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Yup, I got my Superboy today (it shipped yesterday)! It was weird too cause some guy in a minivan delivered it.
Anyway, if DCU can be bought this easily my life as a Mattel toy collector has just improved 110%. Which means I'd be more willing to not only buy off Amazon but from Mattel.
Great to hear, Jason! BBTS is driving me nuts with their shipping delays so I might just give Amazon a try next time around.
Clearly, this is fanciful fiction on Jason's part. It can't possibly be true!
This should be the experience we hear when people order from Matty.com, not tales of woe.
The ability to walk into my LCS and pic up new DC Direct figures off the shelf like new music releases is why I have bought more DC Direct than DCUC since DCUC started.
Maybe I should go to Amazon for my JLU.
Yup, same here. Bought the entire set through Amazon, sans Cyclotron for less than $90. All are being delivered this week!
Cason, That's why I included photographic proof. I wouldn't have believed it, either! 😉
this can't be true.
The pic above looks NOTHING like the featured prototype in the banner! LOL!
kidding man, I'm just jealous. I barely saw w11, no sign of w12 and y'all already got w13!
that is cool that amazon seems to be doing what Mattel is suppose to do with the dc waves. and also at retail. for have bought some figures from amazon in the past may have to go and get negative man. and maybe see if they have the trigon wave yet. nice for amazon to pick up the slack and maybe start the end for frustrated dc collectors.
I miss your big porn stache and Carl Yastrzemski sideburns. How dare you take yourself off-model!
After reading your post I jumped onto Amazon and ordered Negative Man, Iron, and the Spectre using a couple of promo codes I had. Thank you for saving me time, gas, hassle, and frustration. Please feel free to make my life easier in any other way that you see fit!


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The Cambridge Dog Ordinance is Chapter 6.04 Animal Control Regulations of the Cambridge Municipal Code. This describes regulations on licensing dogs, leashes and restraints and areas where these are exempt, and requirements of dog owners to remove waste, etc.
The Cambridge Tree Ordinance is Chapter 8.66 Tree Protection of the Cambridge Municipal Code. This describes the ordinance that protects trees, tree replacement, regulations and enforcement.Cambridge Tree Removal Policy Tree removal occurs when trees are dead, dying, diseased, or hazardous. Public trees are protected by Massachusetts State Law Chapter 87. The removal of a healthy public tree requires an advertised public hearing. If a tree is declared by the Tree Warden to be an immediate hazard to the public, a hearing is not required. City trees are not removed without good reason. We do not remove trees because they drop leaves or acorns, because it has grown too large or shades your lawn, or because it is not conveniently located. We will remove trees that are hazardous. In the context of state law, a hazard tree poses a threat to persons and/or property. As defined by the International Society of Arboriculture, a hazard tree must meet three criteria: 1. The tree is sufficiently large enough to cause damage should it fall; 2. The tree has a target (that would be damaged should it fall); 3. The tree has a condition that would make it likely to fall. We will promptly inspect requests for removal. In many cases, a tree may be developing a condition that would ultimately make it a hazard, but not imminently. The removal of such trees requires a public hearing as prescribed by state law. In some cases, the entire tree may not be hazardous, but some maintenance work is required. We will enter that work request into our database and schedule the work within our priorities.
Cambridge citizen requests, now online & on the go! Report issues here.
Have a question?Find the answer in our extensiveFrequently Asked Questions
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text: Use mouse scroll wheel over image or pinch-to-zoom on touch devices. You can also click and drag around on image. Park it 0 0 Follow Ferrari 458 on HRE P107 Parked to Ferrari by Wheels Boutique Ferrari 458 on HRE P107 Vehicle Info: Ferrari 458 Italia Keywords Sign up to add your own keywords More from this Garage: More from this Profile: Project Wheels Boutique's Ghost Project Ford SVT Raptor on HRE TR46 Project Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 10th Anniv. on American Force Wheels


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As we come to this wonderful time in the Word of God together, I want to draw your attention back to the text of 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Although we certainly could spend much more time on the text, we'll...we'll end our brief series on verses 5 to 10 this morning. Second Corinthians 12:5 to 10 is in a larger context of this epistle where Paul is giving his apostolic credentials and we've entitled this particular three-part series, "Power in Weakness."
As we approach this text, one phrase, one expression in the text stands out and it's in verse 9, "And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you." And by way of introduction, let me just start with that word "grace" and then we'll get in to the text itself. This is a magnificent Greek word used 155 times in the New Testament. The word in the Greek is charis and it basically means a favor bestowed, it means a generous gift given.
That is its sort of normal common meaning.But in the sense of the New Testament in its redemptive sense, it means a favor bestowed and a generous given...a generous gift given by God to people who are totally undeserving and unworthy. It is God's favor, God's goodness, God's generosity to provide for those who are unworthy of that provision. It starts at salvation and it goes right on forever because it tells us in Ephesians that through the ages to come God will show the riches of His kindness in His grace toward us. grace starts in a very general sense. Theologians call it common grace with the rain falling on the just and the unjust and God giving us life and breath and families and the joys of life and the beauties of life and just life itself...that's common grace. Then grace reaches a completely and wonderful proportion when it saves us and we go from common grace to the uncommon grace of salvation and we are given salvation, forgiveness of all of our sins, all the blessings that are God's and the heavenlies are then bestowed upon us and held for our disposal. That goes on through sanctification and on through glorification. God is generous to undeserving sinners. He is generous to those who are in Christ from
the time of their salvation forever and forever.This grace is a dynamic force. It is a dynamic force by which God applies to us everything we need...to save us, to keep us, to enable us, to deliver us, to sanctify us, to glorify us. We were saved by grace, Ephesians 2 says, through faith, but it is God's grace that just initiates there and sustains all the way through all of eternity. Every benefit in life, every benefit in eternity is by God's grace. And this great redemptive aspect of grace comes only to those who know Jesus Christ. It is faith in Jesus Christ that brings us into God's uncommon grace,
into God's special saving grace and eternal grace.When we think about the Christian faith, we could sum it up in the word "grace." That's why this church is called Grace Church. No word more clearly sums up the message of our faith than grace. And no word sets us apart from all other religions of the world than grace, for all others have inherently in them some attainment of salvation through some human achievement, religious or moral, or a combination of both. But ours is a grace religion, ours is a faith that includes the concept, the overriding concept that we deserve nothing and yet God gives us everything. Because of His goodness He bestows on us eternally
favors undeserved.One of the most wonderful statements ever made about our Lord Jesus Christ was the inspired word by John the apostle in John 1:14 when John said of Jesus, "He was full of grace...He was full of grace." We shouldn't be surprised by that since He was God incarnate and God is a God of grace. If God incarnated Himself and came into the world, we would expect Him to be full of grace. Or the wondrous fact that His being full of the attribute of grace was followed by an even more thrilling reality in two verses later, John 1:16, it says of His fullness, "Have all we received and grace upon grace." God is grace, Christ was full of grace and when Christ comes into our lives we receive grace upon grace upon grace. That is to say those of us who know God through faith in Jesus Christ are the recipients of the out-pouring of God's continual blessing and favor. We accumulate grace. We accumulate it moment by moment by moment by moment all through our lives and even on into the glories of eternity. No wonder Luke, writing about the early Christians in Acts 4:33 says they were experiencing abundant grace. And Paul writing to the Romans in chapter 5 verse 2 said we stand in grace. In other words, he was saying it's as if grace is the environment in which we live, the air we breathe. We have received, according to Romans 5:17, an abundance of grace, and Ephesians 1, as I told you, and 2 talks about the riches of His grace. James adds that whatever great need we might have, God gives us a greater grace. And Peter calls it the multifaceted, many-colored,
multiplied, manifold grace of God.And from just those few Scriptures you get the idea that God doesn't skimp on it, don't you? When it comes to grace for salvation, when it comes to grace for sanctification, grace for service, grace for suffering, there's plenty of it. In all areas of life His kindness abounds, His benevolence abounds, His goodness abounds. This is contrary to the gods of the pagans who are best indifferent and must be coddled and cajoled and appeased so that they don't destroy their subjects. Our God is a God who by nature is gracious, who had incarnated Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ who was full of grace who comes to live in our lives and pour out upon us grace upon grace
upon grace upon grace.No where is it more magnificently summarized than in this very epistle, 2 Corinthians. Go back to chapter 9 for a moment and verse 8. This is the greatest statement on the sufficiency of grace made anywhere in the Scripture. Notice its comprehensiveness. Second Corinthians 9:8, "And God is able," that is He is powerful, "enough, He is capable to make all grace abound to you that always having all sufficiency in everything you may have an abundance for every good deed." The superlatives here are almost overwhelming, all grace, all sufficiency in all things always
and an abundance for all or every good deed.God has the ability to pour out enough grace so that it literally overflows you and always you will have all sufficiency for all the issues of life and an abundance of grace for every good deed. You have all the grace available you need to believe. You have all the grace you need to remove your sin and apply the righteousness of Christ to you. You have all the necessary grace to understand the Word. You have all the necessary grace granted to you to apply the Word, to overcome temptation, to triumph over habitual sin. You have all the grace necessary to endure suffering and disappointment and pain and sorrow. You have all the grace necessary to obey the Lord, all the grace required to serve Him effectively and powerfully, all the grace necessary to worship Him in truth and in spirit. No wonder verse 14 of 2 Corinthians 9 calls it the surpassing grace of God,
I love this, in you.When you became a believer, the floodgates of grace were open. Grace for everything is poured out on you and continues and will continue to do that. It's no wonder the hymn writer in looking for an adjective to describe it came up with "Amazing
Grace."Now against that background of this great sufficient grace in our text, the question is posed, "Is there sufficient grace to help us in every issue of life?" And Paul is finding out in our text, as we remember, that indeed there is. Life is filled with trouble, isn't it? Life is filled with difficulty. Life is filled with pain and sorrow and suffering. There are fears that abound in life. A lot of people made much out of the book written by Rabbi Cushner(?) called When Bad Things Happen To Good People. I'm going to write a book and the title of it is going to be Bad Things Happen To Everybody. Why sort out good people? Bad things happen to everybody because we are bad people living in a bad world. This is fallen humanity in a fallen environment. Obviously things go wrong, they go wrong all the time. God has given us the grace to save us. God has given us the grace to sanctify us. God has dispensed to us the grace that will bring us to eternal glory. God has given the grace to serve Him and proclaim His truth. The question here is, has God given us the grace to handle the sufferings of life?
That's the issue.We find Paul in this text at the low point of his life, depressed. He says he is in chapter 7, depressed, heart-sick, heart-broken, betrayed by the people he loved the most. And we pointed out the fact that the deepest pain in life comes from people and the closer we get to people and the more intimate we become with people and the more we love them and the more devoted to them we become and the more of our hearts we give them, the more potential there is for them to hurt us deeply. There's nothing as profound as being wounded in the house of your friends. Far greater than any economic pain or physical
is that pain of unrequited love and betrayal.And that's where Paul was. The Corinthian church had turned on him. They had betrayed him. They turned away from his love to them and were abusing him, following false teachers and believing lies about him. And his heart was broken and it was effecting the joy of the church and affecting the witness of the church as well. And so there was that suffering as well because he cared so deeply about the work of the church. And we find him at this point in his life where he's really at the bottom and he can't seem to do anything about it. And therein is the right place to ask the question...did he find sufficient grace for his trouble? Was God's grace sufficient in the deepest pain
of his life.Many would say today...Well, if you're really talking about deep issues, if you're talking about the deep pains of life, the depressions of life, the deep profound disappointments of life, the deep anxieties of life, you certainly don't want to give shallow answers. And I would agree with that. Some would suggest that when you get to the deep things you have to turn away from the Scripture because the Scripture is only good for the light touch, if you want the deep things to be dealt with you've got to turn to psychology, and psychiatry and therapy and counseling and even medication. You have to fill in the lack in our Christian
life with some human insight and your human wisdom.Sad to say, as bizarre as that sounds, most churches have bought into that. Most evangelical churches have bought into the idea the serious problems that Christians have are beyond the realm of the spiritual, they're beyond the realm of the power of God, they're beyond grace, they're beyond divine grace and they require human technique. Human technique, for the large part, invented and defined and basically altered over the last hundred and twenty years. Psychology is offered as the source of power in solving the deep problems, while divine grace is adequate only for the shallower ones. You have to turn to some human source for the deep things and you can turn to God for the shallow
ones.You know, it was interesting this week, I was reading in a Christian periodical that came out, an article advocating psychology as the necessary source for solving the problems of Christians. And in the article they attacked me in a...and, of course, in some periodicals being attacked is an honor because you don't want to be particularly identified with it and so they said, and it was kind of interesting the way they said it, they said, "John MacArthur has written a book called Our Sufficiency in Christ and in it he says that Christ is sufficient for all our needs and that the Word of God is sufficient for all our needs." And I forget the exact words, "And the Holy Spirit is sufficient for all our needs. And all that we ever need is available to us in Christ and through divine grace." And then their response was, "Can you believe anybody would say something like that?" They didn't even try to argue with it, they just said, "How archaic is this guy and where did he come from? Where has he been for the last 30 years?" They just quoted me without comment, like people would say...Wow, what kind of bizarre
belief is that?Pastors and Christians who give people the Bible and call them to prayer and to intimacy with God and to the resources of God's grace are even thought to be potentially dangerous and maybe even liable. That's why I was sued for clergy malpractice, a ten-year lawsuit that ran from 1980 to 1990, some of you don't know about it. I was sued for clergy malpractice because a young man had taken his life in a suicide and the family sued me and sued Grace Church, obviously all lawsuits have money as their ultimate end, but the lawsuit was based upon the fact that in ministering and preaching and speaking to this young man and giving him biblical truth to apply to the problems of his life we had exacerbated his precondition and driven him to suicide and were therefore guilty of
clergy malpractice.Well happily, by the goodness of God, and the sensibility of the court system all the way to the California State Supreme Court which ruled in our favor and finally the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of the California court. Whatever the court said isn't the issue, simply to say that there's a whole community out there who believe that if you try to solve people's deep problems with the Word of God, you're a threat to society. Now that may be the worst of it, on the other hand, the best of it might be churches that believe only shallow things can be dealt with by divine grace, deep thing need human wisdom.
How strange is that?Is the Word of God so insufficient which Word is perfect, totally transforming the whole person, according to Psalm 19? Is the wisdom from above which confounds all the wisdom of man and calls it foolishness so insufficient to call upon that foolishness to help it? Is the Lord Jesus Christ in whom we are complete, in whom we have all things that pertain to life and godliness and have become partakers of His own divine nature and possessors of all His fullness so insufficient that He can't provide what we need? Is the Holy Spirit who has filled us with might in the inner man and given us all the fullness of God so we can do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think so weak and insufficient as not to be able to help us cope? It's unthinkable. Is the package of spiritual resources we have received in salvation which enables us to do everything in which we are strengthened unto all things in Christ unable at any point in our lives? And what does human wisdom add to us? When Paul said, "Our sufficiency is from God," was that just ignorance? Was he wrong? Was that foolishness? When he said in 2 Corinthians 3:5, "Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves but our adequacy is from God who also made us adequate,"
was he wrong?Are we not adequate for every issue of life in the grace of God that is lavishly poured out on us? What a tragic delusion in the world but what an infinitely more tragic delusion in the church. And what an affront to our God and our Christ and our Holy Spirit and the Word. Truly, to borrow the words of Galatians 5:4, "We have fallen from grace." What fools people are in their troubles not to realize there is a throne of grace where we can go in time of need to find help,
Hebrews tells us.Where did Paul go in the time of his deepest depression, his greatest sorrow? Let's go back to our text. Let me read verses 7 to 10. "And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation, for this reason to keep me from exalting myself there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly therefore I will rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake,
for when I am weak then I'm strong."This is a monumental passage here. We find Paul in his deepest disappointment. Here we find Paul with a broken heart, in pain and sorrow and depression, rejected, betrayed, maligned, suffering from supernatural attacks on what was most precious to him, the church, particularly the church at Corinth. You remember the false teachers had come in. He defines all of that in verse 7 as a thorn in the flesh, literally the word "thorn" is a stake, he was impaled by this thing, it was just rammed through him, impaling him. And what was it? He defines this thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan, that's another word for a demon, an angelos of Satan, Satan's angel, a demon. A demon had moved in to some false teachers, brought the false teachers into the Corinthian church and they had created this terrible betrayal and this mutiny in Corinth. They were tearing up Paul's church. They were trying to destroy his reputation. They were maligning his character. They were assaulting his people. They were starting to destroy the effectiveness of that church, potentially its witness. And Paul saw this as a thorn in his flesh. It was something that was just ripping into him
because of his great love for the church and the people in it.I remind you in verse 7, "There was given me," and I told you it was given to him by God. And I remind you that most people want to wander through life thinking that God brings all the good times and the devil brings all the bad times and don't understand that the bad times come at the will of God just like the good times. And the bad times are by God's design and far more productive than the good times. There was given me by God this...this demon-inspired conspiracy that just ripped and tore me like a stake driven through my flesh to buffet me. The word "buffet" meaning to punch. This thing was hammering on me.
God had brought this.You know, people, you need to understand this. There is this idea in Christianity today that if you have a problem it needs an immediate solution and you've got to run somewhere and get it fixed. Counselors' offices are full of people who want quick fixes on the issues of their dilemmas...people who are suffering from being hated or rejected or abused or misrepresented or maligned or betrayed or unappreciated or whatever it might be. And all these human problems of unfulfillment and dissatisfaction that create all these problems with people are brought before the counselor in this passion to get
them all solved.But the right perspective is to understand that in the midst of life this is part of it and don't look for a quick solution. But try to discern what God is doing in the midst of it. And don't assume that the devil brought it independent of the allowances of God cause God has purposes in our suffering. And sometimes God's purposes are really amazing. It's hard to imagine in one way that God wanting to achieve something in the life of such a special man as Paul would allow one of His own beloved churches to be torn up to achieve that. It doesn't seem rational to us that God would allow this discontent and this chaos and confusion in the church at Corinth so that He could accomplish something in Paul's life.
But in fact that's exactly what happened.Now it isn't that God didn't love Paul. He loved him greatly as He loves all His own. It isn't that God was indifferent to Paul, not at all. In fact, our dear Lord Jesus Himself after He had already gone to heaven and taken a seat at the right-hand of God came back to earth to visit Paul three times, and one time took Paul to heaven to see him there. So He came down to visit him three times and took Paul to heaven once to confirm His love and to strengthen Paul for the immense amount of suffering he had to endure. He appeared to him on the Damascus road face-to-face, made him blind. And then He took him to heaven. And then He appeared to him in Acts 18, just in the moment of Paul's suffering when he was starting the church at Corinth, Acts 18. And then He appeared to him again in jail. And the Lord came to him in powerful,
unique unequalled encounters.And the Lord was personally involved in Paul's life to shape him into the man he ought to be. But it was...it was not that that did the work of shaping Paul. It wasn't the Damascus road vision and it wasn't the vision that he had when he went to heaven as noted earlier in the same chapter. It wasn't the vision in Corinth. It wasn't the vision in jail later on. What really made Paul the man he was were not those high and elevated, holy and glorious experiences of the risen Christ. What made him the man he was was suffering and pain. The Lord came to Paul to shape and mold that man into the man He wanted him to be through his suffering and his pain. God does not want you free from suffering. He does not want you free from sorrow and pain. James says count it all joy when you fall into various trials cause trials have a perfecting work. Peter says after you've suffered a while the Lord will make you perfect. God has called us to suffering. It was even Jesus Christ Himself who became obedient through His sufferings,
who was perfected though His sufferings.And that's what we learned in verses 5 to 10 here. Through the suffering and the terrible depression and sorrow of unfulfillment and broken heartedness in which Paul was literally being shaped, he learned five great lessons and that's what we're looking at. Remember lesson number one, God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition.
God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition. We saw that in verses 5 and 6. I won't go over it again, simply the fact is if somebody wants to see what you're really like and the truth must be known, then let them see you in your deepest sorrow, in your greatest pain and suffering. And therein will come out the character that is really there. So it was time for Paul to demonstrate his credentials. The Lord wanted the world to see what this man was made of, every reason then to cause him to suffer because it was in suffering that the truth would be manifest. What you are comes out in suffering. And Paul says you can look at me, in verse 6 at the end of the verse, and you can judge me and credit me with what you see in me and hear from me. That's the proof of the pudding. In the midst of the sufferings, what kind of man do you see.
Secondly, God taught him that He uses suffering to humble us, verse 7. Twice he says to keep me from exalting myself there was given me this thorn in the flesh. Paul, as he says in Colossians 2, would not take his stand on visions like so many do. He said...I did go to heaven, I did have a vision. I went to heaven, I came back from heaven but that's not helpful because all that does is puff up my pride. And so the Lord has to bring along these terrible thing in my life to humble my otherwise proud heart. God wants us meek and God wants us humble and He will even use Satan and his demons if necessary. And He will even use trouble in the beloved church if necessary to humble His servant. So when you're going through suffering, remember it is here that your spiritual condition is manifest. It is here that you can come to grips to what you really are in Christ and deal with it. And it is here that others can see the true character of your faith. Remember also that in your suffering you are humbled, you are broken. You become contrite. And when you become broken and contrite, of course you become useful to God. He gives grace,
He says, to the humble.Thirdly, Paul learned that God uses suffering to draw us to Himself. Verse 8, what did he do? He went to the Lord three times to pray. He drew into the Lord's presence, to call on the Lord to deliver him from this. And this is the right place to go. What lesser sources do men find when they can go to the living God? He faced many trials. He knew where to go. He went to God. It's the right place to go. That's the only place to go because therein could
he find the strength and wisdom necessary.That leads to the last two points which we'll make this morning. Point number four, God uses suffering to display His grace...God uses suffering to display His grace. Now we're in to verse 9. "And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you." "He has said," by the way, is in the perfect tense which means it was a set answer. He went three times and three times he got the same answer. "Paul, I hear you, I know you're asking for the thorn to be removed. I know you're asking for the messenger of Satan to be removed. I understand all of that. I'm sorry, however, I'm not going to do that, I'm just going to turn up the grace." Standing answer. God answers not by removing the pain, because the pain was productive...not by removing the trouble because the trouble was productive. It really showed the true man and it humbled him and it drew him to God. And so God says I'm not going to remove that, the process isn't over, but what I am going to do is increase the grace
so that you can endure it.He gave relief. God gave relief not by removal but by sufficient strength to persevere through the necessary humbling process. In those times is when God pours out the greater grace. In those times sometimes you find yourself with an exhilarating joy. I can't...I can't say it any better than to say it in the way that it's in Acts 16 where Paul is in stocks and his arms are stretched and his legs are stretched and the muscles are taut and locked in these stocks, and he's kept there in excruciating agony. And Paul and Silas are in that condition and you go into the jail and you hear them doing what? Singing...singing. Why are they singing? Because they have been given sufficient grace to endure it...sufficient grace. And you're never going to know that grace if you don't have the exigencies that call for it. You're never going to know that grace and you're never going to know the joy of that grace and the exhilaration of that grace until you have
to have that grace.Sure, from a human standpoint Paul says...Get that stake out of my flesh, get that agony out of my heart. It's depressing me and it's crushing me and it's breaking me. And God says...I'm not going to get it out of there, I'm going to leave it there, I'm just going to crank up the grace and in the midst of the grace you're going to give Me glory and you're going to endure and people are going
to see the greatness of your God and the strength of your faith.First Corinthians 10:13 remind you of this. "There is no trial that will ever come upon you but such is as common to man. God is faithful who will never let you be tempted above that you are able and will with the temptation make a way of escape." But the Lord will bring trials into your life that you can endure. He will give you the grace to endure them so that in the enduring you experience the great grace. What an exhilarating,
what a joyous, joyous experience that is.Deuteronomy 33:26 puts it this way. "There is none like the God of Jeshurun, or the God of Israel, who rides the heavens to help." Joshua 1:9, "Be strong and courageous, don't tremble or be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." God will always be there, He'll always be riding to your help, ready to just unload gushing grace so that you
can endure whatever it is that you're suffering.I read earlier Isaiah 42, I want to read a couple of verses out of a subsequent chapter, Isaiah 43. Listen to this. Verse 1, "I have called you by My name, you are Mine, God says. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire you will not be scorched, nor will the flames burn you for I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Savior." God doesn't promise no waters and no rivers and no fires, He just promises to be there when we're going through. And the grace is there poured out on us in abundance. In 1 Timothy 1:14 Paul says, "The grace of our Lord was more than abundant."
Wow, more than abundant.Now, folks, get this would you, please? Here is the cornerstone of Christian living. It is simply this, listen carefully. You will have trouble. In this life it is inevitable and it is useful because it produces the evidence of your true spiritual condition, humility and intimacy with God and allows God to put Himself on display in His grace. This is the cornerstone of Christian living, folks. You will have trouble. God does not promise to remove it but He does promise to pour out enough grace to endure it.
The word "sufficient" there in verse 9 is arke, it is enough. You'll have enough grace. You will have trouble, you will have difficulty, you will have temptation, you will have pain and disappointment, but God promises not to take away all that. See, that is the current temporary lie that God wants your life to be happy, and peaceful and comfortable and successful and satisfactory and prosperous and it's the devil who wants all the bad stuff. You want to know the truth? It's the devil who would like to make your life prosperous and successful and happy and tranquil because then you wouldn't need God and you wouldn't have to thank Him for anything. The prosperity message is the devil's message. God's message is a message of suffering and grace. God wants us humble and He uses suffering to humble us. God wants us intimate with Him and He uses suffering to make us intimate with Him. God wants our testimony made manifest. He wants our character on display and He uses suffering to reveal it. And the greatest testimony a Christian's ever had in history is when they're persecuted. And the persecution of the saints, the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church. God will crank up the grace in your life and He'll crank up enough grace for you to be able
to endure.The song writer put it this way, "He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater. He sendeth more strength when the labors increased." In other words, you get as much as you need and more. "To add affliction He addeth His mercy, to multiply trials is multiplied peace. When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed as the day is half done, when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, our Father's full giving has only begun. His love has no limit, His grace has no measure. His power, no boundary known unto men for out of His infinite riches in Jesus He giveth and giveth and giveth again."
God just wants to flood you with grace and there's always plenty.In His inimitable way, Charles Spurgeon was riding home one evening after a heavy day at the church, a day full of work and hardship and some disappointment. He was filling depressed. And his biographer says he thought about the verse, "My grace is sufficient for you." And in his inimitable way he immediately compared himself to a little fish in the Thames River apparently lest drinking so many pints of water in the river each day it might drink the Thames dry. And feeling insecure in that event only to have Father Thames say, "Drink away little fish, my stream is sufficient for you." The biographer says, and then he thought of a little mouse in the granaries of Joseph in Egypt, afraid it lest might also die by daily consumption of the corn it needed it feared it might exhaust the supply of all the corn in all of the silos and starve to death. And when Joseph came along and sensing the mouse said, "Cheer up, little mouse, the granaries are sufficient
for you."There again he thought of himself as a man trying to climb to the tops of the Alps. Reaching the lofty summit and dreading to take a breath lest he might exhaust all of the oxygen in the atmosphere only to hear the creator say, "Breathe away. old man, my air is enough for you.
There's enough and more than enough and plenty.And you're never going to know it, and you're never going to know the exhilaration of it and you're never going to know the thrill of it unless you can just rest in the suffering and let God pour out the grace. And you find yourself singing at the strangest places and times and you'll find a peace in your heart that knows no explanation and you find a joy that's disconnected from your circumstances because this grace is an energy that transforms. It's not in itself a static gift. Grace is an energy that chooses you. It's an energy of being flooded with blessing from God that alters your thinking...changes you,
transforms you.Yes, Paul was in his deepest suffering, but God was using it to put His grace on display. And that turns you into a worshiper, doesn't it? And God wants you to worship Him. And you couldn't fully worship Him, you wouldn't know the abandonment of joy and the abandonment of heart that Paul and Silas knew in the jail unless you had sufficient grace in the midst of dire suffering. The people who worship God most deeply are those who have been through the deepest water and have
been flooded by His grace.One last point. God uses suffering to perfect His power...God uses suffering to perfect His power. God wanted Paul not just to be a humble man, not just to be a man of prayer and intimacy with God. Paul was not only to be a man of suffering so that God could display His grace but God wanted this man to be powerful. God wanted this man to be used to change the world. God wanted him to impact individuals and families and cities and nations. And so we come back to verse 9. "Power is perfected in weakness," God said to him. When He answered that prayer He said, "My grace is sufficient," and then the second part of it was, "Power is perfected in weakness." I not only want you to go through this so I can put My grace on display, but I want you to go through this so there's nothing of you left. I want you whittled down to nothing. I want you down...I want you down to the point where you have no self-confidence, you have no trust in yourself, you have no self-esteem in the sense you believe you're capable of anything eternal. I want you broken down.And I mean He broke him.
You go back, and we'll do this next Sunday, but you go back to Romans chapter 8 and remember Paul talking about tribulation and distress, persecution and famine, nakedness, peril, sword. And then he says, you know, they'd come after me, the angels, the principalities, the things present, the things to come and the powers, the height, the depth, and nothing can separate me from the love of God...he says in Romans chapter 8. But it had all come at him and he was basically broken down. I mean, you remember part of the accusation against him in the Corinthian church was that he was weak and he was contemptible and he lacked charm and charisma and oratorical skill and all of that. And he had been pretty well hammered down to nothing. It was the suffering that crushed out his pride and crushed out his self-confidence that made
him powerful.You see, when the Christian gets to the place where he's lost all human ability to deal with his difficulty, he's got nowhere to go...nowhere to go. When you realize you're weak, when you realize you can't fix it...Paul couldn't fix it, he couldn't fix it, he had been there, he visited, he sent people, he wrote letters, he couldn't fix it. And the rumors were getting further and further spread around about him, lies about his life that he was a wicked man and he couldn't do anything about it. And there he was with nothing but God and that was enough.
He had to trust God's power.I mean he had been persecuted mercilessly. He had been battered and hammered. He had not only found sufficient grace but he had found that when he was finally crushed down to nothing, he became powerful. You see, when your human wisdom's out, when your human confidence is out, when your ingenuity is out, when your solutions to the problems are out, when you have nowhere to go and nowhere to turn but God, you are now in a position to be most effective. I'll put it this way. No one in the Kingdom of God is too weak to be powerful but many are too strong...many are too strong. First Corinthians 1:27, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong, the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen the things that are not." God loves to work through nothings and nobodies
and then He gets all the glory as He rightly deserves.Paul says, "When I came to you...I was in weakness, fear and trembling." He didn't come in thinking himself some great man with some great message and some great power in his life and parading himself around as if he were. He came in fear. He came in trembling. He came in weakness. He had had visions of Christ, he had had a trip to heaven and back, he never talked about it. He just spoke of his weaknesses. But when he was no longer able to do anything,
then God was able to do everything.You see, physical suffering, mental anguish, disappointment, unfulfillment, failure creates a pressure that produces power, it really does because it just squeezes everything out of us so that we become nothing but a clear channel through which the power of God can flow. Paul learned, he really did. He learned all his lessons. In the middle of verse 9 he says, "Most gladly," he's happy now, circumstance hasn't changed, nothing's changed circumstantially, but "Most gladly...he says...I'm happy now and I'd rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me." I'd rather be powerful than anything else and in order to be powerful I have to be weak. I just want to talk about my suffering. I don't love the abuse, I know it's satanic, I don't honor that, but I do know that God is using all of this to make me the man He wants me to be and I love His grace and I love His power and I love the humbling process and I love the intimacy with Him because I understand what
it produces.So, let me boast...he says. We're going to compare notes and see who is the real apostle, let me boast...I'll boast about my weaknesses. He goes back to that again as he has every time. He's done it several times, as we've noted, always wanting to boast about his weaknesses because it was in his weakness that the power of God was seen. Look at me...he's saying...you can't explain my life, you can't explain my effectiveness, you can't explain my ministry except for the fact that I am weak and He is strong because you know I'm not strong.
He says I just want the power of Christ.His weakness was not self-induced, it was God-given. It wasn't artificial, it wasn't a psychological game he was playing with himself. It was God-given weakness. He had been literally crushed by God so that he could be powerful. So when we have the deepest trials in life and we go through these things, you go through those times of unfulfilled relationships and broken heartedness and unsatisfied desires and we suffer from those who should love us the most, remember God is at work. The world can't fix it and probably shouldn't because God is using it to reveal your spiritual character, to humble you, to draw you to Himself, to put His grace on display and to make you powerful.
So Paul says the dominant theme of my life is suffering. Verse 10 sums it up, "Therefore...therefore...here's the summation...I'm well content with weaknesses." Well content means I'm satisfied, folks, I am satisfied. I am at peace, I'm at rest, I'm content. It's a great word...I am content. Perfect contentedness with weaknesses, insults, distresses, persecution and difficulties for Christ's sake. He's not talking about the things that come as a result of our sin and iniquity and disobedience. No. He's talking about those things that come for Christ's sake, they're undeserved sufferings and persecutions that aren't connected to our sin. He wouldn't be happy about his chastenings. He wouldn't be happy about sins. He's not saying that. He's saying I'm content with all those sufferings that come when I'm faithful to the Lord, "Because when I'm weak, then I'm strong." He wisely embraced his pain. He wisely embraced his suffering as hard as it was because it was in that weakness that Paul
died and it was when Paul died that Christ really lived.That's the way to look at life. And again I go back to the fact that this is the cornerstone of Christian living. Life is full of trouble and it's your perspective on trouble that is the bottom-line issue here. Running all over the place to have your trouble fixed isn't the answer. Being obedient to the Word of God and letting God do His perfecting work in your life, that's the answer. You embrace your suffering like Paul did. You be content with it. You be thrilled with it. You sing hymns of joy to God for it. You count it all joy because it's having a perfecting
work.A few years ago a song was written that really says it. I'll close with this. It's called "The Refiner's Fire."
Listen carefully to the words.There burns a fire with sacred heat, white hot with holy flame. And all who dare pass through its blaze will not emerge the same. Some is bronze and some is silver, some is gold and with great skill all are hammered by their sufferings on the anvil of His will. I'm learning now to trust His touch, to crave the fire's embrace. For though my past with sin was etched, His mercies did erase. Each time His purging cleanses deeper, I'm not sure that I'll survive. Yet the strength and growing weaker keeps my
hungry spirit alive.And then this great chorus...The Refiner's fire has now become my sole desire. Purged and cleansed and purified that the Lord be glorified, He is consuming my soul, refining me, making me whole.
No matter what I lose I choose the Refiner's fire.And when you can come to the point where you say that, you've reached a level of maturity and a grasp of the Christian life. No matter what I may lose, I choose the Refiner's fire. The Refiner's fire has become my sole desire because I want to become weaker so that He may
become stronger.Revealing your spiritual character, humbling you, drawing you to Himself, displaying His grace, demonstrating His power, that happens through your suffering. Embrace it and let God do His refining work.
Join me in prayer.Father, give us songs in the night, give us joy in jail and give us peace and contentment in our pain knowing that You're at work teaching us these profound lessons, revealing our spiritual condition and humbling us, drawing us to You and putting Your grace on display so that we can rejoice in its exhilarating reality and bringing us to the end of ourselves so that our total trust is in You and we therefore become powerful in our weakness. O Lord, bring us to the place where we can say with the writer of that song...no matter what I may lose, I choose the Refiner's fire, not just because of what it produces, but even the joy of going through it bathed in Your overflowing grace. And, Lord, accomplish Your good purpose in every life so that indeed as we sung earlier we might be used to bring people to the knowledge of Christ, the reason we're here to accomplish that ministry. Thank You for this morning together and we commit it to You and to the lives of all of us we ask that You would work Your work for Your glory in Christ's name. Amen.
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YORK, PA – York College is proud to announce that men's soccer athlete Justin Kaiser (Bradenburg, KY / Menchville VA.) has been named the Spartan Athlete of the Week for the week ending October 6.
Kaiser helped the Spartans take a come from behind, double overtime thriller 2-1 victory over the visiting Christopher Newport team on the big Fall Fest Day.
The Spartans had to battle back from a first half 1-0 deficit all the way into the second overtime. Justin entered the game, not at his usual defender position, as fresh legs for the Spartans. The team pushed the ball quickly down the field and Christopher Gillespie (Chapel Hill, N.C. / Chapel Hill) collected the loose ball to send over to Kaiser. Justin made the most of the opportunity and fired a tough low ball to the far side of the goal to give the Spartans the game-winning goal. Kaiser made his first collegiate goal a memorable game winner.


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Tom Zimmerman Retires from Campus Police, March 17, 1999
SOCORRO, N.M., March 17, 1999 -- Tom Zimmerman, longtime director of Campus Police at New Mexico Tech, will be handing over the reins of office come April 30.
Zimmerman, who started at Tech on Jan. 1, 1975, is retiring after 24 years and four months. He came to New Mexico Tech during a very different era and has seen -- and presided over -- some important changes.
"I was asked to be head of campus security by (then Tech president) Stirling Colgate," he recalls. "I was approaching the end of the two terms I served as Socorro County Sheriff, and in those days, two terms was the limit." So Zimmerman, who is a graduate of the national FBI Academy, decided to give campus law enforcement a try.
"When I came, the department was not a police department; it was a security department," Zimmerman recalls. "The six security officers did things like unlock doors for people. We had no vehicles or radios. My first office was a broom closet in the basement of the Speare Building, which was the library then. When we were needed, we were summoned by a light on top of Workman Center."
Zimmerman set about making changes. "Whenever I got a chance to hire someone," he says, "I would hire a certified police officer. When I had several on board, I requested the administration to ask the Board of Regents to approve making us an official police department. That happened, and the state authorized us as an official police department in 1981."
Zimmerman stated that there are several differences between a security department and a police force. "Certified police officers have to undergo a 16-week training program. They can write citations, make arrests, and investigate charges."
Zimmerman is pleased at the professionalism of today's Tech campus police force. "We have 13 sworn police officers. We have certified dispatchers and 24-hour communications. On major crimes, such as felonies, we have about an 85 percent arrest and resolution rate. We patrol the EMRTC area as well as the main campus. In addition to police and security functions, we have federal regulations we have to comply with, such as dealing with storage of classified materials and papers.
"The potential for danger is there every time you check a building," Zimmerman continues. "That's why our officers are armed. We have an in-house certified instructor in firearms, and all our officers have up-to-date training. We always hope they never have to use firearms, but since they carry them, they must be trained in the proper use of them."
Although the Tech campus tends to be peaceful, dangerous incidents can occur. Tom recalls an occasion on which a student broke into the Golf Pro Shop. "I happened to see him coming out of the window, and I caught him in my arms. He escaped from me, and I chased him across the golf course. I tried to grab his foot, but I slipped and broke my shoulder. We were later able to arrest the individual in his dorm room. While he was in jail here in Socorro, we found out that he was wanted in California for killing a police officer there. He was sent back there, and as far as I know, he's still in prison."
But most incidents end on a more positive note than that. "I like university law enforcement," says Tom, "because of the element of society you deal with. You have the potential to turn someone who might be a bit of a hell-raiser around so they're a productive member of society. Tech students really want the education they can get here, and they will change their ways in order to stay in school and finish their degree. They can turn out to be a positive person in their community."
"I have liked dealing with university law," says Zimmerman. "The administration has been very pro-law-enforcement; their support has made my job easier to perform. Tech is a part of my life and a good part of it. This is like my extended family."
Zimmerman's plans for retirement include raising cattle, fishing, and perhaps some travel. "I'm a cowboy at heart," he says. "I have a little farm, and my kids are in the area, so I plan to stay. My wife, Sally Ann, and I may do some traveling in our RV. I know people from all over the nation, because I have belonged to the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) for many years. I've visited virtually every state in the nation, and there are a lot of them I want to go back to."
Zimmerman concludes, "People ask me what I'm going to do in my retirement, and I tell them that my biggest problem is that I'm going to miss my weekends!"


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Hey guys and girls,
I've been dating a girl for almost half a year now, we're living together and things seem to be going well. However, I sometimes get that 'feeling' that she's not faithful to me. She's great to be with, we have a great time together, and she's always first to initiate when it comes to sex, so there's no signs from any of those areas. But, for some reason, there's small changes in her behavior that make me wonder...
For example: she always comes home at 4:30pm, never changes. but, one night last week she came home at 5pm. now, i don't think this is a big deal, but after about an hour of conversation she mentions that she's blazed out of her mind. this is then followed by a happy recounting of how her co-workers, her boss and she sat out getting smoked out, and how she spent the entire day with some dude who was "on the phone with his gf all day" (aliby?) getting baked the entire workday while driving around "delivering and selling art" (she works in a gallery). then, her first question is am I mad that she was late? when i say no, she asks are you mad that i got high? which doesn't make any sense, since we've smoked out stupid amounts of time. what's the weird part, is that later on that night, when i'm falling asleep i roll over on top of her arm, and after she grunted i ask if she's ok. to which she replies, yes i'm just so glad i didn't have to go to work today. after i ask, i thought you were working all day, she says no, i was at work all day, it's just not the same thing.
today she left for a business trip for the rest of the week, travelling with sales people who she claims are "all couples" but that's w/e i'm not gonna go investigate this. still, the drive takes 5 hours, they leave at 2 and she doesn't call until 11pm; yet the same girl freaks out when i don't call her for an hour while i'm having a drink at the bar after work with a work-friend.
am i being irrational, or is there something not right about this?


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Wave of jumbo squids hits California
Fisherman in California are pulling up huge numbers of Jumbo Squids. The unexplained boom in the species began a week ago and has left fisherman with more squid than they can eat.
A scene straight out of a movie is taking place on boats around Southern California: Giant squids are spewing water and ink at passengers.
And people are loving it.
Fishermen say that hundreds of the oversized squids - weighing up to 25 pounds - are turning up in numbers that they haven't see in years.
"It's like Super Soaker time; people get squirted in the face," Mike Hansen, a captain at Dana Wharf Sportfishing, said. "It's really exciting for people, and you know they love to eat the stuff too."
Passengers on California-based Dana Wharf Sportfishing's boats recently caught more than 1800 jumbo squids on a single night. Normally, the water is so empty in the winter that the company doesn't even send out nighttime fishing boats.
Fishers are pulling up so much squid, they can't eat it all. Most of the squid that is caught ends up being thrown back into the ocean because people can only take a couple of the species back home because the others are too large, according to Hansen.
Although jumbo squid, also known as Humboldt squid, are the same type found in calamari, Hansen says the change in availability probably won't affect the calamari market.
Commercial squid boats fish for smaller "market squid" instead of dealing with the heavy jumbo squid, according to Hansen.
"You get a couple hundred tons of squid going one way and it'll pull it (the boat) right under the water," he said.
Squid booms every few years are not uncommon for the West Coast, but scientists are still uncertain as to the exact patterns.
Selina Heppell, assistant professor in fisheries and wildlife at Oregon State University, performed research when the species invaded the Oregon coast in 2007. She was particularly interested when they suddenly vanished and then reappeared again.
"They seem to be coming back now, but we expected they would," Heppell said. "There is a periodic ebb and flow of the species."
Bill Gilly, professor of biology at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, has been studying the squid for twelve years.
He believes the El Nino between 2009 and 2010 sent away the squid.
"What's going on now is they're returning to coastal regions since 2010," Gilly said.
Earlier this year, Gilly spotted the species up in Monterrey, Calif. He believes they are now moving down the coast toward Mexico to spawn in warmer waters.


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As children of the Great Depression, Jerome and Evelyn Ackerman had modest dreams: They wanted to own their home and decorate it with beautiful things. In 1952, the couple left Detroit to start a mom-and-pop arts studio in Culver City, and in the decades that followed they produced hundreds of handmade ceramics, tile mosaics, woodcarvings and rugs -- affordable home furnishings that, starting Sunday, will be elevated to museum pieces.
The Mingei International Museum in San Diego's Balboa Park is opening the first major retrospective for Jerome, now 89, and Evelyn, 84. "Masters of Mid-Century California Modernism — Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman" offers more than 200 pieces from a portfolio distinguished by stylishly cheerful motifs, cute but never cloying expressions of postwar optimism. To this day, the work continues to resonate among designers and collectors such as Jonathan Adler. "I first stumbled upon an Evelyn Ackerman tapestry 12 years ago when I was digging through a thrift store in Seattle, and an addiction was born," Adler says. "Their textiles are like Charles and Ray Eames' designs and Bonnie Cashin's fashions -- optimistic, gorgeous, influenced by a sense of freedom that can only be found in California."
Jerome first experienced the liberating atmosphere of Los Angeles while decompressing from his Air Force service after World War II. "I was a beach bum and I liked it," he says.
He returned to Detroit and met and married Evelyn. As cash-strapped art students who made their own furniture and draperies, they found inspiration in the work of the Santa Monica-based Eameses. On a 1949 vacation in Southern California, the couple met acclaimed ceramists Beatrice Wood and Otto and Gertrud Natzler.
"We came away from it saying there were interesting things happening in Los Angeles design," Jerome says. "We thought, 'Why can't we do that, or at least try?'"
They moved west and set up the ceramic studio Jenev, an abbreviation of their first names. To make ends meet, she worked for $1 an hour answering fan mail for comedian Red Skelton, and they both designed and decorated novelty kitchen items for Cal Pacific Imports. "A lot of measuring spoon sets and spice racks," Jerome recalls, laughing.
It took a year for Jerome to develop the forms, molds and glazes for his pottery, which sold for $4 to $20 at modernist stores such as Jules Seltzer. The sleek ceramics caught the eye of East Coast furniture designer Paul McCobb, who sold Jenev pieces in his showrooms.
By 1956, Jenev was successful enough that the Ackermans could buy an $18,000 three-bedroom tract house in Culver City, where they still live. There, Evelyn began to blossom as an artist. Jerome remembers leaving the couple's showroom and coming home to stacks of drawings.
"She'd say, 'These are for wood, those are for weavings, and the others are for mosaics,' " he says. "It astonished me that this fine artist who never did anything commercial could come up with these things."
By the end of the 1950s, working under the name Era Industries, Evelyn had created designs for wooden bas-relief plaques, aluminum wall sculptures and decorative textiles. With her at the drawing board and Jerome taking charge of production and marketing, the Ackermans exemplified the Bauhaus principle of bringing good design to the masses. Production was limited, but prices were affordable. Evelyn was adept at what her husband calls "warm and whimsical" designs featuring folk art-inspired flora, fauna, children and mythical figures.
"They embodied the can-do spirit of California," says Bill Stern, founder of the Museum of California Design. The modern work "brought affordable midcentury design into homes across the country."
Adds textiles expert Dale Gluckman, who mounted the Mingei show: "Their designs were in the right place at the right time for the booming housing market."
The couple's colorful, textured mosaics and textiles relieved the starkness and the glare of light-filled modernist homes, says Gluckman's co-curator, Jo Lauria.
"I was amazed at how fluidly they moved from the language of geometric and minimal abstraction -- a modernist aesthetic -- to a vernacular vocabulary that bordered on folk art," she says. Stern goes so far as to say that Evelyn's tile table tops, panels and architectural friezes "helped reinvigorate the art of the mosaic, a medium that dates back at least to Roman times but which hadn't yet caught up to the 20th century." Mosaics remain the most sought-after Ackerman works at Los Angeles Modern Auctions, says founder Peter Loughrey, who in June sold a 1950s panel for $3,120, doubling the low end of its pre-auction estimate.
Although their work frequently landed on the cover of the Los Angeles Times Home magazine and they exhibited in the California Design shows that the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon) ran from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the Ackermans never achieved the stature of many contemporaries, something that Loughrey attributes to their prolific output. "You just don't see the same designs over and over again," he says, "which makes it harder to be iconic."
Indeed, for examples of that kind of iconic modernism, one need only look to the Ackermans' home, furnished with a pair of Eames plywood chairs, a lounge chair and sewing table by Hans Wegner and an Alvar Aalto stool. But true to form, the place is also home to antique toys, Mexican handicrafts, African masks and stacks of art books.
"I have one rule for decorating," Evelyn says. "Do whatever pleases you."
Since completing her last major project -- a 1960s series of Bible story cloisonné enamels now in the collection of the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. -- she has followed her own advice. Evelyn has filled her home with antique dolls and dollhouses and written five authoritative books on dolls, including two volumes that feature her own doll costume patterns.
Though the couple closed the Era Industries showroom on Beverly Boulevard more than 20 years ago, Jerome still fields calls from collectors and consults with architects looking for interesting products. He has returned to the potter's wheel, creating ceramics and limited reissues of his Jenev designs that are sold at the Del Mano and Freehand galleries in L.A.
"I've been much busier since we retired," he jokes.
Combing their archives for the Mingei show has given the couple, married 60 years, an opportunity to re-examine their legacy.
"It reaffirms the faith that you had in what you were doing," Jerome says, adding that it's gratifying to see their work strike a chord with longtime fans as well as with new generations.
"The work was meant to be appealing, but it was never frivolous," Evelyn says. "One of our goals was to be affordable. Not having a lot of money was the position we were in most of our young life, so it is what we strove to do for others."
As children of the Great Depression, Jerome and Evelyn Ackerman had modest dreams: They wanted to own their home and decorate it with beautiful things. In 1952, the couple left Detroit to start a mom-and-pop arts studio in Culver City, and in the decades that followed they produced hundreds of handmade ceramics, tile mosaics, woodcarvings and rugs -- affordable home furnishings that, starting Sunday, will be elevated to museum pieces.


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(Reuters) - As fans readied to see how chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White would meet his end in the tense finale of "Breaking Bad" on Sunday night, one Albuquerque donut maker had a rush of customers on her hands.
"It was insane," said Carrie Mettling, the co-owner of the city's Rebel Donut chain, which sold $10,000 worth of its blue frosted and crystal rock candy-slathered "blue sky" donuts in the hours before showtime. "Our sales were probably quadruple what they are on a normal Sunday."
The local business is among many in the wake of the runaway success of AMC's "Breaking Bad" - a show both set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico - whose profit margins have been so good lately they are almost criminal.
The chain, whose donuts are named for Walt's top-notch "blue sky" methamphetamine, is among several Albuquerque businesses that have felt a rush to their bottom line with the success of the Emmy-winning show
"Breaking Bad" has enjoyed a surge in viewers in the past year, as an average of 5.2 million people tuned into the last half of the fifth and final season to see cancer-stricken Walt complete his metamorphosis from a mild-mannered high school teacher to the murderous drug kingpin known as Heisenberg.
Love for the gritty drama triggered a tourism surge in Albuquerque and has helped several niche businesses.
Bakers, candy makers, tour operators and even a spa that produces bath salts in the city have done a roaring trade in products they have cooked up to meet the growing demand from an influx of "Breaking Bad" fans from across the United States, Europe and Asia.
"Business now is crazy good," said Albuquerque spa products firm owner Keith West-Harrison, who began manufacturing Bathing Bad bath salts with his partner to pay for the renovation of the vacant building they bought for their skin products business.
"In order to pay for this renovation, we asked ourselves 'What would Walter White do?' We decided meth probably wasn't good for us, because we're not chemists, we know that it blows things up and smells bad ... so we decided bath salts were better," he told Reuters.
After a tentative start turning out bath salt batches in a gallon bucket, the partners now use a cement mixer to churn out batches of 50 pounds at a time, which sell well across the United States and in 19 countries, in show-themed plastic baggies.
Also cashing in on "Breaking Bad" is Debbie Ball, the owner of the Candy Lady store in old town Albuquerque. Ball made rock candy that was used as a stand-in for Walt's meth during two seasons of the show, and which she now sells to tourists in "dollar dime bags."
"We like to have fun with it; it's such a bad subject," said Ball, who reckons she has sold 35,000 to 40,000 bags in just over a year. She also runs a limousine tour taking fans to locations from the program, including White's home, although she said the owner has now tired of the procession of visitors beating a path to the front door
Sunday's final episode was watched by 10.3 million viewers as Walt, played by Bryan Cranston, tied up the loose ends of his crumbling drug empire and died from a bullet wound just as the police finally caught up with him. But while Walt's death spelled the end of the hit show, local business owners are optimistic the commercial high will last.
"We still watch 'The Sopranos' reruns, we still watch 'Sex and the City.' Those have been going on for years," said West-Harrison, who now has three generations of his family churning out bath salts upstairs at the business. "So I'm thinking it's going to have a staying power."
Mettling first baked the blue donuts as a gift for Aaron Paul, the actor who played Walt's drug partner Jesse Pinkman, at the show's wrap party last year. She now sells them at an Albuquerque building used as a location for the Drug Enforcement Administration office in the show, and is also upbeat despite the show's conclusion.
"Albuquerque fell in love with that show, and I will not have a problem keeping that donut on the menu," she told Reuters. "It's got some longevity."
Ball agrees, pointing out that the final series has not yet aired in all global markets and that a spinoff series is in the works.
"The business is not going to go away just because the show has ended. There's too many fans, and it's not going stop any time soon. I'm going to continue to deal."
Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Cynthia Osterman


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Official vote canvas reaffirms local election results
The preliminary results of the Summit County Council election are now official. After reviewing 765 provisional ballots and 2,530 absentee ballots; Roger Armstrong, Claudia McMullin and Kim Carson can begin preparing for the next four years.
As of election night, the margin between the winning and losing candidates vying for seats A and B on the five-member council was smaller than the number of outstanding ballots, leaving open the possibility that the outcome could change.
However, after review by the county assessor, treasurer and the two council members, who were not on the ballot this year, both Armstrong's and McMullin's leads grew over their opponents Max Greenhalgh and Sue Pollard, respectively.
The official vote tally is:
Seat A:
Seat B:
Seat C:
According to the county clerk's report, which was reviewed and accepted on Monday, of the 765 provisional ballots 667 qualified but 98 did not. Of those that did not, 76 were cast by new residents who had neglected to register to vote. Of the 2,530 absentee ballots, 2,053 were sent in and only 18 were disqualified, the majority of which were postmarked after the deadline.
Christian Center Boutique gets a makeover
The Christian Center of Park City had a makeover last year, and its boutique felt it was time for one, too.


text: Wortschatz Deutsch lernen online Posted on April 19, 2019 by phb quizlet.com/33126179/flashcards Wortschatz B1 Flashcards Yours phb Teilen mit:TwitterFacebookWhatsAppTumblrSkypeLinkedInPinterestE-MailRedditPocketTelegramDruckenGefällt mir:Gefällt mir Lade … Published by phb Ex - teacher of English and German, retired since AUG 2015. Teacher at the DHPS Windhoek, Namibia, from 1988-2004. Living in North Germany near LG and at the Gold Coast in QLD Australia. German Language Adviser of the Goethe-Institut Sydney from 1998 - 2005, based in Brisbane, Education QUEENSLAND. Coordinator & Director at Fritz Reuter Gymnasium, Dannenberg (Elbe) from 2005 - 2012. Active blogger and active citizen plus digital nomad - from time to time ... Zeige alle Beiträge von phb


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The ebook world is changing fast.
A year ago, we had the Kindle and the Sony Reader as the two main platforms for ebooks. Now we've got Kindle, Sony, Nook, and iPad. Apple sold 300k iPads on its launch day. And this technology hasn't come close to reaching a saturation point with the general population.
New ereaders are going to continue to come out. They'll be better, less expensive, and more widely available. And people will adopt them.
Our society is moving toward a digital future, and the concept of ownership in regard to media is changing rapidly. We don't need to own a tangible object, because we recognize that the content, not the object, is all we care about.
We've actually known this for hundreds of years. The endurance of libraries proves a lot of people are happy to experience media without owning it.
Now we have Netflix and On Demand, and we can watch movies with the press of a button. We have iTunes, and can access the store directly using our mp3 players. We're no longer slaves to the television schedule. Indeed, TV schedules, and TV seasons for that matter, are things of the past. We Tivo, we Hula, we YouTube, we Roku.
And if we don't want to pay, we pirate. Millions of people share billions of files.
If we want it, we can get it instantly, without leaving the comfort of home.
Of course ebooks are going to continue to gobble up greater and greater shares of the publishing market. It's inevitable. Media has become fast food.
So why don't publishers act accordingly?
From July through December 2009, I sold 4840 Kindle ebooks of my Jack Daniels series, earning me $9130.
If I had the rights back from my publisher and priced them at $2.99 each, and they sold an average of 800 copies per month (which is what the average of my five top self-pubbed Kindle titles sell), then I would make $58,752 in a six month period.
By my count, I'm going to lose almost $100,000 per year. Probably more.
You may have noticed that ebook prices are going up. That's because publishers have switched to the agency model, allowing them to control the price. Though no publisher has come out and said it, the reason they're raising the prices of ebooks is twofold.
First, they want to stave off the inevitable dominance of ebooks, and make as much money as they can on print while print is still around.
Second, they believe they need high-priced ebooks to cover the cost of doing business, and that customers will adapt to higher prices.
They're wrong, on all counts.
I sold about 8000 paperbacks that same period. Which is not a lot. Keeping my ebook prices high didn't result in people buying more print books. And as bookstores stock fewer of my titles, those print numbers will go down.
Compare that to roughly 20,000 ebooks I sold by self-pubbing on Kindle during the same period.
On one end, we have a large NY publisher, with distribution muscle to get books into thousands of stores. They're a giant machine that employs a lot of professionals to acquire, edit, print, and sell books.
On the other end, we have a single guy uploading his self-pubbed ebooks to Amazon.
You'd think the NY publisher would cream the single guy in terms of sales. But they didn't. Not only did I double the sales of my publisher, but I made more money per book. Hell, I sold more ebooks than they sold print books and ebooks combined.
Don't you think there's something amiss in the universe when a midlist author can make more money on his own than he can with a big publisher?
Publishers talk about devaluing an ebook by pricing it low. I've said before that the value of a book is what it earns, not what the cover price is. Low-priced ebooks--which are what customers want--earn more than high priced ebooks. My own sales hammer this very simple point home.
People don't care about ownership. They care about price.
People want their media instantly. They don't want to go out and physically shop for it (or order it and wait for the mail to come.)
People want their media without restrictions.
In simpler terms, people want ebooks fast, easy, and cheap, and I can fulfill their needs better than a large company can.
I don't have overhead. I don't have meetings. I can make a decision without answering to my boss. I can turn on a dime. I can publish a book a few days after I write it.
In short, this market is perfect for a one-person operation.
I'd certainly entertain an offer from a large publisher, if they wanted to buy rights for one of my books. But I'm not going to go out looking for the opportunity. Especially since I'll make more money in the long run if I keep my rights.
I could even make more money in the short run.
According to my recent royalty statement, my horror novel AFRAID sold about 54,000 copies in all formats, earning me around $27k.
If I released a Jack Kilborn ebook on my own, and it sold like my current ebooks are selling, I'd make $20k in a year.
It's doubtful I'll make $17K next year on AFRAID, since it's no longer getting coop on bookstore shelves. But I'm sure I'd make $20k, or more, on a self-pubbed ebook.
So in two years I can make more money on my own on a self-pubbed ebook than a book released by a major publisher in hardcover, trade paper, paperback, and ebook formats, supported by a tour and advertising.
Unless it's a big offer, I can't imagine selling rights to my work ever again...
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
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By Jeff Caplan, NBA.com
VIDEO: Kawhi Leonard's Finals MVP performance
SAN ANTONIO — When the deal went down on Draft night 2011, when the San Antonio Spurs traded humble, team-oriented George Hill, a combo guard who for three seasons ingratiated himself to this team, to this city and most strikingly had found a soft spot in the heart of gruff coach Gregg Popovich, for a mostly unknown small forward with a funny name, all of San Antonio gasped.
Kawhi who?!
Even in the Spurs' draft room, the decision to pull the trigger was hardly a unanimous, feel-good swap.
"It felt like we were going to get our ass chewed because we just traded the coach's favorite player," Spurs general manager R.C. Buford said on Saturday, reminiscing on the eve of Game 5.
Three years later, the folks in the Alamo City have popularized a different phrase for the player whose mannerisms, work ethic and determination fit this franchise like a glove.
Kawhi not?!
And on Sunday night inside the raucous AT&T Center, Kawhi Leonard, equally as humble as Hill and more reserved than even team patriarch Tim Duncan, forcefully answered that question with a third consecutive authoritative performance. He fatigued LeBron James with relentless defensive pressure and dominated in multiple ways on the offensive end.
Leonard's 22 points and 10 rebounds led the Spurs to a 104-87 victory, a third straight blowout and the final one that ended the Heat's two-year reign. It completed the Spurs' season of redemption after last year's heartache in South Beach and returned the Larry O'Brien Trophy to South Texas for the first time since 2007.
When Leonard stepped to the free-throw line in the first quarter, 18,581 fans instantly chanted "M-V-P! M-V-P!" A few hours later they would do it again, this time with even more conviction following confirmation that this quiet, corn-rowed, 22-year-old who had turned the tide of the NBA Finals in Game 3 was now its MVP.
"At the moment, I was just happy," Leonard said. "Just had faith throughout the whole game, but I didn't think at all I was about to win the MVP of the Finals."
Heeding advice from his coach after sub-par efforts in Games 1 and 2 to be aggressive, to quit being concerned about deferring to the team's elders, the 6-foot-7 Leonard closed out the final three games by averaging 23.6 points and 9.0 rebounds. He went 24-for-35 from the floor and 7-for-13 from beyond the arc. Defending the game's best player, the reigning, two-time Finals MVP in James, Leonard had six steals and six blocks.
"He shows up the last three games and just plays out of his mind," Duncan said. "He's not worried about just doing the little things. He wants to do it all, and he plays with a confidence that is just amazing."
When he was announced the MVP, his teammates mobbed him and pushed him playfully, and a smile even broke across Leonard's normally stoic stone face. He grasped the trophy as his mother, Kim Robertson, hugged him and literally danced by his side.
That it was Father's Day also resonated. Six years ago, Mark Leonard, Kawhi's dad, was shot and killed at the car wash he owned in Compton, Calif. The case remains unsolved.
"It is a very special meaning for me knowing that he's gone and I was able to win a championship on Father's Day," Leonard said.
The night after learning his father had been shot to death, Leonard played for his Riverside King High team, scoring 17 points in a loss. After it was over, according to the story in the Los Angeles Times, he broke down and cried in his mother's arms.
"He loved his dad and they were really, really close," his mother said, clutching the MVP trophy as she watched her son smiling through sit-down television interviews, the kind he typically hates to do because they force him to talk about himself. "I think from the moment that it happened, he wanted to make his dad proud, he wanted to take that as a rocket, keep on moving, moving. Because I was kind of scared. The thing is he is such a good kid, he always wanted to get better and better and better."
Desperate to keep the series alive, Miami bolted to a 22-6 start, and James was going off, scoring 17 points in the opening quarter. But Leonard scored eight. He buried two 3-pointers and the Spurs closed to 29-22. Leonard nailed his third consecutive 3-point attempt with 4:47 to go in the second quarter. It put the Spurs ahead for the first time, 37-35. When the shot fell through, the roof practically blew off the arena and the party was officially on. San Antonio would never look back.
Leonard became the youngest Finals MVP since Duncan won it in 1999. He was also 22 at the time, and preferred to defer to veteran center and team captain David Robinson, who as usual, was in attendance Sunday to witness this latest title, Duncan's fifth. Now here was Leonard, basking in the glory, but really no more than a willing pupil who had learned from these remarkably selfless players on this remarkable team, his own value system so much like theirs.
"I mean, look at Tim," Kim Robertson said. "I think Tim has been a great role model for him, you know, a mentor for him. Tim is always, I always see him taking him to the side and telling him different things and I really think Kawhi respects that. Kawhi, his thing is he always wants to get better, better, better. He does not want to be in the limelight, he just wants to be good at what he loves to do, and that's it."
It sounds so familiar. While this Spurs era will always be known for the Big Three with Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, it is Duncan who defines it, who followed Robinson as the face of the franchise, and who will one day pass along that mantle. Popovich has made no secret of it, even saying as much last season, that the quiet kid with the funny name is the next in line.
Spurs owner Peter Holt, wandering the floor and basking in the glow of another championship run, was asked if it's too much burden to place on such a young player.
"Not so far," Holt smiled. "He's got pretty broad shoulders."
As they say around here, Kawhi not?!
VIDEO: Kawhi Leonard addresses the media after his MVP performance


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By John Schuhmann, NBA.com
VIDEO: Nets-Raptors: Game 7 Preview
TORONTO — How silly of us to think that one of these teams would win this series in six games. We should have realized that the Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets have some sort of reciprocal gravity that keeps one team from ever pulling away from the other.
They've played 10 games this season. They've each won five, with a total combined score of Raptors 767, Nets 766. Eight of the 10 games have been within five points in the last five minutes.
So it's only fitting that this first round series will come down to a Game 7 on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, ABC).
For the Raptors, this is an opportunity. A win would give their young core 4-7 more games of playoff experience against the defending champion Miami Heat. It would give head coach Dwane Casey additional job security. And it would help establish the franchise's place on the NBA map.
For the Nets, this is another referendum. If they can't get past the first round, what exactly did they spend $104 million in salary and another $92 million in luxury taxes on? And where the heck do they go from here?
"They have more to lose than us," DeMar DeRozan said Saturday.
Indeed. But payroll won't determine which team gets their first Game 7 victory (since the Nets came to the NBA). These six factors will.
The nail
Though the Nets lost Game 5, they established some things offensively. One of those was Joe Johnson operating from the middle of the floor, a set that made it difficult for the Raptors to double-team him. The Nets didn't go to that set much in Game 6, instead using Johnson back in the low post and in pick-and-rolls with Deron Williams more often.
But the Nets did take the middle of the floor away from Kyle Lowry, who scored just three points in the paint or at the free throw line in Game 6 after scoring 14 in Game 5. They took away the Raptors' primary offensive actions and often had them trying to improvise with less than 10 seconds left on the shot clock.
DeMar DeRozan will make some tough shots, but if it's only tough shots that he's getting, Brooklyn is in good shape.
Minutes distribution
The Raptors have been at their best when reserves Greivis Vasquez and Patrick Patterson are on the floor. They may sacrifice some defense by playing big minutes with Lowry, Vasquez, DeRozan and Patterson on the floor together, but their regular small forwards have come up empty offensively all series.
Terrence Ross is gaining experience and John Salmons is a bigger body to put on Johnson. But Raptors coach Dwane Casey shouldn't hesitate to go to the three-guard lineup early and often, because the positives on offense will outweigh the negatives on D.
Lowry, Vasquez, DeRozan and Patterson are a plus-23 in 54 minutes together, but played just 12 minutes over the last two games.
The 3-point line
Neither team has shot well from 3-point range in the series, but both teams have attempted 22 threes per game. If one team – or just one player – gets hot, it could be the difference. With the attention that Johnson draws, Brooklyn is more likely to get open looks. That's why Alan Anderson has replaced Shaun Livingston in the starting lineup.
Patterson, of course, puts a fourth shooter on the floor for Toronto. He can punish the Nets' defense for its focus on Lowry and DeRozan.
Toronto on the roll
One of the bellwethers of this series has been Amir Johnson, who has averaged 14.7 points in the Raptors' three wins and 4.3 points in their three losses. A lot of Johnson's production has come as the roll man, catching passes from Lowry and Vasquez. The Nets' weak-side defender needs to meet the roll man – whether it's Johnson or Jonas Valanciunas – before he gets too close to the basket.
Both teams have averaged less than 10 fast break points per game, but have been at their best when they've been able to get out into the open floor. Williams pushed the pace from the start in Game 6, which allowed the Nets to get into their offensive actions early in the shot clock and before the Raptors could get set. That produced easier shots.
When the Raptors made a little bit of a run in the fourth quarter, they were getting some easy baskets in transition as well.
After averaging 19.3 turnovers in the first three games, the Raptors have averaged just 13.0 in the last three. But it was an issue that popped up again in the fourth quarter on Friday, keeping them from being able to cut the Brooklyn lead to single digits. Any extended turnover issues in Game 7 (for either team) could end their season.


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On the bright side, Jay predicted the outcomes of all three games against the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs, and Oklahoma City Thunder this week. Unfortunately he predicted all losses. We summarize the very poor weeks the Knicks had and then lighten the mood with a fun interview with Justin from KnicksGM.com
Download Episode 30 Subscribe on ITunes


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WASHINGTON (Circa) -- Thomas Markle will not be able to walk his daughter down the aisle due to a major heart surgery he is expected to undergo, according to TMZ.
Markle is scheduled to be operated on 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
"They [doctors] will go in and clear blockage, repair damage and put a stent where it is needed," Markle tells TMZ.
He suffered from a heart attack last week but reportedly wanted to do his best to be in England for his daughter's big day.
TMZ quoted Markle saying, "I hate the idea of missing one of the greatest moments in history and walking my daughter down the aisle." As of Tuesday morning, he was awaiting word from doctors about whether he would be released in time to arrive for Saturday's wedding.
On Monday, Markle said he wasn't attending after staging photos with a paparazzi agency. He felt his actions had embarrassed his daughter and the royal family.
Markle had a change of heart after receiving a message from his daughter saying she loved him and was concerned for his health, according to TMZ.
He also believes a letter sent by Meghan's brother discouraging Prince Harry from marrying her caused his heart attack.


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Israel News - Stay Informed, Pray Informed
We all know the story of David and Goliath, a story that inspires us to root for the underdog. David and Goliath is largely presented as a conflict based on values - David being good, and Goliath being evil. Yet we rarely choose to set aside the morality of the story and look at this conflict as more of a tactical configuration.
For example, Israel is often seen as a small country within the world, surrounded on all sides by its enemies. Israel being David, and the surrounding hostile nations being Goliath. This has played itself out time after time throughout history.
But today we have a situation of a violent terrorist organization (Hamas) up against a national army (the IDF). So, now one might ask the question: who here is David and who is Goliath? Is it possible that in the current conflict, Israel could be a Goliath? And thus Hamas would be a David?
But what does this mean? (Remember, I am suggesting that this is the case from a tactical standpoint - not a moral one.) What advantage does "David" have here? He has the tactical advantage of being the underdog in a lopsided conflict (not the spiritual one that David had in the Valley of Elah). Hamas, as a "David," can move somewhat faster. They have small terrorist cells running around shooting rockets and infiltrating via tunnels.
Hamas, as a "David," also takes greater risks. They sacrifice soldiers and civilians for tactical gain. Hamas, as a "David," also unscrupulously manipulates all available media channels. They attempt to boost an image of legitimacy in the face of a tremendous foe.
How can a "Goliath" defeat a "David" like this? From a tactical standpoint, he has to pursue his opponent until annihilation. Because even if the slightest remnant of Hamas remains, this will be a moral victory. Such a "victory" that will lead to yet another bloody conflict in the future.
So, the sentiment is for the stronger opponent to "go for it," to smash the weaker foe until this whole thing is over. But you just cannot destroy a foe of this nature only with force, or only through using a tactical approach.
Hamas embraces a hateful, violent ideology because they know no other alternative. A statement from its official website reads:
"We will use the skulls of Zion's sons to build a bridge to heaven."
Although this is a horrific statement, it's worth a second look. Islam teaches of a bridge to heaven, it is one of the core values of the Muslim faith. Any devout Muslim would no doubt have a longing to finally see this bridge to heaven that the Koran speaks of, but it is nowhere to be found.
In desperation, you start mixing other Islamic values together. You read about the bridge to heaven. You read about the removal of infidels. You read about the sacredness of Jerusalem. And in the end you try to get a result that seems logical to you: a bridge to heaven built on the skulls of Zion's sons. There is nothing in that statement to contradict the faith that Muslims adhere to, so why not embrace it? You would give your own life and the lives of your loved ones for your faith, so why not sacrifice the lives of your enemies as well?
The only way to defeat such a hateful militant sentiment is to prove that a bridge to heaven cannot be built on the skulls of Zion's sons.
Yeshua (Jesus) said:
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." - John 14:6 NKJV
I believe this, do you? Yeshua is the bridge to heaven, and He is the only one. If Hamas knew this, they would throw down their arms immediately and this war would be over. But how do you communicate this truth to someone who wants to tread on your skull (I am a son of Zion)?
"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds..." - 2 Corinthians 10:4 NKJV
We must pray this truth into Gaza, we must worship this truth into Gaza, for these are the weapons we have. Many former Muslims can testify to receiving supernatural visitations from Yeshua. This is a tactic that God Himself has decided to use with Muslims. It's our job to join Him, using the weapons at our disposal.
Yes, there are Davids and there are Goliaths, but what about those few of us who know what a bridge to heaven really looks like? We certainly are not Goliaths, but we have the same tactical and spiritual advantages that David had, so let's use them.
To contact Adam Rosenfeld, visit www.adamandbethanyandco.com
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Anyone on here know of any good hidden strip mine lakes around here?? I work for an outdoor magazine company and would love some insight on good, potential trophy bass spots in central Il. PM me if any insight is available. I only practice catch & release and love nothing more than to catch trophy fish and watch them swim away.
Strip Mine?


text: This year's Tribeca Film Festival will not only be remembered for its impressive array of films, but also for a number of controversial firsts. An airline commercial was pulled from showing, reporters were infuriated to find James Franco and Shai LaBeouf absent from a red carpet premiere, and the new Immersive Storyscapes feature allowed audiences to experience virtual reality in an all new way. As if all that wasn't enough, the 2017 celebration wrapped with special showings and cast reunions for two of the biggest films in history: Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Continue reading


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Let's Golf 3 by Gameloft Free for Android users
The golf odyssey continues!
Yeeee haw! We're headin' for the untamed frontier – the Wild West – in this newest update! So saddle up for new style and new challenges before riding off into to the sunset.
Freemium game! Download and play 5 holes every day for FREE or buy energy boosts to play anytime you want!
Download it Free From Google Play
The world's most exciting golf odyssey returns with more great new features that you've been waiting for! Everyone can join in this fun and exciting golf adventure. Create your avatar and challenge friends and opponents from across the globe in golf tournaments that are unlike anything you've seen before.
• Travel to six of the most far-out locations you've ever played, from the Great Wall of China to Outer Space!
• Each course is created in 3D so you'll see every beautiful waterfall, lush forest and distant green as if you were immersed in an adventure.
• Up to 4 golfers can compete in fun matches online and locally (via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). By popular request, you can also play on the same device!
• Your friends are not online? Challenge them to beat your score and see who will win the top prize.
• Chat live during your online games.
• Invite all your friends to join the Golf Club via Facebook, Gameloft LIVE!, email and more.
• Watch your opponent's turn during a match! (Feature only available for certain devices.)
• Create your unique golfing avatar from thousands of combinations of clothes, hair, gear and more to match your style, no matter how colorful or down-to-Earth.
• Purchase special skills (like increased range or accuracy for your shots) or balls with special powers (like Tornado, Luck, etc.) using virtual coins you can earn in-game.
Progressively unlock new modes: Stroke Play, Match Play, Shootout, and Close to Pin.
Need a change of pace? Play some challenging mini-games like Catch the Star, Target Range and Putting Master to hone specific skills and become a champion of the links.
Download it Free From Google Play
Scan QR code From this Image


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After their 2006 demo, Sargatanas, the all-female melodic Death metal band from Russia have released their album "Greatnes Of Rot".
The current line-up is composed by Xenia at the guitars, Mary Cymball behind the mic and drums and bassist Alex F.
You can buy their album here: iTunes, Amazon MP3.
Or listen to some of its tracks at their official MySpace.