text:
[ insert some sort of multiple face-palm gif, or maybe the one with Nathan Fillion, and his hands ]
Here's a question the NEA literature staff has been thinking about lately: what do you call a literary title that infuses text with art and is primarily geared toward grownups? A graphic novel? Picture book? Art book? Illustrated book? Or, as the poet Matthea Harvey suggested to me recently as we sat and discussed the matter over brunch, a "tart" (text + art)?
I, I don't, I just—how about we, maybe we just call them comics? —Unless they aren't?
And if they aren't? I don't know, maybe don't listen to someone who doesn't care to tell the difference between medium, idiom, and genre—poetry's a medium, after all, and intermingling (or co-mixing) pictures and verse would be an idiom thereof, and as for genre, well, that's apparently mostly useful for figuring out which shelf Citizen ought to be put on, to move more units, or which tags should be used, to maximize SQL query returns, and in the face of such generic concerns the particular instantiation of a singular work such as this seems—
—no, wait, those aren't the words—
To yelp, or not to yelp.
"What happens to our notion of humanity if Hamlet just takes out his smartphone and asks Siri what to do?" Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. —Christ, where do they find these people?
You an' me both, kid.
"As soon as he left, Velásquez spoke and said, 'I have tried in vain to concentrate all my attention on the gypsy chief's words but I am unable to discover any coherence whatsoever in them. I do not know who is speaking and who is listening. Sometimes the Marqués de Val Florida is telling the story of his life to his daughter, sometimes it is she who is relating it to the gypsy chief, who in turn is repeating it to us. It is a veritable labyrinth. I had always thought that novels and other works of that kind should be written in several columns like chronological tables.'" —Jan Potocki
the Diaghilev de nos jours.
Why must Helen DeWitt always make me weep?
Definitions of distinction.
The novelette is, of course, but a narrower version of the novelatelle, and the novelttine is narrower yet; the novelccine is larger and thicker than the novelatelle, but more of a ribbon; the novelucce is wider than both by far. Noveletti, as a rule, are thin rectangles or squares of plot, while the noveleja is an elongated screw. The novelalde, like the novelccine, is a ribbon, but long, with ruffled edges, and the novelaldine is a novelalde cut into bits. The novelgnette, also called the noveliolini, is short and thick; the novelarelli is fluted; the novel alla chitarra is named for the strumming motion made to slice the theme. Novelozzi are similar to shoelaces; noveloline are ridged, but only on one side of the plot; novelerini are slender and photogenic. The noveloccheri is made without tropes, and so is hard to manipulate; the novelardella is thick and wide, similar to a thick novelccine. The novelagliati is irregular in shape and size, formed from the scraps left on the floor by other novel-shapes.
I am, occasionally, quite mean.
For whatever reason, I've been watching old episodes of Alias, a show I never got into when it was running, and while ordinarily I'd be game for anyone who said, hey, let's mash up La Femme Nikita and Hudson Hawk, maybe see what happens, there's something so pedestrian about how the show goes about showing how mad the writing seems to think it wants to be—but then the penny dropped: the thing about J.J. Abrams filmmaking (to pull a name from a hat) is how it's the filmic equivalent of transparent prose: images, that get out of the way of the story—
Pellucid limpidity.
Wesley Osam's undertaking a series of posts on the Novelization Style, which is a fine-enough name for a thing that thinks it has no name, that imagines because it sounds just like everything else around it can't be heard, but that once you've finally seen it can't be unseen, like the goddamn arrow in the FedEx logo, poking your eye on every commute, now. —The notion of "transparent" prose, to tug a loose thread, has always so bedeviled me, if only because the sheer folly of seeing one's chosen medium as an impediment, to be done away with, has always struck me as, well, sheer folly: I've whittered on about it before, and it was the subject of perhaps my first-ever twitter rant, but Wesley's digging in with grace and purpose; go, read. Myself, I just want to take up just a little bit of it, here—
In effect Novelization Style has no narrator—or, at least, the narrator, and the implied author, is neutral, impartial, and devoid of personality. No one is telling this story. It's a camera, pointed at a set, with no one behind it.
So you don't ask "Who is the narrator?" which means you also don't ask questions like "Why is this narrator telling this story? Why did they make these decisions about the plot, or the characters? What do they want me to think about all this, and do I agree?" The story feels less like something someone made, and more like something that just sort of happened. This does not exactly encourage you to think about what you're reading. When I read a book like Leviathan's Wake it's a struggle to actively engage with the book instead of… well, just sort of skim along the surface with it.
This is where the writing gets tricky, because this disengagement is an accidental side effect. But it's going to sound a bit like I'm accusing writers of writing this way to discourage questions about what they write. This is not even remotely any writer's goal. I thought I should pause to explicitly note that, to forestall confusion.
Because maybe, if we're reading something like those old space operas with no place for women, reading thoughtlessly reinforces ideas we'd be better off questioning. A few years ago, because it seemed popular at the time, I gave Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy a chance. What I remember is that the pro-democracy, reformist male lead gained some political power and quickly became a dictatorial tinpot general because, gosh, going all Pinochet just worked better. The books seemed barely aware they were making a political argument.
—and set it next to this, from Ethan Robinson's critique of so much more than The Weave—
A book that raises such specters needs to deal with them; this one does not. In her review of the musical Urinetown Erin Horáková, paraphrasing and expanding on something I once glibly tweeted, analyzes the ways in which a work of art, by presenting a political critique that stops just short of where it needs to, or goes awry at just the right (wrong) moments, can present the appealing appearance of opposition while in effect serving to prop up the system it appears to oppose.
—from which I'll then move on, to Erin's critique—
I don't think the show means to so thoroughly betray its political content and its Brechtian form. It's not evil; it's just stupid. In trying to "blow your mind" with this final turn and add another layer of cynicism, Urinetown manages to undo every scrap of work it's done thus far. Then it has the nerve to sneer that:Little Sally: I don't think too many people are going to come see this musical, Officer Lockstock.
Lockstock: Why do you say that, Little Sally? Don't you think people want to be told that their way of life is unsustainable?
It's rich to say that people won't hear this story and change, when the musical itself has pretended to be a revolutionary text and then said change is too dangerous, the workings of power too mysterious and wise (however corrupt), and that thus the wisest thing one can do is nothing. This is like that shitty Doctor Who episode "Stolen Earth," where Davros tells the Tenth Doctor that his problem, as a character, is that he "makes people killers!!" Now that character, at this point in the run, had a score of serious issues, and none of them were that? So the show burns a straw man and tells itself and its audience that it's gotten to the heart of the matter, that it's done its repentance. Again, the fail-condition of criticism is reification. In misdefining a problem and/or not offering possible ways to fix a problem while dwelling on that problem in your art, you can just reinforce said problem. Radicalism has issues and is capable of failing itself and those it advocates for, but not quite in the boring, simplistic way depicted herein. Rather than attacking the culture of overweening corporate power and its control over our lives and how that control is redefining our ideas of privacy, the body, etc. (which would be fairly apropos right about now), suddenly Urinetown is talking about vague ideas of personal responsibility, but not in a tangible, useful way. Shit, was the last act written by a Republican?
—and then round it all with this, from Teju Cole:
In McCurry's portraits, the subject looks directly at the camera, wide-eyed and usually marked by some peculiarity, like pale irises, face paint or a snake around the neck. And when he shoots a wider scene, the result feels like a certain ideal of photography: the rule of thirds, a neat counterpoise of foreground and background and an obvious point of primary interest, placed just so. Here's an old-timer with a dyed beard. Here's a doe-eyed child in a head scarf. The pictures are staged or shot to look as if they were. They are astonishingly boring.
Boring, but also extremely popular: McCurry's photographs adorn calendars and books, and command vertiginous prices at auction. He has more than a million followers on Instagram. This popularity does not come about merely because of the technical finesse of his pictures. The photographs in "India," all taken in the last 40 years, are popular in part because they evoke an earlier time in Indian history, as well as old ideas of what photographs of Indians should look like, what the accouterments of their lives should be: umbrellas, looms, sewing machines; not laptops, wireless printers, escalators. In a single photograph, taken in Agra in 1983, the Taj Mahal is in the background, a steam train is in the foreground and two men ride in front of the engine, one of them crouched, white-bearded and wearing a white cap, the other in a loosefitting brown uniform and a red turban. The men are real, of course, but they have also been chosen for how well they work as types.
Clear? (—"It strikes me that one of the similarities between great fiction and great marketing copy is the ability to sell the content of whatever it is you're writing about," writes RandyC, extolling the importance of transparency in prose, but "Weaker photography delivers a quick message—sweetness, pathos, humor—but fails to do more," writes Cole. —Which is true not just of photography.)
So I was setting up to fold the week's laundry in the living room, and I was looking through the DVDs for something to watch, mostly because the last working Apple remote has gone walkabout, and maybe it's because the Wachowskis have been in the news lately or maybe it's because it's one of the best films of the aughts, a pinnacle of cinematic achievement, but anyway I grabbed Speed Racer.
I mean, the opening sixteen minutes or so alone, a thrilling overture that blithely delivers a payload of unthinkably dense exposition—here is our protagonist, here is his backstory, here his family, his brother who went before him, here's how the sci-fi cars work, and also all the tricks we'll be using to tell the story, pay just enough attention to clock our moves, the time-shifts, the colors, the floating talking heads of sports commentators, as-you-know-Bobbing their polyphonic takes on the various narrative threads—it's a real piece of Gesamtkunstwerk, and you can't help but feel a little taken aback when the movie downshifts into the first act of its actual, y'know, story (though the disappointment is anticipated, cushioned, soon enough wiped away).
So anyway the story's unspooling, and I've folded a bunch (amazing, the laundry a seven-year-old can run through), and here comes the quiet beat when Ben Burns comes to see Speed Racer in the locker room, after Speed's DNF'd the Fuji Helexicon, and you realize, damn, they just ran a whole sequence in a conditional tense—anyway, it's quiet, as I said, and contemplative, we're at what you might call the hinge between the first act, and the second, which I wouldn't, but there's Ben Burns, whom the story's already told us is our Fisher King, who'd lost his soul by letting them let him win a race, the race, the Grand Prix, only to discover that all he can do after is sit outside the castle, and cast sports—but here he is, come to speak to our protagonist, Speed, and what does he say?
Nice race. Haven't seen moves like that in a long time.
And, I mean, Speed Racer is technicolorly, obviously a fantasy in any of a number of senses, but I'm speaking strictly Cluthian, for the moment: we see that the world (of racing) has gone wrong; that (its) honorable ideals have been thinned (by corporate corruption, and greed); our protagonist is then recognized (as the racer who can win in spite of it all); and thus the world returns (with all those flashbulbs, and a bottle of cold milk, and a kiss).
So you might think Ben Burns says "Haven't seen moves like that in a long time" (and not, "Damn, I've never seen moves like that before") because he's thinking of Speed's brother, Rex, or of his old rival, Stickleton, or even of himself, and it could be any one of those, or all of them at once, or none, but the real reason why he says that is because Speed must be recognized—and to be recognized, one must've been seen before. Maybe not in a long time. But now, again.
(And but one can argue nor would I stop them that the real recognition comes later, at what I'd never refer to as the hinge between acts two, and three, when Speed's about to storm out of the Racer household in a rage, in an echo of Rex's storming earlier, much earlier, when Pops sits Speed down to tell him what he didn't tell Rex, what he wishes he'd told Rex, what might've kept Rex from dying, as it were, but sequences can multitask, and I have always read this scene as a fantasy of what a parent might sit down to tell a child who's somehow, somewhich coming out, a parent who's come to see how wrongly, maybe, they'd treated a child who came out before, a parent who's life's been thinned by the regret of that loss, who's recognized in the second child a second chance, and oh, the return—)
Anyway. (Did I say that already?) —That, all that, or some approximation of that, was part of what was running through my mind when I got up from where I was sitting, and paused the DVD, and stepped, carefully, over all the folded laundry around and about to the keyboard, and after a moment's thought, typed this:
We've not seen this in a long time. —fantasy— Kip Manley (@kiplet) March 13, 2016
We've never seen this before. —sf
We're not gonna see this again. —horror
Madeleine nabobs.
I'm told that professionals, when recording on the road, in a hotel room, away from the studio, will climb into bed and pull a blanket up over themselves, to cut down on ambient noise, I suppose; but I didn't hear that until after, which is maybe why the audio's not so great on my end—well, that, and my habit of speakingquiterapidlytillthemomentIsuddenly, uh—
—pause. And the swerve. —But! Jonah Sutton-Morse, proprietor of Cabbages & Kings, invited me over (in part, I believe, based on this old post) to talk about reading, and genre, and reading genre to our kids, and it was a blast: he's a gracious and a generous host, and he keeps it moving in his finished pieces, and somehow even focussed—despite the material I gave him to work with!
So go, have a listen. —Jonah assembled a slideshow of book covers, a partial list of the titles we discussed, and it skews young, which is to be expected given our focus and purpose, but there's another skew I wanted to note, here, at least: it's rather almost entirely pale. —And that's understandable, I suppose, given our purpose and our focus, and who I was and what I read when I was young, but the very fact I'm saying it's understandable is telling enough, isn't it? Or the itch I feel to soothingly point out that it's a list of things I have read, not a list of recommendations to read, though I don't not recommend them, or not all of them, anyway, and it is what it was, which is awkward, which it should be, which is useless, which leaves me, what?
(There are moves I could make. Other lists to itemize. But.)
—A footnote, though: one of the last books we talk about was one of the first that ever made an impression on me, in the way that books can, even though I only ever saw a school library copy, and then not ever again for years afterward, forgetting the title, the author, the illustrator, the names of the characters, most of the plot, but not—that thing? Whatever it is, that's useful to us in a story, when all the rest is worn away? —Once Taran was old enough, I took those bones of a memory and went looking for the book, which it turns out is something the internet's pretty good at.
Something Queer is Going On. How (further) disappointed I am in myself, that I might've forgotten a title like that! —There was something of a disorienting madeleine-moment, opening the envelope, seeing a lost memory restored and reified with one rather swell foop of that vanilla-ish old-book smell, but more dizzying was opening up those worn boards (the front cover has since fallen off, and been taped) and reading it aloud, feeling the ghosts of the word-memories under what I was hearing my mouth speak, but above all having the two main characters restored: Jill, whose mother is "O.K.", and Gwen, with her habit of tapping her braces when she's thinking, and their friendship, which—and there's nothing that revolutionary about it, it's not like this was the only or first time it'd ever been done, but still: how shiveringly odd to hold in my hands the first time I'd ever so long ago met the archetypes I'd later lean on, when I started to write about Ysabel, and Jo.
If publishing a book takes one year, then why do George R.R. Martin's publishers only need three months? Learn how blockbuster novels can change the book production process.
A standard publisher's contract gives the publisher the right to conform the text to house style. If this clause is not changed, preservation of the author's punctuation is a matter of chance—it depends entirely on the discretion of the publisher. If the clause is changed, however, this STILL doesn't guarantee that the author's punctuation will be respected.
Once the structural edits are approved by the editor, the manuscript is "accepted" by the publisher and a laser-focused line edit process begins. Line edits are just what they sound like, a line by line editing of an entire manuscript. The editor typically champions this task, keeping the author in the loop in regards to questions or significant changes that the editor wants to make to a line. This can be something as simple as correcting a homophone or deleting a repeated reference (such as Davos clutching his finger bones). Or the edit can be something significant, like changing the tone of dialogue to make a chapter read differently in comparison to the chapters before and after. Sometimes the simple and complex line edits are the same thing, like when a singular word choice abruptly reveals the answer to a series-long mystery. Line edits take a variable amount of time depending on the size and complexity of the manuscript and the series it takes place within, but they typically do not stretch beyond two months.
After line edits, the manuscript is sent out for copy edits. These can be handled by the author's editor or by a separate editor specifically tasked with copy edits for multiple titles. Copy edits correct lingering grammar and spelling errors, and are focused on technical corrections and continuity rather than content and tone corrections. This process usually does not take more than a month, but is subject to the length of the manuscript and the availability of the copy editor. (Many authors, especially in the fantasy genre, work with a preferred copy editor who is familiar with the world's terminology and the author's voice, rather than a copy editor who must learn these from scratch. Having a consistent copy editor for a series also makes continuity errors easier to catch.)
The text was quite complicated, so I offered to meet the copy-editor before she started work. I had made a special trip to New York to try to settle possible difficulties in advance. I had five books that were coming up for completion; I was desperate to get back to them before they were gone; I wanted everything to be as simple and clearcut as possible. My editor called the copy-editor, who said she would rather work through the book first and send me her mark-up. The editor, copy-editor and production manager all assured me that the copy-editor's comments were only suggestions; I could change anything I didn't like, and then the book would be sent to the printer. I asked whether there were any points on which the editor felt strongly. If anyone wanted to make a case for some particular point I was happy to discuss it. The editor and copy-editor both said there was no point on which the editor felt strongly; no one wanted to make a case for any particular point. I reminded everyone politely that my contract gave me the last word.
The copy-editor made thousands of gratuitous changes to the book, for which she was, of course, paid an hourly rate. It was then necessary to go through the book thinking about these suggestions—if someone has "corrected" a grammatical mistake, it is always possible that it is a genuine mistake, so one must consult various works on usage to ensure that one has not been wrong all these years. I went through, anyway, marking up the mark-up, and I again made a special trip to New York to make sure there were no problems.
The subsequent line editing and copy editing processes cannot be skipped in the same manner. However, for a title as hotly anticipated as The Winds of Winter, external market forces, a publisher's annual profit quota, and the intensity of consumer demand for the book would ensure that once a manuscript was completed, George R.R. Martin and his editors would be working on nothing but that book, hour by hour, day by day. So while the intensity of demand wouldn't necessarily shorten the editing process, it would guarantee an immediate and uninterrupted editing process.
In this office we have a stupid, petty little conversation. The editor explains that if one does not italicise the titles of books it looks like carelessness. He explains that there are rules. The production manager explains that there are rules. I explain that the Chicago Manual of Style has only whatever authority we choose to give it. I explain: Look, these are two characters obsessed with numbers. The Chicago Manual of Style does not have a rule for using numerals in texts about characters obsessed with numbers because THIS BOOK HAD NOT BEEN WRITTEN when they last drew up the Chicago Manual of Style. They could not ANTICIPATE the need for a rule because the book did not then exist. I WROTE THE BOOK so I am obviously in a better position to decide what usage is correct for its characters than a group of people in Chicago who have NEVER SEEN IT.
I say: LOOK, if perceived norms did not exist it would not be possible to mark a text as departing from norms, it is not possible for the texture of a text to be different, to be perceived as original, without marking itself off from norms by departing from them.
What I really needed to focus on was persistence. I've worked in the publishing industry and I've worked on the floor in book retail before, so I've seen marketing from many sides, where it begins, how it's executed, and how successful it is. And to create an awareness of a new author really takes persistence in all of these areas. A marketing person at a book publisher deals with lots of authors and is probably overworked, so you have to remind them that you're there, but in a helpful way. Which means updating them on what progress you have made, and suggesting work that you can do to help with their marketing ideas. Your own persistence makes you an ongoing presence to your publisher and the marketing department, which may open up a larger number of venues for you to be presented within. And this all starts way before your book is even out.
They're looking at me in an embarrassed, pitying way, and it's kind of funny, because as it happens I am actually a, perhaps even the, world authority on this subject. I really am. The concept of propriety in ancient literary criticism was the subject of my doctoral thesis. It covered ancient criticism, rhetoric and theories of correctness of language from Homer to St Augustine, it took in sociolinguistics, it looked at the subject of linguistic Atticism, it looked at the whole tradition of Shakespearean scholarship with special attention to 18th-century objections to Shakespeare, it looked at the Homeric scholia, it did groundbreaking work on the conceptual difficulties raised by distinguishing propriety (which was seen as stylistic) from purity of language (which for ideological reason was meant to be neutral, a degree zero)—not only was it a monster of erudition, it also brought to bear modern theories of language and literature. The problem is not that I am speaking from a position of ignorance. I am speaking from a position of knowledge to people who don't know what knowledge would look like. I am talking to people who are afraid that other people who also don't know what knowledge would look like will read the book and think it is full of mistakes.
What is a good editor like? A good editor offers you decent advances, and goes to bat with his publisher to make sure your book gets promoted, and returns your phone calls, and answers your letters. A good editor does work with his writers on their books. But only if the books need work. A good editor tries to figure out what the writer was trying to do, and helps him or her do it better, rather than trying to change the book into something else entirely. A good editor doesn't insist, or make changes without permission. Ultimately a writer lives or dies by his words, and he must always have the last word if his work is to retain its integrity.
There's just one slight problem, which Marx and Bourdieu have thrashed out. A veil of decency separates the search for the 'best possible book' from sordid financial considerations. The novel, that bourgeois form of art, has no qualms about poking around in the dirty corners of money and power, but the people who bring these books to the market have a euphemistic discourse all their own, one which makes it possible to talk about money without talking about money. Other forms of art have their own systems of euphemisms, but they are different systems, adapted to the sources of revenue. Bringing the traces of writers' methods of composition to the market would involve talking in a non-euphemistic way about means of infiltrating those other systems of discourse; people who are euphemising successfuly in one field find that very uncomfortable; it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Market forces also affect the production process of a title. While a novel begins as a work of personal expression by its author, it will eventually be seen by a bookseller as primarily a product. The task of a publisher is to balance the artistic expression of the author with the demands of the marketplace on the product. For a debut author, the publisher and bookseller must work together to generate initial demand for that author and their story. In George R.R. Martin's case, booksellers want the product as quickly as possible, so a publisher's task becomes maintaining the integrity of the writing while satisfying the intense demand for the product.
Fighting too long against.
Dragons can be beaten, sure. But the most important thing that fantasy teaches us is there's this factory, just over the hill, that won't stop churning out more.
Teleological bees.
So Benjamin Gabriel, Erin Horáková, Ethan Robinson, and Aishwarya Subramanian got together over at Strange Horizons to chat about Jupiter Ascending and if you're anything like me, you're not reading this anymore; you're over there, reading that. —There's a lot to love in the giddy watch-me-for-the-changes interplay (friends with wing benefits! every young girl a Skydancer commercial!) but I'm going to focus on those teleological bees, or rather the incoherently ateleological, and Aisha's neatly apt coinage of "world-furnishing" (as decidedly opposed to the clomping foot of world-building), if only because it dovetails nicely enough if you push it with points I've made about grit v. grain, and if I don't leave it at that I'll just keep babbling on, so.
A bricoleur's dam'.
Reading the Attebery's been interesting, and good, most especially the chapters on structure and (most especially) character, but I'm coming up on the last chapter, the one I got into it for, "Recapturing the Modern World for the Imagination," all so I could start to get at what he had in mind when he coined "indigenous fantasy" which, I mean, well. We'll see. —I mean, I've peeked; of course I peeked: the opening of the second paragraph alone:
Of all the subgenres to emerge within fantasy in recent years, the one that promises to reshape the genre most significantly is as yet unnamed, or rather no name for it has proved adequate.
Written in 1992, five years after I'd already got lost; by 1992, I'd already read Ægypt (The Solitudes, anyway) cover to cover and back again, and oh God Folk of the Air. And since then, but since then, that promise—the promise embodied by this swirling mess of indigenous fantasy (soi disant), this low fantasy, contemporary, postly modernist, magically realist, paranormally romantic, this syncretistic mulch of pulped megatexts, superheroic, supermagical, superscientifictional, these fantasies that "describe settings that seem to be real, familiar, present-day places, except that they contain the magical characters and impossible events of" say it with me now, URBAN FANTASY—what happened? What became of it? Of us? —I mean, we ate the damn world, or what we could find of it, and what good did any of it do?
But in all this, welling up out of all of this, there's a specific refusal? rejection? repudiation? that I struggle to apprehend, much less articulate, when I turn from this model I'm building to argue with, yell at, kick against, to take up the thing that kicks, that yells, that argues? sermonizes? —There's an abjunct, between that all-of-this, and the very specific feeling of tuning a sentence just so, of overdubbing detail, of rigging or tripping over structural rhymes, the very peculiar shiver that can obtain with just the simple repetition of a cocked and loaded phrase—map and territory, theory and praxis, forest and trees, I know, I know, but still: I'm either wrong there, or wrong here, and I know where I'd rather not be right.
—Anyway, permit me some links: just about a quarter of the next volume of praxis has appeared since June; I'm hoping the larger cycles have begun to hove into view, and you can see the shape I think it makes, might yet end up making, and that I can keep this discordant bolus soaring, not crashing in a mutter of nothing-or-other:
At the late-night double-feature picture show.
Not only has SF lost some of its power, it has lost its innocence in a world in which the products of science include horrifying war machines and seas of waste. SF has always had both optimistic and pessimistic strains, both A Modern Utopia and The Time Machine, but the difference has been largely a matter of one's view of human nature, not of the capability and fitness of science itself. Now, however, some writers seem to have lost faith in the scientific imagination, looking outside the scientific megatext for other ways of seeing and judging. Yet there are very few alternative megatexts sufficiently powerful, comprehensive, and familiar to act as a commentary on science. Even religion lacks the authority it once had for many readers, because it cannot match the material payoffs provided by science.
The discourse of fantasy can challenge SF, partly because it pays its own tribute to science. Impossibility itself, one of the elements of fantasy, is defined largely through reference to the current scientific worldview, especially where that coincides with common sense. Because it is the current view of reality that is violated in a fantasy, inventions that were once fantastic may be no longer, or vice versa. The transmutation of metals might serve as an example of both sorts of change: once part of science, then impossible, and now achieved. Nonetheless, we can tell whether the transmutation is to be viewed as possible or not by the discourse that surrounds it. If an alchemist's description of the philosopher's stone were inserted verbatim into a modern fantasy, it would cease to testify to the existence of such a miraculous substance and become part of the rhetoric of the unreal. The same description within a science fiction text might be used to represent exploded myth or to highlight the mysterious properties of transuranic metals.
If fantasy were only the denial of science, however, there would be no contest between them. But in affirming impossibility, fantasy opens the door to mythology, which is the name we give to cast-off megatexts. Gods, fairies, ancestor spirits, charms, spells: a whole host of motifs no longer convey belief and yet retain their narrative momentum and—and here is one of the great differences between science fiction and fantasy—their congruence with the ways we wish we saw the world. They are emotionally and psychologically, if not scientifically, valid, and therefore most potent where science fiction is traditionally weakest.
I still rarely put in an appearance in my own sex fantasies. I remember being startled and a bit alarmed when I learned that other people—so-called normal people—did: the person squirming under the hail of blows, or lecturing sternly as their arm rises and falls, is the avatar of the dreamer herself. That seemed to me, when I first heard about it, like only half a fantasy. It still does.
What I love about my two-faced fantasies is that I get to body-surf. Sometimes I'm the spanker, strict and loving, doling out punishment and affection, slowly chivvying my charge back into the world of acceptable behavior. Sometimes I'm the spankee, nervous and filled with dread, embarrassed as I drop my pants and bend over, fighting to remain stoical and then losing the fight, collapsing in tears and remorse.
If I'm by myself or nobody is watching, I might even whisper the dialogue to myself, complete with the appropriate facial expressions (indulgent smile, disapproving frown, quivering lip, tearful grimace).
I keep expecting to outgrow these fantasies and mature into something more appropriate, but I turned sixty last birthday, and the fantasies have stayed about the same, changing only in a 21st century update to the casting (Captain Picard spanking Q, Spike spanking Giles—you get the general idea).
So it should come as no surprise that in my kinky life, I am a switch, someone who enjoys both ends of the paddle or strap or cane. Nor should it be all that startling to learn that my sexual persona is male, and that I expect my partners to treat me as such.
But that's in the bedroom, or the dungeon. What about at the writing desk?
One imagines that one can escape a category by collapsing it, but if one tries to collapse the category, the roof falls on one's head. There a person is, then, having not escaped the category, but having only changed its architecture. Once it was a category with a roof, now it is a category in which everyone is buried in the rubble made of what once was a roof over their heads.
Three tangents make a triskele—which is not, you'll note, a triangle, and thus not nearly so stable as that shape would have it. —Ethan Robinson says:
This goes a long way toward explaining why I love her work so much, I think; often it fixates—again I think the word is accurate—specifically on the question, what makes this work different from any other? what makes it "fantasy" (or, more rarely with her, "science fiction") rather than otherwise? and answers: one is allowed neither the luxury nor the irresponsibility of taking anything for granted.
When I was very young that sort of thing was frightening because it represented a breakdown of the logic of the world. A worldbuilding incompatibility that cast doubt on the author's grasp of the narrative, as it were. Eventually I grew up and saw the invisible world as a rhetorical device to avoid ever talking about violence, cruelty, and responsibility, and that didn't make it any better. That's just another way that the world breaks down.
And some time ago, John M. Ford went and said:
Fantasy doesn't make different stories possible, but sometimes it makes different outcomes possible, through the literalization of metaphor that is one of the key things fantasy does. Moral strength can change the real world—and a good thing, too—but in a fantastic story it can make dramatic, transformative, immediate changes. The idea that such transformations always have a price is what keeps fantasy from being morally empty—magic may save time and reduce staff requirements, but it offers no discounts.
I'm always on the lookout for groups or schools or clubs that might, if they knew of me, have me as a member, so that I might Marxily walk away before they think to ask; so when the Millions teased the heralding of a New Modernist age (with a parenthetical invocation of Josipovici), well—I had to go take a peek.
More recently—say, in the last 20 years or so—numerous so-called postmodern novels have contained this distinctly non-postmodern quality—not that the characters feel so much as the reader. The cumulative effect isn't necessarily a fully fleshed-out character but a fully emotional experience. Think of Jonathan Safran Foer's strong sentiments in the face of the Holocaust and 9/11; think of the alligator-wrestling family at the heart of Karen Russell's Swamplandia!; think of the way Ali Smith works her linguistic magic in order to convey the complexities of love and relationships; or the heart-breaking wallop of David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary; think of Reif Larsen's I am Radar, of Zadie Smith's NW, of Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. Can these books truly be considered postmodern when the most prevalent aspect is emotion rather than thought?
Consider the way even genre fiction has been infiltrated by humanity and feeling. Science fiction is no longer merely speculative, adventurous and pure fabulism. Now we have Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and myriad others. Fantasy is no longer characterized simply by lengthily described worlds and political intrigue; now we have Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles and almost everything David Mitchell has written. These so-called genre books now aspire to human heights.
So, well, yes—careful with that cricket bat, Eugene—not so much of a there there. —I drew what amusement I might from the idea of a return to modernism's warm emotional core, a repudiation of the chilly formal games of postmodernism, but it's weak tea at best, and then there's the evocation of Franzen. (Turns out postmodern tropes are like thermal curtains: not as embarrassing as one first thought.) —I mean, I did then pick up the Attebery I'm leafing through, for reasons, turned the page, and laughed at the juxtaposition of the previous with this paragraph—
John Barth has described the reductio ad absurdum of the Modernist movement in his essay "The Literature of Exhaustion": "Somebody-or-other's unbound, unpaginated, randomly assembled novel in a box." According to Barth, Modernism's program of "disjunction, simultaneity, irrationalism, anti-illusionism, self-reflexiveness, medium-as-message, political olympianism, and a moral pluralism approaching moral entropy" was accomplished by the middle of this [past] century. Readers had been educated, had grown wary of literary illusion, could no longer take narrative or narrator for granted. Nothing remained for Modernist writers to exercise their irony upon, and so Modernist fiction had nothing more to say.
—but that smacks entirely too much of pulling Marshall McLuhan out from behind a fern, and anyway, a page earlier Attebery was summing up Edmund Wilson's take on modernism as "essentially mimetic reporting striving to turn into lyric poetry," and would you look at that? I've been a modernist all this time.
I suppose I shouldn't be too unkind—charity, and resounding gongs, if nothing else. It's understandable that modernism and postmodernism are so easily confused: postmodernism's merely what modernism gets up to in our bedroom after the war, and you know me: I'm a partisan of that small country, mindful of death, disinclined to long journeys, ever since the war and all, you know. —Which may not explain to you why I eagerly clicked on the link to an article titled, "For the future struggle: what is science fiction?" but trust me, I was eager to read something with a tagline that read, "The science fiction that is most important is that which situates itself at a point of struggle." (—I want to be wrong. —Doesn't everyone?)
I was eager, but I read it with a deepening frown, a weightening sigh. It isn't so much a paean or a how-to or even a why-we-must on revolutionary SF; it's just a minor jeremiad against utopia, which, I mean—
The originating Utopia of Thomas Moore's 16th century novel was founded by King Utopos, who cut off the peninsula from the mainland, making it into an island. Utopias are, like their primary ancestor, closed systems, functioning perfectly without class, oppression or struggle. As islands, cauterized from the world, proper utopias are resided in by unchanging, eternal societies, a conception which is both absurd and bordering on fascism in its undemocratic and unquestioning existence.
Utopias then are in fact antithetical to science fiction. They are more like a blueprint of a future society, instructions and pictures of a post-revolutionary world rather than stories set in those worlds. Narrative relies on change, process and struggle, all things that cannot happen within a utopia in which struggle, need and desire have been banished.
—sure, if you define it like that. —Utopia is when our lives matter, dammit, and if you can't make that storyable, God help you. —Inept utopias are bad, to be sure, but these future worlds the mode demands as backdrops for its narratives and struggles—when the action pauses for a moment, and you take a breath, and look around, and see just how it's different, the then and there, from the here and now, that such difference is imaginable, possible, that it's amazing, frightening, thought-sparking, utterly uncanny, the home you never knew you could have—this is what breaks hearts, cracks heads, keeps Plato up at night. (It's also what can bring on the abjunct, yes. I mean, I know I'm wrong. It's impossible. Look around you.)
So maybe we wouldn't disagree, Stupart and Dillon and me, ends and means, broadly speaking and all that, it's just how we marshal our arguments, but still, details matter, I mean theirs or to again be charitable the constraint of wordcounts or something leads to a tendentious misreading of Delany's Triton: Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus, Part One—
On this heterotopia on Neptune's moon, Triton, the lead character Bron attempts to live in a post capitalist world where anyone can change gender and sexuality at will and structural oppression appears to no longer exist. However, despite living in a world ruled by individual freedoms, religious mania, the threat of war and violent subjectivities still exist, as typified in the main character themself.
—by way of demonstrating that Triton is one of the good ones, the not-a-utopias, see? Struggle! —But Triton is a utopia, where all our stupid petty bullshit misunderstood and -standing lives matter. —The war, the very real and not at all threatened war, comes from outside Triton, from way back down on Old damned Earth, and maybe I cling to this because these days when I think of the book it isn't Bron's shaggy-dog of a story that sticks, or the New York City I can see in it now that I've lived there (once, and long ago), or even the game of vlet; what looms over everything else in the book now comes at the very end, Appendix B: Ashima Slade and the Harbin-Y Lectures: Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus, Part Two, the part that begins:
Just over a year ago, at Lux on Iapetus, five million people died. To single out one death among that five million as more tragic than another would be monumental presumption.
One of the many, many to die, when gravity and atmosphere were stripped away from the city by Earth Intelligence sabotage, was the philosopher and mathematician Ashima Slade.
And, I mean—
Falling will fall, fell.
The Fall, okay, but did anything ever actually fall? Did the story ever scale vertiginous, dizzying heights, only then to plunge? Or the characters, or a character? An action? —Not as such, no. —Mostly I'm left with a lingering confusion with Tarsem Singh's spectacular 2006 film whenever I try to talk about it, which is annoying, but mostly to me. —Oh, this: I wrote this a few months back, as part of a conversation with Lili Loofbourow about why I'd liked it, and she hadn't, and why I'd ended up coming rather forcefully around to her side of the matter; she's the "you" in what's below, and this piece in particular is what it's responding to—treat this post, if you like, as an off-brand badly xeroxed fanfic installment of Dear Television, or something, with parenthetical interruptions from the show itself as it was being written about. —Anyway; enough prologue: with the announcement of season three, and with the occasional bits of praise I've been seeing from others (who really ought to know better), here's the matter as it began the beguine back when:
The Fall, okay, but nothing ever fell, as it were. Except, y'know, the bad guy, I guess, at the end? —And oh for God's sake Milton? —I'm typing this as the last episode is playing on the other screen, so there's another piece of evidence to add to the snack-grabbing and beard-shaving you noted.
But first maybe why I liked it, or was liking it, or was thinking it was something I was liking. (Gibson's one technique is to play on, or instruct others to play on, the desires of her subjects, and welp, here's Spector looking right at the camera in the interview room and calling our attention to precisely how clever this is.) —Sorry. —The first season was appointment television for us, in the sense that Jenn and I made appointments to sit down and watch an episode or two together, when we got a chance, between day jobs, childcare, and creative enterprises. (And now Gibson's proxy with Katie, the handsome young detective she requested before she knew she'd need a handsome young detective, has just made a mess of getting any actual information from Katie, and made a hash of treating Katie in any sort of a humane fashion, but has of these two mistakes made what was supposed to be a dramatically satisfying moment.) —Other appointments were made for Hannibal, and Top of the Lake, and (in theory) The Good Wife, and Orange is the New Black, but: appointments are hard to keep, and it's easy to watch television while you're doing something else, like coloring comics, or running maintenance routines on a database, which is why she's watched all of Orange herself, and I'm caught up on Good Wife, and we never did finish Top of the Lake, which I'm tempted to go and take up again now, and feel a little guilty about that.
(The mannequin in the trunk. I admit I've completely lost track of where that was supposed to've come from.)
But! The Fall! Gillian Anderson rocking her cool, severe British accent! Rainy grey cinematography! (Oh, and here's the daughter's interview, to remind me where that damn mannequin came from, though damned if I can actually remember it myself. And Gibson, tearing up, telling her proxy precisely why she's tearing up, thanks.) —What's not to like, really. (Oh for God's sake the miscarriage.) —Sorry. That first season of The Fall we did finish, is the basic point, I guess, and there's a there there: the aforementioned, plus a slow, steady, controlling hand in the direction, a keen eye for place, and a fascination with the minutiae of process—as opposed to the sterile gestures of the procedural, which I should mention as another media-consumption data point: the fucking procedural, the Castle and the Bones and the House and the Elementary and the Person of Interest and the Psych and the Leverage and yes also the Miss Fisher's and that dam' Good Wife, each with its rhythms, its shorthands, its conventions, and though they may play with them, some better or at least with more evident joy than others, or mutate them over the course of their run or even once or twice upend them utterly, they're still there, implacable skeletons that mean you can queue one up on the one window of your computer set-up and go about your business in the other and surface three or four hours later having watched four or five episodes without ever really seeing one, you know? —So when there's a show that doesn't immediately tip its hand, that takes its time, that buries the lede, I suppose, I tend to sit up and take notice, but also to cut it some slack.
(And here we are, the confrontation we've been slow-burning our way to through ten previous episodes: Gibson v. Spector, cara a cara! —I paused the playback to put some additional fillips on clauses, here and there.)
One of the procedurals I was watching in and around the same time was Criminal Minds, which, ick. —I watched some of it in small part because of Mandy Patinkin, but mostly because there's a webserial by a group of genre writers, some of whom I've been a fan of since high school, such as Emma Bull and Steven Brust and the infamous Will Shetterly, who was once more firmly on the rails ("It is utterly compelling, compulsive," is not the language of someone speaking about a thing they've experienced themselves, but of someone attempting to describe what they've seen someone else experience, which—oh, never mind)—Criminal Minds, yes. The webserial's a game of procedurals—it's called Shadow Unit; the authors take turns writing short stories which are (sort of) thought of as episodes of a television show, sort of horror, sort of urban fantastic, about a semi-occult task force in the FBI—I had something of a professional interest, as well as enjoying the stories, and seeing what the writers were getting up to with something of a new-media experiment. —Anyway: they'd talk about enjoying this program, Criminal Minds, which they'd based Shadow Unit on, so I finally got around to watching some episodes, and wanted to take a long hot shower after: Bones is full of deeply unpleasant, self-absorbed people, and Castle's awfully blasé about death and civil rights violations, and House is just plain mean, but Criminal Minds is the foulest moral pornography, a terrifically ugly example of reveling in what you pretend to condemn, ideology they don't even bother to rinse off much less gussy up, which is why, I'm sure, it's on its tenth season or whatever over on CBS.
I mention (all) this because what was compelling, what was compulsive about the first season of The Fall, for me, was how it handled Spector. Unlike a procedural's monsters-of-the-week, he's very much a part of the world: he has a job, he has appointments, he has a family, and a family has him, and this humanized him—in a very frail, limiting, deflating way, deftly making the point that Gibson rather stentoriously makes to Burns just before this climactic interview: he's just a man, a person, a human being. No monster, not in any sense of the word. Not empowered; not invincible. Arrested.
The attention paid to the logistics of his activities, the lack of attention that seemed to be shown for any attempts at patly explaining or reasoning through the why of what he was doing—it's not, of course, that this has never been done before, but it was such a welcome change of pace from the Criminal Minds approach that, well, I mean. If you're going to watch shows about serial murders and rapes and such.
And none of this is to take away from Gillian Anderson and her Gibson, about whom so much ink has been spilled—though dear Lord, to insist she doesn't pursue self-destructive sexual relationships? Every single one we see either risks or damaged, long ago, some aspect of her professional life, which is the only life we see. —But I digress. I was talking about Dornan's blithely pathetic Spector.
("The people who like to read and watch programs about people like you," says Gibson, and fuck you, show; you just blew the last of my good will right out the window with that direct punch on the nose.)
—There's two moments, in the first season, that jolted like electric shocks, and fixed it in the plus column for me. —There once were, I should say. —The first was when Spector crept into his sleeping daughter's bedroom, climbed up on her bed, pushed away the bit of ceiling and tucked his book away in the attic: brute force, perhaps, but still: the mean logistics of his evil, how it had to be folded into and worked around the quotidian, how—and I'm gonna digress for a moment, but: I did a lot of babysitting, in high school? And one thing I discovered, after making sure the kids were asleep, when I went snooping about the houses, as one does when one babysits, one thing I discovered was almost every single house had a stash of pornography, and sometimes it was under the bed, and sometimes it was in a nightstand, and quite often it was on a shelf high up in the closet; anyway. This little depth charge of someone else's desires, squirreled away. —The moment had resonance. There was a shivery horror to it that stuck.
The second moment was that first phone call between Spector and Gibson. It's the first time he gets to perform as the monster he's supposed to be; it's the first time we're privy to any attempt to explain why he does what he does, and, well, as with any of these shows or stories, it's bullshit, utter adolescent cod-Nietzsche bullshit. But: the show knows it's bullshit. And astonishingly, electrifyingly, for that one moment Spector gets to know it's bullshit. He falters, he hesitates, there's a look in his eye—that feeling, when you've been living with an idea, holding it in your head, telling it to yourself, and you finally get a chance to say it out loud to someone, and you hear yourself, the words coming out of your mouth, and you realize it's all crap, the magic's gone, it was never really there in the first place—to have that basic interaction applied to serial-killer nonsense was beyond refreshing. It felt revelatory. The weirdly anticlimactic structure of the first season, with no actual confrontation as such, with him getting away, as it seemed—it felt deliberate, as if the show wanted to say forget catharsis, forget quote-justice-unquote, this, here, this moment, this is the important thing to take away: he's pathetic, he's feeble, he's destroyed real people and that makes him contemptible, he's just a person himself, and there's no deep insight into rage or fantasy or desire here. Go home.
So, y'know. I liked it.
(And yes, of course, Rose is alive! God, what a weirdly desultory bit of plot that was. I will say that a show that has become this fetishistic about process and detail is nonetheless and of course terribly squeamish about what and how a person might excrete, trapped in a trunk for was it three episodes? Or four?)
There were a number of ways the show could've carried on into a second season; what I'd thought—Stella Gibson moves on to another
(—oh for FUCK's sake extrajudicial execution ex machina—)
where was I? —How it could've carried on, yes. The continuing adventures of Stella Gibson as she moves on to another town where she's had an inappropriate relationship with someone in the police hierarchy that might compromise yet another investigation of a sadly all-too-human fuck-up drunk on patriarchal power, haunted every now and then by the one that got away, in Belfast—that wasn't going to happen. Spector retreating, doubling down on his bullshit in isolation, resurfacing to try and make another go of it, okay, there's possibilities there, and the fact that he does find someone he can articulate his bullshit to, who'll validate it and egg it on, and it's a teenager, there's potential there, too, dicey, but. (Oh, Katie! I really hope you end up in a Kelly Link short, so you can finally become the whacked-out Nancy Drew you so desperately want to be.) —Anyway. Second season, I was still on Team "Aw, I liked it" through the first episode and into the second. I'm a sucker for brooding on ferries, what can I say.
But! That third episode. Two moments, again: first, there was the dizzying bewilderment that came when, almost immediately after Gibson gives a distraught-for-her tirade about how it's the task force's fault that Rose was taken by Spector, Archie Panjabi's M.E. (I nip over to another tab to Google—her name was Reed Smith? What?) rather firmly informs Gibson that it's highly likely Spector found Rose because of the task force, and Gibson nods, considering, yes, this is likely true. It was like two scenes from two alternate takes on the story slapped into the same show without anyone realizing the causality breach, and while I'm as big a fan of kicking over the traces of story-logic as the next fellow, they don't need to be so carelessly Brechtian. —So that was the first moment I sat up and said, wait, show, what?
The second comes at the end of the interminable sequence in Gibson's hotel room, after the bit in the bar, and the wildly, desperately obvious fanservice-kiss and flirtation. —We get Spector's infiltration of the hotel, which is insultingly contrived: the waiter's just put down a tray right by the service entrance! He's left a master key-card on the tray! Spector knows what a master key-card looks like, and can do! Look, room-service orders, hanging on the wall right there! And that one, right there, it's from Stella Gibson! See, how cleverly he hacks the script? I mean, the hotel? —And all of it done in one shot, too. I'd've found it far more "realistic," far less noticeable and off-putting, if the show had just made it clear he'd broken into her room somehow, who cares, let's not bend over backwards to justify how. —So there's that. There's Burns, dropping by to whinge drunkenly about the B-plot of the first season, and since there's no further fallout from this the only reason he does so is to get punched, which, okay, good moment there, and then he gets cleaned up, and more discussion of this or that explicative point, and then we shifted somewhere else I think? Long enough for Stella to change out of her suit into a robe just like the one she was wearing in the dream sequence, huh, and then she boots up her computer to see what Spector's done to her desktop, and—she leaps for her gun!
Which is an impulse I can totally understand, if one were used to guns, and had one at one's disposal. But in the flow of the episode, the tonal shifts, the way everything intervening had been strung out to such lengths, how we'd already had the one confrontation in that hotel room just minutes before, it felt wildly out of place. I laughed, when I should've jumped. A definite stumble.
And then things start to snowball, and where I might've cut some slack before, I now shook my head. Spector's wrestling with logistics becomes instead superhumanly smooth urban-ranger skillz, to the extent that he seemed to be colluding with the writers to get away with stuff. The minutiæ of process becomes fetishistic, calling attention to precisely how much labor and money was being poured into this task force that can't seize actual evidence from a house they're destroying to surveil. (Though I did initially like the murmuring Greek chorus effect of the surveillors all checking in with dispatch, it got numbingly repetitive after a bit.) —You mentioned the slow-motion shots of his being hauled into the police station; I found the sullen gotcha! of his arrest to be, well, arresting: let him go from the scene of the officer-involved shooting, as if he's not a person of interest in any other matter, let him walk half a block away, look about, and then let someone else march up out of nowhere to arrest him for Rose's abduction—why? What on earth was the point of that?
I'd like to think the show itself was aware, just for a moment, of just how far it had fallen when the abusive husband got the phone call from his mate, oh, hey, I just saw your wife, the one you've been looking for. —But I can't be certain.
Looking however briefly into the production history it's easy to take what I think I know of the making of these things and run some diagnostics: the first five shows were ordered in one batch, and proved so popular a second batch were ordered, and not everyone could come back for them, including the director of the first batch, so the writer directed the second run, and voila! And now there's going to be a third. —But this reading is awfully generous to my own half-considered initial impressions of the show, a decent-enough first outing run into the ground by a thoughtlessly extended second, so I distrust it, because what the hell do I know. —I'm left with a point Sady Doyle made about Agent Carter, about how feminism is just a button to be pushed now by multinational corporations, a niche to be pandered to, and that's kind of what this feels like: hey, that misandry's pretty popular with some folks, let's see if we can make a splash. —But that's uncharitable, and I do try to have some charity, so I'll walk that back; it's not worth it as a punchline.
So. Anyway. —Thoughts! I had some.


text:
Cold Blood by Richard Kerridge
To our delight Cold Blood: Adventures with Reptiles and Amphibians – course tutor Richard Kerridge's nature writing memoir – will be Book of the Week on Radio 4, July 26th to August 2nd.
On the MA, we had earlier studied 'Our Adder', a shorter piece of writing that appears in the book, and had a stimulating discussion about its complex and fascinating reflection on human – animal relations. You can link to this piece, published by Granta, here.
Richard has been garnering excellent reviews, such as this by Patrick Barkham in the Guardian. He talked to Laura Rawlings on Radio Bristol and also appeared on BBC Radio 4's Midweek: you can listen to this here (listen from around 33 minutes in).

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Edinburgh Caravan Club Site
Edinburgh Caravan Club Site is an ideal location for your holiday getaway.
Edinburgh Caravan Club Site is an ideal location for your holiday getaway.
William Street is located in Central Edinburgh in the heart of the West End Village. The street is home to a large number of businesses, well-loved pubs as well as stylish boutiques.
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text:
This year I"m going to have a go at making a few walking sticks though I"m only starting off with some simple thumb sticks, the idea came about because my grandaughter wanted a stick like grandads and I decided it would be nice to make her one rather than just buy one (hopefully it"ll be something she can keep and will mean a bit more for her)
She is aware of the process and how long it takes, we started off last year with her coming with me when we scoured a few hedgerows looking for suitable sticks which we cut and have been hanging since in my shed drying out.
walking sticks
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Re: walking sticks
That's a really lovely idea, and she'll treasure it.
Guinea fowl & a lot of surplus poultry equipment.
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Cubed ice isn't cool. You know what's cool? Soccerball-shaped ice.
Ice Ball Mold, a company touting technology "direct from Tokyo," has crafted some pretty nifty ice making machines for unleashing your inner ice sculptor. These limited production models will cost you thousands of dollars, though, so best wait until the knockoff version makes it to TV infomercials.


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DSD Plant Hire List
All of our specialist plant is owned and maintained in house by expert fitters. All our plant is regularly serviced and repairs are carried out in our workshop facilities. This ensures that all our machinery is kept at near showroom condition.
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We have a range of rollers to hire that come in a variety of sizes and weights, from 1.2 metre wide rollers for smaller jobs like asphalt footpaths and walkways to 1.8 metres for larger jobs such as driveways, roads and car parks. Our Hamm rollers are well known for developing first-class technology while also having extremely user-friendly controls that make using their plant safe, easy and reliable.
Chip Spreader
Our 14ft hydrostatic chip spreader is one of the reasons were the best to go to for plant hire. We guarantee easy and even chip spreading, even whilst going around corners. Our spreader has complete safety with emergency stop buttons and dead mans switches at each control station. Complete control of the machine from centre or remotely at each end with connecting footway.
We have a number of different road surfacing plant for hire, this includes our Wirtgen W100 CFi Tracked Road Planer. Our expert team of road layers has many years of experience of not only road planing, but laying new asphalt surfaces from the likes of Tarmac, Cemex and Hanson. Wirtgen is a world market leader that was formed in 1961 and produce a wide range of plant relating to road construction. Their road planers are constructed using the most up-to-date methods while having an extensive quality assurance procedure.
We have an excellent range of Vogele paver hire plant. Vogele has more than 80 years of experience in the development and manufacture of road pavers. They are built using the highest level of engineering and quality that makes their pavers global leaders in the industry. Whatever your paving job, we have the right paver for you.


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(2009 - 2010) - Cross Country Boys
Date: Nov. 07, 2009
Time: 08:00 AM
Location: Sandhills Research Park
Saturday, November 7 at Sandhills Research Center.
Admission is $5.00 per car.
9:00 am............ Class A Boys
9:30 am........... Class AA/A Girls
10:00 am............ Class AA Boys
10:30 am............ Presentation of Awards
11:00 am............ Class AAA Girls
11:30 am............ Class AAA Boys
12:00 pm............ Class AAAA Girls
12:30 pm............ Class AAAA Boys
1:30 pm........... Boys Presentation of Awards
From I-20 East Take the Clemson Road Exit – turn towards restaurants. Stay on Clemson Road until you cross over US 1 (Two Notch Road). The entrance is just past US 1 on the right. The entrance on US 1 will be closed, it will be open after the final race for those wishing to exit.
Address for GPS
900 Clemson Road
Columbia SC 29229


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July and August 2018
Brigit's Garden offers an excellent opportunity for children to run wild, get their hands mucky and make some new friends.
The Celtic Gardens, woodlands, meadows, polytunnel and lochán provide a unique setting for kids to explore the wonders of nature, guided by our experienced staff.
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Book a Brigit's Garden camp now and give your kids a special experience and a lifetime of memories.
Fun with Nature (ages 5 – 7yrs)
• Nature games in the Woodlands
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Starting July 16th & 23rd and August 13th 2018.
Questions? Email email@example.com or phone 091 550905
Survival Skills (ages 8-12 yrs)
- Create a natural hut
- Cook food on a campfire
- Learn tracking skills
- Identify plants and insects
- Build teamwork and leadership skills
- Nature crafts and more!
Five-day camps:
Monday to Friday 10am -1:30pm
Starting July 16th & 23rd and August 13th, 2018.
Email email@example.com or phone 091 550905
Summer Camps


text: Tried the search function but no luck. I have a lot of iphone apps that sync to the Ipad, but i would rather they didn't. I am sure there is a way to control this, but am a bit lost as I don't want to delete from from Itunes, just from the pad and not have them return. Can some one just direct me to a link that would be of help? thanks


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So I did the same with my pictures for week 29.
However, when they arrived, I was kind of sad about finishing the week so quickly and not having any of the paper-cutting, sticking-things-on kinda fun that I got out of the more colorfull pages.
And my Project Life album looked more like my photo albums do: they are clean and white with large pictures, focussing really more on beautiful images than stories.
So, I cut all the prints up again :)
As I had originally printed them in white templates with a small line of text underneath, and it seemed a waste not to use it, I cut the journaling out as well and used that in the spread.
Turns out I like that most about the whole spread!
So, as my goal for 2013 (my first PL year) is to find my own style, I can now safely say all white is not it.
One thing I started doing recently and liked ( so I am going to keep doing it) is use a picture for the weeknumber card.
I just pick a general picture, or one that captures the week somehow ( or shows off my tan) and add the week number & dates. This way you do have a week number in your spread, but you do not have to sacrifice picture-space.
So at least I have "weeknumber cards" covered. Now onto finding the rest of my style. 23 more weeks to do so (doesn't time fly??)


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To understand Japanese, one must look at what they like to do. Japanese like to take bath in a very special way. I remember decades ago, in one of my early trips to Tokyo, my wife and I stayed in a small hotel in Asakusa, a popular tourist district with the famous Kinryuzan Temple. On the top floor of the hotel, there is a huge public bath in which male guests can do the bath ritual and soak in a huge hot water communal pool overlooking Tokyo. In addition to public bath houses, Natural hot springs (温泉, onsen) are numerous and highly popular across Japan. Every region of the country has its share of hot springs and resort towns, which come with them. The internal sensation that a Japanese seeks is a balanced chi-filled body created by hot bath, not without a short period of "suffering" before one can ease into the enjoyable meditative state. The mind is totally consumed by the hot water and the person will enter a mode of total focus that rational thoughts are supposed to be blocked out.
Most Japanese love such sensation, except perhaps some of the younger generation who feel more akin to embracing the western environment of a Starbucks in Shibuya, to see and to be seen like any Western kid. Even then, in the heart of such busy district like Shibuya, there are small cafes scattering in the side streets where, mostly on the first floor, I found a few salaried men and women sitting stoically in front of a café, very Zen like.
Japanese love Zen, and they like to create the feeling of Zen in traditional practices like tea, archery and calligraphy as mentioned above. What is meaningful in Zen for the Japanese personality? What are they seeking in Zen, as expressed in the different Ways?
First of all, it is not passive enjoyment. The Japanese Way of Tea is not like simply enjoying a nice cup of tea. If that be the case, no ceremony will need to be learned. Secondly, it is not like a quantifiable achievement. In the higher Dans, Kyudo practitioners are not being judged principally by their target scores (which being no more than 20% of the final score). Thirdly it is not just simply beauty. In Japanese calligraphy, a piece of work is not judged principally by its artistic beauty (that will make Japanese calligraphy works of graphic or abstract art).
Steps in practising/doing Japanese Ways are meticulously set out as rules. A practitioner of a Way has to learn the steps to the letter, usually in a particular order and which always requires some kind of physical pain (oftentimes involves muscular endurance pain) on the part of a practitioner. Suffering, rather than to be avoided, is an honorable act for a Japanese. What suffering finally delivers is a perfection of the steps. Perfection in a such as way that the particular movements of a Way has to be second-nature to the practitioner. Perfection also has to include the mind. The mind has to be totally focused in attending to the task. The kind of focus requires is meditative in nature. In other words, it should be in essence as in the zone as in seated meditation. This is moving meditation par excellence.
It is Zen. It is Japanese interpretation of Zen. It is attention to physical that delivers mental results. It is Tao. It is The Way!
|Japanese tea ceremony


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Since its first publication in 1999, OHSAS 18001 has been a recognized occupational health and safety management system (OH & SMS) standard against which management systems can be assessed and certified. 19 years later, a new ISO standard has been released to replace OHSAS 18001; this standard is ISO 45001.
ISO 45001 is an OH SMS standard developed by an ISO Project Committee which was published on March 12th 2018. A number of differences are evident between ISO 45001 and OHSAS 18001. Some of the main differences between the two standards are explored below.
The first difference concerns its structure. ISO 45001 is based on the ISO Guide 83 ("Annex SL") which defines a common high level structure, text and common terms and definitions for the next generation of management systems (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 14001, etc.). This structure aims to facilitate the implementation process and the integration of several management systems in a harmonized, structured and efficient manner. Such structure is as follow:
- Scope
- Normative References
- Terms and Definitions
- Context of the Organization
- Leadership
- Planning
- Support
- Operation
- Performance Evaluation
- Improvement
In the new standard there is a stronger focus on the "organization's context". With ISO 45001, organizations will have to look beyond their own health and safety issues and consider what the society expects from them, in regard with health and safety issues.
Some organizations that use OHSAS 18001 delegate health and safety responsibilities to a safety manager, rather than integrating the system into the organization's operations. ISO 45001 requires the incorporation of health and safety aspects in the overall management system of the organization, thus driving top management to have a stronger leadership role with respect to the OH&S management system.
ISO 45001 focuses on identifying and controlling risks rather than hazards, as it is required in OHSAS 18001.
ISO 45001 requires organizations to take into account how suppliers and contractors are managing their risks.
In ISO 45001 some fundamental concepts are changed, like risk, worker and workplace. There are also new definitions of terms such as: monitoring, measurement, effectiveness, OH&S performance and process.
The terms "document" and "record" have both been replaced with the term "documented information" in ISO 45001. The standard also states that documented information must be maintained to the extent necessary to have confidence that the processes have been carried out as planned.
In spite of these changes, the overall aim of ISO 45001 remains the same as OHSAS 18001, which is to reduce unacceptable risks and ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone involved in an organization's activities.
Read about more differences between OHSAS 18001 and ISO 45001
Read about who needs ISO 45001


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JonP necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 211 diseños de 92 diseñadores freelance.
Your logo will be for a new Company providing software and services to corporate customers. The logo needs to transcend the different cultures for a multinational company. We have no limitations or restrictions other than the logo needs to be professional and able to translate well onto web pages and business cards.
Service Quality
We need a logo for a totally new company that we can use on web pages and business cards. The company supplies IT software and consulting services to large corporate clients so the logo needs to appeal, be memorable and recognisable to other businesses. The focus is on old fashioned personal service with the best of todays technology. While the company has been on operation for almost 10 years we are rebranding totally including a name change to launch new products and services.
- Must Be Sharp
- Must be Clean
- Must be Fresh
- Friendly
- Professional
- Sophisticated
- Elegant
- Not Busy
- Not Brash
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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"Spring Showers"
"Singing In The Rain" ( I really like this one ;o) )
"Cruisin" "I hope the baby crow witches, don't get a speeding ticket." This is another entery for The Aceo Challenge Blog. "March Winds", Voting starts March 23rd!
Oh yay! I love your creative crows, they are just darling! :) the singing in the rain is very cute!! and I can't wait to see your stuffed crows!! I can tell by the fabric that this new little baby girl crow born on the super moon is going to be delightful! :)ReplyDelete
Oh oh baby crows I cannot wait!!! Love the sunflower umbrella - such an imagination you have Crow Girl!!ReplyDelete
Hugs Misty, thanks so much!ReplyDelete
LOL! Hugs Donna ;o) Have a great day!ReplyDelete
Adorable, adorable. Love it! You have created such wonderful little crows!! Love 'em!!!ReplyDelete
Hugs Robin ;o) Thanks so much!ReplyDelete
Stacy, they are all so much fun! I love the sunflower umbrella & Singing in the Rain! Looking forward to seeing your stuffed crow! Happy creating!ReplyDelete
These are just so cute! Looks like you are so ready for April Showers! :-)ReplyDelete
Hugs Debbie ;o) Thanks so much!ReplyDelete
Thanks so much Crystal ;o) Have a great day!ReplyDelete
Oh my gosh...way too much cuteness....my heart is bursting! So darn adorable!!!ReplyDelete
Hugs Deborah ;o) Thanks ;o)ReplyDelete
I'm am so voting for those witchy babies! I'll put it on my calendar right now. They are SOOOOO beautiful!ReplyDelete
Love them! Your new crows are awesome - you are so clever! The "Singing in the Rain" one just kills me. Can't wait to see your stuffed crow!ReplyDelete
a stuffed baby crow oh myReplyDelete
I showed my love!
I can´t wait for the stuffed crow - how exciting. I really love the one with the sunflower umbrella - a very surprising touch. I enjoyed the other ones too - it´s always a surprise to see what you´re up to!!!ReplyDelete
LOL! You're so cute Judy, thanks ;o)ReplyDelete
Hugs Magaly!! Thanks soooooooo much!!!!ReplyDelete
BIG BIG HUGS Magaly ;o)))ReplyDelete
Hugs Debbie ;o) Thanks so much!! Glad to make you smile ;o)ReplyDelete
Thanks so much Lone ;o) It means alot to me! Have a great day!ReplyDelete
Precious new little crows, Stacy! Off to vote on the challenge...:DReplyDelete
They are all wonderful Stacy! Can't wait to see more of your stuffed crows. Have a super day! Hugs. :)ReplyDelete
Hugs Roxanne! Thank-you!ReplyDelete
Thanks Lee ;o) Have fun voting!!ReplyDelete
Your baby crow pictures are so fabulous!ReplyDelete
Hugs Mina, thanks so much!ReplyDelete
Soooooo Cute!ReplyDelete
Thanks New End Studio ;o) Have a great day!ReplyDelete
Love love love them!!!! :) And I can't wait to see your stuffed crow all gussied up and finished. As you know, I love them. :) Take care! TheresaReplyDelete
LOL! Thanks Theresa ;o) Have a great day!ReplyDelete
Thank you for taking the time to comment! I'm very grateful! Your words are very special to me! Big Hugs!


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Ship ARABIA MARU
Between 1882 and 1960 arrived to the Port of Buenos Aires, main port of Argentina, 2,313 ships transporting new immigrant to these lands of peace.
Some of them hoping to find new opportunities to work and progress. Others escaping the European wars.
The ship ARABIA MARU arrived 11 times to the Port of Buenos Aires, Argentina bringing immigrants from Europe.
This is a list of arrivals of the ship ARABIA MARU, by clicking on each of them you will find a list of passengers (may be incomplete) for that arrival.
The available fields for each immigration record are name, age at arrival, marital status, occupation, religion, nationality, ship, boarding port, date of arrival and town of birth.
List of arrivals of the ship ARABIA MARU to Buenos Aires
|Dec 30, 1931
|May 31, 1932
|Oct 28, 1932
|Nov 29, 1934
|Apr 30, 1935
|Aug 26, 1938
|Jan 26, 1939
|Nov 28, 1939
|May 27, 1940
|Dec 02, 1940
|May 21, 1941
« Return to list of ships


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Consultations, Seminars and Workshops
Light and Field Therapy seminars and workshops are a unique method of analysing the state of our being. Fields reveal how we separate truth from illusion and what beliefs we hold that are detrimental to a healthy and happy life. They may also be used as a unique and powerful biomarker.
Field analysis is an additional tool that clearly guides us to the next step when we are met with an unusual or unexpected response from any therapy or treatment that we may have used with our clients.
Light therapy is used to help us release those illusions and turn them into the birthing of an inspirational life. Together these processes are able to shift deeply embedded emotional, physical and mental conditions.
The training is for allopathic and complementary practitioners wishing to expand their diagnostic tool base and deepen their understanding of the impact of field awareness on our every function.
Consultations may be arranged online or face to face in Brighton UK.
- Contact firstname.lastname@example.com
- UK Mobile 07943 357174
Workshops I am currently planning additional workshops in UK, USA and Europe for 2017. If you would like to receive emails on upcoming seminars and workshops, please send your request to email@example.com
I have begun teaching Light & Field courses on skype. For those wishing to learn more, please email me for further information.
I will be presenting this work at the Mind Body Spirit Festival at Olympia in London, 28th April -1st May 2017, Stand B8. Join me there! I will be offering Kirlian chakra analysis, an uplifting light session and a field analysis.
The 85th International Conference of the College of Syntonic Optometry will be held June 7-10th 2017 in Pittsburgh, PA. I will be there! Come and join me there for another exciting journey into the newest research on light.


text:
- Description
Crain 558 Staple Set Tool
This set tool can manually drive hardwood staples and L-shaped cleats after misfires, in tight places where air guns can't fit, and is quick for repair jobs. The relieved nose and thin hardened tip finish the fastener flush into the side of the plank. Compact design works close up to walls. Durable hardened steel construction, with tough polyurethane grip / hand guard. Weighs 1.5 lbs.
- Additional Information
Additional Information
Manufacturer Crain Product Type Hardwood Tools SKU CC-558
- Reviews


text:
If you just got engaged and are going down a checklist for wedding planning, don't hesitate to book your take engagement photos. Engagement photos are a fairly new thing. Over the past 5-10 years they've become pretty standard, but a lot of people are still skeptical on why they need them. Engagement photos are a great way to prepare for your wedding day, and they are a lot of fun!
Capture How You Feel Now
Being engaged is a just a stepping stone to the next step with your partner. But the feeling of preparing, planning, and getting hyped for your wedding day and new life together is a beautiful thing. You're giddy, happy, nervous, and in love.
Get to Know Your Photographer
I include engagement sessions in all of my wedding photography packages because I think it really helps us get to know each other. An hour in front of my camera helps us interact, and helps me know the best way to bring out your natural reactions on camera, because everyone and every couple is unique. It's good to meet and spend some time together before the big day because any stress alleviated helps.
Use your Engagement photos on save the dates
Posting your photos on Facebook and social media is fun, but it's especially nice to have a current cute shot of the two of you to send out as Save the Dates.
Get Comfortable in Front of the camera
Most people haven't had professional photos done that often, so it's normal to be nervous to be constantly photographed on your wedding day. Taking engagement photos is a good practice run to see how you'll feel. I love to take photos when you two are interacting and not posed and ready, to really help ease the stress and capture a natural scene.


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New York's Governor and Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller; Justice and Mrs. Arthur J. Goldberg; His Excellency Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Ambassador to the United States and Mrs. Rabin; His Excellency Yosef Tekoah, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations and Mrs. Tekoah, were among the more than 800 prominent leaders in the cultural, diplomatic, social, civic and business life who joined yesterday to honor Zubin Mehta, the distinguished Indian conductor and this year's recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation's King Solomon Award. Violinist Isaac Stern presented the Award to Maestro Mehta at the Foundation's annual dinner-dance in recognition of Mr. Mehta's outstanding contributions to the enrichment of Israel's musical life. Zubin Mehta has been the musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra since 1962 and became musical adviser to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1968. A highlight of the evening was the Foundation's special concert tribute to The Juilliard School. Four Israeli musicians, all former Foundation scholarship recipients–Joseph Kalichstein, pianist; Itzhak Perlman. violinist; Uri Mayer, violist and Michael Haran, cellist–paid homage to the school with a performance. Jan Peerce, chairman of its Arts Council, presented Peter Mennin a kinetic sculpture by the well-known Israeli artist, Yaacov Agam. which will eventually stand at the entrance to The Juilliard School.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.


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The Softer Hand-Dipped Biscotti & Scones
$ 5.00 – $ 24.00
If you are both a Mocha and a Chocolate Chip lover you will surely love this flavorful scone. Try it with a cup of coffee or hot tea and see why this scone is an old time favorite! Made fresh daily using only the finest ingredients.
Our Commercial Kitchen and Order Fulfillment location:
7250 Northfield Road
Walton Hills, OH 44146
Call us Monday through Friday during normal business hours at


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With 6 team on a bye week, are you in need of some assistance on who to pickup to help bolster your roster? Here are some players who we think can make a positive impact on your fantasy squad, who are still available in most leagues.
Must Haves
Ed Dickson (TE) - He is just 15% owned in Yahoo leagues, most likely because of their BYE week last week. Scoop him up and start him every week for the rest of the season. He is first on the team with 32 targets!
Solid Pickups
Ryan Torain (RB) - A weak Eagles secondary could mean big games for all 3 Redskins RBs. Torain only played in week 4(19 carries for 135 yards) and they had a BYE last week, so many owners do not know he is even available. Scoop him up and reap the benefits.
Earnest Graham (RB) - With no LeGarrette Blount this week, Graham will handle the rock more than any RB on the Bucs roster. He has been a favorite target of QB Josh Freeman in the passing game as well, catching 23 balls this season.
Good For A Week
Andy Dalton (QB) - He has been impressive and trusts all of his receivers. A matchup against a weak Colts secondary should give Dalton some nice numbers replacing your starting QB.
Dane Sanzenbacher (WR) - A matchup with the Vikings should allow for some quick passes to the Shifty receiver. A solid BYE week option in PPR.
Players to Watch
Tim Tebow (QB) - Now the official starter in Denver, Tebow is probably gone in your leaugue. However, with a BYE week, he just might be available. If you have a roster spot, and your QB has not had his BYE week yet, I suggest giving him a chance. His numbers will never be Aaron Rodgers, but he will score TDs.
Jackie Battle (RB) - Is the Dexter McCluster experiment over in KC? Battle took 19 carries 116 yards in Week 5 while McCluster only saw 4 carries go 8 yards. Keep an eye on the RB situation in KC.


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2 / 277 Adverts
Charming Villa Detached, single storey, separate entrance, in a luxury property
from $70/Night (rates)
4 people
2 bedrooms
3 roomsLiveable floor area : 2,370 Sq.ft
2 bedrooms
3 roomsLiveable floor area : 2,370 Sq.ft
Swimming poolParking
- View : Panoramic, country side, swimming pool, farmland, Vineyards, village
- Kids welcome
- Setting : Peaceful, Pleasant
- 9 hole golf course at 9mi.
- Horse riding, Culture
- Exposure : South
Touristic region : discover Adriatic Sea
Advert No. 9935
For your guidance
Contact by phone
Contact by email
For safety and quality control reasons, we strongly recommend to contact the owner through IHA Holiday Ads.
Reviews about the Advert 9935
Be the first to provide a review about this advert!
Villa GoranAdvert 9935Rakovci - Istria County - Croatia
Advert details 9935
Assets Villa
Swimming pool : Private swimming pool, pool house
Parking : Parking uncovered : internal.
Interior Charming Villa with View: panoramic, country side, swimming pool, ...
Receive up to : 4 person(s)
Liveable floor area : 2,370 Sq.ft
Interior layout : 3 Room(s), 2 bedroom(s), 1 shower room, living room, american style kitchen, dining area
Sleeps - bed(s) : 1 queen-size bed(s), 1 king-size bed(s)
Guest facilities : T.V., cable/satelite
Appliances : Kitchen utensils, electric coffee maker, refridgerator, deep freeze
Exterior Charming & Luxury vacation rental in Setting: peaceful, pleasant
Outside accommodation : Terrace, covered terrace, balcony, sundeck
Outside setting : Private courtyard, enclosed grounds, yard
Outside amenities : BBQ, yard table(s), yard seat(s), yard seated area
Rates Calendar Availability Charming & Luxury vacation rental in Rakovci
Seasons & Availability Charming Villa in Rakovci
Rates Charming Villa in Rakovci
(Minimum Night)Check-in day
Season Night Weekend week 2 weeks Month
Low season$175* (7) Sat - $1227* Sat - -
Mid season$210* (7) Sat - $1472* Sat - -
High season$234* (7) Sat - $1636* Sat - -
Festive specials$70* (7) - $491* - -
Promotional period$117* (7) - $818* Sat - -
ServiceFrequencyIncluded / SuppliedSupplementRates
Single family home
Yard/swimming pool maintenance
For your guidance
Information :
Kids welcome
Pets accepted under certain conditions (ask the owner)
Water : hot/cold
Electricity supply : mains
Booking conditions
Reservation :
Payment made upon reservation : $234*
Payment balance : on handing over the keys
Deposit required : $234*
rentals :
Service charges included
Day tax included
Cleaning charge on departure included
Anticipated supplement for : animals
Accepted methods of payment :
Bank transfer (wire)
Leisure, Surroundings, Location Charming House 9935
Leisure Rakovci - Istria County
Specific activities on site or less than 3 miles :
HORSE RIDING Istria County
CULTURE Istria
Leisure activities less than 12 miles : Bathing, pedalo, water skiing, jet ski, canoeing, golf, tennis, boat trips, mini-golf, ATV/Quad Bike, go-karting, basketball, volleyball, paintball, fishing, fishing
Supervised : Dive school, tennis school, riding school
Attractions and relaxation : Bar/pub, discotheque, restaurant, park and garden, art gallery, historical site, museum, cellar and wine tasting, casino
SurroundingsCountryside - Istria County
Locality :
Ski lifts at 9mi.
Sea/ocean at 9mi.
Shingle beach at 9mi.
Rocky beach at 9mi.
9 hole golf course at 9mi.
Watersports centre at 9mi.
Marina at 9mi.
Jetski slipway at 9mi.
Amenities :
Village center at 2.5mi.
Downtown at 9mi.
Bus stop / bus station at 9mi.
Car rental at 9mi.
Boat rental at 9mi.
Breadstore at 2.5mi.
Supermarket at 2.5mi.
Internet cafe at 9mi.
Bank at 2.5mi.
Drugstore at 2.5mi.
Doctor at 9mi.
Hospital at 25mi.
Location AccessVilla Rakovci
Rakovci 5
52554 RakovciIstria
GPS coordinates of the city
Latitude 45°11'46.716"N
Longitude 13°45'41.292"E
Access routes Charming & Luxury vacation rental 9935
at 6mi.
Bus station Poreč
Poreč, Istria County, Istria, Croatia
at 25mi.
Airport Pula
Pula, Istria County, Istria, Croatia
at 2.5mi.
Freeway (exit) A9 Baderna
Baderna, Istria County, Istria, Croatia
Cities close by
Baderna (2.5mi.)
Sveti Lovreč (2.5mi.)
Poreč (9mi.)
Close to Koprski Zaliv, Sveta Fuma, Markovec, Srednji Vrh, Uvala Sveti Petar, Luka Izola, Rt Crna Punta, Uvala Sveti Martin, Luka Rovinj, Standar, Uvala Lunga, Otocic Sveti Andrija, Rt Sveta Eufemija, Marnjana, Cipri, Uvala Karpan, Luka Madona, Grgetov Rt, Uvala )) (( Fazan, Uvala Lucica, Sokolic
Cities close by
Nearby places
Photos Villa 9935
Return to the rental listingsContact


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Call Us for More Information
Stage 3 kidney failure life expectancy refers to that how long can patients live with stage 3 kidney failure. And this is also a point that patients concern most. If you want to have doubt, please contact our online doctor directly or add WhatsApp/Wechat+8618395615012. We will try our best to help you.
As a matter of fact, most of patients will ask that what is the life expectancy with stage 3 kidney failure. However, this questions depends on several factors, such as your age, overall illness condition and illness history. No matter what your life expectancy it is, what you want is to life longer as much as you can. Therefore, you need to try your best to prolong the life expectancy. And the most important step for prolonging the life expectancy is to improve kidney function. And then, coming to next question, what should patients do to improve kidney function.
Clinically, it is difficult to improve kidney function, because there are many diseased cells and tissues inside kidney, and there are many toxins in blood, which affects the medications for treating kidney severely. Thereby, the treatment in our hospital focuses on clear away various wastes products and toxins in blood. The method is to use Chinese medicine to clear away various wastes products and toxic substances in blood and inside kidney out of body. After clearing away various wastes products and toxins in blood, a health environment can be provided for patients to repair the diseased cells and tissues and recover kidney function besides, it also can improve the efficiency of medications of treating kidney. In order to repair kidney cells and tissues efficiently, Micro-Chinese Medicine Osmothrapy is provided for patients. This is a external application and this is a natural and comfortable treatment. Additionally, the herbal medicines are often refined into powder which is collected into two medicated bags. What needs patients do is to lie down on two medicated bags for about 30-40 minutes. Through a way of connecting osmotic machine, the active substances in herbal medicines will penetrate inside kidney lesions directly, so as to repair the diseased cells and tissues and recover their kidney function.
D you want to know more details about the natural treatments, please contact our online doctor directly or send your present condition and phone number to email@example.com the renal doctor will analyze your illness condition accurately and then reply you as soon as possible.
Leave your problem to us,You will surely get the free medical advice from experts within 24 hours!
email@example.com : facebook :


text:
A 14-year-old girl was killed by an unknown gunman Saturday night as she rode an M.T.A. bus in Queens, police said.
Daja Robinson had just boarded the Q6 bus at Sutphin Blvd. and Rockaway Blvd. on her way home from a friend's Sweet 16 party when gunfire erupted outside. One of the bullets passed through the window and struck her in the head.
Robinson was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, where she was pronounced dead just after 9 p.m.
Two teenage female friends of the victim were on the bus with her at the time of the shooting. They told investigators they had left a birthday party at the nearby Onyx Lounge prior to boarding the Q6 and that there had been no disputes or arguments that might have led to violence.
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Nine .40-cal shells were recovered outside of the bus, which was shot several times, police said.
No arrests have been made.
Danielle Tcholakian contributed reporting.