text:
We work hard to bring you the best free horoscope predictions! We've got your free daily horoscope, free weekly astrology predictions, love horoscopes, monthly astrology forecasts and now featuring 2019 horoscope forecasts and astrology readings, all for free! Our predictions for all zodiac signs come from our favorite internet astrologers and we include only free astrology websites in our astrology directory. We've visited hundreds of astrology sites and we feature direct links with dozens of reviews. At last you don't have to do a lot of searching on the web to find the best, most accurate and totally free horoscope forecasts. Astrology readings include free daily horoscopes, romantic relationship forecasts, love predictions, weekly horoscope forecasts, monthly astrology and free yearly forecasts in the 2018 - 2019 horoscope year ahead readings! We've got hundreds of free horoscopes and we organize predictions for love, daily horoscopes, weekly astrology, monthly predictions and yearly astrology. Yearly horoscopes for 2019 are now showing up steadily! Free Chinese horoscopes, Chinese daily love horoscopes, Chinese lunar horoscopes and 2018 Chinese horoscope predictions and astrology forecasts, as well as free pet horoscopes for dogs and cats!
Free Daily Horoscopes | Weekly HoroscopesMonthly Horoscope Predictions2019 HoroscopesLove and Romance Horoscopes | Financial Astrology10 Best Astrologers and Astrology WebsitesAbout Free Horoscopes AstrologyLearn About Western Astrology | Chinese HoroscopesPet Horoscopes for Dogs and Cats
We also offer free astrology content via horoscope widgets for social networking websites and web pages.
We've spent hundreds of hours researching your daily stars and planets and read hundreds of free horoscope forecasts and zodiac predictions on hundreds of free horoscope and astrology websites before creating this site. We hope you'll agree that we're the best free horoscope website directory and daily zodiac astrology guide online. Why not make us your home page or bookmark our website and drop by anytime for your free daily horoscope, weekly horoscope, monthly horoscope, free love horoscopes and more? We constantly update our links to hand picked accurate astrology readings and feature reviews of the best astrology websites and the best astrologers in the world. We've organized our links to astrology and horoscope sites conveniently, straight to the forecasts and predictions from one convenient page.
Inside this website you'll find the best daily horoscope as well as your weekly horoscope organized by day of release, by astrologer, by time and 2019 love horoscopes for all signs on one page, and we do the same by sign if you want to read just the horoscopes for your zodiac sign. Many of our astrology websites offer daily and weekly horoscopes free via email. Our very own free daily horoscopes by email feature weekly and monthly forecasts as well. Weekly zodiac forecasts are our favorites and you can always check yours today since different astrologers release horoscope predictions on different days.
We also love monthly horoscope predictions, which we've organized by astrologer, with links for each zodiac sign. Monthly horoscopes come out for the most part in the last weeks of the month. Monthly zodiac forecasts tend to be longer and highlight major trends and important dates in the coming month.
For yearly astrology readings and your free yearly horoscope 2019, we've organized yearly horoscopes for 2019 by astrologer/astrology website and forecasts are available for sun sign, moon sign and rising sign. Our favorite astrologers cover everything from your career, money and finance astrology to your love horoscope for 2019, including romance and relationship predictions about friendship, work, compatibility and love.
Exploring your past, present and future can help you understand yourself and learn what's in the stars today, this week, this month and this year as well as next, for your career and money outlook, opportunities and challenges in your personal life and love relationships. Horoscope forecasts and free zodiac readings for the year ahead include in-depth astro predictions for 2019 in the free yearly horoscopes section of the site.
Whether you're looking for free love horoscopes, synastry and relationship astrology, including free zodiac compatibility horoscopes, or career, money and business horoscopes, we've got the best free astrological forecasts and readings for all twelve signs of the zodiac.
Astrology is much more than fortune telling. No one can tell your future, but the best horoscopes identify the problems and opportunities, issues and challenges you and others who share your zodiac sign likely to face. We hope that the best astrologers on the web (the ones giving at least pseudoscientific readings guided by their intuition) will help you understand yourself better and help you to improve your health and love life as well as your fortune in business, work and career!
Start by reading our free daily horoscope for today! The best things in life are free and the best free daily horoscopes online are here, today and every day. Visit often and bookmark this site to find the best daily astrology from the best daily astrologers. We've scoured the web to find the best free daily zodiac horoscope forecasts online and gathered them together in one convenient place. Also be sure to look at our free daily love horoscopes and weekly astrology section below for a broader perspective than daily horoscopes may bring.
Checking your daily horoscope forecast is a great way to keep abreast of shifts in the cosmic climate from yesterday to today or tomorrow, and you are sure to find worthwhile seeds of contemplation from the best zodiac interpreters we've found in the universe, for the day ahead. Many sites also feature yesterday's and tomorrow's horoscopes as well as today's. Daily horoscopes by zodiac sign for Aries, the Ram to Pisces the Fish and everyone in between are easy to find. We group the daily section by astrologer and then by sign, so for example Taurus, Aquarius, Gemini, Virgo and Capricorn generally can reach their horoscope from one click where we could manage that. We haven't neglected Scorpio, Leo, Sagittarius or Cancer either. All daily zodiac horoscopes and zodiac forecasts are available for each zodiac sign in one convenient location!
The weekly horoscopes and astrology forecasts are even better than daily, because they cover a broader period, and events unfold a bit differently for all members of a particular zodiac sign. Why not check out your weekly horoscope forecasts for this week covering love, money, spirituality and relationships today and see the bigger astrological picture? Weekly love horoscopes, weekly horoscopes by day of the week released and your weekend forecast are featured. We've scoured the internet to find the best weekly horoscopes online and brought them all together. Now you can finally enjoy one weekly horoscope guide filled with reviews and links to the best weekly astrology readings. Not only do we feature our own weekly horoscope with daily and monthly predictions on the same page for this week and for this month. We've saved you the work and made it easy to find the best astrologers on the web for free weekly horoscope and astrology predictions by zodiac sign!
Our free monthly horoscope for the month ahead is right alongside your daily and weekly reading. Our top monthly horoscopes and free monthly astrology forecasts often provide more insight than weekly or daily readings and predictions alone. The stars unfold a bit differently for everyone who's birth falls within a particular sign, and monthly horoscope forecasts can give you a better astrological reading for love, romance, spirit and money by covering your outlook for the full month ahead. We enjoy brief and detailed free monthly astrology readings at the end and beginning of each month, when tons of monthly horoscopes come out. You may even be able to get you reading for next month already. Monthly horoscopes include free monthly couples horoscope and love horoscopes for singles, monthly business horoscopes for career, work, job money and more. A substantial free monthly horoscope forecast provides the opportunity to look ahead from this to next month's astrology predictions and to reflect on prior monthly predictions in astrology forecasts that have already come to pass.
The best 2018 horoscope forecasts yearly may be relevant in 2019, as some outer planetary influences hold sway in 2019 horoscopes so you're in for a great glimpse of the future this year! We'll be seeing more and more 2019 horoscopes yearly near New Year's Eve and Day, with 2020 horoscope predictions appearing as the 12 zodiac signs have their birthday in 2019. A yearly horoscope is a great way to prepare for the year ahead, financial, business career and love life in 2019. Often, you'll see that your 2018 astrology predictions have already unfolded and you might start to think your astrologer was clairvoyant! Our favorites are at a minimum using pseudoscientific aspects of astrology, talented and/or lucky rather than merely using suggestion and Barnum statements that apply to everyone! Some of the trends in your 2018 astrology forecasts may carry on in your 2019 horoscope predictions so do look at both readings when available.
We offer several premium personal 2019 horoscopes. This is the most accurate yearly horoscope you'll ever find, since our astrology readings are based on your place, date and time of birth -- i.e. your natal chart. Get a sneak peek at what's coming next year and the whole rest of the year!
Perhaps you'll decide that in the science of astrology, many different astrologers converge on the same meaningful themes and areas of free will in your 2019 horoscope, and that if astrology works for you, the proof is simply that it works! No one can really ever understand the mystery of how astrology works or why, only that it sometimes does ring true. Readings often feel like an accurate prediction of the future, present or recent past. The best astrologers are all consulting the same roadmap, though there is room for different interpretations or emphasis. This disparity tends to diminish with annual horoscope readings, so several astrologers may reveal - and elaborate on - the same major themes in their free horoscopes for the whole year ahead. Don't miss our new section on free 2018 horoscope videos, featuring the best video horoscopes online!
Check back every so often to find the latest yearly stars and free astrology readings for 2019, including your horoscope love life in 2019, yearly career and money horoscope and more!. We hope you find your future lucky, happy, healthy, prosperous in financial, spiritual and otherwise and may your life be filled with love in the coming astrological year! We believe in free will more than astrology. Life is what you make it. But it doesn't hurt to consult maps from time to time!
Relationships and love are fundamental to human existence. Our romantic love horoscopes and relationship astrology for all zodiac signs can help you understand the important influences leading toward better compatibility in love relationships as well as help you understand friendships, family relationships and your professional relationships. You might prefer your free love horoscopes organized by zodiac sign rather than for all signs on one page. You can also find love match horoscope sign compatibility.
Love horoscope predictions and relationship astrology for couples in love is usually the first thing people think of when they hear love horoscope or relationship astrology. If you are in a relationship, do consider purchasing one or more of our in depth compatibility horoscope for romantic couples for you and your partner, or a comprehensive couple's astrology reports package for each of you individually and together, based on both of your natal charts at a substantial savings. Birth chart horoscopes allow true synastry astrology to reveal you more fully to one another.
Remember that relationship astrology is about more than romantic horoscopes! Relationship astrology and love horoscopes can help you understand family, friends, lovers and coworkers by first understanding yourself and the universal nature of human relationships.
Of course a good and romantic love horoscope for 2019 can improve romance and intimacy, which is a great way to use relationship astrology for couples and astrological compatibility (synastry). Horoscopes for love cover the astrological influences specific to all kinds of relationships, including family, children's horoscopes, friends and coworkers.
Astrology can be very enlightening if partners delve deeper into themselves and share with each other, reading the synastry aspects in the couple's combined birth charts. This can be especially romantic when looking at baby pictures and imagining that some of the you that is you is actually due to the stardust we're all made of -- the matter of the universe is all the same matter! Of course, for singles dating, the best love match horoscope for you might be just around the corner and your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly love horoscope forecasts can tell you when the best opportunities exist.
Love horoscope forecasts also cover family relationships for parents, sometimes exploring what to expect when parenting your children. You see, we all share the same concerns and astrology believes that the position of the planets, moon, sun and stars all create a cosmic climate that influences every aspect of our lives in some way. There are forces unmeasured in the universe (as gravity itself once was) which can help us better understand the universe and our relationship to it! This is, after all, the ultimate relationship issue and after all is said and done, our relationship to our self and our relationship to others and to the very universe is the fundamental business and essence of astrology. Astrology shows us how our life is ultimately a labor of love.
Who couldn't use more money or help with their career or in business during these challenging financial times? Career astrology, business and financial horoscope forecasts can help you profit more and improve your career, business and financial outlook through astrology. It costs no money so check out our monthly, weekly and daily stars for career horoscope predictions, job and financial astrology forecasts and business horoscopes. Financial horoscope predictions for the 2019 stock market and the like break out around New Year.
End of 2018, we updated our sister site with 2019 horoscopes featuring our very best love horoscopes, career horoscopes along with business and financial horoscopes appear now. Our website and astrologers do a nice job with issues and opportunities in the professional, business horoscopes and career astrology space. Financial astrology forecasts and financial astrology predictions for career, job, work, investment and business are regular features in the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly business and career horoscope forecasts and money horoscope predictions.
Daily Horoscope | Free Weekly Horoscopes | Monthly Horoscopes2019 Horoscopes | Love Horoscopes and Romantic Astrology
Our free Chinese horoscopes and 2019 Chinese astrology predictions cover your 2018 year of the dog horoscope too! You can get your Chinese love horoscope predictions, daily Chinese zodiac forecasts, yearly 2019 Chinese Horoscopes, monthly Chinese astrology forecasts and more, including 2019 Chinese horoscopes Daily, Love and Chinese Astrology Year of the Horse Predictions.
We hope you animal lovers find our free pet horoscopes and pet astrology worthwhile, where we feature horoscope forecasts for your dog and cat horoscope predictions. This section focuses on pet astrology and free pet horoscopes based on your pet's zodiac sign with kitten and puppy forecasts :)
Perhaps you would like to delve even deeper into your stars or understand the planets and signs in your free birth chart. Be sure to consider not only your sun sign, but also moon sign and rising sign (ascendant). For the full picture, have a professional astrologer cast a birth chart. That way you'll understand all the important planetary aspects (the relative position of the planets) in your natal birth chart. It's easy to get your free birth chart wheel as well as a free personal astrology chart life destiny interpretation sample, free personal daily horoscope and free daily horoscope by email based on your exact place, date and time of birth! This is a terrific way of interpreting your natal astrological chart!
We strive to be your astrology supersite and one stop astrology shop! Our free astrology primer will help you learn basic western zodiac astrology, covering sun, moon and rising signs (ascendants). We cover all twelve zodiac signs, the planets in astrology, the twelve houses, the four elements, cardinality.
Our zodiac horoscopes and zodiac astrology forecasts go beyond western tradition by bringing to you the internet's best Vedic astrology (Eastern), Tarot Card Readings, Wicca Card and even Sabian Symbol interpretations and mandalas. Ogham stone readings, rune stone interpretations, numerology and some offer psychic readings. All in all, it's a pretty spiritual subject area with rich symbolism. Somewhat scientific, perhaps somewhat paranormal, but certainly interesting!
For those who already know a bit about the western zodiac and sun sign, visit our intermediate level astrology discussion, which goes a bit deeper than the primer. You can learn out all about the zodiac and the important planets, stars and asteroids. Did you know that the astrological symbols (12 signs) are based on constellations in the sky and that a person's birth chart factors in a great deal about the cosmos? A personal natal chart is a Rosetta stone to understanding personality and temperament, major life issues and life challenges. The way the various transits play out between the planets and stars today, i.e. the current aspects and angles of the planets to each other in today's sky, as well as planetary aspects and position in the houses of the zodiac if overlaid on a person's natal chart, reveal the most specific and personal horoscope forecasts. Our daily zodiac horoscopes are free and span all of your signs and often delve into the specific astrological aspects that the best forecasters consider when interpreting love and work, relationships and career, professional and personal challenges and opportunities.
Did you know that you have more than one sign?! Sun signs, moon and rising sign (ascendant).forecasts for your sun sign, also known as your birth sign all represent different aspects of your temperament. Most of us are familiar with the notion of the elements (fire, water, air, earth) and aware that each of the zodiac signs is "of" one of these elements. Other considerations, such as cardinality, of which there are 3 (fixed, mutable and cardinal) help divide the zodiac into the 12 signs. It's somewhat akin to personality type, of which there are 16 or the enneagram, of which there are 9.
Even more interesting and more than a bit complex, the placement of the planets in the different houses in a person's birth chart are considered to foretell major life predispositions in terms of astrological nature and fortune, fate, joss or karma. The houses of a person's chart represent all twelve signs of the zodiac and the positions of major bodies in the solar system are plotted. It's positively fascinating when you realize how little of this information is available to astrologers in a typical daily forecast targeting the whole of a sign when everyone has such infinitely different natal charts, yet how often today's forecast can feel meaningful.
It takes a lot of horoscope search engine time, astrology reading and reflection to find the best internet astrologers and free horoscope forecasts. We've organized our horoscope directory to save you time and point you at the best. Ultimately, only you can decide which astrologers give you the most accurate readings, but we think our website is the best way to find great horoscope forecasts. We've got an astrology search, horoscopes from the open directory, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, love, career, business and financial astrology and much more!
In our free horoscope directory all astrologers are hand-picked. We've enjoyed and benefited from their readings. We've visited their websites time and again, reading their zodiac forecasts over the years and we want to share their horoscopes with you…absolutely free of charge. It's our way of saying thanks to the top internet astrologers for all their wonderfully inspiring and insightful messages!
You can buy professional and personal astrology charts, readings and horoscopes in our shop, which helps support this site, so discover what our natal chart readings reveal today and don't miss our very own free horoscopes for a sample - we know they will blow your mind!
Don't miss Horoscope Astrology Tarot, our sister site for over 24 great free horoscope predictions every day of the week, including free daily horoscope forecasts. Choose among one of the best assortments of free monthly horoscopes forecasts online or free weekly horoscope readings. Not to mention your free 2019 horoscope! Plus, there are dozens of free tarot readings. And all 21 tarot cards of the major arcana are explained in depth! Our new site is our gift to you, our loyal visitors! Thank you for making us one of the top 58,000 websites worldwide, top 23,000 websites online in the USA and one of the best astrology websites in the world today! We hope you'll agree that we're the best horoscope directory on the planet, human edited! Thanks also to the many hard working astrologers around the world who write the best horoscopes for free! We wouldn't be here without you.
Our in-depth personal astrology reports and personalized horoscopes are all
about YOU, based on your zodiac birth chart. Birthday horoscopes, based on your
birth place, birth date and time are the most accurate readings available.
You'll be amazed by these in-depth astrology forecasts and personal zodiac
interpretations. Available online and for immediate download without
obligation, so grab your free natal chart, birth chart interpretation and free personality profile today. If you like the
sample readings, you'll be thrilled with the full length astrology predictions
and reports, on sale now for 2019-2020!
Favorite Astrology Quote: "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and
the stars. You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is
clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should." - Max Ehrman
MORE THAN 50% OFF (selected readings and astrology report packages)!!!
Monthly Horoscope for November 2019 and Horoscope Forecasts for 2020 Appearing
International Guide to our Free Astrology Directory
Italian (Italiano): Oroscopi Gratis Astrologia
German (Deutsch): Freie Horoskop Astrologie Gratis
Swedish (Svenska): Fri Horoskop Astrologi
Dutch (Nederlands): Vrij Horoscoop Gratis Astrologie
Danish (Dansk): Gratis Horoskoper Astrologi
Finnish (Suomi): Vapaat Horoskooppi Astrologian
Spanish (Espanol): Horoscopo Gratis Astrologia
French (Francais): Horoscopes Gratuits et Astrologie
Portuguese: Astrologia Gratis Dos Horoscopo


text:
Readers of The Atlantic Monthly, browsing the edition of November, 1880, and already looking forward to articles on "The Silk Industry in America" and "The Future of Weather Foretelling," were greeted, on the opening page, by the first installment of a new story. It began, "Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." This is hardly the most American of starts, and certainly not the most American of sentiments; those readers, if canvassed, could have nominated a host of more agreeable experiences. The whole setup sounds suspiciously English; was it for this that Emerson, Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and others had founded the magazine, twenty-three years before? Suspicions are confirmed, as the tale unfurls; the setting is indeed an English lawn, rug-soft, on a waning summer's day, and one of the tea-takers, to make matters worse, is an English lord.
He and two other men are soon joined by a female character. As a newcomer, she is entranced by the spectacle, and we are invited to join the trance:
She had been looking all round her again,—at the lawn, the great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; and, while engaged in this survey, she had also narrowly scrutinized her companions; a comprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself, and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye brilliant, her flexible figure turned itself lightly this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. "I have never seen anything so beautiful as this," she declared.
And I have never read anything as beautiful as that. Decades after I first encountered the passage, it has lost none of its thrill and lustre. The beauty of the telling should not be confused with the loveliness of the scene, whatever the enticement of the greensward; hundreds of writers have tried their hand at Old World pastoral and got stuck in a sentimental mud. The beauty, rather, is in the excitement—in the motions of the "flexible figure," and in all that is presaged by the quickness of her response. "It's just like a novel!" she exclaims, unaware that she is trapped inside one. Already, however, we find ourselves wanting to ask, of those turnings of hers: are they feline and purposeful, or more akin to the flutters of a flag in a breeze? Will this impressionable young woman, apparently so open to experience, end up in its pitiless thrall?
So begins "The Portrait of a Lady," and its opening chords, quiet as they are, have almost no match in English-speaking literature. You have to go to "Great Expectations"—to the raw, shivering sea light and the talk of slit throats, all so vastly distant in tone, though not on the map, from this teatime in the warm sun—to find the same trembling sense of a plot in waiting and a book in bud. What Pip sees, hears, and does in a few paragraphs will determine the entire span of Dickens's novel, though Pip will take almost as long to understand why, and no less an impact is made upon Isabel Archer, the woman on the grass; from here, she will be launched on an adventure, both by the men she meets at tea—two of whom will fall in love with her, and one of whom will bequeath her a fortune—and by the delectable deluge of her senses.
The serialization that started in late 1880 bore no author's name at the head. Instead, his identity was revealed at the end of each excerpt, in minuscule type: "Henry James, Jr." The appellation was a telling one; James still resided, to a degree, in the shadow of his father, and would remain there until Henry James, Sr., a theologian with a pronounced weakness for Swedenborg, joined the shades himself, at the end of 1882. Not that his son was a stranger to the magazine. Countless items of nonfiction, with titles such as "A Roman Holiday" and "Recent Florence," had appeared there, as had the novels "Roderick Hudson" (1875) and "The American" (1877), whose title, so promisingly patriotic, had proved deceptive; the story opened in the Louvre and seemed all but incapable of tearing itself away from France. Where, one was forced to ask, did this young James fellow belong? To what, or to whom, did his loyalties cling? He had caused a small storm, in 1878, with the appearance of "Daisy Miller," whose sales were of a breeziness that would hardly be repeated; he had also published "The Europeans" (1878) and "Washington Square" (1880). Now, at last, he was girding himself for a more substantial project ("settling down to the daily evolution of my 'big' novel," he wrote in a letter of March, 1880), although subscribers to The Atlantic Monthly had, as yet, no inkling of what they were in for—no clue that James was passing from apprenticeship to mastery, or that the scene by the silvery Thames would flow into an enterprise of great pith and moment, shifting the deep tides of what we seek, and listen out for, when we read.
That flow is charted by Michael Gorra in "Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece" (Liveright), which takes the rare but wise decision to approach James through the channel of a single work. This is, in short, a book about a book, joining a select band of the equally fixated. We have "James Joyce's Ulysses," an early explication by Stuart Gilbert, and Francis Steegmuller's "Flaubert and Madame Bovary," although more questing Flaubertians may prefer "The Perpetual Orgy," a plunge into the same novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. Samuel Beckett's "Proust" was written after he spent a summer reading "À la Recherche du Temps Perdu" twice, a valorous act, although any discussion of Proust must, by definition, pay homage to the one engulfing work. Note that all the authors honored in this list are themselves obsessives: men prepared to devote any amount of time and intellectual industry, and to renounce almost everything, in the exhausting bid to wrestle the world into words, leaving us to revere the result and to inquire how much was entailed in the sacrifice. In each case, the equilibrium of their readers was shaken, and it remains so today; part of Gorra's task, in admitting James to that distinguished company, is to measure the aftershocks touched off by "The Portrait of a Lady." A book that begins in tranquil decorum will become, like "Ulysses" and "Madame Bovary," a disturbance of the peace.
What happens in "The Portrait of a Lady"? A plain chronology seems manageable. Isabel Archer, of Albany, aged twenty-one, and conveniently parentless, is brought by her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, to England. There she meets her uncle, the aging Mr. Touchett, who is sufficiently charmed to alter his will in her favor, although it is her cousin Ralph, weak of lung but strong in his affection for her, who suggests the change; to observe how Isabel fares, and what she may fashion from her independence, has swiftly become his "finest entertainment." She receives but rejects offers of marriage from Lord Warburton, a manly neighbor, and Caspar Goodwood, who has pursued her from Boston to pitch his woo. She spends time in London, largely with her friend Henrietta Stackpole, an American reporter, who nourishes fewer illusions about European allure. Mr. Touchett dies. Isabel makes the acquaintance of Madame Merle, a handsome, baffling friend of Mrs. Touchett's, who, in turn, once Isabel has crossed to the Continent, and descended from France to Italy, introduces her to Gilbert Osmond, a widowed gentleman with perfect manners. To his imperfections, which are grave and irredeemable, Isabel alone seems blind, and she consents to marry him. She becomes stepmother to the teen-age Pansy, who is later courted by a young American named Rosier and, for good measure, by Warburton, who will lose no opportunity to draw near to Isabel once more. Pansy, we learn, is in fact the product of an adulterous liaison between Osmond and Madame Merle. On hearing that Ralph is close to death, Isabel, against the orders of her disobliging husband, returns to the English house where we first observed her, and where she stays until Ralph passes away. Goodwood, undaunted, arrives and pledges to rescue her from the quicksand of Osmond—"you must save what you can of your life." Isabel, nonetheless, leaves for Rome. What happens next we do not know.
Put like that, the novel sounds not uneventful, and it is surprising to read the reviews that "The Portrait of a Lady" attracted when it first appeared as a book, in both England and America, in 1881. "Nothing but a laborious riddle," The Spectator said, while The Nation remarked on its "elaborate placidity"; even William Dean Howells—not just James's friend and adviser but the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, who had received it, chunk by chunk, for serial publication—was moved to ask, in an essay on James the following year, "Will the reader be content to accept a novel which is an analytic study rather than a story?" A furious but anonymous critic, in The Quarterly Review, cited Howells's words and added, "The answer to this question, from nine readers out of ten, will be emphatically No." To an extent, the battle over James has never really shifted from that ground; Jamesians continue to swoon over his fine discernment, while detractors still smirk at his willingness to grind near-nothings into powder. Yet "The Portrait of a Lady"—and the same holds true for masterpieces early and late, like "The Europeans" and "The Ambassadors" (1903)—is enough to stop the fight, and to prove both parties wrong. Plenty occurs to Isabel, in body and mind, with a frequency that suggests both comic and tragic modes; her pursuers pop up with the unexpected flourish of farceurs (Warburton is suddenly there, before her, in the Roman Forum), while a stalking mortality is never far behind. Her final exchange with Ralph would surely gratify the most demanding connoisseur of the Victorian deathbed, as Jamesian prolixity is halted and hushed by the patient's last gasps: "Love remains. I don't know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I shall find out. There are many things in life; you are very young."
Yet the reviewers, in their bewilderment, were onto something. However carefully you lay out the structure of the plot, you will always be left with a rustling sense of truths unapprehended—smaller, darker sagas unfolding backstage or in the wings. Some of these, naturally, are prompted by the sexual reticence of the author and the period alike. When Henrietta heads off to see the Paris sights with a jovial bachelor named Bantling, and we hear that "they had breakfasted together, dined together, gone to the theatre together, supped together, really in a manner quite lived together," it is precisely in not knowing what they did together by night—whether they proceeded to feast in foodless ways upon each other—that one finds, as so often with James, a pleasurable ache of dissatisfaction. Far creepier is his description of Osmond's rapport with his daughter: "If he wished to make himself felt, there was soft and supple little Pansy, who would evidently respond to the slightest pressure." James omitted the line, and its surrounding passage, when he thoroughly revised the novel, in 1906, for the New York edition of his works (and thereby hangs another tale), yet the jolt of that earlier, unrefined image feels dreadfully suited to Osmond, for whom Humbertism, actual or threatened, would make a pleasing addition to his secret stash of sins.
This hint of links either missing or deliberately dropped, however, reaches beyond the carnal. James was the nonpareil of the hiatus: "the whole of anything is never told," he confided to his Notebooks, when sketching out the novel. Only he would pause, after his heroine has been favored with yet another declaration of love, and then spring forward a year, obliging us to hang around, like fidgety suitors, for her reply. The year, we learn, has been "an interval sufficiently replete with incident," though not replete enough to warrant more than a short chapter; the author tells us that Isabel gazed at the Pyramids, but makes it clear that her mind was elsewhere. And only James, too, would then vault over the wedding itself, and the first years of marriage, before landing squarely once more in the presence of "Mrs. Osmond"—for a second, we have to stop and remind ourselves who on earth this is. What change has been wrought by her new status, and her new name? "She had lost something of that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately taken exception—she had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the picture of a gracious lady." Tucked inside that last sentence is not simply the near-title of the novel but a perplexing memory of her first appearance, hundreds of pages ago—"a tall girl in a black dress," who "lingered in the doorway, slim and charming," observed by Ralph as he wandered on the lawn. Over the years, she has traded one doorway for another—stepped from frame to frame, as if sitting for two different artists, first as a girl, and then as a lady. In between, the picture has become a prison.
How does one hope to pay homage to such complications: to all those hops and holes in the text, those worrisome velleities? What Michael Gorra has done—and I can't decide whether it's modest or brazen—is to make his book almost as tricky to negotiate, let alone to summarize, as James's. You shouldn't tackle "Portrait of a Novel" without getting "The Portrait of a Lady" under your belt, and into your head, either afresh or for the first time; submit yourself to the dazzling vertigo of James's third and fourth chapters, when he drops away from the tea ceremony and slips backward into Isabel's meeting with her aunt, in a rainy Albany, and thence, with frictionless grace, into incidents from her childhood, and you will be nicely primed for Gorra's own exercise in time travel. He thinks nothing of leaping from a scene in Osmond's villa to the Italian journeys of Goethe, in 1786, or from a chapter that ends with James getting down to his novel, in Italy, to a chapter that opens, "With nine months of work on the 'Portrait' behind him, James left London." Some people will find this confounding; a more charitable verdict would be that, in deference to James's brilliance, Gorra has assumed the role of a professional prismatist. He peers at the book from multiple angles—those of biography, geography, publishing, textual variation, and mild erotic sleuthing, among others—as if hoping to catch it at an unfamiliar slant. No facet must go uninspected.
That may be inevitable. How can a critic embrace James and stay uninfected by his chronic restlessness? This had been initiated by a trip to Europe in 1843: a first chance to take the temperature of an older civilization, although even Henry was not quite up to the job, being only six months old. By the time Gorra catches up with him, in 1869, the wayfaring is well under way. "He hiked through Switzerland and traveled down into Italy, to Venice and Florence and then Rome," Gorra writes, and anyone schooled in the later, fastidious James will be bewitched by this youthful vision of him with groaning rucksack and outstretched thumb. But Gorra is right to map such movement, because vagabondage was as crucial to the formation of the novel as it is to people's actions within it; it is scarcely a coincidence that a heroine who lands in Europe with a dangerously boundless curiosity, as Isabel does, and who marries an expatriate so torn from his roots that he now secretes himself in Florence like a neglected prince, or a spider, should have been conjured into being in that same place. It was in yet another city, on the Venetian waterfront, that the threads of the book were eventually pulled together; James's incomparable preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," composed to accompany the New York edition, recalls a vain struggle to create fiction while the "ceaseless human chatter" outside, teeming with unfictitious life, poured in through his high window.
If chatter is your preference—if you would readily swap James the international voyager for the more contained prowlings of James the social animal—then Gorra will meet your needs, with a roll call of the supporting players from whom "The Portrait of a Lady" drew its dramatic strength. Most of them are female, as befits a novel about "a certain young woman affronting her destiny," in James's phrase—not merely "confronting" but squaring up to what was expected of her and, if the mood stirred her, doing the opposite. Gorra gives us a chapter on George Eliot, for instance, whose account of a frustrated, half-frozen marriage, in "Middlemarch," can be felt behind Isabel's no less calamitous match with Osmond, and to whom James's anxious debt was such that—for The Atlantic Monthly, again, in 1876—he couched his response to "Daniel Deronda" not as a straight review but as a three-voiced "Conversation." We get a similar excursus into the short but zestful existence of Minny Temple, James's adored cousin, who is commonly identified with the ailing Milly Theale, in "The Wings of the Dove" (1902). But that connection is a sickly one; in Minny's "taste for life as life," as lauded by James in his autobiography, in "the play of her own light spontaneity and curiosity," she is no less surely reborn in the shape of Isabel Archer. ("Poor Minny was essentially incomplete and I have attempted to make my young woman more rounded, more finished," Isabel's creator wrote in a letter of 1880.) A third presence whom Gorra summons to the stage is Constance Fenimore Woolson, with whom James once shared a villa, and who threw herself from a window in Venice, after—we should not say because—he failed to make a promised pilgrimage to see her. Mind you, their intimacy belongs to the late eighteen-eighties and the early nineties, some years after "The Portrait of a Lady," and that gap forces Gorra to read backward, rather than forward, into the novel and tempts him into a flight of wayward fancy: "Let us walk with Fenimore onto her terrace and look down at Henry James as he sits with his morning coffee."
That is untypical of Gorra's book. For the most part, it is wary of elastic speculation while being every bit as nimble, alert, and far-ranging as it ought to be if justice is to be done to Henry James. I could have used more vivisection—the laying bare of individual sentences, and the probing of syntactical tissue—but no one could deny how densely the author is steeped in his theme. When, on the first page, he writes of James, "He had lived in Europe for thirty years—he had taken possession of it, inhaled it, appropriated it," he is himself appropriating a line from a letter that James wrote to his family from London, in November, 1875, the day after docking in Liverpool: "I take possession of the old world—I inhale it—I appropriate it!" Gorra does not own up to that borrowing in the endnotes, which is a little remiss, and, as a rule, it seems risky to replay as reported fact, long after the event, what a young man once announced and prophesied on his own behalf. Nonetheless, the accent of devotion is unmistakable, and, if anything, one is driven to ask: Is this book mad enough? Does it have a touch of "that tonic wildness" which Isabel finds wanting in the oversophisticated Madame Merle? If you love a book so much that the sole outlet for your infatuation is to write your own book about it, should you leave rough traces of that love, or should scholarship smooth them over?
In the acknowledgments, at the back of "Portrait of a Novel," Gorra writes, "I first read 'The Portrait of a Lady' during the fall of 1977, in a class at Amherst College." If I find myself wishing that he had broken cover, perhaps in an afterword, and sought to track his changing apprehension of the novel, over thirty-five years, that is not out of prurience but because such transformation is an abiding theme in James. His books are drenched in time: the times at which they were written, and the times and ways in which they were rewritten or left alone; the times in which they are set; the times that elapse in the careers of the characters, as they thrive or sour; the time it takes for a man to split into two, like the hero of "The Jolly Corner," and to see what he might have become; and, last, the times at which we read them, and, if we happen to be incurable Jamesians, at which they leave us other than we were. I know of no more enviable diary entry than the one made by Evelyn Waugh on Sunday, November 17, 1946: "Patrick left on Saturday afternoon. What an enormous, uncovenanted blessing to have kept Henry James for middle age and to turn, as the door shuts behind the departing guest, to a first reading of 'Portrait of a Lady.' "
On the other hand, what does middle age bring to the inhabitants of the book? Disappointments, refusals, and shutdowns; chances for the enactment of low cunning, if you are Osmond or Madame Merle; and, for Ralph, what Philip Larkin called "the only end of age." "The Portrait of a Lady" that I read in my late teens bears the scantest relation to "The Portrait of a Lady" that I read today. That may be because, taking things the wrong way around, I began with the New York edition, whose style bears the more velvety nap, whereas these days, if possible, I pick the earlier version, which is marked by abrasive edges; but textual difference alone does not account for the chasm between the two. What I browsed, back then, seemed a serene, rather aristocratic affair, strewn with bright, overtalkative folk who could switch countries at will; one bad marriage didn't make it any the less romantic. What I discover now feels funnier, still sharp with the Jane Austen-like tartness of its predecessor, "Washington Square," but it's more than that. It's a horror story.
The first critic to notice this, and to lend it adequate stress, was, of all people, Ezra Pound. In a brief essay from 1918, he wrote, "What I have not heard is any word of the major James, of the hater of tyranny; book after early book against oppression, against all the sordid petty personal crushing oppression, the domination of modern life." In a footnote, he added, of James, "What he fights is 'influence,' the impinging of family pressure, the impinging of one personality upon another." We think of Osmond, the supreme impinger, all the more cruel in his confinement of Isabel's spirit because she gave herself to him, rather than to his rivals, in a defining flourish of her liberation. That, it turns out, is precisely what rouses his contempt. "One ought to make one's life a work of art," he tells Isabel, sounding like a warmup act for Oscar Wilde; any hint of aesthetic levity, however, vanishes after the marriage, once she realizes that he is an anti-Pygmalion, quenching her vital fire and nailing her into place like a statue. Osmond did not fall in love with our heroine; what he loved was "the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects." That is what monsters do, especially the polite and patient ones: they harvest souls. Hand them a human in full bloom, and what they give back to you, after a few seasons, is a pressed flower.
Is there a blush of self-accusation here? When James calls Osmond "a student of the exquisite," whose "ideal was a conception of high prosperity and propriety," was he glancing in the mirror at his own ambitions, fearful of what harm they might, if brandished too freely, inflict on other selves? It goes without saying that James, who chose never to marry, was infinitely kinder than his villain; but I agree with Gorra when, having recounted the closeness of James and Minny Temple, he frowns over "the speed with which he reconciled himself to Minny's loss." In short, the elbow of the creator—someone, as Gorra says, "whose job is to turn life into narrative"—is forever nudged by opportunism. If Osmond is uniquely menacing, it is because he resembles a writer who writes nothing, preferring to take a woman as his text.
Yet he is not alone. Listen to all the other schemers in the book. "I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," Madame Merle says, adding, "I only know what I can do with them." She would say that, of course, being Osmond's co-conspirator, but consider Henrietta, the journalist in search of a topic, who admits to Isabel that "I should have delighted to do your uncle," or Ralph, musing on the newly arrived Miss Archer with his mother:
"All this time," he said, "you have not told me what you intend to do with her."
"Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico."
Ralph, hands in pockets, with not much time to live, is the most benevolent character in the book; yet if even he displays "the crooked timber of self-interest in the most altruistic of intentions," as Gorra proposes, what hope is there for the rest of us? Are we all so mercenary, cutting and trimming people, whether unwittingly or by design, to fit the pattern of our own desires? Such are the politics of personhood. There is always the option to remain alone: "A woman ought to be able to make up her life in singleness," Isabel reflects, and that assurance stares ahead to what we, though not James, would hail as the feminist cause, requiring no male prop. At the same time, any retreat into the solo self, for either sex, must be shaded with a special dread: "the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place," we learn of Isabel, in words that seem to herald the parched cries of "The Waste Land," and the truest hell is to wind up like Osmond, immured in the plush safety of his own home and the fortress of his own brain. And so the book traffics back and forth, with sublime indecision, between the need to stand firm, in Emersonian majesty, and the yearning to break one's pose and join the more crowded landscape of mankind. "That account of the limits of self-sufficiency is what, above all, makes 'The Portrait of a Lady' stand as a great American novel," Michael Gorra declares, and the case that he mounts for the defense is unlikely to be put with more conviction. "It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself," Pound wrote in his tribute to James, adding, in triumph, "Here the thing was done." We are left, in Ralph-like idleness, to wonder what Henry James would make of our current state. To him, one imagines, it would rise up like a bad dream; he would see an archipelago of solitudes, feverishly interlinked, with bridges collapsing as fast as we can build them. He is our foremost explorer of the private life, and of what it costs to preserve. We need him more than ever. ♦

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Crime and safety in Brazil
Brazil has a reputation as a rather dangerous place, and while it's not entirely undeserved, it is often overblown and you should not let fear overshadow your stay. If you take the precautions outlined below, you are extremely unlikely to come to any harm – although you might still have something stolen somewhere along the way. The tips in this section apply everywhere, but be particularly alert in Rio, Salvador and Recife.
Continue reading to find out more about...
Criminals know that any injury to a foreign tourist is going to mean a heavy clampdown, which in turn means no pickings for a while. So unless you resist during an incident, nothing is likely to happen to you. That said, having a knife or a gun held on you is something of a shock: it's very difficult to think rationally. But if you are unlucky enough to be the victim of an assalto (a hold-up), try to remember that it's your possessions rather than you that are the target. Your money and anything you're carrying will be snatched, your watch will get pulled off your wrist, but within a couple of seconds it will be over. On no account resist: it isn't worth the risk.
Taking precautions
As a rule, assaltos are most common in the larger cities, and are rare in the countryside and towns. Most assaltos take place at night, in backstreets with few people around, so stick to busy, well-lit streets; in a city, it's always a lot safer to take a taxi than walk. Also, prepare for the worst by locking your money and passport in the hotel safe – the one in your room is more secure than the one at reception. If you must carry them, make sure they're in a moneybelt or a concealed internal pocket. Do not carry your valuables in a pouch hanging from your neck. Only take along as much money as you'll need for the day, but do take at least some money, as the average assaltante won't believe a gringo could be out of money, and might get rough. Don't wear an expensive watch or jewellery: if you need a watch you can always buy a cheap plastic digital one on a street corner. And keep wallets and purses out of sight – pockets with buttons or zips are best.
You need to take special care when carrying a laptop – around business-oriented airports, like Congonhas in São Paulo and Santos Dumont in Rio, laptop stealing has become epidemic. Scouts wait at exits and phone ahead to thieves on motorbikes, who pull alongside your taxi when it is stuck in traffic and tap on the window with a revolver. Conceal laptops inside bags that do not look like computer bags, and try to avoid looking like a businessperson even if you are one.
More common than an assalto is a simple theft, a furto. Brand-new, designer-label bags are an obvious target, so go for the downmarket look. You're at your most vulnerable when travelling and though the luggage compartments of buses are pretty safe – remember to get a baggage check from the person putting them in and don't throw it away – the overhead racks inside are less safe; keep an eye on things you stash there, especially on night journeys. On a city beach, never leave things unattended while you take a dip: any beachside bar will stow things for you. Most hotels (even the cheaper ones) will have a safe, a caixa, and unless you have serious doubts about the place you should lock away your most valuable things: the better the hotel, the more secure it's likely to be. In cheaper hotels, where rooms are shared, the risks are obviously greater – some people take along a small padlock for extra security and many wardrobes in cheaper hotels have latches fitted for this very purpose. Finally, take care at Carnaval as it's a notorious time for pickpockets and thieves.
At international airports, particularly Rio and São Paulo, certain scams operate; for instance, well-dressed and official-looking men target tourists arriving off international flights in the arrivals lounge, identify themselves as policemen, often flashing a card, and tell the tourists to go with them. The tourists are then pushed into a car outside and robbed. If anyone, no matter how polite or well dressed they are, or how good their English is, identifies themselves as a policeman to you, be instantly on your guard – real policemen generally leave foreigners well alone. They won't try anything actually inside a terminal building, so go to any airline desk or grab one of the security guards, and on no account leave the terminal building with them or leave any luggage in their hands.
The police
If you are robbed or held up, it's not necessarily a good idea to go to the police. Except with something like a theft from a hotel room, they're very unlikely to be able to do anything, and reporting something can take hours even without the language barrier. You may have to do it for insurance purposes, when you'll need a local police report: this could take an entire, and very frustrating, day to get, so think first about how badly you want to be reimbursed. If your passport is stolen, go to your consulate and they'll smooth the path.
If you have to deal with the police, there are various kinds. The best are usually the Polícia de Turismo, or tourist police, who are used to tourists and their problems and often speak some English, but they're thin on the ground outside Rio. In a city, their number should be displayed on or near the desk of all hotels. The most efficient police by far are the Polícia Federal, the Brazilian equivalent of the American FBI, who deal with visas and their extension; they have offices at frontier posts, airports and ports and in state capitals. The ones you see on every street corner are the Polícia Militar, with blue or green uniforms and caps. They look mean – and very often are – but, apart from at highway road blocks, they generally leave gringos alone. There is also a plain-clothes Polícia Civil, to whom thefts are reported if there is no tourist police post around – they are overworked, underpaid and extremely slow. If you decide to go to the police in a city where there is a consulate, get in touch with the consulate first and do as they tell you.
The drug wars in the favelas that you will have heard about and may well see on local TV during your stay are very localized and unlikely to have any impact on foreign tourists. But you should be extremely careful about using drugs in Brazil. Marijuana – maconha – is common, but you are in trouble if the police find any on you. You'll be able to bribe your way out of it, but it will cost you the daily withdrawal limit on whatever plastic you have. Foreigners sometimes get targeted for a shakedown and have drugs planted on them – the area around the Bolivian border has a bad reputation for this – in order to get a bribe out of them. If this happens to you, deny everything, refuse to pay and insist on seeing a superior officer and telephoning the nearest consulate – though this approach is only for the patient.
Cocaine is not as common as you might think, as most of it simply passes through Brazil from Bolivia or Colombia bound for Europe. Nevertheless, the home market has grown in recent years, controlled by young and vicious gang-leaders from the favelas of the major cities.
Be careful about taking anything illegal on buses: they are sometimes stopped and searched at state lines. The stupidest thing you could do would be to take anything illegal anywhere near Bolivia, as buses heading to or from that direction get vigorously searched by the federais. Much the same can be said of smuggling along the rivers into Peru and Colombia: don't even think about it.
Everything you need to know before you set off.
Book through Rough Guides' trusted travel partners
Planning your trip to Brazil
Everything you need to plan where to go and what to do.
Book Your Trip To Brazil
Get your dream travel planned & booked by local travel experts
At Rough Guides, we understand that experienced travellers want to get truly off-the-beaten-track. That's why we've partnered with local experts to help you plan and book tailor-made trips that are packed with personality and stimulating adventure - at all levels of comfort. If you love planning, but find arranging the logistics exhausting, you're in the right place.Learn Morechevron_right
Brazil features
The latest articles, galleries, quizzes and videos.


text:
Advanced Search
Sign up for our newsletter.
I agree to this site's Privacy Policy.
All Webcasts
Applying a patchwork of protection with traditional security controls and freeware tools is proving inadequate. The relentless
onslaught of daily attacks coupled with stretched IT teams and limited budgets is impeding educational institutions from
delivering on the goal of educational excellence through endpoint resilience. Proactive prevention is the most effective
protection, but resilient organizations understand and prepare for the worst. Resilience is the combination of protection and
response that allows your organization to rapidly recover after an attack.
Read more...
All Whitepapers


text:
City Councilman Dennis Zine has never struck me as a controller type. He's garrulous, outgoing, street-smart — the remnants of his first career as a Los Angeles police officer and union representative. He was a forceful personality at the Police Department, where he often squabbled with his then-boss and now-colleague on the City Council, Bernard C. Parks. Zine was combative then and still is, more of a brawling, glad-handing pol than a cerebral, numbers-driven type.
And yet, Zine is by any measure the front-runner in the race for Los Angeles controller, if only because he's the sole candidate in the race who holds public office already. If he wins, he will become the city's chief auditor, but his campaign so far hasn't done much to stimulate debate. He talks about eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" at City Hall. But he doesn't offer many specifics about where he expects to find them — or, for that matter, why he hasn't done more about them during his 12 years on the City Council. Indeed, most of the insider chatter about Zine's campaign is about how he's the luckiest candidate in town because Councilwoman Jan Perry elected to run for mayor instead of challenging him for controller.
Zine's perceived vulnerability in this race means that more than the usual attention is going to two candidates who might otherwise be thought of as long shots — businessmen who have never held elected office and who come to the campaign as fierce critics of City Hall. Cary Brazeman runs his own marketing business, and Ron Galperin is a lawyer who has served on a couple of prominent city commissions. Both have put their own money into their races; both are pressing to make the controller's race a referendum on City Hall's efficiency and effectiveness. And both are swinging hard at Zine.
"Zine has no demonstrated record of leadership on city issues," said Brazeman, a youthful community activist whose marketing flair shows up in his literature. One flier pictures Zine with an ice cream cone and calls the councilman "Double Dipping Dennis," a reference to Zine simultaneously drawing a council salary and a police pension. "To me, it's indefensible that we're paying people like Zine close to $300,000 while we're laying off 311 operators."
Galperin is equally pugnacious, if slightly less colorful. "Mr. Zine has been part of this problem all along," he told me last week. "He loves to get up in front of a microphone, but we don't need more press conferences."
Galperin and Brazeman have other similarities beyond bashing Zine, but they're not copies of each other. Brazeman sees himself as an outsider who can push the council and the mayor to take seriously such issues as the city's persistent structural deficit, driven in part by its ballooning pension obligations. He emphasizes his success as a private citizen at highlighting city problems: He helped call attention to the Fire Department's misleading reporting about its response times, and he critiqued the proposed deal between the city and AEG in order to sweeten the results for taxpayers. One of his favorite phrases is "shine the light," and he promises to do so as controller.
Galperin, meanwhile, is wonkier and deeply immersed in the details of city procurement and spending. He gets animated talking about the city's asphalt plants and the possibilities of collecting more effectively on the city's parking taxes, and he argues that his experience with city commissions looking at waste and savings — he's president of the Quality and Productivity Commission — have equipped him with the insights needed to turn the controller's office into an engine of efficiency.
There is, of course, the possibility that Brazeman and Galperin could split those voters who see City Hall as the problem and leave Zine to coast into office — perhaps without even a runoff — by virtue of name recognition, if nothing else. For the two outsiders then, part of the challenge is not just to convince voters that City Hall needs a change but that one of them can bring it about.
That dynamic — the need to beat each other, not just Zine — can be seen already. Brazeman has accused Galperin of accepting laundered campaign contributions in his unsuccessful City Council campaign a few years ago, and Galperin counters by alleging that Brazeman is hiding some sources of financial support and says he is weak on solutions. "It's not enough just to identify the problem," he said.
Still, they both recognize who their main rival is, and they insist that voters will share their skepticism about him. As Galperin put it, when he tells voters his opponent is Zine, the most common response is: "Huh? Zine for controller?"
Jim Newton's column appears Mondays. His latest book is "Eisenhower: The White House Years." Reach him at firstname.lastname@example.com or follow him on Twitter: @newton_jim.


text:
May 16, 2011
Legislative update, May 16
To: K-State faculty, staff and students
From: Sue Peterson, Assistant to the President and Director of Government Relations; and Bruce Shubert, Vice President, Administration and Finance
The Legislature finished the session early Friday morning, May 13.
Though some details are yet to unfold, we believe legislative action will reduce K-State's State General Fund (SGF) budget by about $3.16 million (approximately 1.9 percent) in FY 2012. Additionally, we must fund a number of required budgetary needs that include: 1. Replacing Federal Stimulus funding currently being used to fund student aid and graduate student salaries; 2. Increased costs for employer group health insurance and other employee fringe benefits; 3. Increasing student aid; 4. Increased utility costs; 5. Funding University handbook required salary increments (promotions).
The Kansas Board of Regents (BOR) will receive the first reading of K-State's FY 2012 tuition proposal next week. Our current plan, subject to BOR approval of our tuition proposal, will allow us to absorb the SGF reduction and fund the required cost increases from tuition rate increase revenue, revenue produced from enrollment changes and targeted funding reductions agreed to last spring. We will not be able to provide resources to create a salary increase pool or to make progress towards funding Graduate Research Assistant tuition waivers.
The Legislature provided $5 million to K-State for animal health and food safety. These funds will be administered by the Kansas Department of Commerce (KDOC). We will continue working with KDOC to create a plan that meets requirements necessary to access those funds.
A program to significantly expand the number of engineering graduates in Kansas was also approved, with $1 million to be divided among Wichita State, KU and K-State in FY 2012. That amount will increase to $10.5 million per year in FY 2013 and will be divided equally among the three schools. These funds will be administered by the KDOC. We will continue working with KDOC to refine our program proposal.
The Classified Market Equity pay plan was not funded.
Legislation to begin addressing the KPERS unfunded liability and to establish a KPERS focused commission was passed.
Pease feel free to contact either of us with comments or questions.


text:
Assurance Extra is our master policy for your personal life insurance needs.
Business Assurance and Business Extra offer flexible insurance solutions for your business.
You deserve the peace of mind knowing that if the unexpected happens you have the right insurance in place, with a company that you trust.
At OnePath, we provide the comprehensive insurance cover you need to protect your life and your lifestyle, and we'll be there for you if you ever need us.
With the help of your adviser, you can decide what your financial goals are, and then choose the solutions that will give you the best possible chance of achieving those goals - regardless of what the future holds.
If you don't have an adviser then we can put you in touch with someone in your area. All you need to do is phone us on 0508-464-999.


text:
Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum
Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum
The conventional notion of dimension consists of three degrees of freedom: length, width, and height, each of which is a quantity that can be measured independently of the others. Many mathematical objects, however, require more—potentially many more—than just three numbers to describe them. This unit explores different aspects of the concept of dimension, what it means to have higher dimensions, and how fractional or "fractal" dimensions may be better for measuring real-world objects such as ferns, mountains, and coastlines.
Is there such a thing as a higher dimension, a parallel universe where otherworldly things can happen? Over the years, artists, writers and filmmakers have tried to answer that question, creating some dazzling works of science fiction in the process. But are the higher dimensions we see in sci-fi really fiction?
In modern mathematics the concept of dimension, utilized in a number of practical applications, encompasses much more than just the three spatial degrees of freedom—length, width, and height—to which we are accustomed..
By modeling objects of lower dimensions, you will be able to gain an understanding of the hypercube, which exists in the fourth dimension.
© Annenberg Foundation 2017. All rights reserved. Legal Policy


text:
This Week at Physics
This Week at Physics
|<< Spring 2012
|Fall 2012
|Spring 2013 >>
|Subscribe your calendar or receive email announcements of events
Event Number 2737
Monday, December 3rd, 2012
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- Gyrokinetic Simulations of Solar Wind Turbulence and Dissipation
- Time: 12:00 pm
- Place: 1310 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Jason TenBarge, University of Iowa
- Abstract: Turbulence plays an important role in space and astrophysical plasmas by mediating the transfer of energy from large-scale motions to the small scales at which the turbulence can be dissipated. Recent advances in solar wind data extending to sub-electron scales have increased the focus on turbulence and dissipation at kinetic scales. Due to the nature of plasma turbulence, gyrokinetics is well suited to study weakly collisional kinetic plasmas, such as the solar wind. We present nonlinear gyrokinetic simulation results in- cluding: (1) energy spectra spanning the entire dissipation range from ion to sub-electron scales that show striking agreement with in situ solar wind data, (2) identification of a dissipation range anisotropic cascade of energy in agreement with predictions of critical balance, and (3) constraints on the physical origin of energy dissipation at kinetic scales.
- Add this event to your calendar
- Gyrokinetic Simulations of Solar Wind Turbulence and Dissipation


text:
Company registration and company's information updating through EMITS' "INDUSTRY OUTLOOK" mandatory as of 15 March 2007
The Member States of the European Space Agency (ESA) have made it mandatory for the Agency to register economic entities (whether commercial or non-profit organisations, natural or legal persons) wishing to make business with ESA in order for them to be included on the Agency's list of Potential Tenderers.
This registration requires the mandatory submission and regular updating by such economic entities of a certain number of information concerning among others legal, financial and professional status.
In order to rationalize this process and ease the management of such list the Procurement Department of the Agency, who is responsible for this task in the Agency, has since April 2006 through its web based EMITS application provided economic entities with an on-line facility tool allowing for registration and/or updating of records as an ESA potential tenderer.
This facility called INDUSTRY OUTLOOK, besides providing the Agency with the requested mandatory data allows economic entities to securely manage their staff access to tender information and expressions of interest, also offers the opportunity to promote expertise and technologies towards ESA and be published as European space stakeholders in the EMITS yellow pages hereby contributing to improved industrial relations.
In view of the above, economic entities are hereby informed of the following mandatory measures:
- For economic entities wishing to do business with ESA and who are not yet registered as potential tenderers registration shall only be allowed by filling out the online questionnaire in INDUSTRY OUTLOOK;
- As from 15th March 2007 economic entities who are already registered and possess a valid ESABD code and which have not yet updated their information through the online questionnaire in INDUSTRY OUTLOOK are given a period of four months up to 15th July 2007 to comply. Failure to do so by this date will result in their access to EMITS being stopped until such time they comply.
As of the completion of the questionnaire in INDUSTRY OUTLOOK registered economic entities will have to update the questionnaire on an annual basis. Failure to do so will also result in EMITS access being blocked.
To help economic entities in this process a presentation detailing the registration procedure is available on the ESA Industry Portal at http://www.esa.int/home-ind, select "Registering as ESA tenderer" and choose between "Registered Tenderers" or "New Tenderers".
Further information can be obtained by phone from the CASP Help desk (+39 06 941 80700 ) or email (email@example.com) mentioning subject "IOD".


text:
Your first few days as a local will most likely leave you mesmerized by the beautiful cityscape surrounded by towering oak trees, crystal-clear lakes, and luscious strawberry farms. If you are one of those that thrive in nature you will most definitely find living here quite entertaining as Seffner provides a plethora of outdoor adventures for you to embark on. One venue that you will simply have to check out is the internationally renowned Life Fellowship Bird Sanctuary, home to a variety of rare birds and reptiles, and a proud breeding place of rock iguanas. And because so much fun in nature will make anyone feel hungry, a visit to one of the many exquisite eateries, from Exit 10 to Martha's Family Restaurant, will surely leave you satisfied.
Those with an eye on hot Seffner property will be able to choose from available pieces of real estate, all within the low $300Ks to high $500Ks price range. And courtesy of the large number of competent builders operating within the area, such as David Weekley Homes, future residents will have access to a large variety of houses, all with different architectural styles, incorporated amenities, and room counts. With so much diversity, finding the dream home you always wanted will be an easy venture in this fun part of Florida. Have the opportunity to start a new, exciting chapter in your life by living comfortably in an energy saving property complete with all the perks you deserve, from a modern, gourmet-inspired kitchen to spacious, light-filled rooms.
Whenever you are ready to make the transition and move to lovely Seffner, New Home Source will be right here to assist you in finding the best piece of property within your budget. Who says real estate shopping has to be tedious?!


text:
Spotlight Article:
When Above Average Is Not Good Enough
Let's imagine two neighboring families on a residential block—the Joneses and the Smiths. Their homes are of comparable size and age, and both are families of four, living typical middle-class lifestyles. ...
Keep Reading
Solar Empowerment
premium CONTENT
Gary Gerber, CEO and founder of Sun Light and Power in Berkeley, California, has been working in the renewable energy field for 30 years. He successfully steered his solar design and installation company through the lean ... [continue reading]
The Little House That Could
premium CONTENT
A new Habitat for Humanity-built home is a net producer of energy, having met and exceeded its zero-energy goal. [continue reading]
New Development in Air Flow Measurements
free CONTENT
Tracer gases have been used for many years for air flow testing in buildings. However, the expense and complexity of analysis equipment, and the difficulty of analyzing results, have restricted this kind of testing to ... [continue reading]
Hidden Costs: Wasted Water
premium CONTENT
Saving water can have a huge impact on the expense of operating multifamily buildings - especially when the water bills and the heating and hot water bills are in the same ballpark. [continue reading]
Garbage Bags and Laundry Baskets
premium CONTENT
Homemade air flow diagnostic tools get professionally tested. [continue reading]
Taking the Pain Out of Testing
premium CONTENT
Tackling the defrost cycle dilemma makes metering a practical tool to use when choosing which refrigerators to replace. [continue reading]
New Construction Report Card, Part II
premium CONTENT
Complex building designs make even the best-laid plans for home performance hard to fulfill. [continue reading]
Keeping Score
premium CONTENT
A package of software tools is designed to make routine measurement of actual energy savings cost-effective for home performance contractors. [continue reading]
Kristina Frunze
HVAC Industry Trends: 7 Things Every Contractor Should Know
The past year has seen many developments in HVAC technology and the industry as a whole. For contractors, understanding these ...
Laurie Stone
Equity and Climate: A Solution for Home Rentals
Lack of affordable housing and energy burdens plague many people and communities. Cities throughout the United States are looking for ...


text:
Kansas City, Missouri
In his book The Battle Behind the Badge, former police Cap. Robert Heinen portrays himself as a hero of mythic proportions in rooting out corruption in the Kansas City Police Department. He may have set out to get the bad guys, but in the process he became one himself.
by J.J. Maloney
Robert B. Heinen was a legendary and controversial Kansas City cop, almost from the time he joined the department in 1946 to his retirement in 1974. He played no small part in the downfall of Police Chief Joseph McNamara in 1976, now a respected national authority on crime and criminal justice.
In his book, The Battle Behind the Badge, Heinen portrays himself as a hero of mythic proportions. He bills the book, published in 1997 by Leathers Publishing, a local vanity press, as "The story of a police captain's struggle against corruption and political interference in the Kansas City department."
The book also depicts Heinen, a retired captain, to be a brutal, sadistic cop, who – with his badge as a shield – committed many, many felonies. The book further recounts that the upper echelons in the police department also took part in numerous crimes.
Heinan's book reveals that the Mafia controlled the Kansas City Police Department for many years. In reading the book it is often hard to tell the difference between the police and the criminals.
Heinen describes a police force riddled with crooks and grafters: an army of police officers who not only took payoffs from the Mafia, but who routinely committed armed robberies and burglaries, with supposedly honest cops closing their eyes and shutting their mouths to the crimes they witnessed. To wit:
"We approached Benton Boulevard and spotted the acting sergeant's cruiser parked with two other cruisers in the shadows by a side door of the tavern. As we drove up, we saw a policeman carrying a case of liquor out of the place. We left the car and walked into the bar while the thieves continued to work as though we weren't there. They had broken open the vending machines to get at the coins, and were unloading cases of liquor from a storeroom.
"They didn't worry about being ratted on because that would be against the 'code.' The thieves called Morris so he could get his share of the loot. We watched in silence. . .We had learned from experience to overlook any infractions perpetrated by a fellow officer. This 'code' wasn't to be violated. An officer who infringed upon the code met a wrath designed to banish him from the department. When that came into conflict with one's personal morality, it could be extremely frustrating. Reporting any rogue officers to the inspection bureau backfired for the whistle-blower. He would be set up for phony violations, and rather than suffer the ensuing embarrassment, he usually resigned."
Anyone who wants to understand why blacks have a deep distrust of the police need only read this book. Heinen to this day takes pride in the beatings he gave to countless black people:
"...Stretched turned belligerently to me again and said, 'What're you taking us to jail for? We got a right to know?'"
"We're not taking you to jail," I said. "That's too easy. We're going to beat the hell out of you." Without another word, I slugged him in the gut, and caught him in the jaw on the way down. He folded up on the sidewalk.
"My first punch was a signal for Chuck to begin educating the other gang member. He finished by knocking him over the hood of a parked car and into the street, where a passing motorist barely missed hitting him."
Admittedly Heinen is talking of an earlier era, when police beatings were routine (although always officially denied). Heinen, however, effectively describes the institutional mindset common among police officers: to protect each other.
And lest anyone think these problems are in the past, Heinen says in the book: "Most large cities have had a problem with police corruption at some time; Kansas City just seems to have it at regular intervals, like the life cycle of a cicada."
I remember Heinen from my days as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. When I was investigating River Quay and the Mafia, I had occasion to read all of the Star's clippings on Robert Heinen. The Mafia hated Heinen. He would invade their gambling dens and arrest them in droves. At one point he carried a sawed-off pool cue on his raids, and used K-9 dogs.
He was Dirty Harry long before the movie was made. He was involved in shootings and he arrested thousands of people. His motivation, as he sees it, is simple: "During the noon hour, students from Lincoln High School went down to 12th and Highland and shot heroin. I wanted to catch the bastards who were peddling to these kids, but I didn't know any pushers. In fact, I didn't know much about narcotics. I also felt that I had a stake in the community. My family lived there, and I was in a position to do something about it. If I wouldn't do anything, why should I expect anyone else to stick out their neck?"
There is no doubt in my mind that Heinen believes he was correct in all he did. It is sometimes called being in denial.
Throughout the book Heinen rages at the corruption in the police department, and portrays himself as a lonely figure trying to end that corruption. He needs only to read his own book to discover how wrong he is – how deep in denial he is.
In 1959 Heinen was demoted and put back in uniform after a dispute with his superiors. He decided to blackmail them into putting him back in plainclothes. According to Heinen he burglarized the Produce Club on Third Street, which he describes as a Mafia company frequented by Carl "Cork" Civella, a much-feared Kansas City gangster. He planted an electronic bug on the premises, with a voice-activated recorder nearby. Heinen says he obtained the following on tape:
"The plainclothes commander and Cork Civella finally came on the tape. No mistaking Cork's blustery voice and, of course, I recognized the voice of the lieutenant. Apparently they had started talking before they entered the balcony office, because Cork's voice came on in mid-sentence.
"'...told you that before!"
"'It's not my idea. That's what the colonel wants."
"'Tell him to take some of Davidson's cut! That's his fucking problem! We're not coming up with any more fucking money than you're already getting!'"
Heinen says he notified his superiors that he had the tapes, and demanded that he be put back in plainclothes by Nov. 1 or he would resign and take his superiors down with him. They returned him to plainclothes by Nov. 1.
When a Jackson County grand jury opened an investigation into corruption in the Kansas City Police Department it tried to get the tape recordings Heinen had made, and he refused to turn them over. As he says: "I wasn't surprised to receive top billing, and my run-in with prosecutor Donald Hudson was a head-on collision. Word circulated that I had taped conversations with some of my commanding officers, and he wanted to hear them. These tapes were my personal property to be used as a matter of protection and a matter of survival. At the moment, I was under no threat of either."
In other words, as long as Heinen got what he wanted – detective status and promotions – his corrupt superiors could get away with anything they wanted.
Heinan's hypocrisy is best revealed in the fact that he stole dope from the police department to give to his stool-pigeons – while at the same time denouncing those who feed the addictions of addicts.
"After taking his address, I gave Benny his heroin and told him he could go but that I might need him in the future. As it turned out, he became a good informer.
"The next evening, before the meeting with Heisig, I went to 14th and Lydia to meet Fred Jackson, my addict informant who had given me the information on Gamble. After he had gotten into the car, I handed him a small bag with 50 capsules of heroin in it. "You know I'm not supposed to do this. It's a violation of the law. I took it out of Gamble's stash."
"I thought that selling illegal drugs should rank in severity with the crime of murder. It condemns an addict to a slow death after first destroying any integrity or moral ethics he may have."
Those three paragraphs come from different parts of the book, which is why Heinen needs to read his own book.
In 1965 Heinen cooperated with U.S. Sen. E.V. Long (D-Mo.)who was holding hearings on wiretaps. At this time Heinen had been under investigation by the IRS for four years, and had even been given an O.C.D. number by the IRS, indicating he was the subject of an investigation involving organized crime.
Heinen, who is quick to relate anything shady about anyone he perceives as an enemy, is strangely silent about Sen. Long, who was long suspected of being under the influence of organized crime – his very reason for being the senator who fought the longest and the hardest against wire-tapping laws, because such laws are used most often against organized crime.
Long was closely connected to Morris Shenker, the St. Louis lawyer who represented Jimmy Hoffa, and who met Hoffa through Frank "Buster" Wortman, the gang boss of East St. Louis, Ill.
Heinen told the committee that the Kansas City Police Department often used illegal wire-tapping, but felt no fear of getting in trouble because there were federal agents involved.
Lt. James Hitchcock, now commander of the intelligence unit, was extremely nervous when he was called to testify. During the examination he admitted that his unit had been active in installing wiretaps. His immediate superior, Maj. James Newman, chief of detectives, admitted knowledge of wiretapping activities performed by the intelligence unit. Chief [Clarence] Kelley, who was aware of the wiretapping and kept informed of the results, was not called to testify.
Late in his career, after being promoted to captain, Heinen was suspected of being a right-wing radical, and was suspected of being involved in a number of bombings in Kansas City.
Heinen describes one encounter with Chief Kelley that included this exchange:
"'I don't have any organization,' I said again."
"I have evidence that you do, and that you would kill anyone who got in your way."
According to Heinen he took a series of polygraph tests on whether he had dynamite in his basement (he refused to let the police search the basement), and that he flunked one question relating to dynamite in the basement. According to Heinen the bomber was eventually caught, and he was cleared.
In 1973 President Richard Nixon appointed Clarence Kelley as head of the FBI. Kelley's eventual replacement as police chief was Joseph D. McNamara, a 38-year- old New York police officer.
Following the shooting of a 15-year-old boy, fleeing from a burglary, McNamara instituted a new gun policy, forbidding Kansas City police officers to shoot a fleeing person unless they were first fired upon.
Then McNamara committed the greatest sin of all: He attended the slain youth's funeral. In doing so, McNamara was perceived as breaking ranks with his own officers.
Heinen eventually filed a court challenge to McNamara's fitness to be chief of police, arguing that McNamara did not have the requisite five years of command experience, and indications are that Heinen was correct.
When McNamara struck back at Heinen, Heinen retired to save his pension – then continued to wage his battle against McNamara.
Heinen enjoyed the support of many, many, police officers. Signs saying "Viva Heinen" were painted on buildings and highway overpasses.
In 1976 McNamara took a job as chief of the San Jose (Calif.) Police Department.
That ended the saga of Robert Heinen – until now, with publication of this book.
The book is strangely fascinating. It represents a glimpse into the workings of a police department that is usually not available. The miasma of Machiavellian intrigue, as police officers jockey for promotions and assignment – or even credit for who shot a burglar – is something more citizens need to understand.
Heinen pats himself on the back so frequently and vigorously that the book becomes tedious. He blames every reprimand and demotion on the arcane workings of the Mafia, the politicians, jealous police officers or just plain stupidity. Sometimes it was the Mafia, I'm sure, and sometimes it was the politicians. A lot of the time it was Bob Heinen.
It never occurred to him that he was the loosest of loose cannons, which is never tolerated in a military-style organization.
As a young man he set out to get the bad guys, and became one himself in the process.
Describing one gang of police burglars who were caught, Heinen writes: They denied stealing anything, but couldn't deny that they had gone to the store, since they had been dispatched there. Given the choice of resigning or being charged in state court, they chose to resign. They knew they wouldn't be able to lie their way out of the manager's evidence. Their stealing days, under cover of a police uniform, were over. Unfortunately, that was the only punishment they received.
Heinen says early in his career he was advised to go talk to Charlie Binaggio, a top Mafiosi, about getting a promotion. Heinen says he declined. Following Binaggio's murder in 1950, Heinen says: Detectives found a black roster in Binaggio's desk containing the names of so many policemen of various ranks that the department decided not to do anything about it. There would have been too many officers to replace.
The offender knew when he was out of line, and respected an officer who had to boff him in lieu of arresting him, to get him to shape up. There is quite a difference between that and brutality.
While standing in a dark alley one night I spotted a well-known addict, Fred Jackson, on the street. By his actions, I sensed that he was dirty. I stepped out of the alley so fast he didn't have time to dump the stuff. Without a word of greeting, I cold-cocked him. Splat! The blow to his jaw made a sound like that of a raw steak slapped down on a butcher's block.
We never had much trouble reasoning with our suspects, especially on a freezing night. Late one night we located a burglar who had hauled merchandise out of several businesses. We picked him up and drove to a quiet alley where we could have a friendly chat. [Ed: Heinen wrote that he then made the man disrobe and stand in the snow and freezing wind, until he confessed.]
We had more leeway than officers have today. The news media has made such an issue of perceived injustice, that instead of using common sense, the slightest contact is viewed as brutality.


text:
Mythic Narrative and Cultural History
With mythic narratives as the loom, so to speak, Joseph Campbell's scholarly corpus provides a blueprint for how the various fields of the humanities can be woven together to reveal a rich tapestry of the emergence of humanity. This website follows Campbell's approach, marrying the traditional arts-humanities with some innovative methods of the digital humanities, to uncover new insights and give fresh perspectives on the relationship between culture and consciousness. T. G. Dolan
Mythology is central to all Campbell's work. But can myth have any relevance in today's world? In the second episode of the Power of Myth series Campbell gives an answer.
Interactive Timemaps
Interactive Timemaps provide an interesting way to index and access information. Maps for covering the period of Celtic Christianity in the First Millennium and Paleolithic Sites in Europe are well advanced.
The Book of Kells provides some marvelously illustrated pages dense with symbolism.
Trinity College Dublin has published all the pages in vivid detail in its digital collection.
Also see: The Art of the Scribes
Fairy Tales
Mythology is a bit like maya, it both illuminates and obscures. Myths are typically written by an elite and then engaged with by the populace through ritual.
Fairy tales on the other hand come from different sources and one of these is the folk psyche. They can be eloquent of unconscious processes in the collective-psyche of the populace.
New Section: Fairy Tales.


text: In Santorini lots of interesting sights inside and outside of the Marina attract yacht charter tourists. In addition to an attractive town center, Santorini also offers cultural sights inland away from the sea. In the port of Santorini many others important services are offered for a yacht charter: e.g. the range of water sports in the marina is diverse and various. The shopping facilities in Santorini for bunkering just before starting the yacht charter or to buy a souvenir are quite good and diverse. Moreover, enthusiasts of culinary delicacies will not be disappointed in Santorini as the level of quality outweighs the price. Whether fish dishes or a glass of wine, local dishes can be enjoyed anywhere during a yacht charter in one of the bars and restaurants. In Santorini the yacht charter holiday will be a great experience for every member of the sailing crew. A pleasant start to the trip is certain through an organized airport pick up upon request. Yacht charter crews and skippers often like to return year after year back to Santorini to spend their best days of the year.


text:
Mets planning on Laffey in Marcum's absence
Left-hander would take the ball for Sunday's matchup against the Marlins
NEW YORK -- As the Mets await updated word on Shaun Marcum's injury, they have made their contingency plan all but official. With Marcum "very unlikely" to pitch against the Marlins on Sunday due to discomfort in his right shoulder and neck, left-hander Aaron Laffey is the team's first option to step into the rotation.
"Hopefully he comes in Sunday and pitches very well," manager Terry Collins said. "If he does, he'll most likely get another start. But we're going to take it one start at a time right now."
That will depend in large part upon the health of Marcum, who is scheduled to report to Citi Field on Thursday for an examination by team doctors. The Mets have changed their diagnosis of Marcum's injury twice since mid-March, and are seeking clarity on what exactly is bothering him.
"Obviously, we've got to wait until the doctors tell us what it is, but he has some real discomfort running from his shoulder up through his neck," Collins said. "What that is, where it starts, what's causing it, I think we won't know until he sees the doctors [Thursday]."
Though Marcum admitted some alarm when he first felt neck pain during a bullpen session in Port St. Lucie, Fla., last week, he indicated at the time that he had avoided the worst. Yet Marcum's continued discomfort has the Mets concerned.
Until they receive the answers that they seek, the Mets will patch their rotation with Laffey, who began stretching out as a starting pitcher in the final weeks of Spring Training. Though the Mets considered instead giving the assignment to right-hander Collin McHugh, who is already on the 40-man roster, they can easily create roster space by shifting Johan Santana to the 60-day DL.
That will allow them to activate Laffey, who started 16 games with the Blue Jays last season.
"We just thought in Spring Training from what we saw from Aaron Laffey," Collins said, "that due to his experience -- he's had some success at this level -- he would be our first option right now."


text:
|Authored By: Polly Pitchford, Full Spectrum Health
|Assorted root vegetables are baked along with the roast for an easy dinner.
|Diet Type: Low Fat
|Serves: 10
|Cooking Time: Over one hour
|Trim excess fat from roast. Cut several 1/2" wide slits randomly into top and sides of roast. Insert garlic slivers into slits. In a small bowl stir together coriander seed, lemon peel, olive oil, Cumin seed, salt and pepper. Rub beef surface with spice mixture. Cover and chill for several hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place roast in a shallow roasting pan. Bake for 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours or until a thermometer inserted in the thickest portion of the meat registers 140 degrees for medium-rare doneness or 155 degrees for medium. Add assorted cut up vegetables during last 45 minutes of cooking. Remove from oven. Loosely cover with foil. Let stand for 10 minutes. Slice and serve with roasted vegetables.
|Printable Version
|E-mail a Friend


text:
The Great Unknowns presents Narcolepts, Ep XVI - 0 views
Michael J on 03 Jul 09The artist spotlight of the week goes to a talented duo called Narcolepts. Lead singer, Craig Lawrence and guitarist, Aaron Wilson collaborated to create Narcolepts early 2009. Their unique modern classic rock style showcases in this four track preview. Please enjoy and view their websites for future tour dates and CD releases.


text:
The French know how to vacation the right way. While on our way to Château de Fontainebleau in France last summer, our driver, a frantic French man, pointed to the traffic on the nearby Highway. He emphasized how he was smart to avoid all the Parisians leaving for holiday. Holiday? He explained that, in France, people leave the city in either July or August for vacation. And they're gone for the entire month. Yes, month.
As an American, this was a novel idea to me. I had never heard of such a thing and had a difficult time imagining what a month long vacation was like. Americans get a lousy two weeks off. Most people view those two weeks as something to brag about. In reality, those two weeks are rushed and hectic. Two weeks of rushed vacation time, trying to hit every landmark before the clock stops ticking. Two weeks of running away from the inevitable return to the mundane 9-to-5. American vacation is work outside of work. Two weeks is not enough.
The Parisian's know how to vacation right. They take things slow. They slowly roll out of bed at 9am (maybe 10am, there's no rush) and sip on a hot cup of café au lait. They enjoy a novel. They make love. But, more importantly, they relax. Relaxation during vacation is something that we can all learn how to do better. To do so, all we need to do is look at the experts in the field. The French.