text:
Boy In Shaken Baby Lawsuit Dies After 2 Years On Life Support
By RAY REYES - email@example.com
Published: November 30, 2008
TAMPA - A child involved in a well-publicized "shaken baby" lawsuit and who had been on life support for more than two years died Friday, according to a former Pinellas County prosecutor.
State Rep. Darryl Rouson's law office represents the 3 1/2-year-old boy's mother. He said Sunday night that he will ask the state attorney's office to upgrade the charges for the child's foster caregiver, Tenesia Brown, from aggravated child abuse to murder.
Brown and her husband, Marcus, had custody of the child, Lazon, and his brother for nearly four months while their mother, Niccole Booze, completed a drug treatment program.
Brown is accused of shaking Lazon in March 2006, when he was still a toddler. Brown was charged on Nov. 1, 2006, with aggravated child abuse. She turned herself in to authorities and was released after posting $50,000 bail. Brown, a certified nurse's aide with no previous criminal record, has since been awaiting trial.
In 2006, Booze filed a civil lawsuit against the Browns and the Safe Children's Coalition, Directions for Mental Health and the Sarasota Family YMCA, the agencies responsible for caring for her children. Local agencies did "an absolutely shoddy job in vetting out foster parents," Rouson said. "She trusted her child to the system. But the baby suffered."
Shaking Kills: Instead Parents Please Educate and Remember - Shaken Baby Prevention
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Baby in critical condition may have been shaken: cops
10-week-old infant was in foster care; tests show brain injuryTimes Colonist - Published: Saturday, November 29, 2008
A 10-week-old baby is in critical condition in hospital suffering from what police believe is shaken-baby syndrome. The child was in foster care, a ward of the province, at the time of the alleged assault, said Det. Paul Brailey of Central Saanich police yesterday.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
It offers some important tips on training the trainers:
Training as the Teaching of Adult Learners
Teachers also responded positively to the interactive, facilitated approach to learning—both for themselves and their students.
This aspect of training emerged as key to their learning of the content, their creation of models for their students, and their classroom instructional strategies (Kealey et al. 2000). Because the Implementer Manual contained all the materials needed for every activity in every lesson, teachers embraced the notion of stressing facilitated learning and practiced it during the training sessions, prior to undertaking the exercises in the classroom with their students.
Those planning for implementer training should ensure that all materials are provided; that they are attractive; that they are clearly organized and user-friendly; and that they reflect the philosophical approach to the training as well as the program for which the training is being provided.
Worth keeping in mind not only for training teachers to deliver prevention education in schools, but nurse educators in hospital based programs.
From Culture in the Classroom: Developing Teacher Proficiency in Delivering a Culturally-grounded Prevention Curriculum, Mary L. Harthun et al. Medscape (may require FREE subscription to login) J Prim Prev. 2008;29(5):435-454. ©2008 Springer
Springer Science+Business Media
Friday, November 28, 2008
Well worth reading, and well worth acting upon PCAA's invitation to let the transition team know you support those suggestions.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
A letter from Prevent Child Abuse America to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team.
Below please find a letter Prevent Child Abuse America has forwarded to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team. We encourage you to send similar messages to the transition team at the address included in this letter, and/or through the online form. Feel free to borrow any language from from the letter and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Bridget Gavaghan our Senior Director of Public Policy at firstname.lastname@example.com.
The Honorable Barack Obama
Office of Presidential Transitions
Washington DC, 20270
Dear President-elect Obama:
Prevent Child Abuse America and our national network of 47 state chapters and over than 400 Healthy Families America home visitation programs, congratulate you on your election to the office of President of the United States of America. Like you, our organization believes that the early years are a critical time for a developing child. Please count on this organization's knowledge, extensive communications network and support for public policies that address the problems that arise when a child is denied healthy childhood experiences. Research is clear that there is a relationship between child abuse and neglect and often life long consequences in many other areas, including chronic health problems, academic achievement, juvenile delinquency, criminal behavior, drug abuse and mental health issues. Our organization is committed to working with your Administration to help ensure that every child has the opportunity to grow up in a nurturing, stimulating and stable environment. Below for your consideration are policy recommendations to promote healthy child development based in proven prevention strategies.
1. Develop a National Strategy for Prevention
Sustainable change cannot occur until there is a national policy and commitment to prevent child abuse and neglect. Implementing a national strategy will require the coordination of federal agencies, and the assurance that all federal funding, policies, and regulations related to child well-being are coordinated and working towards complimentary goals. Our paper, A New Way of Thinking About Prevention from the First Focus book - Big Ideas for Children: Investing in our Nation's Future, outlines specific steps that our nation must take to embrace child abuse and neglect prevention in a more effective, meaningful, and comprehensive manner.
2. Invest in Evidence-Based Early Childhood Home Visitation
Prevent Child Abuse America is grateful for your support of early childhood home visitation, and for your commitment to making a range of quality home visiting programs more widely available, as evidenced by your support as Senator of the Education Begins at Home Act (EBAH). Introduced by Senators Hillary Clinton and Chris Bond and Representatives Danny Davis and Todd Platts, EBAH enjoys broad bipartisan support and has been endorsed by over 700 national, state and local organizations. The House Committee on Education & Labor passed EBAH earlier this year by a voice vote, setting the bill up for early action in the 111th Congress. I urge you to work with Congress to ensure the immediate enactment and funding of EBAH in 2009.
Thank you for promoting the successes of the Nurse-Family Partnership home visitation model throughout your campaign. Those same successes have been achieved in other home visitation service models and I ask that you extend your support to them as well. A compelling body of research demonstrates the measurable outcomes attributable to programs that employ home visitors with a wide range of backgrounds.
For example, results from the randomized trial of a Healthy Families New York program, based on the Healthy Families America model using Family Support Workers, showed that the program had positive effects in the areas of parenting and child abuse and neglect, birth outcomes, and health care. Please see the attached fact sheets for more information on the research supporting Healthy Families America, and the attached Evidence-based Early Childhood Home Visitation Programs for information on the research supporting a number of home visitation models.
3. Increase Investments in Prevention
For far too long, prevention has been undervalued and underfunded. We urge you to support increasing investments in prevention through both discretionary and mandatory funding mechanisms.
• Fully Fund the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act: CAPTA embodies the federal commitment to preventing child maltreatment, but has not been funded adequately to meet the demand for community-based prevention programs. Please support fully funding the following components of CAPTA:
o CAPTA state grants, which provide funds for states to improve child protective services. Full funding will shorten the time that post-investigative services are delivered, and increase the number of children and families who receive these services.
o CAPTA community-based grants, which help states develop and implement effective approaches to preventing child abuse and neglect. Full funding will provide communities with additional support to implement effective prevention strategies such as parenting education, home visiting programs, mutual self-help support groups for parents, and crisis nurseries.
o CAPTA discretionary research and demonstration grants. Full funding will help pay for valuable data collection, technical assistance, and grant-funded research and demonstration projects. I also ask that you support the continuation of a $10 million allocation from this funding to support evidence-based home visitation.
• Fully Fund Promoting Safe and Stable Families: PSSF grants help states pay for family support, family preservation, family reunification, and adoption support. Unfortunately, the PSSF discretionary grant is currently funded at just $63.3 million. Fully funding the PSSF discretionary grant at $200 million will promote the expansion of family support services in communities across the nation and provide more intensive help for families in crisis. Research is clear that by investing in positive outcomes for children and families, family support and family strengthening programs can also lead to fewer incidences of child abuse and neglect.
• Reform the Child Welfare Financing Structure: States may access dollars under Title IV-E, the principal source of federal child welfare funding, only after children have been removed from their home and enter foster care. Of the $7.2 billion federal funds dedicated for child welfare in 2007, approximately 90 percent supported children in foster care placements ($4.5 billion) and children adopted from foster care ($2.0 billion). States can use about 10 percent of federal funding dedicated child welfare funds flexibly for family services and supports, including prevention or reunification services. Prevent Child Abuse America urges you to support initiatives that will secure adequate, guaranteed funding for front-end, prevention services while ensuring an effective approach to child welfare that provides for a full continuum of care.
• Fully Fund the Social Services Block Grant: HHS reports that SSBG funded preventive services for 29 percent of the total child recipients of preventive services in 2005. Despite the many critical services that SSBG makes possible, funding for the block grant has been chipped away over the past decade from a high of $2.8 billion a year to its current level of $1.7 billion a year. Prevent Child Abuse America urges you to support restoring SSBG to $2.8 billion.
• Enact the Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention Act: Introduced by Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Nita Lowey, the legislation would provide $10 million to HHS to develop and implement a public information and education campaign aimed at preventing Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). SBS prevention programs have demonstrated that educating parents and other caregivers about healthy strategies for coping with a crying infant, infant soothing skills, and the danger of shaking young children can bring about a significant reduction in the number of SBS cases.
• Increase resources in the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control to address child maltreatment through a public health approach. This approach will compliment the other federal initiatives and efforts and can provide another inter-agency link toward a unified and integrative approach to address child abuse and neglect prevention. The CDC's child maltreatment prevention work is designed to better understand the scope, causes, and consequences of child abuse and neglect, and to identify and disseminate effective prevention strategies. They are a critical partner in preventing child abuse and neglect from occurring in the first place.
Prevent Child Abuse America believes that there is no issue more important to the future of our society than how we raise our youth. Yet, a recent UNICEF report found the United Sates was ranked 20th in child well-being out of the world's 21 wealthiest nations. The measures used by UNICEF represent educational, health and safety, material, and family and peer well being; measures that can reduce the potential for child maltreatment. The UNICEF study reinforces countless reports and government data showing that child neglect and maltreatment is a significant but preventable public health problem in our country today.
Research, such as the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, has shown that child abuse and neglect have life-long impacts, not only for child but for the nation. These studies show a strong correlation between child abuse and neglect and debilitating and chronic health consequences, delinquency, criminal behavior, mental health illness, drug dependency and lower academic performance.
Getting prevention right early is less costly to the nation, and to individuals, than trying to fix things later. Prevent Child Abuse America estimates that implementing effective policies and strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect can save taxpayers $104 billion per year. The cost of not doing so includes more than $33 billion in direct costs for foster care services, hospitalization, mental health treatment, and law enforcement. Indirect costs of over $70 billion include loss of productivity, as well as expenditures related to chronic health problems, special education, and the criminal justice system.
With your leadership, together we will finally be able to shift our federal policies from addressing the issues that arise because of child abuse and neglect towards making sure that abuse and neglect does not occur in the first place. Please consider Prevent Child Abuse America and our national network a resource to you as you consider opportunities to address this pressing issue.
James M. Hmurovich President & CEO
cc: Melody Barnes, Director-designate, Domestic Policy Council
Peter Orszag, Office of Management and Budget Director-designate
Heather Higginbottom, Deputy Director-designate, Domestic Policy Council
Rob Nabors as Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director-designate
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
One has enormous success selling ads and one has an enormous budget to buy ads, and together they're exploring better ways to reach consumers online.
One eye opener for those offering prevention messages - the eyeballs are spending more time on line:
Consumers ages 18 to 27 say they use the Internet nearly 13 hours a week, compared to viewing 10 hours of TV, according to market-data firm Forrester Research Inc. But currently, P&G -- so famously thorough at understanding consumers, it even tracks people's tooth-brushing strokes -- spends only a sliver of its ad budget online.
And there are significant differences between the media:
The rapid spread of high-speed Internet access "has been the biggest disruption to marketing," says Rob Norman, CEO of WPP Group's media-buying firm, GroupM Interaction Worldwide. A key factor, he argues: TV-watchers are passive viewers. But Internet-surfers are tougher to reach because they take a more active role in what they choose to view.
As the two companies started working together, the gulf between them quickly became apparent. In April, when actress Salma Hayek unveiled an ambitious promotion for P&G's Pampers brand, the Google team was stunned to learn that Pampers hadn't invited any "motherhood" bloggers -- women who run popular Web sites about child-rearing -- to attend the press conference.
"Where are the bloggers?" asked a Google staffer in disbelief, according one person present.
But the fundamental task common to both enterprises is surprisingly simple:
Google job-swappers have started adopting P&G's lingo. During a session on evaluating in-store displays, a P&G marketer described the company's standard method, known as "stop, hold, close": Product packaging first needs to "stop" a shopper, Mr. Lichtig said. "Hold" is a pause to read the label, and "close" is when a shopper puts the product in the cart.
Google's Ms. Chudy gasped. "This is just like our text ads," she said. The headline is the "stop," its description is the "hold" and the "close" is clicking through to the Web site.
"This is going to get so much easier, now that I'm learning their language," she said.
And that's the challenge for prevention marketing. Or phrased a bit differently, listen, hear and act.
We have a lot to learn about effective marketing from the likes of Google and Proctor & Gamble (whose marketing savvy includes not only the know how to market diapers, but razors too - BTW: why don't new parents leave the hospital with a baby bag that includes a disposable razor too), not to mention marketing icons like Seth Godin.
Or feel free just to post a link to a good discussion on preventing inflicted injuries...
Friday, November 21, 2008
MCH LIBRARY RELEASES NEW EDITION OF KNOWLEDGE PATH ABOUT DEPRESSION DURING AND AFTER PREGNANCY Depression During and After Pregnancy: Knowledge Path is an electronic guide to recent resources about the prevalence and incidence of perinatal depression, identification and treatment, impact on the health and well-being of a new mother and her infant, and implications for service delivery. The MCH knowledge path contains information on Web sites, publications, and databases. Separate sections present resources for professionals (health professionals, policymakers, program administrators, and researchers) and for women experiencing perinatal depression and their families. The knowledge path is available at http://mchlibrary.info/KnowledgePaths/kp_postpartum.html.
Upgrade punishment for shaking infants
Editor:Lebanon Daily News
Once again a parent got a slap on the wrist for abusing and shaking his baby. The courts determined that it wasn't aggravated assault — it was only simple assault for putting his child on life support.
The justice system wants to nail people with petty crimes like a dime bag of weed,but when it comes to a 2-month-old baby on life support, all the judge and jury says is "please don't do that again." And the worst part about it is the parents always say, "the baby wouldn't stop crying." Welcome to parenthood, people! Babies cry because they are hungry, sick or just plain upset and tired. They have feelings just like the rest of us. How about if somebody shakes them for crying in the courtroom until their bones break and their eyes roll back in their heads?
Who has to suffer? The child does. He or she will never lead a normal life. Once they take that child off life support he or she won't be alive anymore. So all the parents and baby-sitters who cause these babies shaken baby syndrome should be charged with murder or aggravated assault.
They all seem to make the most pathetic excuses of why they did it. Either they weren't thinking, or they blacked out, or they have bipolar disorder. Give me a break.
If you know you are physically unstable, why risk it with your child? A child isn't a person's throw toy. Somebody may get five to 10 years in prison, but that child has a lifetime of problems physically, mentally and emotionally.
The people who do stuff like that to babies should be ordered by the courts to get spayed or neutered — they are animals. Some people might be offended, but just because someone gets upset doesn't mean he can take it out on an infant. Go to the gym. Punch a pillow. Don't take it out on the child.
Babies cry because they can't talk. If they could then they wouldn't cry. I don't have any kids of my own, but I do have nieces and nephews, and yes, they cry. I would try to find out what is wrong. I could never look at them as an object to take frustrations out on. People want babies but they don't want the responsibility of having a baby. I think all want-to-be parents should go to parenting classes before they decide to have a baby. We are supposed to protect our children from harm, not bring harm to them. I don't judge because only God can do that.
The justice system should be a lot more stable and harsh for these types of crimes, because people know what shaking a baby does.
It doesn't take much to seriously hurt an infant.
Charles Witherson
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Cute donations carry serious message
The Kiwanis Club is providing Fayette County Memorial Hospital with bibs that are designed to make parents of newborn babies aware of the dangers of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
"It really is a wonderful donation," said Debbie McQuiniff, the nurse director at the hospital's birth center. "With the number of shaken baby incidents, we really hope that this helps convey the message of how dangerous it can be. We can also provide tips for new parents......coping mechanisms that they can use during stressful times."
Monday, November 17, 2008
Here's an interesting illustration from Coachr.org showing the differences in body proportions between a child and an adult.
And Dani Draws' website has anoher interesting sketch.
Should you prefer a more classic visual treatment, Martin Dace at www.dace.co.uk offers great illustrations and explanatory text.
Any of these illustrations help to explain how the combination of large head and weak neck muscles can contribute to injury...
Shaken baby syndrome: diagnosis and treatment.
A Reynolds - Radiol Technol 1 Nov 2008 80(2): p. 151.
Shaken baby syndrome education program: nurses making a difference.
KM Smith and KA deGuehery - MCN Am J Matern Child Nurs 1 Nov 2008 33(6): p. 371.
Testing educational strategies for Shaken Baby Syndrome.
M Bailey, T Gress, D Bolden, and L Pfitzer - W V Med J 1 Nov 2008 104(6): p. 22.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Senator Dodd's 2008 resolution and the supporting organizations for that resolution follow below.
2009 would be a good year to seek a concurrent resolution in the Senate AND the House for a couple of reasons: there will be new members and new committee assignments in both chambers, and this will be a new Congress, which means pending legislation has to be reintroduced.
Hopefully, SBS Awareness Week can springboard the SBS Prevention Act. It may help that the incoming administration seems to have an interest in early childhood issues. For example, President-elect Obama has joined as a Senate cosponsor of the Education Begins At Home Act.
So, any thoughts out there on:
- how the 2009 resolution can be crafted to highlight prevention?
- how to enhance support for SBS prevention in the House?
- additional organizations that should join as sponsors?
- local or regional activities during the Week that could help improve awareness?
Organizations that sponsor the resolution will be invited to put info and links on their website and include an article in their spring newsletter.
Any other ideas for synergy?
SBS Awareness Week Resolution 2008
S. Res. 518
WHEREAS the month of April has been designated ``National Child Abuse Prevention Month'' as an annual tradition initiated in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter;
WHEREAS the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System figures reveal that more than 900,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in the United States in 2006, causing
unspeakable pain and suffering for our most vulnerable citizens;
WHEREAS more than 4 children die as a result of abuse or neglect in the United States each day;
WHEREAS children younger than 1 year old accounted for approximately 44 percent of all child abuse and neglect fatalities in 2006, and children younger than 3 years old accounted for approximately 78 percent of all child abuse and neglect fatalities in 2006;
WHEREAS abusive head trauma, including the trauma known as Shaken Baby Syndrome, is recognized as the leading cause of death among physically abused children;
WHEREAS Shaken Baby Syndrome can result in loss of vision, brain damage, paralysis, seizures, or death;
WHEREAS 20 States have enacted statutes related to preventing and increasing awareness of Shaken Baby Syndrome;
WHEREAS medical professionals believe that thousands of additional cases of Shaken Baby Syndrome and other forms of abusive head trauma are being misdiagnosed or are undetected;
WHEREAS Shaken Baby Syndrome often results in permanent, irreparable brain damage or death of an infant and may result in extraordinary costs for medical care in only the first few
years of the life of the child;
WHEREAS the most effective solution for preventing Shaken Baby Syndrome is to prevent the abuse, and it is clear that the minimal costs of education and prevention programs may
prevent enormous medical and disability costs and immeasurable amounts of grief for many families;
WHEREAS prevention programs have demonstrated that educating new parents about the danger of shaking young children and how to protect their children from injury can significantly reduce the number of cases of Shaken Baby Syndrome;
WHEREAS education programs raise awareness and provide critically important information about Shaken Baby Syndrome to parents, caregivers, childcare providers, child protection employees, law enforcement personnel, health care professionals, and legal representatives;
WHEREAS National Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week and efforts to prevent child abuse, including Shaken Baby Syndrome, are supported by groups across the United States, including groups formed by parents and relatives of children who have been killed or injured by shaking, whose mission is to educate the general public and professionals about Shaken Baby Syndrome and to increase support for victims and the families of the victims in the health care and criminal justice systems;
WHEREAS the Senate previously designated the third week of April 2007 as ``National Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week''; and
WHEREAS the Senate strongly supports efforts to protect children from abuse and neglect: Now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the Senate—
(1) designates the third week of April 2008 as ``National Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week'';
(2) commends hospitals, child care councils, schools, community groups, and other organizations that are—
(A) working to increase awareness of the danger of shaking young children;
(B) educating parents and caregivers on how they can help protect children from injuries caused by abusive shaking; and
(C) helping families cope effectively with the challenges of child-rearing and other stresses in their lives; and
(3) encourages the people of the United States—
(A) to remember the victims of Shaken Baby Syndrome; and
(B) to participate in educational programs to help prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Association of University Centers on Disabilities
Brain Injury Association of America
Child Welfare League of America
Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty
Children's Safety Network
Congress of Neurological Surgeons
Easter Seals
Hannah Rose Foundation
National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies
National Association of State Head Injury Administrators
National Center for Learning Disabilities
National Child Abuse Coalition
National Exchange Club Foundation
Prevent Child Abuse America
Shaken Baby Prevention, Inc.
Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention Plus
The Arc of the United States
The Center for Child Protection and Family Support
The National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions
The National Shaken Baby Coalition
United Cerebral Palsy
Voices for America's Children
D.C. Children's Trust Fund
National Family Partnership
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Exchange Club has a wonderful SBS awareness project, and has supported some great awareness activities, including support for the Period of PURPLE Crying campaign.
So, given that SBS is described as violently shaking a child, it's a bit surprising that a regional representative of the Exchange Club was quoted in an article in the Katy Times, TX yesterday as saying
"Please keep in mind that SBS does not always occur out of anger," said Brenda Robinson, vice president of Region 5 of the National Exchange Club.
"Sometimes it's simply playing with your child, bouncing them on your knee or just simply setting that child on your shoulder so they can see a parade roll by and they let go and fall back."
With that in mind, it's encouraging to see significant economic actors like the World Bank providing info on early childhood development.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
A 13 month old boy is injured as a result of being shaken by a "babysitter."
Following a shot of the hospital, Reporter interviews "experts": Nurse, who teaches a babysitting course. Reporter then interviews director of the local child care resources center. Well-meaning people all...
If you watched it, the "lessons" you learned were:
- First, hire a licensed child care provider who knows CPR (um, CPR is good, but irrelevant: does Vermont require child care providers to be trained about the causes and consequences of shaking young children? I couldn't find anything about SBS prevention on the VT DCF site for child care providers, which isn't that unusual - most states don't require it. I did find some good SBS training, but it's for child welfare specialists: unfortunately, that's cart-before-the-horse training on how to deal with the consequences, instead of prevention...).
- Second, check references and do a criminal background check (um, "has she ever shaken your child?" - while this perpetrator is the exception to the rule, having a domestic violence "charge" driving with a suspended license, and having parole violations, most SBS cases don't involve someone with a criminal background). Oh, and given that most children are shaken by a parent or relative, just how helpful is advice to "hire someone you know personally"?
Not one mention that it might be a good idea to ask someone taking care of your child whether she has learned about shaken baby syndrome (or, for that matter, if your child is not a year old yet, SIDS), and whether she has a coping plan for those inevitable moments of frustration that do come when caring for a young child.
Given the absence of that critical info, it's particularly unfortunate and misleading that the televised report is "How You Can Protect Your Children..."
More on the story from the Burlington Press
Sunday, November 09, 2008
It's not apparent from this (necessarily) short summary that the legislation will enable prevention efforts that "look upstream" for prevention opportunities. An obvious step would be education for new parents that enables them to influence health behaviors in early childhood.
Educating parents can have significant near-term benefits: a UCLA research project found that health literacy training for Head Start parents produced significant savings for Medicaid by helping parents learn to care for common childhood illnesses instead of bringing their children to emergency rooms and clinics for care.
October 14, 2008
Trust Wellness
New legislation dropped in the final days of a Congressional session obviously isn't going anywhere. But it does signal what that legislator thinks is important and plans to push next year. And when that legislator is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the bill involves health care, it merits close attention.
On October 1st, the junior senator from New York introduced a bill that would channel existing payments by both public and private insurers for preventive health services into a new Wellness Trust, which would then pay for all preventive services in this society. You can think of it as Medicare Part "P," except that it isn't just for the nation's elderly.
The new Wellness Trust would be run by 7-member board appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Under S. 3674, the Wellness Trust in its first year of operation would commission and then issue reports on the best way to supplement the existing health care workforce with certified "prevention health workers"; establish new reimbursement systems that would "align incentives" with health promotion and disease prevention goals; and analyze current expenditures on prevention, which the bill estimates at 1 to 3 percent of health care costs or $20 billion to $60 billion.
A year in, with those reports in hand, the trustees would then begin collecting all payments made by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies for existing prevention services. The agency would then designate its own "prevention priorities." These would include community-based strategies like tobacco and alcohol counseling or diabetes prevention education, as well as the usual clinical services like the colonoscopies, mammograms and vaccinations that most people associate with preventive care.
With these priorities and money in hand, the Wellness Trust trustees would enter into contracts with certified prevention providers to deliver the services deemed the highest priorites "without regard to the insurance status of such individuals."
The legislation tracks closely to a report that Jeanne Lambrew, now at the University of Texas, wrote for the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, which was created by former Secretary Treasury and Citicorp board member Robert Rubin to serve as a policy think tank for the next Democratic administration.
There's an outside chance the proposal will find a receptive ear in the next administration, whoever is elected. Prevention is included in the health care planks of both candidates. Yet neither has stressed the issue on the campaign trial.
That's not surprising. The conventional wisdom that recently emerged from the health care policy world is that strategies for preventing chronic disease -- which is responsible for 75 percent of all health care expenditures -- don't pay. They only add another layer of cost to the system and won't lower other health care expenditures for many years, if at all.
In my view, that's hogwash. Some prevention interventions lower costs, and some cost far more than they are worth -- just like health care interventions. For a critique of the new conventional wisdom on prevention, intially laid out in a New England Journal of Medicine article, see this GoozNews post.
The Clinton bill pushes back even harder. By centralizing all the money spent on prevention in a single agency, the government could deploy those limited resources in the most cost-effective manner. Moreover, it could target the populations most in need of prevention information, advice and services -- low and moderate-income people who are the most at risk of chronic disease because of poor education, low income, high stress, poor diet, and the lack of exercise that lead to unidentified or untreated pre-disease conditions like hypertension, high blood sugar, smoking, and alcohol abuse.
Right now, the prevention priorities of the nation are driven by who is best insured and a member of what University of Minnesota bioethicist Carl Elliott has called the worried well: educated consumers who know how to demand every high-end preventive service that health care providers can dream up. Have you been told yet that you ought to get a heart scan just to make sure there aren't any blockages forming in your arteries? I have, and I didn't appreciate the pressure to spend money out of my own pocket to get something I probably don't need.
Friday, November 07, 2008
With John Lewko, Richard has written a casebook on evidence based prevention programs. It's an excellent resource.
This chapter describes the Upstate NY SBS Prevention Project developed by Mark Dias.
NB The Upstate New York SBS Prevention Project was rated "promising" by the California Evidence Based Clearinghouse/
Thursday, November 06, 2008
RWJF Offers Lecture, Workshop on Shaken Baby Syndrome
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM presents a lecture, "Where the Rubber Hits the Road: How science can be translated into policy for prevention of shaken baby syndrome," on Thursday, Nov. 13 from 12:30 – 2 p.m. in the Barbara & Bill Richardson Pavilion room 1500. Then, from 2:30 – 4 p.m., a workshop, "Community-wide, Culturally-sensitive Prevention Programs for Shaken Baby Syndrome: Principles and Challenges for Implementation," is set in the same location. The events are part of the RWJF Fall Lecture Series.
Photo: Ron Barr, professor of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
The lecture features Ronald Barr, Canada Research Chair in Community Child Health Research at the University of British Columbia. Barr is a professor of Pediatrics on the Faculty of Medicine at UBC, and director of the Centre for Community Child Health Research at the Child and Family Research Institute of the BC Children's Hospital. He is also director of the "Experience-based Brain and Biological Development" Programme of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
Barr will describe a primary, universal, community-based prevention program for Shaken Baby Syndrome.
This presentation will:
· Delineate four convergent lines of evidence for the program,
· describe the stages of its development,
· discuss the prerequisites for a primary prevention initiative,
· describe the development (including cross cultural focus groups), testing (randomized controlled trials of knowledge and behavior) and,
· discuss strategies and challenges for jurisdiction-wide implementation in North Carolina and British Columbia
Continuing Medical and Nursing Education is available.
The workshop features Marilyn Barr, founder and executive director of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome in Canada, and Ronald Barr.
In this symposium workshop, the Barrs will describe their experience of effectively implementing the Period of PURPLE Crying prevention of shaken baby syndrome program. The Barrs will illustrate their discussion using specific examples from recent implementation projects in North Carolina and British Columbia.
Topics include:
· basic principles that need to be met to justify implementation jurisdiction-wide
· importance of timing and "doses" of intervention
· challenges and processes required for effective translations of the materials into eight languages
· importance of bringing about a cultural change in order to establish long-term
· discussion of the 10 most "frequently asked questions" that implementation raises
For more information contact the RWJF Center at 277-0130 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Jury acquits dad in shaken-baby case
By CLAIR JOHNSON
Of The Gazette Staff
A federal jury Tuesday afternoon acquitted a Busby man accused of seriously injuring his infant son by shaking him.
The panel found Merlin Wade Littlesun Sr., 22, not guilty of assault resulting in serious bodily injury after deliberating about 2½ hours in the two-day trial.
As the clerk announced the verdict, about a dozen of Littlesun's family members and supporters jumped to their feet and applauded and cheered the verdict, prompting an angry rebuke from Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull.
"Get them out of here," yelled Cebull, who stood up and pointed at the group. Courtroom security guards directed Littlesun's supporters out of the courtroom and the building. After the courtroom had been cleared, the judge dismissed the indictment against Littlesun and ordered him released from custody.
Littlesun testified Tuesday morning that he did not shake his son as alleged on May 10, 2006. Littlesun's testimony lasted barely five minutes, and he gave mostly yes-or-no answers. Littlesun said he was sleeping when he is alleged to have shaken his 4-month-old son, Merlin Wade Littlesun Jr., hard enough to cause head trauma. He drove the baby's mother, Nicole Fisher, and his son to meet the ambulance as it was coming from Lame Deer, he said. Then he returned home to get a diaper bag and baby supplies.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lori Suek, Littlesun said he was aware of bruises on the baby and asked Fisher about it but did not call the police or get the bruises checked. He suspected Fisher caused the injuries because "she just looked down," he said.
Littlesun also said he told the FBI agent he took responsibility for what happened even though he didn't do it. He acknowledged that he didn't tell investigators he suspected Fisher of causing the injuries.
The prosecution's witnesses included Fisher, others who were present in Littlesun's residence at the time and doctors who treated the baby.
Dr. Richard Stevens, a pediatrician who treated the infant, said the boy is now doing "quite well" even though his injuries were life-threatening. He was flown to a Denver hospital, where pressure on his brain was relieved.
In closing arguments, Suek recalled Fisher's testimony that she saw Littlesun in their bedroom holding the baby in his arms and that his head was shaking violently. She told him to stop and left the room. She could hear her baby crying but was afraid of Littlesun, she said.
Fisher went back in a few minutes later, picked up her baby and was holding him when he began having a seizure.
Fisher initially lied to investigators and medical personnel about what happened because she was scared of Littlesun's family, Suek said. She told the truth after she moved out of the house about a year later, she said.
Defense attorney Robert Kelleher Jr. argued in closing that Fisher caused the injuries and that there were serious problems with her testimony. According to Fisher's account, it was about 20 minutes after she allegedly saw Littlesun shaking their son until they called an ambulance.
But defense witness Dr. Thomas Bennett, a forensic pathologist who has studied shaken-baby syndrome, said a baby would experience seizures almost immediately after being shaken, Kelleher said. Bennett also said it can take only a few seconds to shake a baby hard enough to injure its brain.
Fisher was a 17-year-old mother of an infant and also had a toddler at the time, Kelleher said. She was "multitasking," trying to get breakfast ready and walking around the house with the baby, he continued, and "it only takes a second for her to snap and do this to the baby."
He also discounted Fisher's fear of Littlesun and his family. Fisher was alone with the doctors at St. Vincent Healthcare, where her son had been transferred from Lame Deer, and had the opportunity to say Littlesun caused the injuries.
"She did not tell anybody. Why? Because she's the one who did it," he said.


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Hello again!
I know what you're thinking. You're talking back to your monitor right now wondering what took me so long to get to this point. Well, if you've been following this series, hopefully you've started to realize that there are many things to consider when choosing an office products vendor - not just one. People put too much emphasis on that one thing. But it is there, and we do need to talk about it, so here we go. Let's discuss the dreaded
Courtesy of ksalbrecht88 on youtube.com
Mistake #1 - Much of the time, the person responsible for purchasing the office supplies for a company concentrates on the cost of each item and ignores the other topics we've already discussed in this series. Now, to be fair, you may have been given a budget to work with and you're doing your best to stay within that budget, but as the employee assigned to this task, it would be a feather in your cap to relate the other issues to your boss and explain why the price isn't the only thing to consider. Value added services are just that - Value Added!
Most office products vendors sell the exact same items, so availability isn't usually an issue unless you're dealing with house brands. Those may vary from one dealer to the next and some dealers will have exclusive items that you can only get from them, but those items usually aren't deal-breakers. If dealer A has an exclusive brand of pen, you can usually find an equivalent substitute at dealer B.
The ABC's of pricing:
- Inquire as to whether the supplier has any sort of pre-made frequently ordered products contracts and ask for a copy of the pricing for those programs. (Office Express has one called Essentials.)
- Make a list of your most frequently ordered items and your current price and compare them to the supplier's program.
- Give the supplier a list of any of your frequent items that aren't on their program. Ask them to create a price plan for those items for you at their best price. (We'd be delighted to!)
- Ask if they offer competitive price matching. Obviously, it's not reasonable to expect them to put every item you buy on a price plan for you and believe it or not, no single vendor is going to be the lowest price on every single item. If they offer price matching (yes, we do!) and the difference is significant, contact your account manager or customer service representative and request a price match. Tell them what company they're matching to and make sure it's the same item, size and quantity. If you're not comparing apples to apples, the supplier may be hesitant to believe the information you provide in the future.
Be smart - and don't be fooled by marketing ploys! Getting a box of paperclips for a penny looks great on paper, but you know there's a catch. A company stays in business by making a profit. Profit = the amount received over and above the cost of the item. To sell you that box of paperclips for a penny and make a profit, the supplier has to pay the manufacturer zero. Now you know that's not going to happen. The supplier is running a loss leader and they're making their profit on you someplace else. The better deal is going to be the supplier that has consistently low prices, even though every price may not be the same as what you're paying now. (If you do the math, you'll see that I'm right about that.)
Lastly, find out if there are any added fees. Is there a minimum order? (Not at Office Express!) If you need to order below the minimum, will the dealer accept the order and will they charge you a small order fee? (No small order fees here.) Is there a delivery fee? (Not with us!) What about a handling fee? (Nope.) All of these add to the overall cost of the order (another good thing to point out to a number-crunching boss).
That about covers Mistake #1. Ok, what's Mistake #2, you ask? There really isn't one - #1 pretty much covers it.
Realize that the price you see isn't always the price you're paying - and know why. Then explain it to your boss.
Thanks for stopping by today! Check back on May 8 for our last installment in this series, which will cover Payment Terms and Refunds.

subset: commoncrawl


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Larry The Cable Guy Tickets
Larry The Cable Guy Tickets Las Vegas
Venue: Pearl Concert Theater
The man who added the catch phrases "Git-R-Done" and "Lord, I Apologize" to the American lexicon and drew fans by the pickup truckload to his shows proved to be one of the most successful comics of the early 2000s. Dan Whitney, known better as Larry the Cable Guy, claims he was born in the back of an El Camino during a Foghat concert. His drawl may sound Southern, but Larry was raised on a pig farm in Pawnee City, NE. His upbringing was conservative, traditional, and churchgoing. That didn't mean that strip bars were out of the question when Larry reached 18 (maybe even a little earlier).
Fascinated by this redneck life -- "redneck" being a term he is not only fine with, but endorses -- and always looking to comment on it, Larry used his humorous observations to captivate his friends, who dared him to try his hand at standup. He did in 1986 and the fans' reaction to his slow, approachable style had him hooked. Two years later, he relinquished his title as funniest bellhop at the Ramada Inn and set out for a career in comedy.
Vegastickets.com has a huge selection of Larry the Cable Guy tickets, along with all the Las Vegas headliners, shows and concerts.
Larry The Cable Guy Tickets
Larry the Cable Guy Tickets
Miscellaneous Information:
At Vegas Tickets you can count on finding Larry the Cable Guy Tickets and tickets to all the Best Vegas Shows and Las Vegas Concerts. We are a local Las Vegas ticket broker with a local office located just minutes from the world famous strip. Vegas Tickets is a long-standing member of the NATB (National Association of Ticket Brokers), ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents), and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. We have Celine Dion tickets and all the Cirque du Soleil Vegas tickets. If you can't find what you're looking for on our website, please call one of our professional sales reps at 877-467-4697 and we will do our best to help you.


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The previous post dealt with auspiciososo/auspicious, an adjective based on the Latin noun auspex, with stem auspic-, that meant, in the words of Lewis and Short's A Latin Dictionary, ' a bird inspector, bird-seer, i. e. one who observes the flight, singing, or feeding of birds, and foretells future events therefrom; an augur, soothsayer, diviner.' The corresponding abstract noun for the process was auspicium 'divination by observing the flight of birds, augury from birds,' which Spanish has taken over as auspicio, and for which the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española gives three definitions:
1. m. agüero.
2. m. Protección, favor.
3. m. pl. Señales prósperas o adversas que en el comienzo de una actividad parecen presagiar su resultado.
The matching English form is auspice, a singular that I don't ever recall seeing. The 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary gave this first definition of the word: 'A divining or taking of omens by observing birds; an omen as to an undertaking, drawn from birds; an augury; an omen or sign in general; an indication as to the future.' The second definition, which has become the most common one, was: 'Protection; patronage and care; guidance.' The dictionary went on to note that "In this sense the word is generally plural, auspices; as, under the auspices of the king." Similarly, Spanish can also use the plural, but whereas the English preposition is always under, an Internet search turns up Spanish examples of con los auspicios de and bajo los auspicios de. It's not clear to me whether the use of bajo is due to influence from English. It is clear to me that anyone who observes flights of birds from below may need protection from what falls from above.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman


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|Korean People's Army
|Appears in
|Voice by
|Hoon Lee[1]
Colonel-Commandant Jeong (Korean: 정) is a KPA officer stationed in Montrose, Colorado.[2]
In 2027, Col. Jeong and two KPA soldiers forced their way into Robert Jacobs's home to question him as to why he has not enlisted in the KPA's military to serve his country. Jeong had Jacobs arrested and sent him on his way to a re-education camp. However, Jacobs was rescued by the Resistance.
Later, when a Resistance cell was going through the labor camp based in Montrose, they were compromised and forced to hide in a mass grave while Jeong overlooks and searches for them. He orders the two soldiers to fire into the grave, suspecting the Resistance members to be hiding in the grave. When there was no reaction, he went back to his helicopter to continue his search.
His fate after the Battle of San Francisco is unknown, he most likely being killed while trying to defend the city or retreating out of the country when the KPA loses all their standing in the US.


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Bharti Airtel is out of Nigeria's 2.3 GHz auction race which is planned for today.
Bitflux Communications and Globacom are the only two operators who have pre-qualified as approved bidders for the auction of one frequency spectrum license of 30 MHz in the 2.3 GHz band says Nigerian Communications Commission on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
In line with the terms of the Information Memorandum published on the 2.3 GHz spectrum auction by the commission, the auction will happen on February 19-20 at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.
Recently, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria has announced its intention to auction one frequency license in the 2.3 GHz band to qualified applicants for the provision of wholesale broadband service in Nigeria.
The commission decided to assign one slot of 30 MHz nationally available in the 2.3 GHz band for the delivery of broadband wireless access service at the wholesale level, to provide ISP's and other retail telecom service providers with the requisite bandwidth to service their subscribers.
This wholesale broadband provider will have the required spectrum to expand wireless broadband access across the country to ISP's and other retail telecom service providers for the provision of retail high speed internet access services.
The commission has decided to adopt auction in the award of this spectrum and is geared towards ensuring transparency in the assignment of the available spectrum.


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This episode of Art Beat Conversations I interview ceramic and mixed media artist Courtney M. Leonard from the Shinnecock Nation of Long Island, New York. Leonard's work explores the evolution of language, image and culture through mixed media pieces of video, audio and tangible objects. She studied art and museum studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts (AFA 2000), Alfred University (BFA 2002), and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA 2008). She currently lives in Santa Fe, NM and works as a professional artist and educator.
Listen in as we unfold the journey and process that has led Courtney to her current body of work. We will talk about academia life, her travels, experiences with teaching, and motherhood. I look forward to sharing with you all the story of this intensely hardworking and inspiring indigenous artist, stay tuned!
Check out Courtney's webite HERE!
Follow Courtney's work thru her artist page on Facebook!


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Photo Scanning Service
Photo Scanning services are the best options for you to choose. you have to make a contact as per your requirement and get precise solutions.
Contact Us:-
Photo-60 Studio Woodbridge
Address: 2602 Morse Lane, Woodbridge VA 22192
Local Tele: 571-572-3026
Email: email@example.com
Website: https://photo60studio.com/photo-scanning-service-washington-dc-maryland-md-virginia-va/
|Related Link: Click here to visit item owner's website (0 hit)
|Target State: Virginia
Target City : Woodbridge
Last Update : Jan 09, 2019
Number of Views: 73
|Item Owner : Jacob Harrison
Contact Email:
Contact Phone: 571-572-3026
|Friendly reminder: Click here to read some tips.


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What to Do Before and While Taking Actoplus Met
Actoplus Met is a medication that contains a combination of such active ingredients as pioglitazone and metformin. Both of them are diabetes meds that help many patients control their blood sugar levels. It means that Actoplus Met is taken by patients with diabetes who don't want or can't use insulin injections every day.
Cases When Actoplus Met Is Not Recommended
It's not allowed to use this medication if people have kidney problems, heart failure, metabolic acidosis, bladder cancer and some other serious health conditions. This treatment may worsen or cause congestive heart failure, so you need to call doctors right after noticing such symptoms as swelling, sudden weight gain and shortness of breath. Besides, if you must undergo CT scanning or X-ray, it's necessary to stop taking Actoplus Met. Some patients end up with lactic acidosis when using this medication, so you need to get emergency medical help once you develop such symptoms as trouble breathing, muscle weakness or pain, severe nausea, dizziness, slow heartrates, etc.
Precautions before Starting This Treatment
Patients are not advised to use Actoplus Met if they have any allergic reactions to similar drugs. Besides, this medicine is not suitable if you have the above-mentioned health conditions. To ensure that it's safe for you, you need to inform doctors about heart attacks, bladder cancer, liver and kidney diseases and fluid retention. Patients who are over 80 years old should be quite careful with its intake, and Actoplus Met isn't intended to be used by children.
Basic Tips on Effective Uses
It's advisable to use this medicine with regular meals to avoid different gastrointestinal side effects, and most patients take only one tablet a day. They all need to check their blood sugar levels on a regular basis. Most doctors prescribe their patients to take 15 mg once a day to treat diabetes, and this dosage can be increased gradually when needed.
Possible Actoplus Met Side Effects
There are certain adverse effects caused by this medication, and the most common ones include:
Sudden weight gain and edema;
Dental diseases and allergies;
Pharyngitis and reduced concentration of vitamin B12.
However, most of these symptoms are rare and mild, but if any of them get worse, you should report it to your physician. Only a few patients taking Actoplus Met may end up with such severe side effects as:
Painful, difficult, and burning urination;
Bladder pain and urine;
Back pain and severe swelling;
Frequent urge to urinate and pale skin;
Unusual weakness and tiredness;
Blurred vision and anxiety;
Cold sweats and chills;
Coma and confusion;
Loss of appetite and depression;
Fast heartbeats and migraines;
Tremor and seizures;
Muscle cramps and slurred speech.
If you experience any of the above-mentioned side effects, it's necessary to stop taking Actoplus Met and go to the hospital immediately because of possible health risks.


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Anne Arundel County established a charter form of government in 1964.
More About Our County
The Anne Arundel County Government consists of Departments and Offices as well as Boards & Commissions. These entities work together to serve our Citizen's needs.
Department DirectoryBoards & Commissions
Anne Arundel County provides a wide array of services and programs for its Citizens, Businesses, and Visitors
View All Services & Programs
Stay connected with the latest news/information, provide your input, and find out how you can get involved.
News & Events
With almost 54,000 businesses, Anne Arundel County is a major hub of commerce and development. With a $35 billion economy, low taxes, a vast multi-modal transportation system, highly skilled workforce and excellent educational institutions, Anne Arundel County is the premier location to do business.
From MD-214 West/Central Aveune take a right onto Patuxent Crossover and turn left onto Patuxent Manor Road. Then turn right onto Morgan Road.
As the most centrally-located county in Maryland and site of the state capital of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County is in many ways the heart of Maryland. Half a million people call the county home.
Learn More


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Monastic orders apparently each have their own personality and the Benedictine order based in the Kraków suburb of Tyniec is roughly the equivalent of a happy-go-lucky type that loves to shoot the breeze and have a microbrew or two over dinner. If you are expecting sombre stares, vows of silence, lives of restraint and a general sense of withdrawal from the outside world, then you've definitely come to the wrong place. You were thinking of the Camaldolese order from just across the river. But, the only thing the Camaldolese have on the boys at Tyniec is a better view of the Tyniec Abbey and church grounds, majestically perched on a white limestone ridge with a commanding view of the Wisła River (and their 'rivals,' the Camaldolese). Life is much easier and far more social for the Benedictine monks, and they'll gladly tell you all about it if you bother to ask. Throughout the entire Abbey complex the monks are visible, social and surprisingly accessible and interactive. When you head down to the restaurant for a traditional meal or up to the coffee house for the best view of the area, you may well find a monk or two sitting right alongside you, enjoying the same view and the very same beverage. It is hard to imagine a more gregarious religious order, especially so close to the tourist capital of Poland.
The Benedictine order has been around for quite a while – nearly 1000 years in fact – originally founded by Casimir the Restorer in 1044. They've lasted through centuries of foreign domination and suffered the relocation of Poland's capital to Warsaw from Kraków, but managed to keep the Abbey functioning throughout most of their history. The era of Poland's partition (1795-1918) was particularly daunting, and featured time periods where the monastic order largely abandoned their location. Ironically, it was in 1939 that the order rebounded for good in tandem with the Nazi invasion and annexation of most of Poland, including the Kraków region. As you can imagine, the monks believe it was due to divine intervention that they avoided the lethal wrath of the Nazi authorities during the years of German occupation and emerged relatively unscathed from the Second World War.
The order then thrived, even under forty years of a Communist regime that was clearly uncomfortable with - and occasionally threatened by - organised religion in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. The town of Tyniec was incorporated into the Krakow municipality in 1973, and is now just another distant (albeit uniquely charming) suburb. The city's bus-lines and bike paths have now extended out to this ancient development, making it a cinch to get to. Rain or shine a half-day trip out to Tyniec is rewarding and is a surprisingly serene and charming setting just outside the heavily-touristed areas of Kraków. Even if you could find another place to hang out with amiable monks and snap scenic shots of Poland's historic heartland, why would you skip this one?


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Fall used to mean going back to school, learning new things and reconnecting with old friends. But for most of us, fall is just one more season in the year.
Capture your inner child and make this fall a season of learning. Don't know where to start? Check out our selection of personal development and business books. They'll inspire your heart, challenge your ideas and encourage you to make a change. If you want to be really frugal, use your local library to check them out instead of buying them. You can also form a book club with your friends and discuss the books' concepts together. Nothing is more encouraging than sharing your hopes and fears with a group of supportive girlfriends.
Rising Strong by Brene Brown
Brown became a Ted legend with her talk about shame and vulnerability. Her most recent book, "Rising Strong" is a manual on learning how to embrace failure and rise again after a loss. Whether you've lost your job, broken up with a boyfriend or feeling down about your life, this book can show you how the most successful people use failure to propel themselves even further.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
The author behind "Eat Pray Love" returns with a book about harnessing and developing creativity. You might have heard her Ted talk on the discipline of creativity.
If you're looking to get past your perfectionism to unleash your creativity, Big Magic is for you. Gilbert shows how to not let fear stand in the way of the gifts you can offer the world.
#GirlBoss by Sophia Amoruso
Whether you're running a small business or working on a side hustle on the weekends, you need to read this book. Founder of Nastygal, Sophia Amoruso knows how to take an idea and see it flourish. Her hard hitting writing is a testament to her fearless personality.
Don't be afraid of her no-holds-barred approach; she dispenses the kind of tough love that will help stop making excuses in your life. You will love GirlBoss.
Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter
Slaughter became famous for writing an "Atlantic" piece saying that women can't have it all. In her latest book, Slaughter details where inequality lies and how to fix it.
She includes actionable items that women can use to create a more equitable balance family and work, leading to a more realistic version of "having it all."
I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time by Laura Vanderkam
An expert on productivity and maximizing your time, Laura Vanderkam dispels the notion that you can't have a demanding job, raise children, have a great marriage and still have time left for self-care.
She includes time logs from successful doing it "all" and explains how they're able to make time for what's most important in their lives. Instead of making women feel bad, she includes innovative ideas for making sure each hour of your day counts. I Know How She Does It is an intimate look into the habits of women with jam packed days, that earn around $100k or more.


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Usenet is a Worldwide bulletin board system that predates the Internet. Usenet was originally established in 1980 by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. Users are able to post messages to over 120,000+ different subject based discussion or binary forums known as newsgroups.
Since its creation in 1980 Usenet has been provided to users via Colleges, Universities, Internet service providers (ISPs) and commercial services such as Fast Usenet.
Usenet is similar to the modern forum systems that you find on the Internet, but unlike the forums Online today, Usenet newsgroup posts sync with newsgroup providers all over the World. For example, when a user submits a post to an Internet forum that message will only appear on that website. With Usenet, when you post a message it's transferred between the different Usenet services that have a peering relationship.
Let's say you post a message to Fast Usenet. That message will then appear on thousands of different Usenet systems around the World. That's what makes Usenet a great communication tool, you aren't limited to just one web service, your questions, posts, comments, ideas will be seen by people accessing the newsgroups all over.
Usenet can be accessed via the command line for tech savvy users, but for everyone else there are programs called newsreaders. Newsreaders are software applications that make Usenet easier to use. As an example, we offer a newsreader called GrabIt. GrabIt allows you to easily view the newsgroup list, subscribe and post to newsgroups and offers a global search feature which works as a search engine for newsgroup content.
There are three different categories of newsreaders. Newsreaders that are text only, newsreaders that process binaries (data files) only and newsreaders that work for both. Popular programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird do text only, while newsreaders such as SABnzbd and NZBGet work just for binaries. GrabIt works for both binaries and text.
Usenet was originally used for text only. It wasn't possible to share binary files such as images, audio and video on the newsgroups. That all changed in the late 1990's with the help of 8-bit value encoding using ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). Usenet could then be used for encoding and transferring data files, and due to the nature of the NNTP (network news transfer protocol), Usenet is very efficient when it comes to transferring data. Users where then able to encode and upload binary files to the newsgroups. Over the years the encoding process has changed from ASCII 8-bit to yEnc which is about 30% more efficient when it comes to data transfer.
Retention, a common term used when discussing Usenet service. Retention is the amount of time a service provider can store files. File storage can differ greatly between providers as it's directly related to the amount of hardware the provider has available. For example, if 1 day of newsgroup storage is 9TB (terabytes) then 10 days is 90TB, and 3000 days is 27,000TB or 27PB (petabytes), which is a lot of storage. Hard drives storage is needed to house all this information. Thus, providers need to invest heavily in storage infrastructure to provider higher levels of retention. For more information about retention please visit our Usenet retention page.
As there are over 120,000+ newsgroups to choose between, there needed to be a way to organize them. There are 9 hierarchies, 8 of which are under strict control and must follow the guidelines when created. The 9th is called the alt.* hierarchy and isn't subject to the naming standards the big 8 are under. The newsgroup hierarchies are:
For more inforamtion click on the specific hierarchy name above or visit our Newsgroup Hierarchies (Categories) section.
As mentioned above, newsreaders are the easiest method for accessing the text and binary newsgroups. We recommend GrabIt as we offer a customized version which is already configured to work with our service. We also offer different tutorials on how to setup the most popular newsreaders which can be found in our "Learn How" section.
Fast Usenet works with any newsreader that uses the standard NNTP protocol, so basically we work with all newsreaders.
We could write about Usenet forever as there is an incredible amount of information about it. Different newsgroups, different technologies, the list goes on. We have articles about: Retention, SSL Security, and GrabIt. For additional information we suggest doing a little digging around the Internet.
We hope that this article was informative and you now have a better idea on what Usenet is. If you are interested in getting started please checkout our free trial offer.


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Celeste Havener is a Laramie, Wyoming based artist who uses bailing wire animals, landscapes painted in oil, pen and watercolor drawings to create original artwork that will be on display and for sale at the 6th Biennial Touchstone Laramie Art Exhibition hosted by the Laramie Artists Project.
Painting is Celeste's therapist. While Celeste is not sure if she is cheaper, she is certainly available 24/7. Centennial Valley, where Celeste makes her home is inspiration for much of her work, the animals and the landscape provide constant sources of images daring to be captured. As a child she enjoyed drawing, the brightest crayons in her Prang box of crayons were always worn to stubs first. Her parents took her to see the work of Birger Sandzen, an artist who lived in Lindsborg Kansas. The brilliant Rose Madder and Ultramarine Blues she saw in the wheat fields and rivers in the Midwest gave her new eyes with which to view the world. To see the threads of red in the sumac, the Prussian blue of the shadows, the way a river was rarely just blue but rather a mirror to the trees and vegetation around it. She didn't follow through on putting those colors to canvas until forty years later. Celeste is self-taught and likes to think one can see Birger's inspiration in her work.
As to those wire animals, well she has Bella and Obi to thank for those. Her two BLM horses are opportunistic feeders, her two Arabs are princesses. This has dictated that Celeste become cafeteria monitor in the mornings to make sure the mustangs don't chow everyone's food. While she waited she began twisting the baling wire into balls for easy disposal, then the balls became animals. The barn filled with pronghorn and horses and probably would have stayed that way had not a friend, an art instructor no less, asked where she was selling the figures. It really hadn't occurred to her that someone would be interested but the world can surprise you. Now Celeste's repertoire had expanded to include bison and moose, and to various types of wire.
You can see more of Celeste Havener's work at Works of Wyoming in historic downtown Laramie, Wyoming, Blue Moose Gallery in Fort Collins, Colorado, and 3 Crows Gallery in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
This is Celeste's 3rd time exhibiting at Touchstone Laramie and her 5th year as part of the Laramie Artists Project. This years he will exhibiting new original paintings and bailing wire sculptures for the 6th Biennial Touchstone Laramie Art Exhibition on November 10th and 11th, 2018 at the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Laramie, Wyoming.


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After the recent update, it may be from the new physics implemented, I've gotten hung up on a low wall and on indestructible sand bags on two different maps, and on the crest of a hill on another. It's like the tank bottoms out and the tracks can't make contact with the ground.
1. The wall/sandbags In front of the house facing the edge of the map at A5 on Kitimat.
2. On the sand bags around E5-F6-G6 on Panama
3. Numerous terraces around the middle of the map on Dragon Ridge.
I was in a panther 1, E50 and E50M when these hang ups occured. I could not rock back and forth or turn to get myself free. Another tank had to physically push me off of it.


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The film that actually started French New Wave cinema is The 400 Blows, from 1959.
It was produced and directed by François Truffaut and stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier and Albert Remy.
Besides being a character study, the movie is also an exposéof the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time.
It's highly auto-biographical and is based on real events in director Truffaut's life. He was born out of wedlock in 1932 and his birth was kept secret because of the stigma of being illegitimate back then.
In the French hospital records, he was registered as "A child born to an unknown father". As a child, he was passed around to live with various nannies and his grandmother.
The identity of his biological father was unknown, although a private detective agency in 1968 revealed that their inquiry led to a Roland Levy, a Jewish dentist from Bayonne, France.
His mother's family disputed the findings but Truffaut himself believed them. A movie lover from early childhood, he started his own film club when he was 16 and in 1948, he met a man named André Bazin, who was a movie critic and head of another film club.
Bazin became a personal friend and helped Truffaut out of various financial and criminal situations throughout his life.
At age 18, Truffaut joined the French Army but absolutely hated it and spent the next two years trying to get out. When he was arrested for attempting to desert, his friend Bazin used his political contacts to get him released and then set him up with a job at Bazin's film magazine.
Over the next few years, Truffaut became a film critic at Bazin's magazine, where he became notorious for his brutal, unforgiving reviews and earned the nickname 'The Gravedigger of French Cinema'. He was so despised that he was the only French critic not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.
He had made a couple of short films, but after seeing Orson Welles' Touch of Evil that he was inspired to make this movie, his first full-length film. When it was released, the movie was widely acclaimed, winning numerous international awards, and was nominated for best screenplay at the Academy Awards.
And The 400 Blows currently holds a rare Rotten Tomatoes rating of 100% from critics and 93% from viewers.
So, amazingly, just a year after he was 'not' invited as a hated critic, Truffaut was back at the Cannes Film Festival to be awarded the best director prize for 1959.
The character of René in this film was inspired by Truffaut's best friend from childhood, Robert Lachenay, who Truffaut hired as an assistant on many of his films.
Extremely passionate about film, Truffaut once picked up a hitchhiker and started a conversation about movies. When it turned out the man knew almost nothing about film, Truffaut stopped the car and made him get out.
You may know Truffaut as one of the stars in Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where he played the scientist, Claude Lacombe.
And look for Truffaut to make a cameo appearance riding next to Antoine in the centrifuge ride at the Funfair, and then smoking a cigarette just outside the ride.
Truffaut dedicated The 400 Blows to André Bazin, the man who had been his spiritual father who, unfortunately, died just as the film was about to be shot.
An icon in French film, Truffaut was only 52 when died in1984. In his career, he directed only 27 films but was nominated for 3 Oscars and won 29 international film awards.
There is also a Francois Truffaut Award given out at a French film festival; appropriately, it's for films made for children.
Playing the young lead is Jean-Pierre Léaud. Truffaut loved working with him and over the next 20 years, he made four more films withTruffaut, playing the same character, Antoine, at later stages of his life.
One of Léaud's idols was Marlon Brando and he once worked with the great actor….sort of. In 1972, he appeared in The Last Tango in Paris, which starred Brando.
But Léaud was so in awe of Brando that he was terrified of working with him.
So he asked that all of his scenes be shot on Saturdays, when Brando didn't work.
So, although he's in the same film, during the entire shoot, he never once met his idol.
Léaud is still acting today.
All the dialog in the film was dubbed later by the actors because shooting on the streets of Paris was hectic and noisy.
Because everything was dubbed later, Truffaut didn't have to worry about lugging bulky and expensive sound equipment around. Plus, he didn't have to worry about a street scene having too much background noise.
In the classroom scenes, notice all the young kids. All of them are young actors who unsuccessfully auditioned for the lead role of Antoine.


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Ken Clarke , the justice secretary and former chancellor, mentioned that it would take two to 3 years for Britain to get out of the recession. Please word: SUGGESTIONS is administered by a third-social gathering vendor, Nelnet Business Options. F) Alternatives-are outcomes which are attainable without the agreement of the other celebration. Your cost plan contract is with Nelnet Enterprise Options to pay your HCC invoice. In his view then, it was completely vital for the appropriate implementation mechanism be created and put to work as a way to ensure that the advantages of the settlement could be realised.
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Silver Run Vineyard & Winery
Silver Run vineyard & winery is a family-owned boutique winery offering award-winning, hand-crafted Ohio wines in a country setting. Relax with a glass of wine by the fireplace in the cozy tasting room or on the covered porch.
376 Eastern Rd
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Review This Winery


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59. FC-AFC Hoot N Holler "Hoot", LM, John Henninger
DF: Had a short flyer, went out and smacked the bird!
HF: Chalk-lined out to the area, made a few passes in the area before retrieving the bird.
SR: Took a great initial line, angling the pond, up the hill, went wide left of the cover then turned back, dove into cover to retrieve the bird.


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Project 'Akashdeep' was inked on 20 Dec 2010 for recognizing the Basic and In-service training imparted to the airmen and Non-Combatants Enrolled (NCs (E)) of the Indian Air Force for award of civil qualifications. It is aimed at fulfilling the long standing desire of the IAF to get civil recognition for the knowledge and experience gained by the airmen and NCs (E) while they are in service.
Online Registration of airmen and Non-Combatants Enrolled (NCs (E)) for award of Certificates, Diplomas and Associate Degrees under the Project Akashdeep commenced on 20 Sep 2011 and continued till 31 Dec 2011.
A total of 49,692 (Forty Nine Thousand Six Hundred Ninety Two) airmen have completed online registration leading to the award of Certificates, Diplomas and Associate Degrees. Associate Degrees will be awarded in Science, Arts, Commerce and in Paramedical Science.
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Former Miami police officers Malinsky Bazile, 28, and Vital Frederick, 26, were recently arrested and charged with identity theft and tax fraud.
"Bazile and Frederick allegedly misused their access to the D.A.V.I.D. (DAVID) driver's license database to find identity information to be used for tax refund fraud," DataBreaches.net reports. "Bazile allegedly systematically ran searches on the database for women in a particular age range, e.g., he would run a search on DAVID for females in Florida aged 57 to 61 with first names beginning with 'A' and last name 'Martinez.'"
"Then he took their personal information and filed bogus federal income-tax returns, all to score stolen refunds," writes The Miami Herald's Jay Weaver. "Bazile and fellow officer Vital Frederick, separately accused of tapping into the same database, were both arrested Thursday in the first-ever federal prosecution of identity theft and tax-refund fraud involving South Florida law enforcement."
"The perpetrators of this type of fraud have been as diverse as the victims they prey upon," Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo said in a statement. "To date, we have prosecuted Social Security office employees, hospital employees, clinic workers, former NFL players, gang members and violent criminals, to name a few. Today, we sadly add law enforcement to the list of thieves."


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Blue movie censored in Bnei Brak
Well, this is reassuring news.
It turns out that charedi taboos against seeing images of women do not discriminate on the basis of national origin, skin color, or fictional identity.
Posters promoting "Smurfs: The Lost Village" have gone up across Israel, as theaters release children's films for the Passover vacation.
The standard poster for the film shows four of the short, blue-skinned humanoids, originally created by a Belgian cartoonist in 1958. Among them is Smurfette, easily distinguishable by her long blonde hair and six cartoon eyelashes.
Except for the posters hanging in the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak.
There, the film's distribution company decided to erase the blue-bodied beauty from posters in order not to offend residents, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, which printed a photo of the poster showing only the three male Smurfs. The company, Forum Film, also told Haaretz that it is common practice not to feature women on posters in Bnei Brak.
JTA Wire Service


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.strandberg* The Boden 'Metal'
Visually sleek and futuristic, the Metal model was designed for over-the-top brutal metal sounds that are still articulate and expressive as well as being versatile for various other genres of music. The model name doesn't mean it was meant for metal only! Underneath the metallic gloss finish, the body consists of Basswood for full-sounding midrange that is mated with plain Maple top to provide a fast transient attack and high-end brilliance. The neck features roasted Maple neck with Ebony fretboard for a fast and sleek feel as well as a meaty yet cutting sound. The Metal models all feature the innovative Fishman Fluence pickups that combine the best of what active pickups offer with the sound and feel of passive pickups, making it an incredibly versatile instrument for many other genres besides metal.
For more information on .strandberg*'s new The Boden 'Metal' model, visit strandbergguitars.com


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Homeless and hungry
How does your church help people who are homeless and hungry or does it? What does the Bible say on this?
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature Matthew 16:15
Come visit us at http://www.caringhandsministries.com
Our Church has a "Inner city" ministry that, along with other area churches, provide food and clothing to "street folks" (of whom we have a LARGE population in Dallas maybe 4000+) most of whom live in shelters in the evenings. And "Dallas Metro Ministries" is a "Frontline Group" that deals with the problem daily. And then there "Teen-Life Challenge" Dave Wilkerson's ministry for solks who are Desperate enough to "Commit themselves" to the TLC Programs, and live within the ground rules that CONTROL them (since they can't control themselves).
It is partly at least maybe wholely a matter of priorities. God says in Proverbs that when we help the poor we lend to Him and He repays ...and in our experience He repays with interest. Appalachian Hope Center is one of the smallest churches in the county but God has shown us that we are to reach out and help people to give and it will be given us. No one here is rich. Some still get food stamps and yet somehow needs of the church are met we have never not had enough to pay bills granting that we are frugal in what we agree to for e penaes, sharing space and utilities in proportion to use. Needs of the people are met too. Some give directly to needs not through the church bank account but as a way of showing God's care. One family had saved up for an expense that WS important to them struggled to save and then learned of a baby with no diapers and another family with no food. Those nerds became their priority and still not only is their rent paid and their utilities and food in response to a car problem the dealer wiped out the repair bills and waived down payment on a better vehicle and the original need / want is being met too. We know this because they asked us as their pastors to pray but I doubt that anyone else outside their family does. They tend to keep things like that between them and Jesus.
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature Matthew 16:15
Come visit us at http://www.caringhandsministries.com
Long before there was Appalachian Hope Center there was and still is Caring Hands Ministries founded in '95 so for our area one of the oldest help ministries. I'll share some on that when I am not on a cell that is making battery threats.
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature Matthew 16:15
Come visit us at http://www.caringhandsministries.com
It seemed obvious that Jesus meant us - all his people and my wife and I in particular - to help people in need. It's a tradition in both families. If grandma had only a small pot of beans and a pan of cornbread and someone came to the door hungry they ate first and somehow there was always enough for all of us too. But more than that Jesus is very specific that what we do for "the least" we do for him and what we don't do for them we deny Him. Not sure I could get any enjoyment out of a meal if Jesus was standing there in front of me going hungry. When we moved to NE GA God gave me one direction "Help Mervin." Mervin was an older lady who helped people in many ways including food. At that time she was head of the outreach (benevolence) program for the church we attended. So we helped Mervin and when she was no longer as involved in that we did it. Until the week that an elderly couple whose home we passed on the way to church were robbed and even their food stolen. Their neighbor also a member of that church asked us to take them food and we did only to catch heck at church because they lived outside the county where the church was (so did we so did their neighbor and about 1/4 of the people who went to church and paid tithes there). At least 20% of the people then attending had been reached through the help program originally and had learned grow and to give. There were a lot of words in my mind but the only ones God let come out my mouth were "We'll do things a different way."
In the next 2 days we had calls from 3 people not affiliated with the church offering food help for "Your Caring Hands Ministries" A lot of food. It finally dawned on us that God was establishing a new ministry and had named it Caring Hands. He told them before He told us or at least before we heard Him. Over the next few months He made a way to help with more than food things like rent and power bills tires so someone could take a job etc. We were having a hard time ourselves but there was always a way to help people.
My wife was a welfare caseworker for years and later worked as senior caseworker for Red Cross Disaster Services ad Armed Forces Emergency Services. So things like verifying needs and making payments directly to the vendors came naturally to her. We were and are a volunteer ministry. God gives discernment too if you listen. Right now we serve people in 6 counties in the southern tip of Appalachia. Most of our support comes from local businesses and from grants. A few churches help too. Appalachian Hope Center grew out of Caring Hands because so many said they did not feel accepted in local churches and we believe God welcomes everyone to His fellowship and offers each on the opportunity to accept salvation and learn to live in Jesus.
I really believe any church or any individual who wants to help others can find a way to do it and that to one extent or another we are called to do that. It is not their goodness it is Jesus making a way. We camped one time near a number of homeless people. Apparently my old van and beat up popup felt to them like we must be in the same state so they invited us to eat. Everyone who came brought a can of something or some rice or crackers or had gathered some firewood or walked to the nearest water and brought back a gallon. Someone had caught some fish. One child had a bag of cookie he shared. It was a great meal and plenty of it and everyone took some "warm up" back to their tent or camper, These were people who had just about nothing. One family was living on the ground under a plastic drop cloth but they shared and everyone was blessed.
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature Matthew 16:15
Come visit us at http://www.caringhandsministries.com
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Bar Hop brings its craft beer talents to the Danforth/
Places for a pint on the Danforth just got more plentiful with the opening of Bar Hop.
One of Toronto's premier craft beer bars, the new location is called Bar Hop Session and features a rotating beer list with 24 taps.
Previously occupied by the Court Jester, the Danforth location is the third for Bar Hop after its original King West location and the Bar Hop Brewco. on Peter St.
Its presence adds to the growing depth of the east end's beer scene.
Bar Hop Session is now open at 681 Danforth Ave. near Pape Ave. Check out barhopbar.com for more info.


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I've been working on something a little different. And I thought you might like to take a peek.
She'd had the dream again.
Within minutes of waking, Ramona's hands were pawing over the mess on her bedside table, skimming her glasses, her phone, upsetting two books splayed open, kissing like lovers. Her fingers found the roll of tape she'd left there the night before and she was up, eyes squeezed shut as she moved by touch in the dark to the wall opposite her bed where she'd drawn the map.
Lines drawn in thick, black permanent ink spidered from the window to her bare, aggressively tidy desk. Structures had been meticulously trimmed from a variety of magazines and discarded books and taped against the wall in various places, some labeled, others awaiting identification. Ramona gently peeled one labeled 'Bazaar' from the lower left quadrant of the map and placed it several handspans further right, next to another clipping - a squat ruin she'd cut out of a tattered National Geographic - labeled 'Arena.' The snap as she tore a new piece of tape was startling in the silence, and only after she'd made the adjustment did she open her eyes and turn on the light.
The harsh fluorescent glow further illuminated the stark, impersonal dormitory: bed pushed against one wall, built in wardrobe and desk opposite, door and window with its navy drape squaring off like combatants. The rug underfoot was cheap and thin, the curtains and bedspread worn but without personality. The wall with its world realized in marker and college scraps was the only thing that felt like it belonged to Ramona, and she'd have to paint over it in less than a week.
She sat down on the edge of her bed without a sound, reaching for her glasses and her phone, checking her face, checking the time.
Yesterday it had been nearly 6 AM when the dream woke her.
It wasn't always the same dream, it just always was. It was the world as she knew it, twisted, the places she recognized warped and peopled by strangers - or not at all.
Dr. Cutter was interested in the dream. It had been she who had first suggested Ramona keep a journal, sketch what she recalled upon waking, as though getting it all out of her head would keep it from coming back. But it didn't, and the notebook hadn't been big enough, anyway. So she'd sacrificed the security deposit on this year's board and started drawing on the walls.
There was the strip where she and her mother and brother had bought groceries and visited the check advance place to borrow against dad's upcoming pay day, the taquería where between the three of them they'd demolish an easy conquistador's dozen.
Ramona had layered clipped photos and crude sketches underneath of the main edifice she'd chosen to represent each place on the map, indicating what was different, what was the same. There were some places she frequented often - her high school, the trailer where she'd grown up, her grandma's house just down the street, the quarry - and others she'd go months without seeing, sometimes whole years - the labyrinthian downtown, the derelict grocery, the sculpture park. In the park there was a bronze statue of a woman in the center of a reflecting pool, her arms raised in invitation. But when Ramona dreamed of her, the gestures were always different and Ramona had noted this, too: arms overhead like a dancer's, fists clenched against the stiff folds of her robe, arms absent, hacked off or lost like an ancient Roman statue.
Because it really wasn't one dream, but many. Ramona moved through them each night, pursuing whatever mad trajectories her sleeping mind conjured. Usually, she was alone. But sometimes she was with her brother, Felix.
He'd been the reason she'd gone to see Dr. Cutter in the first place, six years ago, in the weeks following his disappearance.


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Politics Blog
Unofficial election count: Conservative Helm wins Whatcom Conservation District race
Incumbent Larry Helm won a second three-year term on the Whatcom Conservation District, according to an unofficial count released today, Monday, March 16, by the district.
The race was close. Helm, a Republican precinct committee officer who had the backing of his party, defeated the Democrats' preferred candidate, Joy Monjure. Helm had 2,053 votes (51.1 percent), and Monjure had 1,964 (48.9 percent). Another 265 ballots were invalid, according to a district press release.
The Conservation District received more ballots in this race than any other — almost three times as many. This year, the obscure district election became yet another opportunity for the ever-competitive county Republicans and Democrats to face off. Helm, a cattleman, is a conservative who said in a campaign statement that government regulations interfere with the business of farming. Monjure, who farms her rural property and runs a farm market, emphasized protecting habitat and water quality.
The district offers technical and financial assistance to help farmers conserve natural resources, particularly water quality in the streams that run through their land.
The ballot count will remain unofficial until certified on May 21 by the Washington State Conservation Commission. This countywide election is different in an essential way: It is run by the district itself, on practically no budget, rather than the county Auditor's Office, which exists in part to supervise most county elections. People on both sides of this year's election said before Election Day, on March 10, that the district election process is "defective" (Monjure's word) and needs to be improved.
If the auditor were to take over this election, county Republican Chairman Charlie Crabtree said, the election would be better publicized.
"I'm all for this election going through the Auditor's Office," Crabtree said.