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No Room for Contemporary Art
Casablanca is a noisy and chaotic metropolis that's steadily encroaching on the flat land that surrounds it. Amidst the industrial zones, the wealthy suburbs and the frighteningly large belt of slums, attractive places are few and far between.
They can be found, though – and most of them date back to the first half of the 20th century, when architects from half of Europe found ample opportunities to practice their art here.
One such gem from bygone days is the white Art Déco villa on the Boulevard Brahim Roudani. Flawlessly restored, and set in a large, well-tended garden, this cubical building outshines the assorted eyesores of the surrounding area. It's the Villa des Arts, built in 1934 as a businessman's private residence, and now used as a cultural centre and exhibition space.
The villa is currently owned by the ONA Foundation, one of the biggest industrial holding companies in the country. The Moroccan royal family are the company's major shareholder. This splendid edifice is a worthy setting for the foundation's own collection of works by Moroccan artists; but ONA also plans to organise its own exhibitions.
A home for contemporary art
Sylvia Frei-Belhassan, a Swiss citizen who has been living in Morocco for more than 40 years, played a decisive role in the realisation of this project.
Even during the planning phase, she managed to convince those in charge at ONA that the villa (at that time unoccupied) would be an ideal location for the new cultural centre. In 1996, she began working closely with the foundation; shortly thereafter, she was placed in charge of the project.
After an intensive planning phase and two years' work converting the building, the Villa des Arts opened its doors in June 1999. Casablanca now had an exhibition space that gained attention throughout Morocco as well as abroad.
With Sylvia Frei-Belhassan, the people at ONA had made an excellent choice. An arts administrator married to a Moroccan, she had studied ceramics at the Zürich Kunstgewerbeschule (College of Arts and Crafts) in the 1960s, and she is now recognised as one of the leading authorities on current Moroccan art.
Fatima Zohra Akalay, a professor of literature, attests to Frei-Belhassan's decisive contribution to the development of contemporary art in Morocco, her exceptional ability to discover and foster young talent, and her excellent reputation in informed circles. Others speak of the Swiss administrator in similarly glowing terms.
Developing Moroccan public's interest in modern art
Sylvia Frei-Belhassan spent 20 years working for one of the best galleries in Morocco's capital, Rabat. During this crucial period, she built up a network of contacts and developed her professional expertise. Today, she still takes pride in the way she managed to develop the Moroccan public's now-enthusiastic interest in modern art.
In 1991, however, the gallery "L'Atelier" in Rabat had to close its doors for good; Ms. Frei-Belhassan says she had a wonderful core audience that simply lacked the funds to purchase artworks.
A few years later, the people who run ONA approached her and asked her to take over the development and management of the Villa des Arts; she didn't hesitate for long. She dreamt of an "espace" – a home for present-day culture with the emphasis on contemporary painting, sculpture, installations, videos, architecture and design.
Nothing of the kind had existed in Morocco hitherto, and it seemed self-evident that such a place would also take an interest in developments beyond the country's borders.
Therefore, Ms. Frei-Belhassan also sought to collaborate with reputable European museums. For the first exhibition, entitled "L'Objet Desorienté au Maroc", she succeeded in gaining the cooperation of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
For the show that followed, on contemporary textile arts, she worked with the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid; and for an exhibition on architecture in Casablanca from 1900 to 1960, she won the partnership of the giant French energy concern EDF.
An abrupt ending
And then it all stopped. Although the 25 exhibitions organised by Sylvia Frei-Belhassan had been very well received in Casablanca and in the art world as a whole, ONA's powers-that-be said that the energetic arts administrator was too "elitist", that the exhibitions were too expensive and – above all – that too few Moroccan artists were having their work shown. Following the terrorist attacks in Casablanca, demands were also made that more be done for young people in the banlieus.
This was something Frei-Belhassan also regarded as important, and she had been in fact fighting for it for years; but at the same time, she felt it couldn't be made to fit into her exhibition concept.
"It's an illusion to think one should bring these young people from the Bidonvilles to an arts centre in the inner city", says Frei-Belhassan. Instead, she feels, one should approach these young people on the outskirts of the city, where they live (often with no prospects whatsoever), and initiate cultural activities there. This, however, would require particular concepts and – not least – financial resources.
What seems to have escaped the people at ONA is that the Villa des Arts had succeeded, within only five years, in becoming a beacon of contemporary culture in Morocco – and therefore also a significant source of prestige for ONA itself.
The conservative-Islamic influence on modern art
In any case, Sylvia Frei-Belhassan was not prepared to bow to her sponsors' concepts: in Autumn 2004, she left the institution she had herself built up. Her successor remained in office for barely six months, and then the Villa was closed. A few weeks ago, a new exhibition was announced – dedicated to "les arts traditionels".
It's not the only time something like this has happened in Morocco. In the Musée de Marrakech, too, the director was recently "released" from her duties because the museum's sponsors felt that she had been focusing too strongly on contemporary art. They replaced her with someone who placed the spotlight on traditional arts.
For Sylvia Frei-Belhassan, this return to tradition is an expression of the resurgence of conservative-Islamic circles in Morocco. It is accompanied, she says, by a reawakened interest in the so-called Orientalist painters; these are practically the only kind of pictures bought by Casablanca's "bourgeoisie" right now, and contemporary art hardly has a chance.
She describes the financial situation for young Moroccan artists as more precarious than ever before, with almost all talented artists of the younger generation leaving the country – because, in Morocco, "there's simply no place for them".
The arts are not a priority
After years of observing and helping to shape the Moroccan arts scene, Frei-Belhassan also sees major deficits in other areas of Moroccan cultural life. She says that the art collegel in Casablanca is of a low standard, and stuck in the thinking of the 1950s.
In most schools, she says, there is no art teaching worthy of the name. Sylvia Frei-Belhassan sums up the outlook with resignation: art is the least of this country's priorities – and, in a way, she says, she can even understand this.
The Moroccan media have become noticeably freer in recent years, and new laws governing the family and women's rights signify that substantial social progress has been made.
Sylvia Frei-Belhassan's somewhat pessimistic assessment of the Moroccan cultural scene contrasts with the image of a resurgent Morocco cherished by many in Europe since King Mohammed VI came to power.
Isn't it fair to say that a new civil society has come into being, and that it manifests itself in thousands of independent alliances and associations? Frei-Belhassan agrees that this is true of Moroccan society as a whole, but says that little of this can be felt in the country's cultural scene.
She sometimes has the impression that Moroccan society has "fallen asleep", and she would like to shake the country's decision-makers out of their slumbers. The King, she says, has a great deal of good will – but he alone cannot possibly master the great task ahead.
Beat Stauffer
© Qantara.de/NZZ 2005
This article was previously published by the Swiss daily NZZ.
Translation from German: Patrick Lanagan
Hans Werner Geerdts
A Rare Symbiosis
The German painter and writer Hans Werner Geerdts has been living in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh for more than sixty years. His art has made its presence felt throughout the country. Christoph Leisten presents this portrait of the artist on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
Museum without Borders
Islamic Art in the Mediterranean
The aim of the unusual projects launched by the initiative Museum without Borders is to create a whole new way of experiencing art. One such project is the publication of books on Islamic art in the Mediterranean. Petra Tabeling reports on a borderless cultural dialogue.
Architecture in Casablanca
The City of Fog
Casablanca has been reinvented over and over again - by Hollywood as the backdrop for a classic flick, by the French as a modern metropolis with an Oriental flair. An architectural and historical exploration of the port city with Christian Hauck


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With a snow and ice storm hitting the Mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C., airlines moved Monday to cancel more than 2,600 flights within the United States, though relatively few flights in the Los Angeles region were impacted.
By late morning, airlines had canceled seven departures from Los Angeles International Airport and 23 arrivals into the facility, according to Flightaware.com, though not every cancellation was weather related.
Flights between LAX and Washington Dulles International Airport have been most affected. Virgin America, American and United either canceled or significantly delayed their first seven flights from Dulles to Los Angeles on Monday. However, in the other direction, only two flights had been canceled as of late morning.
Nationwide, Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington had the most departing flights canceled Monday, with 350, according to Flightaware. But there are only two daily flights from Reagan Airport to LAX. Both were canceled.
There also were some delays and cancellations on flights between Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
According to the Weather Channel, five inches or more of snow and ice were expected Monday in New Jersey, Delaware, southern Maryland, central and northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.
As of late morning Monday, there had been no significant delays at Long Beach Airport or Burbank Bob Hope Airport due to the storm. L.A/Ontario International Airport has no flights to the East Coast, so it, too was unaffected.
— Brian Sumers

subset: commoncrawl


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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A lab hired by the father of Brittany Murphy says it found heavy metals in the hair of the late actress, possibly indicating she and her husband were poisoned.
Testing by the Carlson Co., a private laboratory, turned up high levels of aluminum, manganese, barium and other metals, TheWrap.com reported Monday. The lab's report said that pointed to the possibility they were deliberately poisoned by "a third party perpetrator with likely criminal intent."
"It's a bona fide report," the lab's general manager, Denny Seilheimer, told TheWrap. "It was our client's prerogative to release the report. That's all I can tell you."
Murphy's father, Angelo Bertolotti, has rejected the conclusion reached by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office that the "Clueless" star and husband Simon Monjack died of natural causes -- pneumonia and anemia -- five months apart in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
Coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said the office had no comment on the private lab's findings "and our report stands as of now." He told The Wrap the office had not been in touch with Bertolotti.
Los Angeles police officer Cleon Joseph said it would be up to the coroner's office whether to take further action.
"Whatever the findings, if there was something to report, they would report it to us," he told The Wrap.


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Dr. Grumpy: "It looks like your internist did a pretty decent work-up. Unfortunately, I have to agree with him that she has Alzheimer's disease."
Mr. Amyloid: "Yeah, that's what her daughter and I both figured. What about..."
Lady Amyloid: "We just got married!"
Dr. Grumpy: "Really?"
Mr. Amyloid: "Yep. We've been together for 10 years, but got married last week."
Dr. Grumpy: "Congratulations!"
Mr. Amyloid: "We weren't ever planning on it, but after Dr. Intern told us the news I decided we should while she still knew how much I love her."
After 15 years in this job, it takes a lot to get to me. That did.


text: Cisco recently announced it will discontinue its popular Cisco VPN client. Cisco is moving customers to its Cisco AnyConnect client or to native support as it helps other vendors integrate support directly into their products. With OS X Lion, you can connect to your corporate network without requiring any changes on the part of the corporate infrastructure. This means that existing automations and management will function correctly for IT staff and have the advantage of not requiring IT to roll out new software.


text: Find this wine Find this wine Gnarly Head Vintage 2012 Not bad. Wouldn't buy again. Pin It Tweet 5 years ago by Robert Z. More posts Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin Vintage 2012 So much for saving one... 4 years ago by Gayle B Gnarly Head Authentic Red Vintage 2012 October 24, 2014 Bahre's 4 years ago by Charitybrower Gnarly Head Old Vine Vintage 2012 Great Zin, one of the favs 6 years ago by Ballet A. Gnarly Head Authentic Red Lode California Vintage 2011 Dave and I like this one. Rich flavor. Smooth 6 years ago by Melyssa J. Gnarly Head Authentic Red Vintage 2011 Late night/early morning dinner with Jim: cheese filled tortellini tossed with Classico pesto & salad w/fresh basil. 6 years ago by Gail


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This page indicates where annexations are requested, summarizes the annexation process, answers common questions, and provides the current status of each annexation proposal.
Annexations (the addition of territory to an existing city) within Riverside County are controlled by the Riverside Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) established by the state's Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Act (commencing with Government Code Section 56000). The commission is made up of elected officials from the county, cities, and, in some cases, special districts. LAFCO duties include: establishing the "spheres of influence" that designate the ultimate service areas of cities and special districts; studying and approving requests for city annexations; and, studying and approving proposals for city incorporations.
All annexations, whether property owner-initiated or City-initiated must be authorized by the City Council prior to submission to the LAFCO. When the LAFCO receives an annexation request, it will convene a hearing to determine the worthiness of the proposal and may deny or conditionally approve the request based on the policies of the LAFCO and state law. Annexations which have been passed by vote of the inhabitants or which have not been defeated by protest (in cases where no election was required) must be certified by the LAFCO as to meeting all its conditions before they become final. It is the LAFCO, not the City, that is ultimately responsible for the annexation process.
Select a link from the lists to the right to view the project summary for each proposed or potential annexation. This information will be updated to reflect any changes that develop, so be sure to check frequently.
Useful Links:
3900 Main St. 3rd Floor
Riverside, CA 92522
Phone: (951) 826-5371
Fax: (951) 826-5981
Email: Click here to email
|Mon - Fri
|7:30am - 5:00pm
|Closed on Weekends and Major Holidays


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The Lab Bratz site is now functional. So far, the first 6 episodes are online at:
We're planning on uploading a new episode every Monday, so check back regularly and then drop us a line on either this forum or the one that links directly from the comics page. We'll probably combine the 2 forums once we see which one generates more buzz.
We've also posted a Cast page, a News page (which should be updated regularly), and a Store to buy Lab Bratz merchandise!
Anyway, welcome and enjoy the show.


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We help teams build executable models
that solve hard problems on
challenging platforms.
We help teams build executable models
that solve hard problems on
challenging platforms.
We help our clients model large and complex systems using Executable UML by itself, or integrated with other tools, modeling languages, libraries and software services.
Model based systems engineering (MBSE) should deliver clear and compelling results, not just in the long term, but on a daily basis. The important ideas should be communicated, documented and validated. Hard problems should be identified and solved early on. Valuable intellectual property should be preserved for fast redeployment on varied and evolving computing platforms. And the models should lead directly to efficient, reliable and maintainable production code.
But this is all easier said than done. It is easy for teams to get distracted modeling the wrong things at inconsistent levels of detail. Models can be built in the wrong order, leading to unnecessary rework or poor designs. Opportunities for parallel development can be missed, wasting valuable time and resources. Key model reuse patterns can be overlooked resulting on large scale wasted effort and needless extra code.
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Our expert training and consulting services will give your systems engineers, developers and project leaders the skills, patterns and techniques necessary to ensure success on your MBSE project.
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Training is an important step, but the real learning happens on the job. We roll up our sleeves and work intensively with your team on a day to day basis to understand all the subtle aspects of your problem and deliver detailed solutions.
As the work progresses, team members will see what it takes to perform solid analysis and build worthwhile models. In time, they can share those skills with other team members. And the provided solutions yield useful examples that can be incorporated into internal training guides for your other engineers.
Managers and project leaders don't need to be modelers. But the work products, review criteria and agile processes on an MBSE project are unique and need to be carefully understood.
It is also important for managers to know exactly why each model type is necessary and to understand the specific benefits of modeling as opposed to coding. They also need to spot any signs of counter productive modeling.
We offer brief presentations and training geared toward project leaders, managers and executives so that they can get the results they want and provide the support the developers need.
Our clients build complex high performance, mission critical systems that must operate safely.
Our clients build complex high performance, mission critical systems that must operate safely.
We work with large organizations who want to reduce the cost of software development and deliver new features rapidly while ensuring safety and reliability.
Their computing platforms can be highly specialized with unique interfaces and multiple processors. The platform design typically evolves and eventually results in varied configurations to support different levels of features and spin-off products.
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Suzanne Shell raises chickens in rural El Paso County. It's not the world's most exciting job, but Shell's other pursuits -- which include working as an author, journalist and documentary producer, running a contentious website called ProfaneJustice.org, offering her services as an expert consultant to parents accused of abusing and neglecting their children, and generally raising hell as a prime mover in the family-advocacy movement -- manage to keep things interesting.
She's been ejected from courtrooms by judges and attacked in a hallway by a convicted child molester she was trying to capture on film. She's been arrested in Wisconsin for refusing to turn over her video equipment to a police officer and detained at the Colorado Springs Airport because she forgot to remove a .380-caliber pistol from her carry-on items. The mere presence of Shell and her camera put a halt to a Colorado legislative hearing on a family-rights bill a couple of years ago. And she still receives treatment for back pain resulting from being run over by a neighbor's car in her own driveway; at the time, she was dialing 911 on her cell phone, reporting the driver for making threats to her husband in a dispute involving chickens and dogs.
Shell's efforts to serve as an advocate for parents in what are known as D&N cases -- dependency-and-neglect investigations, in which allegations of child abuse can lead to a child's placement in foster care and even termination of parental rights -- have ruffled feathers in social-service agencies across the state. Some desperate parents see her as their only hope for justice in an epic battle against a cruel and indifferent system. But many attorneys and child-protection professionals regard her as a divisive meddler who does more harm than good.
"I am this amazing, powerful woman who can walk into a courtroom and hurt a case just by being there," Shell says sarcastically. "They're obstructing me every step of the way. The first time I walked into the courthouse in Lincoln County a year and a half ago -- I had never been there before in my life -- they knew who I was. And I was shut down immediately."
"I've seen her thrown out of a courtroom where she was sitting quietly in the gallery doing nothing," says Lisa Byrne, a Teller County woman whom Shell assisted in an abuse investigation. "You know what she did for me? She went with me to the courthouse. The county attorney peed down his leg when she walked around the corner. I felt like a million bucks."
Lawyers who've gone up against Shell say she can hurt, rather than help, her own clients. "Suzanne's involvement helps me," notes Rocco Meconi, a Cañon City attorney who represents the Fremont County Department of Human Services in D&N cases. "I get paid on an hourly basis. When she's involved, we always have contested hearings, and I make a ton of money. But it doesn't help the families or the kids."
Shell's fights in Fremont County have led to a more prolonged tour of the state's justice system than she bargained for. Four years ago, after complaints from Meconi and other county officials, the Colorado Supreme Court's Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel launched an investigation of Shell for allegedly practicing law without a license. The case was settled with Shell signing a stipulation, in which she admitted providing legal advice to parents and drafting legal documents for them and agreed not to do so in the future. But her subsequent tussles with what she calls the "child savers" in the county -- in particular, her involvement in two D&N cases in which questions have been raised about the mental capacity of the mothers who enlisted Shell's help -- landed her in deeper trouble.
In March 2004, the Supreme Court cited Shell for contempt of court, alleging that she'd ignored the court's 2001 order to stop unauthorized lawyering. Last month she presented her defense before presiding disciplinary judge William Lucero, who's expected to make a recommendation on the case to the state's highest judges in a few weeks. If she's found guilty, Shell could face thousands of dollars in fines and possible jail time.
"We don't care what people like Ms. Shell believe about anything, as long as they don't press that belief and representation onto someone," says John Gleason, who heads the Colorado Supreme Court's attorney regulators. "The insidious nature of the harm is what we're worried about. She's attracted to people who are the most vulnerable, people who are in some horrible life situation."
Shell argues that the contempt action is part of an ongoing campaign by judges, attorneys and the child-protection system to violate her rights, thwart her journalistic efforts to expose the system's excesses, and smash the growing family-advocacy movement, in which she's emerged as a national figure. It's a clash of values, she says, one that pits those who believe fiercely in parental rights against a powerful and arrogant bureaucracy that destroys struggling families.
"My goal is to influence the way society thinks about these issues and to bring us back to a semblance of sanity," she says. "The only way we're going to see change is if pressure is put on the system by the public in a large way."
Shell's lawyer, Paul Grant, views her case as a critical test of the constitutional rights -- and limits -- of web-based court activists. "The idea that outside advocates want to help consumers deal with lawyers and judges is a threat to the system as it stands," he says. "There's going to be more and more of this self-help, people going outside the system to find resources, because the Internet is such a powerful source of information. And that's going to break down the walls somewhat of a closed profession. A lot of lawyers won't like it, but the world changes.
"This is the carriage-maker trying to protect his profession against the automobile industry. It's a fruitless exercise. But Suzanne Shell is caught in the middle. She's kind of a pioneer."
In 1974, when Suzanne Shell was seventeen years old, her father punched her in the face.
It was an isolated event, but it had a profound effect on her life. Her family was investigated; despite being a straight-A student, a cheerleader and a member of the marching band at her Minnesota high school, she was labeled an "out-of-control teenager" and placed in a foster home for her entire senior year.
Compared to the horror stories of abuse and neglect in foster care that she's collected over the past decade, Shell's brush with the child-protection system was relatively benign. "I was in a very good foster home," she says. "Still, I was nothing more than a live-in babysitter and housekeeper. And it disturbed me how the social worker and my foster parents would speak so badly about my father. That incident didn't define who he was as a father, but they felt the need to constantly undermine my relationship with him."
Shell went on to marry, have two sons, divorce and remarry. (At seventeen, she also gave birth to a daughter that she gave up for adoption.) In 1991, after moving to Colorado, she had an even more traumatic encounter with social services when her oldest son, Jacob, accused her second husband of child abuse. Dennis Shell had spanked his thirteen-year-old stepson with a martinet, a kind of cat-o'-nine-tails with leather straps, after an argument during which the boy yelled at him. The couple was living in Elizabeth at the time, and Elbert County officials temporarily placed Jacob in foster care.
Shell says she witnessed the spanking, which was Jacob's first in nearly a year. "I didn't feel eight swats were excessive, given his age, his size, and his offense," she writes in her self-published book, Profane Justice: A Comprehensive Guide to Asserting Your Parental Rights. "It was part of our clearly defined plan for discipline.... Frankly, if Dennis hadn't spanked him, I would have. He deserved it."
Dennis Shell took his case to trial and was acquitted. Jacob eventually went to live with his father. Three years later, Shell's youngest son also made what she calls "false accusations" of abuse and moved in with his father. Neither child ended up in the custody of the state, but Shell blames "the corrupt child-protection system" for the loss of her children.
"Rather than breaking me, these trials have made me strong," she writes in her book. "I have been called to use this strength to break the profane system that destroys God's righteous families and subverts parental authority over their children."
Although her husband was acquitted, the abuse case cost the couple thousands in legal fees. Shell put an ad in the local newspaper, seeking other parents who'd had similar experiences. She compiled interviews, went online and visited libraries to research the law and find out what options parents had when they felt they were unjustly accused. "After five years, I had a lot of the answers for what people could do to defend themselves," she says. "I didn't know what to do with it, so I wrote a book."
Shell wrote a slim version of Profane Justice in two weeks in 1997. (The second edition, published in 2001, weighs in at just under 600 pages.) She set up a website loaded with legal information and sample pleadings and began exchanging information with family-rights groups around the country. She started her own group, the American Family Advocacy Center, which she describes as "a network of people around the country who want to take advantage of the training I have to offer." Soon she began conducting seminars and accepting invitations to speak at conferences.
She also began to offer her services, free of charge, as a consultant to parents enmeshed in the court system, videotaping many of their stories for what she hopes will be a documentary series exposing the excesses of the child savers. So far, this has not proven to be a lucrative career move.
"I don't make enough money to pay the costs of printing my books and mailing them out," she says. "When I go to seminars, I tell people to pay for my hotel and travel up front -- and they often don't, and I end up in the hole from that, too."
Many journalists would consider Shell's dual roles as family advocate and documentary producer as a conflict of interest, but she regards them as complementary activities in her crusade. She believes that child-protection workers often exaggerate abuse claims and that official transcripts are sometimes edited to suit the officials involved, so she's developed almost a mania for documenting and recording as much as possible; she even persuaded Judge Lucero to allow her husband to videotape her contempt-of-court hearing. Most courts don't allow recording devices, but in Profane Justice, Shell urges parents to tape every D&N hearing, even if they have to do so secretly.
Her camera has been a source of controversy in courthouses and capitol buildings. Two years ago, while covering a spanking case in Wisconsin, Shell ran afoul of a sheriff's deputy who didn't want her shooting in the Walworth County Courthouse. Shell insisted that she had permission to videotape in public areas; the dispute ended with the deputy arresting her for "obstructing an officer." The charge was later dismissed. Other unhappy encounters in court hallways over Shell's video work have prompted her to seek an escort by deputies in some jurisdictions, including El Paso County.
"I'm tired of getting kicked out of courtrooms and being accused of causing a disturbance," she says.
Her tapes are important, she adds, because she's not the only one making a record. She claims to have been followed by a tag team of police cars on drives into Colorado Springs. She's convinced that unknown forces were tapping her phones for a time, with or without a warrant. Since the courts began pursuing her over her alleged unauthorized practice of law, even cries in the night from parents desperate for guidance are not above suspicion.
"I presume that when people call me asking me for help, it's a trap," she says. "Every phone call that goes in or out of my house is recorded."
Colorado's Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel receives eighty to a hundred complaints a year concerning the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). That's about 4,900 fewer complaints than it receives about lawyers behaving badly.
Most UPL reports concern immigration consultants who bilk new arrivals of their wages with promises of a green card, "estate experts" who mess up elderly clients' wills and trusts, or document-preparation companies that have gone from selling legal forms to improperly offering legal advice.
Last year, with a budget of $3,500 devoted to such cases, the office completed seventy UPL investigations. Thirty complaints were dismissed. Fourteen were settled with a strong cautionary letter, another fourteen with informal agreements. In ten cases, the office sought an injunction. Only two were deemed serious enough to merit contempt proceedings; one was the case of Suzanne Shell.
Hearings in attorney disciplinary matters are held in a small courtroom in an office building in downtown Denver. The room is usually sparsely populated by errant attorneys and their attorneys, but for the Shell matter, it was packed with her supporters.
They included Lisa Byrne, the woman from Teller County who'd sought Shell's aid in a complicated abuse investigation; a young man named Robert who was planning a public rally of mad-as-hell fathers, which would involve dressing up in fright wigs to demonstrate "how the family court system has turned us into clowns"; Linda Sanders, a paralegal who'd authored her own attack on the courts, Exposed! Tyranny on the Bench in Colorado; and Christine Korn, a Penrose woman whose daughter and granddaughter are at the center of one of the D&N cases that triggered the contempt charge against Shell.
It's not often that subjects of the Supreme Court's wrath show up with their own entourage, but then, little about the Shell case is typical. Her defenders were outraged that she was on trial rather than the attorneys and social-service types she defies. After the hearing ended, they were eager to offer testimonials, to explain how Shell had provided aid and advocacy when the system was bearing down on them and their own attorneys were ignoring them -- and how she avoided crossing over the line into unlicensed lawyering herself.
"Suzanne did nothing in our case," says Korn, who testified on Shell's behalf. "All she did was say, ŒHere are the resources, here's where you can look for the answers in the law.'"
"I was a single parent with six kids, fighting social services, my ex-husband, his family and all their attorneys," says Byrne. "And I won. I went through two treatment plans, two psychological evaluations -- whatever I had to do to get my kids back. I tap-danced faster than you can imagine. I'm a bright woman; I can write my own stuff. But Suzanne was there to offer support."
Parents who are in fear of losing their children, Byrne explains, will often agree to almost anything. "It's terribly emotional, and that's why people like Suzanne are important," she says. "She has the ability to be detached from the emotional aspect of it and focus on what matters. You need someone who can give you information and hope."
Yet the kind of information Shell peddles has its own emotional wallop. Profane Justice is less a sober guide to dealing with the courts than it is a declaration of war, a take-no-prisoners guide to guerrilla tactics for God's righteous families. Although it starts with a disclaimer that the author in no way endorses child abuse, the book quickly asserts that most D&N actions are unwarranted or overblown; they are, in Shell's view, gestapo-like intrusions into family life that mistake poverty for neglect and disrupt the parents' ability to discipline their children as they see fit.
"Parental rights should only be terminated if there is credible evidence that the parents have measurably harmed the child, physically or mentally," Shell says. "I'm talking a serious injury. The bond should not be casually severed. This is a death penalty for the family."
The pro-spanking, home-schooling, families-first forces have won their share of victories over the years, but Shell believes that the child-protection "racket" is heavily stacked against parents -- particularly since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, federal legislation enacted in the late 1990s that made child safety a greater priority for child-welfare agencies than family preservation.
"The system is set up to offer financial incentives for removing children from homes, and also for terminating parental rights and adoption," Shell says. "The money is there for putting the child in foster care, but the money is not there for providing in-home services."
Shell urges her readers not to cooperate with the child-protection system at any level. Don't let social workers into your home if you can help it. Don't talk to any investigators without a lawyer. Don't sign any releases that will allow them access to confidential medical information. If you must send your children to a public school, teach them to be wary of nosy teachers and buttinsky counselors. (Shell has also written a children's book, Knowing My Rules: Who Do I Trust?, that "empowers them to be safe while being questioned.") If you see a child whom you suspect of being neglected or abused, you probably shouldn't report it, Shell suggests, since the kid could be victimized further in foster care; instead, try to help the child and the family in any way you can.
Tape everything. If it looks like the brutes might try to remove your precious dumplings from the home, hide them. If they snatch Junior anyway, plant a bug in his teddy bear so you can monitor what goes on in the foster home. And, as the case lurches toward trial, raise a barrage of constitutional issues.
The vast majority of D&N cases are resolved long before trial. A child's temporary removal from the home by law enforcement triggers a hearing and a petition to the court to determine if the child has been abused or neglected; typically, the accused parent agrees to a treatment plan that is supposed to lead to the family's reunification. Shell's approach throws a monkey wrench into the machinery, demanding jury trials and resisting the state's efforts to monitor what goes on in the home.
"They just crank these through," Shell says. "In 2000, there were nearly 3,000 D&N petitions filed in the state of Colorado and fewer than ten jury trials. What do you think would happen if everyone insisted on their right to a trial?"
Shell's crusade has a kind of quixotic appeal among accused parents, but they're not its only admirers. Last spring she was a guest of the Hawaiian legislature, the first state body to pass a law endorsing the use of family advocates in court hearings. In Colorado, though, she's had a much rougher reception. Her opponents say her brand of advocacy drags out the painful process of a D&N case, turns the entire proceeding into a hopelessly adversarial one and can end up depriving parents of their children.
"I don't think I've ever had a case where she's been involved where we have not ended up terminating parental rights," says Rocco Meconi, Shell's nemesis in Fremont County.
Meconi has tangled with other self-proclaimed family advocates, and the results are always the same. "All these groups take the same tack: The department is bad, the courts are corrupt, the attorneys are inept, the children should be home, regardless," he says. "We've had lots of cases where people like Suzanne Shell get involved, and they harden the positions to such an extent that there's no degree of trust or cooperation. Yet these cases are often so clear and extreme that when people deny things, we just move for summary judgment. The facts are not in dispute, and they're horrific."
And Shell's claim that most abuse cases are exaggerated?
"That's garbage," he snaps. "When I hear those kinds of comments -- and I do get that from legislators and reporters -- I say, ŒCome look. Come with us. You'd be horrified. You'd want to know why we didn't pick up every child.' In the larger counties, Denver and El Paso, they hardly do anything unless it's incredibly egregious because they don't have the manpower. If we took on every case that warranted it, the system would be buried."
Until a few years ago, Shell admits, she did provide legal advice and on occasion draft court documents for Colorado parents who'd sought her help. Her activities triggered complaints from the Fremont County Department of Human Services and its attorney, Meconi -- and drew a stinging rebuke from a district court judge, Julie Marshall, who ordered Shell not to have any contact with the children in one D&N case.
Shell insists that she never tried to contact the children, but simply delivered some school supplies in backpacks to their foster home. "I had the camera going the whole time," she says. "They called the police and said I'd dropped a bomb off at their door."
After her first go-round with the Colorado Supreme Court over unauthorized practice of law in 2001, Shell redefined the limits of her advocacy. "They spent a lot of time making me understand that I could not give case-specific legal advice, draft legal documents or tell people what documents to file," she says. "So I changed my website. If you want my help now, your attorney has to be on board. If your attorney isn't on board, I won't help you. But I will film you if you want."
Shell's current site requires parents to download and sign a document granting her power of attorney before she will provide services. The document doesn't give her a license to practice law -- the Supreme Court's regulators spent a lot of time explaining that to her, too -- but it does give her permission to videotape their stories and authorizes her to gain access to confidential court records and discuss the case with their lawyer. And that's exactly what she was trying to do, Shell says, in the two D& N cases that led to her contempt charge.
In early 2003 Shell faxed a seven-page letter to Pueblo attorney Daniel Kender, who represents many parents in D&N cases in Fremont County as a court-appointed counsel. Shell informed him that she was contacting him as the "agent" of one of his clients, a mother who was facing termination of parental rights after various alleged incidents of abuse and neglect of her daughter. She then directed him to file various documents on his client's behalf, including something called "admissions."
"We have had great success using admissions in the past," she wrote. "Of course, if you feel this is inappropriate, I am requesting that you contact me immediately to explain why and to offer another alternative."
Kender assumed Shell meant a request for admissions, a tool for discovery that he'd never used in D&N cases because state agencies are required to make full disclosure of their case to the defense. He ignored the letter and Shell's requests.
"I considered it spurious paperwork," Kender testified at Shell's contempt hearing. "She did not have any reason to be involved in this case at all."
A few days later, Shell sent Kender another fax. This one notified him that she'd been "engaged as an expert consultant" in another case he was handling. The client in the second case was also a mother whose daughter had been placed in a foster home; the mother, April, was developmentally disabled, and there had been recurring contacts with social services over the daughter's head lice and supposedly unsuitable living conditions.
"You are hereby directed to treat any communication with me as privileged," Shell wrote. "The best course for April's protection is if you were to consider me part of your legal team and hire me to assist you.... As long as you are providing a vigorous defense on April's behalf, you will not be charged any fees for my services.... Delays and failures to properly prepare or respond will be considered ineffective assistance of counsel and malpractice."
Again, Shell directed Kender to file a slew of court documents that "will raise all relevant constitutional issues. This is not negotiable."
Kender wasn't interested in hiring Shell as part of his legal team. He ignored that letter, too.
Over the next few weeks, Kender was alarmed to learn of motions in both cases filed with the court without his knowledge. The motions listed him as the respondent's attorney but were signed by the mothers themselves. The documents challenged his competence, made questionable discovery demands and, in April's case, contained admissions that Kender regarded as tantamount to a "confession" of parental neglect, damaging her defense.
Meconi urged the court to throw out the odd documents, which he considered to be poorly written and inappropriate. He knew Kender hadn't prepared them, and parents aren't allowed to represent themselves when they already have an attorney. He also had serious doubts that either mother had actually drafted the documents they'd signed. Another attorney in the case had described the first mother as having "significant mental problems," and Meconi regarded April as "very limited, very malleable and easily influenced." He'd seen similar documents on Shell's website and in other cases in which she'd become involved.
"I saw this and said, 'Here we go again,'" he recalled at Shell's hearing. "It was clear to me that she'd become involved in these cases, as she had in others, and was acting in a way that was damaging to the families."
The first mother, who was living in California, ultimately lost her parental rights. Kender withdrew from April's case, citing Shell's interference. Judge Marshall was so perturbed at the situation that she held hearings on the matter, questioning April closely about the meaning of the documents she'd filed. The judge concluded that April "did not author any of these documents and, in fact, has somewhat limited understanding of what the documents are."
Marshall issued an unusual ruling in the case, naming Shell as a "special respondent," subject to the judge's orders. She declared that Shell "has essentially been providing legal advice" to April's detriment and ordered her not to have any contact with April at all.
Shell fought back in federal court, filing a lawsuit against Meconi, Kender, several employees of the Fremont County Department of Human Services and the county's district courts. Among other claims, she argued that Marshall's broad order violated her constitutional right of freedom of association, as well as her right as a journalist to interview sources for her documentary. Joining her as co-plaintiff in the suit was April herself, who made a strident plea to retain her advocate: "All the defendants have acted together, behind my back, to try to use the state laws to force me to stop using Suzanne Shell as an advocate."
Neither woman was represented by an attorney in the federal case, which was dismissed early last year and is now being appealed.
Paul Grant, Shell's attorney in the contempt case, believes that Marshall's order was out of bounds. "That's called making it up as we go," he says. "The judge has no authority to ban all contact. If the mother had been declared mentally incompetent and a guardian had been appointed, the court could act to protect her. But Suzanne certainly had legitimate claims that her rights were violated, and so were the mother's."
Yet the federal case soon became one more exhibit in the mounting investigation of Shell for unauthorized practice of law. Anyone can file a lawsuit on her own behalf, but Shell had signed the initial complaint on April's behalf, too, as her "agent." Even though April later signed for herself, the Supreme Court's regulation counsel regarded this as another instance of Shell attempting to represent someone in a legal matter and included it in the contempt citation, along with an account of Shell's alleged interference in Kender's two D&N cases.
Shell's defense to the charges was simple: There was no evidence that she knowingly violated the Supreme Court's order. Grant summoned family members of the two mothers, who swore that they had drafted the inflammatory court motions -- without Shell's help. Christine Korn, April's mother, testified that she'd visited several websites, including Shell's, but modified the forms she found to suit April's case and explained them to her daughter before filing them. She and April never even met Shell face-to-face until late in the case, she said, although April had granted Shell power of attorney months earlier.
"I helped to draft them with my kids," Korn said. "We were frustrated at being low-income and not being able to afford help and being stuck with whatever [attorney] they gave you."
An Oklahoma man named Steve LaBrue testified that he'd helped the mother in the other case, his girlfriend's daughter, draft her own pleadings because they, too, were frustrated with Kender's representation. "There couldn't have been a more grassy, moss-on-the-log lawyer," LaBrue said. "Basically, he didn't do much."
As for the federal case, Grant argued that Shell and April had a right to file their own lawsuit, however inexpertly prepared. All his client had done to get the grand poobahs of the law in such a tizzy was write the imperious letters to Kender -- which Kender blew off.
"To give strong legal directives to a lawyer is not the unauthorized practice of law," Grant said. "Has Suzanne Shell acted as an advocate? Absolutely. She advocated that a lawyer represent a family's interests."
Deputy regulation counsel James Coyle, who served as the prosecutor in the case, countered that the letters to Kender were clearly offering legal advice, in defiance of the state's highest court. "She knew of her obligations," Coyle told Judge Lucero. "It couldn't have been any clearer to her. By various means and ways, she's attempted to get around the order."
Early in the hearing, Coyle indicated that he was seeking punitive sanctions against Shell, including up to thirty days in jail. As it ended, he said he'd settle for a $2,000 fine for each instance of contempt of court -- plus attorneys' fees and costs, of course.
Whether Shell is punished for her ferocious advocacy or not, there's no denying that she's tapped into something dark and volatile in one of the most furtive areas of the legal system. The currents of parental rage, panic and frustration coursing through many D&N cases are what power her crusade; without them, there would be no family-advocacy movement.
It's tempting to dismiss that movement as a collection of misfits who'd rather blame the government than confront their own faulty parenting. But Shell's clients all have stories of how they've been marginalized and humiliated by the system that was supposed to help their family. They talk about caseworkers who write devastating reports about them based on hasty and infrequent visits, court-appointed lawyers who never return phone calls or e-mails, and a bewildering labyrinth of court hearings and treatment plans that make endless demands on their patience and meager incomes.
April's mother says she went online to try to figure out what to do because no one would explain the court process to her. "It's like being a deer in the headlights," Korn adds. "April is so completely helpless to fight back. She's the person everybody in this community brings their baby to for babysitting. Kids love her. To take her own child away from her is just cruel beyond belief."
Korn has set up a website of her own that documents April's battles. She claims that social workers have pressured April to give up her nine-year-old daughter for adoption practically since she was born and have urged her to move out of the house she shares with Korn and two brothers. Korn admits that the family is struggling financially and that the house is often messy, but she's posted photos purporting to show that it's not the "filthy and unhealthy environment" that caseworkers claim it is. She blames the head-lice problem that triggered the D&N case on her granddaughter's school and says that social services overreacted.
She started drafting court filings herself, she says, because Kender wasn't interested in fighting the Fremont Department of Human Services' allegations of neglect. "He told us, 'You can't fight DHS,'" she says. "He said it was too big a monster to fight, and the fastest way to get April's daughter back was to agree to their treatment plan."
"There are parents all over the country whose rights are being violated and who don't understand their rights," says Grant. "If you look at the cases in Fremont County, the court-appointed lawyer has an incentive to deal cases. Like a public defender, he has to make them go away. People who want to have a jury trial -- they're a pain in the ass. He doesn't get paid more for that. He gets paid to deal cases."
Kender says he was doing his best to represent April. "There's two approaches to take when you get into one of these kinds of cases," he explains. "One is to attack the system, and the other is to do whatever you need to do to get through it. If you attack the system, that's like walking into quicksand and wanting to attack the quicksand. Whenever that happens, you go down. You lose your children."
After Kender withdrew from the case, another attorney was appointed to represent April. She eventually dropped her demands for a trial and admitted to the county's petition. Her daughter, who'd been in foster care for six months, was soon returned to her. That would seem to bear out the wisdom of Kender's approach, but Shell and her followers see it as one more example of the court holding kids hostage in order to pummel the parents into submission.
"People believe that if they tell the truth, the courts will do the right thing," says Shell. "The courts aren't set up to do the right thing."
April's case is far from over. Last fall, after being home for fifteen months without incident, her daughter was again placed in foster care. "They're claiming that April's boyfriend is a possible pedophile, which is a bunch of BS," says Korn. "I don't believe he is, but I would never take that risk. He's never been in the same room with my granddaughter alone."
Korn insists that the latest action was retaliation against her family for getting involved with Shell. The removal came at the same time Korn was organizing a meeting of parents in the Penrose area who were concerned about social services and the court system. "I was feeling really powerful," she says. "We finally had people who were corroborating what we were saying, and all but two of them had never heard of Suzanne Shell. I walked into a meeting with forty people that night and told them they just took my granddaughter again. The next weekend, five people showed up. The rest jumped ship. They're scared."
Two weeks ago, April's third court-appointed lawyer filed a motion asking to withdraw from the case, claiming that his client and her associates had "tacitly, inferentially and directly" threatened him with ethical grievances and a lawsuit. Shell had recently written him a letter, demanding that he attend one of her seminars and informing him of her plan to "broadcast this compelling story worldwide."
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"You are out of your element," she wrote. "If you are not fighting for April all the way with big brass balls, you are against her.... Whatever happens, I'll be watching and the cameras will be rolling."
Coyle says his office isn't on any particular crusade against Shell. "We're a consumer-protection agency," he says. "We don't want to regulate every conversation going on in the state. But when it does involve harm, or it's clear several people are getting bad legal advice and their rights are affected by it, we investigate."
Grant points out that UPL cases tend to be complaint-driven. "It's very selective," he says. "In traffic cases in some jurisdictions, the cop acts as the prosecutor. He practices law without a license every day. Probation officers file motions asking the court to revoke someone's probation, and they aren't lawyers. Victims' advocates offer legal advice to alleged victims all the time. The Supreme Court winks and nods at people in the system who practice law without a license."
Shell is only a threat to the system, Grant says, because the system is unjust. "If she's convicted of contempt, she would be made a martyr," he adds. "That would be a bigger mistake than letting her go."


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Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, wears spiffy banker suits. He has floppy hair. His glasses are nice. But how's his handwriting? On a 3DS?
Above is the Swapnote message Nintendo is sending out for its monthly "Nintendo Direct" online presentation in which Iwata and Nintendo directly speak to the internet.
The message is fairly simple: "Hello. This is Iwata from Nintendo! This is a notice for the next Nintendo Direct. Feb. 22nd, from 8pm. Please watch it."
The individual who posted these images on 2channel stated this shows everyone just how difficult it is to use the touch pen, taking into account the tiny touch pen and small screen. "For the president of a large international company, this is embarrassing," the uploader wrote.
Other commenters in the thread were less fussed about the touch pen and Iwata's handwriting. Since calligraphy is held in such high regard and the written Japanese language is beautiful, people in Japan might be more sensitive to things like handwriting. But everyone already knows what kind of penmanship is possible on a touchscreen.
Me? I think it's pretty cool Iwata handwrote this notice. Crappy handwriting, touch pen shortcomings, or whatever, it's a nice personal touch.
And it's not just Iwata—Kotaku reader Jon sent along a handwritten Swapnote from Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. Like Iwata, his handwriting might be considered cruddy!


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AbbVie Inc., which has research operations in Worcester, forecast 2013 earnings higher than analysts' estimates, after sales surged for its arthritis treatment Humira, the world's second-best selling medicine, and its testosterone-boosting gel.
AbbVie, giving its first forecast since breaking away from Abbott Laboratories on Jan. 1 as an independent company, projected earnings excluding one-time items of $3.03 to $3.13 a share. The top end of the range is higher than the $3.08 average of 11 analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Abbott split its diversified health-care products company, leaving medical devices, diagnostic tools and infant nutrition businesses with the parent, while North Chicago, Illinois-based AbbVie became a drugmaker. Abbott Chief Executive Officer Miles White said the breakup was designed to get the other businesses out from the shadow of Humira, now AbbVie's top-selling product with $9.27 billion in revenue last year.
The focus is on AbbVie's experimental drugs. William Chase, the company's chief financial officer, said earlier this month that AbbVie will try to develop specialty treatments rather than targeting primary care medicines.
Among its leading experimental therapies is a hepatitis C treatment targeted for the market in early 2015 that will eliminate shots of interferon, the standard yearlong treatment that has flu-like side-effects. Also in the final phase of testing usually needed for U.S. regulatory approval are medicines to treat multiple sclerosis and multiple myeloma.
AbbVie shares fell less than 1 percent to $37.16 at 9:40 a.m. New York time.
Sales of Humira increased 23 percent in the fourth quarter to $2.68 billion. Sales last year of the arthritis medicine trailed only the world's best-selling drug, Pfizer Inc.'s cholesterol treatment Lipitor. Lipitor has been losing sales after generic copies came on the market last year.
The testosterone-boosting treatment AndroGel rose 41 percent to $364 million in the fourth quarter as the company increased television advertisements for the medicine. Americans spent $1.15 billion on the drug in 2012, a 32 percent increase.


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DMC Tapestry Wool Yarn Quick Ordering!
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DMC Tapestry Wool is a soft smooth non-divisible yarn made of 100% virgin wool. Ideal for needlepoint. Its twist and thickness provide excellent canvas coverage with a smooth, even texture. DMC Tapestry Wool is both mothproof and colorfast. The wool is combed and twilled which gives it an even finish. Endorsed by the Woolmark. 8.7 yard skein.
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KWOW Season 4 shows you where to eat, play, drink and sight-see in the vibrant capital Seoul. This time around Professor Oh travels with her main crew. Billy Jin, Granny Kim and Taekwon Do join in as main hosts while Yoonah (Professor Oh's bestie famed for her eye smile) assists with co-hosting and filming.
Professor Oh focuses on the historical aspects of Seoul. Taekwon Do unveils some of the best places to eat Korean food. Billy Jin shows you where to shop and get in touch with your inner Kpopper. And Granny Kim? She handles the nightlife department.
Note: Season 4 incorporates the educational aspects of Seasons 1 and 2. The original meaning of KWOW (Korean Word of the Week) is resurrected. The travel episodes are paired with supplementary videos containing helpful Korean phrases.
For Season 3, KWOW goes to Korea! Professor Oh documents her experience and shows you places to visit, revealing one particular face of the Land of Kimchi: its chilly winter. In these casual and spontaneous travel episodes, Professor Oh frequently co-hosts with locals, family and friends. For the complete list of episodes, click here.
KWOW Season 2 focuses on Korean culture both modern and traditional. Professor Oh delves into subjects ranging from Kpop to holidays to North Korea. For the complete list of episodes, click here.
KWOW Season 1 teaches common and trendy Korean words and phrases. Professor Oh and Friends combine education and entertainment to make learning an enjoyable experience. Be sure to check out the mini Korean dramas at the end of select episodes! For the complete list of the season, click here. Episodes 39-57 were aired on Mnet America.


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Citizen Fire Academy
The Citizen Fire Academy program equips participants with the knowledge they need to improve fire preparedness and resiliency on their own properties and in their communities.
Land Steward Program
The Land Steward Program helps owners learn how to better utilize and take care of their land. The multi-disciplinary program covers a broad range of management topics including wildfire risk reduction, woodland and forest management, encouraging (and controlling) wildlife, stream ecology, pasture management, soil health, rural acreage systems and infrastructure, economics and enterprise on your land, stewardship planning and more. Program offerings include field-based training, online short course, evening classes, land tours, workshops and the regional Living on Your Land Conference.
Master Woodland Manager
The Master Woodland Manager (MWM) training is offered by Oregon State University Forestry Extension as a master's level course for landowners who are interested in an intensive forest management training and sharing the knowledge gained through this training with people in their local communities. Graduates of the program have been serving Oregon for 20 years.
Oregon Forest Pest Detector
Oregon Forest Pest Detectors (OFPDs) are volunteers that help prevent the damaging impacts of invasive forest pests by monitoring for and reporting potential infestations. They usually already have some baseline knowledge of tree/insect identification and are likely to encounter an infestation as part of their work. OFPDs are very important in early detection and rapid response of control efforts.
Oregon Master Naturalist
The Oregon Master Naturalist Program is for people interested in Oregon's natural history and natural resources management who want to dedicate their time as volunteers. The Program provides an opportunity to learn about natural resources through the study of scientifically sound information: the natural history of plants, animals, habitats, and geology, the history and processes of landscape change, as well as the most relevant topics in present-day sustainable natural resource management. Participants volunteer for natural resources programs, agencies, organizations, and other groups in their communities.
Oregon Season Tracker
Oregon Season Tracker (OST) is a project of Oregon State University that aims to link natural resource managers, educators, researchers and others in the community to the science they use through collaborative citizen science. We hope that together the OST partnership can improve understanding of weather patterns and how plants and other living things in our ecosystem respond and adapt to regional variations in climate conditions by gathering data across diverse Oregon landscapes.
Tree School
Regional Tree School events held each year throughout Oregon provide important opportunities for continuing education and building community, helping support the success of family forest landowners.
Women Owning Woodlands Network
The Women Owning Woodlands Network (WOWNet) is a diverse, enthusiastic, group of women who are interested in woodland management. WOWNet allows women to come together to learn about forest management, share their forestry and natural resources experiences, and exchange personal knowledge in a unique peer-to-peer learning environment. The group encompasses many different knowledge sources and diverse management goals. WOWNet women are working in forests, they are owning forests, and they are actively engaged in land management!


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The latest news on WordPress.com and the WordPress community.


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Here is What All Celtics Fans Should be Thankful for
I am thankful for a lot of things in life. My family, friends, good health and being able to kayak on the Potomac River anytime I want.
Since this is a Celtics site, I'd like to give thanks to a person all Celtics fans should be thankful for: Danny Ainge.
Ainge was a great player for the Celtics during their championship years in the 80's. However, just 5 years ago people were trying to boot him out of town. Now, he has assembled in my opinion the best Celtics team since the glory days of the 80's. Sure, this team is old and their window for a championship is probably this year and next. But I admire Ainge for sticking with the core group that won in 2008 and taking a chance with the controversial signings of Shaq and Delonte. Ainge simply wants to win and doesn't care what others think. This is what we should all want in a leader of a franchise. Besides Danny, I'm also thankful for the following:
The privilege of watching Rajon Rondo pass the basketball. No one plays like Rondo in the league. While he may not be the best at his position, he is without a doubt the most unique. It is a joy to watch.
KG's intensity. I know KG talks trash. I know and can understand why opposing teams wouldn't like him. But if you can honestly say you wouldn't want him on your team than you are kidding yourself.
Paul Pierce. This guy has given so much to this franchise and deserves to be considered amongst the greatest Celtics that ever lived at the end of his career. His step back jumper is a thing of beauty.
Ray Allen and Ray's Mom: Ray Allen is just an outstanding human being and still has the smoothest jump shot in the game. It's great seeing Ray's mom cheer him on during the games.
Shaq: Sure he's old. Sure, he has been disruptive to a few teams. But the guy is playing great this year and has been a positive impact on the community. How many athletes volunteer to take pictures with random people in a park.
Perk: Best defensive center in the league. Best glare in the league. Can't wait till he gets back.
Big Baby: The best person at taking charges in the history of basketball. Current 6th man of the year. One of my favorite athletes in all of sports to watch.
We are privileged to have such a great sports team to cheer for. Be thankful for the Celtics. Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!


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Editor's Note: Officials in Indiana's Elkhart County were working this week to bring Mike Huckabee's show, which airs Saturday night on the Fox News Channel, to Elkhart this week. Plans call for the show to be taped Saturday afternoon at the RV/MH Hall of Fame. The former Arkansas governor made an unsuccessful run to win the Republican nomination for president last year.
A leading official in Elkhart County, Ind., is lobbying state and federal legislators to target some of the federal economic stimulus money to complete work on the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart.
John Letherman, president of the Elkhart County Council, told RVBusiness that completing the conference center and showcase grounds at the Hall is on a "wish list" of 13 projects submitted to the state of Indiana in the last month and No. 4 on his personal wish list.
Private funding through the RV/MH Heritage Foundation Inc. got the Hall of Fame to its present state but further funding is drying up, leaving work on completion of the conference center, kitchen and 20-acre business showcase still on the drawing board. Cost to complete the facility is estimated at $10 million to $12 million.
Letherman has been lobbying Hoosier Congressmen Joe Donnelly and Mark Souder, whose congressional districts include Elkhart County, for a share of the $787 billion economic stimulus package President Obama signed into law on Feb. 17.
No funds have come Elkhart's way thus far, but Letherman is still hopeful.
"If they are passing out money, we should be getting a large share because the New York Times says we're 'at the white hot epicenter of the recession' and everyone knows the New York Times doesn't lie," he said. "Congress gave huge loans to the auto companies and they are still in business. Nobody gave anything to Elkhart County RV manufacturers and we lost a huge part of our business base because when sales slowed they just shut down and many went out of business.
"The fastest way to get back is to start selling RVs and getting them financed."
Letherman, a prominent Republican at the local and state level, said he can make a persuasive argument why the community deserves the money for this and other capital improvement projects. He favors the Hall project because work to complete it could put hundreds of people to work and, once completed, the facility would give the RV industry an excellent venue to showcase its products.
"I know some people may think producing a venue is less important than taking care of unemployed people, but the best way to get people back to work is to start selling RVs again," Letherman reiterated. "If we create a good venue to showcase RVs and a conference center where 1,000 people can sit down to eat, neither of which we have now, this will be good for Elkhart County in the long-term."
A leading Midwestern caterer told the Hall of Fame staff that a facility able to seat 1,000 people for a meal could draw as many as 20 functions within the first year of operation.
Letherman, formerly employed in the RV industry but now a commercial realtor in Elkhart, said the finished Hall of Fame site would be an excellent location for the annual Midwest RV Show sponsored by the Indiana Manufactured Housing Association-Recreation Vehicle Indiana Council (IMHA-RVIC). That show is currently staged at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds.
"Those guys who are still in business when this (recession) is all over with are going to need a venue to show their products, other than in the field behind the animal pens at the fairgrounds," Letherman said. "The fairgrounds are a great place for 4-H projects and a midway. However, it is just not in my mind a proper place to be trying to showcase the outstanding RV and MH products that Elkhart County."
Dennis Harney, IMHA-RVIC executive director, agreed that the completed Hall of Fame grounds would be a good venue for the Midwest Show and other manufacturer events.
Letherman said the Hall of Fame complex could broaden its appeal and become an "industrial showcase" for the region.
"There are people in Detroit who would like to bring shows down here because there are few venues with this kind of quality and exposure," Letherman said. It also would help the community retain some of the business and social events that end up going to other communities because Elkhart County does not have a suitable facility, he added.
Letherman noted that Elkhart County government is known for being frugal in its spending.
"Both local government and the Hall of Fame know how to do a big project like this," Letherman said, referring to careful spending on big projects. "The Hall, for its part, has raised almost $12 million and has built the finest facility in the Elkhart County Community, all with donated funds."
Letherman has run his proposal by the Hall of Fame management and received its support. Heritage Foundation spokesman Tom McNulty called Letherman "a champion of the Hall" since before it opened and praised his efforts to get funding. However, he stressed that the foundation will not undertake partial completion of the conference center and won't finish the show grounds until the money is in hand.
"My board has mandated we are not building anything until we have the money and that is how it should be," he said.
Also, knowing where to go to get the economic stimulus funding could prove problematic.
"All of the stimulus money is being channeled through federal agencies or the state," explained Tom Byers, Elkhart County administrator. "Nobody knows what the rules and regulations in getting access to these funds are. The criteria are being put together now."


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Week Ahead: Yellen To Testify Before Congress
The highlight of next week's economic calendar will almost certainly be Janet Yellen's testimony before Congress, her first as the newly installed head of the Federal Reserve.
Fourth-quarter earnings are winding down as well, and there's a smattering of economic data due including reports on small-business optimism, consumer sentiment and retail sales.
Yellen will appear Tuesday morning in her first semi-annual monetary policy testimony before the House Financial Services Committee.
Given Friday's tepid jobs report, the second in a row, Yellen will undoubtedly be asked about the Fed's plans to continue gradually scaling back its long-running stimulus policies. The Labor Department reported the U.S. economy had added just 113,000 jobs in January, a little better than the 75,000 jobs added in December, but not much.
Despite the lousy December labor report, other mixed economic data and turmoil in emerging markets, the Fed voted last month to cut another $10 billion from its monthly bond purchase program known as quantitative easing.
The Fed has pointed to an array of indicators beyond the labor market -- %VIRTUAL-article-sponsoredlinks%GDP and low inflation levels, for instance -- to justify its optimism for continued economic growth. But the members of the Financial Services Committee are going to want lots of details.
The National Federation of Independent Business, which represents about three-quarters of the small businesses in the U.S., releases its NFIB Small Business Optimism Index on Tuesday. The index is a key measure of whether small businesses, which create 70 percent of American jobs, feel optimistic enough to hire.
A report on retail sales is out Thursday and reports on import and export prices and consumer sentiment are out Friday.
Fourth-quarter earnings are winding down, but these bellwether companies are scheduled to report next week: Sprint (S) on Tuesday; Deere & Co. (DE), MetLife (MET), Owens Corning (OC), CBS (CBS) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) Wednesday; and PepsiCo (PEP) on Thursday.
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STANWOOD — A large area on the east side of Port Susan looks very different from how it appeared six months ago.
Previously diked off and dry, the 150 acres now floods at high tide with salt water from the bay and is teeming with ducks and snow geese.
"It's a great feeling," said Kat Morgan, manager of Port Susan programs for the Nature Conservancy, which owns the property.
The environmental preservation group breached an old earthen dike to allow salt water to rush into the site and reinforced another old dike to protect farmland.
The change is expected to restore original wildlife habitat to much of the east side of the bay north of the mouth of the Stillaguamish River, also known as Hat Slough.
A new tidegate also was installed to allow water to run out when flooding does occur. The $4 million project, by Northwest Construction of Bellevue, involved a lot of earth moving and was done between May and October. The money came from state and federal environmental programs and private donations.
First, the original, inner dike along the adjacent Twin City Foods farm was reinforced. At the dike's north end, a new section of dike was built to connect to the original and make it longer. Dirt was skimmed off the top of the outer dike to help build the new one.
In September, the outer dike, 14 feet high, was breached in two places. Salt water crept through at high tide and now, after more than two months, the only signs of the dike are some decayed pilings and a marshy area that grew up on the dike's outer side.
Sunny weather in August and September helped crews get the project done.
"That helped keep everything on schedule," Morgan said.
The 1.4 mile-long outer dike near the river mouth was built in the late 1950s by farmer Menno Groeneveld, the son of a Dutch immigrant, according to the Nature Conservancy. He tried to farm the enclosed area over the years with little success. The environmental group bought the property from Groeneveld's estate in 2001 for $2 million.
The outer dike not only dried up the tidelands in the enclosed area but blocked fresh water and river sediment from moving north in the bay. This starved that area of the water mix needed by native plants and animals, and it has slowly been losing marshland, Morgan said.
Removing the dike is expected to improve fish habitat by providing young salmon with cool, deep channels where they can hide, feed and adjust to the saltwater environment.
"They have to fatten up in that place," said Lisa Bellefond, external affairs director for the Puget Sound Partnership, a state-funded environmental agency based in Olympia. "These are like the teenagers that are going off to college."
The Puget Sound Partnership sets goals for restoration of each section of inland waterway, Bellefond said. In Port Susan, the target is 315 acres, meaning the Nature Conservancy project gets it half way to the goal — not counting the potential benefits to the northern part of the bay.
"This project is incredibly important for many reasons," she said.
The area is a popular spot for birders. The Nature Conservancy has opened the outer dike to the public on a by-permission basis, but plans to keep the new and reinforced dikes closed at least until January while staff monitor the area's progress, Morgan said.
It could take five years or more for the habitat to restore itself, but changes will be visible along the way, especially in the wet season, she said.
"Winter's when the changes will happen," Morgan said.
Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439; firstname.lastname@example.com.


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(AP) — A division of Europe's HSBC bank has been ordered to pay about $2.46 billion in a class action lawsuit claiming that it violated federal securities laws.
The shareholder lawsuit named consumer mortgage lender Household International Inc. — formerly based in Prospect Heights before it became known as HSBC Finance Corp. — and former executives William Aldinger, David Schoenholz and Gary Gilmer. It claimed that the company fraudulently misled investors about its predatory lending practices, the quality of its home loans and its financial accounting from March 23, 2001 through Oct. 11, 2002. HSBC acquired Household International in 2003. The acquisition made HSBC the biggest subprime lender in the U.S. at the time, but resulted in billions of losses to HSBC leading up to the financial crisis of 2008.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that the judgment, which includes $1.48 billion in damages and nearly $1 billion in prejudgment interest, was the biggest ever following a securities fraud class action trial. HSBC Holdings PLC, Europe's biggest bank by market value, said in a statement on Friday that it will appeal, noting that it was "the next step in an 11-year-old case and we believe we have a strong argument."
The judgment "shows that the fraud committed by Household International and the individual defendant officers will not go unpunished, and we look forward to having the judgment affirmed on appeal," James Glickenhaus of Glickenhaus & Co., one of the three lead plaintiffs appointed by the court in 2002 to represent the class, said in a statement.
A jury in Chicago found in favor of the plaintiffs in May 2009. In the final judgment entered in the U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division on Thursday, Household International, Aldinger, and Schoenholz are held jointly and severally liable for the judgment. Gilmer is held severally liable for 10 percent of the judgment.
HSBC's U.S. shares shed 32 cents to $54.84 in morning trading. They are up less than 2 percent for the year.


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sv necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 56 diseños de 22 diseñadores freelance.
Drunksport.com is an ecommerce website for the indoor/outdoor and lawn games enthusiasts. We sell everything from Beer Pong tables to Cornhole boards to Polish Horseshoes.
Twenty-to-100 somethings who appreciate multitasking. Our games are aimed towards people who enjoy participating in active and competitive leisure sports. (And hey, if you choose to partake in a cocktail while playing, good for you. It's always five o'clock somewhere.)
We are looking for a logo to use on our website (still in development), business cards and letterhead.
The logo should focus on "games" rather than implications of alcohol (no beer bottles or funnels in the design, please). Because our target audience is of legal drinking age, the design should be sporty and slick rather than whimsical and playful.
We would prefer the design to be either square or spherical shaped rather than long and rectangular (easier to post on promotional pieces).
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.