text:
Travel agency system jobs
We form recognition among potential audience and attract the interest of investors by engaging all channels and promotion tools. you can visit [login to view URL] for more information
Hi Designgot Agency, I noticed your profile and would like to offer you my project. We can discuss any details over chat.
Agency has increasing projects, need a superstar project manager to manage client communication and team to deliver project ontime.
I need a website which represents our influencer agency .
It's agency work to link the investment people with the supplier from around the world the name is IBRAHIM OFFICE we need sample for it and the text show in the logo
Hey, I'm looking for logo designer for my digital marketing agency. name: Cardinal (it's a bird) colors: Red and Black style: semi-professional, clean, maybe with digital elements
**This Project is For Fashion Modeling and not any other thing ( Just to be Clear ) My Friend has a local fashion agency and he is trying to recruit models and photographers from around the world to work with. - Your Bid should be for 1 Shooting Day ( 6-8 Hours ) - We Hire Photographers From Your Location / City. Bid Fair.
We need to Search and Map Fashion Modeling Agency in the Philippines. WebSearch then Finding info about Prices and some other info and Next Data Entry at Excel File. We need someone local from the Philippines. - our budget is not high.
About This Job: We are a social media agency based in Los Angeles, California that focuses specifically on Instagram. Roles & Responsibilities: We need a bright individual to be our #1 star for sales (and some customer service). Must have PERFECT written English (demonstrate this in your application). Most of the sales process will be via writing
Hi Designgot Agency, I was pleased with your last work and would like to offer you my new project - recreation of two simple diagram. Please, let me know if you'd be interested in this job. We can discuss any details over chat.
Hi Designgot Agency, I noticed your profile and would like to offer you my project. We can discuss any details over chat.
High quality backlinks for a translation agency. Please price per link + content. Send the URL pls. MOST IMPORTANT: CONTENT MUST BERELEVANT...
Seeking a smart , career minded expat Canadian or american who is living in low cost Latin america . You must speak English and live in a similar time zone so Latin america is where we are looking for our lower cost online staffing help . The owner lives in Mexico winters and so do most of our staff year round . We need a strong manager with people skills and ability to multitask in a virtual env...
We will provide g...must know how to use them. Your goal must be monthly improvement of ranking and not just reaching a rank and resting on the accomplishment. You must work together with our agency to do things that create business opportunities and leads that we can convert into sales. IF you meet these requirements, please send us your proposal.
website to book hotels and flights compatible with major booking websites ( [login to view URL], skyscanner, etc) also Multi-Language ( arabic - english)
Hello, We are a Medical Recruitment Agency working in Australia, who source doctors for Locum and Ad Hoc work. We are currently looking for a receptionist / client caller with an articulate clear telephone manner and good English who will receive calls and take messages, also contact our database of clients to chase up jobs. Hours - 08:30 - 12:30
I'm a personal chef who teaching cooking class in Atlanta. I try to get my website update and get more follower.
We're an established digital marketing agency looking to extend our team. We're looking for experienced talent who has worked in B2B, industrial and manufacturing industries to assist us with on-going marketing projects to service our clients. Looking for create that creates, engagement, lead generation or call to actions. We're looking for talented
The time has come for us to launch the digital marketing agency! The name of the agency is: Xclusive Digital Marketing Agency The logo needs to have Xclusive as big and authoritative with DMA smaller on the bottom or next to it. This logo needs to show authoritative, transparent, edgy, catchy, etc. We haven't decided on the colors,
Hi, my name is Mohit Sharma. As a freelancer, I specialize in Content Writing, Editing, E-commerce, WordPress/SEO and Logo Design.I am a professional Digital Marketer and web developer and valuable member of ms2571332 . I specialize in Wordpress, not just as a CMS but as the foundation for building all types of web presences from e-commerce sites to membership sites to blogs to forums. My prefe...
We need a freelancer to do data entry. Let me know your hourly rate or monthly salary. Do not bid Asian. We perfer Americans.
Need freelance content writers for online news and article platforms. The way of writing should be professional. Also, they need to write about business feeds and recent news.
...finding some leads. I need a person with impeccable communication skills to businsss develop for me in the UK. What do I do? I own a niche Finance & Accountancy Recruitment Agency in the UK. Where I recruit CFO's, Finance Directors, Financial Controllers (qualified accountants) including Sales in risk etc I require someone who is used to speaking with
We are Catalyst Creative Society, a collective of stylists, set designers, art directiors, product stylists and photographers. We are looking for a sales rep to work as an independent contractor to target commercial clients and help the team land creative contracts.
News agency with frontend dashboard and a backend dashboard, frontend posting and posts approved by admin daily payments to authors in their wallets, payment can be withdrawn when threshold limit reaches point system and point deduction system for each post contact me at [Removed by Freelancer.com Admin]
With an aging population and a huge growth in wealth, I'd like to create a website for a private, premium nursing agency in Hong Kong. Basically, as people are getting more familiar with technology, apple's ecosystem in particular, I'd like a website that also reflects that feel. It's hard to describe on words, but the way I see it, most other agencies
looking for someone to work with me every day to make calls to my client's and to follow the progress of work, Tasks are : - Data Entry. - Calling and updating clients. - Email Responding. - Schedule Managment. - Web Search. 5 days a week 2-3 hours per day. you should have a good working environment and good English writing and talking.
l am looking for someone to create a FB Ads Agency Business psd website including a logo, web banners (Instagram and FB) and other marketing material required to promote my business. I am going to build a website myself but need images and graphics etc... to make it look like a professional FB Ads Agency Business.
North8 Agency, a US-based marketing agency is looking for a results-driven sales representative to actively seek out and engage customer prospects. You must be fluent in English. We pay per hour + 10% commission on each sale.
hello we are a marketing agency looking to hire a specialist to do the facebook advertisement and managing of many projects we have , all of this will be based on (CUSTOM AUDIENCE) ,so we are going to provide the email address that we will target ,and need managing for it
Hi guys, Need a fairly basic animation which can be used on my home page website. Only needs to be up to 30-60 seconds about the process of how we provide leads and a bit about the features which set apart our data. Will provide logo and colour schedule to chosen person.
Hi, We are need of a Freelance Designer, Creative Person Or Visualizer who can put our thoughts in Creatives. Please share your Quotes for Soc...in Creatives. Please share your Quotes for Social Media Creative Posts 30-60 Posts a month minimum. Banner and Brochures. Join us as Creative Manager on Freelance Basis. Agency or Freelancers are invited
Company is named Cobra Digital I need a logo that incorporates the cobra snake but has a modern techy vibe to it suitable for a marketing company. Want the base colour to potentially be a vibrant purple but open to seeing other colours. I want UNIQUE designs only and will really appreciate if people entering could report copied logos in the comments so I can filter them out as the logo I have a...
I need to know how to convert traffic into paid clients and how to get referrals.
I need old google adwords account which has been used for sometime With impressions as well...Google mcc acc will also do.. need someone who has inactive old google [login to view URL] approved
online Marketing agency website it hast to include all the free seo tools and it hast to work from the website custmers can pay for many services 1- seo tools 2- keywords 3- they can make a campignen from the website 4- they can track the clicks from facebook and google adwords for there campiens its not matter if is it wordpress or php , i want
Estou no processo de criação de uma agencia de marketing especializada nas redes sociais, assim procuro fotógrafos, designers e project managers que estejam dispostos a trabalhar comigo.
I am looking for a quick turn around logo for a client. The website is [login to view URL] Something simple and in tune with the website. I don't want an icon in the logo just something classic and nice. The logo should say SoWRA It is vital the word is capitalised like this
Hey, we are looking for an professional and highly skilled wordpress developer who can make anything happen! We want to build a long time relationship with you and habe tons of work. We need someone who is reliable, trustful and professional. We will exclude all copy and paste Bids, write a personal proposal with detailed informations about yourself. You should have at least 20hours time per wee...
...the following requirements: - Knowledge of native Nordic & English (B2/C1); - Writing Speed: 20 words per minute. - Project: to be disclosed - Starting date: On-Going - Travel Expenses: Paid by our client; - Accommodation: Our client offer the first 14 days of stay in Hotel, during this time will have a company looking for accommodation according
I need a logo design for a new digital agency startup. The company name is called Digital Dynamic Solutions This company will deal with marketing, social media, SEO, websites, ETC. I am open to different design if its possible to incorporate any of the above services we provide that would be awesome. Thanks
Help write a report base on the case study provided. Analysis, identify and discuss the four elements of a valid contract. Support your analysis with appropriate case law and reasons.
Catalog design as discussed.
Hi i have a escorts agency website .i wanna run it in India through ppc compaign or google adword. I am looking for expert in ppc or google adword who can work for me how much i have to spend for ppc on daily basis? or montly basis
Require the services of a good SEO professional. I am looking for someone who can drive organic traffic quickly using white and blue hat techniques. Person must have done a Escort SEO job like this before. My main focus comprises in making the website appear on the first page on Google for certain keywords and increasing my overall page rank.
I need a logo for my creative agency. Name is : Hōkō Please do the little things on top of the ". It ca be in capitals, whatever is the best I need two versions : one white with black background, one black with white background. A very nice font, elegant, trendy, and custom for me only. I need all editable files, png, pdf, etc etc Attached
Hi Niyaj, I have a new report for IW Capital. Can you use their previous logos please? Thanks.
I have a JPEG logo and I want to convert it to PDF and EPS. Exactly as the JPEG is. I will provide you with the JPEG files and the Arabic part of the logo in PDF.
Hi Designgot Agency, I noticed your profile and would like to offer you my project. We can discuss any details over chat.
looking for Digital marketing agancy to mArket my website in South Africa region.


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JK Rowling Writes Piece on U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown for Time Magazine
May 01, 2009
J.K. Rowling
Time Magazine has released their annual list of the 100 Most Influential people in the world. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has written a piece about the number two man on the list, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown. A long time friend of the Prime Minister, readers will recall J.K. Rowling was a recent guest at 10 Downing Street for a dinner held by Gordon and Sarah Brown for the spouses of the members of the G20 world economic summit that included Michelle Obama, wife of US President Barack Obama. JKR writes of the current Prime Minister:
Back in the mid-1990s, when he was new labour's brooding, intellectual
heavyweight, I was a lone parent struggling to get by. He said he was
not interested in stigmatizing the poor but in finding solutions for
their predicament. I was tired of hearing government ministers lambaste
the likes of me as irresponsible scroungers. I wanted Gordon Brown in
He went on to become one of the longest-serving Chancellors of the
Exchequer that Britain has ever seen. While our economy grew strongly,
he could have stood back and done nothing; on the contrary, he brought
in and continually drove up the minimum wage, and 600,000 children and
a million pensioners were raised out of poverty. Brown believed the
wealthy would always be able to look after themselves; it was people at
the other end of the economic scale that government ought to be helping.
When capitalism shuddered on its foundations last year, Brownite words
like responsibility and morality started issuing from the unlikeliest
politicians. Global financial regulation, something Brown had advocated
long before last September, shot to the top of the political agenda.
Now Prime Minister, Brown took a lead among European leaders in setting
a course for economic recovery. He hosted the most important meeting of
the world's major economies in years. In doing so, the British press
said, he had become "Chancellor to the world."
The son of a Presbyterian minister, with a formidable intellect and a
work ethic to shame a nest of ants, the 58-year-old Brown is frequently
dubbed "dour." I know him as affable, funny and gregarious, a great
listener, a kind and loyal friend. These are strange and turbulent
times, but issues of fairness, equality and protection of the poor have
never been more important. I still want Gordon Brown in charge.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A Salute
to Volunteers
Henry Street Settlement volunteers help out with gardening, above, and with a childrens program, below.
Settlements still lend, and need, a helping hand
By Nancy Reardon
The settlement house tradition played a crucial role in urban social reform movements at the turn of the century, but here in New York City, these centers are much more than relics of the past. They continue their missions today, still reaching out to the community with evolved programs for children, seniors, the homeless and immigrants.
Historically, settlement houses offered services to immigrant families to help integrate them into American society. Today, many of the services are updated versions of the originals: tutoring, after-school and mentoring programs and recreational activities for children and seniors.
Settlement houses throughout Lower Manhattan say they are looking for volunteers with time to spare, an interest in helping and big hearts. Many of them are in constant need of extra help even though some of them have 75 to 100 volunteers, its still not enough and some programs simply wouldnt exist without volunteers.
University Settlement on the Lower East Side needs tutors who can work at the Beacon Schools after-school program on weekday evenings and Saturday afternoons. The Beacon School, located on E. 12th St., is in most need of help because it stays open from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., said Michael Zisser, executive director of University Settlement.
A lot of the programs we have involve both professional staffers and volunteers in order to respond to a demand that goes way beyond what our funding allows us to do, he said. Volunteers become an integral part of the labor force and really expand our ability to provide the range of programs people are asking for.
University Settlement also relies on volunteers to plan, organize and run events for its senior program during weekday afternoons and evenings and to provide extra support to its preschool programs.
Zisser said the center makes a strong effort to match volunteers to programs that reflect their interests. The real challenge is to make sure we have something appropriate and useful for all volunteers, he said. We do a lot here to make volunteers part of our operations. They receive a lot of attention here and really become members of the staff.
People interested in helping at University Settlement should contact Zisser at 212-674-9120.
The Henry Street Settlement, also on the Lower East Side, dates back to 1893 when social work pioneer Lillian Wald opened its doors. We are particularly appreciative of volunteers because our founder was a volunteer, said Catherine Cullen, chief administrator for operations. We understand the power of personal sacrifice.
Henry Street has 600 volunteers working in seven areas the arts center, behavioral and health services, home care, senior services, shelter and supportive services, youth services and the workforce development center but Cullen said it still needs more.
The Abrons Art Center needs people who can serve as ushers or ticket collectors for its three theaters to help offset production costs. The center is also looking for anyone with theatrical experience or costume design skills.
The youth program is looking for volunteers to run a baseball league this summer, or organize activities around other sports. We try to make it fun for everyone, especially the volunteers, so everyone takes away something, said Cullen. We absolutely rely on volunteers to help us serve the community.
The Henry Street Settlement has four gardens, which Cullen said could not be maintained without community involvement. We cant afford to hire landscapers or put the labor into turning the soil. But for people who love to garden and live in Manhattan apartments, its such a great opportunity.
Anyone interested in joining the volunteer force at the Henry Street Settlement can fill out an application at its Web site, www.henrystreet.org.
Further Downtown, the Grand Street Settlement is looking for volunteers who can help organize activities throughout the year. The center maintains a list of interested people who are called upon when parties, fundraisers and seasonal activities take place.
The Grand Street Settlement also needs math and science tutors and volunteers for its summer day-camp program. The JUMP (Juniors Undertaking Manhattan Pleasures) program matches young professionals with children and teenagers to form mentoring relationships. Jennifer Walker, the volunteer coordinator, said this program is very popular and competitive because so many people want to get involved.
It exposes kids to different parts of the city and they get to form relationships with the volunteers, many of whom have been around for five or six years, she said. They become friends and get to serve a real mentoring role in their lives.
Even when JUMP is not in need of help, Grand Street has other opportunities for volunteers to form one-on-one relationships, said Walker. All of our volunteers really become someone that young people can rely on, talk to and really look up to, she said.
People interested in volunteer opportunities at Grand Street can contact Walker at 646-201-4207, ext. 207 or at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Greenwich House in Greenwich Village calls on volunteers of a different kind. It urges young professionals to get involved as members of an advisory board to its board of directors. The advisory board has anywhere from 20 to 40 volunteers who plan and run fundraising events and large-scale projects.
This year, the group raised $115,000 toward Greenwich Houses Childrens Safety Project, which provides free counseling to abused children and their families, said Aileen Parker, the centers volunteer coordinator. Greenwich House couldnt function without these volunteers, she said.
People in the community with special interests or talents such as crocheting, music or group reading are encouraged to volunteer to plan programs for the senior center. Recently, a student from a culinary institute ran a cooking group, said Parker.
People interested in general volunteer opportunities at Greenwich House or the advisory board can contact Parker at 212-242-4140, ext. 229.
The Grade Grabbers Tutoring program at the 14th Street Sol Goldman Y, affiliated with the Educational Alliance, needs tutors who can help neighborhood children whose parents speak limited or no English.
Our volunteers get to connect with the community on a much more personal level, said Miryam Rosenzweig, the volunteer coordinator. Its almost a privilege to be able to meet and help so many different people.
The center also runs the weekly Chabbat ORE program, which offers kosher meals every Saturday for homeless and isolated adults. Volunteers who can set up, serve and participate in the meals from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. are needed.
People interested in either program can contact Rosenzweig at 212-780-0800, ext. 231 or at email@example.com.
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text:
Culturally Sensitive Intervention to Improve Retention in HIV Care for Latino MSM (PODER)
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01457066
Recruitment Status : Completed
First Posted : October 21, 2011
Last Update Posted : May 27, 2015
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
|Condition or disease
|Behavioral: Peer Navigator Intervention
|Phase 1 Phase 2
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|118 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Parallel Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Health Services Research
|Official Title:
|Culturally Sensitive Intervention to Improve Retention in HIV Care for Latino MSM
|Study Start Date :
|December 2012
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|June 2014
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|September 2014
Experimental: Intervention
This group will receive the peer navigator intervention.
Behavioral: Peer Navigator Intervention
Peer navigators will teach HIV retention and linkage skills and knowledge using group-based as well as one-on-one, peer-based learning approaches.
No Intervention: Control
This group will receive usual care.
- Retention in care [ Time Frame: Six month follow up ]Retention in care will be assessed through the following measures: HIV medical care visits, ART use, self-reported adherence, acute care utilization, viral load, and health-related quality of life
- Intermediate outcome variables [ Time Frame: Six month follow up ]Social support, perceived social norms, retention knowledge, retention self-efficacy, outcome expectations
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria include: 1) being HIV+; 2) > 18 years old; 3) male; 4) fluent in Spanish; 5) self-identify as having Latino or Hispanic ethnicity; 6) Self-identify as gay or as ever having sex with men; 7) Must have scheduled visit with AltaMed in the prior 12 months and have a) fewer than one visit in the prior four months or b) detectable viral load
Exclusion Criteria include 1) not having a scheduled visit with AltaMed in the prior 12 months and having a) more than one visit in the prior four months or b) undetectable viral load; 2) being unable to give informed consent; 3) Lack of Spanish language skills
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT01457066
|United States, California
|Los Angeles, California, United States, 90023
|Principal Investigator:
|William E Cunningham, MD, MPH
|University of California, Los Angeles
|Responsible Party:
|William Cunningham, Prinicipal Investigator, University of California, Los Angeles
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|NCT01457066 History of Changes
|Other Study ID Numbers:
R34MH089719-01A1 ( U.S. NIH Grant/Contract )
|First Posted:
|October 21, 2011 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|May 27, 2015
|Last Verified:
|May 2015


text:
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned on Friday against too much enthusiasm over December's strong job figures and said Canadians should expect the economy to experience more "bumps" in the future.
The economy added 39,800 jobs in December, according to Statistics Canada on Friday in the third surprisingly strong report on the labor market in the past four months.
Continue Reading Below
"I always tell people not to read too much into a single monthly number even though its a very good number this month. It's very good in all dimensions actually, the underlying numbers are in essence even better," Harper told reporters following an announcement at an auto plant in Oakville, Ontario.
"We can't be surprised if we will continue to have some bumps along the road," he added, citing troubles in the U.S. and European economies.
(Reporting by Cameron French; Writing by Louise Egan)


text:
Photos: On TV, the list of serial killers grows
Photos: On TV, the list of serial killers grows
Two decades after its release, "The Silence of the Lambs" has become a defining influence on programming, most recently on Fox's "The Following."
The serial killer has become a kind of rock star figure on TV, like Dexter Morgan, who kills killers on Showtime's hugely successful "Dexter."
NBC is returning to the source with "Hannibal," in which Hugh Dancy's FBI agent turns to Mads Mikkelsen's Lecter for assistance.
The list of serial killer fantasies goes on: "Criminal Minds" has remained in Nielsen's weekly Top 15 for five of its eight seasons.
"Dark Minds," an Investigation Discovery reality series, just returned for its second season with a doozy of a "Silence of the Lambs" gimmick.
"Ripper Street" isn't about Jack the Ripper so much as those who failed to catch him, but his fame hangs over every episode.
Globe critic Matthew Gilbert thinks thought-provoking depictions of violence have a place in our broad range of programming. Above, CW's "Cult."


text: The Nissan Pathfinder was originally compact SUVs and they are now mid-size SUVs. The following wiring diagram and electrical circuit/schematics apply for 1993 Nissan Truck Pathfinder D21 Series. Here you will find detail description, explanation, illustration of the entire electrical system and wiring diagram of the vehicle which covers following components/parts/electrical function.


text:
Although some areas of the Southeast received scattered showers during early to mid-July, crops such as corn and cotton still suffered in many regions, and poor pasture conditions were reported in several states.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reported on July 17 that a wetter pattern had provided some drought relief in the southern Appalachians and the southern Atlantic region, with local rainfall amounts exceeding 5 inches in some areas. However, heavy rainfall largely bypassed the area in the western Carolinas rated as exceptionally dry — the most severe drought rating.
Elsewhere in the region, there were modest reductions in the severity of the drought.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the rain came too late for a portion of the Southeastern corn crop but aided pastures and some other summer crops.
In North Carolina, USDA rated the corn crop at 42 percent very poor to poor on July 13, an improvement from 47 percent the previous week. Another crop suffering due to the lack of rainfall was South Carolina's cotton, which was rated 33 percent very poor to poor on July 13.
Meanwhile, the portion of pastures rated very poor to poor included 59 percent in South Carolina, 35 percent in Georgia, and 31 percent in North Carolina. In addition, Southeastern stream flows and lake levels continued to reflect the effects of long-term drought.
In southern Florida, the average surface elevation of Lake Okeechobee rebounded to 10.17 feet on July 15, up from 9.27 feet on June 15 and 9.10 feet on July 15, 2007. Lake Okeechobee's record-low level of 8.82 feet occurred July 3, 2007.
Farther north, the surface elevation of northern Georgia's Lake Lanier stood at 1,055.89 feet on July 15, up just 5.1 feet from the record-low level established on Dec. 26, 2007. Normally, Lake Lanier reaches a level of just over 1,070 feet during the spring months and falls to a little below 1,064 feet during the autumn.
With drought becoming a way of life in much of the Southeast, growers are urged to take advantage of programs and methods that help to make crop irrigation more efficient. In southwest Georgia, the Georgia Soil and Water Conservation Commission offers several cost-share opportunities through its Agriculture Water Conservation Program.
The Irrigation Pond Program, explains irrigation technician David Hall, is designed to help growers utilize as much surface water as possible. "The whole idea is to utilize that surface water such as rainfall to lessen the impact on underground aquifers. That is a 75 percent cost-share up to $50,000. Most farmers know it's a large investment to build a pond," says Hall.
The program helps to offset the cost of either constructing a new pond or renovating an existing one. "These ponds catch off-season water that would be lost, and they provide a source to augment both surface and groundwater supplies," he says.
Another program, the Mobile Irrigation Lab, is available to assist producers in improving the uniformity of their irrigation systems by installing end-gun shut-off valves and more efficient emitters.
"This is a free service," says Hall. "If you have a center pivot irrigation system, we can come out and evaluate the pivot, walk over the field collecting water in a bucket, and taking all of that data and putting it into a computer program. That will tell us if your system is applying water uniformly."
As systems age, water distribution patterns may change. In many cases, irrigation is scheduled when a portion of the field is stressed by hot, dry conditions. If water is not applied uniformly, this portion of the field may need to be irrigated before the rest of the field requires water.
A Mobile Irrigation Lab audit quantifies how uniform water is applied. Results of this field test include a graph showing the uniformity of the pivot starting at the pivot point and proceeding down the system toward the end-gun, an accurate application chart from a field-verified speed and water-flow test, and a detailed report showing leaks and needed repairs.
If uniformity results are poor, cost-share assistance is offered to the producer to retrofit the nozzle package to improve water application uniformity.
Through the use of GPS technology and aerial imagery, this program also helps to identify offsite water application from an end-gun and will provide cost-share assistance to equip the systems with an end-gun shutoff device when water is thrown on a public roadway or irrigation is applied to more that 0.5 acre of non-productive land.
In conjunction with the National Peanut Research Laboratory in Dawson, Ga., the GSWCC also is offering an incentive for growers to use the Irrigator Pro computerized irrigation scheduling program, says Hall. This program allows producers to track water-use needs and then target irrigation events to match these needs for peanuts, cotton and corn.


text:
On the borderline
A bleak, flat, grim, hot, gritty and wondrous desert
El Pinacate, Mexico - This doesn't look like a national park. No signs told us how to get here. There are no restrooms, kiosks, rangers or even tourists. The ranger who used to patrol the 600-square-mile volcanic field left in 1990, and no one has bothered to replace him. Nevertheless El Pinacate is a national park, Mexico-style, designated in 1979.
To get here, we drove south out of Arizona, then angled west onto an anonymous, sooty dirt road. The soot, coughed up from ancient basalt volcanoes, has coated the ground an unexpectedly dark shade, coal black in places. Rising from this unlikely soil are brilliant green cacti, rods of red ocotillo and tiny, still, purple blossoms.
The black desert could be an apocalyptic X-ray, the spindly saguaro skeletons frozen in their supplicating poses. To the Tohono O'odham Indians, until recently called Papagos, El Pinacate is sacred. They believe saguaros are just as expressive and vulnerable as humans. In their language, the word for saguaro and human is the same.
El Pinacate lies at the heart of the Sonoran Desert. In satellite pictures, it shows as a dark stain in the middle of a pale basin. But from the ground, it feels like the center of an empty universe. The park's prime attraction - unmarked, of course - is Crater Elegante: a vast, steep hole in the ground, known as a pit crater, stretching a half-mile in diameter and plunging 800 feet deep. The result of a prehistoric, massive steam explosion, Elegante is the biggest of the dozens of craters that surround us. For all that liquid violence, the hole before us gapes perfectly symmetrical. Early Spanish explorers thought it was formed by a meteor.
The expansive view from the crater looks pretty much as it did thousands of years ago: no houses, highways, power lines or Port-o-Potties. Directly to the north are public lands, U.S.-style: a military bombing range, cow-beaten BLM allotments, a small national monument, a wildlife refuge and an Indian reservation. Four-and-a-half million acres in all. To the east are marginal Mexican farms, called ejidos, which are largely abandoned. Not far to the west and south is the Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California).
Against this strange backdrop of black lava flows and deep craters, NASA astronauts practiced their first lunar landing. Edward Abbey wrote of El Pinacate: "This is the bleakest, flattest, hottest, grittiest, grimmest, dreariest, ugliest, most useless, most senseless desert of them all." He loved it, naturally.
With fewer than five inches of rainfall a year and soil temperatures that reach 175 degrees, this part of the desert repels human habitation. For that very reason, conservationists are excited about the southern Sonoran Desert. "This is one of the most pristine areas in the world because it's so dry," says Michael Soulé, a conservation biologist from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
It was while hiking in the volcanoes of El Pinacate that Dave Foreman and several buddies hatched a plan to start a little rebellious movement called Earth First!. Now, 15 years later, Foreman has returned to the desert, bringing Soulé with him, to advocate its protection. "Where else can you stand and know you are the only person for miles in any direction?" Foreman asks, not a little wistful. "The Pinacates are a biological and spiritual wonder."
The unique soils and volcanoes of El Pinacate are just a small piece of the ecological picture. Fences in this part of the world are few and far between. Consequently, over 460 migratory animal species, including two small herds of Sonoran pronghorn, call this desert home. According to The Nature Conservancy, the Sonoran Desert is the "largest intact arid ecosystem in the world."
But what exactly does "intact" mean, and for how long? El Pinacate, the desert's volcanic jewel, suffers noticeably from neglect. Trash pocks the lower slopes of Crater Elegante. Worse, poachers, cactus thieves, cinder miners and fellers of ironwood trees - trees critical to the health of senita cacti - come and go as they please. On our way in, we passed a pickup full of charcoal, made illegally in pits nearby.
Despite these problems, Mexican conservationists, as well as their counterparts in the United States, have been lobbying hard to protect the desert, with some impressive results. The Tohono O'odham tribe, whose members live on both sides of the border, has also joined the chorus. What they all want is to keep the desert healthy by managing it as a cohesive ecosystem. The question is: Can three nations with a history of enmity come together for the sake of a desert? Will the Sonoran be able to transcend its many cultural, political and administrative lines in the sand?
A border like a knife
One of the biggest barriers to the region's coordination is, not surprisingly, the Mexico-U.S. border. Just a dozen miles north of Crater Elegante, it cuts the peaceful oval desert like a serrated knife.
The border is particularly noxious to Floyd Flores, a member of the Hia-Ced O'odham tribe, formerly Sand Papagos. Although many history books call the tribe extinct, Flores says over a thousand of his people remain. All members of the larger Tohono O'odham Nation, the Hia-Ced have dispersed across the southern desert. Some live in Mexico, some in Arizona. Because of the border and language barriers, cousins have lost touch with cousins.
Also because of the border and its politics, Flores has witnessed damage to his people's traditional homeland. Bighorn sheep wander across the border to be shot by Mexican poachers, sacred spring waters on the U.S. side are being depleted for agriculture in Mexico, and American mining companies have begun drilling on aboriginal O'odham land in Sonora, where they are freed from conducting lengthy environmental and archaeological studies (see accompanying story).
With the liberalization of trade in North America, it looked like things would only get worse.
"With all this talk of free trade, there were so many issues not being discussed," says Flores, 36, who works for the O'odham tribal government in Sells, Ariz., and is learning to be a shaman. "What about the social and environmental impacts of more people coming to the border? What about the Indian burial grounds that will be dug up with new roads? We can't just be steamrollered by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). We have to jump in the driver's seat and take advantage of its momentum."
Just over a year ago, Flores began meeting regularly with Mexicans, Americans and O'odham to talk about regional planning and preservation. From those meetings, some important links were forged.
Indians met federal land managers, Mexican scientists met scientists from the United States, unemployed fishermen from the Sea of Cortez met chamber of commerce leaders from Arizona. Every sentence at the monthly meetings was translated from Spanish to English and vice versa.
"That kind of communication is totally new," says Flores. "We had never talked before."
Assisted by two Tucson-based non-profits, the Sonoran Institute and Friends of Pronatura, the trans-border group gained credibility, calling itself the International Sonoran Desert Alliance. The U.S. Congress even appropriated $300,000 to the alliance for the creation of sister preserves on the border.
"Frankly, this is the best thing going on the border right now," says Luther Propst, director of the Sonoran Institute and a veteran of the town meeting approach to regional planning. It was Propst who facilitated the initial meetings between ranchers and environmentalists in Gunnison, Colo., that coalesced into Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's grazing advisory committee. Propst has also led community planning workshops in Jackson Hole, Wyo.; Livingston, Mont., and other towns in the greater Yellowstone area (HCN, 4/5/93).
"The alliance is doing a remarkable job," says Caroline Wilson, the founder of a small Tucson-based group called Friends of the Pinacate. "The magic is that they've gone to the right people and interested officials who are very high up. This could end up being a model for cross-cultural preservation, and it certainly may help save the Pinacate."
Surprising steps toward preservation
Already, some surprising events have occurred south of the border. Last June, Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, designated two new biosphere reserves in the Sonoran Desert: one was El Pinacate and the other the nearby Upper Gulf of California. These designations will add another, stronger layer of protection to this corner of the desert.
Salinas' move wasn't just window dressing to grease passage of NAFTA; Mexican ecologists had been studying the areas for a decade. One of those scientists is Exequiel Ezcurra, who now happens to be Mexico's counterpart to Bruce Babbitt. He researched his doctoral dissertation in El Pinacate, studying the area's many rare plants.
"He's very close to the Presidente," explains one pleased Mexican conservationist. "This is a good example of the changing tide in Mexico. These areas will finally receive some protection."
She may be right. In the Upper Gulf biosphere reserve, the government recently banned commercial fishing, a historically profitable industry. The Upper Gulf is considered one of the richest marine ecosystems in the world, but fisheries there have declined in recent decades due to the overharvesting of shrimp.
A biosphere reserve is the highest legal protection the Mexican government can offer, equal to wilderness status in the United States. The difference is that some traditional and commercial activities are allowed to continue in the reserve's "buffer" zones. "Core" zones are managed exclusively for biological health and diversity. The United Nations has worked with over 80 countries to designate approximately 325 such preserves.
With these two recent designations, the total "protected" land in the Sonoran Desert, including the adjacent public land on the U.S. side, totals 6 million acres. That is an area three times the size of Yellowstone, giving conservationists hope that the desert can, in fact, be managed cooperatively as the sum of its parts.
"Mexico has done a good job managing its other biosphere preserves," says Bill Gregg, the international affairs officer for the U.S. National Biological Survey. "Now I think it would be an excellent idea to restructure the southern Sonoran Desert as one big biosphere unit, with Mexico's core zones managed by Mexico and ours managed by us, with everyone working together."
It's an ambitious plan, but thanks to the efforts of the International Sonoran Desert Alliance, the players have come to the table. Just a year into their project, the nine volunteer directors of the alliance have specific goals: They will help compile a biological database for the region, identifying critical areas for protection; they will prepare an economic profile of the desert's towns; and they will ask nearby communities what they think about the sister parks and other "ecotourism" destinations. In addition, federal officials who attend the group's monthly meetings say they've been bolstered with a renewed sensitivity to the O'odham as they draw up management plans for El Pinacate and the Upper Gulf.
A legacy of conquest
Such cultural understandings are recent, and remain tenuous. From the perspective of the O'odham, the last 500 years have been marked by repeated conquest. First came the conquistadors, searching for cities of gold. Next came the missionaries, then the gold miners, ranchers and drug smugglers, and finally the U.S. and Mexican governments.
When Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was established by congressional decree in 1937, the remaining Indians were kicked out. As recently as 1962, the Park Service destroyed the last of the traditional native dwellings, apparently considering human history far less interesting than cacti.
Even now, the uniquely adapted skills of traditional Papagos are ignored by the mightier nations. These Indians perfected the world's most efficient agricultural fields: a full crop on one or two brief summer rains. Next door, where Mexican cattle are raised on irrigated grass, are the world's least efficient fields. A single hamburger requires an Olympic-size swimming pool's worth of water. Evaporation rates are that high.
Contrary to bureaucratic expectations, the greatest diversity of species coexists with traditional Native American settlements. When the National Park Service fenced off a desert oasis, many native birds left, too. It seems they had thrived on the trees and crops cultivated by the O'odham. The desert is full of paradox. While this year has seen enormous gains made in protecting land in Mexico, the government has concurrently opened its doors for wide-scale gold mining. But not without a fight: Oxford educated Mexican ecologists struggle against the department of mines.
Local conservationists know they are taking on an overwhelming project in attempting trans-border planning. But after centuries of isolation, hostility and domination by one group over another, they say it is time for the barriers to come down.
In fact, the isolationism that once characterized life on the border is slowly starting to change. For one thing, visitors can now purchase maps of El Pinacate from the gift shop in nearby Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. "We'd like to go side by side with Mexico and the tribe if that's in their interest," says Harold Smith, superintendent of Organ Pipe.
Is tourism the answer?
My guide to El Pinacate is Will Nelson, a white-whiskered man who looks much like the country singer of the same name. Even his jollity turns solemn in the presence of these brilliant saguaros, afire in the slanting afternoon light. At two and three centuries old, these cacti are the old-growth of the Sonoran Desert. He considers El Pinacate the Sonoran Desert's best asset.
"I believe it's possible to keep this area pristine and also benefit from it economically," says Nelson, who lives in the small town of Ajo, Ariz., and leads tour groups into the volcanic field.
Nelson, along with others from the desert's scattered towns - Ajo and Lukeville in Arizona, and Sonoyta and Puerto Penasco in Sonora - regularly attends alliance meetings. They are looking for alternatives to lost extractive industries. A Phelps Dodge open-pit mine closed in Ajo in 1985, and the shrimp industry has taken a nosedive in Puerto Penasco. What they are finding is tourism.
"These towns together form an economic corridor," says David Kidd, director of Ajo's chamber of commerce. "We need to erase the idea of border, and stop being so provincial. We're all interested in sustainable, steady-state development."
Jorge Luis Gamboa, Kidd's counterpart in Sonoyta, agrees. "Right now, the only kind of tourism event we have in Sonoyta is an off-road vehicle race, and that's destroying our best asset. We need to look at better options."
Others, however, envision a region of strict preservation, with economic activity only on the fringes. Bill Broyles is a physical education teacher from Tucson who one month walked 320 miles along the border. A sort of guru among desert rats, Broyles proposes one huge national park straddling the border. Such a plan would require the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Pentagon to yield to the National Park Service.
"What's going to provide the highest use for this land?" Broyles asks. "To me a national park is the clear answer. It's a distant goal, but now's the time to start thinking about it, before the roads and industries come."
Agencies other than the Park Service are less keen on the idea. "It's early yet to speak of a bi-national or tri-national park," says Maria Elena Barajas, the secretary of the environment for the Mexican state of Sonora. "But we do need to think of cooperative management, of sister parks, or of a large umbrella through which to manage each unit. The alliance meetings are a good start for that." Toward that end, Barajas is currently working with the Centro de Ecologia at the National University of Mexico and with the Tohono O'odham tribe in issuing new management regulations for the Sonoran biospheres. She expects them to be complete by next year.
From the rim of Crater Elegante, the Sonoran Desert looks immeasurably vast. Looking at the empty desert below, it's difficult to imagine all the phone calls, the translators, the meetings and the chance encounters that will be necessary to protect this land. The lonely, tri-national landscape seems to forbid communication, not foster it. But if Floyd Flores is any indication, there may a bright future for this desert. Last year, Flores met Bob Schumacker, manager of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, which follows the Mexican border for 56 miles. Flores and Schumacker agreed to go camping together on the refuge, and Flores made informal recommendations for preserving archaeological sites.
"We give each other a perspective that we wouldn't normally see," Flores said at a recent alliance meeting. Next to him, two Mexican ecologists huddled in a discussion of buffel grass, an exotic species that is escaping from ranches into El Pinacate.
"We have a forum now for exchanging information, research and ideas. We won't always agree, but we'll understand each other." Well, almost.
"My next project," Flores added, darting a look toward the ecologists, "is to take a crash course in Spanish."
Florence Williams is a former HCN staff reporter who free-lances from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Her story was paid for by the High Country News Research Fund.
The following sidebar articles accompany this feature story:
- There's gold, and no controls, in Mexico's hills
- Border doesn't block dirty air and water
For more information, contact the International Sonoran Desert Alliance, 6842 E. Tanque Verde Road, Tucson, AZ 85715 (602/290-0828).


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Gil Adamson
The Outlander
Gil Adamson
The Outlander
Release Date: 4/15/2008
Main description:
In 1903 a mysterious young woman flees alone across the West, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, Mary Boulton has just become a widow—and her husband's killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother's death. Responding to little more than the primitive fight for life, the widow retreats ever deeper into the wilderness—and into the wilds of her own mind—encountering an unforgettable cast of eccentrics along the way.
With the stunning prose and captivating mood of great works like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or early Cormac McCarthy, Gil Adamson's intoxicating debut novel weds a brilliant literary style to the gripping tale of one woman's desperate escape.
Review quote:
"A remarkable first novel, full of verve, beautifully written, and with all the panache of a great adventure."
Review quote:
"THE OUTLANDER deserves to be read twice, first for the plot and the complex characters which make this a page-turner of the highest order, and then a second time, slowly, to savor the marvel of Gil Adamson's writing. This novel is a true wonder."
Review quote:
"This remarkable novel opens at full gallop and never slows. Adamson has seamlessly merged a compelling narrative with poetic language to create a work that is full of beauty and heart and wonder."


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Art Guild Day Trip | Mid-Century Modern: From Charles Schulz to Richard Diebenkorn
Early Peanuts cartoons were filled with Eames chairs and abstract paintings. Mid-Century Modern at the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa celebrates this early work, including modern furniture, décor, paintings and early Peanuts drawings. Our private tour will be before the Museum opens.
From 1973 until his death, Schulz's residence was the current Sechrist home, where Schulz's study with his memento-covered desk has been preserved. A catered lunch in the Sechrist's hilltop garden will be a special treat.
At the College of Marin in Kentfield, The Intimate Diebenkorn: Works On Paper 1949 – 1992, curated by artist Chester Arnold, has 40 pieces, 38 never before publicly viewed, and offers "a rich glimpse into the artist's evolution spanning more than 40 years."
Need more info? Contact email@example.com
Download the program brochure here.
For more information about OMCA Guilds, including how to join and a list of upcoming trips, visit museumca.org/travel-guilds


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2 days ago
Peyroux and Lawrence secure futures with new clubs
Peyroux and Lawrence secure futures with new clubs.
Confirmation today that iSelect Titans centre, winger Dominique Peyroux and forward Brenton Lawrence have both secured three year deals with the Warriors and Manly NRL clubs respectively and will join their new teams for the start of the 2013 pre-season campaigns.
Both Peyroux and Lawrence debuted for the Titans during the 2011 NRL season with Peyroux playing a total of 16 games for the Gold Coast while Lawrence played a total of 17 games across the two seasons.
Peyroux and Lawrence were granted a release from the Titans for 2013 enabling them to secure their futures with their new clubs for next year through to 2015.
iSelect Titans Head Coach John Cartwright said,


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NASHVILLE, TN. – Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art will host an exhibition of contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art this spring entitled Modern Twist. The exhibition will open March 22, kicking off with special programming and events inspired by bamboo art and the Japanese culture.
With rare wall-hung installations and pieces never before seen in the United States, Modern Twist brings 38 works by 17 of the most visionary bamboo artists to Cheekwood. Two of the featured artists hold the prestigious title of Living National Treasure, an honor awarded to only six bamboo artists since 1967. Katsushiro Sōhō's Sunset Glow and Fujinuma Noboru's Spring Tide and Gentle Heart exemplify this incredible level of skill and artistic ingenuity. Other artists represented include Matsumoto Hafū, Honma Hideaki, Ueno Masao, Uematsu Chikuyū, Nagakura Ken'ichi, Tanabe Chikuunsai III, Tanabe Yōta, Tanabe Shōchiku III, Tanioka Shigeo, Tanioka Aiko, Honda Shōryū, Mimura Chikuhō, Nakatomi Hajime, Sugiura Noriyoshi, and Yonezawa Jirō.
Modern Twist celebrates the art of making bamboo baskets, a quintessential part of Japanese culture and an expression of the country's social, artistic, and spiritual landscape. While these baskets were traditionally used to hold flower arrangements, the medium has been elevated to art form status in the last century as awareness of the skill and artistry of its craftsmen has grown. As an artistic medium, bamboo is as challenging as it is abundant; mastering the art requires decades of meticulous practice learning how to harvest, split, and plait the bamboo. Fewer than 100 professional bamboo artists are working in Japan today.
"We're honored to host Modern Twist at Cheekwood this spring," said Jane MacLeod, President and CEO. "The activities we have planned in conjunction with this exhibition will enrich our visitors' experience as they encounter, appreciate, and learn about the evolution of this revered art form. Making art and nature accessible to our community is at the core of our mission, and it's a joy to deliver on that promise."
To celebrate the opening of Modern Twist, Cheekwood will host a Family Day on Saturday, March 22 from 10:00am to 2:00pm with engaging Japanese-themed activities for all ages. Master bamboo artist Ueno Masao will create a giant sculpture in the courtyard while visitors make origami crafts, watch traditional tea ceremonies, tour Cheekwood's Japanese Garden and more.
Modern Twist: Family Day Schedule:
10am - 4pm Artist Demonstration: Bamboo Weaving with Ueno Masao
10am - 2pm Drop-in origami making with the Nashville Origami Club
10am - 2pm Cultural crafts in the Frist Learning Center Studios
10am - 2pm Ikebana Flower Arranging Demonstration
11am, 12pm, 1pm Japanese Tea Ceremony Viewing
1:30pm Japanese Garden guided tour
Modern Twist: Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art is organized by the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture and International Arts and Artists. The exhibition is supported by Barbara and Jack Bovender and educational programs are supported by Bridgestone Americas Trust Fund. The exhibition will be on display at Cheekwood until May 25, 2014.
About Cheekwood
Cheekwood is a 55-acre botanical garden and art museum located on the historic Cheek estate. Our mission is to preserve Cheekwood as an historical landmark where beauty and excellence in art and horticulture stimulate the mind and nurture the spirit. Cheekwood is located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive in Nashville, 8 miles southwest of downtown Nashville. Hours: Tuesday through Sunday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Friday nights May – October, open until 10 p.m. Admission is $14 for adults, seniors $12 and children 3-17 are $7. Parking is $3 per car. For further information call 615-356-8000 or visit www.cheekwood.org.


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Dear Editor:
Shame on Theresa Castellano, First Ward Councilwoman. One would expect better of elected official when writing to respond to a critical letter.
There is no need to take the low road indicating anyone who objects to her decisions should be belittled or called names. She was so petulant that you could almost hear her stamping her foot as she wrote her letter. She should also keep in mind that one cannot be an "independent" when voting in a bloc as she has done consistently with the other three in opposition to anything Mayor Zimmer proposes. Ms. Castellano is a member of a anti-Zimmer group and should accept that fact, which negates her so-called "independence."
Thank you,
Michael Petrikat


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|Episode Description
|Thursday, Mar 14, 2013 - 6:00 AM
"Cracking Your Genetic Code"
What will it mean when most of us can afford to have the information in our DNA read, stored and available for analysis? We meet cancer patients returned to robust health and a cystic fibrosis sufferer breathing easily because scientists have been able to pinpoint and neutralize the genetic abnormalities underlying their conditions. But we also meet ethicists who are convinced we need to consider the moral dilemmas raised by this new technology. G
|More on WORLD (MT)
|No upcoming shows in database


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Posts Taggedkayak
Planning a holiday can be a momentous job. For the trip to be a success, everything needs to be planned and all the costs have to be accounted for. And if anything is forgotten, disaster and disappointment could rear their ugly head. Another big problem is overpricing – many people try to avoid paying too much for anything while planning their trips. Enter Kayak which aims to solve these problems.
Transferred over from the highly successful website, Kayak is now available on Android in both tablet and phone form. This thorough and well-made application is, in my opinion, one of the best holiday planners around.


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The Securities and Exchange Commission lacks clear policies and proper training in records management, according to a recent audit.
Jon Rymer, the interim SEC inspector general, surveyed and interviewed employees to determine whether the agency's Office of Records Management Services had thoroughly complied with President Obama's November 2011 memorandum on improving records management. The agency's policies on financial document destruction became the focus of a whistleblower controversy last year.
SEC documents include confidential treatment requests files, correspondence, investigation records, records of matters under inquiry, transcripts, working papers, consumer complaint files, congressional and chairman files, administrative proceedings files, self-regulatory files and bankruptcy files.
"The SEC does not have an active staff assistance program, and periodic agency-wide staff assistance visits were not conducted by [the records management office] or its predecessors," the audit concluded. Although the central records office "provided assistance to SEC offices and divisions to identify their records and has scheduled records for disposition, it has not conducted staff assistance visits of all 36 SEC offices and divisions. Therefore, confusion exists," the audit said, "regarding their records management responsibilities."
The audit, dated Sept. 30, also highlighted inadequate training specific to records management and faulted some offices for not responding to requests within required deadlines. The absence of a "timely review of commission records eligible for destruction" has left a 10-year backlog of documents that have not been properly destroyed," the report said. Up to 40 percent of SEC employees responding to the IG survey had not disposed of any records, as privacy policy requires.
In 2011, a whistleblower made national headlines by accusing the SEC of destroying as many as 9,000 documents related to preliminary investigations involving companies that played active roles in the 2008 financial meltdown.
The IG made 12 recommendations, including increasing the number of visits to offices by records management specialists, improved internal controls of documents as well as policy training in records retention.
SEC management agreed with all the recommendations. The IG has called for an action plan to implement them within 45 days.
(Image via Jonny McCullagh/Shutterstock.com)


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Myotis dasycneme
|Scope: Global
Language: English
|Scientific Name:
|Myotis dasycneme (Boie, 1825)
|Regional Assessments:
Common Name(s):
|Red List Category & Criteria:
|Near Threatened ver 3.1
|Year Published:
|Date Assessed:
|Piraccini, R.
|Pacifici, M. & Cassola, F.
|Hutson, A.M., Aulagnier, S. & Nagy, Z.
The species' range is wide but it is specialised to feeding above water courses and water bodies. Loss and degradation of aquatic habitats may threaten the species. There has been a rapid decline in the past in at least parts of Europe, and although this decline may now have slowed, it is nevertheless suspected to approach 30% over the last 15 years (3 generations). Consequently the species is assessed as Near Threatened (approaching A2c). Better knowledge on population trends, particularly in eastern parts of its range for which there is currently little information, might result in a downlisting to Least Concern.
|Previously published Red List assessments:
|Range Description:
|Myotis dasycneme occurs from north-west Europe (north-western France and southern Scandinavia) south to Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, and north Kazakhstan and east to the River Yenisey in central Russia, with a few records from China. Historic or subfossil records exist from Switzerland, Austria and the former Yugoslavia. It has been recorded from sea level to 1,500 m.
|Countries occurrence:
Native:Belarus; Belgium; Bulgaria; China; Czech Republic; Denmark; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Hungary; Kazakhstan; Latvia; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Moldova; Montenegro; Netherlands; Poland; Romania; Russian Federation; Serbia; Slovakia; Sweden; Ukraine
|Additional data:
|Range Map:
|Click here to open the map viewer and explore range.
|It is rarely abundant, and ranks among the rarest bat species in Europe. Summer colonies usually less than 100, but can reach 500. In winter sites, usually roost singly or small groups of up to 10, few sites with more than 200 individuals (maximum 700). Although no quantitative data on population trends are available, the species is reported as seriously declining in much of Europe.
|Current Population Trend:
|Additional data:
|Habitat and Ecology:
|This species feeds principally over open calm water, particularly canals, rivers and lakes, on small emerging and emergent insects, often taken from the water surface. It prefers water lined by open rough vegetation without trees. Most of the known summer maternity roosts are in buildings, often in large attics and church steeples, in groups of 40-600. Some tree and bat box roosts are recorded. It frequently hibernates in underground habitats ranging from natural caves to cellars and bunkers. It is a partial migrant, with winter and summer roosts often separated by more than 100 km (maximum recorded: 350 km, and it may need good habitat links between summer and winter roosts.
|Generation Length (years):
|Major Threat(s):
|Threatened by habitat change, including renovation and maintenance of buildings with roosts involving the use of chemicals for remedial timber treatment that are toxic to mammals. Few nursery roost sites are known and many of these have been lost, although numbers in hibernation sites have shown a slower decline in The Netherlands. Water pollution may also be a threat; the species already has a relatively restricted foraging habitat of broad, open flat water of canals, rivers and lakes with relatively open banks, with possibly some further seasonal (summer) restriction within utilized habitat. Such restrictions in summer may be opportunistic rather than enforced, and it may be that the requirements for wider dispersal in spring, and possibly autumn, is more of a conservation problem than concentration in summer in good foraging habitat close to the roost. The requirements during migration are not known and may be a constraint (Limpens et al. 2000, Hutson et al. 2001)
|Conservation Actions:
|Protected in all European range states, and in some other parts of its global range. In Europe it is included in Annex II of the EC Council Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora 1992 (EC Habitats Directive) requiring full protection and designation of Special Areas of Conservation to maintain it and its habitats. Other international treaties of relevance are the Agreement on the Conservation of Bats in Europe (Bonn Convention 1994), Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (the Bern Convention 1982) and Bern Convention Recommendation 36 (1992, Conservation of Underground Habitats). Most European range states are party to at least one of these treaties.
|Piraccini, R. 2016. Myotis dasycneme. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T14127A22055164. . Downloaded on 24 September 2018.
|To make use of this information, please check the <Terms of Use>.
|If you see any errors or have any questions or suggestions on what is shown on this page, please provide us with feedback so that we can correct or extend the information provided


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Welcome to the Virus Encyclopedia of Panda Security.
Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT
TCP/IP is the suite of communication protocols used for sending data over networks.
If exploited successfully, MS10-058 allows to gain unauthorized privileges on a computer or network. An example of privilege elevation would be an unprivileged user who could manage to be added to the Administrator's group. In such case, the hacker could take complete control of the system: create, modify or delete files, install programs, create new user accounts, etc.It could cause the system to stop responding until it is restarted.
MS10-058 is usually exploited by running a specially crafted program in the vulnerable computer. In order to do so, a hacker must be able to log on locally to the system.
If you have a Windows 2008/7/Vista computer, it is recommended to download and apply the security patch for this vulnerability. Click here to access the web page for downloading the patch.
Bear in mind that this security patch replaces a previous one, called MS10-029.


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Scientists are getting better all the time at collecting data, pulling vast amounts of it from expanding networks of sensors, satellite feeds, supercomputers and other devices. The trick is poring over that data and finding useful information, and even with the big data analysis tools at hand, that's not an easy task.
But researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab may have just made the job easier.
A team at the Energy Department lab has developed new techniques for analyzing huge data sets, by using an approach called "distributed merge trees" that takes better advantage of supercomputing's massively parallel architectures, according to a report from the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.
With supercomputing being applied to everything from genomics to climate research, data sets are getting more complex as well as increasingly large, often running into the petabyte range. Their complexity often puts them beyond the range of standard methods of creating a topology, which has led scientists to apply massively parallel supercomputing techniques during analysis.
But even supercomputers can run up against their limits. "The growth of serial computational power has stalled, so data analysis is becoming increasingly dependent on massively parallel machines," Gunther Weber, a computational researcher in Berkeley Lab's Visualization Group, said in the report. "To satisfy the computational demand created by complex data sets, algorithms need to effectively use these parallel computer architectures."
And that's where the distributed merge tree algorithms come in. They're capable of scanning a huge data set, tagging the values a researcher is looking for and creating a topological map of the data, the way a pocket map of the London subway cleanly depicts what is a vast labyrinth of tracks, tunnels and stations.
Distributed merge trees essentially divide and conquer the large topological data sets, separate the data sets into blocks and leverage a supercomputer's massively parallel architecture to distribute the work across its thousands of nodes, Weber said. In the process, it separates important data from the "noise," or irrelevant data, inherent in any large data set, the researchers said.
An example would be a topological map of the fuel consumption values within a flame, said Dimiti Morozov, who co-authored a paper on distributed merge trees with Weber. The algorithm would "allow scientists to quickly pick out the burning and non-burning regions from an ocean of 'noisy' data," he said.
Ultimately, distributed merge trees will let scientists get more out of the future supercomputers. "This is also an important step in making topological analysis available on massively parallel, distributed memory architectures," Weber said.
About the Author
Kevin McCaney is a former editor of Defense Systems and GCN.
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Not my area of expertise, but this sounds very interesting. The article did spur me to do some research about how to control CPU processing in Linux. I have always left the decisions about process allocation to the operating system. Not because that's the best way in all cases, but because I was ignorant. It looks like the solution will also work on no so super machines which have multiple processors as well. It would be nice if basic data structures classes included some information about distributed data structures.
I am a PhD student and i hop to help me to get a data set of noisy satellite images.
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I have always been a people watcher. In the first grade I did not play with the other kids. I stood back and watched. And I have been watching ever since. I watch what people do and imagine what they might like to do.
Life and society are such that we cannot always say and do what we like. However, in the imaginary world in which my ceramic people live, they can.
At the dawn of mankind primitive peoples fashioned clay objects. They sculpted about what they knew and wanted. Pregnant women and animals were the hot topics of the day. I think of my work much the same way. Though the topics may be different I feel a link to those old people sitting around playing with this beautifully plastic material.
Wesley Anderegg
Wesley maintains a studio in Lompoc, CA
The studio is open most Saturdays from 12-4 pm and by appointment. For more information go to www.thedoughfarm.com
Website Designed by Tony Natsoulas


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The premiere of a play offers a rare opportunity to create an entire world where nothing existed before.
Recent graduate Lindsey Brissette helped to fashion such a world as dramaturg for Deported/a dream play.
The production employs music and dance to tell a time-travelling story of friendship in the context of the Armenian genocide, and the action emerges out of the memories and dreams of the lead character.
Brissette's role gave her access to a brand-new script by award-winning playwright Joyce Van Dyke and a chance to work with a respected, professional director, Judy Braha. The play, which is being co-produced by the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, is at the Modern Theatre through April 1.
Research brings characters to life
"Most of my work was done before rehearsals started," said Brissette, who focused on directing in her Theatre studies.
As the dramaturg, she created a blog for the cast – which includes the Sayat Nova Dance Company, professional actors and University students – and the crew,
The blog presented art and videos that illustrated the music, dance, events, and atmosphere of the era, as well as stories about the Armenian genocide.
"I met with Judy Braha, and we talked a lot about her vision for the production," said Brissette. "My role was to create research and support materials to help the actors in particular have a sense of time and place."
Brissette attended the first week of rehearsals to listen and answer questions when needed.
"It was fascinating to see how the actors use the material I'd provided to bring these characters to life," she said.
Student ensemble
The ensemble is made up of six Suffolk University students, and the assistant director is a student, Arissara Chounchaisit, who also worked closely with Braha.
"The challenge with this play is the atmosphere," said Chounchaisit. "A lot of what Judy talked about involves the specific details to creating a dreamy feel, to creating the feeling of 'floating motion' the playwright asks for. We did a lot of improvisation with the ensemble to help create those smooth transitions."
Outstanding mentors
Working with theater professionals like Braha has been a tremendous learning experience for Chounchaisit.
"I knew who she was and her reputation, but it's been great to work right next to her and absorb her insight and experience."
As a Theatre major focusing on directing, Chounchaisit says she feels very lucky to have experienced "a wide-ranging mix of styles and directing approaches" in both professional and student productions.
In the past year Chounchaisit also has worked with award-winning director David Gammons on Dr. Faustus and Theatre Department Chair Marilyn Plotkins on the musical Anything Goes.
A taste of professional theater world
Plotkins said that giving undergraduate Theatre students the opportunity to work with professionals has been a very deliberate choice.
"The goal is to help students transition into the professional world," she said. "Having the Modern Theatre available makes us attractive to professional theaters and offers the students unprecedented opportunities to be exposed to and develop relationships with the professional theater community."


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The question this brings up for me is: which is the better way to develop deliberately underexposed images made using "ISO-less" or Unity Gain ISO exposure methods. I suspect the PS way is better if you're trying to simulate what you'd get if you just turned up the ISO, but that the Lightroom way is better if you want soft clipping of the high values, like you get with film. It will take some testing for me to figure this out.
One of the benefits of using "ISO-less" (with cameras where it makes sense) is that you keep the maximum DR so you have a lot of headroom for highlights. In this case I think the LR way is much better. If you do it the other way (PS or old LR) then you lose whatever you gained going "ISO-less".
I got similar results with a photographed Stouffer stepwedge with 0.3 EV steps over a range of 40 steps, but using ACR instead of LR. PV2012 rolls off the highlights rather than clipping them (within limits). The +2 EV exposure adjustment places the highlights short of clipping. ACR uses a baseline offset of +0.5 EV for this camera, so one must use a negative exposure compensation of -0.5 EV to correct for this. The ACR preview for this exposure is shown along with results obtained with Imatest on the files rendered into sRGB.
BTW: interesting potential topic of discussion in about 10 days, right Jim?
Hum...what's gonna happen in about 10 days?
For example, as you increase the Exposure control in Lr (with PV 2012) and push values closer to the high end of the display range, Lr "realizes" that highlight values (and near-highlight values) need to be gamut-mapped (compressed) to minimize unpleasant visual changes.
Eric, Charles Cramer, Brian Griffith, Lionel Kuhlmann, Rex Naden, and I are going to be doing a one-day workshop on raw processing in Menlo Park.
Thanks, Bill. It's nice when synthetic and real images produce roughly the same results, and I appreciate your doing the testing. In addition to the real vs simulated test images, you also got some differences because you fed LR raw files, while I fed it TIFFs, and, as you pointed out, it's smart enough (or too smart, depending on your point of view) to apply some corrections automagically. I didn't go into the dark parts of the DlogE (aka H&D) curve, but if I had, I think it would have dropped off much further at low EV boost than the curves you posted, probably because of real world lens flare and surface effects of the wedge.Jim
You are correct about flare. It does lift the shadows even when I mask off the surround of the wedge, as shown by non-linearity in the shadow portion of the graph. The lens was the Nikkor 60 mm f/2.8 AFS which is multicoated and has the Nano coating on selected elements as well, so should have relatively low flare. With the surround of the light table not masked off, flare is quite prominent. Imatest does have an ability to measure veiling flair, but thus far I have not implemented it in my setup.
Hi Bill,Nothing new for you, but I can confirm that in every day practice, veiling glare makes a difference. It's a major killer of dynamic range if we are not careful. For critical work, one should attempt to limit the amount of ambient light that enters the front lens element to only the image forming rays, as much as practical. An unpleasantly deep lens shade may help (I use a Lee universal hood if the situation allows). That only leaves direct light-sources in the image to do their thing, but due to the angle of incidence, they are more likely to be affected by the lens coatings.Cheers,Bart
You might want to apply [the simulations] to PV2010 as well.
As per Eric's comment, how do you handle the camera profile in your simulations?
Imatest was able to detect the same number of steps and apparently computed the DR on this basis.
However, the usual definition of DR involves the brightest highlight and deepest shadow for a given noise floor. Looking at the Imatest raw data for the patches in question, the sRGB values are shown in the table and converted to linear via the inverse sRGB function. The computed DRs are shown. As a check, I looked at the values in Rawdigger and got the same values for DR. There is a 3 stop difference in DR.


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Nathan & Heather's Authentic Kitchen
While I love the look of white kitchens, even I'm not immune to feeling a little white kitchen fatigue. That's why it was such a pleasure to see Nathan and Heather's vintage kitchen. The cabinets are all mid-century original, and in fabulous shape. It's common to paint over cabinets like these to tone down the vintage feel, but the wood fits better with the couple's style. ("Cozy vintage that evokes nostalgia and joy.")
Friends love the kitchen, the couple tells Apartment Therapy. Other details include a 1957 General Electric oven and stovetop, which was original to the apartment, and a vintage pull-down ceiling mount light fixture, found at a thrift store. Truly charming.
See the Full Tour: Nathan and Heather's Cozy Vintage Ballard Home
Related: Matt and Blair's Fresh Retro Kitchen
(Images: Julie Harmsen via Apartment Therapy)


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Burrito Bison
BeskrivningIf you like the distance game 'Homerun in Berzerk Land' you should also check the launcher game 'Burrito Bison' which is coming in a funny cartoon style!
HackAll purchases add cash. Note : you need at least $350 before you can order so make a few tries.
Mer Spel
City Siege Hack: Invincibility - Buying stuff gives you money - Using stars gives you stars. Spela nu!
Chaos Faction 2 Hack: Press "1" for Player 1 health and lives - Press "2" for Player 2 health and lives - Also infinite ammo and rage on all modes! NOTE: Use the number keys on top of your keyboard not the numpad! And don't use the hacks for player 2 on Campaign! Spela nu!
Warfare 1944 Hack: XP, Level, Resource points, Skirmish resource points, Mortar's damage, Bunker's health, Friendly fire does not decrease morale and Tanks morale hacked Spela nu!
Learn to Fly Hack: Infinite Money, Decreased Gravity, Increased Instant Speed, All Items Available. Spela nu!
Sift Heads World - The Ultimatum Hack: Unlimited health, ammo and money. Spela nu!
Crush the Castle - Players Pack Hack: All projectiles unlocked (FIXED) Spela nu!
Days 2 Die Hack: Health, Barricade Limit, Money, Can hire more than 2 mercs Spela nu!
Epic War 3 Hack: money, exp, player health, castle health, player speed, player damage Spela nu!
Weapon Game Hack: Credits,invincible black hawk and delta guy,ammo and clip size,no reload,all guns make more damage Note:I know it goes off screen but you can still play it Spela nu!


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Anne Bass — a combination of good looks, wealth and dimples to die for — and Julian Lethbridge — an abstract painter described by those who know him as "interesting" and "charming" — are the newest romance to stir up this bored and jaded city. This is not just another fling but a quite serious affair. Anne is not only happy but "radiant" and "glowing." Ain't too many of those around. So where do we go from here? Make that — so where do they go from here?
Anne and Julian were at Khalil Rizk's Lebanese dinner the other night at his beautiful, terraced Manhattan townhouse of many stories, looking as though they were trying to keep the thrills and heart throbs under control. Also looking happy whilst tucking into the hummus, lentils and chicken with barley were such as Deeda Blair, Marit Gruson, Blaine Trump, Nan and Tommy Kempner, Doda Voridis, Alex Gregory, Jerry Zipkin, Ashton Hawkins, Linda and Archibald Gillies (of the Astor Foundations and the Andy Warhol Foundation, respectively), Claudia Ruspoli, Duane and Mark Hampton, Katherine Warren, Brooke Hayward and Peter Duchin, Beth DeWoody, Tarek Kettaneh and Khalil's sister, Joumana Rizk. But all eyes were on Anne and Julian.
Princess Margaret, looking tan and rested and in fine spirits, has just left for London after spending a few days with her friend Drue Heinz at the Heinz New York townhouse, a Mongiardino gem. Princess Margaret's other good friends, Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera plus Cynthia and Graydon Carter of the Vanity Fair Carters, gave a small dinner in her honor at the Carters' big Dakota apartment, which looks like an English country house minus the dog hair.
Princess Margaret wore a royal blue organza dress designed by Carolina, but she informed the lovely fashion designer that the dress was really too short for her on arrival so she had taken one of the ruffles at the side of the frock and added to the bottom — and did Carolina mind? Carolina, in a short chocolate velvet suit of her own making, thought it was just fine. What are friends for?
This is who was at the dinner: Princess Margaret's old friends Lord Glenconner and Lady Anne Glenconner (she is the Princess's lady-in-waiting); pretty Peggy Noonan, the Reagan and Bush presidential speechwriter, who has just finished her second book, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"; Sara Giles; Dominick Dunne; Barry Diller;, Ron Perelman with Patricia Medavoy — or Patricia Medavoy with Ron Perelman; Hamilton South, and Gil Shiva. You just know Princess Margaret had a good time, because she didn't even think of going home until almost 12:30.
The wedding of the year in Caracas will take place on March 17 when Carlos Alejandro Beracasa marries Maria Fernanda Vaamonde at "La Barraca," the home of Carlos's late grandfather, now the residence of Carlos's father, Alfredo Beracasa, on Avenida Alegria Bercasa in Los Chorros. Following the wedding, the reception will also take place in the historic house. Both the bride-to-be and the groom-to-be studied in the United States and both have B.S. degrees in economics.
Carlos Beracasa is the son of Mrs. Randolph (Veronica) Hearst of New York and California, and both she and Randolph Hearst, head of the Hearst empire, will be in Caracas for the wedding and will host a dinner there for family and friends.
The bride's gown was designed by Bill Blass, Veronica Hearst's dress is by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, and the maid of honor, Carlos's sister Fabiola, will also wear something by Lagerfeld. But more of all this after the wedding.
Victor Skrebneski, the world-famous Chicago-based photographer, who makes ugly people look beautiful and beautiful people look divine, has just composed a wonderful new book of photographs, magnificent portraits of the great opera stars of today, male and female. Placido Domingo, who is, of course, in the book, calls it "perhaps the most beautiful book on opera ever created." "Bravi," a coffee-table book composed in honor of the Chicago Lyric Opera's 40th anniversary, should become a collector's item for people who love opera — even people who hate opera. They're all in there — June Anderson, Kiri Te Kanawa, Alfredo Kraus, Catherine Malfitano, Eva Marton, Samuel Ramey, James Morris, Frederica von Stade, Tatiana Troyanos and more. The Chicago Tribune says, "Skrebneski's lens beholds beauty and perfection wherever it turns." Amen and how.
The beauty Betsy Kaiser and her husband, Michael, gave a beauty of a big lunch at their beauty of a big house in Palm Beach, restored to its original grandeur by Michael Kaiser himself. And it needed restoring — to say the least. Now it's a tropical dream or something. Or so thought the guests eating paella at poolside — Chessy Patcevitch; Judy Taubman; Louise Stephaich and her mother, Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock; Noreen and Johnny Drexel, like that. The great designer James Galanos has been in Palm Beach staying with the Kaisers, who have yanked him to every lighted candle since he arrived — the Preservation Society Ball at the Flagler Museum, Barton Gubelmann's dinner at her oceanside house and Maureen and John Donnel's dinner for Irene Roosevelt Aitken. Jimmy had a fine time, though not much inspiration for his next collection. After the social whirlwind, he fled to Houston. As for Betsy and Michael, they motored to Hobe Sound to see his mommy's house and then flew off to their splendid mountainside place in St. Croix. One must avoid stagnation, must not one?
As for Lisa and Jack Anderson, they returned from their long hegira through the Far East just in time for the Moroccan-themed Preservation Society gala where Lisa wore a rare and stunning Moroccan caftan with a gold filigree belt studded with emeralds and diamonds. It was given to her by the King of Morocco, who can probably afford it.
Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Disney biggies, left sunny California for the horrors of New York weather to be here for the big gala surrounding the first preview of the Broadway musical version of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," a benefit for the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Everywhere you looked at the Palace Theater and at the party at the Macklowe Hotel, you saw such as chairmen Jean Remmel Little, Norma Dana, Jane Gammill and Kari McDowell plus such first preview peekers as Adair and Bill Beutel, Anne Cox Chambers, Evelyn and Leonard Lauder, Jo Carole Lauder, Alison Howard Blumenfeld, the president of the Society, who brought her daughter Lucy, Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Susan and Coleman Burke and a whole mess of fairytale lovers just like them.
Mike Nichols, Lauren Bacall and Cynthia O'Neal are all hosts of the "Friends Spring Drive," the highlight of which is the raffling off of a brand new 1994 very red Mercedes-Benz Cabriolet convertible on "The Late Show with David Letterman" on March 22. Benefiting from the drive is Friends In Deed — Mike Nichols is chairman of the board — an organization that gives physical and mental help to those with life-threatening illnesses. Dave himself will draw the winning ticket on the show that very night, and it's all very exciting. If you love brand new 1994 very red Mercedes-Benz Cabriolet convertibles — who doesn't? — and care for those who may not be as fortunate as you are, you can buy a raffle ticket by calling 1-800-966-LIFE — or look for orders forms in the March issues of many major magazines.


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Retirement won't alter Mike Connelly's love for all things Immaculata.
My seventh grade year, I hated basketball. Tall and awkward, I didn't know how to use my size, strength or really how to play the game at all.
At the time, Mike Connelly was the eighth grade coach at Xavier, yet both the seventh and eighth grade teams practiced together.
During one practice, Connelly decided that none of us knew how to box out. So, he stepped right in front of me and boxed me out so hard, it felt like I flew clear across the court.
He then proceeded to do it to everyone so we would understand what we were aiming for when boxing out. We all laughed and thought it was the funniest thing we had ever seen, a grown man boxing out all of us kids.
But I can tell you if there was one thing that I never forget when playing basketball, it was how to box out.
Earlier this summer, Mike Connelly retired his post as head boys' basketball coach at Immaculata and within the school system's administration. It marked the end of an era for an incredibly devoted and passionate man.
He's zealous about Immaculata High School and Xavier Elementary. He's avid about athletics and about winning. He's ardent about his student athletes and their studies.
In all of these things, he succeeded in greatly because of the time he devoted and the passion he put into everything he did.
"I turned 66 on July 8 and I figured it was time," Connelly said. "It's never easy to give up something you love, but sometimes you get to the point where it's time for someone else to take over."
Connelly started in 1980 as the Imac wrestling coach, before moving onto girls' basketball, and then from 1984-2000 he was the head boys' basketball coach. During this time he took the Raiders to sub-state finals 11 times, state seven times and placed fourth in 1999, third in 1994 and second in 1991.
He coached volleyball from 1984-1999 and took his teams to state 10 times, earning two third place trophies, a fourth and a championship in 1991.
Connelly also coached the golf team that earned a state championship in 1993. He was an assistant football coach, head wrestling coach, assistant and head track coach, head golf coach, head boys' basketball coach, head girls' basketball coach and head and assistant volleyball coach.
For over three decades, he racked up quite the résumé. But for the longtime Raiders coach, it was about a lot more than just statistics.
"Besides the relationships you build with the coaches, it's obviously the kids I'll miss the most," Connelly said. "If I start naming them, I'll leave somebody out. They were absolutely fabulous to work with. They wanted to win. They came to practice and wanted to be the best they could be."
When I was in middle school I used to pester coach with questions, asking him everything from how to shoot a free throw to why he would always wear his shiny, black shoes.
Every time, coach would patiently answer all of my questions and then continue to teach me in whatever we were doing because that's just who he is; an incredibly caring guy who coached the students to the best of their abilities in far more than just sports.
During my time at Immaculata, Connelly was the principal my freshman year, the head boys' basketball coach and the assistant volleyball coach.
He always wanted to make sure things were going well with the students in their lives and emphasized school above all else.
"And that's what I'll miss the most, that interaction with the student-athletes," Connelly said. "And at Immaculata, they are student-athletes. I think we won a lot of games, maybe not because of our athleticism, but because of our smarts."
The man always went the extra mile to find ways to help out students with schoolwork, and could always be found in good company with other teachers and coaches.
"Immaculata is an absolutely fabulous place to work," Connelly said. "I've worked with nothing but great people while there. You build relationships. I made some amazing ones with Pat Moran, Danny Schmidt, Lisa Lentz and many more."
Although Connelly's replacement, Bronson Schaake, has big shoes to fill, the Immaculata family will support the new family member while also recalling our fond memories of our good friend Mike Connelly.
He has impacted every Raider that walked through the school's halls in some way, whether it be the times spent with him out on the court, in the classroom or simply just talking about how blessed we truly are.
Luckily for Raider nation he is not completely gone, nor will he ever be, for I don't think we could get rid of him even if we tried.
"I'll volunteer every chance I get at Imac and help anyone who wants it." Connelly said. "They say I bleed green. Well, it's time to show that and continue to support this great school."