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Report to the Justice and Treasury Departments regarding law enforcement interaction with the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas
The following report and recommendations are based largely on oral briefings conducted on July 1-2 at the Justice Department, as well as on August 3 at the Treasury Department and at the FBI Training Academy at Quantico. In addition, I have had access to a number of other sources. We were supplied with background information on many of the persons in the Investigative Support Unit, and I was supplied with a list of the experts consulted by the FBI during the affair. I have consulted with academic colleagues and have reviewed a good deal of the academic literature on New Religious Movements. Various political and lobbying groups have sent me information. I talked with Glenn Hilburn at Baylor, and I spent two hours with Pete Smerick and Gregg McCrary at the FBI Academy.
I do not pretend that this represents a full accounting of what happened at Waco. That has not been my aim. Rather, what follows attempts to assess the nature and quality of the expert advice available to the agencies involved in this situation and to make some suggestions about how that advice might better be utilized in the future.
I. What information sources were available in the Waco affair?
A. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. In the months that led up to the February 28 attempted "dynamic entry" at the Branch Davidian compound, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) apparently failed to solicit any social science background information about the nature of the group with which they were dealing. BATF has no internal behavioral science division and did not consult with any other behavioral science persons within the government. Nor did they consult with outside persons in religious studies, sociology of religion, or psychology of religion. There were, for instance, persons in the Baylor University Department of Religion who had studied this particular group for much of its history; they were not consulted. Investigators reviewing the Waco incident have repeatedly told us that BATF simply did not consult with anyone who might be considered an "expert" on this group or groups like it.
In their attempt to build a case against the Branch Davidians, BATF did interview persons who were former members of the group and at least one person who had "deprogrammed" a group member. Mr. Rick Ross, who often works in conjunction with the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), has been quoted as saying that he was "consulted" by the BATF. My suspicion is that he was merely one among many the BATF interviewed in its background checks on the group and on Koresh. However, it is unclear how information gained from him was evaluated. The Network and Mr. Ross have a direct ideological (and financial) interest in arousing suspicion and antagonism against what they call "cults". These same persons seem to have been major sources for the series of stories run by the Waco newspaper, beginning February 27. It seems clear that people within the "anti-cult" community had targeted the Branch Davidians for attention.
Although these people often call themselves "cult experts," they are certainly not recognized as such by the academic community. The activities of the CAN are seen by the National Council of Churches (among others) as a danger to religious liberty, and deprogramming tactics have been increasingly found to fall outside the law. At the very least, Mr. Ross and any ex-members he was associated with should have been seen as questionable sources of information. Having no access to information from the larger social science community, however, BATF had no way to put in perspective what they may have heard from angry ex-members and eager deprogrammers.
B. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1. Outside consultants. After the failed raid, handling of the crisis passed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They had a much broader array of information available, although they still failed to consult a single person who might be recognized by the social science community as an expert on the Branch Davidians or on other marginal religious movements (sometimes called "cults"). The official list of outside experts consulted, compiled by the investigative team, includes three persons in the field of psychiatry who have been regular consultants to the FBI on other cases (Murray Myron, Syracuse University; Joseph Krofcheck, Yarrow Associates; Park Dietz, University of California San Diego). From my conversations with the persons in the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) who worked with the negotiators at Waco, I believe that these three persons were the most frequently consulted experts throughout the siege. Dietz assisted in writing the profile of Koresh. Others apparently assisted in recommending strategies to the negotiators and tacticians.
It is unclear which of these consultants (if any) recommended the psychological warfare tactics (Tibetan chants, sounds of rabbits dying, rock music, flood lights, helicopters hovering, etc.). None of the persons associated with NCAVC with whom I have talked claims to have favored these tactics, but no one was willing to say who recommended them or how the decision was made to use them.
Three other persons were apparently called in for specific, limited, consultations. Because he was examining the children who were leaving the compound, Bruce Perry, a Baylor Medical School psychiatrist, was consulted. A pastor in Virginia (Douglas Kittredge) was consulted on one occasion, offering assistance in interpreting the scriptural references being used by Koresh. And CBN talk show host Craig Smith was consulted regarding the airing of the Koresh tape.
Finally, one person in religious studies was consulted by the Bureau—Glenn Hilburn, chair of the Religion Department at Baylor. He was contacted about one week after the initial raid and was asked especially for help in interpreting Koresh's ideas about the "seven seals." He offered the negotiators basic tools for interpreting scripture (a set of commentaries and concordances) and consulted with them on a number of occasions about various biblical interpretations. While Hilburn is a reputable scholar in church history, he would never claim to be an expert on the Davidians or on other marginal religious movements. He often offered to help the Bureau get in touch with others who might offer such expertise, but he was not asked to do so. For instance, Prof. Bill Pitts, also of the Baylor faculty, had studied the history of the Davidians, but was not consulted by the FBI. Nor did they seek Prof. Hilburn's help in locating others, outside the Baylor faculty, who might help.
In my judgment, this list of outside consultants is sorely wanting. The psychiatrists who were most intimately involved are undoubtedly experienced in helping the FBI understand "the criminal mind." This however, was a very different situation, and we have no evidence that any of these men had background or experience in dealing with a high-commitment religious group. The only experts in religion that were consulted lacked the kinds of expertise necessary for understanding the dynamics of a marginal religious movement.
One of the dilemmas faced by the Waco negotiators was the problem of assessing the potential helpfulness of outside experts. Agents on the scene in Waco described their situation as information overload. One person referred to the threat of "fax meltdown." Not only were they receiving constant information about the situation as it unfolded, they were also being bombarded with offers of help from all sorts of unknown sources. Many of these were judged to be "crack pots." Others were probably legitimate and potentially helpful persons. However, the persons on the scene had no way to evaluate this information. With no one in the scholarly community at their disposal to help evaluate the credentials and experience of these persons, they were forced simply to discount everything they received.
Conclusions. Since the BATF consulted no outside experts and the FBI consulted only a limited roster, both agencies were then relying primarily on their own internal capabilities. As we have seen, BATF has no internal behavioral science personnel. As a result, all of their planning was based on building up a legal case against the group and planning a para-military type assault on the compound. In that atmosphere, I believe, it became easy to lose sight of the human dynamics of the group involved, to plan as if the group were indeed a military target. It also discouraged the BATF from seeking other forms of intervention in the group. Quite simply, the agency pursued the line of action—armed assault—for which they were best equipped. If they had been better equipped to pursue interventions based on human science advice, they might have acted differently.
2. Internal advice. The FBI, on the other hand, did have solid Behavioral Science advice available internally. The Behavioral Science Services Unit, especially its Investigative Support Unit, at the NCAVC, houses a number of people with considerable working knowledge of marginal religious groups. For instance, Gregg McCrary, in the Criminal Investigative Analysis subunit, is well-informed in this area and was on the scene in Waco throughout much of the siege. While no one there would be considered an "expert" by the usual standards of scholarship (academic credentials and publication, that is), several have done sufficient reading to have a good basic knowledge of the nature of religious groups. They know that religious beliefs have to be taken seriously, and they know that it takes more than understanding an individual personality to understand the dynamics of a group. They could benefit from additional training and from access to reliable outside experts (about which I will say more below), but they had the basic social science knowledge they needed to analyze this situation.
In the early days of the siege, Pete Smerick (along with outside consultant Park Dietz) put together a profile of David Koresh and of the group. They used materials gathered by the BATF, but knew they should weigh carefully the reports from former members.
Based on that assessment, Smerick (with Special Agent Mark Young) wrote on March 5, in a memo to his superiors (the Special Agents in Charge at Waco and people in headquarters in Washington),
- ...For years he [Koresh] has been brainwashing his followers for this battle [between his church and his enemies], and on February 28, 1993, his prophesy came true.
- As of March 5, 1993, Koresh is still able to convince his followers that the end in near and, as he predicted, their enemies will surround them and kill them.
- In traditional hostage situations, a strategy which has been successful has been negotiations coupled with ever increasing tactical presence. In this situation, however, it is believed this strategy, if carried to excess, could eventually be counter productive and could result in loss of life.
- Every time his followers sense movement of tactical personnel, Koresh validates his prophetic warnings that an attack is forthcoming and they are going to have to defend themselves. According to his teachings, if they die defending their faith, they will be saved.
On March 7, Smerick and Young listed the psychological warfare tactics available to the FBI, but cautioned that these options "would also succeed in shutting down negotiations and convince Koresh and his followers that the end is near." On March 8, the same pair cautioned that the Mt. Carmel compound was for the Davidians sacred ground, something they were likely to defend against the intrusions of people they considered evil (the federal government). Summarizing the arguments of people using primarily "criminal" or psychological categories to explain Koresh, they wrote,
- It has been speculated that Koresh's religious beliefs are nothing more than a con, in order to get power, money, women, etc., and that a strong show of force (tanks, APC's, weapons, etc.) will crumble that resolve, causing him to surrender. In fact, the opposite very well may also occur, whereby the presence of that show of force will draw David Koresh and his followers closer together in the "bunker mentality", and they would rather die than surrender.
They go on to detail the way in which FBI actions are playing into the prophetic scheme of Koresh, warning that "we may unintentionally make his prophesy [death, or the "fourth seal"] come true, if we take what he perceives to be hostile or aggressive action." They note that "mass suicide ordered by Koresh cannot be discounted." Then, following their logic through to its conclusion, they point out that "one way to take control away from him is to do the opposite of what he is expecting. Instead of moving towards him, we consider moving back. This may appear to be appeasement to his wishes, but in reality, it is taking power away from him. He has told his followers that an attack is imminent, and this will show them that he was wrong."
It is my belief that this understanding of Koresh's ideas was basically accurate and that their assessment of his likely behavior was on target. While outside experts might have refined this picture and added nuance to the assessment, the basic direction of the FBI's own behavioral analysts was sound.
II. How was behavioral science advice utilized in Waco?
Clearly the advice of these agents was not heeded. Why? The answer to that question takes us first to the structure of command and second to the culture and training of the Bureau itself.
Most basically, people representing the Behavioral Sciences Unit were out-ranked and out-numbered. Within the command structure, people from the Hostage Rescue Team carried more weight than people who were negotiators. In addition, it is evident that people from the tactical side were simply trusted more and more at home with the Special Agents in Charge (SACs) in Waco.
As I understand it, the SACs for this operation were chosen on the basis of proximity, not on the basis of any special training or experience for an operation like this. Understandably, their primary skills are in the apprehension of criminals and in the management of personnel. Under normal circumstances, they can count on key assistance in apprehension of criminals from their SWAT teams and from Hostage Rescue Teams, and predictably they listened most closely to people who spoke the language of forceful tactics. This was the territory in which they were most comfortable, possibly the direction in which they perceived the most potential rewards. There was an understandable desire among many agents in Waco to make Koresh and the Davidians pay for the harm they had caused. Arguments for patience or unconventional tactics fell on deaf ears.
Those ears were deaf for a number of reasons, many of which have to do with the training and culture of the Bureau. In all likelihood, these SACs had had no behavioral science training since their very early days training as agents. And then, they were very unlikely to have heard anything about religious belief systems of group dynamics. Their entire professional world has been constructed (understandably) around understanding and out-maneuvering criminals. They think (again, understandably) in terms of individual behavior (hence the near exclusive focus on Koresh, rather than on the group) and on criminal wrong-doing (hence the label sociopath for someone seen as dangerously at odds with society's norms). Little, if anything, in their previous experience prepared them for the kind of situation Mt. Carmel presented them.
The tendency to discount the influence of religious beliefs and to evaluate situations largely in terms of a leader's individual criminal/psychological motives is, I believe, very widespread in the Bureau. In our initial briefings with Daniels, Johnson, Wright, Noesner, and Uteg, the consensus around the table was that when they encountered people with religious beliefs, those beliefs were usually a convenient cover for criminal activity. While they were willing to consider that this case might have been different, they were still not convinced that Koresh was anything other than a sociopath who had duped some people into helping him carry out aggressive criminal activity. They continued to refer to the people in the compound as hostages, failing to recognize the free choice those people had made in following Koresh.
Behavior science advice, then, failed to get an adequate hearing. In the culture of the law enforcement community, neither training nor experience prepares agents for taking behavioral scientists seriously. And in the crisis situation, behavioral scientists are out-ranked and out-numbered. As a result, those in charge dealt with this situation as if it were one more familiar to them—a criminal committing illegal acts for personal gain for whom the threat of force is a significant deterrent.
III. What, in hindsight, should the BATF and the FBI have taken into consideration in dealing with the Branch Davidians?
1. They should have understood the pervasiveness of religious experimentation in American history and the fundamental right of groups like the Davidians to practice their religion. On that score, they might have benefitted by reading Jon Butler's Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), in which he gives a detailed portrait of the breadth of religious belief and practice in early America. Catherine Albanese's America: Religion and Religions (Wadsworth, 1992) does the same up through the present. We have simply been a very religious people, and there have always been new and dissident religious groups challenging the boundaries of toleration.
And alongside all that religious fervor and experimentation has been our First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty. Only when there is clear evidence of criminal wrong-doing can authorities intervene in the free exercise of religion, and then only with appropriately low levels of intrusiveness. For a critical look at the regulatory issues raised by new and marginal religious groups, an article by David Bromley and Thomas Robbins, "The Role of Government in Regulating New and Nonconventional Religions" (Pp. 205-241 in The Role of Government in Monitoring and Regulating Religion in Public Life, edited by James Wood and Derek Davis. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 1992) might have proven helpful to agents planning a raid on the Waco compound.
2. They should have understood that new or dissident religious groups are often "millennialist" or "apocalyptic". That is, they foresee the imminent end of the world as we know it and the emergence of a new world, usually with themselves in leadership roles. Among the many books and articles that would have helped agents understand such beliefs are Paul Boyer's When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Susan J. Palmer and Natalie Finn's 1992 article "Coping with Apocalypse in Canada: Experiences of Endtime" (Sociological Analysis 53(4, winter):397-415); and Roy Wallis's edited book Millennialism and Charisma. (Belfast: Queen's University, 1982), especially the chapters by Balch and by Wallis.
3. They should have understood that the usual fate of new religious movements is quiet extinction through natural causes. Only a fraction of those that begin survive as a group more than a few years, and an even smaller fraction make it through the crisis that is precipitated by the natural death of the leader. For helpful background on factors in the success and failure of such groups, I would suggest the articles by Stark and by Wilson in David Bromley and Phillip Hammond's edited volume The Future of New Religious Movements (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1987).
4. They should also have understood that new groups almost always provoke their neighbors. By definition, new religious groups think old ways of doing things are at best obsolete, at worst evil. Their very reason for existing is to call into question the status quo. They defy conventional rules and question conventional authorities. Not surprisingly, then, new groups often provoke resistance. A number of social scientists have examined the relationship between marginal religious groups and the surrounding society. Among the most helpful are Charles Harper and Bryan F. Le Beau's 1993 article, "The Social Adaptation of Marginal Religious Movements in America." (Sociology of Religion 54(2, summer):171-192); James T. Richardson's 1993 article "Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative" (Review of Religious Research 34(4, June):348-356); and the book Richardson edited with Joel Best and David G. Bromley, The Satanism Scare (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991). These sources help to put groups like the Cult Awareness Network in context. Such groups are organized "anti-cult" responses that make predictable charges (such as child abuse and sexual "perversion") against groups that are seen as threatening. It is important to see that new religious groups are usually more threatening to cherished notions about how we all ought to order our lives than to our physical well-being.
The corollary to their provocation of neighbors is that they themselves are likely to perceive the outside world as hostile. This almost always takes the form of rhetoric condemning the evil ways of non-believers, and that rhetoric can sometimes sound quite violent. It may also be supplemented by rituals that reinforce the group's perception that they are surrounded by hostile forces (thus reinforcing their own sense of solidarity and righteousness). It is at least possible that rhetoric about the BATF as the Davidians' arch-enemy, the purchase of guns, and practicing with those guns served just such rhetorical and ritual purposes. That is, as the group talked about the evils of the federal government and went through the ritual motions of rehearsing a confrontation with their enemies, they may have been reinforcing their own solidarity more than they were practicing for an anticipated actual confrontation. The irony, of course, is that their internal group rhetoric and ritual did eventually come true.
5. They should also have understood that many new religious movements do indeed ask for commitments that seem abnormal to most of us, and those commitments do mean the disruption of "normal" family and work lives. Most of us are accustomed to seeing religion as relevant only to portions of our lives, with wide areas of decision-making (from marriage partners to what we do at work) kept neatly out of the reach of religious authorities. However, throughout much of the world and throughout much of human history, such neat divisions have not been the norm. People have lived in tightly-knit communities in which work, family, religion, politics, and leisure (what there was of it) fell under one domain. Taking the long view, not belonging to such a community is more abnormal than belonging to one. No matter how strange such commitments may seem to the rest of us, they are widely sought by millions of people. A number of social scientists have written accounts of everyday life in such religious groups, and those accounts can help readers to understand the sense of coherence and belonging that outweigh, for the believers, any freedom of choice they give up. One such recent book is David Van Zandt's Living in the Children of God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
6. They should also understand that the vast majority of those who make such commitments do so voluntarily. The notion of "cult brainwashing" has been thoroughly discredited in the academic community, and "experts" who propagate such notions in the courts have been discredited by the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association. While there may be real psychological needs that lead persons to seek such groups, and while their judgment may indeed be altered by their participation, neither of those facts constitutes coercion.
An review of the legal issues surrounding allegations of brainwashing can be found in James Richardson's 1991 article, "Cult/Brainwashing cases and freedom of religion" (Journal of Church and State 33:55-74). Alternative views on the process of joining (and leaving) new religious movements can be found in David Bromley and Anson Shupe's 1986 article, "Affiliation and Disaffiliation: A Role Theory Interpretation of Joining and Leaving New Religious Movements" (Thought 61:197-211); Stuart Wright's Leaving Cults (Washington: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1987); and Eileen Barker's award-winning 1984 book The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? (Oxford: Blackwell).
7. They should have understood the ability of a religious group to create an alternative symbolic world. Ideas about "logic" as we know it simply do not hold, but that does not mean that the group has no logic. The first dictum of sociology is "Situations perceived to be real are real in their consequences." No matter how illogical or unreasonable the beliefs of a group seem to an outsider, they are the real facts that describe the world through the eyes of the insider.
8. The agents should have understood that "charisma" is not just an individual trait, but a property of the constantly-evolving relationship between a leader and followers. The leader is a prophet only so long as members believe him (or her) to be so. And those beliefs are sustained by the constant interplay between events and the leader's interpretation of them. So long as the leader's interpretations make sense of the group's experience, that leader is likely to be able to maintain authority. These interpretations are not a fixed text, but a living, changing body of ideas, rules, and practices. Meaning emerges daily in the interaction of sacred texts (in this case the Bible), events, and the imagination of leader and followers. Only in subsequent generations are religious prescriptions likely to become written orthodoxies.
Among the sources that might have helped in understanding charisma is Timothy Miller's edited book, When Prophets Die: The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). In his introductory essay in that volume, J. Gordon Melton writes that the first generation of a new group is "a time of experimentation and rapid change. The leader must discover the right elements to combine in a workable program, generate solutions to unexpected obstacles, choose and train capable leaders, and elaborate upon the initial ideas or vision that motivated the founding of the group....The group formally or informally gives feedback in the form of approval or disapproval of the leader's actions. The most successful leaders are continually adjusting and reacting to that feedback" (p. 11). Other essays in that book examine the relationship between groups and their charismatic founders, from the Shakers to the Moonies.
Understanding that the relationship between leaders, followers, and practices is a fluid one might have led agents to take more seriously the possibility of suggesting alternative apocalyptic interpretations to Koresh. Such a strategy was suggested (and attempted) by Houston theologian Phillip Arnold and University of North Carolina professor James Tabor. In "The Waco Tragedy: An Autobiographical Account of One Attempt to Avert Disaster" (forthcoming in From the Ashes: Making Sense of Waco, edited by James R. Lewis and published by Rowman and Littlefield), Tabor writes that after considerable study of the interpretations being offered by Koresh, they concluded that alternative scenarios—still within his system of symbols—were possible. They hoped that he might reinterpret the "little season" of Revelation 6:11 as an extended period of time, that he might see himself as the writer of the "little book" mentioned in Revelation 10:11—and, most importantly, that he might use those reinterpretations to ask for a delay while he wrote down his insights about the seven seals. Koresh's response to their radio broadcast and tape indicated that he indeed had taken up this interpretive possibility and had begun to work on a book. In a letter sent out on April 14, he said that "as soon as I can see that people like Jim Tabor and Phil Arnold have a copy, I will come out and then you can do your thing with this beast." That he was indeed working on such a book is demonstrated by the existence of a computer disk brought out by one of the survivors who had been typing for him on the day before the fire. Ironically, it was the actions of the FBI on April 19 that evidently forced Koresh to return to his earlier interpretation of the texts—namely that the next event in the unfolding prophetic calendar would be death for his group, rather than a delay while he wrote his book.
8. And, of course, as soon as the possibility of mass martyrdom became evident, they should have reviewed the events of Jonestown. There, too, an exceptionally volatile religious group was pushed over the edge, inadvertently, by the actions of government agencies pushed forward by "concerned families". The best account of the Jonestown tragedy is John R. Hall's 1987 book, Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History (New Brunswick: Transaction). Also helpful is David Chidester's 1988 account of the religious dynamics of the People's Temple, Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple and Jonestown. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press).
9. Finally, they should have understood that any group under siege is likely to turn inward, bonding to each other and to their leader even more strongly than before. Outside pressure only consolidates the group's view that outsiders are the enemy. And isolation decreases the availability of information that might counter their internal view of the world. In this case, the federal government already enjoyed a particularly condemned place in the group's worldview. Taking that fact seriously might have changed the minds of federal agents who argued that using outside negotiators is always a mistake. Persons other than federal agents might have been able to assume a genuine third-party position in this case, translating and mediating between Koresh and the outside world. It is ironic to note that the one similar situation the FBI could point us to, in which they successfully negotiated a peaceful surrender, involved the use of an outside negotiator.
In this case, federal negotiators had a difficult time convincing Koresh to take them seriously. But even when they did, their talking strategies were constantly undermined by the actions of the tactical teams. Any success negotiators had in winning the group's confidence was completely undermined by continuing application of tactical pressure. If such pressure had been a specific response to a specific failure of Koresh to respond to negotiating proposals, it might have had some coherent psychological effect. However, such was never the case. Pressure from encroaching tanks, psychological warfare tactics, and the like, continually worked at cross-purposes with the negotiating strategies. This outside pressure only increased the paranoia of the group and further convinced them that the only person they could trust was Koresh.
IV. What outside experts might they have consulted?
I am attaching to this report a copy of a letter from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion which includes several names and addresses of people recognized by that academic organization as experts on new, marginal, and high-commitment religious groups. I am also including in that appendix several additional names of persons whose research I have found helpful.
In addition, to help in locating experts and in evaluating the credentials of volunteer "experts", law enforcement agencies can turn to the American Sociological Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, or the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
V. Conclusions.
Knowing these things might not have changed the outcome in Waco. It is unclear to me whether any negotiating strategy could have succeeded in getting most or all of the members to leave the compound. However, paying attention to these basic facts about the nature of religious groups would at least have enabled federal agents to have a clearer picture of the situation they were in. They were not in a hostage rescue situation. They were in a tragic stand-off with a group for whom they were already the enemy foretold to destroy them.
VI. Recommendations.
In order for this sort of thinking to become available in future situations, several modes of access seem important.
1. Basic training. The training for all agents should include units in the behavioral sciences and units that give attention to the nature of political and religious groups. These units should emphasize both the rights of such groups to exist unhindered and the characteristics of high-commitment groups that may be relevant to future efforts at law enforcement. Such units should be aimed not so much as making every agent an expert as at sensitizing agents to the complex human dimensions of the situations in which they may find themselves. When they hear behavioral scientists advising them later, it will not be the first time they have heard such voices in the law enforcement community.
2. Advanced training. Incidents like Waco are, fortunately, relatively rare. Not everyone in federal law enforcement needs to be an expert on such situations. However, it appears that there is a need for a standing group of specialists in managing this sort of crisis. Rather than turning to whoever happens to be the local SAC, the FBI (and similar federal agencies) should have a small corps of crisis managers available. These persons should have received advanced training both in the various tactical measures at their disposal and in the insights available to them from the behavioral sciences.
3. Training and expertise for other federal agencies. An expanded Behavioral Sciences unit, perhaps not lodged in a single agency, might make a broader pool of behavioral science information available on a regular basis to all federal law enforcement agencies. I was particularly struck by the fact that ATF has no such unit. No one ever had the responsibility of imagining what the people in the compound were like, how they might be thinking, etc. With dozens of federal law enforcement agencies, it would not be cost effective to set up behavioral science units in each one, but all of them need such expertise available to them.
4. A broader pool of "experts" who can be consulted. Not all sorts of expertise are needed all the time. But agencies should not be caught in a moment of crisis wondering who to call and how to assess the credentials of those who call them. It is essential that behavioral scientists inside federal law enforcement and behavioral scientists in the academic community forge expanded working ties. People in law enforcement have for too long distrusted the "ivory tower" position of academics who do not have to make "real world" decisions. They have too long insisted that only someone who is really an insider to law enforcement can give them advice. For their part, academics have for too long discounted the experience and wisdom of persons working in law enforcement because it did not come in standard academic packages. It is my sense that this incident provides an opportune moment for overcoming both those problems. Law enforcement people are more aware than ever of the need for additional insight and training, and academics are more aware of their obligation to the public.
That new cooperation might take a number of forms. The various training facilities for federal law enforcement might host a series of consultations in which a small group of academics and a small group of agents work together for 2-3 days on problems and potential problems facing law enforcement. Academics, for their part, might organize sessions at annual professional meetings at which such questions are raised and to which law enforcement people are invited. In addition, people teaching in the various academies should be encouraged to read more widely and to draw in outside experts whenever possible. Such on-going collaboration would have the benefit of acquainting the two communities with each other so that each would be better prepared for cooperation in a time of crisis.
Most concretely, it is essential that federal law enforcement develop an expanded list of experts on which it can call. These people need not be on contract. They simply need to be people the agencies already know to be legitimate, reliable, and willing to cooperate with them. The sorts of activities I am suggesting above would aid in the development of such a list. In addition, the various professional associations could also be helpful. It is essential that persons in federal law enforcement use this occasion to think pro-actively about the kinds of situations they are likely to encounter in the future and to seek out now the expertise they will need in confronting those situations.
VI. A last word.
Finally, the presence of expert knowledge is of no use if behavioral scientists are kept marginal to the actual decision-making being done. For knowledge about human behavior to have any effect, scientists must be involved early and often. They must have at least as much "clout" in a situation as the person commanding the firepower. And, it is my sense that it may be important for the behavioral scientists to have some autonomy, to be something of an outside eye. Once a team of enforcement persons has begun to formulate a plan for dealing with a group, that plan is likely to take on a life of its own. The same dynamics that hold the religious group together also hold the enforcement group together. They are as determined to stick together against their "enemy" as is the group they are facing. Having a built-in "yellow flag" can sometimes avoid catastrophe.
Additional experts on new and marginal religious groups
- Prof. Robert Balch
- Department of Sociology
- University of Montana
- Missoula, MT 59801
- Prof. John R. Hall
- Department of Sociology
- University of California, Davis
- Davis, CA 95616
- Prof. Gillian Lindt
- Columbia University
- 50 W 106 St., #PH-A
- New York, NY 10025
- Dr. Larry Shinn
- V. P. for Academic Affairs
- Bucknell University
- Lewisburg, PA 17837
- Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
- Psychology Department
- University of Haifa
- Haifa, Israel 31999
- Prof. Susan J. Palmer
- Dawson College
- 5134 Jeanne Mance
- Montreal H2V 4K1
- Canada
TO: Deputy Attorney General Heymann and Assistant Secretary Noble
FROM: Nancy T. Ammerman
RE: Waco Report - Addendum
September 10, 1993
Since completing my report, I have received additional information from Steven Zipperstein regarding the experts consulted during the siege in Waco. He was able to supply an expanded list of persons consulted and, for several of them, background on the nature of the consultation. While none of this information causes me to alter my basic assessment of the situation of my recommendations, it does warrant this brief addendum to my report.
1. During March, agents on the scene received communication from several persons who claimed biblical expertise and urged the negotiators to take Koresh's beliefs seriously. In all cases, it appears, the information was taken down, passed along, and ignored. For instance, the logs from March 17 make clear that agents on the scene did not take seriously the possibility that Dr. Philip Arnold's broadcast discussion of biblical prophecy might be useful to their negotiations. They recognize that Arnold is a reputable scholar, but had apparently not talked with him or listened to the broadcast themselves.
Some of the theologians who got through to Waco were of doubtful credentials, but they were uniform in their suggestions that successful negotiations would require meeting Koresh on his own biblical ground. However, in the log of March 15, negotiators report that they will start being "more firm with the group - no more Bible babble...".
2. The interview transcripts document that Mr. Rick Ross was, in fact, closely involved with both the ATF and the FBI. He supplied ATF with "all information he had regarding the Branch Davidian cult," including the name of an ex-member he believed would have important strategic information. He also supplied information to the Waco newspaper and talked with the FBI both in early March and in late March. He clearly had the most extensive access to both agencies of any person on the "cult expert" list, and he was apparently listened to more attentively. The ATF interviewed the persons he directed them to and evidently used information from those interviews in planning their February 28 raid. In late March, Ross recommended that agents attempt to publicly humiliate Koresh, hoping to drive a wedge between him and his followers. While Ross's suggestions may not have been followed to the letter, such embarrassment tactics were indeed tried.
The FBI interview report includes the note that Ross "has a personal hatred for all religious cults" and would willingly aid law enforcement in an attempt to "destroy a cult." The FBI report does not include any mention of the numerous legal challenges to the tactics employed by Mr. Ross in extricating members from the groups he hates.
Both the seriousness with which agents treated Ross and the lack of seriousness with which they treated various theologians demonstrate again the inability of agents on the scene to make informed judgements about the information to which they had access and their inability to seek out better information. It also demonstrates the preference given to anti-cult psychological tactics over strategies that would meet the group on grounds that took faith seriously.
- Prof. David Bromley
- Department of Sociology
- Virginia Commonwealth University
- Richmond, VA 23284
- Prof. James Richardson
- Department of Sociology
- University of Nevada
- Reno, NV 89557
- Prof. Jeffrey Hadden
- Department of Sociology
- University of Virginia
- Charlottesville, VA 22381
- Prof. Larry Greil
- Alfred University
- Box 545
- Alfred, NY 14802
- Dr. Thomas Robbins
- College Apts., 8-A
- 427 4th Street, SW
- Richester, MN 55902
- Prof. Gordon Melton
- Institute for the Study of American Religion
- Box 9079
- Santa Barbara, CA 93190-0709
- Prof. Anson Shupe
- Department of Sociology
- Indiana University-Purdue University
- Fort Wayne, IN 46805
- Prof. Stuart Wright
- Dept. of Sociology
- Lamar University
- Beaumont, TX 77710
- Dr. William Sims Bainbridge
- Director, Sociology Program
- National Science Foundation
- 1800 G Street, NW, Room 336
- Washington, DC 20550
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).


text:
It's quite surprising that Magnet, for all their previous toiling in the dry and unforgiving field that we lovingly refer to as 'indie', aren't yet straddling the charts, the globe and a host of colour supplement end-of-year polls. This isn't just because they (or rather he, Even Johansen) have been cropping up in the most lucrative of places – ooh look, there he is on the OC, and Six Feet Under, and the bit where Brad and Angelina do something reasonable raunchy in Mr and Mrs Smith – but also because his new single, 'Fall At Your Feet', complies with the formulas created by the most popular and resonating of puppy-dog artists in pop today.
Melodic enough to be turned into a ringtone? Check. Vague sentiment of undying love general enough to be applied to universal emotional attachment? Check. Creator instrumentally gifted enough to be considered a Proper Musical Artist? Yep. A song safe and warm and dangerously close to being downright mediocre? But of course. Granted, Magnet have a modicum of poetic flair that places them just above the Blunts and Grays of this world ( "Without you I'm a torch with no flame", how sweet etc.) and a penchant for atmosphere that would make this a more reasoned choice over the last Coldplay single, but on the whole there's much more scope here for excitement, colour and adventure. It's also quite telling that the B-side, 'This Bird Can Never Fly', plods along in almost exactly the same doe-eyed manner, only without a memorable chorus. All in all, not as attractive (sorry) a proposition as it could be.
3Thomas Blatchford's Score

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I am supposed to write a client server code using Java, that will estimate the network status between the two computers, in terms of Link Speed, Packet loss and end to end delay.
I am still a beginner using network programming, and this is a practical project that i should make for a multimedia Communication course in university, can anyone please help me to write this program, or at least tell me where to read or what the subject to search for, what would help me doing this project??
I would appreciate any kind of help
thanks in Advanced.


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SINGAPORE — Overnight, the newest Olympic city went from triumph to triage.
Still euphoric over its big victory to host the 2012 Summer Games, London was hit by a series of deadly explosions Thursday that rocked its subway, tore open a packed double-decker bus and created chaos during morning rush hour. Prime Minister Tony Blair called the blasts a series of "barbaric" terrorist attacks.
The jubilation in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday following the Olympic vote contrasted with the looks of horror on the faces of casualties and witnesses after three explosions ripped through underground stations and one struck a bus in quick succession.
A day earlier, London had won the right to stage its first Olympics since 1948. Led by two-time Olympic gold medalist Sebastian Coe, the English capital beat longtime favorite Paris in the vote by the International Olympic Committee in Singapore.
"It wasn't an attack against the games," IOC president Jacques Rogge said. "Cities like London, Paris, New York all face these kind of risks, and remember what happened in Moscow and Madrid. There are no safe havens."
When Londoners awoke Thursday to start the seven years of planning and construction, they were instead hit by the news of explosions in central London. The buoyant mood changed dramatically as people came to terms with the blasts.
"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners," London Mayor Ken Livingstone said from Singapore before heading home.
Jubilation in the British camp in Singapore quickly turned to distress.
"It's terribly unfortunate in terms of timing," said Keith Mills, chief executive of London's bid team. "And clearly, our celebrations as a result of yesterday will have to be put on hold. Our thoughts go out to the families who've been effected. I hope that the security forces can get to the bottom of this quickly."
Coe called the violence a "despicable terrorist attack."
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies stressed the decision to award the games to London was not in question. London won the IOC vote, beating Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow.
"From what we understand, this is not at all related to the Olympic Games," Davies said in Singapore. "We have full confidence in the London authorities in securing the event."
British Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said celebrations planned to coincide with the return of the London 2012 delegation would be canceled. She declined further comment.
The explosions occurred while leaders of the G-8 summit, which included Blair, President Bush and six other leaders, was about to begin in Scotland. Blair said he would leave the summit at Gleneagles to return to London.
"Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world," Blair said.
Sports events scheduled in London for Thursday were called off, but a one-day international cricket match between England and Australia in Leeds and the Scottish Open golf tournament in Luss went ahead.
Formula One's British Grand Prix will proceed as scheduled, with qualifying starting Saturday and the race Sunday at Silverstone. The course is in central England, about an hour's drive north of London.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
She'd been kept awake all night by the palm berries clattering on the roof, and when she woke to the sun blazing through the window she'd had enough. Goodbye to all that! she sang, moving the little she owned to the station wagon: her ex-boyfriend's guitar, the camping equipment they'd bought the first year of grad school (their single night on the Suwannee, they were petrified by the bellows of bull gators), a crate of books. Goodbye to the hundreds of others she was leaving stacked against the wall: Worthless, the man had told her when she tried to sell them.
Goodbye to the glass mountain of debt she was slithering out from underneath. Goodbye to the hunter-orange eviction notice. Goodbye to longing. She would be empty now, having chosen to lose.
The apartment was a shell, scoured to enamel. She breathed fully when she stepped out onto the porch. There was a brief swim of vertigo only when she shooed the cat out the door. Oh, you'll be all right, she said, and reached for the silky fur between his ears, but, as quick as a blink, he struck at her. When she looked up from the four jagged lines slowly beading with blood on the back of her hand, he had leaped away. Then he, too, was gone.
She drove past the brick university, where the first-years were already unloading their sedans, their parents hugging their own shoulders for comfort. Goodbye, she said aloud to the tune of the tires humming on the road.
After a summer with the power shut off, a summer of reading by the open window in her sweat-soaked underwear, the car's air-conditioner felt frigid. She opened the window and smelled the queer dank musk of deep-country Florida. Out here, people decorated their yards with big rocks and believed they could talk to God. Here, "Derrida" was only French for rear end.
She thrust her fist out the window and relaxed it slowly. She could almost see her hopes peeling from her palm and skipping down the road in her wake: the books with her name on them; the sabbatical in Florence; the gleaming modern house at the edge of the woods. Gone.
When she looked at her hand again, it was puffy and hot and oozing. She put it to her mouth. When she stopped at last at the edge of a little oceanside town and gazed over the dune grass at the sea, her tongue was coppery with the taste of blood.
Someone had left a cooler on the beach, and it still held a bag of apples, a half-eaten sandwich, two Cokes. She sat, watching the dusk turn mustard and watermelon, and ate everything. Seabirds clustered on the wet sand, then winged apart into the air. When it grew too dark for her to see, she took the cooler back to the car and walked up to A1A to a pay phone.
She was poised to hang up if her stepfather answered, but it was her mother, vague and slow, saying, Hello? Hello?
She couldn't speak. She imagined her mother in her nightgown in the kitchen, a sunset, the neighbor kids playing outside.
Hello? her mother said again, and she managed, Hello, Mom.
Honey, her mother said. What a treat to hear from you.
Mom, she said. I just wanted to let you know that I moved. I don't have a new number yet, though.
She waited, feeling the sunburn begin to prickle in her cheeks, but her mother said only, Is that so?, absently. Ever since she'd been remarried, she'd had chronic idiopathic pain, treated, also chronically, with painkillers. She hadn't remembered her daughter's birthday for three years; she'd sent empty care packages more than once. One hot July day, when the girl had stared at her sickening bank balance at the A.T.M., she'd considered calling for help. But she'd known, somehow, that the envelope would also arrive empty.
Over the line, there was the sound of an engine drawing close, and her mother said, Oh! Your dad's home. They both listened to the slam of the door and the heavy boots on the steps and she thought but didn't say, That man is not my dad.
Instead she said, Mom, I just want you to not worry if you don't hear from me for a while, O.K.? I'm all right, I promise.
All right, honey, her mother said, her voice already softer, anticipating her husband's arrival. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.
As the girl walked back on the road, headlights spinning by in the dark, she said aloud, I'm doing exactly what you would do, and laughed, but it wasn't very funny, after all.
During the day, she lay in the sun for hours until she was so thirsty she had to fill her camping water bottle at the foot-washing hose again and again. In the rearview mirror, she watched her skin toast and her hair shift from honey to lemon. Her clothes flapped on her. She thought of the thousands of dollars she'd spent on highlights over the years: all that anguish, all those diets, when all she needed to be pretty was laziness and some mild starvation! She ate cans of tuna and sleeves of crackers and drank an occasional coffee from the beach café, for pep. Her money dwindled alarmingly. The scar on her hand turned a lovely silver in the sun and she sometimes stroked it absently, signifier in lieu of signified, the scratch for the lost life.
At night, she lay in the back of the station wagon and read "Middlemarch" with a penlight until she fell asleep.
When she smelled too strong for salt water to wash the stink away, she walked into the gym of a fancy beachside condo complex in her running clothes. She waited for someone to yell at her, but nobody was watching. The bathroom was empty and the vanities held baskets with lotions, tiny soaps, disposable razors. She stood in the shower and let her summer of loneliness wash away. Even before her boyfriend left her for a first-year master's student, she'd withdrawn into herself. Her funding hadn't been renewed and she'd had only her T.A. stipend, which was barely enough for her half of the rent, let alone groceries. There was no going out, even if she could have swallowed her shame to look her funded friends in the eye. The boyfriend had taken everything with him: their Sunday brunches, the etiquette book he had unsubtly given her one Christmas, the alarm clock that woke them ten minutes before six every day. He had been a stickler for the proper way to do things—hospital corners, weight lifting, taking notes—and he'd stolen her routine from her when he left. Worst of all, he'd taken his parents, who had welcomed her for four years of holidays in their generous stone house in Pennsylvania. For weeks, she had expected the mother, a soft-haired, hugging woman, to call her, but there was no call.
The door opened and voices flooded the bathroom, some aerobics class letting out. She turned to wash her face in the spray, suddenly shy. When she opened her eyes, the showers were full of naked middle-aged women laughing and soaping themselves. They wore diamond bands and their teeth shone and their bellies and thighs were larded by their easy lives.
She woke to a hard rapping next to her ear and struggled up through sleep into darkness. She turned on her penlight to see a groin in stretched black fabric, and a shining leather belt hung with a gun in a holster and an enormous flashlight.
A cop, she thought. Penis of death, penis of light.
Open up, the policeman said, and she said, Yes, sir, and slid over the back seat and rolled down the window.
What are you smiling at? he said.
Nothing, sir, she said, and turned off her penlight.
You been here a week, he said. I been watching you.
Yes, sir, she said.
It's illegal, he said. Now, I get a kid once in a while doesn't want to pay for a motel, O.K. I get some old hippies in their vans. But you're a young girl. Hate to see you get hurt. There are bad guys everywhere, you know?
I know, she said. I keep my doors locked.
He snorted. Yeah, well, he said. Then he paused. You run away from your man? That the story? There's a safe house for ladies up in town. I can get you in.
No, she said. There's no story. I guess I'm on a vacation from my life.
Well, he said, and the looseness in his voice was gone. Get on out of here. Don't let me see you back, or I'll take you in for vagrancy.
She spent a few days on a different beach where people drove their trucks onto the sand and pumped out music until their batteries ran down. She dug again into the wagon's seats to find change for a candy bar but failed, and walked the miles into town to consider what she should do, her legs shaking by the time she arrived.
The buildings on the town square looked like old Florida—the tall porches with fans, the tin roofs—but everything was made of a dense plastic in shades of beige. There was a fountain in the center: a squat frog spitting up water, and change scattered on the blue tiles under the water. She sat on the edge of the fountain and watched the shoppers in the boutiques and the people eating ice-cream cones.
At one corner of the square stood a small brick church, flanked by blooming crape myrtles. She didn't notice the people gathering in front until they began to emerge with hands full of Styrofoam clamshells and juice packs. Some were stringy, greasy, the familiar life-beaten people who lived half-visibly at the edge of the university town she'd come from. But there were also construction workers in hardhats, mothers hurrying away with kids in their wakes.
She wanted to stand. To be in the line, to get the food. Her body, though, wouldn't move. In the twilight, a family passed and she thought how she had once been this blond toddler on her tricycle, singing to herself, while her parents walked behind her. How sudden the disturbance had been! Her father dead when she was ten, the struggle with money through high school, her mother marrying in exhaustion only to fold herself entirely away. The one safe place the girl had had left was school. But she'd been too careful in the end, unable to take the necessary scholarly risks, and they had withdrawn even that from her.
She sat like a second frog on the edge of the fountain, hunched over her hunger, until the clock clicked to an impossibly late hour and she was alone. She rolled up her jeans and stepped into the water. She felt along the bottom with her feet until she came upon a coin, and dipped her arm up to her shoulder, but almost all the change was glued to the tile. By the time she had gone entirely around, she had gathered only a small handful. When she peered at them in the dim light from the street lamp, she found they were mostly pennies. Still, she went around again. She saw herself from a great distance, a woman stooping in knee-deep water for someone else's wishes.
Most days, she found food—bread and bruised fruit—heaped, clean, in a dumpster behind a specialty grocer. She hid the station wagon at the far end of a supermarket parking lot, next to a retainer pool and shielded by the low branches of a camphor tree. The smell entered her dreams at night and she'd wake to a slow green sway of branches, as if underwater. There was a Baudelaire poem this reminded her of, but it had been erased from her memory. She wondered what else was gone—the Goethe, the Shakespeare, the Montale. The sun was bleaching it all to dust; her hunger was eating it up. It was a cleansing, she decided. If pretty words couldn't save her, then losing them, too, was all for the best.
She was baking on the beach when a leaf slid up over her stomach. She caught idly at it, and found that it wasn't a leaf at all but a five-dollar bill.
That night, she went into the poolside showers of an apartment complex and washed herself carefully. When she caught sight of herself naked in the mirror, she could see the ribs of her upper chest and the pulse in the curve of her hip bone. But she blow-dried her hair and put it into a ponytail and applied makeup that she'd bought a few years ago. She no longer looked like herself: diligent, plump, prim. She looked like a surfer girl or a sorority sister, one of those quivering dewy creatures she had always silently disliked.
She walked three miles to a beach bar, listening to the ocean break itself again and again. The place was full when she came up through the back door, the huge televisions blaring a football game. Once, she would have been invested in the game, if only because it was the lingua franca of the Southern town, the way to put a freshman-comp class at ease, to converse with a dean's vapid wife. But now it seemed silly to her; young men grinding into one another, war games muted with padding.
She ordered the dollar-special beer and gave the bartender another dollar for a tip. His fingers brushed hers when he handed her the change, and she was startled at the warmth of his flesh. She peeled the label off her beer and took deep breaths.
Someone climbed onto the stool beside hers, and she looked at him when he ordered two gin-and-tonics. He was a sweet-looking sandy boy with large red ears, the kind of student who always got a B- in her classes, mostly on good-willed effort alone. He slid one of the drinks toward her shyly, and when he began to speak he didn't stop. He was a junior up north but had had to take a semester off and was working in his mother's real-estate office for now, which really pissed off the old agents there, because there were few enough commissions right now, real estate going to shit in this shitty, shitty time. And on and on. After three drinks, she was drunker than she'd ever let herself be. She wondered, as he spoke, what had happened to make him take a semester off. Drugs? A hazing scandal? Bad grades? When they stopped on the walk to his house and he pressed her shoulders against the cold metal of a street light and kissed her with touching earnestness, she felt the soft hair at the base of his neck and thought he'd probably had a nervous breakdown. He kissed like a boy prone to anxiety attacks.
But she liked him, and his apartment was clean and pretty: she could sense the hand of an overbearing mother in its furnishings. Before he touched her he looked at her naked body for a long time, blinking. She saw herself, then, as he did: the clean white of her bikini pressed into her skin, the eroticism of the contrast. In gratitude, she came toward him.
But, afterward, the softness of the bed was overwhelming. As the boy slept, she went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was so full, the abundance stilled her. She ate a slice of cold pizza standing in the glow, opened a jar of pickles and ate three, ripped a hunk of Cheddar from the block with her fingers and gobbled it down. She didn't see the boy standing in the doorway until she reached for the orange juice. Then she noticed the pale gleam of his T-shirt and she closed her eyes, unable to look at him.
She could hear him walking toward her and steeled herself for recrimination. But he touched the small of her back and said a soft, Oh, honey, and this was infinitely worse.
A hurricane developed over the Caribbean but only its edges lashed the shore. Still, during the scream and blow, the camphor rattled its branches against the top of the car and the wagon shook so hard she was afraid the metal would twist and the glass would break. The retention pond overflowed and water licked up to the hubcaps. She lay as quietly as she could and listened and watched: she was a thin shell of glass and steel from the raw nerve at the center of herself. She felt the storm come closer, charging near; she waited with a painful breathless patience. But before it arrived she fell asleep. She called her mother on Thanksgiving but her stepfather answered and said her mother was in bed again, under the weather. Not that she cared. They'd given up on her coming home, but couldn't she call her damn mother once a month?
She held the receiver up to the highway and let him speak himself out, and in a pause said to tell her mother that she loved her and would call again soon. She sat for a while on a dune, shivering in the cold wind. The ocean was blank and inexpressive, withholding sympathy. At last, she was numbed enough that she could walk to the town and stand in the long line outside the church. Today they were serving people in seatings, and the line moved very slowly.
Most of the people at the table looked normal. Across from her was a family, the mother with a chic black haircut and tattoos across her collarbone, the father with an artful mullet, the two little girls with barrettes in their bangs. Next to her was an enormous black woman whose flesh pressed up to hers, firm and warm. Nobody spoke. There was a soup course—home-made minestrone with good bread—then the turkey course with canned everything: cranberries, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, beans. And, last, there was homemade pecan and pumpkin pie with coffee.
When the woman serving their table bent over to clear the pie plates, the black lady grasped her gloved hand. They all looked up to see the serving woman's startled face under her shower cap. Thank you, the black lady said, that was goooood, and the little girls laughed. The girl expected awkwardness, a hurrying away, but the serving woman briefly laid her cheek atop the black lady's head and gave her a squeeze, and both women closed their eyes as they leaned closer in.
It had been a rare warm day, and she'd built wind walls out of sand and soaked the last of the season's sunshine into her skin. Now she dropped her towel and book and water bottle and stared in wonder at the station wagon. All the doors were open, her things spilling out. Her car had been gutted; her things were entrails. The hood was open, the engine gone. The tires were gone, the hubcaps gone, the front seats gone. Inside, a strong stench of urine: someone had pissed in the glove box. The guitar was gone, the camping stove, the tent, her childhood stuffed turtle, her winter jacket. "Middlemarch," of all fucking things, gone. Her backpack had a long slit in it.
She gathered what she could—the sleeping bag, "Paradise Lost," some clothes, a tarp. She found some dental floss and a needle and sewed up the backpack. Then she took the registration from the glove box and ripped it up—wet, it tore easily—and tossed the license plate into the retention pond, where it floated on the duckweed for a moment before it sank.
How light she thought she had been before. How truly light she was now.
She should be leaving anyway—it was too cold now, with the wind off the ocean. There were Santas in the store windows, in piles of fake snow.
Out on A1A, the cars screamed by her and threw exhaust in her face. She stuck out her thumb, and a tan sedan rolled to a stop. The driver was pale and nervous, and somewhere inside her alarm bells began to ring, but she found she didn't care to listen. He said he was going back to the university town, and she thought of her ex, her friends, her fall from safety. She found she didn't care about those things, either.
She could feel the ocean pulling at her back, but didn't turn to say goodbye. It had failed to do what she had longed for it to do; it had been indifferent, after all. Over the inland waterway, with its tiny islands and corrugated bridge, into the palmetto scrub. Somewhere along a stretch of road bordered by pines in strict formation, the man put a hand on her knee and squinted, straining, toward the empty asphalt ahead. She gently removed his hand and he didn't try again. He turned on the radio and they listened to sticky love ballads. In town, he dropped her at the downtown plaza and squealed away, to the loud derision of two old men at the bus stop. They grinned at her and, together, blew pink bubbles with their gum and one by one let them pop.
Just before the public library closed for the night, she rode the elevator to the top floor and went into the grand, stained-glass conference room set like a crown at the top of the building. She'd discovered an unlocked closet behind a leaning blackboard, barely long enough to hold her body in its sleeping bag. In the dark of the closet, she ate what she found during the day and listened to the library empty out. It was orange season, and she plucked satsumas for breakfast and spat the pips into her hand.
She neglected to call her mother for Christmas or New Year's. When she tried to read during the day the words lost their meaning and floated loosely in her eyes.
She didn't make it to the library in time one evening, and spent the night shivering in her light jean jacket. She was walking by a club that had just closed when a cluster of undergraduates in strapless dresses tottered by, fingering their cell phones. She recognized one of them, a girl from her fall comp-lit class last year. She'd been a frightened, silent thing who'd earned her C-. No matter how hard she was drilled, "its" and "it's" had eluded the girl. Tonight, if she and the girl came face to face, the girl would look through her former instructor, not seeing her in this worn, dirty woman; and she, whose words had once lashed, would have nothing to say.
Its, it's, she said aloud now. Who cares?
A man stacking the chairs in the front patio area heard her and laughed. Twits, he agreed.
She leaned against the railing and watched him work. He was a skinny, short brown man and exceptionally fast: he'd already rolled the rubber mats and was hosing down the bricks when she realized he was still talking to her. I'm telling you, he was saying, get sillier and sillier each damn day, filling up those heads with tweeters and scooters and facebooks and starbooks and shit. He looked up at her and grinned. His four front teeth were gone, and it gave him the mischievous air of a six-year-old. Name's Euclid, but everyone calls me Euclid-Euclean. I clean, right? I got three of these clubs to set right before morning so's I can't stop to chat.
O.K., she said, and took a step, but he meant he couldn't stop; he could still chat. This land, he told her, is full of living twits and unsettled spirits, both. The spirits were loud and unhappy and filled the place with evil. All them dead Spanish missionaries and snakebit Seminoles and starved-to-death Crackers and shit. He, Euclid-Euclean, come down from Atlanta near on four years back and got infected with the spirits and they were inside him and he couldn't find his way to leave.
By now they were inside the booze-stinking club and Euclid had poured her a glass of cranberry juice. He began to mop the floor with a bleach solution so strong it made her eyes water. He looked up at her and stopped, struck by a thought. I like you, he said. You keep your words in tight.
Thanks, Euclid, she said.
I could use some help, he said. Three clubs is hard to clean alone by morningtime come. You could do bathrooms, stuff like that. You got you a job?
No, she said.
He looked at her shrewdly and said, Fifty bucks Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, twenty bucks other nights. Monday off.
She blinked at the empty bucket he thrust into her hands. Partner, he said.
There was a sensation in cleaning that she used to get in her other lifetime, when the books she was reading were so compelling they carried her through hours. Words were space carved out of life, warm and safe. Polishing windows to perfect clarity, scrubbing porcelain, working caustic chemicals into the tiles until they gleamed like teeth; all this detached her mind from herself. She grew hard muscles in her skinny arms.
In the mornings, she would walk into the cold and feel herself wrung out. Euclid-Euclean sometimes bought her breakfast and they'd sit, stinking of chemicals, in their booth, surrounded by the smells of warm grease and hot coffee. She wanted to laugh with him, to tell him of the horror of her mother's house when she was little, the cockroaches and the dirt-crusted linoleum, how strange it was she was cleaning now, but Euclid spoke so much she had no need to say anything. He'd tell her about his talking dog when he was a kid, or he'd describe his moments of illumination, when the world slowed and the Devil spoke in his ear until he was chased away by the brightness that grew inside Euclid and bathed the world in light.
She took a room by the week in a squat cement motel sticking out over the highway. It was called Affordable–Best Price–Comfortable, but she had to borrow some chemicals and rags from Euclid to make the bathroom usable. She liked the sound of the trucks rumbling past and the steady rhythms of her neighbors' voices and the boys who hung out at the roasted-chicken place next door, with their swooping boasts and hoots of derision.
One morning, she was walking home to the motel when she saw a familiar bicycle at the coffee shop where she used to grade papers. She looked in the window, hiding her face with her baseball cap. Two of her former friends sat at a table, both frowning into their laptops. How fat they looked, how pink. They were nursing their plain black coffees, and she remembered, with a surge of ugliness, how they all used to complain that they were too poor for lattes. How rich they had been. It was a kind of wealth you don't know you have until you stand shivering outside in the morning, watching what you used to be. One of her friends, the man, sensing eyes upon him, slowly looked up. A knot pulled tight in her gut, but, when he looked past her to a sleek young woman gliding by on a bicycle, the knot frayed and broke apart.
One Saturday in March, at their last club, she looked up to see Euclid-Euclean swaying on his feet. He was staring at the air ducts above with a taut look of ecstasy on his face. She couldn't get to him before he fell over. His body was rigid, his jaw grinding. She heaved him onto a table and considered an ambulance, then dismissed it, because he had no money for medical care: he was saving for a bridge for his missing teeth. He always came out of it, he had told her. The Devil was fought off by the light in him. All she had to do was wait.
She went back to cleaning. When she was finished, she polished all the glasses and wiped the fur of dust from the bottles on the top shelves. She squeegeed the windows.
When people in work clothes began passing by outside, it was time. When she came near Euclid-Euclean, however, she smelled a terrible odor and found that he had voided his bowels. She heaved him into a chair and dragged him to the bathroom and cleaned him as well as she could. She threw his pants and underwear and socks and shoes into the dumpster out back and fashioned a kind of loincloth from her sweatshirt. His van was parked out back, and she wrestled him up into the back, and laid him out on a bundle of clean rags.
She didn't know where he lived, or if he had loved ones. She hadn't asked anything about him, had only listened to what he'd chosen to tell. She left a note on his chest and locked the van, and when she returned in the afternoon to check on him the van was gone, and he was gone, and though she waited for him at the clubs every night for the next week, none of the hungry, idle people in the plaza or the night-club managers knew or would tell her where he was.
A cold wind blew in one April night and killed the most fragile plants. Across town, there were skeletons of ferns and banana plants and camellias. In the morning, the small, frowning Thai woman who owned Affordable–Best Price–Comfortable knocked on the door and waited, silent and cross-armed, in the doorway, until she had packed up, put on her shoes and jacket, and left the room.
At noon, she followed the slow-moving parade of the indigent to the plaza, and received a sandwich in plastic and a can of juice. At six, she followed them to the Methodist church and was served milk with a sour taste she remembered from kindergarten and a baked potato with chili.
Afterward, she followed a group past the homeless shelter, which was always full by one minute past five, when it opened for the night. They passed the old town depot, went through a park scarred with chain-link fences and heaps of dirt. They came out onto the bike path where she and her ex, once upon a time, had taken long, leisurely rides to see the alligators glistening on the banks of the sinkhole ponds. It was dark in the woods, thick with Spanish moss and vines that looked from the corners of her eyes like snakes. She felt a new upwelling in her, a sharp fear, and tried to swallow it. The people ahead of her disappeared off the bike path and into the trees.
She could smell it before she saw it: the tang of urine and shit and woodsmoke and spilled beer and something starchy boiling. She heard the voices and came out into a clearing. In the dark, tents hulked beyond where she could see them and there were fires here and there.
A man shouted, You looking for me, sweetheart? and there were laughs and she could see a dark shape detaching from the closest fire and gliding toward her.
From behind her, she heard a woman's voice saying, warmly, There you are! and she felt herself being pushed past the man who approached, then past seven or eight campfires.
They stopped. Hang on, the woman said, and bent down and lit a lighter to some newspaper, then the newspaper to a bit of kindling. The fire revealed a heavy woman with a bready face and hair in a pink shade of red. I got the water, kids, she said. You can come out. There was the sound of a zipper and four little bodies crept from a tent. They were indistinguishable from one another at first, four skinny things with long blondish hair.
The woman looked up and said, Not smart, coming here alone.
I had nowhere to go, she said, and her voice sounded ugly in her ears.
No family? the woman said. Clean-looking girl like you?
No, she said.
Got food? the woman asked, and she nodded as she pulled from her pack the last of her supplies: a loaf of white bread, a jar of peanut butter, a pack of cheese, a few tins of sardines, three cheap dry packs of ramen.
Peanut butter! one of the kids said, snatching it up, and the woman smiled at her for the first time. Share your food, you can share our tent, she said.
Thank you, she said. When they sat to eat, one of the little girls crept close to her and put a hand on the sole of her foot. When she was little, she'd had the same hunger for touch. She could smell woodsmoke in the girl's blond hair, something clovelike in her skin.
The big woman was named Jane, and they nursed cups of weak cocoa after the children went to sleep. Jane told her about the husband who had run off, the house she and the kids lost, the jobs she'd been fired from because of her temper. She sighed. Same old story, she said.
She could hear the campsite settling; could smell marijuana over the thick stink of the place; a man was shouting, then his voice suddenly cut off. The house was real nice, Jane said ruefully. Pool and all. My husband always said there's no such thing as a Florida childhood without a pool. She snorted, and made a gesture toward the children. Now we're camping.
How long have you been here? the girl asked.
But this was the wrong thing to say, and Jane frowned at her and said, It's temporary, and stood to clean her cup. We'll get back to where we were.
Still, when she went to brush her teeth, she noticed Jane watching. Toothpaste, she said. Kids've been out for a while. You think tomorrow you can let us borrow some? And she said sure, and Jane smiled again, and by the time the two women went into the tent and curled on either side of the four sprawling children, they were friends again.
In the bright light of the morning, the campsite was steaming with fog: it looked almost innocuous, dreamy. She started up the fire and found the drinking water and began to boil oatmeal for the kids. They came out, one by one. The oldest couldn't have been more than five, none of them school age. In other tents, other women's voices rose, other children responded. A small boy ran over, said a shy Hey to Jane's children, and fled back to his mother.
She understood now that this was the family part of the tent city, that the safety here was safety in numbers, of rules and unspoken militancy against the threat just feet beyond.
Jane poked her head out, smiled, and emerged in a fast-food uniform.
You watch the kids today? she said. The girl who usually watches them got housing a few days ago, and I better not drop them at the library again.
I can read, the oldest girl said. I can, too, the second-oldest said. Sort of, the first said, but kindly.
She looked at the children, a sinking in her stomach. Oh, she said.
Jane's face was cold again. Listen, she said. Either I work or we never get out of here. Either they stay with you or I drop them off at the library and risk Social Services catching wind and lose them. We got no choice.
O.K., she said. Of course, I'll watch them. And Jane said thanks, but looked at her sourly as she untangled the little girls' hair with a wet comb.
Nights, Jane came back stinking of perspiration, with bags of burgers and fries that had got too old to sell. She soaked her feet in warm water, groaning, and, when the kids were asleep, talked bitterly of her boss. Stupid young lech, she said. Felt up her boobies in the supply room.
She nodded, listening, offering little. But Jane seemed to take solace in her quiet presence, treating her like a slow cousin, pitiful but useful.
The kids and she were coming out of the library one afternoon when they saw Jane across the street on a bench.
Uh-oh, the oldest girl said. The youngest buried her head in her brother's back.
Stay here, she said, and sat the children on a wall in front of the library.
Fired, Jane said, without raising her head. I got a temper, I told you that.
It's all right, she said, though the ground seemed to buckle under her feet. You'll get another job.
Jane lifted her head and spat, No, it isn't all right. It's not all right. I put down all our money on a place the other day and was waiting for my pay on Friday to put down the rest. It's so not fucking all right, she said. Go back to the tent, she said. I'll be in when I'm in.
For supper, she and the kids had tomato soup and cheese sandwiches. She told the children stories filched from the Arabian Nights, and they fell asleep, waiting for their mother. She sat by the fire until she ran out of wood, and the bodies drifting by in the darkness grew menacing. Then she zipped herself inside the tent, warmed by the breath of the children.
In the morning, Jane's side of the tent was still empty. She took the children to the graveyard halfway between the tent city and the town. It was their favorite place: calm, neat, and pretty, with great old oaks and rows of bright plastic flowers that they gathered in their arms and redistributed to the loneliest-looking stones.
At the end of the day, she brought the children to the police department, and gave them each a cup of oversweetened tea and a powdered doughnut that she found on a table in the waiting area.
When she asked about Jane, the policewoman barely looked up from her computer. She sucked her lip and typed in Jane's name and said, Um-hum. Arrested yesterday at about seven. Prostitution.
No, the girl said. The children were out of earshot. She said, That can't be right.
The policewoman flicked her eyes over her. She could see herself as she was to this woman—dirty, stringy, smelly, browned to leather, clearly homeless. The policewoman's mouth settled into its wrinkles. Well, it is, she said, and went back to what she was doing.
The girl summoned the ghost of the professor she'd been and said, enunciating sharply, Officer, please listen to me. I need to have you contact Family Services. These are Jane's children, and I find that I cannot, unfortunately, care for them at this time.
She sat with the children until a tired-looking woman in a black pants suit hurried in, stopping to talk with the officer at the desk. When the Family Services woman said a bright hello, the kids looked up from the magazine they had been studying and watched warily as the woman hoisted her trousers to crouch before them.
The girl stood, weak in the legs, and backed toward the door.
The day was too bright. Her head rang. She had eaten nothing since the morning. She went back to the tent and slept until dawn. Just before the tent city began to stir, she gathered her things and walked to town, leaving Jane's tent still up, the children's belongings tidied into piles and her own sleeping bag in the center in craven apology.
She thought of her mother, what it must be like for her to have a vanished daughter. The police must have found the abandoned station wagon months ago and traced it; someone must have called. Her mother would think of murder or abduction, would wonder what she had done to make her daughter so ungrateful. Maybe, she thought with a pulse of spite, fear had finally awakened her mother. Maybe she was scouring the state for her, even now. She slept for two days under her tarp in her former neighbor's bamboo thicket. The nights were warmer in May, but she still shivered. Once, she woke to find the bright-green eyes of a cat staring at her, and called out her old pet's name, but the animal ran off.
She walked all the way to the university, remembering it was graduation weekend, which meant that many of the students would be moving out. Perhaps she could get some food or another sleeping bag, she thought. In college, she had watched boys open a fifth-floor fraternity-house window and dump their perfectly good computers to the ground. She herself had emptied her mini-fridge of its still-fresh yogurts and apples and frozen pizzas and tossed them into the garbage.
She felt ratlike on campus, scuttling from shadow to shadow. If anyone she knew saw her, if anyone smelled her. There was a tent in one quad, and she could just perceive in the dawn that a buffet was being set up. She waited until the caterers went behind their van for a break, and swiftly filled up a plate with hot eggs and potatoes and sausage. She looked up to see one of the caterers staring at her, a crate of glasses in his hands. She smiled at him and he, grimly, waved her off.
Outside the senior dorms, she noticed a great metal truck beside a dumpster into which people were heaving mattresses, coffeemakers, chairs. She saw an office chair levitate above the lip of the dumpster, but the boy who was supposed to catch it had already seized a crate of electrical wires and turned away. The arms holding it began to shake. Without thinking, she stepped forward and grasped the chair above her head. The man who was passing it peeked out at her, smiling. He had black hair tied back in a ponytail and crows' feet pressed into the skin beside his eyes. You helping?
She was surprised into saying, Sure.
He winked and passed over a rolled-up rug.
She carried boxes of books, a headboard, a coffee table. The truck suddenly started up and someone muttered, Come on. She ran as the others began to run and leaped with them into the truck. A security car pulled up just as the doors clanged shut and the truck moved off. It was dark, the engine roaring, so crowded she felt as if she were suffocating. But someone touched her arm, lightly traced it to her hand, and put something paper-covered into her palm. It was a candy bar.
At last, the truck stopped and the engine shut off. There was a clicking, and the doors opened to impossible brightness. They were at the edge of a long, rolling expanse of grass. She heaved her backpack down and jumped out onto the sandy ground.
A girl with a smudged face and long braid turned to her and said, It's breakfast time.
She trailed the girl up the dirt drive to a sprawling ramshackle building. What is this? she said, and the girl laughed. It's the Prairie House, she said. It's a squat. Do you normally just follow people without knowing where you're going?
Recently, yes, she said. The girl looked carefully at her, and said, Whoa. You don't look so good, sweetie, and led her to a bed that she sank into, even though the sheets smelled strongly of someone else and she couldn't find the energy to take off her boots.
She slept through the day, the night, the next day, and woke light-headed with hunger. She crept down to the kitchen, passing bodies sprawled on cots and mattresses. The refrigerator was nauseating, overstuffed and sending off a garlicky rotten odor, but she found a pot of stew that was still warm shoved in among wrinkled apples.
The moon had risen over the prairie and shot the hummocks with shadow. A small creature was moving at the edge of the lawn, and in the house she could hear the others sleeping, their small movements and breath. She was alert, as she hadn't been in years. She turned on the light over the stove and looked at it in horror: it was caked with old meals, stinking of grease. She would begin now, she thought, and found a caustic cleaner under the sink, a mismatched pair of rubber gloves, some steel wool. She began inch by inch, and worked as quietly as she could. She avoided the windows, sensing that if she looked out she would see Euclid's hungry spirits massing up from the prairie, the starved Crackers, the malarial conquistadores on their ponies. Or Jane's children, their faces pressed to the glass.
By morning, the stove shone, the refrigerator was clean and the rotten food tossed, the dishes in the sink scoured and the sink again its natural stainless-steel color. She had reordered the cabinets, cleaning them of mouse droppings and dead cockroaches.
Her body felt vague with fatigue, but the clarity in her head remained. When she turned around, the man from the dumpster was sitting at the table, watching her. Wowzers, he said. Can't remember the last time somebody made this kitchen so shiny.
I still have a lot to do, she said, and he said, Sit down a minute and talk.
He told her the rules: no fighting, no drugs, sleep wherever you find a place. People were in and out all the time and nobody knew everyone, so if she had any valuables she'd need to keep them close. I don't, she said, and he said, All the better. Everyone should pull their weight, doing things either around the house or in the barn, where they had a business reselling discarded items on the Internet, which paid for the water and electric bills and some of the food they didn't just salvage. They tried to live without money that way, and did pretty well.
He stopped and grinned at her.
That's it? she said. Even in the tent city there had been more implicit rules.
Yup, he said. Heaven, isn't it?
She thought about it for a while. Or hell, she said.
Maybe there's no difference, he said as he poured her a coffee.
The party had grown organically, as things did at the Prairie House. Now there were skinny-dippers, splashes of surprising white in the dark water of the sinkhole, and a keg circled by strung-up Christmas lights on an oak tree. She turned from the bonfire where she was standing, the silhouettes of dancing bodies still in her eyes.
Beyond the party, the prairie unscrolled, calm and impassive, meeting the sky with an equal darkness. She found herself moving into it, each step a relief from the drunken voices, the flaming moths of paper spun from the fire, the sear of the flames. Past the first hummock of trees, the darkness took on a light of its own and she began to distinguish the texture of the ground. She moved calmly over the pits of sand, palmettos biting at her calves, strange sudden seeps of marsh. Small things rustled away from her footsteps, and she felt fondly toward them, for their smallness and their fear.
After ten minutes, human noise had scaled to nothing, and insect noise took on urgency. Her body was slick with sweat. When she stopped she felt the first itch. She kept herself still, and was so quiet for so long that the prairie began again its furtive movements. The world that, from the comfort of the fire, had seemed a cool wiped slate was unexpectedly teeming.
She could smell the rot of a drainage ditch some well-meaning fools had dug through the prairie during the Depression. The land had taken the imprint of their hands and made it its own. She thought of the snakes sleeping coiled in their burrows and the alligators surfacing to scent her in the darkness, their shimmy onto the land, their stealthy bellying; how she was only one lost living thing among so many others, not special for being human. Something crawled across her throat.
She was frozen. The sweat cooled on her body and made her shiver. There was no relief in the sky vaguely filmed with stars, a web vaster than she could imagine. There was nobody who could save her, nobody who could deliver her gently back to the solace of people.
The night on the prairie returned to her during the long and difficult birth of her daughter, years later, after her mother's funeral on a hill gone white with sleet. A shot in the spine took her pain away, and she was content, floating above herself, safe within the gentle beeping of the machines. Then something went wrong very suddenly, and the nurses' faces pressed in and the world outside her shifted into frenzy. She was wheeled down the hall to a cold room. It was almost Christmas and a poinsettia hunched in the corner of the room, making her think about the black dirt in the pot, what was in the dirt. Her body shook so hard it rattled the aluminum slab she was laid upon, and there was an unbearable pressure inside her as the surgeon pushed the knife in. Then the panic came back, the darkness, the sense of being lost, the fangs she'd imagined on her ankles, which were only palmetto cuts, the breath of some bad spirit hot on the back of her neck, before she had seen a glow in the darkness and stumbled back to the light of the bonfire.
She was peeled open to her pulp, but she was glad of her daughter's immanent newness, the perfect possibility of her. A fresh start: a form of lightness. One of the nurses wore a silver bell around her neck that chimed softly, and she listened to it, knowing that this small sound would be the first her daughter would hear of the world. How delicate the things that tie us to one another. The hands in her flesh, her own crossed on her chest, her daughter's tiny fists drawn up into the air. ♦


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Topic : Developing a marketing plan template.
Author : Seth Hale.
Published : Tue, Oct 08th 2019 16:09 PM.
Format : jpg/jpeg.
There are a number of ways of going about the process of writing a good business plan. One of the most tried and time tested ways that works well is using a business plan template. While these are easily available online, some of them are way better than the others. A lot depends on the approach that goes into writing the business plan. However, the best business plan template is that which meets all your business needs and requirements by offering you a high level of customization and a professional layout of all the content that you would like to include. So, rather than looking around for an existing plan and then designing your own plan along the same lines, it would be a better idea to use software that allows you to create your own template.
A good business plan template contains two main parts. A narrative followed by a series of financial worksheets. The narrative part of the business plan template embodies all the details and the strategy of the business plan and is further divided and subdivided into various sections. It is highly recommended that you work on creating a business plan template in a systematic way to avoid missing out on the inclusion of important facts and points.
There is a generic template that is available for all types of businesses. To make a business plan template, you need to modify the standard template that is suitable for your industry and business. The style of writing, the overall organization and the presentation of the ideas is what makes a good business plan template. Creating a template involves a significant amount of research, re-thinking and planning. Detailed notes regarding the sources of information and the underlying assumptions that support the financial data and information must be kept carefully for quick and easy reference as and when needed.


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It hurts to admit it but we really need Plax. Without him the team went downhill. Even our Earth-Wind and Fire triade was not the same without Plax wrecking havoc at WR. There were rumors about us being interested in Q but i still think if Plax gets away without any jail time we should give him another shot. I am pretty sure he is not going to shoot himself twice.
Well the other shot he gave it to himself. lol
Btw if it wasn't for Syracuse you would have been worshiping the same teams as i do.
Rutgers/St Johns is more like me.