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Regulatory pressures and the global move toward reduction in unnecessary energy use continue to push energy conservation in virtually every sector of the economy.
In the past few years, electric utility companies have used demand side management programs to reduce electric energy demand. As part of the overall strategy, they applied incentives in the form of energy rebates. In many cases, utilities worked in conjunction with contractors to recommend products and value-added services to commercial and industrial customers.
At this time, retrofit projects continue to happen despite the reduction in utility incentives and energy rebates. It is not necessary for energy users to wait and see if utility deregulation will lower rates enough before doing a lighting retrofit. You can finance many retrofits in such a way that the energy savings more than pays for the cost of the new lighting system. In some cases, the building owner can even enjoy a positive cash flow.
Electrical contractors can take heart from this news. You can still make money by proposing viable retrofits. Let's look at fluorescent lighting systems. Specifically, it is worthwhile reviewing fluorescent lighting technology because of recent improvements in both lamps and ballast components.
The standard T12 40W lamp, used in the industry since the inception of the fluorescent lamp, has given ground to the 32W T8, high color rendering index (CRI) lamp. And the T8 lamp gains its highest performance when served by an electronic ballast (EB), which offers substantial improvements in performance and reliability, compared with the 60-Hz operation of a core and coil magnetic ballast.
Another important characteristic of an EB is the ability to serve the lamps at various light outputs. Ballast factor (BF) achieves this. BF is the percentage of lumens from a lamp operated by the actual ballast compared with the lumens from the same lamp type operating with a test bench or laboratory standard ballast. Thus, an EB can have a low (around 70%), normal (around 85% to 95%), or high (above 100%) ballast factor. Here are the details: * Partial-output electronic ballasts. Low or partial output EBs are useful when you desire reduced illumination, such as a computer-intensive office where delamping (which is simply the removal of one or more lamps) of existing fixtures achieves the 20 to 30 footcandles recommended for the ambient component of a task/ambient lighting system. Thus, while delamping alone can result in uneven luminaire brightness, a reduced-output electronic ballast can provide uniform reduced luminaire brightness across the entire luminaire aperture and also deliver the appropriate amount of illumination on task surfaces. * Full output electronic ballasts. In nearly every fluorescent lighting system, a full-output electronic ballast can replace a core and coil magnetic ballast. Where feasible, the use of three- and four-lamp ballasts instead of two-lamp ballasts can save money (material, labor, and energy costs). In applications with two-lamp luminaires, consider tandem-wiring a pair of two-lamp luminaires to share a single four-lamp ballast. In this situation, find out what the manufacturer recommends as the maximum lead length between the lamp sockets and ballast for reliable operation.
Keep in mind many T8 electronic ballasts have unique wiring diagrams. Become familiar with the wiring diagram for a brand you are using for the first time; this will prevent the possibility of problems later.
In 1994, a performance standard for electronic ballasts, ANSI C82.11-1993, High Frequency Fluorescent Lamp Ballasts, was issued. This standard established, as a maximum value, a 32% total harmonic distortion (THD). Most of the electronic ballasts used today have a 20% THD, although some products are available with a THD in the range of 5%. While this low harmonic level has no effect on the power consumed, it may have a very positive effect within the power system since this reduces the total harmonics present.
Other ballast choices Since not every project requires the use of electronic ballasts, contractors should also consider the application of hybrid magnetic ballasts. Also called a cathode disconnect ballast, this unit is a standard magnetic ballast that removes power to the cathode heater circuits (the lamp filaments) after the fluorescent lamps are lit. This results in an additional 2W savings per lamp during operation. This type of ballast, which is about $4 less expensive than an EB, is suitable for all two-lamp ballast applications with 4-ft T8, T10, or T12 rapid-start fluorescent lamps.
In a room or space where electromagnetic interference (EMI) from an EB is a potential problem (proximity to sensitive electronic equipment) the hybrid magnetic ballast-with a slightly lower EMI-should be considered. You should not use the hybrid ballast, which is available as either a full-output or partial-output model, in any dimming application or with 32W heater cutout type lamps.
Upgrading commercial lighting systems When owners face the prospect of upgrading a commercial lighting system, they can follow either of two approaches: * Remove old fixtures and replace them with new fixtures that better serve the application, such as a direct/indirect luminaire type. * Retrofit the old fixtures with new ballasts (lamps) and perhaps lenses.
Retrofitting an existing luminaire can involve delamping accompanied by the use of higher output lamps, a reflector, and the cleaning of the luminaire interior surface.
While the number of lamps removed directly determines light level reduction, there is also another factor to consider. In an enclosed luminaire, de-lamping will bring a 5% to 10% increase in efficacy (lumens per watt), because the lamps operate cooler within the enclosure, and there are fewer lamps to block the total lumen output of the fixture.
Delamping may not be suitable for series-wired, two-lamp luminaires where the removal of one lamp extinguishes the other. In such cases, consider installing a partial-output (low ballast factor) electronic ballast to operate both lamps at reduced wattage and reduced output.
Several new lens patterns developed in the past 10 years improve appearance ...when you delamp fixtures in overlit spaces. Such reductions in light levels also further accentuate uneven light levels, so these lenses "fill in" dark areas at task level by more widely distributing the light, while "hiding" the shadows in fixtures where lamps are removed. Other lenses cut VDT screen glare by narrowing beam spread in one plane (oriented perpendicular to the screens) while widening it in the other, filling in potential dark areas to the sides of VDT operators.
These asymmetrical distribution flat lenses have proven useful during lighting upgrades and for new fixtures equipped with special reflector designs. Specular reflectors, for example, can make lighting fixtures appear more glary (even when they do not change the spacing to mounting height), but adding such a widespread lens can reduce the fixture's apparent brightness while distributing light more evenly.
Two more accessory products are available for both existing and new fixtures. Developed to allow re-use of existing (but poorly spaced) fluorescent pendant fixtures, a specular reflector with widespread distribution along with a lamp socket relocation device raises the spacing to mounting height (S/MH) ratio of a fixture from the usual 1:2 up to 1:5.
The second product is a lens that looks like an upside-down pyramid stretched along one axis. The lens has up to 40% more surface area than a flat lens of the same width. The ends of the lens also angle to alter the light distribution.
A basement hallway used for locker storage is an application suited for these two products. The existing two-lamp recessed one-by-four fixtures were up to 18 ft apart in a 10-ft ceiling, delivering a 6:1 ratio of illumination, when measured at floor level under and between fixtures.
A widespread specular reflector was added dropping the light level ratio to about 2:1, thus greatly reducing the horizontal fc variations. When the pyramid lens was added, the ratio of illumination was further reduced to a desirable 1:1.
Economical dimming of fluorescent lamps. Saving energy with dimmable ballasts requires careful coordination and proper equipment selection.
Dimming control options - Controllable electronic fluorescent ballasts vary the light output based on a signal from an external device.
The 10-0VDC control system is rapidly becoming the industry standard for continuous dimming of T8 fluorescent lamps from 100% to 20% output, and these ballasts are available presently only in the two-lamp configuration. Because these latest dimming ballasts are quite cost-effective, their applications are expanding. At 20% of full light output (maximum dimming), the system efficacy drops from about 84 lumens per watt (LPW) to about 58 LPW. Note that a 70% reduction in power consumption accompanies this 80% reduction in light output. Systems that dim down to a 1% light level are more expensive.
The external control device can be a manual wallbox control, photoelectric light sensor, occupancy sensor, or system controller. All of these control devices send a low-voltage signal to the ballast using two control input leads, one with violet color; the other with gray color to the conductor insulation. When more than one device is controlling the ballast output (for example, a photosensor and an occupancy sensor), you can use an integrated load controller to determine the appropriate signal to send to the ballast.
A dimming ballast achieves maximum lamp life by controlling minimum lamp current, lamp starting, cathode voltage, and lamp current crest factor (LCCF). LCCF is the ratio of peak lamp current to RMS lamp current. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recommends less than a 1.7 LCCF for T8 lamps.
Many buildings have started using occupancy sensor and timers to turn lights off in areas of intermittent occupancy, such as corridors, stairs, library stacks, and rest rooms. At the outset, engineers and designers debated whether instant-start or rapid-start electronic ballasts were better to use with these control devices. Studies indicate instant-start ballasts will provide maximum energy savings, but rapid-start ballasts are the economical choice when the lighting loads are turned on and off frequently. Because this choice is concerned with shortened lamp life caused by frequent lamp starts, using either a stepped ballast (50% output) or 20% to 100% variable ballast would also be appropriate.
Selling successful retrofits to upper management is not only important, it is critical. But before starting the process, prepare the following: * Expertise: Become as skilled in energy-saving lighting as you and your firm are in general electrical installation. * Training: Learn about technologies that will provide the best strategy. *Time: Several presentations on design and modifications may be necessary before you conclude the sale, so be prepared to devote sufficient time to the effort.
Suggested Reading EC&M books: Practical Guide to Electrical Energy Efficiency & Reduced Costs; Order #5844. Practical Guide to Modern Lighting Techniques; Order #4783 For ordering information, call (800) 543-7771.


text:
Author Page
Christina Z. Randolph
Contributor's Topics
Contact details forTel: +1 314 552-6155
Thompson Coburn LLP
Thompson Coburn LLP
Fax: +1 202 585-6969
1909 K Street N.W. Suite 600
Washington, DC
United States
Washington, DC
United States
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
How to Get Rid of a File or Folder in Windows 8
Sooner or later, you'll want to delete a file in Windows 8 that's no longer important — yesterday's lottery picks, for example, or a particularly embarrassing digital photo. To delete a file or folder, right-click its name or icon. Then choose Delete from the pop-up menu. This surprisingly simple trick works for files, folders, shortcuts, and just about anything else in Windows.
To delete in a hurry, click the offending object and press the Delete key. Dragging and dropping a file or folder to the Recycle Bin does the same thing.
The Delete option deletes entire folders, including any files or folders stuffed inside those folders. Make sure that you select the correct folder before you choose Delete.
After you choose Delete, Windows tosses a box in your face, asking whether you're sure. If you're sure, click Yes. If you're tired of Windows' cautious questioning, right-click the Recycle Bin, choose Properties, and remove the check mark next to Display Delete Confirmation Dialog. Windows now deletes any highlighted items whenever you — or an inadvertent brush of your shirt sleeve — press the Delete key.
Be extra sure that you know what you're doing when deleting any file that has pictures of little gears in its icon. These files are usually sensitive hidden files, and the computer wants you to leave them alone. (Other than that, they're not particularly exciting, despite the action-oriented gears.)
Icons with little arrows in their corner are shortcuts — push buttons that merely load files. Deleting shortcuts deletes only a button that loads a file or program. The file or program itself remains undamaged and still lives inside your computer.
As soon as you find out how to delete files, which explains several ways to undelete them. (Hint for the desperate: Open the Recycle Bin, right-click your file's name, and choose Restore.)
For more information about Windows 8 and its features, explore Windows 8 For Dummies, available online.


text:
Export 1633 results:[ Author] Type Year
Filters: Working_papers is wp2_summary.shtml [Clear All Filters]
"Sources of human insecurity in the face of hydro-climatic change", Global Environmental Change, 2013.,
"Introduction to the Symposium on 'New' Policy Instruments in the European Union", Public Administration, vol. 81, pp. 509-511, 2003.,
"Instrument Innovation in an Environmental Lead State: 'New' Environmental Policy Instruments in the Netherlands", Environmental Politics, vol. 12, pp. 157-178, 2003.,
"Instrument Innovation in an Environmental Lead State: 'New' Environmental Policy Instruments in the Netherlands.", in New Instruments of Environmental Governance, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 157-178.,
"New Policy Instruments in the European Union: Better Governance or Rhetorical Smoke?", Public Administration, vol. 81, pp. 509-606, 2003.,
"Climate variability and rural livelihoods: assessing the impact of seasonal climate forecasts in Lesotho", Area, vol. 35, pp. 403-417, 2003.,
"Contributions and source identification of biogenic and anthropogenic hydrocarbons to secondary organic aerosols at Mt. Tai in 2014 ", 2017.,
"Study on the Traffic Air Pollution inside and outside a Road Tunnel in Shanghai, China", China PLoS ONE, 2014.,
"Analysis of air pollution reduction and climate change mitigation in the industry sector of Yangtze River Delta in China", 2016.,
"How modifications of China's energy data affect carbon mitigation targets", Energy Policy, vol. 116, pp. 337-343, 2018.,
"Chemical characteristics of PM1/PM2.5 and influence on visual range at the summit of Mount Tai, North China", 2017.,
"A comprehensive enterprise classification approach based on three indicators of emissions, efficiency and location", Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 175, pp. 489-500, 2018.,
"How does demographic structure affect environmental quality? Empirical evidence from China", Resources Conservation and Recycling, vol. 133, pp. 242-249, 2018.,
"Atmospheric PAHs, NPAHs, and OPAHs at an urban, mountainous, and marine sites in Northern China: Molecular composition, sources, and ageing", Atmospheric Environment, vol. 173, pp. 256-264, 2018.,
"Influence of fireworks displays on the chemical characteristics of PM2.5 in rural and suburban areas in Central and East China ", 2017.,
"Migration in a transitional economy: Beyond the planned and spontaneous dichotomy in Vietnam", Geoforum, vol. 37, pp. 1066-1081, 2006.,
"Emissions of CO2 from road freight transport in London: trends and policies for long run reductions", Energy Policy, vol. 38, pp. 1774-1786, 2009.,
"Effects of climate variability and change on Chinese agriculture: a review", Climate Research, vol. 50, pp. 83-102, 2011.,
Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers. London: MIT Press, 2008.,
"Characteristics of carbonaceous aerosols: Impact of biomass burning and secondary formation in summertime in a rural area of the North China Plain", 2016.,
"Spatiotemporal patterns and source attribution of nitrogen load in a river basin with complex pollution sources", 2016.,
"Impacts of climate change on TN load and its control in a River Basin with complex pollution sources", Science of the Total Environment, vol. 615, pp. 1155-1163, 2018.,


text:
Kappa Alpha Theta Ladies' Sweatpants with Twill - Gildan 184FL - TWILL
Something Greek
These women fitted sweatpants feature open bottom legs and pockets. The Kappa Alpha Theta greek symbols are 4 inch twill sewn on letters and will either go down the left leg or across the butt. You can make that selection below.
Sweatpant Features: Gildan brand; 50% cotton and 50% polyester; 7.75-ounce; air jet yarn creates a smooth, low-pill surface; slightly tapered leg with open-bottom hem; covered elastic waistband; differential rise for a better fit; flat drawcord.
Rush service is available for 15% of the total, this service can be selected during checkout.
Style #: G184FL


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Global Investor Study
Are investors too reliant on the state?
Governments are struggling to balance their books and the global economy is in a precarious state, yet investors firmly believe that the state will still be able to contribute significantly to their retirement income. So, are investors being realistic or setting themselves up for a fall?
Investors are realistic about how long they will live in retirement (21.2 years) and the need to diversify their sources of income for retirement, but are investors too optimistic about how much the state will be able to contribute to their retirement income?
Schroders 2016 Global Investor Study found:
- Investors, on average, believe a state pension will contribute 18.8% of their retirement income
Given the precarious state of the global economy is this a major concern?
The long-term fallout from the financial crisis and the lingering effect of loose monetary policy and austerity measures are yet to be fully understood.
If anything, the value of a state pension is likely to fall rather than rise as governments struggle to control deficits, spiralling debts and the unintended consequences of measures designed to boost economic growth.
Set up for a retirement shortfall
Combined with investors' over-optimistic expected return on income (9.1%) and short-term investment horizons (3.2 years), it could lay the foundations for future financial problems.
If investors anticipate the state riding to their retirement rescue then they are likely to see a shortfall in their retirement income.
Sleepwalking into a retirement crisis
While most developed nations currently offer a healthy state pension, the future is less certain, unless the global economy stages a dramatic recovery and governments are able to raise taxes.
Source: https://conversation.which.co.uk/money/uk-state-pension-comparison-serps/
Schroders Global Investor Study 2016 reveals that investors are potentially sleepwalking into a financial crisis later in life.
With the average retirement age rising, pension deficits expanding, and the global economy struggling to recover from the credit crisis, it is clear the writing is on the wall: investors need to be doing more now for themselves and relying less on the state.
For the full story and interactive infographic visit www.schroders.com/gis or download the full report below.
Read the full report
Schroders Global Investor Study 2016 - investment outcomes 8 pages | 156 kbDOWNLOAD


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Senate campaign finance reports: A curious lethargy
If the guy down the street rides a horse to work when everyone else drives a car, it's fair to assume he's doing it deliberately.
Likewise the many U.S. senators who persist in filing their campaign finance reports only on paper and not online. Paper isn't the slowest possible way to disclose political money; clay tablets would in fact be slower. But you don't have to be a cynic to wonder why the Senate seems allergic to 21st-century information technology.
Not to get personal, but Washington's two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, aren't among the 20 senators who voluntarily file electronically. For both of them, this would be an excellent year to start.
In contrast, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislators and countless other elected officials e-file their donation reports directly to disclosure agencies. Voters can then spot the donors shortly after the money arrives in candidates' war chests.
The U.S. Senate prefers a more gentlemanly pace. It requires that printed reports be dropped off at the office of the chamber's secretary. The Federal Election Commission collects the documents, copies them and delivers them to a private company in Virginia. Employees there enter the information by hand, a keystroke at a time, into computers and return them to the FEC. At last, the dollars and donors show up in a searchable database.
The whole laborious process can take weeks. A candidate could get a big dump of cash from Big Tobacco 10 days before the election, and voters might not find out until the folks at Philip Morris are toasting his victory.
Michael McAuliff, a political analyst at the Huffington Post, summed up the benefits for incumbent senators:
"The practice effectively gives Senate campaigns more time in which to portray the filings the way they want to before anyone else can verify them. It often reduces coverage of the reports when they are eventually filed, because they seem like old news by the time they are available."
That may explain why the Senate hierarchy – including Majority Leader Harry Reid – has shown so little interest in change.
Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would require e-filing. It has accumulated 37 co-sponsors from both parties, but Reid has never brought it up for a floor vote. (The lack of interest is bipartisan: Like Reid, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell doesn't e-file.)
Tester's bill seems likely to pass by the end of the century. Murray and Cantwell support it. In the meantime, nothing prevents any senator from voluntarily using the Senate's electronic filing system. Murray and Cantwell, whose constituents include such tech giants as Microsoft and Amazon, shouldn't find it excessively difficult.


text: My website updates are finished, and I am pleased to announce I have a new Liberia gallery in the Selected Work section of the website. If you subscribe to this blog in a reader you may have see some strange posts come through during the update, but that has been fixed and everything should be back to normal now. The current selection of images is basically round one as I will be adding more images in a few weeks. I feel really good about this first edit. Take a look and let me know what you think. I hope you like them.


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Breaking from a tightlywound field just beyond the 40m point, Olusoji Fasuba sped to a dramatic 6.51 victory in the 60m, the first indoor short dash title for Nigeria and indeed for Africa.
It was the third 6.51 of the season for the 23-year-old, and the second on the day. Fittingly for the newly crowned World champion, nobody else in the world has run faster this year.
Feeling his calves cramping over the final stages, Fasuba fought on valiantly to hold off the closing charge of Briton Dwain Chambers and Kim Collins, who each were credited with a 6.54 and both awarded a joint silver medal.
"I felt very strong for this competition," said Fasuba, who helped christen the Valencia track last month with another 6.51 performance. "The track was really good, I'm getting stronger and stronger and this is shown in my time today."
Fasuba's triumph, bringing him his first solo global medal of any colour, came at the conclusion of a day when he displayed the confident look of a champion, from his 6.64 in the opening round, to his commanding and extremely comfortable 6.51 in the semis.
Chambers' runner-up finish came after a 6.55 in the semis, his second PB of the day, as Collins ran his fastest time of the season. The 2003 World 100m champion, was ecstatic with his medal – he claimed the silver already in 2003 – coming at the end of his first indoor season since 2005.
U.S. champion Michael Rodgers, who equalled his 6.54 PB in the semis, was just a few ticks slower, finishing fourth in 6.57 in his first international competition. A somewhat sluggish start might have cost him a medal.
Brazil's Vicente de Lima was fifth (6.60) and Isaac Uche, Fasuba's teammate, was a distant sixth in 6.63.
Bob Ramsak for the IAAF


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My copy was blue. The book was a small Scholastic paperback, and on the cover was a trio of pale-green concentric circles. They looked like radio waves, or the kind of design you could get by fiddling around with a Spirograph set. In one of the circles was the silhouette of a girl, and, in another, a matching image of a little boy.
The book was "A Wrinkle in Time," by Madeleine L'Engle. Published in 1962, it is—depending on how you look at it—science fiction, a warm tale of family life, a response to the Cold War, a book about a search for a father, a feminist tract, a religious fable, a coming-of-age novel, a work of Satanism, or a prescient meditation on the future of the United States after the Kennedy assassination. When I first read it, in 1967, at the age of eight, I was innocent of any of this, and I had no idea that the story was also about the author. The girl in the circle was her childhood self, lost and lonely in space. But for L'Engle, even more than for Meg Murry, who with her brother Charles Wallace is travelling, according to my edition's back-flap copy, "through a wrinkle in time, to the deadly unknown terrors beyond the tesseract!," it had been even more perilous, because she had no grave, precocious little boy to accompany her. I knew even less that those closest to Madeleine L'Engle considered her science fiction to be the least fantastical of her more than fifty books, which, in addition to her novels, include poetry, meditations, and memoirs.
I once asked L'Engle to define "science fiction." She replied, "Isn't everything?" On another occasion, in the vast, sunny apartment in a building on West End Avenue where she has lived since 1960, and where she and her late husband, the actor Hugh Franklin, brought up their three children, she offered an example. "I was standing right there, carrying a plate of cold cuts," she said, pointing at a swinging door between the dining room and the pantry. "And I swooped into the pantry, bang, and got a black eye. It was exactly as if someone pushed me." At eighty-five, L'Engle is a formidable figure. She is five feet nine in her stocking feet, and uses a wheelchair owing to a broken hip. She has a birdlike head, a sharp nose, and an air of helpless innocence that is almost entirely put on. She wore a loose-fitting dress in one of her favorite colors, peacock blue. "Most likely," she continued firmly, "it was a poltergeist. There must have been a teen-age girl in the house. All that energy! They create the best atmosphere for them, you know. We don't know how to catch and harness it." She nodded. "Too true of most things."
"A Wrinkle in Time" is about Meg Murry and her little brother Charles Wallace, and their search for their father, who has disappeared. Meg and Charles Wallace live in a big, drafty New England house on a wooded hill. Meg, at about twelve, is untidy, unattractive, temperamental, and surly at school. She fights with the school bully, who makes rude remarks about Charles Wallace, who, according to the village gossips, "is not quite bright." She bridles at whispers that her father may not come back, even though she knows he will: her mother, a brilliant, beautiful scientist, has told her so. And she knows there's nothing wrong with Charles Wallace. He is a small, blond, preternaturally intelligent four-year-old, who was silent until he began to speak in complete, complicated sentences. He also has second sight.
The book opens on a stormy night. "I knew you'd be down," Charles Wallace says to Meg as midnight nears. There is a strange sound at the kitchen door, and, when Mrs. Murry opens it, in tumbles a very old, cheerful woman who accepts a sandwich, and leaves just as suddenly, in a heave of drenched outer garments, saying in a by-the-by sort of way, "There is such a thing as a tesseract."
Mrs. Murry blanches. Before Mr. Murry disappeared, the two of them had been playing around with a way to square the fourth dimension. Or, as Charles Wallace explains to Meg:
Well, the fifth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.
The next day, Meg and Charles Wallace hike into the woods in search of the woman, and run into an older, popular boy from school named Calvin O'Keefe, who has no idea why he has come to their wood, except that, as he puts it, "When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me." (Calvin is psychic, too. In L'Engle's "The Arm of the Starfish," Meg and Calvin surface again, grown up—Calvin's a biologist, studying regeneration theory; he and Meg are married, and they have a daughter called Polyhymnia.)
The three children are taken in hand by the visitor, Mrs. Whatsit, and her two weird sisters, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, who turn out not to be kind old ladies but, rather, the corporeal emanation of stars who gave up their lives fighting the Dark Thing, which threatens to overcome the universe. Mrs. Whatsit is sensible; Mrs. Who is given to quoting—Cervantes, Goethe, Seneca, Shakespeare, and Jesus; Mrs. Which stammers. They have come to help the children find their father, who, after working in New Mexico and "at Cape Canaveral," is lost in space. Off they go, leapfrogging from one galaxy to another until they land on Camazotz, where life is so regulated that children bounce their balls in unison.
Their father is here. They must descend into the town to find him. Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit, Glindas in a murky Oz, depart. In the end, Meg discovers that it is only by using her faults—her stubbornness, her willfulness, her unruly heart—that she can rescue her father, and ultimately Charles Wallace, from the planet where the Dark Thing has won.
Catherine Hand, who is an executive producer of a made-for-television version of "A Wrinkle in Time," which is scheduled to air next month on ABC, fell in love with the book when she was ten. She says, "The engine that drives it is Meg's inner life, and it's astonishing, because here is a girl who at that moment is stronger than her father. For some of us, it planted the seeds of the women's movement. I have had wonderful conversations with Madeleine, as a friend, who is, of course, Meg."
Robert Giroux, of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which first published "A Wrinkle in Time," says, "Madeleine L'Engle? She's an unusual woman, brilliant intellectually. A really superior person. She's what you used to call a bluestocking. I've worked with T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden, and so on, but my young relatives all say, 'Oh, Madeleine L'Engle!' "
The hardcover edition of "A Wrinkle in Time" is now in its sixty-seventh printing, and continues to sell about fifteen thousand copies annually. (L'Engle says that she had a clause in her contract that Farrar, Straus had the rights to "A Wrinkle in Time" in perpetuity in the universe, but not on Andromeda.) More than six million copies of the paperback are currently in circulation.
More than most writers, L'Engle has engaged with her readers. Until about five years ago, she was a tireless lecturer and teacher, annually accepting dozens of invitations to speak, on writing, family life, and faith—L'Engle has been a devout Anglican for most of her adult life—and she has often received more than a hundred letters from readers in a week. (Her grandchildren, Léna Roy and Charlotte and Edward Jones, now handle most of her correspondence.) One evening at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where L'Engle has been the librarian for forty years, an Evensong service was held to celebrate her contribution to literature for children. Scores of strangers waited to greet her—mainly middle-aged women, some with children in tow, but men, too. What they said was "Thank you. You changed my life."
Of course, people say that all the time about beloved writers. As for me, I kept that copy of "A Wrinkle in Time." One way or another, I read it every year. More recently, I've read it aloud to my children. "A Wrinkle in Time," and a number of L'Engle's other books, became inextricably part of who I was. They influenced how I thought about religion and politics, about physics and mystery, and how I imagined what family life could be.
It wasn't just me. When I was in college, I remember a friend saying to me, "There are really two kinds of girls. Those who read Madeleine L'Engle when they were small, and those who didn't."
"What did you read as a child?" I asked L'Engle one afternoon. I had brought along my daughter, Rose, to see her, and they were playing Scrabble. "I was a voracious reader," she said, counting out tiles. "My grandfather used to send me a magazine called Chatterbox, from England, which I loved. And I read 'Emily of New Moon,' by L. M. Montgomery. She had a dying father, and so did I. She wrote, and so did I. I read that book over and over." L'Engle also read George MacDonald, the Christian fantasist. As a writer, she shares with MacDonald, as well as with C. S. Lewis, another favorite, the sense that there is a parallel universe, and an active belief in the presence of good and evil. She refuses to distinguish between children's and adult literature, and she has consistently resisted being labelled a "children's-book writer." When people ask her how to write for children, her answer is always the same: "Write your story."
She looked down at the board. So far, the tiles spelled out "born," "tree," "nag," and "wrath." "Look at that," she said, an owlish grin spreading across her face. "It's the Garden of Eden!" Then she looked at Rose sharply. "You like to write stories, don't you? When I was a little girl, I was in a play. I chose to be one of the girls playing timbrels on the way to the guillotine."
Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in 1918 in New York City, the only child of Madeleine Hall Barnett, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Charles Wadsworth Camp, a Princeton man and First World War veteran, whose family had a big country place in New Jersey, called Crosswicks. In Jacksonville society, the Barnett family was legendary: Madeleine's grandfather, Bion Barnett, the chairman of the board of Jacksonville's Barnett Bank, had run off with a woman to the South of France, leaving behind a note on the mantel. Her grandmother, Caroline Hallows L'Engle, never recovered from the blow.
"The Barnett scandal was just incredible for Jacksonville," Francis Mason says. Mason, who is now in his eighties, is Madeleine's cousin on her father's side. He is the editor of Ballet Review and the chairman of the board of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. He recalls, "England had the Windsors, we had the Barnetts. In Jacksonville, we called Bion Barnett 'King Tut.' "
Madeleine's parents were the kind of couple whose devotion to each other can stymie children. They rose late, read aloud to each other, and went out most nights. In their apartment on the East Side, Madeleine ate her meals on a tray in her room. Her mother played the piano; her father, after a stint as a foreign correspondent, wrote potboilers. At school, she was terrible at sports and, she says, thought to be stupid (though at least one of her school reports belies this); like Meg Murry, she felt gangly, needy, bullied, and dismayed. She hated the school so much that to this day she won't say which one it was. Her granddaughter Charlotte Jones recalls that when she herself was in private school in New York, half a century later, she was terrified of playing competitive sports: any girls' school could be that school, still full of tormentors.
One morning in Switzerland, at the end of a summer spent abroad, when Madeleine was twelve years old, her parents drove through the gates of Chatelard, a boarding school for girls, introduced her to the headmistress, and left her there. She was completely unprepared. "I shook hands with the matron, and they vanished," L'Engle said. She was sitting in her high-back wing chair in the West End Avenue apartment. "My parents had diametrically opposed views on how to raise me. In New York, even once they knew the school wasn't the right place for me my father kept me there, to teach my mother a lesson, because it had been her idea."
In addition to her novels, L'Engle is the author of several books of memoirs, including "The Crosswicks Journal," which was published in several volumes and is about her life in Connecticut, and includes the book "Two-Part Invention," which tells the story of her marriage to Hugh Franklin. In these accounts, young Madeleine is sent to boarding school because her father was gassed in the war. He needs to travel endlessly in search of air clear enough for him to breathe. She knows that she is loved, though: she stays with her parents during school holidays. One day, however, she told me that she almost never saw her parents during school vacations. She spent the holidays in Provence, with her grandfather. During the long afternoons, she read his collection of Punch.
When Madeleine was about fifteen, her parents returned from Europe—the search for clear air apparently abandoned—and went to live in Jacksonville. After the move, she was released from Chatelard and sent to Ashley Hall, in Charleston. Of her peregrinations, her Jacksonville relatives said, "Where have they shipped that girl off to now?" Madeleine, in turn, found Florida stultifying and surreal: one afternoon, she watched an alligator pick its way up the porch steps. But, to her surprise, she adored Ashley Hall. "We did Shakespeare, and the Chester Cycle. We had a Miss McBee, who was mad about the theatre. The teachers thought I was bright, and I was elected class president. It was extraordinary." During her last year, her father caught pneumonia, and, according to L'Engle, his weakened lungs gave out. Francis Mason was fifteen years old, and the funeral was at his family's house in Jacksonville.
Mason, who later became a close friend of George Balanchine, is accustomed to larger-than-life personalities. He told me, "I knew the saga. Uncle Charles was very exotic. He used to smoke Rameses cigarettes. And he used to drink a lot. He was a great Princetonian, and he went up to a game and caught a cold and died. My mother was brokenhearted."
But weren't Charles's lungs already damaged? I asked Mason. "No, Uncle Charles was not ailing in his life. He was a big, handsome man in a white linen suit smoking cigarettes on the porch and drinking whiskey. He was a favorite of my mother's, and she was a talker, and she never mentioned anything about him being gassed in the war."
L'Engle went on to Smith College. The novelist Mary Ellen Chase, with whom she studied, divided English literature into three parts: Major, Minor, and Mediocre. As L'Engle recalled, "We were all quite vocal about not wanting to be mediocre!" She had already decided that she was going to be a famous writer. "It didn't occur to me that there was an alternative career," she said. "I loved writing dramatic monologues; in class, I did Cerberus, spontaneously."
On odd weekends she took the train down to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where cousins on her father's side held a perpetual open house. There were three sisters. L'Engle was closest to Starr, who reviewed books and gave her new ones to read; a fourth sister, Margaret Lawrence, an actress, had been shot dead by her lover. When L'Engle graduated, she went back to New York.
"I escaped Jacksonville," L'Engle said with a flourish. "I lived first at 43 West Ninth Street. Then I moved to West Twelfth, and then I made a big move, to 32 West Tenth. Leonard Bernstein lived upstairs, with two little babies, and we thought of switching so they wouldn't have to carry the carriage up the steps. We could eat at the Golden Eagle on Tenth Avenue—it was one dollar for spaghetti with wine, a dollar twenty-five without. It was 1941, and I got a job through the American Theatre Wing selling war bonds during intermissions on Broadway. I took acting lessons from Morris Carnovsky—a quarter per lesson."
In the winter of 1942, L'Engle auditioned for the actors Eva Le Gallienne, who had founded the Civic Repertory Theatre, and Joseph Schildkraut with a monologue put together from the letters of Katherine Mansfield. Tall and gawky, she was cast in a small part in "Uncle Harry," and then, in the summer of 1943, as a walk-on in "The Cherry Orchard." The show went on tour, and she roomed with the young Anne Jackson.
"Madeleine was a grown-up kid," Jackson told me. "She was fearless and grand, but then she would confide in one, like a little girl. She amused and delighted and awed me. After her bath, she would walk naked around the room with only her beads on. And once when I was ill she tried to make me feel better by spraying perfume all over the room, which made me feel worse!" Jackson laughed. "She was zany. But I always got the sense that she'd been trained to be a lady, which meant she was not so at ease with her emotions. There was something ethereal about her. She had a terrible time having babies, for instance, but she's wonderfully domestic: she's a terrific cook. And she's terrifically loyal. After she broke her hip, she came to see me in a play in a wheelchair. It was as if she was playing a part—a person in a wheelchair."
Hugh Franklin, a handsome young actor from Tulsa, had been cast in the role of Petya Trofimov, the student. Madeleine was besotted; it seemed he was, too. Then he vanished. She was heartbroken. He surfaced, briefly, the following summer, and then turned up again in the winter and proposed to her. They were married in 1946. In "Two-Part Invention," which came out after Franklin died, of cancer, in 1986, L'Engle wrote, "There in the chapel of the church, Hugh and I made promises, promises which for forty years we have, by some grace, been able to keep." The memoir testifies to the idea that two vibrant, curious people can, over the decades, maintain a marriage that is imaginative, deeply sustaining, and alive.
Of the three children of that marriage, two survive: Josephine Jones is a psychotherapist, and Maria Rooney is a photographer; Bion Franklin died at age forty-seven, in 1999, of the effects of long-term alcoholism. L'Engle's children and grandchildren—who love her deeply, but with a kind of desperate frustration spliced with resentment—revile "Two-Part Invention." Indeed, L'Engle's family habitually refer to all her memoirs as "pure fiction," and, conversely, consider her novels to be the most autobiographical—though to them equally invasive—of her books. (Naturally, L'Engle's children are not the only writer's children who feel that by using them as copy their mother or father has mortgaged their privacy.) When Josephine Jones read "Two-Part Invention," she thought, Who the hell is she talking about? Alan Jones, the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, who was married to Josephine for many years, told me, "The matriarch of the family is the guardian of the family narrative, and if that person is a writer . . . One of the things Madeleine used to say to me is 'It's true, it's in my journals,' which was a hilarious statement. Some of her books were good bullshit, if you don't know the family. Spaghetti on the stove, Bach on the phonograph, that's all true. But there was this tremendous fissure."
Maria Rooney calls "Two-Part Invention" "a lovely fairy tale." She says, "Madeleine knows she's had an enormous influence. I think it snowballs. It would be hard for her to say, 'I made mistakes. Like other mortals.' "
There is a line by the poet Elinor Wylie that L'Engle particularly likes: "Now let no charitable hope / Confuse my mind with images." It has, she says, some indestructible naïve power. One afternoon, in her living room, while we were talking about the past, she fell momentarily silent. In the pause, I read the spines of the books on the bookcase shelf directly behind her head: "Tituba of Salem Village," by Ann Petry; "Bruno's Dream," by Iris Murdoch; "Hildegarde, The Last Year"; Susan Sontag's "Death Kit"; and a row of six books by Rumer Godden.
At last she said, "When I was first in the cathedral library, I had my dog Oliver with me. There was a woman who used to come in he didn't like. One day, she showed up on the close with a knife. He knew she had that knife, and he wouldn't let her in the door." She narrowed her eyes. "This is the first time I haven't had a dog." She thought for a minute, and then said, "I am very impressed with the mind's ability to make a complete shift, to keep a corner free. I like the fact that the universe is alive, that it is moving and growing. Hearing yourself think—that's really what it is for a writer."
The summer after Hugh and Madeleine were married, they bought a dilapidated farmhouse in Goshen, in northwest Connecticut. Josephine, born in 1947, was three years old when they moved permanently to the house, which they called Crosswicks. Bion was born just over a year later. Money was short. Hugh put his acting career aside, and the Franklins took over the derelict local general store, and made a go of it. In 1956, they adopted a little girl, Maria; her parents, close friends of theirs, had both died suddenly. L'Engle wrote early in the morning and late at night, and the white farmhouse became the proto-setting for the books that made her reputation: "A Wrinkle in Time" and the stories about the Austin family, the first of which, "Meet the Austins," was published in 1960, two years before "Wrinkle." L'Engle said, "It was during that decade when we were poised for nuclear war. We thought Goshen would be a better, safer place for the children to grow up. Then we realized there was no safe place—we had a feeling of imminent disaster—but we tried anyway, for the children, to create that safe place. I was conscious of creating it in life, and the books were echoing what that life was like."
"Meet the Austins" is about a family like the Franklins and the Murrys, who live in a white farmhouse on a hill in Connecticut. There are four children: John; Vicky, who wants to be a writer; Suzy; and Rob, a small blond boy whose powers of empathy, if not quite up to Charles Wallace's, are nevertheless remarkable. Mrs. Austin—who is also named Vicky—is fair-minded, concerned, in love with her husband, and a good cook. The children's father, Wally (certain names run in L'Engle's family), is an overworked, beloved country doctor.
Into this happy world springs disaster. A little girl the Austins know, Maggy Hamilton, is orphaned, and comes to live with them. Alas, poor Maggy, whose only relation is a distant, rich grandfather, is spoiled, deceitful, and destructive. She tells lies and tears Rob's beloved stuffed animal, Elephant's Child. Darkness is unleashed: the children argue, Dr. Austin snaps at his wife, Vicky breaks her arm. Mirabile dictu, by the second Austin book Maggy is made to disappear through a second, convenient adoption.
"Meet the Austins" has been continuously in print since its publication. Maria Rooney told me, "I hated the Austin books. Everyone who reads them says, 'How could she have done that?' "
Rooney, who recalls her childhood relationship with her mother as difficult, is now married to an architect, and has two teen-age boys of her own. In recent years she has collaborated with L'Engle on a series of photography books about mothers and their children. She shook her head, and said, "No, I'm not filled with bitterness now. She's such a storyteller that she gets confused about what really happened."
On Maundy Thursday, a priest, performing an ancient Easter rite, came to L'Engle's apartment to wash her feet. "All Angels comes to me," she explained, naming a nearby Episcopal church. "I was thinking just now of Daniel: 'Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.' Martin Buber writes about what goes on in the heart, and we're not good at admitting what goes on in the heart. It's not always pretty." Once, when I'd asked L'Engle about the gestation of Maggy Hamilton, she said, "Maggy has always been Maggy, not Maria. People have always tried to identify her with Maria, but it's not true. We didn't have a large family, and that was perhaps just as well; my characters are more alive to me than the people they are based on."
Now, she looked at me sternly over her teacup. "However, I don't like this current spate of children exposing their parents. I don't think certain things need to be discussed. Why should I care about anyone's bedding down? You know more about Tolstoy from walking through his books." She took a sip, and then said, "Well, Maria. The universe proved itself unreliable when her parents died, so she imagined she could do whatever she wanted in an unreliable universe. I read 'The Bad Seed,' and I got it out of the house because I was afraid she might read it." Later, she told me, "I think I put in a disclaimer somewhere where I say that, of course, real people are more complicated than they are in books. Didn't I do that?"
In 1960, "Meet the Austins" had come out to favorable reviews but small young-adult market sales, and "A Wrinkle in Time," despite the best efforts of L'Engle's agent, Theron Raines, could not find a publisher. The manuscript was rejected repeatedly. To Raines, the problem with the book was the religious element. (It may have been that the potential for identifying Charles Wallace as a type of Christ child made people uncomfortable.) But Raines loved it. "Here was a genuine storytelling voice, and I thought it was wonderful," he told me. "I remember one publisher saying to me that he thought he might be turning down 'Alice in Wonderland.' " But Raines pressed on, and sent the manuscript to Farrar, Straus & Giroux. "The reason John Farrar bought it is he was a very religious man and went to church; he once told me that in the early days it paid for the rent on the offices."
In 1963, after a flux of laudatory reviews (Saturday Review announced, "It has the general appearance of being science fiction but it is not. . . . There is mystery, mysticism, a feeling of indefinable brooding horror . . . original, different, exciting"), "A Wrinkle in Time" won the Newbery Medal, the highest honor for a work of fiction for children. This was despite the fact that some Christian fundamentalists initially tried to ban it. According to L'Engle, "They said it wasn't a Christian book. I said, 'Quite right.' I wasn't trying to write a Christian book. But, of course, it is. So is 'Robin Hood.' The Mrs. Ws witches? They're guardian angels!"
At Farrar, Straus, Sandra Jordan became, for a time, L'Engle's editor. Like Anne Jackson, she found her a winning mixture of grand dame and vulnerability. "We told each other dirty jokes," Jordan recalled, laughing. "There was one about the Holy Grail—that was part of our bonding." L'Engle was working on a sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time," the book that became "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" (there are four books in the Time series). Jordan said, "She would call and say, 'Would Charles Wallace do this?' And we would go paragraph by paragraph, and line by line."
For L'Engle, the alchemy worked. Jordan continued, "I remember with 'Ring of Endless Light' "—the fourth book in the Austin series—"I felt Vicky, who even more than Meg Murry is Madeleine's alter ego, was being insufferable. She was always right and everyone else was wrong. It was fatiguing. And Madeleine and I had a big talk about the vanity of being good, the pitfalls, which led to the scene with Grandfather, when he tells Vicky that other men's burdens are not your burdens. Madeleine had turned it around and spun straw into gold."
In the winter of 1960, the Franklins had moved back to the city, to the building on West End Avenue. Before the move, the family went on a cross-country trip, which Madeleine fictionalized in her second book about the Austins, "The Moon by Night." Hugh had begun to work in the theatre again, and in television; in 1970, he was cast as Dr. Charles Tyler in a new soap opera called "All My Children," a role that he played for fourteen years. Here, too, fiction and reality blurred. Wally Austin-cum-Hugh Franklin is a doctor; now, Hugh was playing a doctor on a hugely popular show.
Robert Lescher, who succeeded Theron Raines as L'Engle's agent, said, "One of the interesting things is that they both had different constituencies. They would go somewhere, and only one of them would be recognized. I think they were mutually supportive to an unusual degree. But Hugh was not, I'd say, as abrasive a personality."
Despite outward appearances, and what L'Engle was recounting in her journals, by the seventies the marriage was troubled. Friends noticed that Hugh was drinking heavily, and he was embroiled in at least two affairs, one of which, according to Josephine Jones, lasted until his death. When I asked L'Engle about her marriage, she said, "Hugh was lucky for an actor—he was tall, good-looking, and he didn't drink." Later, she added, "But he was anything but perfect. In forty years, we had something like four perfect minutes."
Around the same time, L'Engle, while working on a children's Christmas pageant, met Canon Edward Nason West, an Anglican priest affiliated with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. On the cathedral close, where eccentricity is prima facie, Canon West, brilliant, irascible, and charismatic, stood out: one old friend describes him as "lovely and horrendous." L'Engle adored him. West became her spiritual adviser, confidant, trusted reader, and the model for Canon Tallis, who first appears as presiding magus in her Murry-family novel "The Arm of the Starfish." On West's suggestion, she delivered what became an annual tradition of Advent sermons at the cathedral about the Christmas story—the gist of which fit into what Charlotte Jones calls "Madeleine's 'It doesn't have to be true to be true' thing." The sermons—moving, allusory, and intricately reasoned—led to L'Engle's second career, as a public speaker, which often took her away from home. (Her meditations also inspired an outpouring of religious poetry and musings, which are now published by Waterbrook Press.)
During those years, Josephine miscarried, and L'Engle wrote about it, in manuscript. Alan and Josephine asked her to take it out. She did, finally, but she didn't understand why they wanted her to. Other members of the family say, too, that there were incidents in their own lives—in some cases the usual growing pains, and in others what they considered singular, traumatic events—that L'Engle appropriated and used in her novels or revealed in "The Crosswicks Journal." Her own troubles, however, were excised or trimmed to fit. "Think of it," Alan Jones said. "The confirmed construction of the self by means of narrative. Golly, what a job."
On West End Avenue, piles of paperback mysteries teeter by L'Engle's bed. She'll read any mystery, unless she knows that the plot revolves around a dead child. In her dressing gown, looking her most imperious, she pointed to a Chinese highboy across the room, and said, "It was in an antique shop in London. The Queen Mother was looking at it, but my step-grandmother bought it right out from under her nose. I've always thought she'd make a good novel, but you don't write about anything too close."
For L'Engle, the truth is in the telling. In the long dream of her fiction, in which the search for the father is central, that figure changes from an ineffectual father to a fraudulent—or absent—father. In some later novels, the father is dispensed with altogether and replaced by an Anglican priest. But in that dream, which hopscotches through time and space, and in which figures familiar from one book often appear, in odd circumstances, in another, there are two characters who do not grow up. The first is the bookish, awkward Vicky Austin, the girl who wants to become a writer. The second is Charles Wallace Murry and his Austin counterpart, Rob, who are essentially the same child. When I mentioned to Charlotte Jones that Vicky is stuck in time, and asked why L'Engle never shows us who Vicky became, she said simply, "Gran can't. I've asked her about it. Vicky is the character who's closest to her, to who she was as a child, and it would mean looking at her own life in a way she's not prepared to do. Or not willing to do."
Charlotte paused. "One thing I respect about Gran is that she's seamless. She is able to put many complicated things together and make them whole, but she wasn't able to do that with Vicky, or with Charles Wallace, ultimately, or, of course, with Bion, who to her was a combination of Charles Wallace and Rob Austin. She will not admit he died of alcoholism. She will not budge, and she will not talk about it. Bion loathed and detested the Austins."
Bion Franklin, who wanted to be a writer, lived for almost all his adult life at Crosswicks with his wife, Laurie, a doctor. According to the family, he is the person for whom L'Engle's insistence on blurring fiction and reality had the most disastrous consequences. L'Engle's former agent, Theron Raines, who met Bion when he was four or five, remembers him as beautiful and sweet. Everyone in L'Engle's family is large—they're big-boned people—but in the snapshots taken of Bion in the years before he died, he is beyond big, or just heavy: he looks smeared. "It's hard," Maria Rooney said, "to be the magic child."
It was a stormy June day. I had gone to Crosswicks with my children to visit L'Engle. Laurie Franklin, Bion's widow, and Josephine Jones showed me a room above the garage, where L'Engle used to write. No one had cleaned it in a very long time. Outside, beyond a meadow, were the Murrys' woods, and the star-watching rock from the Austin-family stories. Jones said, "I have a feeling still that this is forbidden. I'm not supposed to be up here, and once in a while I still get this hit."
During the year, Jones, who lives in her own house in northwest Connecticut, travels to New York City every other weekend to see her mother. She said, "I went through a time fairly recently when I wanted my mother to know that I knew her parents hadn't been good parents to her. I often wonder if she had grown up in a different family, rather than in a family that was emotionally deprived, what kind of childhood we would have had."
"Bion wouldn't read her books," Franklin said.
"Bion would not leave home," Jones added.
Shrieks of laughter came from an indoor swimming pool, where my children were swimming with L'Engle's great-grandchildren.
L'Engle now lives across the road when she is here during the summer, in a spacious, one-story house that she built a few years ago, for when she would no longer be able to climb the stairs at Crosswicks. ("Old age," she likes to say, quoting Bette Davis, "is not for sissies.") The house is airy and light, and the living-room windows have a view of her meadow. In the late afternoon, the grass turns from green to gold. Throughout the summer, mail from fans—sometimes addressed simply to "Madeleine L'Engle, Crosswicks"—piles up here, too.
One evening, while we were having supper together, I asked L'Engle about her relationship with her readers. "It scares me shitless!" she said. "Because it's a responsibility. Over time, someone reads your book, and something happens. People want intimacy, and I have a terrible time saying no." When people tell her, "You've helped me grow up, you're my mother," she tends to brush it off: her job, as she sees it, is to write stories, not to be known. (About her own children, she has said, "My children want Mama to be Mama, and if I'm known it takes me away from them.")
In her living room, she directed her gaze to a spot beside my chair. "Now, you know an alligator comes to visit. His name is Alastair."
Marianne Moore, I mentioned, had a pet alligator when she was a child.
"Did she? How wonderful. Then I'm certain it returned to her, too, in old age. Mine is from Jacksonville."
She turned to look at me. "I think I'm less judgmental now. I accept people as they are. And I'm able to think more freely about my childhood." Later, she added, "My father was glamorous, and he seemed that way because, I think, he was pretty glamorous. Just because I know his faults now doesn't mean he wasn't glamorous."
She admits, though, that the portraits in her memoirs are idealized: "I can't put disturbing things about people into print." In fiction, she is freer. "If I'm working on a piece of fiction," she told me, "I do not write from life. I think that my characters came to me because I didn't have any family, and I wanted to have a family, and it was the only way I could get it."
"But you had your own family," I said.
"Even so, writing the stories came out of my childhood experiences."
Time, for L'Engle, is accordion- pleated. She elaborated, "When you bring a sheet off the line, you can't handle it until it's folded, and in a sense, I think, the universe can't exist until it's folded—or it's a story without a book."
But, I asked, is there a difference between fiction and nonfiction? "Not much," she said, shrugging. It was a long shrug, the wishbone of her shoulders pulled up almost to her ears. "Because there's really no such thing as nonfiction. When people read your books, they think they know everything, but they don't. Writing is like a fairy tale. It happens elsewhere." She paused. "I had a friend, who died. She thought she could control everything. See? The story creeps up whether we want it to or not." ♦


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- Fruit forward on the nose with some cinnamon spice. Cherry and berry upfront with clove and nutmeg and a hint of molasses on the finish... And a bit of a bitter after taste. Enough tannins to give it some body... Over all nice bottle of wine for 10 bucks.. Would recommend.
- Me and Mona
- very good Cali red. easy to drink and not too dry.


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Ball poolWe purchased thousands of these balls to fill a suburban swimming pool for an Old Navy project. When we were done, instead of throwing them away, I decided to build a pool behind my desk and have staff meetings in it. Clients are caught off-guard when I ask them to "dive in for meetings"artwork sculptureI commissioned this sculpture for a Givenchy project. It's made from 3,000 Givenchy mascara brushes and was created by the British artist Ian WrightsofaWhen I bought this sofa I had just opened the agency and had the chance to win a really big client. They wanted to see our office but we didn't have one yet, so we rented one and faked it. I found the sofa online from a Wall Street law firm and had it covered in the cheapest plastic I could find. We won the job, and it allowed me to finally have a real officeowlsMy lucky owls. I collect them. Every time I go on a trip I buy one. These are my latest two. One is from Hawaii and the other is from LondonDESKThis was my kitchen table when I started the agency out of my apartment in 2005. I purchased it from the Chelsea Flea Market in New York. So many of our early decisions were made on this table, so when I set up my office it became my work deskModel planesI'm from Australia, so faraway travel has always been part of my DNA. My greatest obsession is airlines and airplanes. I have dozens of models around the office and working on an airline is my dream job
Photography by Ms Martien Mulder
Words by Mr Jim Shi
Words by Mr Jim Shi
When your work manifesto is the pursuit of "unexpected delight", it helps to have an imagination that knows no bounds. Having worked as a creative director for brands all over the world, from London and New York to Italy and Sweden, Mr Christiansen, 34, now applies his particularly non-traditional tactics to clients that include fashion labels and hotel groups. Here he shows us around his unconventional workspace.
What was the catalyst to starting Chandelier?
I grew up on a farm in the Australian outback. I watched The Muppets and Dynasty and dreamt of faraway places like New York. When I was 22 I moved to Italy to work at Benetton's Colors magazine and was excited to finally arrive in New York soon after - but then I felt the marketing of many brands here was formulaic. There was little sparkle. So I created Chandelier, a company that is all about unexpected delight.
Where does the name Chandelier come from?
Firstly, I want people and brands to shine. A chandelier is like fireworks or a Christmas tree: it's an unapologetic inspiration. I also had an incredible network of great people - stylists, photographers, illustrators and designers ? and that network looked like a chandelier when it was all drawn on paper.
How would you describe the aesthetic of your office?
Cinderella-meets-punk rock. It's curious. It's fun. It has balls (literally). It never feels like work. It's always changing. It attracts people who smile and love what they do.
What are some of your favorite places in New York? Why?
My bathtub, because I get all my ideas there. My truck; I just bought an old Ford F-150 from 1985. I throw the dogs inside and we go driving around the city looking for ideas. Chinatown - I am moving to Chinatown currently. It's unexpectedly wild and creative. But you need
the details
A DOG'S LIFEDaylesford (right) is named after Daylesford Organic - the organic shops and cafés in London. I love everything about that brand; it makes me so happy, which is exactly how I feel about my dogs. Freeway is named after the dog on the Eighties TV show Hart to Hart
Watch and tie barMy vintage Rolex is from the year I was born and this is my lucky tie bar. I wear it during big pitches
IMAGESWe did a project for NARS Cosmetics and this is a portrait of Marc Jacobs (left) shot by François Nars. The image of the woman putting on lipstick was for a 300-page book I created for 7 For All Mankind. I found the Princess Diana magazine cover at Dover Street Market, just before the royal wedding
Graphis Magazine COllectionMy favourites are from the Fifties and Sixties. I recently bought an entire library of them from a woman in Los Angeles who had the magazines in her garage. I look at an issue everyday for inspiration
surfboardI just created the Chandelier Surf Shack, a compound in Montauk for all my staff and friends to escape to during the summer. We have honeybees and a big vegetable garden. Most importantly we have the surf. This is my old surfboard from Hawaii. We also designed limited-edition Chandelier surfboards with Saturdays Surf NYC
to scratch under the surface to find the treasures. The Bowery Hotel - where I have lived for almost three years - is still my favorite place in the city. The airport - because I get so angry at bad creative work when I am there that it inspires me to work harder.
You're obsessed with airlines. Where did that develop from?
It's true, I am obsessed. It's my dream job and although I have pitched for some airlines, I've never landed one as a client. I think when you grow up in Australia it becomes part of your DNA. I think Marc Newson has done an awesome job at delivering surprise for Qantas. Air France's new economy food boxes are beautiful. They prove you can still be surprised and excited at the back of the plane.
What's been your most memorable project to date?
We designed a massive pop-up book last year as an invite to our annual Christmas extravaganza. It took seven months to make and was a truly selfish, expensive and indulgent piece of work.
Having worked in a vast array of disciplines, including magazines, film, books and a fashion brand, how have they shaped you?
I've been very fortunate to experience many disciplines. Until recently I never saw the connective tissue - except that they were all different platforms to tell stories, and I was super curious. Just now am I seeing how it shaped me. It's important that those who work for a brand live the brand.
Being from Australia, how does your style differ from when you are there compared to when you are in New York?
There is something about the color of the sky in Australia. It's a shade of saturated blue that you never see anywhere else. I was raised on a visual diet of the outback: blazing blue sky, golden sugar cane and bright red earth. The visual language of Australia is true optimism. Bold confident colors; no pastels or grays. I think that had a deep impact on me, and you can see it in all my work.
What brings you the most satisfaction in life?
That I can be creative and curious every single day.


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Sergei Bedryk, deputy head of the Crimean committee on fuel, energy and innovation policy, said the suspension was the result of the termination of the contract between the local Energyrynok, state operator of Ukraine's wholesale electricity market, and the operators of local wind power plants.
According to Bedryk, existing plans to build wind power plants in Crimea have also been frozen.
He added that the Russian government is likely to approve the amendments to the existing federal law, and introduce a green tariff for the local power system with regulated prices in order to bring the projects back online.
Before the Russian occupation, the Crimean wind projects supplied energy to the mainland Ukrainian grid. All of the wind projects were nationalised by Russia and the new Crimean government.
The relaunch of wind power plants in Crimea is important, as the peninsula traditionally has a large energy deficit while experiencing high winds.
Operating Crimean wind farms include the 15MW Tarhankutskaya project, which according to Windpower Intelligence is owned by the Ukrainian government. While the biggest Crimean project in the pipeline is the 200MW Turhenevska project, owned by French developer Filasa International.
Before the occupation, the Ukraine offered a green tariff of EUR 0.34/kWh. Most local wind farms were owned by state corporations such as Crimean Generating Systems and state agencies, in particular the State Committee of Ukraine and the Ministry of Defense.
Some projects were owned by private company Wind Parks of Ukraine, which is the largest wind power holding in the country's wind energy sector.
At the same time, according to Bedryk, despite the suspension of wind operations, Crimea currently does not experience a shortage of energy.
According to Russian media reports, there is a possibility that the re-launch of Crimean wind power plants may take place after 1 June.
According to an announcement by the Russian government, the country's' energy ministry, together with the Federal Tariff Service, will formalise new tariffs for Crimean wind power plants while keeping the benefits that existed under Ukrainian control.
There is hope that this will not only bring existing wind farms back online, but also provide an impetus for the development of new projects.


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Search for National Marine Sanctuaries - The top results (relevance sort) are listed below:
NCSU Data Collection[ Hide ] Possible Related Terms:
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Roads, Sediment, Seismic Events, Shaded Relief, Shellfish, Shellfish Harvesting Areas, Shipwrecks, Shorelines, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), Soils, Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) Database, Soil Surveys, Species Endemism, Species Richness, State Boundaries, State Capitals, State Complexes, State Forests, State Maintenance Yards, State Natural Areas, State Ownership, State Parks, State Property, State Research Facilities, State Soil Geographic (STATSGO), Steward, Streamflow, Stream Reaches, Streams, Superfund Sites, Surface Hydrography, Surface Waters, Surface Water Sampling Sites, Surficial Deposits And Materials, Swamps, Tallowtree, Territorial Acquisitions, TIGER/Line, Time Zones, Topographic Maps, Tornadoes, Towers (Transmission), Towns, Townships, Toxic Release Inventory Sites, Trace Elements, Trails, Train Stations, Transit Lines, Transportation, Transportation Terminals, United States Geological Survey (USGS), Unsurveyed Areas, Urban Areas, Vegetation, Volcanic 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Legacy denotes outdated data. A more recent version likely exists. Consider an "External Data Source" option linked above, or click the Collection link for updated source options.
Contact a Data Services Librarian for help.


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Today Dwight Howard announced he won't be signing a contract extension before the July 1 deadline.. With Howard officially putting Orlando in the clock, the Knicks now must decide whether to go after him or New Orleans point guard Chris Paul III. Both are elite players in the NBA and both are free agents after next season barring any extensions being signed. So the debate begins, who should the Knicks go after? Howard or Paul?
Money: Anybody who says the Knicks don't have the money to get another superstar doesn't know what they are talking about. As can be found in the useful links section of this site, the Knicks salary situation for the 2012 season leaves them 17 million dollars to spend under the current salary cap. Now it is probable that the cap will be lowered from the current 58 million dollar cap but with a lower cap will come a lower max contract. In short, it's very possible for Melo and Amare to drop a couple mil a season to contribute to a 3rd superstar and we will still fit under the cap.
On the court: I believe if given the opportunity to acquire one of these 2 players, there is absolutely no way the Knicks can lose. Chris Paul looked re-energized from his injury in the postseason and looks to build on his strong finish, and when he's healthy he is one of the top 3 point guards in this league. Dwight Howard is far and away the best center in this league. The sexier pick is Chris Paul, and granted I'd love to see him become a Knick, but if given their pick, I believe the Knicks should sign Dwight Howard. First Howard is 26 and has been injury free while Paul is 26 but has had knee problems and a concussion. The deciding factor for me is how Howard is the best defensive player in today's NBA. The reigning 3 time NBA defensive player of the year eliminates any inside game an opponent throws towards him. With Melo and Amare's notoriously lazy defense, Howard would eliminate a lot of defensive deficiencies, especially when it comes to rebounding. On offense, his low post presence would open everything up for Melo and Amare, especially down low. Who on that offense would you double team? It wouldn't be possible to defend us. As much as I love Chris Paul and he is a great point guard, nobody doubles point guards. Nobody wants to see Paul in a Knicks uniform more than I do, but from a purely basketball standpoint Howard makes more sense for this team. Not only does Howard give the Knicks the center presence we sorely need but he makes everybody else better. He'll open up the wings for Melo, Toney Douglas, Billups if he's still around, Fields and the other guys to knock down open 3s. He'll take double teams off of Amare and Melo and give them more room to operate. We won't be out rebounded by anybody if we get Howard, he'll control the glass and allow our defense to cut back on giving up 2nd chance points. While Paul would make us an even better offensive team and provide the ball movement and assists that make offenses go, I believe you can find quality point guards way more easily then you can a dominant center. In today's era where Howard is far and away the best center with no center even in the same stratosphere, you take the center whenever you can get him.
Conclusion: Go back and look at the great Knick teams of the 90's, they had Ewing and Starks and a bunch of really good defensive players. Starks was a great player but nowhere on the level of Melo or Amare. If Ewing and a bunch of solid role guys competed against the great Bulls teams, imagine what our big 3 with Dwight could do. Also look at the matchups we'd have against Miami, the team that's gonna stand between the Knicks and future championships. Miami lacks a great center, I mean Joel Anthony vs Dwight Howard. It's no contest. Miami's best offensive game is when they drive and dominate the paint. With the 6'11, 3 time defensive player of the year standing in the paint there is no way Miami would dominate the paint in a 7 game series. With D'antoni's 7 seconds or less offense making the transition to a halfcourt game, Howard's post up style of offense would be a great fit. If you look at the Bulls dynasty or this last Laker dynasty, Ron Harper and Derek Fisher were the point guards. Yes they were good point guards but not elite. It's different for all teams but the past has shown that you can win NBA championships with solid veteran point guards. Its not everyday that Dwight Howard comes walking by, the Knicks would be foolish not to pounce on him in the summer of 2012.


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Emergency, Unscheduled and Snow Closures
In the event of an unscheduled school closure caused by snow, emergency, power outage or extraordinary circumstances, an alert announcing the affected schools will display at the top of the district website and school websites. Current information on school closures or threats of closure due to external conditions is also available:
- On the District and School websites.
- On Facebook and Twitter.
- On media outlets such as CKNW, News1130, 170.1 Country, CBC Radio, 107.7 Pulse Radio.
- By phone at 604-532-1453.
School Status Info During Inclement Weather
Please note that Langley District schools are all considered 'open' until a decision to close is required. Decisions about school schedules and bus route changes are almost always made in the early morning before school. This allows for the most current weather information to factor into the decision. This information is communicated immediately, generally before 6:30 a.m.
We understand these decisions have an impact on our families and appreciate your patience during these severe weather situations. While we know that our students and families are best served when we are open, our top concern is the safety of our students and staff.
The final decision to send students to school resides with parents since they know the road and weather conditions in their respective areas. If you feel it is unsafe for you or your child to travel to or attend an open school for any reason, please keep your child home and report an absence to the school. Parents/guardians should be reminded to dress their children warmly during inclement weather conditions as schools are sometimes cooler than normal.


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2444 Eastern Blvd., York PA 17402
Phone: 717-757-1818
Fax: 717-755-2709
Open 7 Days
Sunday-Thursday: 11am - 10pm
Friday-Saturday: 11am-10:30pm
Check Out Our Menu!
Looking for the best Neo Asian Japanese Cuisine in York, PA? Look no further, Wild Ginger offers Sushi, Sashimi, Chinese, and Thai. Come in a enjoy Wild Ginger!


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User Defined Functions are an intrical part of becoming a professional, efficient SQL programmer. These functions make it possible to write almost scalar code, and allowing for complex calculations without cluttering your stored procedures. The benefits of using User-Defined functions are countless. We can use these functions in so many different places, unlike the traditional Stored Procedure. Having the ability to have a function to act like a table gives the developer the ability to break complex logic into smaller, more maintainable pieces of code.
The ability to pass parameters into these objects (UDF's are database objects, much like classes in, say C#) makes the User Defined Function (UDF) not only invaluable but also an extremely powerful tool for a SQL developer.
There are three types of functions that you can create:
- Scalar
- Inline Table valued
- Multi-Statement Table valued
A Scalar function is one that returns one of the scalar data types, such as VARCHAR, CHAR, BOOLEAN, INT and others. Data types Text, NTEXT, IMAGE and TIMESTAMP aren't supported by scalar functions.
An Inline Table Valued function is one which returns a table data type populated with data. The Inline Table Valued user defined function is a great alternative to say a view.
A Multi-Statement Table Value also returns a table, and is also an excellent alternative to a View as it can handle multiple statements, whereas a View can support but a single statement. With a Multi-Statement Table Value user defined function you can actually use that in the WHERE statement of your stored procedure.
There are so many benefits to using user defined functions, the first one being that they can be used in any number of places. A user defined function can actually take the place of a physical table in your queries. User Defined Functions allow the SQL Developer to break down their code into smaller and more manageable sections, making for easier maintainability, which is the overall goal of any type of programming.
I am of the belief that all SQL Developers need to have their own code repository which contains some basic functions that perform many useful functions. In this I will be sharing a couple User Defined Functions that I take from employer (or contract) to employer(contract) as they do indeed make my life easier. I learned a long time ago that it is OK to allow your SQL Server do some of your work for you, thats what it's there for, it's not there to just store data.
The first User Defined function I have is the ability to format currency, either before storing it in a table, or before passing it back to the method that called it. This functions is of the Scalar variety as it returns one of the scalar data types. Lets take a look at it
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.udfFormatCurrency (@value decimal(20,2),@dollar_sign BIT = NULL) RETURNS VARCHAR(20) AS BEGIN DECLARE @results VARCHAR(20) DECLARE @negative BIT SELECT @negative = CASE WHEN @value < 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END IF @dollar_sign IS NULL SET @dollar_sign = 0 IF @negative = 1 SET @value = -1 * @value SET @results = CONVERT(VARCHAR, ISNULL(@value, 0)) DECLARE @before VARCHAR(20), @after VARCHAR(20) IF CHARINDEX ('.', @results )>0 BEGIN SET @after = SUBSTRING(@results, CHARINDEX ('.', @results ), LEN(@results)) SET @before = SUBSTRING(@results,1, CHARINDEX ('.', @results )-1) END ELSE BEGIN SET @before = @results SET @after = '' END -- after every third character: DECLARE @counter INT IF LEN(@before) > 3 BEGIN SET @counter = 3 while @counter > 1 AND @counter < LEN(@before) BEGIN SET @before = SUBSTRING(@before, 1 ,LEN(@before) - @counter) + ',' + RIGHT(@before,@counter) SET @counter = @counter + 4 END END SET @results = @before + @after IF @negative = 1 SET @results = '-' + @results RETURN CASE WHEN @dollar_sign = 1 THEN '$' + @results ELSE @results END END
As you see this function even offers the option of adding a dollar sign ($) to your formatted results, this comes in handy when the data is being returned for displaying in an application.
The next function I will be showing is one for formatting a US phone number, sorry for all the international readers, I am working on one for international numbers and will add it soon. With this function you can pass it a phone number, either a non-formatted string, or a formatted string, and it will return the formatted phone number in a (555) 555-1212 format. You can, of course, tweak this function to apply a format needed by your organization.
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.udfFormatPhoneNumber(@PhoneNumber NVARCHAR(60)) RETURNS NVARCHAR(60) AS BEGIN DECLARE @Length INT DECLARE @TempStr NVARCHAR(30) --Strip all non-numeric characters from string WHILE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', @PhoneNumber) > 0 SET @PhoneNumber = REPLACE(@PhoneNumber, SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', @PhoneNumber),1),'') SET @Length = LEN(@PhoneNumber)-10 --Remove a leading "1" if exists (15555551212) IF SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,1) ='1' and LEN(@PhoneNumber) >10 BEGIN SET @PhoneNumber=SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,2,LEN(@PhoneNumber) -1) END --Format our phone number to the (555) 555-1212 format SET @TempStr = @PhoneNumber SET @PhoneNumber = '(' + SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,3)+ ')' + SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,4,3) + '-'+ SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,7,4) -- Returns Value RETURN @PhoneNumber END
Next we will take a look at a Table Values function. This is a UDF (User Defined Function) that I use to parse a delimited string. This comes in very handy if in your Stored procedure you need to use the IN keyword to check if something is in a provided value. With this function you can have comma delimited values passed to your stored procedure.
CREATE FUNCTION udfParseDelimitedString ( @source VARCHAR(8000) ,@delimiter VARCHAR(100) = ',' --default to comma delimited. ) RETURNS @parsed TABLE (pos INT identity(1,1),i_value INT ,n_value NUMERIC(18,3),t_value VARCHAR(2000)) AS BEGIN DECLARE @continue INT ,@start INT ,@length INT ,@pos INT ,@int INT ,@num NUMERIC(18,3) ,@txt VARCHAR(2000) ,@del_length tinyINT IF LEN(@source) = 0 BEGIN SET @continue = 0 -- force early exit END ELSE BEGIN -- parse the original @source array INTo a temp table SET @continue = 1 SET @start = 1 SET @source = RTRIM( LTRIM( @source)) SET @length = DATALENGTH( RTRIM( LTRIM( @source))) SET @del_length = LEN(@delimiter) END WHILE @continue = 1 BEGIN SET @pos = CHARINDEX( @delimiter ,(SUBSTRING( @source, @start ,((@length - @start) + @del_length)))) IF @pos > 0 -- delimeter(s) found, get the value BEGIN SET @txt = LTRIM(RTRIM( SUBSTRING( @source, @start ,(@pos - 1)) )) IF ISNUMERIC(@txt) = 1 BEGIN set @int = CAST( CAST(@txt AS NUMERIC) AS INT) set @num = CAST( @txt AS NUMERIC(18,3)) END ELSE BEGIN set @int = NULL set @num = NULL END SET @start = @pos + @start + (@del_length- 1) END ELSE -- No more delimeters, get last value BEGIN SET @txt = LTRIM(RTRIM( SUBSTRING( @source, @start ,((@length - @start) + @del_length)) )) IF ISNUMERIC(@txt) = 1 BEGIN set @int = CAST( CAST(@txt AS NUMERIC) AS INT) set @num = CAST( @txt AS NUMERIC(18,3)) END ELSE BEGIN set @int = NULL set @num = NULL END SELECT @continue = 0 END INSERT INTO @parsed VALUES( @int, @num, @txt ) END RETURN END
With this UDF you pass it a delimited string and what it is delimited with and it will return a table with the split values in it. With a Table Value you can use this in your stored procedure like you would a normal table, like this\
SELECT COlumn1, Column2, Column3 FROM Table1 WHERE ID IN (SELECT i_value FROM db.udfParseDelimitedString('1,23,104,99'))
This table values function will actually return the integer value of the items in the string, the number value and the text value, all the values you would need. Unfortunately at this time I do not have a Multiple-Statement Table Valued UDF to show, but will be updating this with one at some point.
The last UDF we will look at is one I find completely invaluable. After you've done SQL development as I have in time you get tired of having to write RTRIM(LTRIM(YourValue)), so I decided to create a Scalar UDF for this. With this UDF you pass it a string and it will remove trailing and leading spaces for you
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.udfTrimString (@value VARCHAR(8000)) RETURNS VARCHAR(8000) AS BEGIN --variable to hold the final result DECLARE @Trimmed_Value VARCHAR(8000) --user LTRIM & RTRIM to set the vaoue of our final result SET @Trimmed_Value = RTRIM(LTRIM(@value)) --return the trimmed string RETURN @Trimmed_Value END GO
As mentioned, this UDF performs your RTRIM() and your LTRIM() and returns the trimmed value.
So, as you can see User Defined Functions can and will be an invaluable asset to your code repository. User Defined Functions allow as close to possible Object Orientated Programming in both SQL 2000 and SQL 2005. I know some are going to argue this, but that is OK with me, you can make your own determination. Bottom line is UDF's will make your life as a SQL developer much easier, and allow you to write scalable and maintainable code.
In Part II of this series on Microsoft SQL Server I will cover User Defined Data Types, what they are, how they work, how to create them and how they, like User Defined Functions, can make your job much easier.


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An Evaluation of Automation for Stock Exchange Firms
BY PAUL W. PINKERTON Partner, New York Office
Presented at the Second Annual Automation Seminar Sponsored by The New York Association of Stock Exchange Firms — October 1957
In his annual report of the New York Stock Exchange for the year
1956, Mr. Funston said, "The Exchange community must continue to expand its educational, sales, and merchandising facilities; must keep its costs low by adapting modern facilities and equipment to the needs of the securities industry; and must work continuously to attract and train young people of talent and promise." In previous annual reports, Mr. Funston had mentioned the first and last of these, but the need to keep costs low was introduced this year for the first time.
This emphasis on costs is largely a recognition of the constantly increasing clerical cost with which the country has been faced. The increased cost is compounded of the expanding need for clerical effort and the decreasing productivity of the individual which seem to be in evidence everywhere. A good segment of the expanded clerical force is a reflection of the sharp growth of credit and investment activities in which the securi-ties brokerage firms play such an important part.
Let me refresh your memories with a few statistics. The average daily round-lot volume on the New York Stock Exchange in 1946 was 1.4 million
shares; in 1956 it was 2.2 million, an increase of 60 per cent. The number of offices of brokerage firms grew from 1,400 in 1947 to 2,400 in
1957, an increase of 70 per cent. The estimated number of shareholders of publicly held corporations increased by one-third during the four years from 1952 to 1956, to over 8,500,000. And the number of producing personnel of brokerage firms doubled during the ten years from 1947 to 1957. It stands to reason that this increase from 12,000 to 24,000 producers
was bound to cause increased activity in the back office. I don't have figures for earlier years, but the number of non-producing (and I don't like that word any better than you do) — the number of non-producing