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A field guide to the birds: a completely new guide to all the birds of eastern and central North America
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980 - Nature - 384 pages
By popular demand, the revolutionary binding used on the 50th anniversary edition--the Flexibook--is back! This Flexi Peterson edition is the ultimate bird guide, inside and out, featuring birds east of the Rockies. Full color.
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Systematic Checklist
How to Identify Birds
Ducks Ducklike and Miscellaneous Swimming
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Common terms and phrases
accidental Adult Alaska America AMERICAN COOT American Wigeon Arctic Argentina band belly bill blackish breast Breeds brown Calidris Canada cheek circumpolar coastal coasts color Common Loon Common Tern Conifer dark DOWITCHER duck dusky Eurasia eye-ring Female Field Guide Flight note Florida FLYCATCHER Food GALLINULE GOOSE gray grayer Greater Yellowlegs GREBE Gulf GULL Larus Habitat head Hemisphere HERON Immature lacks lakes larger legs Lesser Yellowlegs Male Merganser Mexico neck nesting NORTHERN ocean Overhead pale paler pattern PHALAROPE PLOVER ponds prairies Range RED-TAILED HAWK rufous rusty salt bays Sanderling SANDPIPER SCOTER Sexes alike Similar species smaller Snow Goose Song SPARROW spots streaked TERN throat Topside tundra tundra summer U.S. East U.S. south U.S. Winters underparts undertail coverts Vireo Voice WARBLER Whimbrel whistle white patch white rump white wing patch whitish wing bars wing linings wing stripe woods yellow yellowish Young birds


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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is under pressure to veto an oil royalty bill that will slash the revenues of Rio de Janeiro state and put the 2016 Olympics and the 2014 World Cup in peril, according to the state's governor.
The bill passed by Congress on Tuesday cuts royalty payments to governments where about 80 percent of the country's oil and natural gas is produced and shares it out more equally among Brazil's 27 states and more than 5,500 municipalities. It also redirects royalties to a national fund for social programs.
Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo states, which have been experiencing an oil-led boom, stand to lose most. Rio alone will lose about $2 billion in 2013 and forgo $39 billion in revenue by 2020, the state development secretariat said.
"This bill will cause the financial collapse of the state of Rio de Janeiro," Governor Sergio Cabral warned in Brasilia on Wednesday. "It's totally unfeasible. The state would have to close its doors. There would be no Olympics, no World Cup, no payments for retirees and pensioners."
Cabral said he was confident Rousseff will veto the bill because it would modify existing oil exploration and production contracts between companies and the government, a move she has strongly opposed.
Rousseff has not decided yet whether to sign or veto the bill, a member of her cabinet told reporters. She has 15 days to study the bill and decide.
The bill was passed a year ago by the Senate but held up in the Chamber of Deputies by opposition from Rousseff and the three oil producing states. It cleared Congress on Wednesday with the overwhelming backing of states that produce no oil.
The legislation has been in the works since 2007 when Brazil discovered some of the world's most promising oil reserves in a deep-water region now known as the "subsalt".
The New York-state-sized area off Brazil's coast near Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo may contain as much as 100 billion barrels of oil and natural gas equivalent according the Brazilian Petroleum Institute at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
That's enough to supply all U.S. oil needs for more than 14 years.
One reason for Rousseff to veto the bill is that the Rio de Janeiro state government will almost certainly go to the country's Supreme Court to contest the legality of altering existing contracts.
A drawn out legal battle would create legal risks for the oil industry and hinder plans to hold Brazil's first oil rights auctions in more than four years in 2013, delaying the oil bonanza expected from the untapped "subsalt" reserves.
Brazil is counting on that wealth to continue the policies of Rousseff's ruling Workers' Party to reduce poverty and raise the standard of living in the world's sixth-largest economy.
The emerging market nation is also looking to the windfall to modernize its dilapidated infrastructure that has become a serious obstacle to its growth and development.
Congested airports, insufficient public transport and delays to soccer stadium upgrades have raised concerns about Brazil's ability to hold the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the Olympics in the city of Rio de Janeiro two years later.
Reducing the state's royalties would make it hard to pay for the Games, its leading role in the World Cup - the final will be played in Rio's famed Maracanã stadium - and security measures that have curbed the city's notorious violence, Cabral warned.
Reporting by Luciana Otoni and Anthony Boadle; editing by Jeb Blount and Andrew Hay

subset: commoncrawl


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I'm asked quite often about what the best approach for integrating applications into an existing portal. Should they be rewritten as portlets and run in the Portal itself? What about application isolation, because I don't want a bad portlet taking down my portal? What about the latency effects of running some applications remotely? The answer for what options to use, in typical developer fashion, is "it depends."
First, I think it makes sense to briefly outline your options. You can find more detail on all of these through our product's Info Center as well as from the wide variety of white papers and wiki posts available from the Portal Zone (http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/portal/).
- The first, most obvious, option is to run as a portlet within the portal itself. This of course gives you access to all of the local portal services/facilities, such as Personalization/customization, inter-portlet communication, access control, content integration, etc.
- Build a Web service to front the application, having it perform the heavy lifting outside WebSphere Portal and consume the service in a portlet running local in WebSphere Portal. This has the benefit of offloading the potentially resource-intensive business logic, so the application and Portal don't both compete for the same limited resources, while at the same time projecting a portlet presentation in Portal as a thin shim of logic which like a native portlet gives the application access to other portal features. This web service can also be re-purposed by other business applications, consistent with a SOA approach.
- Run the application as a remote portlet, such as in the lightweight WAS 6.1 or 7.0 WSRP Producer. Portlets can be run either local or remote, so you are not always locked into a remote application model. Plus, portlets can be easily tested outside a portal environment, using the default WAS lightweight portlet aggregators that come with WAS 6.1 and 7.0 (e.g. URL Addressability portal). Also, since the portlet is self contained and requires no component to be specifically developed to run in Portal, as with the web service approach, this promotes a distributed governance model where other groups (departments, lines of business, etc) own the lifecycle of their own application (maintenance, test and deployment) and are not beholden to the processes and schedules of a central portal administration team. Like running as a web service, WSRP is consistent with a SOA distributed application approach.
- Integrate the existing Web application as is. Perhaps there are no plans to refactor an existing application into a portlet or web service; what then? There are several approaches for site-level application integration, none of them rocket science, but all of them effective in their own way and heavily in use today with very good results, including within our own IBM Intranet portal.
- IFRAMEs - customers usually chuckle when I mention this, either because they scoff at the primitive technology, or they are already using it, and are familiar with its limitations. Yes, IFRAMEs can yield highly undesirable effects, such as embedding scrollable regions within the browser, as well as including the other site's navigation and headers. However, if you have some amount of control over the other application, you can make simple modifications to have that site eliminate certain elements of its page, such as navigation and banner regions, if invoked in a certain way. Couple that with an effective single signon implementation, and you can get quite good results, especially since you can still apply portal access control to the IFRAME portlet, protecting it from unauthorized use.
- Web clipping - The Web Clipping portlet has been around for a very long time and has had its measure of success in re-purposing external Web content as its own. It has matured quite a bit, now including the ability to plug additional content handlers to work around some of the portlet's inherent weaknesses with rewriting URLs contained within Javascript. Still, it can be difficult to get all content to work perfectly within it, but like with IFRAMEs, if you have influence over the backend application, you can probably get it to work marvelously within the Web Clipping portlet without much effort. The benefit of this approach is that you have control over the external content, and can do such slick things as substitute the original CSS with another, to help the external content blend more naturally with that of the portal.
- Site-level federation - If you can't effectively integrate an external site within the Portal page, then don't try. As the old adage goes: "If you can't beat them, join them." The idea of site-level federation is simple, and goes back to the earliest days of portal implementations: link to the other site from within Portal. With common styling and effective single signon, you can make other sites look just like your portal and give your users the impression that they are still in the portal. WebSphere Portal's goal, anyway, is not to have you run everything within Portal, but have Portal be the point of entry and the governor and gatekeeper of all user experience. Couple this with what we call "inside portal" techniques that project Portal navigational and content items into your remote site (a la Web Application Integrator, or WP 6.1 Navigational REST services), you can give the user impression that they have never left the portal.
- Federated portals - A corollary to site-level federation is the notion of running multiple portals and linking between them. The portals can be organized around applications or communities and can be service providers of their own, such that a single application-oriented portal can be reused (linked to) by multiple other portals or sites.
In my next blog post, I'll walk through the decision making process to help you decide which one of the above options would work best for you.


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March 2012
On February 25, 2012, at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Montreal, Quebec, the Orthodox Christian Women of Montreal hosted their twenty-first annual conference. This year the topic was "Why Do We Need the Creed?: The Symbol of Faith in Today's World," and the speaker was Archpriest Cyprian Hutcheon of the Sign of the Theotokos Orthodox Church, likewise located in Montreal.
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Three hours on I-5 so far, straight as a tightrope, and every twenty minutes or so he sees one of those birds. Always near the roadside, on bent fenceposts or hopping in the gray flossy grass, they look like crows but with breasts a militant strain of orange. They come with an eerie regularity, ten already, and they are alone. Fish, approaching thirty and driving eighty, doesn't know what to call these birds. They are wretched birds.
It's a stultifying, merciless drive from San Jose to Bakersfield—you'd think it was Iowa or Texas if you couldn't, faintly, sense the sea air coming over the western hills. Inland like this, it's hotter and more humid than Fish, who grew up in Illinois, wants California to be. Heat echoes off the road in liquid waves, cars heave with asthma, and Fish's penis is sticking to his thigh in a way that seems irrevocable. It's actually a decent drive for a while—all those velour hills lit pink by the dropping of a barn-red sun—but then the road just goes, moaning its way south, and it's so straight you want to chop your goddam head off.
Fish tells himself, audibly, not for the first time, that he would kill his cousin Adam if he had the chance and could get away with it. As children, he and Adam were made to think of each other as brothers, because their mothers were close and neither of them had a male sibling. But they looked nothing alike, and Adam was an only child, while Fish has a younger sister, Mary, married now and with two sets of twins, all of them freckled and insane—they jump on visitors like dogs. Adam lived in Aurora and Fish lived in Galena, so they saw each other only once a month and in the summers went on uneventful canoe trips in lower Wisconsin with groups of angry kids, wearing bandannas and white rope bracelets.
Fish is driving to see Adam—there goes another one of those black birds, with plumage like a chest exploding—because Adam has tried to kill himself again. This is his seventh attempt, and now Fish knows he should have flown. San Jose, he's almost sure, has a direct flight to Bakersfield, less than an hour in the air. Every time he finishes this drive he vows never again, and then two months later he's here, punching the window, back soaked, left arm sunburned, cursing himself. Fish decides that he's the dumbest person he knows, aside from Adam, of course, and the guy on the local news who pronounces the "s" in "Illinois."
Five hours at least, this drive, plenty of time to come up with a plan, and he tries to concentrate on Adam but finds himself constantly adrift and onto other subjects, like food and war. Years ago he thought he could have an effect on Adam's life, but now he knows he's a spectator, a parent watching a child's sporting event, hands twisted into fists, unable to influence the outcome.
Fish passes a huge beef-processing plant, where a hundred thousand cows are crammed so close they can't move their tails enough to swat flies. There is no earth visible below their doomed hides. He rolls up the window, the stench vile, punishing. Those stupid cows, he thinks, born to die, born to be eaten, born to walk in their own feces. Jesus! It smells fetid, bloody and sweet, like human innards, if you could open yourself up and bring it all to your nose and inhale.
Adam doesn't talk to his mom or to Fish's parents, and he's never had a job, none that Fish can recall, which in a way is impressive—how he's been able to get by for so many years without any sort of legitimate income. There are people who do this, who divert just enough energy and funds and good will from those close to them to exist without anyone taking much notice; it's like stealing cable, but on a larger scale. Fish has given Adam about twenty-two hundred dollars over the years, which he has used frugally; he is clever that way. He's clever in every way, really, even in surviving so many attempts on his own life. Maybe he's unkillable, Fish thinks, and he suddenly snorts out loud at the thought.
Fish's other cousin, Chuck, a tax lawyer in Charlotte with the face of a priest, pink and surprised, says that Adam looks about forty now, even though he's only twenty-eight. The drugs do that, Chuck says. Chuck should know. Fish hasn't seen Adam in almost a year and now he's afraid to. If Adam looks old, it means that Fish is old and they're both old, everyone's old, and— Damn, another one of those birds. There must be a name for those things.
Adam's hope, Fish is sure, is to be the shape-shifting mystery spot in the life of his family and friends. The problem is that Fish has never had a fascination with people who try to kill themselves, and in most ways Adam is nowhere near as strange, for example, as the guy who delivers Fish's mail, a man named Kojo.
"Short for Kojak?" Fish asked when they met. It was a dusty day, orange, windy, the sun like a planet of sand. The mailman laughed. He laughed for about ten minutes over that one. Fish was flattered, then he was scared. Kojo liked to laugh, laughing in a big, clapping way, but he didn't like to wear the postal pants. He always wore the shorts, no matter how cold it got.
He came into Fish's house once for a beer, and he drank with his mouth all around the bottle, as if he were fellating it. Then he unrolled his sleeve and showed Fish a skin graft he'd got—just for the wack of it, he said. "Took some skin from my lower back and put it on my arm." The pores in the new skin were smaller and the surface was smoother, less weathered. There are doctors, Kojo said, who'll do anything for the right money.
A week later Kojo brought Fish a collage, the kind junior-high girls assemble, with phrases cut from women's magazines—"Only Best Friends Know!" "Quiz: Are His Pals the Real Deal?"—pasted over pictures, cut from books, of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet flying kites together, walking through the woods at night, among trees with muscular trunks and eyes that watch.
Fish attracts these people. In high school there was an older guy, a senior when he was a sophomore, tall and bent backward. He had a huge, almost perfectly square head, and he wanted Fish to drive cross-country with him, though they'd talked only once, briefly, while they were watching the girls' swim team practice.
"I like butterfly," the guy had said. His name was either Brendan or Brandon or Stuart.
"Butterfly's good," Fish had said.
That had been their conversation, all of it, and two months later a breathless Brandon appeared, grinning, forehead wet with concentration, when Fish was walking out to soccer practice. "Don't say no, Fish. We're gonna head out and fuck this fucking school and drive to Florida. Fuck this fucking fuck!"
Fish, not wanting to say no, just said "Sorry," and followed the rest of the team over the hill, to the upper field, rectangular but sloping on every side, like a freshly filled grave.
When Kojo presented the collage to Fish, insisting that he open it there in the doorway, Fish didn't know what to say. So he thanked Kojo, made plans to see him three weeks hence—they'd have a beer at the end of the month, just tear it up—then, the next morning, Fish got himself a post-office box.
Fish is driving, slapping himself to stay alert, and he's counting, to make sure it's been seven times. One: the wrists (with an actual saw on his thin, paper-white arms). Two: poison—he drank floor wax, first pouring it into a glass. Three: the gunshot to the stomach. More like the side of the stomach—the bullet grazed him, then went through his window and into the Episcopal church next door. No one was killed or hurt, but Adam felt so bad about it that, four, he stabbed himself in the leg with a cleaver. Five: he tried bringing a hair dryer into the tub with him, but it was suicide-proof, apparently—it turned itself off, leaving Adam shivering, the water having gone cold while he'd got up the nerve. Six: what was six? A car driven into a tree? There was debate about whether that one had been intentional.
This time, two nights ago, Adam, half drunk—he was usually impaired when he tried these things—jumped off a motel roof. At least, that's what Chuck heard from the paramedic who found Adam, unconscious in the parking lot, splayed like a buck on the hood of a truck. It was about forty feet down, Chuck said.
Adam could have jumped into a dry gorge a few blocks from the motel and he would have died for sure—the dropoff there was about a hundred feet. Instead, he fell forty feet, into the courtyard, broke his collarbone, cracked his left leg, bent his spine.
The road is quiet. I-5 is split, a narrow valley between the comers and the goers, so Fish, his brain marshy and his eyes glazed, can see only the cars that are heading in his own direction. Fish likes to see the faces of people going the other way, to construct stories about them, wish them well or ill, but this is nothing. This drive makes you want to freeze the world and shatter it with a fucking hammer.
How does anyone get used to the words "marines killed"? This morning Fish was digging holes in the back yard—holes for posts for a bigger and more elevated deck he'd never build—and had pulled the TV out onto the back porch. Those words came up again and again. And don't show the damned pictures! Jesus, no. His nerves were already shot, the sun his enemy, when Chuck called from Charlotte and described what Adam had done.
"I'm not going this time," Fish said.
"I can get there four days from now," Chuck said. "Do one day before I come. Make sure he's not paralyzed. Check that they have him in a real room and everything." Two years ago, after No. 3, Chuck arranged insurance for Adam, a good plan, and was frequently checking to make sure he was getting his money's worth.
Chuck doesn't know Adam all that well, and thus his benevolence can be less complicated than Fish's. He never shared a bedroom with Adam. He never found Adam's crusty tissues stuffed, like brains displayed in a jar, in a curvy blue bottle he'd won at a carnival. He never caught Adam rubbing down Mary's legs after track, his hands all over her calves.
Fish is driving a rental car. He called that place where they pick you up in a sedan wrapped in brown paper. He called the agency at about noon and they said they'd send the car over at two. He waited in his house. Between twelve and two, he sat, straddling boredom and a new, trembling kind of feeling. He pictured a game he and Adam used to play—it was Adam's only good toy—where tiny metal football players move around on a field vibrating below them. It was a strange game, because you couldn't really control the little bastards—you just watched as the field sent them jerking around, crowding together or falling alone.
Fish watched some of the national aerobics championship. He closed all the cabinets and, using his new drill, tightened all the hinges. He walked to the stationery shop to see if he could buy Adam anything. They didn't have much. He got a card congratulating him on his bat Mitzvah, thinking that it was funny, knowing Adam wouldn't get the joke.
Outside, it was summer. He bought a red Sno-Kone, wrapped in the same weak waxy paper they've been using for a hundred years, from a tiny man with a cart. He held it gingerly between his fingers. He didn't want to eat that ice—it was so right, that red dome, like a tiny lost moon he could hold in his hand.
It began to melt, so he ate it in gulps.
He returned home, thinking maybe he should wait another day, or even two. The sooner he got there, really, the sooner Adam would feel well enough to leave the hospital, and the sooner he'd try it again. The longer Adam was in the hospital, probably restrained in some effective way, the better. He was content, Fish was sure; Adam was always content in a hospital, at least for a week or so.
At two-thirty, Fish called the rental place and they said they were on their way and could he give them his address again. He did, and waited.
At three o'clock, he called again and it was a new guy on the phone. New guy said he had no record of Fish's reservation. "You know," Fish said, "that's messed up. I've been waiting forever and I have to get down to goddam Bakersfield." New guy sighed and said he'd look again. Then he got back on the phone and said that he was sorry, that he'd found the reservation posted on the bulletin board.
"Someone," he said, "put it up on the board without telling anyone else." He was directing this to some nameless offscreen co-worker.
"Sure," Fish said, "but isn't that what the goddam board is for, so you don't have to tell everyone about it?" Fish wanted a look at that office. "Jesus," he added. "That's really fucked."
"Well, I am sorry," new guy said.
"I have a friend in the hospital, motherfucker." Fish was surprised; he hadn't contemplated that sentence. He realized that this was one of those moments when one's impatience—or perhaps the word is rage—was being misdirected. All the same, he thought he'd very much like to punch the new guy till he whispered.
New guy told Fish someone would come get him soon, and then hung up. Fish went into the tiny yellow yard in front of his house and took the croquet wickets out of the grass. They'd been sitting there for three months, since Mary's kids had been over. They couldn't play to save their lives, those kids. They didn't care about the rules, either. They just hit the balls like monkeys, squawking and swinging and running into the street.
Now it's seven o'clock, two hours to go. This drive would kill anyone.
Adam's mouth curves too much. He's never been able to smile without smirking, or listen without sneering. It isn't his fault, really. He just has too many muscles there, in that area around his mouth.
He moved away, to Baltimore, just before high school, so Fish didn't see him much, but one summer, right after Adam's parents separated and he and Fish were too old for camp, Adam stayed with Fish's family in Galena. At first he slept in the basement, next to the dartboard. When he complained about the ticking and groaning of the water heater, he was moved to Fish's bedroom. It was a small room with a single window, over Fish's bed, painted shut, the lower corners covered in stickers with google eyes and holograms.
That summer, when Adam played football with Fish's friends every Sunday at the park, he tackled too hard and argued too much. Fish apologized for him, but everyone figured he was just intense, had something to prove, like the kids who'd tried out for the team but missed the last cut. Adam, though, was different, less in control, less focussed on the outcome of the game.
He broke a guy's leg once. One warm weekend they had about twenty playing. They'd set up cones one guy had borrowed from his construction job, and figured they could have a proper kickoff, like the pros. So they booted the ball and started running like madmen at each other, and this kid McGrady, older but spindly, everywhere elbows and knees, caught the kickoff, the ball delivering a thump to his concave chest. He was running for the sideline, when Adam burst through the pack unblocked and just flew, for a frozen second almost perfectly horizontal, then speared him, his shoulders plowing into McGrady's legs. There was a crack like a broken bat, and everyone cheered because McGrady was barely out of the end zone and his team would be screwed for field position. But then tiny McGrady went red, blood swimming in his face, and he was holding his leg, one hand on either side, gently, like it was too hot to touch.
The leg, the tibia, was snapped in two. It was a battlefield kind of gore, the bone poking through like a stick through a garbage bag.
"You see that, what I did?" Adam said. Fish had found him up the hill, by the new playground, hiding in a chute. He thought Adam was going to brag about hitting the guy so hard, but instead he said, "Why the hell would I break some kid's leg? What the hell is wrong with me?"
Fish told him that it was an accident, it wasn't his fault, it was football, a violent game, so what. Now Adam was pulling on the skin under his chin, grabbing it and pinching it. "I shouldn't play tackle," Adam said, pulling harder. "I'm not surprised this happened. I've thought about something like this, you know? When I get hold of someone I just get too . . . I feel like I want to tear them in half, you know what I'm saying?"
Fish nodded. Adam seemed to be horrified and proud and enthralled all at the same time. He had a glow that just wasn't right, the wild glow of a scientist who'd discovered a formula that could kill millions.
The ambulance was loading McGrady now, and had pulled right up onto the field, which everyone thought was great; that had never happened before. Fish walked with Adam across the grass, now black and wet, without saying much. The light was almost gone, so they headed home, afraid of the night that would soon bring Monday. Into the house, through the mudroom, past Fish's parents playing Pong and up the stairs, Fish quiet, now running his fingers over each baluster, while Adam talked, sighed, touching nothing.
Fish finds a parking space under a wide wall of the hospital, pink-bricked and bisected by the kind of steel ladder you see on water towers—a fire escape, maybe. The grounds are lavish, or seem so in the dark—cobblestone paths winding around willows and palmettos, sprinklers hissing. As Fish is walking in, a man in institutional blue holds the door for him.
Fish says thank you, tells the man, an aide of some kind, where he's headed, and the aide, in his scrubs and with plastic bags around his shoes, walks Fish all the way to the Nursing/Trauma Unit. "I'd just confuse you otherwise," he says. Fish isn't sure if that's an insult or what.
Adam is in Room 318, on the far side of the building. Fish hopes that he doesn't have a roommate, because the roommates in hospitals are always deformed and either too sick or not sick enough to be there in the first place, and they listen to conversations and make judgments. But when he gets to the room there's no roommate, just a twig of a woman, owlish and sallow, sitting on a chair near Adam, eating a brownie.
Fish waves hello to the brownie woman and walks around to Adam. He lies flat, with a neck brace on, staring at the ceiling. Fish puts his face in Adam's line of vision.
"Hey," Adam says, surprised.
Fish grunts.
Adam doesn't look forty. He looks twelve. He's wearing a baseball cap, and his face isn't wrinkly or strung out or gaunt. With his freckles and the cap, he has the aura of a kid who's just had his tonsils out.
"What's the hat?" Fish asks. It bears a minor-league team's logo, showing a beaver holding a bat he's apparently been chewing on.
"What are you doing here?" Adam asks. His eyes open a little more, catching the glare of a car's headlights in the parking lot.
"Who gave it to you?" Fish says.
"One of the nurses. Ronnie."
"Do you get to keep it, or is it just for here?"
"I don't know. I think I can keep it. Did you drive down?"
"Wow. Thanks, man."
"That's a bitch of a drive," Fish says.
"I know. Sorry. Thanks."
On his mobile table are remnants of dinner or lunch or both—uneaten tapioca and two tangelos, and beside them a little tilting pagoda of Tupperware. The lady with the brownie has finished with the brownie and is now cleaning her nails with a pin she had on her lapel. Fish nods to Adam and jerks his head toward her. She has a hospital I.D. tag clipped to her blouse.
"She sits here with me," he says. "They've got someone in here all the time so I don't do anything." It's clear that Adam is happy they think he's such a serious customer, such a dangerous man. Fish looks over at the brownie woman to see if she's listening, but she isn't; she's watching a movie on Adam's TV—Fred Thompson is playing the President, and is wearing that dissatisfied look he favors. Fish stares out the window. In the parking lot, the cars are colored copper by the light from above, the lamps bent over them like tall thin saints over babies. He sees his rental and misses being inside it.
Adam is holding a little tube with a button on it.
"Is that for morphine?" Fish asks.
"Yeah," Adam says.
"So you try to jump off a building, and they give you an unlimited supply of drugs."
"No. I can only get a certain amount each hour. They've got it figured out."
Fish knows it's just a matter of time before Adam starts telling him why he jumped off the motel roof, but he doesn't want to hear it. Oh, if only it were interesting! he thinks. But it never is. It's always "I wanted to hurt myself. I don't know why." Nothing of any interest will get said by either of them. Adam will say "I feel so dark sometimes" or "It's like I see things sometimes . . . through a dark water." Adam wants Fish to understand, but Fish isn't interested, and, besides, he'll call Adam on where he stole that dark-water part—"The Executioner's Song," his favorite book—and remind him of a hundred ways the two of them, Fish and Adam, are equal in this darkness bullshit. They've seen the same things, they have the same urges. Adam will concede this, and will begin apologizing for everything, and for too long. He's too contrite, too docile.
But at some point they'll start making plans for when Adam is discharged. This is the only part that ever interests Fish: the steps from here on out. Fish will get inspired, laying out what will happen in the first few days, the weeks after, every move for years: first, a different apartment in a new city, away from the therapist fuckups in Bakersfield who keep prescribing things for Adam, then a menial job while doing some kind of night school, and finally a woman, older, hardened but warm, eyes that could love and kill.
"So how's Mary?" Adam asks.
"She's good," Fish says.
"Where's she living now?"
"I can't tell you."
"You can't tell me where Mary lives?"
"Because she's got little kids, Adam, and you're a guy who shoots himself and jumps off roofs. Fuck you."
For a second Adam looks hurt, or pretends to look hurt, then he closes his eyes. His chin is brown and tied together with black string, spiked along the suture, as if spiders had been sewn into his face.
"Ow. Don't," Adam says.
Fish is touching it.
"Why not?"
"I got stitches there. Stop it, prick."
"How many?" It's like a cactus or something. The stitches are amazing.
"Twelve. Get the fuck away."
Fish gives him a look.
"Sorry," Adam says. But he has no rights here. After five hours of driving, Fish is allowed to touch what he wants. Fish remembers the card and drops it on Adam's chest. Adam tries to look down at it.
"You have to hold it up. I can't see."
Fish opens it and shows him the front. It's an elephant surrounded by Hebrew letters, with "Happy Bat Mitzvah" written below.
"A Jewish elephant," Adam says.
"I guess so," Fish says.
Fish used to like hospitals. Waiting rooms in particular. When his last girlfriend, Annie, had her appendix out, he was at the hospital for thirty hours and had a pretty good time. He met about ten people—there was some strange collegial vibe that night. They played cards and Fish won a hundred and twenty-two dollars on a straight flush from a guy whose brother was getting a finger reattached. He'd been drilling a hole through his son's wall, thought the kid was selling crystal meth and wanted to catch him. That had been a good night.
But with Adam he doesn't want to stay. Fish looks at the clock. It says eight-forty. He'll leave at nine, he decides. Then he'll call Annie to see if he can stay with her for the night. Annie follows local politics and has ridiculous lips, full like balloon animals, a voice lower than his. The last time Fish saw her she scratched his head so masterfully, in circles so convincing, that he thought he was rising, ascending. They talk often enough, and she lives in L.A., and he figures he'll drive over after, not for sex or even romance, just for a place to rest where there's breathing other than his own, where he won't have to leave the TV on all night to know he's not dead. If she's not around he'll drive back to San Jose tonight. He could do it. Through the night is easier.
"Does your mom know?" Fish asks. He knows that Adam's mom doesn't know, because Adam told Chuck that if she found out he'd do it for real next time.
"No. I don't think so," Adam says.
Adam's father died a few years ago, a botched bypass, and now his mother lives in Australia. She went there to live with a man she'd met in a community-theatre production of "Fiorello!" He played the lead, though apparently he was six feet four and blond.
A nurse comes in. She's Filipino, young. Her nametag says "Hope." Fish feels an urge to say something about her name, in light of her working in a hospital and all, but then figures she hears that often enough.
"That's a good name for a nurse," he says. What the hell.
She takes Adam's blood pressure. Fish watches, loving how quickly the armband fills with air, how tight it gets. That device always looks like something illegal.
"How's your pain?" she asks Adam.
"Good," Adam says. "I mean, it's fine."
The nurse takes the bat-Mitzvah card off Adam's stomach and puts it on the side table, next to a jar of pink tools, like lollipops but with foam starfish tops. Cleaning devices, maybe, for swabbing mouths or other wet orifices. Fish thinks briefly about taking one of the lollipops and stuffing it up Adam's fat fucking nose. He almost laughs at the thought of it.
Fish leaves while Adam is drifting in and out, his face blank, almost beatific. During a brief moment when his eyes pull open, Fish tells him he'll check in again tomorrow.
The night is sharp, all the lights crisp, and Fish drives to the Motel 6 where Chuck said Adam had been staying. He's supposed to pick up Adam's things—four bags' worth. Adam had been living there for a month, after he was asked to leave his halfway house for skinning a chicken in his room. That's what Chuck said, at least. If Adam did indeed skin a chicken, he did it just to say he'd done it. "Ask for Mr. Ali," Chuck said. Chuck was about logistics. He served as Adam's attorney, benefactor, and medical historian. Fish was someone who could drive down and pick up bags.
When he gets to the motel, a women's volleyball team is checking in. He waits for twenty minutes while they decide who will sleep in whose rooms, and which duffels will stay in the minibus. Fish reads every brochure the lobby offers, and makes a tentative plan to see the irrigation museum.
When it's his turn Fish asks for Mr. Ali, but the woman at the counter, heavy-lidded, wearing a maize-colored sari, says he's gone. "I am Mrs. Ali. How should I help you?" Fish shows her the letter that Chuck faxed, asking for Adam's stuff. Chuck insisted on ending the letter with "I trust that this matter will not present a problem." Every legal letter Chuck writes ends this way.
Fish can see the bags just behind her, in a narrow hallway with a cement floor. Two clear plastic bags sit there, alert, and two tennis bags, one covered in mud. Mrs. Ali reads the note, then looks up at Fish. It's then that he almost cries. Water seems to fill his forehead; his eyes are just portals that show he's drowning. What is she looking at? How much does she know? She must know. The ambulance picked Adam up here, and she or her husband surely packed and stored his belongings. She knew Adam as a flailer, as a leaper, and now knows Fish as someone who picks up the bags of people like Adam. Mrs. Ali is not seeing a dutiful cousin; she's seeing another product of a tainted gene pool, who very well might be worse than the first. People who live in motels and jump off motel roofs. There's a highway just above the motel, and on it people are passing this place at eighty miles an hour, wondering what happens in the filthy little world below.
"I have to call Mr. Ali," she says, and does so, using a receiver that's larger than her face. She gets off the phone with Mr. Ali and lets Fish into the hallway behind the desk.
"Thanks," he says on the way out.
"All right," she says, opening the door for him. "Good!" she adds, and after he's gone throws the bolt, right to left.
Fish loads the bags into his trunk, and then remembers what he wanted to investigate. He walks over to the courtyard area to see where Adam jumped. He has forgotten to look until now, and is suddenly thrilled. But he can't find a part of the motel complex that has three or four stories. There is just the one two-story building, in an L shape around the pool, and its roof is only about eighteen feet high. Dumbshit! Fish has figured it out. Forty feet isn't Adam's way, after all, but eighteen feet is. He jumped from this. Who jumps eighteen feet? Who does this? This is so wrong. There are too many things wrong everywhere for this kind of thing, this jumping from eighteen-foot roofs. Adam must have known that eighteen feet wasn't far enough to kill himself, just far enough to hurt like hell. And the only thing worse than an eighteen-foot motel roof is the imbecile staring at it.
He goes back to the car and opens the trunk. He reaches inside one of the plastic bags, looking for something solid. Most of it is soft, and here and there moist, but he soon finds a trophy, a small one with a tennis player on top and someone else's name engraved on it. Elsewhere between the folds of clothes and socks there is some deodorant, a handful of tapes, which Fish pulls out for the drive home, and a bottle of cologne called Together, which makes him laugh. Adam is the only guy he knows who wears cologne. The only other contents of note are five belts, wound as one like a rattlesnake, and a huge container of baby powder.
A woman is walking across the lot toward Fish. Every part of her is moving—her ankles, unsteady in heels; her arms swinging; her head, which jitters with each step, as if it, too, played a part in her propulsion. Her features are mismatched—small chin, wide nose, the icy, almost clear eyes of a wolf. She's wearing jeans and a denim jacket, with pointy blue velveteen boots, the streamlined, utilitarian body of a tomboy teen-ager.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," he says.
"What're you doing?" she asks. "Coming or going?"
She reminds him of the South somehow; he thinks of Kentucky and doesn't know why. Is she nineteen or thirty? Fish can't tell.
"I'm packing this stuff up," he says.
"Then I'm driving down to see a friend." It's after ten and he hasn't called Annie yet. If he calls too late there's no way she'll let him come over.
"Can you give me a ride?" the woman says. "I'm trying to get to San Diego."
"Oh. Yeah. See, I'm not going that far."
Behind them, a truck parks and sighs.
"I know, but I can get out wherever you stop."
He looks at her to see if she has a gun or a crowbar. He wants to help, but he also wants to leave. Not long ago, at a gas station in Daly City, a guy told Fish that he didn't have any cash, and could Fish spot him twenty dollars—he'd give Fish a personal check in exchange. Fish figured he'd be less than human if he said no, so he said yes. The man had a car, after all, and was wearing a sports coat, so this was just a small transaction between solvent citizens—the guy put his home phone number on the check and everything. But the check bounced.
The thing is, Fish had just wanted to help the guy. He spent that first day thinking he had helped the man, believing in the community of souls, in Daly City or anywhere, and then that man took it away. He reached inside Fish and took that from him.
He gets in the car and unlocks the passenger side. He moves a Jack in the Box bag and a milk carton and now the woman is sitting in the passenger seat, a few inches from him. She picks up the map from the floor, folds it quickly, expertly, and puts it in the side compartment.
"Thanks for this. You're sweet," she says, giving him her hand in a royal way. "What's your name?"
"Eddie," he says, lying. Her hand is cold. He doesn't know if he should kiss it or shake it. He doesn't do either, just holds it for a few seconds and lets it drop.
"That's weird," she says. "My brother's name is Eddie. Was."
"He changed his name?"
Fish pulls out of the parking lot and onto the frontage road.
"No, he died."
"Oh, hell. I'm sorry."
"No worries," she says.
No worries. He wants to tell her how much he hates that expression, but doesn't. "Don't worry" makes sense, is a pat on the arm, a reassurance from one person to another, but "No worries" implies there aren't any worries anywhere in the world, and that's just a huge, unvarnished lie.
They get on the highway. Fish asks her name. Her name is Wendy.
"Where're you going?" she asks.
"Redondo Beach, I think." That's where Annie lives. Near the beach, with a futon, in a cave of an apartment next to the garage of a family of five. Her place is full of small glass figurines of mythical animals, ears pinched while the glass was molten—hippogriffs, hydras, satyrs, a tiny sphinx the color of cantaloupe.
"My ex lives in Redondo," Wendy says. "He's married now."
"Huh," Fish says. She is staring at him. He wonders how he looks in profile.
"So what were you doing at the motel?"
"Nothing. Getting stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Just some stuff. Friend's stuff." Somehow that sounds shady. But he figures he'll let it go. She seems impressed, and he likes that.
She pushes the radio scan button a few times, and finds that "Oooh-oooh, Jackie Blue" song.
"I love this song," Wendy says, and slaps her lap loudly. She leaves her hands there, sort of grabbing her thighs. He loves the way a woman's thighs look when she's sitting down, the fabric tight around them. Like breasts, they are, in their roundness, their over-all optimism.
"So do you party?" she asks.
"Do. You. Party."
"In general? I don't—"
"You know. Party."
"Man, I am lost," he says.
"You and me, party, handsome. We should go party somewhere. We could stop and get a drink and stuff. Or a room. Get some weed. Whatever."
Fish knows then what's up. Normal women don't call men "handsome"—only waitresses and prostitutes do that. It's a shame, really. "Handsome" is such a beautiful word.
Fish gives her offer some thought. Her thighs have his head lunging. But it would cost too much, right, spending time with a woman like this? He doesn't know. How did I get to my age without knowing how much things like this cost? __Forget it. He never takes off his shirt with people he doesn't know, anyway. She'd see the hair on his shoulders and his hernia scar, much bigger and less straight than it needed to be—bastard doctor—and she'd think he was a bad package, that the hair and the scar were proof he needed to pay for the kind of company she could offer.
"Nah, I gotta get down to Redondo," he says. "My friend's waiting for me. And his wife and my mom and everyone. Cousins." His mouth is adding family members quicker than his head can count. "They're probably all waiting up."
"We can be quick, if you want," Wendy says.
Another orange-and-black bird appears, shooting across the road low and fast. Fish wants to ask Wendy if she knows what they're called—thrushes? finches? Not that it would make any difference, knowing their name. He glances over at her; her shoulders are squared to him now, her chin lowered. "I'm not expensive," she says.
Fish pulls off the highway and under a gas-station canopy; it's bright like daylight and he thinks of Reno. She's asked to use the bathroom, and her skin looks blue, as if lit from within, and the humidity has lifted. Instead of using the bathroom, though, she heads straight to the pay phone, and while she's on the phone she waves Fish away like he's her father dropping her off at a concert. So he leaves.
By the time he gets to a phone to call Annie, it's too late. He wakes her up, or she pretends to have been asleep. Her first syllable is full of scorn, and he wonders if Wendy is still at the gas station where he left her, just a few miles back. "You have to start thinking of other people, honey," Annie says, without anger, without anything, and hangs up.
He is back at the hospital twenty minutes later. It's well after midnight, and he has no hope of getting up to Adam's room the standard way. He parks his car in the same spot, and calculates which is the right window. He knows that Adam is on the third floor, and the two possible windows are on either side of the steel ladder. So he runs under the willows and through the palmettos and starts up.
It's the left window. He can see Adam in the light of the TV. His twelve-year-old mug is facing Fish now, eyes closed. The brownie woman has gone.
As Fish is about to tap on the glass, Adam opens his eyes. When he sees Fish, he closes one eye, as if looking through a telescope. Fish waves, and Adam, with his fingers only, waves back.
Fish hasn't thought any further than this. If he had a specific message for Adam, he could mime it through the glass, but he doesn't have a specific message.
Adam mouths the word "How?" and points to Fish. Fish is about to mime climbing a ladder but realizes he can't do this without taking both hands off the rungs. He tries it with one hand, but it looks more like he's shopping, like he's doing the shopping-cart dance move. Adam doesn't get it.
Fish shakes his head, wiping the board clean. He'll just pry the window open and tumble in and talk. But the window frame is flush to the building. There's no way to open it.
Fish decides to knock his head on the glass, and does so, twice. Adam smiles. Fish does it a few more times, just to entertain him. Adam pretends to be laughing a lot. It isn't as great as either of them makes it out to be, but there isn't anything else to do. Soon Adam yawns. Fish yawns. Adam's eyes are flickering, so Fish gestures that he'll see him tomorrow, rolling his hand like he's creating a wave, the wave meaning tomorrow, rolling and rolling.
Fish drives to Redondo and stays in a Red Roof by the highway. He figures he'll call Annie in the morning and then see Adam again on his way back north, and do something with all the bags after he's gone through them and dumped the pills and anything else he doesn't want Adam to have. He figures he should get him a real suitcase or two, something with a hard shell, sturdy. He can do that tomorrow.
Tomorrow he can put Adam's stuff in the sturdy suitcases and take them to him, put them in the hospital room, lined up by the door so they're there when he's ready to leave. He can show him how he repacked everything, put it all in two rows, pants on one side and shirts on the other, with the second suitcase holding the other things—socks and underwear and toiletries and belts. Tomorrow he can do these things better than he did today. Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
His room is dark, and he knows he's being stupid. The room smells like people, and he doesn't deserve this, to be tricked like this again. He is done being fooled. Why would that sports-jacket man jack him on a bad check? It was such violence. He doesn't want to be a part of the world under the highway. No. No, he'll skip Annie and Adam and just get a shotgun now and go to that farm on I-5 and shoot a bunch of stupid cows. Ha-ha! They wouldn't make it, anyway—some animals are built to die. Maybe cut off their heads and hollow them out and wear one as a mask. Yes! The humidity inside one of those big heavy heads—he'd love to see what it's like in there for a second. His clean hair would be covered in blood, his face wet, filthy from the stuff he didn't scoop out before he put the fucking thing on. ♦


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Cats and Christmas Trees How to Keep Both Safe
My Favorite Tree and Memories of my Grandpa
November Memories of my Grandpa
October has passed by and now there is a short lull before Thanksgiving and onto the rush of the Holiday Season. I like this break between Halloween and Thanksgiving, while we prepare our habitat for winter. Thicker and softer blankets come out of hiding and my heated thinking circle takes its place in the sun room. Even though the sun begins to play hide and seek with us for the next few months, the warmth of my heated circle allows me to close my eyes and pretend the sun is shining down on me.
As the days shorten and the temperature cools, the leaves on all the trees around our home begin to turn color and then float to the ground. Some leaves are super spooky, like the giant Maple tree leaves that scritch and scratch across our porch. But my favorite leaves dance and float down to the ground from the ginkgo tree.
I have a great view of the ginkgo tree from the front bay window. I know that sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving depending on the temperature fluctuations that the ginkgo tree will perform a mesmerizing leaf dance as she sheds her leaves for winter. The leaves twirl and float down to the ground forming a golden blanket upon the ground. I must stalk the tree, because once the dance begins, it continues until all the leaves participate and take to their winter resting place.
The ginkgo tree is extra special to me and my family. You see, my grandpa planted and loved this tree. He nurtured her from a sapling and made sure she was protected and able to grow. Today she is a mighty tree with strong limbs and gorgeous leaves. This tree stands as a living memory of my grandpa and we feel his presence every day when we come and go year round.
But in November, when the ginkgo leaves turn gold, memories of my grandpa turn bittersweet. Our hearts feel a little heavier remembering the November the ginkgo leaves performed for us when my parents came home from Grandpa's funeral. The sun was shining, the leaves were dancing, and I was waiting in the bay window for my mom and dad to come and watch with me. And just like that, in the middle of our heartbreak. our spirits were lifted watching his tree and feeling his spirit dancing with the leaves. Grandpa lives on in our hearts, and we dance in November.


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Nick Schmidt struggles for Sky Sox; Parker Frazier solid for Tulsa
Triple-A Colorado Springs had 13 hits, but lost 11-10 to Reno in 11 innings.
Starter Nick Schmidt struggled, allowing 12 hits and seven run in just four innings. Triple-A newcomer Chris Pettit had three hits, while Tommy Field, Charlie Blackmon and the rehabbing Wil Nieves each had two hits.
NW Arkansas 3, Tulsa 2
The offensive drought continued for the Double-A Drillers. Tulsa managed just seven hits, only two for extra bases.
The good news: Kent Matthes continues to tear it up. He belted his 17th homer, his fifth home run in his last eight games. The outfielder is hitting .387 in his last 10 games.
More good news: Parker Frazier pitched a splendid game. The right-hander gave up a two-run homer in the first ining, but then found his groove, retiring 17 of the last 18 batters he faced before being replaced in the eighth by Josh Sullivan.
After retiring the first two batters he faced, Sullivan gave up the game-winning home run to Yem Prades in the bottom of the eighth.
High Desert 6, Modesto 3
Thursday's game was a so-so affair for High-A Modesto starter Tyler Matzek. He allowed two runs on eight hits, in five innings. He walked four and struck out three.
Shortstop Cristhian Adames was 2-for-44 with two RBIs to pace the Nuts' offense.
Greenville 10, Asheville 3
Low-A Asheville starter Ben Alsup allowed five runs on four hits and walked four in 4 1/3 innings. His record feel to 11-5. Jared Simon had two hits for Asheville, including a two-run homer, while Trevor Story also had two hits. Story is now hitting .267.


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Bush on Cheney: 'It's been cordial'
Former President George W. Bush is in the midst of a media blitz to promote the Thursday opening of his presidential library and has generally projected a jaunty, at-peace air as he takes questions about his tumultuous eight years in the White House.
But a straightforward, C-SPAN-style question from C-SPAN's Steve Scully in an interview set to air on the cable channel Wednesday night about a central figure in that administration met with a revealing coolness from Bush.
Story Continued Below
"There's been a lot of attention, new documentary, on your vice president, Dick Cheney," said Scully. "What has your relationship been like between you two since you left the White House?"
"You know it's been cordial — but he lives in Washington and we live in Dallas," Bush replied, sitting next to his wife, Laura. "One of the saddest things about departing Washington is that you miss your pals and a lot of people were there for all eight years and I became good friends with them, like Vice President Cheney."
( PHOTOS: George W. Bush's career)
Bush, apparently feeling the need to say more, continued about the man widely seen as the most powerful vice president in American history: "You know, I just I don't see him — much. And I don't see many of the people I worked with much and it's kind of sad. It's great to be in Texas, however."
Perhaps sensing a bit of awkwardness, Laura Bush interjected.
"They'll all be here for the opening, though, and that'll be really fun — a great reunion with lots of people that worked in the administration," she said, not mentioning Cheney.
The former president then shot back in, saying, "You know, I really don't miss Washington" before reiterating his desire to stay off the political stage.
"So while we've got friends in Washington I'm not all that friendly to Washington," Bush said, finally concluding his answer.


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Top Kite Course Board Riders Go Through Their Paces Ahead Of Race Worlds
Hang Loose Beach, Gizzeria – The hotly anticipated showdown between the world's fastest kite course board racers is set to kick-off in southern Italy in light-to-moderate Mediterranean breezes and smooth conditions guaranteed to throw up blistering pace and the closest of contests.
With reigning Formula kite world champion Maxime Nocher (MON) fresh off the back of the back of a peerless victory in the Kitefoil Gold Cup Italy on the same waters, he is familiar with the conditions and keen to prove his dominance with back-to-back victories.
But the young Briton, Olly Bridge who took the third podium spot at last year's worlds in Turkey, will be looking to avenge his defeat. He suffered a calamitous meltdown missing the last race when in contention for the gold medal, partly due to a kite mix up with his mother, Steph Bridge, who herself took the women's world championship title.
Olly Bridge bounced back, though, with a stellar performance in the International Sail Federation (ISAF) World Cup in Abu Dhabi snatching the title in the Formula kite "short track" format vying to secure kiting an Olympics berth.
Another young rider, Axel Mazella (FRA), will also be out to show his pace on a course board after he placed second to Nocher in the Kitefoil Gold Cup which was also hosted by Hang Loose Beach on the dramatic, wooded Calabrian coast.
The field consists of 73 riders — including 11 women — from 25 nations. The men will be divided in to "yellow" and "blue" qualifying fleets for the first two days of competition, with the riders seeded into the top "gold" and "silver" fleets, with medal races of the top ten men on the final day of competition. The women will race as a separate fleet.
Among the women Bridge is likely to be challenged hard by Elena Kalinina (RUS), especially if the conditions remain as light as registration day when most of the fresh arrivals tested their pace on the flat seas under sometimes sultry, but generally clear skies.
Poland's Aga Grzymska, Anastasia Akopova (RUS) and Ariane Imbert (FRA) could also prove to be fast over the coming days likely to see close tactical battles on the water.
The men's fleets boast a strong roster of Formula kite racers, despite the migration of some solely to the kitefoil discipline. The riders most likely to be in contention are Alejandro Climent Hernandez (ESP), former kite race world champion, Florian Grubber (GER), Florian Trittel (ESP) and Maks Zakowski (POL).
But unknown quantities like the talented Guy Bridge (GBR) could cause some upsets. The coming days' battles will no doubts prove an intriguing to sort out the new up-and-coming faces from the established old order.
Writer: Ian MacKinnon
The post 2015 IKA Formula Kite World Championships – Preamble appeared first on KTA - Kiteboard Tour Asia.
Read original article: KTA News:2015 IKA Formula Kite World Championships – Preamble


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How productivity software helps two agencies — one federal, one county — improve efficiency
Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a key goal of technological development has been to make work more efficient. That hasn't changed in the Information Age.
A variety of software applications are available to streamline business processes, but organizations, whether government agencies or corporations, often have unique needs. How enterprises select and use software tools to enhance productivity remains a challenge. Commercial productivity tools, such as SharePoint, are common but might not deliver the customized approach an organization needs to improve operations.
Two organizations, a federal laboratory and county social services department, offer examples of different technological approaches to enhance productivity.
A research facility with a distributed and mobile workforce, the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory uses a secure wireless data sharing technology to enhance staff productivity. Jerry Johnson, the laboratory's CIO, said mobility is important for PNNL researchers, many of whom travel globally. When on the road, staff members must be able to access online tools such as e-mail, calendars and SharePoint.
But scientists want to use more than just a laptop PC to access e-mail messages and other information. Johnson said researchers sought more flexibility from their devices and began requesting consumer devices, such as Apple iPads and smart phones. "They become very dependent on the collaboration tools that we've provided for them, and they want to maintain that productivity while they're on the road," he said.
The facility in Richland, Wash., has a staff of about 5,000. To securely manage its mobile workforce, the laboratory chose to use a multiplatform secure enterprise mobility software system by Good Technology. The facility ran a six-month pilot program in fiscal 2010. It was released into production in August. Johnson said the pilot program was successful, both in terms of how the technology worked and how the customers accepted it.
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Johnson said functionality for some enterprise devices, such as BlackBerrys, was slightly diminished in the Good environment, but he added that users were more than willing to give up some capabilities for the increased flexibility to use other consumer devices. He also noted that only PNNL is using Good's data sharing software, not the entire Energy Department. "While we might adopt it for our laboratory, it doesn't mean that anybody else is going to adopt it elsewhere or that the [Energy Department] is going to adopt it."
Good Technology's data sharing capability is now a standard offering. Johnson said it is only supporting iPhone and Android devices. Because the lab could not previously provide e-mail access to iPhone and Android users, they were not receiving the same productivity benefits that BlackBerry owners enjoyed, he said.
Security remains one of the headaches with mobility. PNNL must provide secure access to the network while protecting the information on users' mobile devices. Johnson noted that secure access was not a problem for laptops because of full-disk encryption, and BlackBerrys have built-in security. But security considerations become more problematic when programmable consumer devices, such as iPhones and Andriod smart phones and iPads, become available. "One of the big challenges that we had was to look for ways to secure these mobile devices," he said.
Device flexibility is also an important tool for attracting and keeping talent. "It's hard to tell Ph.Ds that you can only use a Windows box," Johnson said. "If you want to hire a Nobel laureate or a top-notch scientist into a laboratory, you need to be flexible to provide the kind of environment that they want to work in."
In addition to attracting staff members, Johnson said, there is a growing generational difference because younger staff members are "used to things other than enterprise-ready environments." Based on the computing needs of those two groups, the laboratory sought a new way to secure mobile devices that could meet regulatory requirements and protect information that the lab managed for its customers and partners.
"We need to have device flexibility, both to address the experienced, well-founded scientist who has their favorite way of computing, as well as being able to accommodate and attract the next generation of scientists who have grown up with a different style of computing than the [baby] boomers have," he said.
One of the primary problems for wireless security is data encryption. Johnson said the laboratory's BlackBerrys are encrypted and centrally managed. Handheld devices can also be remotely controlled or erased in the event of loss or theft.
"Those are the kinds of things that you would expect to be built into an enterprise-type device," he said. "That kind of functionality is not built into consumer devices like iPhones and Android phones. What Good provided was the ability to create a sandbox on those devices wherein resides the corporate information." That information is protected, which allows the laboratory to enforce encryption and password policies.
Johnson said the laboratory also liked Good's software data erasure options. If the lab conducts a data erasure on a device, only corporate data, not personal information, is destroyed. "When it's a personally owned device that we pay a stipend on, when we force an erasure, we only erase our data, not their data," he said. He said that is a nice feature that's different from security options offered on BlackBerrys.
The laboratory manages smart phones through a stipend program. Researchers own their iPhone or Android devices and receive a stipend from the laboratory for the business use of the devices. For example, the stipend could cover part of a voice plan and most of a data plan. PNNL also provides its researchers with a copy of the Good software that allows them to remotely access e-mail messages.
Johnson said the laboratory took this approach to avoid issues with personal use of government equipment. He said that in the past, scientists were prohibited from making personal calls on phones for business use only except during emergencies, which forced many staff members to carry two phones. That dual-use issue prompted the laboratory to launch its stipend plan, which eliminated the need to worry about employees using the phones for personal calls, Johnson said.
For users, the experience with Good Technology's secure service is not that different from what people would encounter if they used BlackBerrys, Johnson said. Under the stipend plan, the overall number of people using mobile devices has increased.
The laboratory plans to support more devices. Next up: the iPad, which the lab supports only for access to a Web portal. Web access allows staff to access PNNL's data and a subset of the lab's applications from a business center, hotel room or anywhere else their devices, such as iPads, have Internet access. As Good software becomes available for the iPad, he said, the laboratory will move to provide a push capability for e-mail and calendar functions to those devices.
The portal uses two-factor authentication for access to e-mail and time cards without caching the data on users' personal devices. That capability also prevents any device security issues from affecting the security of the internal network, he said. "Currently, that's the only way we're supporting access to the laboratory from the iPad," he said.
Going Paperless
Productivity software can also greatly enhance an organization's efficiency. The Department of Social Services in Cumberland County, N.C., is using an information sharing and document management tool to reduce the processing time in its Food and Nutrition Services division. The fifth largest county in the state, Cumberland County is a mix of urban and rural communities. It is home to Fort Bragg and has a diverse community with a transient population because of the military, said Shirley Harris, assistant business director of business operations at the Department of Social Services.
Cumberland County's Food and Nutrition Services division serves more than 27,000 families that meet federal and state guidelines for food and nutritional assistance. Based on numbers from the 2009 census, Cumberland County's population is about 315,000, and 16.4 percent of the population falls below the poverty level and is eligible to receive food and nutrition aid, Harris said.
The Department of Social Services provides a range of services such as food and nutrition, medical assistance, protective services for adults and children, employment assistance, and child care. The department has a staff of about 650 people.
Harris said the growing demand for services inspired the move toward automation. As the economy fluctuated, especially during the recent severe downturn, the number of people needing assistance dramatically increased. Harris said that from 2007 to September 2010, households that require food stamps increased by 10,618 families. "We could not continue to absorb that amount of customers without automating our system," she said.
The increased demand coincided with budget restrictions. Harris said the county could not afford to develop an in-house system or purchase an outside product. After extensive research, the county selected Tyler Technologies to help develop and integrate a new system to support the department's staff. A technological solution was important because the Department of Social Services could not increase its staff or add space to manage all the paper generated by new customers.
Harris said the county chose Tyler's system because it combined an imaging and case management system. She said the county sought an application that could manage all its programs and services. The department also was willing to gradually grow into the new system in phases, initially installing it in September 2007 for the Food and Nutrition Assistance program.
Before switching to the automated system, the county had an entirely paper-based process. The initial setup for moving to Tyler's system involved scanning and imaging existing case files, Harris said. By December 2007, all of the Food and Nutrition staff case workers were on the system. While setting up the system, she said the department focused on training and helping the staff adjust to working in a paperless, automated office.
The system was an immediate success, dramatically reducing the department's paper storage needs. Harris said the organization hasn't had to buy any new file cabinets in three years. With the average cost of a file cabinet at about $200, she said, the money saved on cabinets equals a case worker's salary and benefits. "We saved over $57,000 in three years on just not having to purchase file cabinets."
The system has increased efficiency by cutting the time needed for caseworkers to review a household's eligibility for services, from about an hour to 20 minutes or less. Harris said the system saves and updates changes to existing files, which eliminates the need for an employee to manually fill out forms with personal information each time someone came in for a review. Now employees can electronically capture and store data in the network and share it among different sections. The Food and Nutrition Services division's 78 staff members, consisting of caseworkers and their supervisors, manage about 27,000 cases. "The system, for us, has been a life saver," she said.
The Tyler system allowed the county to integrate the case management system into its Department of Social Services. Harris said that although the department is part of the county government, it worked independently with Tyler to develop the case management system for the Food and Nutrition Services program.
The system allows all Department of Social Services employees to connect and share data. The system contains user permissions that allow some departments to share data but not view information from some other departments. For example, Food and Nutrition Services staff members can't see information from the Protective Services division.
In addition, the system helped the department do more with its existing staff members. Harris said that without the system, the department would have needed about 20 more people to meet the demand. Because of the poor economy, the Food and Nutrition Services caseload has increased 19 percent in 2010. "It's a difficult time for everyone, but we've been able to manage," she said.
The Food and Nutrition Services division has hired 12 employees to meet the increased demand. However, Harris said existing staff members also shifted their job descriptions, with employees who previously made copies or handled paper files transitioning to intake operators who capture general customer information when people apply for services. That initial data collection speeds the entire process when caseworkers interview applicants for eligibility, she said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Social Services is upgrading the system. Harris said it will soon add a Medicaid program that now consists of nearly 46,000 households. The system will cut the initial application process from two hours to an hour or less. Harris said the department is also considering moving financial records and personnel files onto the system. The department is responsible for archiving those files for a set amount of time.
In the next few years, Harris said she hopes to get the protective services aspect of the system, which involve more human interaction and decision-making by social workers, online. The Department of Social Services plans to develop tools that would help social workers manage the paper process of their jobs, such as dictation and tracking children. The new capabilities would help social workers electronically capture and maintain their work while they are in the field.
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Obesity and being overweight are leading health concerns in the US. Being overweight is considered a risk for chronic diseases such as high blood pressure , heart disease, and diabetes . The general principle of weight loss is to use more calories than one consumes. This means lowering the amount of food eaten and increasing physical activity. However, many still struggle to achieve their weight loss goals. Some believe that the proportions of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are a key factor to weight loss. This has resulted in a variety of specialized diets that over or under emphasizes a particular nutrient.
The Harvard School of Public Health wanted to clarify what type of nutrient change if any was best in reaching weight loss goals. The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found no significant difference in weight loss between the diets.
About the Study
The randomized trial followed 811 participants over a two-year period. The participants were all offered group and individual instructional sessions over the study period. Changes were measured by body weight every six months. The participants were split into four groups. Each group was assigned a diet that emphasized carbohydrates, protein, or fat. The diet options were:
- 20% of calories from fat, 15% from protein, and 65% from carbohydrates
- 20% from fat, 25% from protein, and 55% from carbohydrates
- 40% from fat, 15% from protein, and 45% from carbohydrates
- 40% from fat, 25% from protein, and 35% from carbohydrates
The goal in all four groups was to reduce their caloric intake by 750 calories per day. Researchers recorded weight loss and dietary changes. At the end of the program, on average, all groups lost the same amount of weight. The researchers noted that participants that attended support sessions lost more weight than those that did not attend.
There are some concerns with this study. There was a high dropout rate with only 79.5% of the participants completing the study. The participants also had difficulty adhering to the dietary guidelines that were established. Few reached their dietary goals.
How Does This Affect You?
Long term adherence to any diet plan is difficult for almost everyone. As seen in this study, many people were unable to stay with the program over the two-year period. Nevertheless, its results are consistent with those of many other studies: as long as calories are kept low, it does not much matter where those calories come from. Reducing overall caloric intake is the key to successful weight loss. The study also confirmed that personal support is an important component of effective behavioral change.
A dietitian can help you make a plan to adjust your current diet. Small gradual changes are easier to accept than a dramatic dietary overhaul. Talk to your doctor before beginning a diet that excludes or emphasizes one nutrient. Diets that restrict specific nutrients can be harmful for some people. Seek support through a weight loss group, family members, or a professional.
- Reviewer: Richard Glickman-Simon, MD
- Review Date: 04/2009 -


text: Bumps, Balls and Breathing Friday, September 21, 2018 3:30 PM 4:30 PM 15:30 16:30 Cotswold Birth Centre Russell Way, Chipping Norton, OX7 5FA United Kingdom (map) Google Calendar ICS Breathing and relaxation skills for labourA weekly, daytime class, to learn breathing and relaxation skills for labour. Also discover ways to use a birthing ball to help to position your baby well in readiness for the birth, as well as how to stay as comfortable as possible during labour. Suitable to attend from 28 weeks onwards. Most sessions are for women only, but once a month there is a partners' session in Carterton.


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Florida | RV and Camping Travel Tips
History and Wildlife: Venice to Boca Grande, Florida
- Article Information
- Category: Camping Gems
Take a step back in time on Florida's historic Southwestern coast, an area filled with gorgeous beaches, incredible wildlife, and some of the finest fishing you'll find anywhere. Set in the quiet, undiscovered region around Charlotte Harbor, the coastal towns of Venice and Boca Grande offer old-world charm and modern hospitality. After you tour the beaches and explore the boutiques, take a day trip to the Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area, one of the best bird-watching spots in the country.
Begin your tour in lovely Venice, a sweet, sleepy resort town that's south of Sarasota and Interstate 75. Venice is made up of five small towns, each with its own unique flavor. In Osprey, Laurel, Nokomis, Venice, and South Venice you'll find distinctive boutiques and unique gift shops, plus plenty of cafes and galleries for window shopping. This is also a hotspot for golfing or for boating and fishing off the golden-sand beaches.
While you're in Venice, be sure to spend an afternoon at the Venetian Waterway Park, a ten-mile waterfront park that covers both sides of the Intracoastal Waterway. Head there for a scenic stroll, a bike ride, roller blading, or to walk your favorite furry friend.
Venice has a lively, active community with a thriving arts center. You'll find symphony performances, theater, and plenty of history at Historic Spanish Point and the Venice Historic Preservation League. On Friday night, you can enjoy the town's free concerts and then get up on Saturday, ready to shop for fresh fruits and vegetables at the Farmer's Market.
Once Venice has soothed you into relaxation, head south down Highway 776 to the island attraction of Gasparilla, home of Boca Grande. This charming town celebrates Old World Florida in all its glory with the 104-year old lighthouse and 80-year old Banyan trees. The Gulf side of Gasparilla Island is covered with white-sand beaches that are perfect for swimmers, sunbathers, volley-ball players, and shell collectors. On the bay side, mangroves and wetlands create an ideal ecosystem for fishing. These 750,000 acres of estuary are a haven for ocean fish that love this particular blend of fresh and salt water. Watch for dolphins, osprey, white pelicans, and manatees.
If fishing is what you're after, visit between August and November or during Tarpon season in the spring. You'll find waters filled with grouper, snapper, mackerel, redfish, and kingfish. There are plenty of boat rentals available, as well as boat ramps for getting your own craft into the water.
Beautiful Boca Grande will whet your appetite for more natural wonders and incredible wildlife. So head east through Port Charlotte to the Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area. This 102-square mile region is famous for its bird watching, bluegill fishing, mountain biking, hiking, and horseback riding. Visit in the spring to see the flatwoods burst into color with wildflowers or keep your binoculars trained on the trees as you watch for woodpeckers, nuthatches, hawks, hummingbirds, eastern bluebirds, and cedar waxwings. Herons, ibises, and belted kingfishers love exploring these lush wetlands.
Western Florida is an ideal place to head for a romantic weekend or family getaway. With its fabulous weather, sandy beaches, and wildlife, you'll truly find the perfect attraction or activity. Whether it's fishing, beachcombing, or gift shopping you're after, this part of Florida is the place to be.
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Several months ago I bought this pillow from That Funky Boutique and I love everything about it. I love that it's made from an old sweater, I love that it looks like a flower and I love that it is round! And because I love it so, I put it on one of my favorite spots in the house- my window seat!
When we renovated the kitchen it was suggested to me that we put a window seat under the large bay windows. We did and I am ever so glad! It's a spot to read, nap, play with dolls and chat with whoever is in the kitchen. The window seat also gave me an opportunity to use another favorite thing- my bow sconces! These were picked up at an antique shop years before I ever had the opportunity to use them. For me, bows never get old!


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Located on the 1st hole of the prestigious Sunday River Golf Club in the Mahoosuc Mountains of beautiful Newry, Maine, this fantastic home was designed to exceed all expectations for your large family ski or golf vacation, reunion, retreat or other special occasion. The design of this luxury estate home will fully entertain, pamper and impress in the complete comfort of an artistic masterpiece of a home. It is a state of the art entertainment pavilion and a luxurious family retreat all wrapped up in one. With 9 large bedroom suites, 8 spa-inspired bathrooms, a 20 seat authentic state of the art movie theater (also great for presentations), Huge Game Room, 2 multi-person steam rooms, 4 bars, 2 hot tubs, sauna, a huge heated pool, an incredible playground, 3 kitchens, a professional pool table, foosball table and arcade and so much more!
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Electronics manufacturers have watched as "Avatar" has wowed moviegoers at the megaplex. Now they hope 3D will do the same thing in living rooms.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Wednesday, a slew of high-profile hardware makers unveiled the next generation of television sets and Blu-ray players set to find their way onto store shelves as early as this year. These products make clear that 3D is about to make a big leap to smaller screens.
Among the majors, Sony Electronics, Samsung and LG Electronics introduced its first 3D-enabled Blu-ray players during Wednesday press conferences at CES, with models expected to become available to buy this summer.
Sony also pushed its new line of 3D TV sets, ranging from 40 to 60 inches. They will come bundled with 3D glasses and a 3D transmitter, the latter of which will also be sold to play back screen-jumping visuals on a new line of 3D-ready TVs.
Samsung is a 3D TV pioneer, having launched 3D LCD and plasma sets in 2007 and 2008. Being first may not have proved too beneficial, however. It's only been in recent months that broadcasters, studios and other content providers have started readying plans for 3D content to play on those TVs.
Some of the company's new TVs include 3D outputs and the ability to automatically convert 2D video to 3D.
While introducing its own 3D-ready TVs, LG promoted a new partnership with Skype, whose video conferencing technology will be integrated into new sets, enabling consumers to make free video and voice calls over the Internet using their TVs and a webcam.
The availability of programming encouraged more manufacturers to roll out their 3D hardware.
It's easy to say you have a 3D TV, but then what do you watch on it?" said Buzz Hays, senior VP of the Sony 3D Technology Center, whose formation was announced Wednesday and will operate not only as a resource for Sony but for all of Hollywood.
The center has been developing new content with Sony Pictures and the parent company's videogames, music and other divisions to show on Sony's new line of 3D TVs "so that when someone buys a Sony 3D television, they have a reason to buy it. It's not just a novelty to show their friends three demos and that's it," Hays said.
Panasonic is even helping DirecTV launch three new 3D channels this summer and will brand the effort in order to promote its hardware.
"We are taking a technology that at one time could only be seen in a theater and bringing it into the living rooms of the largest audience in the United States," said Eric Shanks, executive vice president, DirecTV Entertainment. "Adding the most HD channels to our lineup gave customers a viewing experience that was incredibly lifelike; adding 3D to the mix will take that one step further allowing them to become part of the cast as the picture comes to life in their living rooms."
Other devices are also going 3D. Sony announced a wireless 3D 5.1 channel Blu-ray home theater system that can access Sony's Gracenote database technology to display disc cover art, actor and production information.
Pricing has not yet been revealed on most of the new devices.
Internet connectivity is also expected to become standard in new Blu-ray players in the future. Most of Sony's, Samsung's, Panasonic's and LG's new Blu-ray players include wireless Internet connections.
Sony's 3D Blu-ray player can access the company's Bravia Internet video programming, which includes Netflix downloads, Amazon Video on Demand and YouTube, among other online services. In addition, the new player will wirelessly grab stored photos, music and video from PCs for viewing on TVs, a function that has been common on Microsoft's Xbox 360.
LG's wireless set-top box goes one step further and carries an unusually large 250 GB hard drive, enabling users to store their movies, TV shows and other video programming, as well as photos, music and other media, directly on their players. Player bows this year and will also connect to online movie download service Vudu. Consumers will also be able to copy and archive their CDs onto the player's drive using new feature MusicID. Powered by Sony-owned Gracenote, MusicID will also allow a user to hear an entire song playing within a movie or TV show.
The mass adoption of Apple's iPods and iPhones has encouraged electronics makers to embrace the handhelds as well, with Sony enabling several of its Blu-ray players and TVs to be controlled using the mobile devices.
And if consumer can't use their iPods as remote controls, companies like Samsung are creating their own iPod-like remotes.
The company's TVs will include a touch-screen remote control that will let a user watch live TV on the handset while viewing a Blu-ray movie on his TV screen.
Of course, all of the 3D devices were already in development before "Avatar" bowed in December; all of the companies had been boasting about the ability to bring 3D to homes for some time. But the hardware makers were gambling that 3D would be the next big thing that would encourage consumers to upgrade the TVs and Blu-ray players in their homes. It may prove a bet worth making.
Studios aren't writing off 3D at home as just another gimmick to sell more hardware. It should also help sell more movies, especially on Blu-ray.
3D will give Blu-ray a second boost," said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros.' Home Entertainment Group. "It will be a further reason on why people want to convert" from DVD.
Hays said Hollywood has been actively producing 3D films and other fare for the last five years, and "we've learned the difference between good and bad 3D."
Avatar" has helped "legitimize" the 3D format, he said. "It's put a cap on a year when people thought it was still a novelty. Now a legitimate filmmaker chose this method to tell his story."
Hays continued, "We want 3D to be an extension of (consumers') reality instead of being reminded that they're watching some kind of technology," he said. "We want to create things you couldn't get unless you did it in 3D."
(Susanne Ault contributed to this report).


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The University of Missouri Board of Curators and UM System President Timothy M. Wolfe will honor 10 faculty members and one student with awards June 26. These awards include the President's Awards—the highest honor bestowed by the University of Missouri System for excellence in the university's four mission areas of teaching, research, service and economic development; the Thomas Jefferson Award; the Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award; and the C. Brice Ratchford Memorial Fellowship Award.
"These recipients represent our finest faculty and students, and the University of Missouri System is what it is because of their hard work and dedication," Wolfe said. "Every day, each one of them makes a difference in the lives of Missouri's citizens and truly advances our state— and nation."
The recipients and their honors include:
President's Award for Innovative Teaching
Elizabeth A. Baker, Ed.D., MU
This award recognizes a faculty member who is an outstanding teacher and employs innovative teaching methods to achieve success in student learning.
Baker is an associate professor of literacy studies in MU's College of Education. She joined the university in 1996 after obtaining her doctorate and master's degrees from Vanderbilt University. Her deep understanding of today's changing literacy landscape and the importance of educating the nation's youth to read and write with technology have led to a long history of excellence. Baker has produced more than 200 research-based journal articles, book chapters, presentations, technical reports, podcasts and websites that focus on teaching, learning and technology.
President's Award for Economic Development
Thomas G. Johnson, Ph.D., MU
This award recognizes faculty for distinguished activity in meeting the University of Missouri's goal of serving as an economic engine for the state and its citizens.
Johnson is a professor of agricultural economics in the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs at MU. He has engaged with communities at regional, national and international levels by providing new information and techniques, innovative solutions and training. Johnson is a leader in the field of rural economic development. As director of MU's Community Policy Analysis Center, he works to apply area-specific solutions to community development goals.
President's Award for Leadership
Joy D. Swallow, M.Arch., UMKC
This award is presented to a faculty member with a commitment to excellence and integrity; an ability to motivate, build and sustain a high level of morale and productivity among faculty or staff; find practical solutions to complex problems; and effectively build teams, manage projects and produce positive results.
Swallow is a professor of architecture at UMKC where she founded the Architectural Studies program—a collaboration between UMKC and Kansas State University—that is praised as a model for cooperation between universities. Throughout her tenure, she has helped foster a belief in students, faculty and the community that much is expected and possible. Swallow created an undergraduate degree program in Urban Planning + Design that has played an important role in providing much-needed planning and design assistance to underserved communities.
President's Award for Sustained Excellence
Grace Y. Sun, Ph.D., MU
This award is given to a faculty member who demonstrates and sustains a record of distinguished scholarship, research or creativity for 15 or more years.
Sun is a professor of biochemistry and an internationally renowned scientist in neuroscience with a research focus on brain lipids and signaling pathways in relation to aging and neurodegenerative diseases. She is particularly adept at using new technologies—as evidenced by her work using low energy lasers in researching pathogenesis in Alzheimer's disease. Her intellectual curiosity has resulted in several innovative investigations.
President's Award for Early Career Excellence
Anthony N. Caruso, Ph.D., UMKC
This award recognizes faculty who exhibit exceptional promise in scholarship, research or creativity as substantiated by significant accomplishments within their first seven years with the university.
Caruso is an associate professor of physics who started his tenure track appointment in the fall of 2007 and was promoted with tenure last year. He already has authored more than 50 internationally recognized peer-reviewed journal articles; been issued two patents and has four pending patents; completed three article reviews; written two book chapters and awarded nearly $7 million in grant funding as principle investigator. Caruso has distinguished himself in teaching, service and research and is an enthusiastic educator who infuses his curriculum with excitement and is active within the department.
President's Award for Service
John D. David, Ph.D., MU
This award recognizes outstanding contributions in professional expertise and personal service in promoting the missions and values of the university.
David is an associate professor of biological sciences and has played a leadership role in creative problem solving at the university for 22 years by serving on a range of committees, advisory boards and task forces. Because of his wealth of experience and depth of knowledge, David was tapped to serve as the chair of Strategic Planning on the Chancellor's Resource Advisory Council, which helped lead the University of Missouri to their One Mizzou: 2020 Vision for Excellence strategic plan. He also is involved with the e-Learning Task Force and Freshmen Interest Groups.
President's Award for Community Engagement
Clyde Ruffin, M.F.A., MU
This award recognizes faculty who are involved in exemplary community engagement activities such as volunteerism, service-learning, educational programming and outreach.
Ruffin is a professor and chair of the Department of Theatre at MU whose productions have been recognized as some of the best in the country. Early in his tenure, Ruffin established the internationally known World Theatre Workshop. Formerly the Black Theatre Workshop, Ruffin's productions and actor roles explore issues of race and identity that need discussion. In the community, Ruffin engages in social activism on a daily basis by serving as minister at the Second Baptist Church of Columbia.
President's Award for Cross-Cultural Engagement
Rangira Béa Gallimore, Ph.D., MU
This award is presented to a faculty member with demonstrated success in promoting cross-cultural activities or understanding through classroom or student service activities.
Gallimore is a professor in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and specializes in African Francophone Studies. She has focused her research and teaching on genocide testimonial writing since the Rwanda genocide in 1994 and has published several articles about gender, genocide and women, and conflict. With this expertise, Gallimore created new courses about testimonial writings and developed a summer study abroad program in Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies.
Thomas Jefferson Award
H. Carl Gerhardt, Ph.D., MU
This award honors a member of the university community who best exemplifies the principles and ideals of Thomas Jefferson and who rises above excellence and demonstrates clear distinction in service to the university and humankind.
Gerhardt, Curators' Professor of Biological Sciences at MU, is a highly successful scientist, writer, naturalist and mentor responsible for significant scientific advancements in evolutionary biology. In addition to his scientific contributions, Gerhardt is enthusiastic in his approach to mentoring—of the 18 graduate students and 11 postdoctoral fellows he has trained, 15 hold faculty positions at universities around the world.
Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Kristin A. Kenney, J.D., UMKC
This award honors students at one of the University of Missouri System's four campuses who have shown entrepreneurial talent.
Kenney recently completed her law degree with an emphasis in business and entrepreneurial law and was admitted to the Bloch School's inaugural Entrepreneurship Scholars Program, which is sponsored by UMKC's Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and designed to help students create viable businesses. While in law school, Kenney was able to take her idea, RE:Cite, a software program that enables efficient legal research, to market with a potential of $500 million.
C. Brice Ratchford Memorial Fellowship Award
Carl F. Calkins, Ph.D., UMKC
This award recognizes a faculty member who personifies the creativity, vision and leadership exhibited by the late Dr. C. Brice Ratchford, who served as president of the University of Missouri System and dean of Cooperative Extension.
Calkins is a psychology professor and serves as director of the UMKC Institute for Human Development, a research and training center he established more than 30 years ago. He is most known for his support and interest in working with underserved audiences and has assisted organizations serving diverse groups—including Hispanics, the developmentally disabled and teen moms. As director of the institute, Calkins actively builds partnerships that improve the lives of people and the communities in which they live.
Reviewed 2012-06-26