight...
Tucked away under the trees in a shady corner of Clapham Common, south-west London, stands Holy Trinity church. Inside, above the ornate mosaic floor and the neat rows of pews, are three stained-glass windows. They depict the lives of saints – not biblical saints, but the 'saints' of the abolition movement.
From the late 18th century, Holy Trinity Clapham was the parish church of the Clapham Sect – the 'Clapham Saints', as they are sometimes called. This loose affiliation of friends and like-minded men committed their considerable energies to bringing to an end first the British slave trade then slavery itself. On the southern wall of Holy Trinity is a grey marble plaque, set into the red Georgian brickwork. It proudly lists the names of Clapham's abolitionist heroes – men who, we are told, "laboured… until the curse of slavery was swept away from all parts of the British Dominions". The last name in that alphabetical list is that of the man who became the moral lodestar around which the Clapham Sect orbited: William Wilberforce.
The Clapham Sect was famous in its day, and its legend has not dimmed. The homes of its most celebrated members – Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay and Thomas Fowell Buxton – are all stamped with approving blue plaques. The crusade they led, against what late Georgians felt comfortable calling 'negro slavery', has been the subject of innumerable books and is part of the national curriculum.
Abolition has long been the prism through which British slavery is remembered. The other forces – social, economic and military – that also played roles in the demise of slavery have been ushered to the wings to permit the story of abolition to dominate the historical stage. That some of the impetus for abolition came from the enslaved people themselves, who rose up in a series of rebellions, is all too often overlooked.
What has been forgotten is that there were two sides in the political battle fought over slavery. Thousands of British men and women opposed abolition – because they owned slaves.
What has similarly been forgotten is that there were two sides in the political battle fought over slavery. Thousands of British men and women opposed abolition because they themselves owned slaves. They and their supporters in manufacturing, finance and parliament portrayed slavery as critical to the national interest. Britain's slave owners funded a pro-slavery lobby that opposed the abolitionists at every step. Their pro-slavery campaign was just as sophisticated as that of the abolitionists, and at times the arguments of the pro-slavery men were in the ascendancy. The leading voices of that campaign have been little remembered, while their battle to defend slavery, like British slave ownership itself, has been little examined.
More like this
More from David Olusoga
Abolitionists' dilemma
From the 1790s until 1830, one of the most significant figures in the pro-slavery lobby was another member of the congregation of Holy Trinity Clapham. George Hibbert was a slave trader and slave owner. He is one of the anti-heroes in the story of British slavery – an 'anti-Wilberforce'. In defending slavery Hibbert demonstrated himself to be both a brilliant political tactician and a skilled propagandist. At times he became the campaign's vocal figurehead, bitterly clashing directly with Wilberforce from the benches of parliament and on the pages of newspapers.
On Sundays, George Hibbert took his place in the pews of Holy Trinity Clapham, alongside Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect. George Hibbert's name, however, does not appear on the walls of Holy Trinity church. His elegant London town house – which stands on the opposite side of Clapham Common from the home that Wilberforce shared with his cousin Henry Thornton – is bereft of a blue plaque.
The near invisibility of Britain's slave owners in the common modern understanding of slavery is partly a lingering consequence of geography. Throughout the two centuries during which Britain was heavily involved in slave trading and slavery, the vast majority of slave owners resided in the Caribbean. The 4,000 miles separating Britain from that region made it possible for the workings of slavery to be concealed from the public and, when slavery was abolished, for it to be filed away as a closed chapter in the history of the empire, rather than of Britain herself. The ghosts of slavery slept more 'unquietly' in the US, on whose own soil plantations had been laid out and slave markets built.
In the years after the abolition of slavery in 1834, the families who had made their fortunes from sugar and slaves completed this historical disappearing act by covering up the incriminating chapters of their own dynastic histories. Men who in the 18th century had unashamedly regarded themselves as slave owners were, during the 19th and 20th centuries, re-branded by their descendants as 'planters'. Men who had driven the 'triangular trade' were likewise concealed behind an innocuous euphemism: 'West India merchants'.
If there is a reason why, of all Britain's forgotten slave owners, we should remember George Hibbert, it is that he was one of the earliest proponents of the mechanism that ultimately offered Britain a way out of slavery. In the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 it was evident to Hibbert and others that the abolitionists would, sooner or later, embark upon a second crusade to end slavery itself. During the debates about the slave trade, Hibbert had suggested that, if the enslaved were to be freed, the slave owners who would lose their 'property' should be compensated. The abolitionist firebrand Thomas Clarkson responded with mock incredulity. Addressing the slave owners, he admitted: "That compensation is due somewhere, there is no doubt. But from whom is it due? It is due from you to Africa!"
- Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad: how one woman saved hundreds from hell
Clarkson's bombast disguised a justifiable concern among the abolitionists. Their official position was that it was impossible for one human being to hold 'property in men', but they understood that an attack on the institution of slavery was, by default, an assault on the principle of private property. The dilemma they faced was that supporting compensation, though possibly the key to freeing the enslaved, would require them to accept that the slaves were property. The author of an anonymous letter of 1831 summarised the paradox: "Admit the slave-holders claims to compensation, and you admit the justice of slavery."
As is almost always the case when great moral issues are fed through the threshing machine of political negotiation, the discussion – between the abolitionists, the slave owners and the government, beginning after the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in the summer of 1833 – ended with a grubby, technocratic compromise. The abolitionists did accept that compensation was the only way to end slavery and the government accepted that it would have to foot the bill, finally agreeing to pay the slave owners £20m – in modern terms, around £16bn. The slave owners also won another grudging concession: a system of 'apprenticeship', whereby slaves who worked the fields were to continue their labours for an additional six years, domestic slaves for a further four years. Yet what had been agreed was remarkable. The Slavery Abolition Act liberated 800,000 human beings from bondage, and the compensation of the slave owners represented what was at that time the largest payout in British history.
The process of paying the compensation turned out to be just as extraordinary as the decision itself. Though the number of slaves and the total amount of compensation payable were known to the government, the number of slave owners and where they resided were not. The famous owners – the men who had demanded compensation and lobbied in defence of slavery – were the only known quantity; the Hibberts, along with the Gladstones, Lascelles and other slave-owning dynasties, all came forward to claim their share of the £20m. George Hibbert was awarded £63,067 and another 10 members of the Hibbert family also received payouts. Yet what is more remarkable, and more significant to historians of slavery, is that tens of thousands of others – middling to small-scale slave owners – were also lured out of the shadows of history by the money on offer.
In order to claim compensation, all slave owners, no matter how many or how few slaves they were claiming compensation for, had to register their claims with the Slave Compensation Commission, the government bureaucracy established to distribute the money. The process demanded that each slave owner committed their name to the official record and filled out a claim form, identifying the number of slaves to which they laid claim and where those enslaved people resided. In the frenzied rush to stake claims, discretion was abandoned and the taboo that had developed around the owning of slaves was set aside. Britain's slave owners, all 46,000 of them, bombarded the commission with claims.
Punctilious clerks
This story is captured in the records of the Slave Compensation Commission, a great haul of yellowing ledgers and neatly tied bundles of letters held at the National Archives. The commission's records represent a near-perfect snapshot of slavery as it was on one day – 1 August 1834, the day of its demise. Just as Al Capone was convicted not on charges of murder or intimidation filed by the FBI but on charges of tax evasion brought by the bureau's accountants, Britain's secretive slave owners were identified, catalogued and recorded not by the efforts of the abolitionists but by the punctilious clerks and accountants of the Slave Compensation Commission.
For 180 years, the commission's records lay in the archives, largely unexamined until they became the focus of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project. Led by Professor Catherine Hall and Nick Draper, and completed through the efforts of a team of co-directors, researchers and students at University College London, the project has collated all 47,000 claims.
The slave owners upon whom they have shone the brightest light have been the 3,000 or so who were resident in Britain. The picture that emerges from the collated claims is of a Britain in which slave ownership was far more widespread and far more ordinary than had once been imagined. It cascaded further down the social spectrum than had previously been understood, and was distributed broadly across the nation, from the Isle of Wight to the Orkney Isles.
Among the names that appear in the records are many famous ones. The ancestors of the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott appear in the ledgers, as do those of Graham Greene and George Orwell (the latter listed under his real family name, Blair). In the end, however, the obscure families tend to be more interesting than the famous ones: the very ordinary people – middle class and lower middle class – who either invested in the slave economy or, through inheritance or other mechanisms, were drawn into it.
The claimants about whom the records reveal the most are those who entered into correspondence with the Commissioners for Slave Compensation. Among their letters are blatant attempts to influence the process. There are angry complaints at rejected or questioned claims, and unctuous reminders penned by claimants awaiting news.
These letters expose not just the addresses of the claimants but also give voice to the ordinary slave owners. One example was Dorothy Little, a widow living in Clifton in Bristol who struggled in vain to persuade the commissioners to increase the valuation placed on the 13 enslaved men and women she owned in Jamaica. Her letters, and those written on her behalf by her barrister son Simon, repeatedly reminded the commissioners that Dorothy was an aged widow with few means of support other than the forced labour – of what she called "my slaves".
In one petition, Simon Little warned the commissioners that if they were not to increase the valuation they would have "deprived an aged widow of her property without any fault alleged on her part".
These letters capture the mindset of people trapped in a bureaucratic system, unable to understand that such a system was not open to special pleading. But they are also the words of people who have, all too often, lost sight of the fact that the true victims of the system were the enslaved Africans, unseen and unconsidered, 4,000 miles away.
Three British slave owners
People from very different backgrounds benefited from 'property' they owned in the Caribbean
John Gladstone: the prime minister's father
By 1834, John Gladstone and his family had acquired 2,039 slaves for which they were awarded £93,526 by the Slave Compensation Commission. The heart of their slave empire was in British Guiana, at that time the most profitable of the British Caribbean colonies. John Gladstone used the compensation to diversify, investing in the booming railways. His son, William Ewart Gladstone, rose to become prime minister, making a speech in defence of slavery. The Gladstones replaced slaves with indentured Indian labourers on their Guyana plantations.
Nathaniel Wells: the mixed-race absentee
In many ways a typical absentee slave owner, Wells was the favourite son of a prominent St Kitts plantation owner. Sent to Britain for his education, on his father's death he inherited a fortune worth around £200,000, including sugar estates and slaves. What makes his story unusual is that he was mixed race: his mother was a slave, the legal property of his father. As a mixed-race man – albeit a very rich one – Wells would have had few rights in the Caribbean, and he never returned to St Kitts. He used his fortune to buy a country home, the grand Piercefield House, near Chepstow.
Anna Eliza Elletson: the powerful woman
On the death of her first husband in 1775, Elletson inherited 300 slaves and the Hope sugar plantation in Jamaica. She remarried to become Duchess of Chandos, and from Chandos House dispatched a stream of instructions to her attorneys in Jamaica. Carefully navigating the complex gender roles of her age, she presented herself as a woman in need of professional assistance, yet sent her attorneys detailed instructions on managing her estates. The work of the men and women she called her property delivered Elletson an annual income, in the 1780s, of £6,000 per year – around £5m today.
David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster
This article was first published in the May 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster
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When Argentine band Vilma Palma kicks into "La Pachanga" this Friday at Club Karamba, expect a frenzied reception from the Latino crowd.nn
"La Pachanga" was Vilma Palma's first and greatest hit, launching them from obscurity as a Latino rock-influenced band in the Argentine port town of Rosario to producers behind the soundtrack of teenage house parties, bars and nightclubs throughout South America in the early 1990s.nn
That Vilma Palma are headlining in Utah for the first time underscores how rock en español (rock in Spanish) continues to make inroads into the domestic United States market on the back of the ever-expanding Latino population, while at the same time helping clubs like Salt Lake City's Karamba become key fixtures in the local Latino community.nn
Lead singer and Vilma Palma co-founder, 46-year-old Mario Gomez, is the first to admit he's stateside to play his band's greatest hits. "People want to hear the hits and you have to make the people happy," he says in a Spanish phone interview.nn
His motivation helps explain the impassioned way Vilma Palma fans sing along to the seven-strong ensemble's Latino pop-rock classics, including "Te Quiero Tanto" (I Love You So Much), "Fernet con Coca" (Fernet with Coca-Cola) and "Me Vuelvo Loco por Vos" (I'm Crazy for You). Whether Gomez is playing in Bolivia, Peru or downtown Seattle, another first on the band's ninth U.S. tour, the crowds want to belt out "La Pachanga" with him and perhaps recapture a little of their youth.nn
Vilma Palma isn't the first rock en español stalwart to play Karamba. Other high profile South American bands who have played there since it opened in April 2005 include La Ley from Chile, Columbia's Grupo Niche, Costa Rica's Pimiento Negra and Pastor Lopez from Venezuela.nn
Argentine bands, however, have long been a key driving force in rock en español, marked increasingly since the 1970s by social and political commentary from bands such as Sui Generis and Dividos. But an energetic set of simple love songs and jokey lyrics are more Vilma Palma's line than agitprop. That said, their original name, Vilma Palma y los Vampiros, was a rallying cry of sorts, albeit an obscure one. It was taken from graffiti on a factory wall in Argentina, declaiming the female owner and her sons as vampires for stealing money from their employees.nn
Part of Vilma Palma's enduring success is their ability to deliver well-crafted yet simple riffs and undemanding lyrics that cross national boundaries in South America, a success mirrored in its own way by Karamba in the Latino community in Salt Lake City. Owner/manager Duvan Botero says the club is like a portal to changes in Utah's Latino community. "It's a business that allows you to see the new people showing up in town," he says. "When they arrive in the city, they look for restaurants and music they're familiar with."nn
Before Botero opened Mambo'his first Salt Lake City club'in 1993, the only Hispanic music available, he says, was at Latino nights at downtown bars on slow midweek nights. Mambo featured an adult section and one for minors. "That was a big mistake," he says. "You have to be king of something. I got rid of the kids."nn
With Karamba, he says he has the No. 1 Latino club in Utah. Along with rock en español, he showcases bands performing reggaeton, salsa, meringue, Columbian cumbia and bachata from the Dominican Republic. Anglos, he says, make up 15 percent of his crowd, some drawn by the free salsa classes the club offers on Saturday nights.nn
This time around, he's got the formula right, he says. While Mambo, which didn't feature live acts, was pulling in $25,000 a month in gross revenue, Karamba's climbed 200 percent to $75,000.nn
What draw Vilma Palma will have Friday night remains to be seen. Gomez, meanwhile, has other things on his mind. The group recently recorded their 10th album, the title of which eludes him.nn
He has one in mind that arguably sums up the decision many Vilma Palma audience members once had to make: leaving behind family, friends and a social life for which songs like "La Pachanga" were anthems, for the bright lights of the U.S. of A. Todo por un sueno: Everything for a dream.nn
nClub Karamba
n1051 E. 2100 South
nFriday, July 6
n9 p.m.


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thing. They are in themselves poor, guilty, vile creatures, and see themselves to be so; but they have an excellency and a glory in them, because they have Christ dwelling in them. The excellency that is in them, though it be but as a spark, yet it is something ten thousand times more excellent than any ruby or the most precious pearl that ever was found on the earth; and that because it is something divine, something of God.
This holy heavenly spark is put into the soul in conversion, and God maintains it there. All the powers of hell cannot put it out, for God will keep it alive, and it shall prevail more and more. Though it be but small, yet it is powerful; it has influence over the heart to govern it, and brings forth holy fruits in the life, and will not cease to prevail till it has consumed all the corruption that is left in the heart, and till it has turned the whole soul into a pure, holy, and heavenly flame, till the soul of man becomes like the angels, a flame of fire, and shines as the brightness of the firmament.
II. I would consider the honour to which Christians are advanced in this world; and the sum of this is, that they are the children of God. This is an excellent and glorious degree of honour and dignity to which they are admitted, and that because the Being to whom they are related is an infinitely glorious being, a being of incomprehensible majesty and excellency; and also because the relation is so near and honourable a relation. It is a great honour to be the servant of God. John the Baptist said of Christ, that he was not worthy to stoop down to loose the latchet of Christ's shoes. But Christians are not only admitted to be the servants of God, but his children; and how much more honourable in a family is the relation of children than that of servants! Gal. iv. 7. "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." Rom. viii. 16, 17. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of Go; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." 1 John iii. 1. "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!" The honour appears the greater if it be considered how Christians are brought into their relation to God; and that is by Christ. They become the children of God by virtue of their union with the only begotten and eternal Son of God; they are united to him as his spouse and members of his body, as his flesh and his bones, and as one spirit; and, therefore, as Christ is the Son of God, so they are sons; therefore are they joint heirs with Christ, because they are joint sons with him." To this end God sent forth his Son, that
so they might through him also be sons. Gal. iv. 4, 5. "But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." And therefore they, partaking of the relation of the Son, so are they also of the spirit of the Son; as it follows in the next verse, "and because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."
Herein Christians are the children of God in a more honourable way than the angels themselves; for the angels are the sons of God by virtue of that relation which they have to God, as they are in themselves singly and separately. But Christians are the children of God, as partaking with Christ, the only begotten Son, in his sonship, whose sonship is immensely more honourable than that of the angels. And Christians, being the children of God, are honoured of God as such. They are sometimes owned as such by the inward testimony of the Spirit of God. For, as it is found in the verse already cited from Romans, "the Spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God." They are treated as such in the great value God puts upon them, for they are his jewels, those which he has set apart for himself; and he is tender of them as of the apple of his eye. He disregards wicked men in comparison of them. He will give kings for them and princes for their life. He is jealous for them. He is very angry with those that hurt them. If any offend them, it were better for them that a mill-stone were cast about their neck, and they were drowned in the depths of the sea. He loves them with a very great and wonderful love. He pities them as a father pities his children. He will protect them, and defend them, and provide for them, as a father provides for his children. This honour have all they that fear and love God, and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
III. Peace and pleasure are also the portion of Christians in this world. Their peace and joy in God begin in the present life, and are no less excellent than the glory with which he invests them, and the honour to which he advances them. We ought here to consider, 1. What foundation they have for peace and joy. 2. What peace and joy they actually have.
1st. Their foundation for peace and joy is in their safety and their riches.
1. They have ground for peace because of their safety. They are safe in Jesus Christ from the wrath of God and from the power of Satan. They that are in Christ shall never perish, for none shall pluck them out of his hand. They are delivered from all their dreadful misery, that indignation and wrath, tri
bulation and anguish, which shall come on ungodly men. They were naturally exposed to it, but they are delivered from it; their sins are all forgiven them. The hand-writing is eternally blotted out. Their sins are all done away; God has cast them behind his back, and buried their sorrows in the depths of the sea, and they shall no more come into remembrance. They are most safe from misery, for they are built on Christ their everlasting rock. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yea, rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God. They have the faithful promise of God for their security, that is established as a sure witness in heaven. They have an interest in that covenant, that is well ordered in all things and sure. "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus."
2. They have a foundation of unspeakable comfort and joy, because of their riches. They have true and infinite riches. They are the possessors and heirs of something real and substantial, and that is worthy to be called by the name of riches. The things they possess are excellent, more precious than gold and than rubies; all the desirable things of this world cannot equal them, and they have enough of it. The riches that they have given them of God are inexhaustible. It is sufficient for them; there is no end of it. They have a fountain of infinite good for their comfort, and contentment, and joy; for God has given himself to them to be their portion, and he is a God of infinite glory. There is glory in him to engage their contemplation for ever and ever, without ever being satiated. And he is also an infinite fountain of love; for God is love, yea, an ocean of love without shore or bottom! The glorious Son of God is theirs; that lovely one, who was from all eternity; God's delight, rejoicing always before him. All his beauty is their portion, and his dying love is theirs, his very heart is theirs, and his glory and happiness in heaven are theirs, so far as their capacity will allow them to partake of it; for he has promised it to them, and has taken possession of it in their name. And the saints are also rich in the principle that is in them. They have inward riches which they carry about with them in their own hearts. They are rich in faith. James ii. 5. "Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?" They have the grace of God in their hearts, which is a most excellent treasure, and a good foundation of joy; for it is the seed of joy. Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. And the seed that is sown in their hearts, is the grace of God there.
That is a seed that however it
lies hid, will certainly in due time spring up, and put forth itself, and will bud, and blossom, and will bring forth rich fruit. These riches are the true riches. This is that good which God reserves for his friends. God distributes silver and gold and such like things among his enemies, because he slights them and regards them not. They are contemptible things in his eyes, as we throw husks to swine. But he has reserved better things for his children, of which no ungodly man, though a prince or monarch, shall partake. This is the ground which Christians have of peace and pleasure in this world. However, the saints cannot always take comfort, and do not always taste the sweetness that there is in store for them, by reason of the darkness and clouds that sometimes interpose. But though they may walk in great darkness for a long time, yet they are happy notwithstanding.
2d. They sometimes in this world have the actual enjoyment of peace and pleasure that are most excellent. Sometimes the clouds that are in the way are removed and Christians are enabled to behold the ground they have for rejoicing. Though God's glory and love be often hid from them, as it were with a vail, or at least, so as to hinder a clear view of it, yet God sometimes is pleased to remove the vail, to draw the curtain, and to give the saints sweet visions. Sometimes there is, as it were, a window opened in heaven, and Christ shows himself through the lattice; they have sometimes a beam of sweet light breaking forth from above into the soul; and God and the Redeemer sometimes come to them, and make friendly visits to them, and manifest themselves to them. Sometimes Christians have seasons of light and gladness for some considerable period, and at other times their views are more transient. Sometimes their light and joy arise in reading of the holy scriptures, sometimes in hearing the word preached, sometimes at the Lord's table, sometimes in the duty of prayer, sometimes in Christian conference, sometimes in meditation when they are about their occupations, as in the tine of more set and solemu meditations; and sometimes in the watches of the night.
Those spiritual joys and pleasures which believers possess in this world, are chiefly of three sorts.
1. The joy which they have in a sense of their own good estate; in the sense they have of the pardon of their sins, and their safety from hell; and a sense of the favour of God, and in the hope they have of eternal life.
2. The joy and delight which they have in the apprehension and view of God's excellency and love. The joy of a Christian does not consist merely in the sense of his own good estate, as natural men often are ready to imagine; but there is an excellent, transcendent, soul-satisfying sweetness that sometimes fills the soul in the apprehension of the excellency of God. The soul
dwells upon the thought, fixes on it, and takes complacence in God as the greatest good, the most delightful object of its contemplation. This pleasure is the sweetest pleasure that a Christian ever feels, and is the foretaste of the pleasures of heaven itself. Herein sometimes the saints do boast of the clusters of Canaan. This sort of joy is evidence of sincerity above any other joy, a more sure evidence than a rejoicing in our own good estate. From the joy which the Christian has in the view of the glory and excellency of God; the consideration of the love of God to him cannot be excluded. When he rejoices in God as a glorious God, he rejoices in him the more because he is his God, and in consideration of there being an union between him and this God; otherwise, if there were a separation, the view of God's excellency, though it would raise joy one way, would proportionally excite grief another. God is sometimes pleased to manifest his love to the saints, and commonly at those times, when a Christian has the greatest views of God's excellency, he has also of his love; the soul is spiritually sensible of God as being present with it, and as manifesting and communicating himself; and it has sweet communion with God, and tastes the sweetness of his love, and knows a little what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and height of that love which passeth knowledge.
3. The third kind of joy is found in doing that which is to the glory of God. The true love of God makes this sweet and delightful to the soul. The joy of a Christian not only arises in knowing and viewing, but also in doing; not only in apprehending God, but also in doing for God. For he loves God not only with a love of complacence, but a love of benevolence also; and as a love of complacence delights in beholding, so does a love of benevolence delight in doing for, the object beloved. The peace and pleasure which the Christian has in these things, is far better and more desirable than the pleasures that this world can afford, and especially than the pleasures of wicked men, and that on the following accounts.
1. There is Light in this pleasure. The peace and pleasures of wicked men have their foundation in darkness. When wicked men have any quietness or joy, it is because they are blind and do not see what is their real condition. If it were not for blindness and delusion, they could have no peace nor comfort in any thing. There needs nothing but to open a wicked man's eyes, and let him look about him and see where he is, and it would be enough to destroy all the quietness and comfort of the most prosperous wicked man in the world. But on the contrary, the peace of a godly man, is a peace that arises from light; when he sees things most as they are, then he has most peace; and the distress and trouble which he sometimes feels, arise from clouds and darkness. When


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When Kazan won the rights to host the Summer Universiade 2013 the city possessed enormous potential. Kazan is and was among the largest scientific and educational centres of Russia, and second only to Moscow for the number of students in the country. Kazan State University was the third oldest school in Russia — and one of 30 institutes of higher education in the city.
The capital city of the Tatarstan region had an ambitious master plan for hosting the first Universiade on Russian soil since the 1973 summer games in Moscow. Since then, the many new and refurbished sport infrastructures had modernised the city and turned it into an exceptional, international sports haven. With all the sports facilities open to university students and the public one hears still today about the deep sense of pride and joy that hosting the Summer Universiade still brings to the townspeople of Kazan.


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Flowwrappers are like any other piece of machinery in a bakery or snack food manufacturing facility when it comes to ever-changing challenges. Products evolve and consumer demands waver, but the end product must still be wrapped quickly, efficiently and reliably.
Meeting those challenges are even more important when the flowwrapper is responsible for putting the final touches on a food product. The package is the first thing the customer sees and touches, which can go a long way in product sales.
Managing modern materials
Bakers and snack producers are trying new films to cover their products. Some are going with thinner, higher-quality films to reduce packaging while some are looking for more sophisticated materials.
"One of the big things, in general, is that this is requiring some more flexibility," said Dennis Gunnell, vice-president of sales and marketing at Formost Fuji Corp., Woodinville, WA. "Different films require different sealing patterns and some of these patterns can get quite complicated."
The thinner films can present unique challenges. If too much pressure is applied to the film, it can fracture. If too much heat is applied, it will burn.
"We're playing with three variables: heat, pressure and dwell time," said Paul Garms, product and marketing manager for Bosch Packaging Technology, New Richmond, WI. "When you have a thinner film, you're giving up certain qualities that you had with a thicker film with multiple laminations."
One way to work around that problem is to change the profile of the jaw and the serration patterns or use methods traditionally used for thicker films, such as long-dwell technology.
"We can adjust it to where the sealing jaws on a flowwrapper actually move with the film for a certain amount of time and that will help with the pressure problem," Mr. Garms said. "On our long-dwell machines we can actually move with the film for one second. That is another potential solution: just add more time to get a good seal."
Mr. Gunnell said the varying sealing patterns of higher quality films can be most problematic. "The actual seal bar has a pattern face on it and, depending on the film, that pattern face can handle different films," he said. "Some films stretch one direction, some another, some have flow characteristics so the film can flow caulk and create a seal. Others have little. There are things going on that put a higher demand on the technical aspects of the seal bars."
Mr. Garms pointed out the challenge of becoming more sustainable and using less product to complete a wrap while, at the same time, retaining the qualities necessary to keep food in the best condition possible.
"Everything is an evolution, a gradual change, but I think all suppliers right now are focused on sustainability and environmental concerns," he said. "And they're always looking to reduce costs. A lot of times these things are aligned when you're talking about moving to thinner films, but in certain applications, they need certain barrier properties to eliminate air flow and oxygen ingress that might degrade their product."
Many a move to thinner film can't be made because those additional laminations are needed, either for the look and feel of the package or for the barrier properties that come with them.
Revisiting resealability
It can be challenging enough to keep up with the newest and best ways to package a product. It can throw a completely different wrench in the operation when the need arises for a package that can be closed again after opening.
But that, Mr. Gunnell said, is a trend that rears its head after few years.
"That comes up every so often. People start looking more for something that you can open and close again pretty easily," he said. "That seems to be pretty hot again in the last year or so. They're looking for easy ways to get into the package and then easy ways to reclose it again, either for freshness or to keep it from falling out of the package."
The problem is in finding ways that are easier and less expensive to achieve that.
"If it's a bagged product, you've got a couple of options, but with a wrapped product, you've got a number of them, whether it's tape, a label or a zipper," Mr. Gunnell said. "There are a lot of different things you can use, and none of them are perfect. A lot of the things that came out five, six, eight years ago were not the most user-friendly and now people have been playing with it and trying to solve the problem long enough that there are some better options."
One successful adaptation has been the cookie tray that is resealed from the top instead of the sides thanks to a die-cut opening. Consumers can peel the wrapper back, take the cookies they want and reseal the package.
"That is probably what I've seen more than anything," said Vince Tamborello, president of Benchmark Automation, Bogart, GA. "Rather than wrapping it into smaller packages, you take the entire tray and make it re-sealable."
Those ideas come in waves, Mr. Gunnell said. When a trend like resealable packaging hits the industry, it takes time to come up with a plan and implement it, but when that happens, it spreads.
"I think that's what ends up happening; it takes a while from when a challenge is first seen for equipment guys like us to get it on our radar and find a solution," he said. "And every time something better comes along, everybody tries to make some improvements."
Premium packaging
Sometimes a customer is looking for more than the traditional selling points of moisture barriers and breathability when searching for the right package. Sometimes the look and feel of a material is put at the top of the priority list.
"I had a customer last week that wanted a certain feel," Mr. Gunnell said. "They paid extra money for it. It's a real soft, warm feel when you grab the package. The product was not expensive, but the package is."
Flowwrapper manufacturers can help achieve that special request, but more times than not, that means a significant spike in cost for the customer. The higher quality materials can be used to wrap a product and then seal it at a faster rate, but it doesn't always end up in the price point needed.
"That's where the challenge comes in. People are trying to push materials," Mr. Gunnell said. "Something may have been designed to run up to 100 to 120 a minute on a certain product and now they want to push that same material to 180 to get better efficiency and take advantage of line speeds. But that material can't be pushed that far. When you move to a material that can run at higher rates, it's a lot more money. That's really where the cost comes into the equation."
And if everything does come together and the perfect combination of look and feel and cost is achieved, it still, like everything else, needs the seal of approval from the consumer.
"People get an idea of what they want the package to do, but in the end the consumer says if they want it," Mr. Gunnell said. "Some things don't change. The customer is always right."
Foreseeing the future
Even after numerous emerging challenges are dealt with, there will always be a new batch coming down the road. Consumer demand changes, causing some products to change and others to go away altogether. That's why Mr. Gunnell stressed the importance of flexibility.
"The thought of running something for two, three, four, five years … you just can't plan on that," he said. "The product may not be around that long. Every machine we sell now, there's a good chance that in the next three to seven years, it's going to be configured to do something else."
A flowwrapper could last 20 years, meaning companies and their engineers must have the future — an unknown future at that — in mind when spending money on a new machine.
"A machine that has that flexibility built into it is key. An adjustable forming box, easy-to-change cutoff pitch, a design of the in-feed that may lend itself to different sizes easily, a machine that is modularly designed to scale, those are all important," Mr. Gunnell said. "If you buy a machine to do one product, are you really getting the most out of your money?"


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|Part #
|$ 11.00 each
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See our "Material Working Tips " page for info on how to fashion and polish ivory.
FMI can ship internationally.
PLASTIC BAGS: Our plastic bags are heavy bags at 3 mil thickness. They are 2.75" wide X 36" length and are clear. These are available in groups of 5 or in packages of 100.Plastic Extra Heavy Duty Bow Bags


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Holystic Sneaker Laundry offers their clientele sneaker restoration services' send them in after an otc consultation and they make them look like new.
In an article by the playbook, customer Benedict Yeo's experience with the business did not go well. Yeo took his Nice Kicks x adidas NMDs, a shoe whose rarity pushes its value into the thousands of dollars, to Sneaker Laundry for a round of cleaning and restoration services; this turned into a 23-day ordeal, more than double Holystic's advertised 7-10 day turnaround time.
Upon recieving his shoes, he noticed obvious discoloration of the pull tab. Displeased, he ordered (and paid for) another round of restoration to rectify it. When he received his shoes this time, a marker had been used in an attempt to cover the previous foul up.
In a post on his Facebook, Yeo posted the c0ntract Holystic customers must sign before using the company's services. One line reads: " in no event, will Holystic Sneaker Laundry be held liable for any consequential…loss or damages whether or not Holystic knew and should have known of the likelihood of any loss or damage"
Yeo was not alone in his experience. The Playbook spoke to other past customers and here is what some of them had to say:
Holystic responded to the Vulcan Post with this:
Holystic Sneaker Laundry then posted they had come to an agreement with Mr. Yeo to get him a new pair of "Adidas Nice Kicks".
The power of social media gets justice for a customer wronged by a business.


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Page to Screen is a monthly free-form column in which Matt Melis explores how either a classic or contemporary work of literature made the sometimes triumphant, often disastrous leap from prose to film. This time, he hikes off into the woods along the train tracks to discover how Stand by Me became a timeless coming-of-age tale.
"I think most good stories about boys are about journeys," Stephen King says in Walking the Tracks, a featurette on the making of Stand by Me. All these years later, it's hard to believe that this classic journey of four friends hiking into the woods to see a dead body almost never came to pass. For years, King had tried to find a story that could connect to the events of his Portland, Maine, boyhood but had little luck. Finally, after completing 'Salem's Lot, he had enough gas left over to concoct the Ray Brower scenario, which became the catalyst for his novella "The Body". Unfortunately, practically zero markets existed for novellas. As King puts it, "I couldn't publish these tales because they were too long to be short and too short to be really long." So "The Body", along with three other long stories (including "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", later adapted into another award-winning film), spent several years collecting cobwebs until King finally convinced his publishers to combine them into 1982's Different Seasons collection.
Director Rob Reiner had just as little initial luck in trying to get Hollywood to let him adapt King's novella. "Every studio in town had turned us down," remembers producer and co-writer Bruce A. Evans. "The consensus was that no one would be interested in a story about four 12-year-old boys on a railroad track. It was dark, there was not a girl in it, and no one knew how to sell it." Eventually, the film found a home at Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio's Embassy Pictures; however, when the company was sold to Columbia, the new studio decided to axe the risky, starless project just three days prior to shooting. At the last minute, it was Reiner's old All in the Family friend Lear who stepped in and secured the film. "Norman [Lear] said, 'I like the script. I like Rob. I like the boys,'" recalls producer and co-writer Raynold Gideon. "And out of his pocket he gave us seven and a half million dollars to make the film." And Lear wasn't the only person who ultimately stood by the movie. It would later take a private screening at the home of Columbia Pictures production head Guy McElwaine, whose two daughters, according to Evans, fell in love with River Phoenix, for the movie to get distribution. As Reiner recalls, Evans cried during the screening and told him, "I just want this picture. I don't know if it'll make money or not."
So Stand by Me got made and distributed and became an unlikely box office hit for Columbia late that summer of '86. But why are we still talking about the film 30 years later? And why have subsequent generations also latched on so tightly to a movie about four friends cracking jokes in the woods and going on a half-baked adventure hike? The answer rests with those boys: Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris (Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) as well as King and Reiner, whose own boyhoods clearly bled into the production. Together they created one of the rare films about children that treats the bonds, fears, and pains of youth with the same emotional depth and weight reserved for movies about adults. It's a boyhood coming-of-age story that doesn't rely on nostalgia — that understands that a trip into the woods with buddies can reroute lives and that sometimes boys begin to become men only because life leaves them no alternative.
I'm not sure why it's so difficult to write kids for the screen — or the page for that matter. Surely, it should just be a matter of thinking back to one's own childhood and tapping into those memories. But it's clearly not that simple because too often child characters reach the screen annoyingly precocious, painfully diluted, or thinly drawn characterizations able to do little more than spout catchphrases on cue. As tempting as it might be to apply labels like the shy kid (Gordie), the leader (Chris), the hot-tempered spaz (Teddy), and the goober (Vern) to the boys of Stand by Me, neither King's novella nor the film's script let us off that cheaply. And it's more than that the minutia of boyhood is captured so fondly here — the singing, the ranking, the roughhousing. King and Reiner portray real boys who have been damaged, hurt, and devastated and are already searching for means to reconcile the way things should be with life's cruel realities. Teddy, for instance, stands up for the same father who disfigured him, Chris wants to get out of Castle Rock but knows the odds are stacked against him, and Gordie fights to emerge from his dead brother's shadow and realize his own worth. These trials are as heavy as anything they'll ever face in life and all before any of them can even piss straight.
Remarkably, we never doubt for a second the performances of those young actors. Wheaton has directed much of that credit over the years to Reiner, saying: "Rob was able to cast four teenage boys that could just show up and be themselves." According to Reiner, that was precisely his plan. "You can't ask kids of that age to go very far away from who they are," he explains. "So, I tried to find kids who had the qualities of those characters." Once Reiner had Stand by Me's four friends cast, he took them to the shooting locations in Oregon two weeks ahead of filming to play theater games and get to know each other. "I can see now that he was taking this time to get us comfortable with each other," Wheaton says, "so that we would feel like we really knew each other and really had some bonds together." It's those bonds — part genuine, part crafted — that make us believe and embrace the most critical, life-altering moments in Stand by Me.
"The most important things are the hardest things to say," King's novella begins. The worst is when "the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear." Gordie and Chris are that ear for each other in Stand by Me, that friend whom each can reveal his true self to without being judged. In the famous "Milk Money" scene, tough Chris breaks down as he tells Gordie how a teacher — someone who should have his best interests at heart — betrayed him, and he explains how his fate is already sealed by his family's seedy reputation. Later, just before the final showdown with Ace, Chris puts an arm around a sobbing Gordie who wails that his own father hates him. There are no kid gloves in this film. In moments like these, two 12-year-old boys are negotiating the hurdles unfairly strewn in their paths and contemplating what the rest of their lives could hold for them. The stakes could hardly be higher, and Phoenix and Wheaton turn in performances that pierce our cynicism and remain with us forever.
If you have good parents, like mine, you're often lucky enough to spend most of your childhood believing nothing too terrible can ever really happen. In some ways, that childhood ends when life first flashes its fangs and proves to you that really isn't the case. King saw "The Body" as a series of rites of passage that boys go through. Some, like a first time away from home, are more or less innocuous, but others — facing death or something frightening alone — invariably damage our protective force field of childhood in a way that can never be totally repaired. Not many coming-of-age films address these rites in realistic ways, where you have serious doubts that the characters you've spent an entire movie getting to know will come out safely at the other end of the tracks. Stand by Me is one of the few.
One of the most terrifying aspects of the film is how truly on their own the boys are. Who can really help them? Their parents, all but absent in the film save for Gordie's dreams and flashbacks, are either neglectful or outright abusive. Other adults, like Chris' teacher, the grocer, and the junkyard owner, shirk their societal duties towards children and come across as inchoate and childlike themselves. And Ace Merrill (Keifer Sutherland) and his gang, the Cobras, seem to have the run of the town as long as their misdeeds are done semi-covertly. After seeing an unflinching Ace play chicken with a truck hauling logs earlier in the film, I had no doubt that he'd have slit Chris' throat had Gordie not pulled the gun on him. In a fictional world where we quickly learn that a boy can go missing in the woods and get knocked out of his Keds by a train, what's to stop a "cheap, dime-store hood" from making a boy the latest notch on his switchblade?
Maybe an even scarier prospect is that it doesn't get better. In King's novella, Vern dies six years later in a house fire following a drunken party — he falls asleep with a lit cigarette. Five years after that, Teddy, unfit for the army and having done time, bites it when he slams a car full of people, all high and drunk, into a utility pole. Ace Merrill, well, he takes a job at the local mill and rots away on a bar stool. For someone, like me, who grew up in a small town, these stories are commonplace. These towns can suck out your hopes and prospects like a swamp of leeches drains your blood. In some ways, it's scarier than a dead body or Ace's switchblade. It's this small-town fate Gordie and Chris have a chance to avoid, a peril perfectly captured along the train tracks as Chris reacts to Gordie telling him he's not going to enroll in college prep courses. "It's like God gave you something, all those stories you can make up," Chris tells him. "And He said: 'This is what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it.' But kids lose everything unless somebody looks out for them, and if your folks are too fucked up to do it, then maybe I ought to." God, everyone should have a friend like Chris Chambers.
"Books and movies are apples and oranges," King says when asked about Reiner altering his novella. "They're both delicious, but they don't taste the same at all." In "The Body", King paints Chris more as a tragic hero, and Gordie acts as the eyes through which we see him. That was the very first thing Reiner changed after he read Stand by Me's original script. "Gordie has to be the main character," the director says. "It's all about a little boy who doesn't feel good about himself, who's looking for approval, can't get it from his father, and looks to his friends to be bolstered." To achieve this, Reiner doubles down on the Denny factor (Gordie's older brother who died in a recent jeep accident), making it clear that Gordie was robbed of the one person (other than Chris) who believes in him and cares about his talent as a writer — someone who would've made sure he didn't squander his gift. And then there's the gun.
If you're reading this far, you've no doubt seen Gordie lower that forty-five, point it at Ace, and glare steely-eyed down its barrel dozens of times. In King's novella, it's Chris who pulls the gun and comes to Gordie's aid. But if this is now Gordie's story, it has to be him who makes that move. "It was the emergence of Gordie," Reiner explains. "That rite of passage happens in that scene. We had Gordie do it because it was his evolution." That idea of evolution goes back to King's point about the differences between books and movies. Of course, all the boys change — they go from giddily setting out to find a body with childish visions of getting their pictures in the paper to all solemnly agreeing that Ray Brower deserves better than being a trophy for them — but Reiner's version offers a more clear-cut transformation than the novella. With Chris' help, we see Gordie change from an invisible, insecure kid into a young man who isn't going to let others dictate his life or how he feels about himself any longer. In turn, we learn Gordie will do the same for Chris, which makes that sad ending a bit more bearable. Although he was cut down early, we know that Chris did get out of Castle Rock with Gordie's help and became so much more than just Eyeball Chambers' lousy kid brother.
Stand by Me is one of those movies that touches upon something universal. Something that isn't specific to a time, place, or even gender. It speaks in broader terms than that about what it is to start growing up. Most people I know see themselves in one or more of the characters and can cast people from their own childhood to fill the remaining roles. And I imagine, if we think about it long enough, many of us can recall those moments in our own lives — maybe not a hike to find a dead body or pointing a gun at someone — that signaled a change or from which there was no turning back. In my case, maybe because I became a writer and escaped a small town, I've always identified with both the book and the film's narrator, an older Gordie.
I come from Castle Rock — not Gordie's, but my own. A small town in western Pennsylvania. There's a steel plant rather than a mill and nothing much else but churches and neighborhood bars. In the valley below my childhood home, train tracks cut through the thick, forested hillside. There are stories. I'm told an elderly couple once turned onto those tracks late one foggy night — thinking they were a road — and met a midnight freight head-on, headlights to headlight. Nearly every night of my youth, I woke up to those trains that only pass through after everyone's asleep — to that hulking, lethargic rumble or the howling of dogs. Coal comes in those long, rusted freights. Odd lumps spill over the top sometimes. They pull in full and leave empty, always empty. Almost nothing ever leaves my hometown. It's incestuous in that way. Students have the same teachers that their parents did two decades earlier. Guidance counselors shuffle them off to the same handful of nearby colleges and trade schools. Those kids marry local sweethearts and move in next to their parents and have children of their own. It's nearly as predictable as those late-night freights.
But it's home, so I still visit a couple times each year. And I bump into the Teddy Duchamps and Vern Tessios of my youth at the grocery store or while pumping gas. Time has mostly stood still for them, and I can't even begin to turn it back for me. We try to talk but run out of ammo in a hurry, each of us, I suspect, a bit grateful. As King writes, "Some people drown. It's not fair, but it happens." On the odd occasion that an old friend drags me out to a local bar, I even see the Ace Merrills: warming a stool, shooting pool, or lording over the jukebox. The same j.d. asshole who used to repeatedly punch my shoulder each day in study hall now looks too weary to raise his arm for anything more than a swig. It's depressing. I tell myself that isn't me and never could have been. But I can't know that for certain. I always had parents and a couple Chris Chambers in my life, fanning and protecting that spark I pulled in with and making sure it never went out. It's why in the rare moments that I think back to my boyhood, I come away with a sobering feeling of gratitude. And it's probably why I never get tired of watching Stand by Me.
Jesus, does anyone?


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Building STEM Skills with Snapology
While kids are having fun building robots, they're also building important educational and life skills.
It is great to be able to encourage any of your child's interests–whether in the arts, chess, cooking, sports, or even some combination of these (and others) can lead to a well rounded and happy child.
If your child has an interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects, a fun way to encourage that interest is through LEGO Robotics classes. In our modern world, the earlier kids start to get involved with STEM education, the better. Snapology offers a wide range of LEGO Robotics classes that explore not only different types of robots, but also dive into the engineering and thought processes behind them. Through LEGO robotics, kids of all ages are introduced to engineering, mathematics, and robotics principles. They are also given the opportunity to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and they learn the principles of pseudo-coding, coding, robotics and engineering.
Snapology provides STEM educational programs for children ages 4-12, and our programs are designed to combine fun with education. In our classes and camps we use LEGO and DUPLO bricks, as well as other educational tools to teach children development skills and scientific concepts. The children have so much fun while learning through play that they do not realize how much they are actually learning. Through play, children can develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments.
Our classes have been offered in public, private, and parochial schools, and more. While our classes have been offered in a wide range of neighborhoods and in very diverse communities, all of the kids do the same projects and in every class the kids are having fun – but don't tell them it's educational! Children who attend Snapology programs have an increased desire to do well in school, and an increased interest in pursuing STEM fields.
In addition to after school classes, Snapology also offers great birthday parties and summer enrichment camps. Please contact us if you are interested in bringing Snapology to your child's school or preschool, or if you want more information about our awesome birthday party themes.
Photographs provided by Snapology.


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Papers of the Caribbean Banana Exporters' Association (CBEA), comprising a preliminary report, 'Banana Exports from the Caribbean since 1992'; papers of the first General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) panel, 1993 including correspondence with lawyers, High Commissions and Caribbean missions regarding disputes between Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the European Community; submissions and statements from European Community, Jamaica, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela and draft of the descriptive parts of the report of the Panel.
Papers of the second GATT panel, 1993 including submissions from the Caribbean and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) to the GATT Panel on the European Economic Community (EEC) Import Regime for Bananas, following a dispute between Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the European Economic Community with related notes, memoranda and press releases; submissions and rebuttals from EEC; submissions from other parties including Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire and Madagascar; Dominican Republic; Venezuela; Costa Rica and Nicaragua; Colombia; Guatemala; and Brazil; correspondence, chiefly with US lawyers regarding the GATT Panel on EEC Import Regime for Bananas.
Correspondence regarding the World Trade Organization (WTO) proceeding requested by the United States regarding the European Union banana import regime, 1995-1996; correspondence and other papers on the WTO Panel on the banana regime, following a complaint by the United States supported by Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, 1996; transcripts of oral submissions to WTO recourse to Article 21.5 of DSU by Ecuador, regarding European Communities - Regime for the Importation, Sale and Distribution of Bananas relating to Belize, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname; Ecuador and European Communities.
Papers relating to banana publicity in the UK, 1993-2000 including 'Bananas Mean Business' campaigning video; papers on lobbying; correspondence of LM Napier; correspondence with Matrix Partnership and Flagship Consulting; press releases and letters to editors; correspondence with development charities and papers and correspondence regarding Notting Hill Carnival, 1996-1999 including on Notting Hill Carnival Leaflet, 1996 and copy of Jamaica Rising Sun , Aug 1999 (Peoples National Party UK).
Papers on lobbying in Europe, 1993-1999 including papers on ACP-EEC Joint Assembly, 1993; European Parliament questions and debates; correspondence with Overseas Development Administration (ODA), UK; correspondence with EU Commission members; notes on visit of Eugenia Charles (Prime Minister of Dominica); press releases; lobbying notes; papers relating to lobbying in Scandinavian countries; correspondence with European ministers; report of MEP Fact Finding Mission, Guadeloupe and The Windward Islands, 1997; fact sheets; press cuttings and transcript of BBC Radio 4's Today Programme Nov 1998.
Papers relating to 301 Technical Committee set up to discuss US action against the EU banana regime, 1994-2000, including press releases; fact sheets; summaries of CBEA and lobbyists actions; notes from meetings; correspondence; press cuttings; Economic Study commissioned to investigate the economic consequences for Caribbean countries of loss of access to the banana market, Dec 1995; single sheet publication The US and Chiquita at the World Trade Organization. Life or Death for Small Caribbean Banana Farmers ; papers on the CBEA Mission to US, 1998; leaflet 'Caribbean Banana Crisis: Know the Facts'; details of congressional visit to Brussels, 2000; and papers relating to impact of sanctions on imports from EU.


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I don't know how I do it, but I do! I have arranged for my boffins to set up two new free online games for you my lovely cuddly reader to play on my www.wickedly wonderful website so that you can while away your working day and return home fresh, relaxed and happy, aren't I just the nicest Cat in the world? Of course I am.
The first new free online game is called Bloons
Here is what it's about and what you have to do, which is frankly not much except enjoy.
Bloons are what Monkeys call Balloons – they're daft aren't they – but they did beat humans into space, though Cats got there first.
There is only one aim of the game and that is to shoot 'Bloons,' isn't it nice when things are that simple? Oh by the way there are 50 levels and they do get a bit harder as you progress.
Here's the Cat's Tip: Hold down the mouse button and let go to shoot further.
The second free online game is called Grow Cube and I think it's a bit strange – some might call it addictive though.
I personally think that Grow Cube is the first computer game that requires you to have a pencil and paper handy – you'll need it I promise.
The devious devisers of the game say that, "all you have to do (understatement) is to add the right element at the right time other otherwise your cube isn't going to grow." You'll get the hang of it all soon enough depending upon how clever you are of course!
Here's my tip: Start with the man, and make lots of notes.
I hope that you enjoy both free on-line games and manage to to do just a small amount of work every so often when playing them.
To get to my games page on my www.wickedly wonderful website quickly just click here My Games Page to go straight to the latest free online game you would like to play simply click on its picture above, the pictures are rather clever links to my website, but then what do you expect from a rather clever Cat? Nothing less!
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Bloons, clever Cat, Computer game, free games, free on-line games, free online games, Grow Cube, my games, my website, www – wickedly wonderful website, www.thecatsdiary.com


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As the Stan Pocock Legacy Rowing Center moves into its second and final stage of construction in Eagle Harbor, Bainbridge Island Rowing is delighted to be able to make a number of high-visibility sponsorship opportunities available to select local companies and national brands.
Please join BIR in supporting rowing in the Pacific Northwest, honoring the legacy of Stan Pocock and helping to make rowing more logistically, financially and physically accessible across the West Sound with a sponsorship from your company, group or organization.
Each rowing center sponsor will be permanently recognized by Bainbridge Island Rowing through naming rights, VIP events and dedicated custom signage. Every opportunity listed below also includes special rights and considerations for your generous support (click on the image to enlarge in a new browser tab).
Bainbridge Island Rowing is a 501(c)(3) organization and donations are eligible for applicable tax deductions. For more information, please contact the BIR Corporate Partnership Team.


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Real Estate Video
Enhance your listings with a custom video. This is a great tool to reach out to potential buyers, as well as assuring your sellers that their property will stand out. The video tours can include interior and exterior shots as well as aerial footage of the property. All videos are narrated by a professional voice over artist.
Real Estate Photography
High quality photos and video tours spark more interest from real estate buyers, leading to faster sales and higher prices. Beautiful images can enhance both print and online marketing material to drive traffic to your listings. In fact, 98% of buyers who searched for a home on the internet found photos to be amoung the most useful features, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Take advantage of professional photography to reach potential buyers as well as assuring your sellers that their property will stand out.
Agent Profile Videos
Make a good first impression online with a custom profile video! A profile video can be used on your website and across social media to help you stand out in the crowd. There is no better way to give a great first impression to potential clients online.


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Free Books
Food Science Books
Books on the science of food preparation and its storage.
Elements Of The Theory And Practice Of Cookery
Recipes making quantities suitable for a small family are given, as being the most practicable from all points of view. The individual recipe is not adapted to home use, nor is it so easy to multiply as it is to divide the ordinary recipe to make the latter meet the requirements of individual practice.
Handbook Of Household Science | by Juniata L. Shepperd
This text will be found useful in the class room, and it will also serve as a manual for the housewife in the farm home. It treats of the philosophy of cooking. It gives directions for preparing and serving many of the substantial, and some embellishing, dishes. It treats of the kitchen and dining room, and gives suggestions on their furnishing and care.
The Home Science Cook Book | by Mary J. Lincoln and Anna Barrows
The aim of this book is not to answer, the question "what" as to choice of foods, nor "why" certain processes have been adopted as best suited to their preparation for the table, but it endeavors to tell "how" to put materials together to produce results pleasing to the eye and palate and nourishing to the body. The choice of foods may be considered in another handbook, but this one is distinctly a cook-book. Cook-books of the past contained recipes for coloring fabrics, healing diseases, for cleaning, for pickling and preserving, yet little by little these processes have become trades, and have departed or are gradually going from under the home roof, probably never to return. The art of cooking still remains, and since the introduction of the chafing-dish and the gas stove is receiving new attention.
Food And Feeding | by Henry Thompson
In the present and enlarged edition I have attempted to classify the various processes employed in cookery and its staple products in a more complete and natural order than heretofore, and to explain more fully the principles on which they are employed, the objects aimed at, and the rationale of each procedure.
Food Facts For The Home-Maker | by Lucile Stimson Harvey
This book is intended to be a help to the young housekeeper who is starting out in the new home without either a knowledge of science or the technical training which could help her. This is more often the case of the girl who has been to college and has devoted her time to other subjects outside the home, so that she starts in handicapped on the business of home-making, than it is the case of her sister who has stayed at home and has been trained there by her mother. The book is also intended to help those women who have kept house for years and who are excellent cooks and careful planners. It should give a scientific foundation to their technical skill, showing them the reasons why they have been doing certain things all their lives, and perhaps showing them ways in which they may shorten processes and thus save time and energy.
A Textbook Of Domestic Science For High Schools | by Matilda G. Campbell
This textbook has been compiled in response to an ever increasing demand from instructors of Domestic Science for a book which can be placed in the hands of the student to use as a laboratory manual in the school, and as a practical cookbook in the home.
First Lessons In The Principles Of Cooking | by Lady Barker
The day has come in English social history when it is absolutely the bounden duty of every person at the head of a household - whether that household be large or small, rich or poor - to see that no waste is permitted in the preparation of food for the use of the family under his or her care. I am quite aware that such waste cannot be cured by theories, and that nothing except a practical acquaintance with the details of household management, supplemented by a conviction of the necessity of economy, can be expected to remedy the evil. At the same time, it is possible that ignorance of the fundamental principles of the chemical composition and of the relative nutritive value of the various sorts of food within our reach, added to the widespread ignorance of the most simple and wholesome modes of preparing such food, may be at the root of much of that waste.
Experimental Cookery From The Chemical And Physical Standpoint | by Belle Lowe
The principal function of this volume is to present our newer knowledge of food preparation and cookery processes from a chemical and physical basis, particularly that of colloid chemistry. In doing this, many results secured from experimental work along these lines at Iowa State College have been included. A condensed arrangement of the data on cookery, which are found in widely scattered sources, has been included also.
Food Study | by Mabel Thacher Wellman
A Textbook In Home Economics and Cooking For High Schools
Hints To Housewives On How To Buy, How To Care For Food
Meats, Drippings and Butter Substitutes, Fish, Vegetables, Cereals, Bread, How to Use Left-overs, How to Make Soap, Fireless Cooker, Canning Fruits and Vegetables, How to Preserve Eggs
Eating To Live | by John Janvier Black
As to eating and drinking, the majority of human beings are much like sheep. Sheep have no idea of the points of the compass; they have not the least idea of taking care of themselves. They follow any leader, any bell-wether, either to safety or to death, without any proper instinct of self-preservation. If my readers should follow the advice given in this book, and are thereby saved from some of the many pitfalls open to those who eat and drink from instinct rather than from reasoning, I shall be more than satisfied and more than gratified.
A Laboratory Manual Of Foods And Cookery | by Emma B. Matteson
Teaching experience has shown the need of a textbook approaching the study of foods and cookery through experimental work in chemistry, bacteriology, and biology. In this book, therefore, under each topic a considerable number of experiments will be found. The performance of these experiments and the answering of the questions which arise from them will give the student a firsthand acquaintance with the leading characteristics of each kind of food, will furnish a basis for the discussion of the procedures used in cookery, and should give her such a grasp of the principles involved as will enable her to work without recipes, or to develop her own...
Scientific Feeding | by Mrs. Dora C. C. L. Roper
This is a practical and hygienic cook book for all who consider life and health valuable. Intelligent homekeepers, nurses, managers of institutions and factories, all who are interested in furnishing the most nutritious food at the least cost, or wish to distribute such a work, will find this book worth its weight in gold.
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The Hurd Instinct
Oh now that the Cold War is over,
What a wonderful pose for a snap:
I'll just do a kick for Markova -
Take hold of my briefcase, old chap!
Oh now that the Reds cannot rankle,
And bulldozers blast through the brick,
Just glance at my elegant ankle
And pass me a top hat and stick.
Oh now that I'm Secretary (Foreign)
And your cameras are ready to flash,
Just lend me a kilt and a sporran:
I'll give the Gay Gordons a bash.
This moment is truly historic
(Just picture me here while I wave!) -
No wonder it makes me euphoric
To dance on this famous old grave.
The blood used to run here in rivers
While tunnellers worked in their vaults:
Oh doesn't it give you the shivers!
Now capture me dancing a waltz.


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These crispy polenta croutons are the perfect finger food for toddlers and baby-led weaning fans. They're soft and creamy on the inside and crunchy on the outside.
Polenta is simply cornmeal boiled into a porridge, and eaten creamy and soft or baked, fried or grilled. It is quick and easy to make (if using the instant variety, of course!). Unlike flour made from wheat grains, cornmeal does not contain gluten, which makes for an ideal food to serve those who suffer from celiac disease or gluten intolerance.
Due to its mild flavour, polenta lends itself to a variety of spice and herb combinations as well as preparation methods. My go-to method of preparation is usually soft and creamy, topped with marinara sauce or a mushroom cream sauce. I've made Baked Polenta in the past, which is a hit with the entire family so I can say that I have that method of preparation under my belt too.
My son is not much of a fan of the super-creamy texture so I had a go at preparing it differently, in order to encourage him to give polenta another chance. My hard work (well, not so much!) and creativity paid off. He gobbled these up! I do think the fact that he was encouraged to use his hands to eat might have had something to do with it too!


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Both of todays wines come from the global monolith that is Pernod Ricard, both of these within their style are top shelf, both come resplendent with capital city wine show gold medals, yet I think that both these wines are slower sellers than they deserve to be.
Orlando St Hilary Padthaway Chardonnay 2006 (Padthaway, SA) Screwcap, $18
Is there a more underrated commercially available Chardonnay out there? Widely available and reliably good quality, yet suffering under its own image problem, discarded in favour of lesser Sauvignon Blanc & Pinot Gris and perhaps a victim of its own oak driven, stylistic shortcomings.
A golden straw colour, the nose is vanillan with some leesy floral characters & a little honey oat bran. On the palate it is somewhat broad and generous, with oak derived richness alongside sweet vanilla & a little custard. The finish is innocuous and falls away quite quickly, leaving only wood tannins in its wake. Its arguably oak driven, but its also quite well balanced. Drinkable, but not memorable.
I think, again, the problem with this wine is that its not cool. Its made in an oak derived style that may have garnered friends five yrs ago, but just doesn't cut the mustard in the more modern, complex & minerally Chardonnay time where the Chardonnays that gain attention are increasingly cooler climate examples. 17
Jacobs Creek 'Johann' Shiraz Cabernet 2001 (South Australia) Cork $60
I can't say i am taken by the packaging on this – I liked it better when it was the old Jacobs Creek Limited Release. I like Jacobs Creek, the brand and the wines, even though the trend is to lay shit on our bigger winemakers at present (and often because they deserve it).
But back to the packaging – The trophies down the bottom of the label just don't have the same impact as when you see golden stickers all over the place (all that bling would be impressive too). Or maybe its just me – I quite like the old school stylings of the Henschke label for instance (conversely I also love the impressive, contemporary Cumulus labels). The show awards for this wine apparently run to 5 trophies and 35+ gold medals!
This wine is beautifully dark red in colour, with a real dense redness that shows no sign of bricking as yet. On the nose its densely compacted, with tarry, very ripe dark fruit & a little raisined volatility escaping, but otherwise the rest of the aromatics are bound up completely in the wine. In this way it smells like a very traditional Barossan red, yet no fruit source is stated for this wine. Its rather Grange like in fact. The palate follows suit, with an endless flow of sweetly rich black fruit overlaid with some vanillan oak and finishing with not unsubstantial tannins. There is a hint of overripeness to this, the fruit quite sweet and tarry, with just the faintest edge of meaty development, but the balance and drinkability remains high class.
All in all its actually a very traditional South Australian red – its quite heftly proportioned and undoubtedly built for the long haul, but its at no time hard to drink. On its own I think its a little too powerful, but again a quality steak and i think this would be winning over hearts and minds. Drinking very finely at present, but with another decade to live for, this is one top shelf red 18.7/20