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A Madison thing we're listening to: "Preoccupied" by Slow Pulp
The Madison/Minneapolis four-piece's latest clip is obsessed with colors and their associations.
Though none of them are synesthetic, the members of Madison/Minneapolis band Slow Pulp delve into the inherent multi-sensuality of color in the video for their song "Preoccupied."
Directed by Milwaukee's Damien Blue, the video for the track from their 2017 release EP2 depicts Slow Pulp vocalist and synth player Emily Massey, joined at times by her bandmates and friends, drifting through various scenes—an indoor pool, the merry-go-round of now-closed Ella's Deli, and a sunset-soaked outdoor concert.
It's a fairly straightforward structure that isn't especially interested in narrative, Massey says. Instead Blue and the band chose the settings for the video's vignettes to infuse the song with as many emotionally resonant colors as possible—mainly blues, reds and purples. In this, the video embodies how the band thinks about colors and color associations during the songwriting process.
"I don't think any of us have synesthesia, but we do like to associate colors with our songs to represent emotions," Massey says. "They're a big part of how we communicate with each other. In this song the main line is 'I just want to be in love, but I don't want to try,' and for us we knew we wanted red, blue, and purple to hit those feelings of melancholy and love."
Through this prismatic lens, it's impressive how the video hits so many juxtapositions and blends of colors without distracting from the song itself. The blues of the video match elements like the recurring saxophone; the reds seem to correspond with the drums and the fleeting passion in Massey's vocals. At the end of first refrain, Massey, in a red bathing suit, sings repeatedly, "I'm preoccupied with you," just before falling into the blue water of a pool, and just after that the video cuts to a purple sunset.
The video, aside from being a worthy companion to a great track, really hits at the special connection we humans have with colors—one that's unconscious, perhaps, but ever present.


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I turn 43 lol
I have first appoint Feb 21 and Thankfully it is not my first time doing treatments/testing with them so they already have HSG results and my history. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling pretty quickly! I have 2 more chances to O before my appoint so maybe I will get lucky and NOT have to go:)

subset: commoncrawl


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noun re·sil·ience \ ri-ˈzil-yən(t)s
1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress
2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change [1]
As I consider what resilience means to me, I'm struck by the dictionary definition, namely the phrase, "recover its size and shape after deformation" and the word, "easily." Resilience after my husband's suicide has been neither easy nor one in which life has snapped back to its original form. In a matter of seconds, my world and I were forever changed. Although truth be told, it was gradual, and it was sudden. Unexpected and predictable.
As a result, resilience is so much more than a word to me. It is a journey, profound and purposeful. The more I traverse this path, the more akin it seems to the path of bankruptcy Ernest Hemingway's drunken, brawling war veteran, Mike Campbell describes in the author's 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. To the question of how he went bankrupt, Mike answers, "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."
My own journey of resilience has followed a similar course. Three steps forward, two steps back. Slow, tiny movements in the direction of progress. Measured inch by inch, one step at a time, one breath at a time. Then intermittent, sudden pushing and driving forward, then jolting back again.
Feelings, at once, connected and disconnected, triumphant and defeated. Hopeful and hopeless, in equal measure. Courageous, fragile, fearless and weak. Like a wending, winding, upside down, whipping rollercoaster ride, I'm learning to hold on tightly with both hands. I'm hanging on during the roughest patches and treasuring the celebrations of life more joyfully than I ever dreamed possible.
Although I've never really believed in "living happily ever after," I have come to believe with unwavering faith and trust in "living happily even after." My life has not stopped; rather, it is gaining momentum two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly.
In the spirit of elevating resilience from a word to a life most gratefully lived, we invite you to share your own story of resilience with us. Send us a message. With your permission, we may post it here.
Following are stories of how resilience finds its way into my fashion design and stories about resilient women we admire who are making a difference by speaking their truth and following their passions.
What do you bring?
WHAT DO YOU BRING TO THIS WORLD? Laura was touched to be selected for the "What Do You Bring To This World" event. Traffic Stops Where Love Begins hosted the fundraising event highlighting 20 extraordinary women from the Chicago area whose lives...read more
Silver Linings
SILVER LININGS Michigan Avenue Magazine's signature summer event is Ashore Thing. The annual event is held at Chicago's Navy Pier to send off the sailors in style as they leave Chicago on their way to Mackinac Island. The Race to Mackinac is...read more
Kim Jones
KIM JONES Kim has been both a fashion AND personal inspiration to me. Born just weeks after the Tet Offensive in 1968, Kim barely escaped death in Vietnam. In the aftermath of the war, Saigon was transformed into a hell on earth. Fleeing the...read more
ASYMMETRY I'm interested in things that are just a bit askew… a bit off… out of the ordinary. It's the things that are not exactly the same that make life interesting to me. We are all unique — with special characteristics and attributes...read more
Carla Fine
CARLA FINE Carla has been on my mind — especially these past 10 days with the heartbreaking suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. I first met Carla after reading her book, No Time to Say Goodbye. I sent an email to Carla expressing my...read more
POCKETS Why do I favor pockets? They are fun, practical, mysterious, handy and interesting. I can go out and carry an ATM card, phone, lipstick and go. Don't have to worry about a purse to keep track of while I'm socializing, doing deals and...read more
Amanda Munz
THE FASHION FOUNDATION I'm constantly amazed by the resilient women that appear in my life! One of them is Amanda Munz, who founded a nonprofit organization that provides school supplies for underprivileged students in the New York City area....read more
Michigan Ave Magazine
While my studio is in New York City, Chicago is where I was born and have lived my entire adult life. Chicago has been called the "Windy City," "Second City," "My Kind of Town, the "City of Big Shoulders," and "The City that Works" among others....read more
Becca Stevens
"TELL ME YOUR STORY" Although you may have seen or purchased Thistle Farms bath and body care products, you may not know the story behind the company. Becca Stevens created the company to support her residential program for homeless,...read more


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Customer Reviews
At Tallman Instruments, we pride ourselves in providing great guitars and service. Below are some of our satisfied customers, in their own words.
"I received my new Breedlove guitar and couldn't be happier . Rick Tallman is an absolute pleasure . Extremely great communication during the whole deal . And really fast shipping . I will recommend Tallman Instruments to friends and will definitely be doing more business together in the future . Thank you again sir ." – L. Brown
Bought a Breedlove Acoustic.
"These guys were so easy to work with thank you so much." – James T.
Bought an Alvarez AJ80 Jumbo Pak.
"Packaged with extreme care; 100 percent accurate description, fast shipping and a pleasure
to work with. You won't be disappointed!" – Fred J.
to work with. You won't be disappointed!" – Fred J.
Bought an Ovation Legend 1617 w/ Factory Case
"Fast service and beautiful guitar." – David H.
Bought an Indiana Mojave Acoustic/Elec. Guitar w/ Stand, Leather Strap, and Tuner
"Service was fantastic, I could not have asked for better. Love my new violin. Thanks Tallman
Instruments shop." – Taylor S.
Instruments shop." – Taylor S.
Bought a Sebastian-Knilling Paris 4/4 Violin
"Rick Tallman nailed this one, a very happy customer. Would highly recommend." – Tom G.
Bought a Sigma SF18 Acoustic Guitar
"Perfect guitar and outstanding service. Friendly, with prompt shipping, great packaging. The set up
on this guitar is amazing. Tallman instruments is a quality, class business. I'm extremely satisfied." – Scott S.
on this guitar is amazing. Tallman instruments is a quality, class business. I'm extremely satisfied." – Scott S.
Bought a Sigma SF28CE Acoustic/Elec. Guitar
"I bought a new Breedlove that I'm extremely pleased with and the Tallman customer service is superb, I can not say enough good things. I really appreciated the personal service and also follow up to make everything got here alright and that I was happy with my newest guitar. You have my highest recommendation. Thank you Rick ." – Jay F.
Bought a Breedlove Concert Ebony Acoustic/Elec. Guitar
"What a terrific seller. Great communication and lightening fast shipping. Best of all was the TLC he gave my guitar before shipping. Will definitely do business with this seller again." – Gary W.
Bought an Alvarez Parlor AP66SHB Acoustic Guitar


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APAC Secretariat,
c/o Augustinian Sisters of Our Lady of Consolation,
273 Santolan Road,
San Juan, Metro Manila, Philippines
The APAC Executive has announced a thirty-day Augustinian Spirituality Course. It will take place from 9 October to 7 November 2017 at La Consolacion Convent, 273 Santolan Road, Metro Manila, Philippines. Telephone (02) 725-2727.
At the end of the course, the participants would have encountered God in Jesus Christ, in the light of St. Augustine's experience in his time so that their hearts are afire with the love of God and neighbor.
1. To study and reflect on the search for God of St. Augustine in the Sacred Scriptures through his life and works.
2. To appreciate and love the study of the Sacred Scriptures and pray and contemplate the Word of God in the way of St. Augustine.
3. To value and contemplate the Church as the Totus Christus.
4. To get to know the saints of the Order and to be inspired to imitate them.
5. To grow in Augustinian prayer and contemplation and experience the Eucharist from the perspective of St. Augustine.
6. To synthesize the elements of Augustinian spirituality.
7. To identify the aspects of Augustinian pedagogy in the light of present day teaching and catechetical methodologies.
B. To experience an Augustinian Spiritual Exercises toward personal integration and holiness as a contemporary Augustinian in the world.
9. To animate and build an Augustinian community of friends among the participants through studying together, praying together, working together and playing together.
1. The Vision of the Program: The image of Augustine with the Bible and the heart
2. The Community life: Sharing of tasks in leading creative Augustinian opening and closing prayers, in facilitating Lectio Divina, in cleaning each one's room, house, classroom, in washing dishes and one's own clothes.
3. Lectio Divina every Saturday, as part of the Synthesis activity
4. Classes conducted by students and experts in St. Augustine (see CV's of professors). Different methodologies and strategies will be used by professors with content tailored on the vision of the course.
5. Schedule of Classes: six hours a day with Saturdays as synthesis day.
6. The foreigners will be helped with extension of visas by LCCM staff.
7. The culminating and integrating activity is the Augustinian Spiritual Exercises to be held in Baguio City.
8. There will be a historical visit to San Agustin Church and Museum at Intramuros in Manila, pilgrimage to Augustinian churches in Bulacan and Pampanga.
9. A closing ceremony will compose the learnings and realizations of participants presented in a creative way by small learning communities. A certificate of attendance/participation will be awarded to participants.
10. The learning and insights derived from the study and reflection on the life, works, teachings and praxis of St. Augustine will enable the participants to grow in the spirituality of Augustine and share this to people in the varied ministries like formation, school/education, socio-pastoral, and ministries.
The speakers for the course are three religious sisters of the Augustinian Sisters of Our Lady of Consolacion, three priests from the Augustinians of the Assumption, an Augustinian Recollect friar, and two friars of the Cebu Province of the Order of St Augustine. Each of these speakers will offer from three to six successive half days of instruction.
The segments by the speakers are:
Life and Words of St Augustine – Sr Ma. Luz Mijares ASOLC
Augustine and Scripture – Sr Niceta M. Vargas ASOLC
Augustine: The Church and Christ – Fr Czar Emmanuel Alvarez OSA
Augustinian Hagiography – Fr Eusebio Berdon OSA
Augustine and Prayer – Fr Bernard Holzer AA
Augustine and Art – Fr Richard Lamoureuz AA
Augustine on Liturgy and Eucharist – Sr Jocelyn Widwid ASOLC
Augustinian Spirituality – Fr Gia Dinh Vo Tran AA
Augustinian Retreat – Fr Laura Larlar OAR
On earlier occasions, APAC has presented Augustinian Spirituality conferences that were only one week in duration, and therefore did not cover as many topics as the October 2017 course. It is hoped that the 2017 Course will be presented again at a later date.


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Dear Comrades
An aggressive attack is being waged against MST landless peasants in the northern state of Pará, Brazil.
Large-scale landowners along with local judicial authorities, mainstrain media and the Brazilian military police are targeting MST camps throughout the country.
2.000 peasant families living in 20 camps located in the northern State of Pará are under the risk of being violently evicted until the end of the year
On Monday (11) gunman attacked the Hugo Chavez camp. Seven heavily armed men – illegal "private security" hired by the landowners, shot against unarmed peasants, including women and children.
The judicial order for the eviction of the 300 families living at Higo Chavez camp was confirmed to be carried out by ther military police tomorrow (14). There are expected more violence, since the families are ready to resist.
The recent escalation of violence takes place as the Brazilian government continues to use regressive land ownership laws, which have resulted in devastating consequences to landless and displaced agricultural workers.
During the administration of the unelected Brazilian President Michel Temer, the MST has witnessed increased levels of state violence and criminalization against our members
In light of the escalating violence and repression, we are issuing a call of international solidarity!
Send a short video or statement in support and solidarity to the MST families in Pará to the email address: email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com !
Write to the official authorities condemning the evictions in Pará, and demanding the revision of the eviction order of Hugo Chavez Camp!
Send an email to the following addresses:
President of the court of justice – Ricardo Ferreira Nunes: presidência@tjpa.jus.br
Secretary of State for Public Secutiry – Jeannot Jansen da silva Filho: email@example.com
Secretary of the State of Pará – Jose Megale Filho: firstname.lastname@example.com
Agricultural Ombudsman's Office – Rosi Maria Gomes de Farias: firstname.lastname@example.com
Agrarian Judge of Maraba – Amarildo Mazutti: firstname.lastname@example.com
National Agrarian ombudsman – Jorge Tadeu Jatoba: firstname.lastname@example.com
Copy: email@example.com and email@example.com
With your solidarity and the international pressure the 2.000 camped families of the state of Para hope to spend Christmas in their houses and lands.
MST National Board – International Relations Collective
If you value the work Brasil Wire does, please help keep us running with a donation. Our editorial independence relies on our readers support.


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The Association to Preserve Cape Cod sharply denounced the announcement today by the Trump administration to repeal the Clean Power Plan and replace it with a policy that will increase planet-warming carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.
The proposed policy change by the Environmental Protection Agency calls for individual states to be allowed to adopt their own rules for regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants, which produce the dirtiest emissions and the most greenhouse gases. This dramatic reversal in efforts by the EPA to regulate and reduce carbon pollution is, according to projections by some climate analysts, expected to result in up to 12 times more emissions of greenhouse gas over the next decade.
"This move by the current administration to allow more greenhouse gases to contribute to climate change comes in the very same year when Cape Cod was pummeled by a string of monster storms in March that brought destructive coastal erosion and widespread flooding," said Andrew Gottlieb, APCC executive director. "We're living with the impacts of climate change right now on Cape Cod and it will only get worse. With this dismantling of the Clean Power Plan, the EPA is turning its back on its responsibility to protect health of the citizens of this country. It's a shameful display of pandering to the special interests of the coal lobby at the expense of the environment," said Gottlieb.
In January of this year, APCC sent a letter to then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt voicing strong opposition to the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan. In its letter, APCC laid out the ramifications to Cape Cod of reversing course on a commitment by the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions and slow the impacts of climate change.
The text of the letter follows.
January 10, 2018
Scott Pruitt, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460
RE: Opposition to Repeal of the Clean Power Plan
Dear Administrator Pruitt:
The Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC) strongly opposes the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP), and urges the EPA to reconsider its intentions to terminate this critically important national emissions control standard.
Established in 1968, APCC is the Cape Cod region's leading nonprofit environmental organization, working for the adoption of laws, policies and programs that protect and enhance Cape Cod's natural resources and quality of life. With ever-increasing urgency, much of APCC's efforts in recent years have been focused on the need to address climate change and its impacts on Cape Cod. Climate change has emerged as the greatest environmental threat facing our region's natural resources, economy and human population. Cape Cod communities are already experiencing worsening impacts from sea level rise, coastal erosion and an increase in frequency and severity of coastal storms associated with a changing climate.
The settled consensus of the world body of scientists, based on fact-based research and overwhelming evidence, is that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the driving force behind climate change. The continued emission of CO2 pollution and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere threatens the health, welfare and even the lives of American citizens and people worldwide. Some recent data suggests the world's climate is at the brink of certain thresholds, that once crossed, will result in rapid, unpredictable and potentially irreversible catastrophic changes that will impact the Earth's ecosystems and seriously disrupt human society.
Electrical power plants fired by fossil fuels are responsible for 31 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.—the single largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the nation. Any effort to effectively reduce the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change must include a substantial reduction in power plant emissions levels. The CPP would achieve that objective.
Issuance of the CPP by the EPA in 2015, with its requirement for significant reductions in CO2 pollution emissions from power plants, has been the most important step to date taken by the U.S. to address climate change. Implementation of the CPP would set our nation on the right track toward mitigating climate change and its impacts, and it would secure the U.S.'s position as a responsible global partner in the effort to control CO2 emissions.
Emissions reductions in greenhouse gas pollutants resulting from CPP implementation would also reduce
emissions of particle pollution, further improving public health in the U.S. The EPA's own 2015 analysis
estimates that the CPP would prevent 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks in
children, up to 1,700 heart attacks, 1,700 hospital admissions and 300,000 missed workdays.
Repeal of the CPP would be a disastrous reversal in our nation's energy and emissions policies, and
overlooks the investments being made and advances being achieved in the private sector and by
individual states and cities in moving this nation toward a future built on reliable renewable energy
production. Indeed, the proposed repeal suggests the EPA's priorities rest with the financial interests of
the coal industry instead of with the well-being and will of the American people.
The EPA has a legal requirement under the Clean Air Act—a requirement that was upheld by the U.S.
Supreme Court—to regulate CO2 as a pollutant that endangers human health. Repeal of the CPP would
be in direct conflict with the EPA's charge to protect the nation's environment and the health of its
citizens, a responsibility entrusted to the agency since its establishment in 1970.
The CPP is an integral component in the necessary transition to a modern, clean, reliable and affordable
national energy infrastructure, and it is an important air pollution standard that will help protect human
health and the environment. APCC therefore once again urges the EPA to withdraw its proposal to repeal
the Clean Power Plan.
Andrew Gottlieb
Executive Director
cc: Sen. Edward Markey
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Rep. William Keating
CapeCodToday.com welcomes thoughtful comments and the varied opinions of our readers. We are in no way obligated to post or allow comments that our moderators deem inappropriate. We reserve the right to delete comments we perceive as profane, vulgar, threatening, offensive, racially-biased, homophobic, slanderous, hateful or just plain rude. Commenters may not attack or insult other commenters, readers or writers. Commenters who persist in posting inappropriate comments will be banned from commenting on CapeCodToday.com.


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Artist Bob Evans talks about the work of Karl Blossfeldt
In a series of occasional blog posts, we've asked a member artist to talk briefly about an artist who's profoundly influenced their work. Artist Bob Evans talks about the work of Karl Blossfeldt, and the effect it's had on him.
Karl Blossfeldt,
Plate 58 Art Forms In Nature,
My dithered digital photographic prints have been influenced in an interesting way by the photogravure photographs of Karl Blossfeldt (German 1865-1932). In my career as an artist teacher I have taught Basic Visual Design classes and always showed examples of Blossfelt's photos to my students as examples of images having visual strength. Blossfeldt's work is known primarily from three books of high quality photogravure photographic reproductions published between 1928 and 1942. Very few of his actual photographic prints have ever been exhibited. But his work is widely known and his books are still in print in many lower quality halftone republications including several by Dover books. Because of my strong interest in his work I have been fortunate enough over the years to acquire first edition photogravure copies of all three of those books.
Bob Evans
Dithered Fern Frond
When I was preparing to retire from active teaching in the past decade, I was looking for a project to keep me busy in addition to my normal art making activity. Having taught digital photography since the mid 1990s I was skilled in Adobe Photoshop and had always known the power of black and white images when dithered (random black dots of varied size). In looking at Blossfeldt's photogravures, which are made up of random dots created by the photogravure process from rosin dusted onto a metal plate, I thought you could create one bit (i.e. photographs using only black ink dots) images using digital dithering. Dithering is the process that all computer printers use and is a way to generate a range of tones and colors without the use of rigid halftone screens that look very mechanical. Color dithers by putting colored dots on top of each other produce continuous tone smooth looking images. One bit dithers when examined closely show the dots up clearly and give the resulting images a crispness and clarity very much like aquatint etchings. After many experiments with Photoshop and other dithering programs I developed a digital technique that allows me to create the look of photogravure using a standard office monochrome laser printer. The images can be soft or hard depending on the approach one takes and a wide range of tones are possible. Because the laser printer uses metallic oxide pigment the images are completely permanent unlike many colored digital photos that use dyes. Blossfeldt's technique has thus influenced me into wide experimentation of the expressive uses of the dithered random dot in digital photography.


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In Donetsk explosion
Victims and injured in the explosion there.
The explosion occurred in the building of Commissariat of the Kirov district of Donetsk. On Saturday, August 27, said the representative of the Ministry of internal Affairs" the self-proclaimed DND.
"In the military on the street Kuprin near the window of the first floor worked unidentified explosive device, according to preliminary data, with delayed actions", – quotes words of the representative of "the office" Donetsk news Agency (DAN).
No casualties were reported. The blast in the building has damaged the frame and broke the glass.
The circumstances of the incident are being investigated.
In the Donetsk region in the explosion at the mine, there are victims
As reported Корреспондент.neton 25 August in the centre of Donetsk, an explosion, one person died.
The deterioration in the Donbass
Day in anti-terrorist operation: shelling from artillery and mortars
In Shirokino, a sniper killed a volunteer
In Minsk agreed on a permanent ceasefire
Kiev is ready for a serious compromise on the prisoners
Kiev insists on a ceasefire by September 1


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Client Name: Jason Reynolds
Location: Washington, DC
Website: www.dcmaaco.com
Jason Reynolds, owner of a MAACO shop specializing in auto painting and auto body repair, had a problem. His new shop was not attracting customers because of a bad reputation left behind by the previous seedy auto shop. His prospects didn't realize this was now a MAACO franchise.
Jason met the Yodle team at the 2011 National MAACO Convention and signed up. He wanted to drive business by letting consumers know there was a new shop – with a great reputation – at the location.
Yodle built Jason a custom paid search advertising campaign, helping him to both build a positive image for his shop and increase exposure. Jason received:
Jason is impressed with the level of geographic exposure Yodle has helped him build. "For a long time most of our customers were coming from the Northeast area [of DC]. Now we're getting customers all the way from Virginia and the Southwest [area of DC]."
The increase in sales speaks to the fact consumers know there's a new shop in town with a great reputation. According to Jason, the shop now generates $11-15,000 in weekly business – a 100% increase since working with Yodle. "A lot of it has to do with Yodle," says Jason, "we're getting a lot of web inquiries and Yodle phone calls."
Jason is thrilled with Yodle. "It's extremely visible. It's not like you paid for something and then have no idea what's going on," explains Jason, "I know it's working."
Tim Ellison of Mr. Godwrench Auto Service sees an average of 30+ leads per month with Yodle. He also loves the review management and photo syndication tools included in his Marketing Essentials platform.
Learn how Randy Smith of Smith's Radiator and Air Conditioning went from skeptical to ecstatic after using Yodle.
"Before you do anything else to increase your business, try Yodle."
"It was a great decision to work with Yodle."
"Within the first 30 days I saw a substantial increase in traffic and with one of the first jobs I made all of my investment back and then some."
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This is Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's activity
Jonathan "Sem" Holloway
Recent Activity
I was talking about patient referrals to other chiropractors here. This is the story of a patient that didn't accept a referral and became the active patient furthest from my office at 225 miles from my office. He doesn't exactly commute for regular visits, but we do the best we can. Here is his story. A few years ago he fell from a ladder and hurt his upper thoracic spine. The MDs and PTs said he was just kinda stuck with hyper-mobility and should do certain exercises to actively compensate for the problem. It seemed normal to him and he... Continue reading
Posted Apr 12, 2012 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
And my favorite one: I was on the phone with a customer service rep from AT&T who noticed "Chiropractic" in the billing account information. She said "I wish you were in my area, I need a good chiropractor. Continue reading
Posted Apr 12, 2012 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
February was a busy month at the office. I spent more time with more patients than any previous month. It was also a benchmark month thanks to elevating from a financial plateau. With the aid of Dr. Mruz of Eastside Chiropractic in Greenville, SC I increase my web presence and the quality of that presence. The best part is that it only cost time. There were other improvements and milestones. I have finally finished my first box of 8x10 x-ray film and introduced a pamphlet rack in the reception area. Most of the content was self-generated over the past 6... Continue reading
Posted Mar 5, 2012 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
Wow! It is difficult to believe what just happened. An older gentleman limped into my office wearing a dirty baseball cap and a jacket that looked as though it hadn't been washed since Reagan was president. I had just finished posting "The Story of the Wagon" and I was beaming. I greeted the gentleman, "Good afternoon, Welcome to Holloway Family Chiropractic. How can I help you?" He seemed to have mild trouble breathing as he replied, "I have an unusual question to ask. I need money to buy my COPD medication. I was wondering I could sweep the floor or... Continue reading
Posted Feb 3, 2012 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
J. Keith Simpson, DC Ph.D wrote an op-ed and published in the journal Chiropractic and Manual Therapies. The full article can be found here. It starts out as a very comprehensive chiropractic history lesson but continues into a rant about "subluxation-based" chiropractors. I found his approach unprofessional and unscientific. I am dissappointed in CMT for publishishing this opinion piece. Unfortunatley, I have come to expect such "research" from CMT. Simpson has full right to his opinon but a research journal is not the appropriate form for condemnation. My email to Dr. Simpson is below. Dear Dr. Simpson, I read your... Continue reading
Posted Feb 2, 2012 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
The Story of a Wagon By L. H. (Uncle Howard) Nutting (THE CHIROPRACTOR, A Monthly Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, January,1905 (107 years ago). Published by The Palmer School of Chiropractic.) Last Saturday,the writer saw an incident on Main street, Davenport, Iowa, which caused much ill humor, amusement, and some instruction to the crowd that witnessed it. Human nature, the quality of which depends upon education, was shown by each one presenting his peculiar idea of the situation and his suggestions. Main street is paved with brick and is quite steep between Sixth and Eighth. A crowd of idle men... Continue reading
Posted Jan 26, 2012 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
Continued from Part 1 4 What Time Tuesday? By James Tomasi Like "Chiropractic First" I have this in the reception area. I have had the true pleasure of meeting Rev. Tomasi on several occasions and I am always encouraged by his smile and warm disposition. This text chronicles James's experience with Trigeminal Neuralgia which is known as "the suicide disease." It is considered virtually untreatable in many cases and the extreme and constant pain influence sufferers to take their own life rather than live with the condition. It is no spoiler to say that James experiences a full recovery after... Continue reading
Posted Nov 28, 2011 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
Hello everyone. My name is Jonathan and I am a bibliophile. That's right, I love books. My personal collection numbers in the thousands. While my professional collection is significantly smaller; I actually spend more time with it. The only piece of office furniture I purchased new was a very nice bookshelf that I found on sale at an office supply store. Good used bookshelves are hard to come by. Back to the point. I have found use in all of the books in my professional collection so I figured (southern dialect for "reasoned") I would compile this list for future... Continue reading
Posted Nov 28, 2011 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
Things have been going well for the practice. We broke even the first and second month which is awesome. The average small business takes years to do that. Good progress being stated, I was not surprised when the number of new patients started to decrease a couple of weeks ago. I believe it is due to the holidays and was told by fellow DCs to expect it. I am working on a way to turn that around. Get the tide to start rolling back in so to speak. But what I have not received in new patient flow I have... Continue reading
Posted Nov 18, 2011 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
Monday, October 24th was Sherman Pride Day 2011. The announcement email suggested a few different ways to celebrate. I chose several of those options. I : Wore a Sherman Shirt. Offered a prospective student a chance to shadow me in the office. Spoke with two classes of students from the Donaldson Career Center about Chiropractic. Set up a visit for those students to visit my clinic. Talked with a two classmates. Played a classmate's CD during office hours (The Micah Dunn at DunnsMusic.com). So, what did you do to celebrate your pride in Sherman? Continue reading
Posted Oct 27, 2011 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
So Clemson is 6-0 in 2011..... but this post isn't about football. I joined the Reach Out And Recruit team at Lyceum 2010. Who can say "no" to the professional and charming Dr. Jamie Browning when she has free business portfolios and foam beverage coozies? I was attracted by the thought of encouraging prospective students to choose chiropractic as a profession and Sherman as the best place in the world to get the appropriate training. I was also taken in by the idea of mentoring current and future students to be the best they can be. The ROAR program is... Continue reading
Posted Oct 11, 2011 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog
Unfortunately the Council of Chiropractic Education (CCE) has again tried to remove the terms "subluxation" and "without the use of drugs and surgery" from its educational guidelines for the purpose of allowing the merging of the chiropractic and medical profession into one. More information is http://researchupdate.mccoypress.net/ You can find links there to do your part in securing chiropractic's future. My letter to the USDE: To Whom it may concern, I am writing to file a complaint with the US Dept. of Education against the Council of Chiropractic Education (CCE). I am a licensed, practicing doctor of chiropractic and graduate of... Continue reading
Posted Sep 12, 2011 at Dr. Jonathan "Sem" Holloway's Blog


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A Blogging Baby
OK, so our baby is not exactly blogging - yet. But the little bean does have a blog!
Created to keep your email inboxes light and our newsletters full of more than just updates on the pregnancy (it's our first child, we can go overboard if we want to), Baby Notes is the place to go to read everything baby and about our experiences having a baby abroad. You can even bookmark our Baby's Blog if you feel so inclined.
The updates to Baby Notes will also be viewable in the "Personal" section of the right sidebar (down at the bottom of the sidebar on the right -----------------> )


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Follow the Yellow Brick Road – Which way to SharePoint 2013?
Ahha, seems the only way to get to SharePoint 2013 from an older version is to migrate. Ok from 2010 to 2013, but nothing before – think 2003 and 2007. We have several clients on SharePoint 2013 – and got there without glitches. We don't have many that are left on 2003 or 2007 as a matter of fact.
So what's the difference from the standpoint of unstructured and semi-structured content? Either clean up the mess now or later, or like many folks not at all. From this perspective, migration is a better choice to follow. Many migration tools have solid products that do what they say they do. Our products work alongside of them. The ability to mass move content is relatively straight forward. However, from an information governance approach, mass moving content results in the same problem of mismanaged content.
To migrate document collections effectively, the text content of each document needs to be searched to determine its value. This can't be done manually, as the volume is too high, and the consistency of human review and decision making is unreliable as well as costly. If manually processed, the security rights of the documents as they are moved to their new location must be applied. General migration tools cannot safeguard document confidentiality because they do not make intelligent taxonomy workflow decisions based on the text content of the individual document.
The way we do it, as content is migrated it is analyzed for organizationally defined descriptors and vocabularies, which will automatically classify the content to taxonomies, or optionally the SharePoint Term Store, and automatically apply organizationally defined workflows to process the content to the appropriate repository for review and disposition.
The end result is a highly effective approach to cleanse irrelevant or unnecessary documents, as well as to identify records that may not been declared or have potential privacy exposures.
Alas, as a vendor I wish everyone used our technologies for migration, but they don't. How do you approach this? If you are moving from 2003 or 2007 to SharePoint 2013 what would be the best method for you to strategically cleanse content before it available in your shiny new SharePoint 2013 environment?


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I posted this about a year ago. In the last month there has been a large outbreak of measles due to exposure at Disneyland. So, the time seemed appropriate to share this again.
Don't be an asshole. Don't be selfish and shortsighted. Give a damn about the people outside your front door. VACCINATE.
There's been several stories in the news the last couple of days about the public being exposed to preventable diseases like the measles in grocery stores or on public transit. The pockets of "isolated" outbreaks of disease we routinely vaccinate for are becoming less and less isolated and more and more frequent.
This enrages me.
Look, I know that parents need a lot less judging in this world but this is one subject where there isn't a gray area. There is right and there is wrong. The science proves it. The research shows it. Childhood mortality rates prove it. It's not an opinion. It's a FACT. And the fact is that vaccinating children saves lives and not vaccinating them doesn't.
Have you ever looked up what polio is like? Or measles? Or diphtheria? Or pertussis? They're horrible illnesses that killed hundreds of thousands before the advent of…
View original post 483 more words


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By Lars Landner
In 2002, the Swedish steel info activity strength (MITF) engaged the Environmental learn staff (MFG) to replace past monographs on copper, zinc and significant alloying metals (such as chromium, nickel and molybdenum) in society and within the atmosphere. This e-book offers new effects on steel fluxes from society to the surroundings, on steel speciation in water, soil and sediment, and its interpretation when it comes to mobility, organic uptake and toxicity. The clinical basics of latest methods, just like the Acid risky Sulphide (AVS) proposal to foretell steel bioavailability in sediments, and the Biotic Ligand version (BLM) to calculate the toxicity of metals to aquatic organisms, are significantly evaluated, with a spotlight on copper, nickel, zinc, and, partly, chromium.
Recent clinical advances now supply a much better figuring out of the mechanisms and elements controlling the problematic behaviour of hint metals, their interactions, uptake and influence in average structures. conventional possibility review tools frequently outfitted on particularly crude toxicity assessments performed in unrealistic "laboratory waters", and didn't think of usual stipulations. by contrast, sleek techniques now more and more contain the whole utilisation of site-specific components, that are decisive for the formation of bioavailable and poisonous steel varieties.
This e-book offers very good assistance to either scientists targeting the overview of the ecological possibility of metals, and to gurus, choice makers in undefined, academic employees and the public keen on the prevalence and destiny of hint metals.


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MONTREAL, September 14, 2016 – Sigma Energy Storage Inc. is proud to have received the National ENERGY GLOBE Award Canada 2016 at a networking event organised by ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA, the
Consulate General of Austria – Commercial Section, in collaboration with the Canadian German Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Montreal. This is the first time that the award, presented by Mr. Christian Lassnig, Consul and Trade Commissioner of Austria, was given to a Quebec company. The National ENERGY GLOBE Award for Canada serves to recognize the most innovative and environmentally impactful Canadian company in the green energy sector.
Mr. Lassnig commented, "The Sigma technology is a portable, climate-resistant thermomechanical system that integrates high-pressure compressed air energy storage with a proprietary hermal recovery system to store and distribute renewable energy. It provides the missing link between renewable energy generation and its practical use by consumers. We are excited to award the National ENERGY GLOBE Award Canada 2016 to such an innovative company, a sustainable initiative for a sustainable future!"
About the ENERGY GLOBE Award
With more than 170 participating countries and over 1500 project submissions annually the ENERGY GLOBE Award is today's most prestigious environmental prize worldwide. It distinguishes projects regionally, nationally and globally that conserve resources such as energy or utilize renewable or emission-free sources. The aim of the Energy Globe is to raise global attention on sustainable, everywhere applicable environmental solutions and to motivate people to also become active in this area.
About Sigma Energy Storage
Since its inception, Sigma Energy Storage has been working towards its goal of developing, building, and commercializing a cutting-edge green energy storage solution. This novel technology is a durable hybrid thermal-compressed air energy storage system (HT-CAES) that is suitable for use in the harsh Canadian climate. Sigma Energy Storage is currently building a 500 kW/ 2 MWh commercial-scale unit. A system of this size used in a diesel-dependent location will save upwards of 1000 tonnes of CO2e annually, while reducing the expense and environmental liability of shipping fuel through ecologically sensitive areas.
Sigma Energy Storage's hybrid thermal-compressed air energy storage technology can be applied in many contexts. In a grid or micro-grid powered by diesel generators, such as found in remote communities like the Magdalen Islands, it reduces fossil fuel consumption, also reducing associated GHG emissions and soot. Energy storage is also key to integrating renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, or tidal power.
Alongside its management team with extensive business experience, Sigma has a multidisciplinary tech and business development team combining expertise in mechanical and chemical engineering, physics, and project management to deliver a system that will provide more people better access to cleaner, more affordable energy, worldwide.
Sigma is currently undertaking a SDTC project; their SDTC consortium and wider knowledge network includes major research organizations and pan-Canadian industrial partners.
A First for Quebec: Sigma Energy Storage Receives National ENERGY GLOBE National Award Canada 2016


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Hole Outdoor Fire
Hole Outdoor Fire
A reserved niche, a timid opening in the ground. You hardly notice that it's there, but when the fire is burning the Hole is animated, displaying all its charm. Once the show is over it blends again with its surroundings, and you can even cover it and walk on it.
Hole is a wood fireplace for outdoor use. It springs from the idea of presenting only fire on the scene, concealing the place where it is housed. Earth and fire envelope the people around them with warmth and discretion. It can be installed anywhere, on any type of external surface. The fireplace is supplied with a cover to protect it when not in use.
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Budget Friendly Gift Guide
I wasn't going to do a gift guide because honestly I'M OVER THEM and it's not even Christmas yet. We have a full two-weeks left to go. But being a "Budget Friendly Blogger" has me feeling like it would be a good idea to share some of my favorite budget friendly buys.
These handmade gold chokers go with anything. They're a small company located out of Chicago and they look amazing layered for casual looks or for a fancy night out. At only $30-$40 these make the perfect gift for that person who seems to have everything.
I ordered this Quip toothbrush for my husband last year after he saw mine. I selfishly ordered only myself one at first, but realized right away we both needed them. For the traveler in your life, this makes the BEST travel toothbrush EVER! It's an electric toothbrush that doesn't take up a ton of space, and runs on a little AAA battery for 3 months. New toothbrush heads are mailed out every 3-months so you don't have to worry about the last time you changed it!
Accessories are always a win when it comes to budget friendly gifts. These Ily Mix scarves are the perfect addition to any stocking. For just over $20 you can get your best friend, sister, or anyone else that likes to stay warm, that perfect winter accessory! I teamed up with Ily Mix to feature this amazing checker scarf and can't wait to share it with you!
Why not give the gift of coffee!? A lovely holiday roast, roasted locally within your town is the perfect gift for that person in your life who loves supporting local and maybe needs a little pick me up! This Populace Coffee is amazing, and they ship too in case you don't have your own local roaster to buy from!


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It's time to run up the Rock! https://pokyxc.org/races-events/pebble-creek-mountain-run/Read More
2018 Potato Cup Video
Thanks to Todd Nunan for another great video from this year's Potato Cup. Virtually all racers have some coverage and there is a Fun Race mixed in. A lot of time went into this. please pass on your thanks to Todd next time you see him. 2018 Potato Cup VideoRead More
We ain't done yet!
Winter isn't over yet. If you haven't yet, take a look at the trail report. Better yet, go ski!Read More
Mink Creek Update
Things are grim. There are a few spots on Ermine and above and probably parts of the upper Race Loop and Canyon that are skiable if you navigate the thin and bare spots. Likely there won't be any grooming and the City of Pocatello is no longer staffing until things improve.Read More
Potato Cup Pictures
Posted by Valerie Gill - - News
Check out the pictures from Saturday's Potato Cup. All photos by Ron Gill.Read More


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NEO Global Development Highlights Progress Made in 2018 in Annual Report
NGD Annual Report 2018 wasn't shy of accepting that 2018 was a rough year.
In a new blog titled "The Darkest Hour is Just Before the Dawn," NEO Global Development highlighted the events and progress made throughout the year.
Da Hongfei, the NEO founder, stated in the opening line that the team is committed to its vision of a smart economy and aims to make NEO "the most developer-friendly public chain."
Crazy Market Helped Development
NEO accepted that the "extreme insane market sentiments" helped in popularizing the concept of blockchains, leading to the development of the industry.
NGD then thanked the NEO community for improving the NEO infrastructure.
It highlighted the works by old communities like CoZ as well as upcoming ones like the Chinese developer community- NEL, which worked on the game SDK development as well as the NEO Name Service (NNS). It also highlighted the works done by other communities like NEO Denver, Next, NSPCC, and Keymakers.
In 2018, NEO client NEO-CLI 2.6.0–2.9.3/NEO-GUI 2.6.0–2.9.0 were worked upon, which helps in eliminating forking risk and improving the stability of the consensus mechanism. NEP proposals NEP-6 to NEP-10 were written while NEP-5 to NEP-10 were implemented during the year.
It also introduced a new page for letting users file applications for consensus nodes in the network.
The NEO mainnet currently has seven consensus nodes, 2 of which are held by the City of Zion and Netherlands-based telecom company KPN. The NEO Foundation currently hosts the other five nodes.
Other NEO Developments
About a hundred dApps were built on NEO, registering a 3000% growth in 2018.
A detailed infographic layout of the ecosystem was created by NNT to highlight some projects.
NGD also hosted/sponsored over a hundred events in the last year, including the first NEO DevCon, the NEO blockchain game competition and more.
NGD also added new employees with 38 full-time workers engaged with it. The project also completed the 2-year anniversary of NEO mainnet. A detailed description of NEO's plans, events, and more can be found on their blog.
NEO Global Development Highlights Progress Made in 2018 in Annual Report was originally found on [blokt] – Blockchain, Bitcoin & copy trading cryptocurrency.


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Online Booking
Take advantage of our online booking service and reserve your rooms today, click here
You can also email us your reservation details at firstname.lastname@example.com
Phone Booking
Hotel Ameya offers you the convenience of booking a room over the telephone with the help of our travel advisors. Call us at 08433619689 all days of the week between 9 am to 7 pm.
Group Bookings
Wish to make a booking for 7 rooms or more? Please call us on 08433619689
Standard Terms & Conditions
Check In/Out
Check in & Check out time is 10am. Early arrival and late departure is subject to availability and charges.
Cancellation Policy:
• Any Cancellation received (for 3 Rooms & less) prior to 9 days of arrival will be refunded the full amount.
• Any Cancellation received (for 3 Rooms & less) prior to 8 days of arrival will incur the first night charge for each Room booked.
• Any Cancellation received (for 3 Rooms & less) prior to 3 days of arrival will incur the full period charge for all the Rooms booked
• Cancellation not allowed for 4 or more rooms
Refund Policy:
Hotel reserves the right to determine the amount of refund value incase of cancellation and amendments. The decision on the quantum of refund will be final as that made by Hotel. The refund will be made to the credit or debit card or account used by the user for making payment. It will take at most 15 days to process refunds for all services. There will be no refund for unutilised services unless specified. All cancellation and amendment charges will be applicable as per policies of the Hotel.
No Show Policy:
In-case of No-show 100% charge for the reservation will be applicable
What are the documents that are required during Check-in?
In keeping with our heightened security procedures we request you to kindly present the government approved photo identity proof with address of you and your companion(s) (if any) while checking-in. Foreign nationals are required to present their Passport and valid Visa. Indian nationals can present any one of these, which is mandatory: Passport, Driving License, Voter ID card, Aadhar Card bearing the holder's photograph and address.
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Here's what you can expect at Hotel Ameya:
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February Book Log
February 28, 2011
This was an odd reading month. I read a bunch of mid-length books, all of which were good, but nothing (except for the one short thing I read) really blew me away. Overall, a pretty decent month, I guess. I'll need to tackle at least one pretty big book this month.
1. Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff (4.5/5) – Consistency is what keeps this from being a five. There was one story that just wasn't quite great and another that was great, except for the last few pages, which were just a mess. Otherwise, this was an excellent collection of really interesting stories. Having read this and her other book (The Monsters of Templeton) I find myself looking forward to her next book. She an excellent writer.
2. The Chateau by William Maxwell (4/5) – I will start by saying that this is the weakest Maxwell I have read, but it was still really good. It tells the story of a kind of awkward American couple touring France in the aftermath of WWII. The fact that it is rather sprawling and occasionally seems to lack direction is appropriate and wouldn't drag the book down at all if there weren't a place somewhere in the middle where the sprawl gets to be just a bit too self-indulgent and bogs the book town. To be great, this needed to be about 40 or 50 pages shorter. It's still Maxwell, though. I could read his prose all day long.
3. Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout (4/5) – This is the second of Strout's books I've read, and I did like it better that Olive Kitterridge, which won her the Pulitzer. Much like the Maxwell, this book wants to be excellent, but is just a bit uneven. It really takes a while to get going, and there is some heavy foreshadowing that makes it seem like a slog at the beginning because what you know is going to happen is so much more interesting that what is currently happening. Once it gets going, though, this book is very compelling. Excellent ending, too.
4. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (4.5/5) – After much prompting from my friend Josh, I finally picked up some DFW. This book is very good. His vocabulary is absurd and he writes some seriously long sentences. Amazingly, however, he is self-deprecating and self-aware enough that he pretty much never comes off as pretentious. It is this awareness of the audiences needs that, while he is squarely post-modern (I think), keeps him from the pitfalls that so often spoil books of the oeuvre. I will probably pick up one of his ridiculously long novels before too long, though, frankly, the thought frightens me.
5. Proof by David Auburn (5/5) – I'm trying to read more plays so I can get a better sense of the genre for teaching my writing classes. So far, so good. This play was a fantastic exploration of mental illness. What amazed me most was that Auburn manages to imply so much. It would take a conventional fiction writer several hundred pages to get across everything he does in 80 pages. He also conquers the challenge of writing about math without being a mathematician himself, a technical challenge I can certainly relate to.
Spring Book Queue Update:
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
The Chateau by William Maxwell
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
A Gesture Life by Chang Rae Lee
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Zoli by Colum McCann
Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien
Daugther of Fortune by Isabelle Allende
Libra by Don DeLillo
Why Unions are Good for America
February 23, 2011
The Midwest is rife with labor protests right now as various Republican-dominated state legislatures try to take power away from unions. They are doing this, they say, for the Good of the People. Taking power from unions will balance budgets. Attract industry. We will live in a better place if we can just get rid of those awful unions.
I am a proud union member, and I don't understand why so many people have come to view unions with such disdain. That isn't to say I don't understand what Republican politicians have against them (we'll get to that), but I don't understand why the average working person has a problem with them.
If you are reading this, you probably know that before unions, work was dismal for the average American. Your employer, in general, did not care about you. You were paid as little as they could pay you and still have enough people to do the work. Safety was a non-concern. You were a cog. You were meat. You were disposable.
"So what?" you say (at least, if your are a Republican, this is probably what you say). This is America. Anyone can rise to the top. You just have to be willing to work for it.
I say again: Horseshit.
Certainly, it is conceivable that anyone can rise to a place of power with enough effort and enough luck (let us not forget luck, too many people fall into the trap of believing they deserve their luck). But everyone can't. You can't have a nation of CEOs and professional athletes. The world doesn't work that way. Someone has to sell shoes and build roads and teach children. Someone has to do the things that actually allow us to exist as a society. This is why unions are good for the country.
Unions acknowledge that we are not all wealthy and powerful. That no matter what we do, we will never all be powerful and wealthy. But we are still human. We still have needs and dignity. If we band together we become powerful. We gain agency over our lives. Unions allow us to do this.
I don't know if you are part of a union or not, but if you're not, think about it for a minute.
Right now, your boss can fire you because he or she doesn't like your shoes or your politics or because you drink Pepsi instead of Coke or for no reason at all. You could be the best worker at your job, but if the boss decides to fire you, there's nothing you can do. Does this seem fair?
Right now, your company can tell you in the same presentation that the company had record profits this year, but that there is no money for raises or bonuses (I lived that one once upon a time). Does this seem fair?
You are still meat.
If you have any doubt about how much top level executives value you, go look at the labor they use overseas. Go look at how children are enslaved so products can be a few cents cheaper in America. The only difference between you and those children is luck. You were born in a country where, thanks largely to unions, there are laws that prevent companies from abusing there employees in quite such an egregious way.
Something you'll notice if you look around the world is that countries where the workers receive the best treatment are the countries where the workers have the most power. Call me a socialist, but it's true. You will also notice, if you look closely, that where labor is legitimately powerful, the standard of living tends to be very high (go take a look at co-determination and where it's practiced).
What I am saying, in so many words is this: Unions are not the problem. Labor is not the problem. Greed is the problem. Corporate and political corruption are the problem. No one can work hard enough to "deserve" the kind of wealth the people in charge accumulate. You want to talk about hard work? Fine. Let's talk about my father.
My father was dirt poor when he was growing up. For a long time, they did not have plumbing. At dinner, sometimes, they started with the youngest (he was the fourth child of nine) and if there was food left when the pot got you, you got to eat. My dad has dyslexia, but it wasn't diagnosed until it was too late to do much good. But he worked hard. He worked in a factory (with a union). The company made forgings. It was hot, dirty, awful work. There were times when he worked 12 hour days six or seven days a week for months. He worked first shift. He worked second shift. He worked third shift. He did whatever was asked of him. Eventually, he did get a promotion. He left the union and became part of management. He retired after 30+ years working for the same company. The point of this story is not whether or not the union did my dad any good (though, undoubtedly it did). The point is that my dad is not a millionaire. He and my mom are very comfortable. They don't want for anything, but they are not obscenely wealthy. However, if it is really true that all it takes is hard work, as so many Republicans want to claim, they should own a tropical island. So where is it?
The way unions and labor are being portrayed by conservatives is simply wrong. I'm not saying unions are perfect. Corruption happens everywhere, but the solution is not to take power from the workers and give it to the often extremely corrupt and greedy CEOs and politicians. Labor needs more power than it has. If employees were given more say in how a company is run and how workers are treated, then we would be a better nation. A stronger nation.
If the current trend continues and workers continue to lose power and wealth continues to concentrate at the top, it will become harder and harder to get anywhere, no matter how hard you work. Stories like that of my parents will become a thing of the past (without a union, it's doubtful my dad could have afforded to stay at what would have been a painfully low paying job long enough to get a promotion). People will work until they drop dead – never having had the chance to save a dime – while a select few who were lucky enough to be born into the right circumstances live absurd and opulent lifestyles. This is not the America I grew up in, and it's not an America I want to live in.
Keeping Brick and Mortar Stores in Business
February 22, 2011
More than just about anything else I've written on this blog, I should preface this post by saying that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. I'm presenting ideas that are based almost exclusively on personal observation.
Last week, Borders announced it was filing for bankruptcy. Correspondingly, on Saturday our nearest Borders announced its going out of business sale. No one who spends any kind of time shopping for books and music is surprised by this. All I can say for them is that they send out some pretty decent coupons, but otherwise Cate and I avoid shopping there. Borders is a terrible store. Nearly every one I've ever been in has been horribly organized and their customer service has never been great. That's not what did them in though.
Borders is the book equivalent of a big box store. They rely on the consumer believing that they have everything. Of course, they don't have everything. Cate and I have often failed at using the awesome coupons they send out because, well, they just didn't have anything we really wanted. Add to that that Border's is often significantly more expensive than Amazon, and you're forced to wonder if it's even worth going to the store in the first place.
This is the same problem that a local music store (Ear X-tacy) ran into recently. They were something of an institution, but now they're struggling to survive because everyone just downloads music or orders from the internet or whatever.
Ear X-tacy and Borders both want to be all things to all customers, but they can't be. You can't stock every book. You can't stock every album. There are too many. What you have to be willing to do, if you want a presence in the physical marketplace, is to become boutique.
What does this mean? It means you acknowledge that you can't stock everything. Instead, you appeal to the educated consumer. A local bookstore (Carmichael's) has mastered this. Their fiction section, for instance, is excellent. Does Borders have more fiction titles? Of course, but Carmichael's survives because they stock the right titles. They don't, for example, stick Ralph Ellison next to some unfortunate African-American erotica just because both authors happen to be black. They don't even bother with the erotica. This means that people like me will go there because they've already separated a lot of the wheat from the chaff. Discovering new writers is hard, especially when there is so much trash out there. If I want to do all that work myself, well, I can just go to Amazon.
The second part of knowing what to stock is realizing that while, yes you have to stock Justin Beiber if you're a music store and Dan Brown if you're a bookstore, you better find plenty of space for the Jenny Lewises and William Maxwells of the world.
I'll end this with a story that illustrates my point: Cate and I tried hard to support Ear X-tacy. If we could buy something there we did, but then Robert Cray put out an album. And they didn't have it. Derek Trucks put out a new album. And they didn't have it. Finally, Jenny Lewis put out a new album. And they didn't have that either. None of these are huge mainstream artists, but they are artists that you have to carry if you're catering to music fans and not people who listen to top 40 radio on the way to work. We looked around and realized their selection wasn't really any different from your local FYE. After the last incident, we stopped shopping there. It wasn't worth the trip anymore. If they cared about my business, they'd stock music you can't hear on the radio. Amazon has it cheaper anyway.
Holding Parents Accountable
February 12, 2011
I have complained a number of times about how it is unfair to hold schools accountable for all student performance because it ignores extenuating circumstances that typically come down to parents not really doing the job. A while ago, Cate sent me a link to this news story about a Florida law that, if enacted would have teachers give parents a grade. A nice idea, but very obviously flawed. It will never be enacted, of course, but if it were, it would just create problems. Most bad parents don't really care. That's why they're bad.
All this did get me to thinking, though. The primary problem in assessing schools is that the more students you have who are "at risk" (as in, their basic needs aren't being met), the worse your school tends to do on standardized testing. It's the great and obvious inequality in the school assessment system. (An aside: not all at risk kids are really at risk. There are many parents who do a great job, but for reasons beyond their control don't have much money. Their kids are technically labeled "at risk," but I'm not talking about them in this post. I'm talking about the parents who fall asleep on the job.) So, I wondered what could be done to level the playing field, and this is what I came up with:
I mentioned in an earlier post that, generally speaking, it should be unacceptable for a student to ever make anything below a C. This is because there are numerous levels in high school. If a child really has a hard time with math or English, then that child can take a lower level class that will typically teach at the student's level. Basically, it is not required that each student fill his or her schedule with AP classes. Along these lines, I have a proposal to fix the school assessment system. It goes like this:
No school shall be held accountable for the test scores of any student with more than one below C grade in the past academic year unless incompetent instruction is shown.
Pretty simple, right? Now let me break it down. The first thing you probably think is that schools would just start giving bad grades to all but the brightest kids. I don't think this is true. Most parents are involved enough that they are going to complain if their child is receiving unfair grades. Additionally, very few teachers are corrupt in this manner. I'm not saying abuse can't occur in this system, but I don't think it's nearly as likely as you would at first believe.
Plus, there is that provision about incompetent instruction. I think it is fair, in this instance, to shift the burden of proof to the parents because if their children are doing so poorly in school, chances are it has something to do with what is going on at home. This is not something a teacher can control. However, I should be clear about what constitutes incompetent instruction. it's not just what goes on in the classroom. Part of the job of every teacher is to get in contact with the parents of struggling students and see what needs to be done. We should be held accountable for this and it's fairly easy to prove whether we're doing it or not. That said, I can't count the number to times I've heard something along the lines of, "I don't know what to do with him either," when speaking to a parent. That is not good enough, thus the rule.
Will this ever be implemented? No, of course not. People don't want to be responsible and the great thing about scapegoating teachers is that it reduces the number of people who are responsible for their actions. Everyone gets to say of their poorly performing children: "Damn schools, they are not getting the job done." I think it's fair for the schools to start asking if the parents are either.
Girls and Boys and Writing
February 2, 2011
Today, VIDA published this very interesting study of women and men in literary magazines. Each magazine gets two pie charts, one for bylines and one for book reviews. You can probably guess how it turns out. Upon seeing this, I thought, "okay, time to write that post about my students and gender and writing…
Several weeks ago, I noticed something. My creative writing students had just turned in their short stories (okay, they had turned in their stories a while ago) and I was finally getting around to grading them and I saw a pretty startling inconsistency. As you would expect, all of the boys wrote stories from male perspectives, however, only about half the girls wrote from the female perspective. I thought this was an interesting comment about how the male voice is still overwhelmingly dominant in our culture. Then I gave some assignments to my English class…
Over the course of a week, my classes read several persuasive and informational articles. Some written by men, some by women. When they were asked to answer questions about the author's goals for the piece, many of the students (both male and female) didn't bother to check the byline and assumed that the writer was male. Unsurprisingly, no one accidentally called a male writer by the feminine pronouns.
One of the articles they read was a point-counterpoint kind of thing about whether or not women should be allowed in combat. You can probably see where this is going. The overwhelming majority of boys (I would guess about 90%) said no. The overwhelming majority of girls (a slightly lower 75% or so) said yes. What was most disturbing was how the boys had no sense of the female perspective in their answers. It was all about wanting the girls to be "safe at home" or "out of harms way." Patriarchy much?
And now, of course, there's the study I linked above. It should not come as any surprise, I suppose, but it's still disappointing. My students aren't newborns, but they are still young, and already an unfortunate majority have been taught that it is the male voice that has power and the male voice that you use if you want to be listened to.
It makes me sad.


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A reading of a classic dramatic monologue
'Porphyria's Lover' is one of Browning's first great poems, written when he was in his early twenties. It is also one of the first great dramatic monologues in English verse, the 1830s being the decade in which Browning and Tennyson developed the genre, penning a series of classic poems which see the poet adopting a persona and 'staging' a soliloquy given by an (often unreliable) speaker. Here, the speaker is the titular lover of the girl, Porphyria. Before we proceed to an analysis of 'Porphyria's Lover', here's a reminder of Browning's poem.
Porphyria's Lover
The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
Although we know it now as 'Porphyria's Lover', Browning's poem didn't acquire that title until 1863, nearly thirty years after he wrote it: originally it appeared as 'Porphyria' in the Monthly Repository (1836), then, in Browning's 1842 volume Dramatic Lyrics, it appeared as a two-parter with another far less famous monologue, 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation', under the title 'Madhouse Cells'. These earlier, discarded titles for the poem provide some clues as to how we should analyse it: the focus was initially on the doomed and murdered girl, then it was the speaker's madness that was emphasised, and finally, it was the speaker himself who was placed centre-stage – though not under his own name (which we never learn) but merely as Porphyria's lover, i.e. his relation to the lover he strangles. 'Lover', of course, given the fact that he kills the girl, is meant to make us reflect on the speaker's state of mind. How can he 'love' her if he is willing to wring the life from her? But then didn't Othello suffocate Desdemona for 'love', albeit jealous, selfish, twisted and perverted love?
What's more, how should we read the word 'lover'? Is the love returned? The speaker of the dramatic monologue may love Porphyria, and she, we are told, 'worshiped' the speaker – but then should we take the speaker's word for it? Perhaps he is deluded (he may, after all, be mad), or perhaps he is lying to us and Porphyria does not worship or love him. Browning's first attempt at a dramatic monologue establishes one of the key features of the form in his hands: namely, the only source we have for the poem's action is the speaker, and we have no choice but to take his (faulty) word for it that what we are being told is true.
Another key aspect of the dramatic monologue which we can find in 'Porphyria's Lover' is the idea of the confession: the speaker is addressing us and telling us what happened in an attempt to explain and justify himself and his actions. Yet one of the most remarkable things about this poem is how few answers the speaker's confession actually provides: we remain unsure as to why he murdered Porphyria, what her precise relation to him was (lover, sister, sister and lover, or perhaps even, in one analysis, figment of his overheated imagination?), and what he means by that final line: 'And yet God has not said a word!' Did he expect to be struck down for committing such an evil deed? Or – mad as he may be – was he even expecting God to congratulate or reward him for killing this woman when she was 'mine, mine, fair, / Perfectly pure and good'?
It would be dangerous to propose firm answers to these questions, for the very good reason that Browning leaves them unresolved so that we are left scratching our heads over the motive of the killer and his relation to Porphyria. How often have we heard or read in the news about a murder and wondered why the killer did it, and whether he knew his victim? Indeed, Browning appears to have been inspired to write 'Porphyria's Lover' after reading an account of a murder included in John Wilson's 'Extracts from Gosschen's Diary', which was published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1818. Browning's friend, the now forgotten poet Bryan Procter (1787-1874), wrote an 1820 poem, 'Marcian Colonna', based on 'Extracts from Gosschen's Diary' – and it was Procter who added the detail of the killer sitting up all night with his victim after he has committed the murder.
Yet we can work from internal details Browning gives us in the poem to a tentative analysis of the speaker's psychology and his (possible) motives for killing Porphyria. We know he acts impulsively, for he tells us 'surprise / Made my heart swell, and still it grew / While I debated what to do.' But even here there's some ambiguity: he may have already resolved to kill her, making this an act of premeditated murder, but he simply hasn't planned how he is to carry it out. Alternatively, the decision to kill her may be one that he has made on the spot, carried away as he is in the moment. And the 'moment' is crucial:
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I would
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her.
The suddenness and directness of those last three words, arriving after the tortuous and roundabout syntax of the previous line, catches us by surprise, as 'string' is manipulated into 'strangled', a twist of the word 'string' that echoes the twisting of her strings of hair to fashion a gruesome noose or garrotte. It seems to be that this brief moment of total possession – even if it is only imagined possession – is so perfect that it needs to be preserved, and the only way to keep Porphyria as she is, at the height of her adulation and adoration, is to snuff out her existence at this moment. Next, the killer's justification:
No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
The man doth protest too much: somehow the surety of the second line with its repeated assertion of a painless death weakens rather than strengthens the claim in the first. What Browning's poem demands of us is that we treat his speaker's words with a pinch of salt, analytically appraising them and regarding his claims with suspicion.
If you found this analysis of 'Porphyria's Lover' interesting, you might also enjoy our short introduction to Browning's life and our pick of Browning's best poems.


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NYC Times Square "Free Hugs" Original Painting
NYC Times Square "Free Hugs" Original Painting
Times Square "Free Hugs"
Times Square gets two paintings simply for the amount of activity that goes on there at any given day. This painting is based on a trip I took during Christmas break one year. There, among the costumed characters looking for cash, the "Naked Cowboy", and the various street vendors, on this evening was a guy holding a sign "Free Hugs". Depending on your amount of suspicion and outlook on life, this guy was either up to no good, or could apparently offer no good, as very few would take him up on his offer. Was he some deviant getting his kicks from "free hugs"? Was he looking to lift wallets while the hugs ensued? Was he performing street theater? Or genuinely offering a hug to someone who needed it on this particular day? We'll never know. And truth be told, to most New Yorkers who have seen it all, they probably didn't even notice him.
NOTE: Canvas prints require approximately one week for manufacturing. This is in addition to shipping time.
About the NYC Pop Art series
NYC is a unique place. It's been a place of school, work and play over the years that I have lived just outside this city. At times there have been equal parts intrigue and frustration. I have a host of memories spanning the mundane of walking city blocks to get to a job, circling for lengthy time periods on unfortunate occasions looking for parking, and magical moments of taking in the Christmas festivities of Rockefeller Center.
Aside from the lights and action of Times Square, the city has a pretty drab color palette. Grey, brown, black, tan… it often does not match the energy the city actually gives off. So I decided to create a Pop Art series of NYC scenes (mostly taken from snapshots over the years) that would depict the city opposite of what you would actually see visually. I replaced the muted colors for a much more vibrant ones. I created buildings and architecture in loose lines as opposed to the precise, exacting lines that actually exist. It's an alternate reality NYC captured with mood and energy.


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5 Big Post-Cliff Investing Questions/
Now that Washington has talked American investors down from the fiscal cliff, what will be the market's next obsession? And how might people invest for a new normal where tax rates have been decided, but everything from worldwide growth to the fate of Europe's economy remains in flux?
Stocks surged on the first day of the year in a global sigh of relief that the U.S. economy will not go over the precipice after Congress compromised on curtailing recession-threatening spending cuts (for now) and tax increases.
Now that we're over the cliff, what are the biggest worries for investors looking to make more than zero on their money? Here are five key questions and answers, from fund managers and analysts, that will matter in 2013.
1. Will the tech sector recover its sizzle? Put another way, will Apple, the Company Formerly Known as the World's Most Valuable, find its way back to favor with investors? Its products are still cherished by consumers, and it sits on the topmost shelf of global brand names. But it became a dark star for tech stocks last September as its falling price dragged the entire sector lower. A related question: Will investors ever embrace Facebook after its IPO flop?


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BUSINESS HOURS : Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr 8:30am - 5:00pm
As we all learned in sex-ed, when a man ejaculates, he releases semen. Anytime a man ejaculates sooner than he or his partner desires during intercourse, it is called Premature Ejaculation, or PE. Similar, but slightly different is Rapid Ejaculations. This is when a man climaxes early on an occasional basis. Having PE can be incredibly frustrating for a man and can lead to difficulties in his sexual relationship with his partner. It goes without saying that this also affects how enjoyable sex can be. At the Oklahoma Men's clinic, we know this is an extremely personal problem and you may find it difficult to find someone to talk to about this. Call our staff and be confident that we can provide not only expert advice but also keep it strictly confidential.
You may think you are the only one afflicted with PE, but that's not true. Approximately 1 in every 3 men over the age of 18 has an issue with Premature Ejaculation. You may have heard from others that this condition is just "in your head." Medical science research believes however this is quite likely a physical problem.
Medical science still hasn't determined exactly why some men physically have PE while others never experience it. Some science seems to suggest that Serotonin may be a factor. This natural substance produced by nerves has been found to increase the amount of time until ejaculation, if levels are high. If the levels are low, the brain can trigger a forced premature ejaculation.
In some men, the nerve endings in their penis are highly sensitive. As a result, the time it takes to achieve a climax is much shorter than the average. Research suggests these nerve endings are much closer to the surface to the skin, leaving them more exposed for stimulation. These unusually sensitive nerve endings can quickly deliver an ejaculation before a man knows what is going on. This can be a key cause to someone's PE problems.
Age is a common reason given for PE. However, men with PE aren't limited to a certain age. It can happen in men of all ages. Studies show natural aging is not a key contributor to PE. With that in mind however, as men become older their firmness during an erection can decrease. These changes can naturally lead a man of advanced age to ejaculate earlier.
Keep in mind that PE isn't something only you have to deal with, but it also affects your sexual partner. It isn't uncommon to lose feelings of closeness between a man and his sexual partner. Feelings of shame or anger can put serious stress on a relationship or even break it. These hurt feelings and feeling disconnected from each other is something we definitely want to help you avoid.
The providers at the Oklahoma Men's Clinic began using TriMed therapy to treat our patients with PE. We have found the experience with this treatment and PE has been absolutely amazing. A man and his sexual partner decide the duration of intercourse with this therapy. With our partner and as a couple, you both choose the length of time you stay erect. You will never be concerned about the loss of firmness of your erection after ejaculation.
Other treatments often use desensitizing creams or sprays on the penis. Applied before intercourse, the general idea is to cause the penis to have less sensation and therefore last longer. However, if you leave them on to long, you may run the chance of losing your erection. In addition, when you penetrate your partner, that cream or spray will rub off onto them also. This will like desensitize your partner as well meaning no one will enjoy an orgasm during your intimate time.
Our providers at the Oklahoma Men's Clinic will chart in detail any and all medications you are taking. They review your medical history, condition history, and review any surgeries or conditions you may have or had. A Doppler ultrasound will be conducted on your penis to make sure there are no blood flow problems. In addition we will provide a Futurex BMI (Body Mass Index) evaluating your current fat levels and the possible impact on your condition. Finally we will do blood work to cross off any unseen conditions off of our extensive list. After this thorough examination, we will give you our best recommendation regarding your condition. The providers at the Oklahoma Men's Clinic have about a 97% success rate when treating men with PE. We are immensely confident we can help you and invite you to come in and talk to us if you have any questions about PE or RE. We are here to help.


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Scorpio (October 23 – November 21):
This month has the right amount of intensity for you. I guarantee you will not be bored! Internal or external tensions could stretch you beyond your comfort zone; you will change as a result. You could start to feel a shift stirring from within on July 12, when the solar eclipse opposes Pluto, the planet associated with your sign. The twelfth is a day of realizations and awakenings when you could discover hidden information. You know that saying, "The truth will set you free?" Well, keep that in mind, as any discovery will eventually liberate you from life situations that have held you back.
Travel is a big theme this month, whether you are leaving town for a vacation or planning one in the future. Business trips early in the month could result in opportunities after July 20. The further you go, the more you expand your horizons.
On July 10, Jupiter stations direct in your sign, and you might have a chance to revisit career opportunities that didn't manifest as expected earlier this year. This turning point for you could allow you to gain more recognition for your talents. The universe could aim a spotlight on you after July 22, when the sun shines its light on your career sector. However, that also means others could take notice if you act out of integrity or err in some way. Therefore, be conscious in all you do.
Relationships will have ups and downs this month, thanks to Mars (your traditional ruling planet) in retrograde and Uranus in your seventh house of relationships. If you are single, you might find your wishes and desires in flux right now. For those who want life partners, being single is a sacred time during which you grow and change. Honor that time, and focus on you. For those of you involved in relationships, watch your temper with your partner. We are all a more sensitive this month with the Cancer Sun and eclipse season. Find a balance between your work and personal life, and take time for yourself whenever possible.