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Nixon tried that very defense, and see where it got him. Of course, we may have evolved in this country as a political system since then, not just a cultural entity, so we will see.
True, but the problem is that, at least from my understanding, clearer/smarter/generally more decent heads typically ran things back then, in a manner of speaking. Or at the very least, it feels like the corrupt and the stupid weren't quite as numerous as they seem to be in this day and age.
Forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand the whole "Israel" thing.What's bad about it? (Legit asking; not trying to be sarcastic like "What are you guys making a big deal about?")
I'm still such a newbie when it comes to understanding politics and such. Which might not be a good thing, considering I'm going to college for a Criminal Justice degree. lol
All the better. Justice is supposed to be blind, after all.
The difference is that for Nixon, you had Republicans of conscious who put party after country (granted this was after Nixon slipped in the polls with his base). That also implied a base which could ALSO (and actually) put America Fist, which we don't have because of the Cult of Orange.
Only because what we learn in history class and what we write down tends to be a cleaned-up narrative of real life. It took three years for Nixon to resign from office - he would have been in there longer if they had tried to go through the whole process of impeachment and removal. It was just as messy back then - it's just that all the mess doesn't make it into the history books.
It depends on what history books you read. Historians come in different flavors. Some books are general history; others delve deeply into specific areas. The problem is that few people other than historians and history lovers (like me) really read the in-depth history books, and thus miss the nuance and details to some of these historical events. But they are out there, waiting to be read.
Also, what area you're from. Down in DC/NoVA, things that happened in DC and its environs were covered with a fair amount of detail. Mr. Oniya, who grew up in Boston, had more colonial/Revolutionary War history in his classes than I did. Out in Ohio, Little Oni got more of the 'Great Lakes' history.
Great op-ed piece by Roger Cohen about Trump's war on truth, serious debate, honesty and transparency:https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/opinion/trump-mueller-facts.html
Yeah, r-word no bueno. Might I suggest any of these instead?
*dies laughing* Perfect!
... Working my way out of the Oval Office, stabbing one enemy at a time!"
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Tips about getting your newspaper:
- You can get the newspaper for $1 at many Dollar Tree locations...that's where we usually get our extra copies when the coupons are really good. Many stores are now imposing limits but still sell out super fast. I know I have to make it by 2 on Saturday for the early Sunday edition or I'm usually out of luck. Not all locations carry the paper so make sure you call ahead to see if you local Dollar Tree has the paper if you're planning a special trip. (CLICK HERE for more info)
- You can use your Register Rewards at Walgreens or ECB's at CVS to get the paper for FREE :)
- Some Menards locations sell just the inserts for $1...good way to make sure no paper is wasted :) Make sure you call ahead to see if you local Menard's has this deal if you're planning a special trip.
- Several people have asked me which paper I get and where I get it. We ALWAYS get the Chicago Tribune. We have 2 that are delivered to our home each Sunday and we pick up extras at the Dollar Tree if the coupons are really good.
- The Sun Times has coupons in it too, but the Chicago Tribune's coupons are better. Sometimes inserts arrive in the Friday edition of the Sun Times. Every once in a blue moon, the Times has coupons that are no available in the Tribune.
There are a few areas in my neighborhood (Lansing, IL) that collect them. You have to drop them off in person. I found out about the program from the quarterly newsletter my town sends out. If you live near my neck of the woods...
"Drop off boxes are located that the Village Municipal Center, Library, Eisenhower Center, The Insurance Place, and The Fashionette. It is helpful if donated are sorted by grocery and non-grocery. Only manufacturer coupons can be used, not store coupons. They are also in need of monetary donations to send boxes. A box costs $13.20 to mail and holds about 16 pounds of coupons. Volunteers are also needed to help clip and sort coupons. To help, call 708-323-5232."
Thanks for the preview, Sunday Coupon Preview!
*This post may contain affiliate links...they are what helps to keep South Suburban Savings alive! However, I do my best to only post credible deals, and I participate in most of them myself. To see my full disclosure policy, CLICK HERE!

subset: commoncrawl


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Hello Ladies,
How is everybody and their little ones doing?
Parenting!! It is as much challenging as it is fun!! Faith is very demanding for attention. She wants somebody to play with her always! No toy interests her for more than 5 minutes. In order distract her so that I can do my work, I have to give her something new everytime. DH leaves for job very early in the morning. So I have to put Faith on the floor along with her toys when I get ready for work, and pack her diaper bag and all that. She is not interested in the toys for more than 5 minutes. She keeps crawling behind me wherever I go and she holds on to my legs and wants me to carry her!! It is so touching that she wants to be close to me, but I have to get my things done!!! Its kind of frustrating some times.
How so you ladies handle this situation? Any ideas?


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There quite a tale that goes with a book donated to the Valparaiso branch of the Porter County Public Library this week, and it's got nothing to do with fiction.
An employee cracking open a copy of Robert Stone's Outbridge Reach found the book hollowed out with a historic-looking handgun inside, Valparaiso police said.
The weapon was described by police as a gold, wooden handle, A.S.M. brand, .31-caliber, single shot, black powder gun.
Due to the volume of donations received by the library, officials said there's no way to know from whom the book came.
Police said, however, the gun hadn't been reported stolen.


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When: 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Aug. 27
Where: Hilton Head, Bluffton and Daufuskie Island beaches
Description: Beaches on Hilton Head, Bluffton and Daufuskie Island will be cleaned up by volunteers. The beach sweep is free and open to the public. There will be a check-in table at each location and all necessary supplies are provided. Beach Sweep locations include Tower Beach in Sea Pines, Sea Pines Beach Club, Coligny Beach, Palmetto Dunes, Burkes Beach, Mitchellville Beach, Alljoy Beach, the Bluffton Oyster Factory, Pinckney Island and Daufuskie Island.
Details: To learn more, email firstname.lastname@example.com.
When: 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 27
Where: Shelter Cove Harbour, Hilton Head Island
Description: Hilton Head Preparatory School has partnered with presenting sponsors, Coastal Plains Insurance and PURE, along with the Shelter Cove Merchants Association, for an evening of music, food and environmental education. The festival is free and open to the public. The evening's festivities will include live music by blues and rock bands, including Chilly Willy Band, Broad Creek Rum Runners and Domino Theory with Candace Woodson, as well as local high school bands.


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There he stood at the stone gateway of the Harounis' weekend home above Islamabad, a small bowlegged man with a lopsided, battered face. When the American wife's car drove up, turning off the Murree road, Rezak saluted, eyes straight ahead, not looking at her. She sat in the back and smiled at him from the milky darkness of the car's interior. What a funny little man! Once, he had happened to be walking past as she was driven through the gate, and she had waved. In the few weeks since, he had waited hours to receive this recognition from her, Friday when the family came, Sunday when they left. He had plenty of time.
The car continued up the winding flagstone drive and disappeared among the rows of jacaranda trees, blooming purple now in late April. Below lay the roadside town of Kalapani, the bazaar pierced by the horns of buses collecting passengers; above stood these walls, which enclosed ten acres of steep land, planted with apples, pine, jasmine, roses, and lilies that the wife had brought from America. The wind blew with a rushing sound through the pine branches and combed the fresh green grass sprouting all over the hillside after the winter rains.
He made himself useful. In May, pickup trucks full of summer flowers were brought from the nurseries that surrounded the city on the plains below. When the first truck arrived, he stood at the gate, watching the gardeners unload the pots, handing them down to each other and then carrying them up to the house—the loaded vehicle couldn't climb the steep drive. Without asking, he passed through the gate, which he had never done before, took one of the clay pots in his arms, and walked up to the house with it, rolling slightly on his down-at-heel shoes.
"Hey, old man, you better leave that before you hurt yourself," called a gardener standing in the bed of the pickup.
"I'm from the mountains, brother," Rezak said. "I can carry you up on my back, and one of these in each hand."
The pickup driver, who stood to one side smoking a cigarette, grinned.
The old majordomo, Ghulam Rasool, had strolled down to watch the show, a potbellied figure with a tall lambskin hat resting at a slight angle on a fringe of white hair. He sent one of the gardeners up to get his hookah and, comfortably settling himself in the watchman's chair by the gate, looked out over the valley below. At midday, he said to Rezak, "Come on then, and break bread with us."
Rezak looked down at his feet. "I'd need to put stones in my gizzard like a chicken to digest the rich food that you good people eat."
The majordomo tried to convince him, and the gardeners also pressed, but Rezak remained stubborn. "You didn't ask for help—you don't owe me anything."
"Suit yourself then," Ghulam Rasool said finally. The gardeners walked up the drive, talking, and Rezak stood watching them, wishing he had accepted. He was alone now. In the distance, he could see a swimming pool with curving sides, overhung by chinar trees and willows. Melancholy invaded him, and also peace, borne by the whirring of cicadas nestled among the rocks that punctuated the grounds of the estate. He took a bag from his pocket, undid the elastic band, and tucked a quid of tobacco in his cheek, chopped green naswar.
In the Kalapani bazaar, he ate at his usual teahouse, day-old bread soaked in milk, prescribed by a quack homeopath against a fistula that had tormented him for many years. The waiter brought the sopping bread and, when the crowd subsided, came over to have a few words about the flow of tourists up to Murree, more each year, this season begun so early. Lonely as he was, Rezak relied upon his welcome in the teahouse, his connection with it. When the older chickens at the poultry sheds where he worked were culled, Rezak would bring down one of the healthier birds, asking the teahouse to cook it, as a holiday from his bread diet. He shared with whoever was there, insistent, forcing his friend the waiter to eat.
"There, look, I've taken some," the waiter would say, pulling off a wing. Even he, hardened by a diet of stale leftovers from the kitchen, was dubious about eating this time-expired bird.
"No, you have to really eat." Once, Rezak even became angry about it, leaving abruptly, the chicken still on the table.
After finishing his lunch, Rezak walked through a government pine forest to the poultry sheds. The owner had bribed the wardens to allow construction extending into the forest, and each summer his men set fires at the base of pines planted by the British a hundred years earlier, in order to kill the trees and open up more space. Rezak came to his home—not the workers' quarters attached to the sheds but a hut that he had built for himself, a little wooden cubicle, faced with tin and mounted on thick legs. Several decades before, in his early twenties, he had fallen out with his step-brothers over shared property up in the mountains, a few acres of land on which they grew wheat and potatoes, bordered by apricot trees. Outmaneuvered, dispossessed, he had come down to the plains, vowing never to see his family again. This box had become his home and consolation. Each place he worked, he set it up, and then, when he quarrelled with the other workers or the boss, as he invariably did, he would take it apart and cart it away—always he kept a store of money, untouched no matter what, enough to pay for trucking this little house, this nest, to whatever place his heart had set on next. This was his guarantee of independence.
Opening the heavy padlock, he lifted the door hatch and climbed in, tucking his shoes into a wooden box nailed below the cramped hatch. Tiny red lights, run off an electrical connection drawn from the poultry sheds, were strung all over the ceiling and warmed the chamber. He could sit but not stand inside, and had covered the floor with a cotton mattress, which gave off a ripe animal odor, deeply comforting to him. A funnel and pipe served as a handy spittoon, a mirror and shelf allowed him to shave without getting out of bed, an electric fan cooled him. Photographs of actresses plastered the walls and ceiling, giving him company. Fickle and choosy, he shuffled and moved them, discarding one, stripping the photographs from the wall with a cold expression. For several months, he had been favoring a Pathan actress known as the Atomic Bum, who had wagged her way through a string of hit movies in the past year.
A few days later, loitering around the gates of the Harouni estate again, Rezak decided to go in, stepping through a narrow entry set into the wall. The owners would be in Islamabad for the week, and earlier he had seen the watchman down in the bazaar. By climbing the slope of the mountain opposite, he had observed the household routine, marked the servants' quarters, watched the owners sitting on a terrace, brightly clothed. Close up, the house seemed to him ugly, made of large rough-hewn stones, with a vast wall of glass across the front, looking out over the valley and down to Islamabad, forty kilometres below. Nothing to it—no metalwork, no paint, no decorative lights, only size to recommend it. The house blended into the landscape, as if it were one of the boulders littering the mountain slope.
He found Ghulam Rasool sitting in a chair under a tree, reading a newspaper.
"Ah, the volunteer," he said amiably. "Come on then, have a pull on the hookah."
Rezak sat down on the edge of a charpoy, dangling his short legs. "I'm killing myself with this poison instead." He spat and then dipped coarse green tobacco under his gum.
"You work up in Ayub's sheds, don't you?"
"When Ayub needs me, I work. He pays me in dying chickens and loose change." He tried to make a joke of it.
"That's what I hear—Ayub shaves both sides and then trims out the middle piece."
Rezak laughed mirthlessly. "The way I'm going, soon I'll be eating grass." He paused. "I've been thinking. I can do woodwork. I know about trees. I'll carry things, work in the garden. Feed me and I'll work here and do whatever you want. You don't even have to give me a room. I've got a portable cubicle that I live in—you can stick me in some corner."
The owner of the estate, Sohail Harouni, the son of a man who made a fortune in cement and other industries, had, while he was at university in the United States, married an American woman named Sonya. "No, I really love it here," she would say defensively when asked at a party. "It's strange, it's like a drug. I think I miss the States so much—and I do—and then after a month there I'm completely bored. Pakistan makes everything else seem washed out. This is my place now. I don't do enough, but I feel as if here I can at least do something for the good." She did fit in more than most foreign women. She studied Urdu, to the point where she could communicate quite effectively, made an effort to meet Pakistanis outside the circuit in Islamabad. Even her husband's catty aunts admitted that she was one of the few foreigners who wore Pakistani clothes without looking like either an Amazon or a Christmas tree.
And yet, though she insisted that she loved Pakistan, sometimes it all became too much. "I hate it, everyone's a crook, nothing works here!" she would sob, fighting with her husband. Then she would storm out to her car and retreat to the Kalapani house, forty minutes away, arriving unannounced, withdrawing darkly into the master bedroom, while the servants scrambled to prepare her meal. In the evening she would wander the large stone house, slowly becoming calm, speaking with her friends on the telephone. Her husband would drive up to spend the night with her, bringing their little son as a pledge of their love, and they would make peace.
It happened that, soon after Rezak made his plea to Ghulam Rasool, Sonya had a huge row with her husband and ran away to Kalapani. The next morning, she sat drinking coffee on the sunny terrace, which had a view out over the government forest, now heavily logged by poachers, and then down to Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The strain of the fight had shaded into a desire for simplicity and order, an almost pleasant teariness.
Ghulam Rasool came up from the garden, coughing so that she would not be startled. Of all the servants, he was the one she most trusted with her son. She herself felt comfortable with him, with his gentle, stoic manner, with his prayers and his superstitions.
Her blond hair held back by a black velvet band, she wore a simple white blouse, white slacks, and lay on a divan, immaculate, reading a slender volume of poetry. She had been an English major, and turned to a handful of familiar books as a restorative—Yeats or Rilke, Keats, to be taken as needed.
"Excuse me, Begum Sahib. I wanted to ask, it's time to think about the roses."
She knew that he wanted to soften her attitude toward her husband. In any case, she liked him to come and talk with her, and they used as a pretext his supervision of the garden, although he had always been a valet and knew almost nothing about flowers or trees.
She put down her book, and they considered the roses and the placement of the annuals.
"Begging your pardon, the local people drive their goats into the Ali Khan orchard, and they're destroying the saplings that you brought from America. There's an old man. He can't do hard labor, but he's a reliable person. His family abandoned him. He even has his own portable hut—he'll take it there and live as a guard. You don't have to give him a salary. Just food and a few rupees for pocket money."
But she wanted to give the old man the same as all the others. It made her happy to think of spoiling him in his old age.
Newly hired, Rezak moved to the Ali Khan lands, a walled parcel of four or five acres just up the road from the main house. Like the other servants and gardeners, he received a salary of nine thousand rupees a month, more than he had ever made in his life. The gardeners from the big house transported his cubicle in pieces, then helped him reassemble it next to a hut that was already standing there, a single stone-walled room, with an open hearth, which Rezak could use as a storeroom and kitchen. The land had no electrical connection, so he bought oil lamps, which glowed soothingly as he went about his evening chores, his routine of dinner and bedtime.
The season turned hot just as Rezak moved to his new home, coloring the green fruit on the apple and peach and pear trees imported from America. He devoted all his grateful heart to the small orchard, watering the trees with a bucket from the stream that ran through the property, working manure into the soil with a spade. Taking a bus to Islamabad, with his own money he bought three grapevines, carried them back wrapped in straw, and trained them up the legs of his tin-clad cubicle. He planted radishes, corn, cauliflower, onions, peas, more than he alone could eat, so that as they ripened he could take baskets of produce to the big house. With his second paycheck he bought a goat for milk—before, in his previous jobs, it would have cost many months' savings.
One day, the master and his wife took some guests to the Ali Khan land for a picnic lunch. In the morning, servants brought carpets and divans, tubs full of ice for the wine, grills for the meat, firewood in case the party lasted into the night. Rezak spent the morning hours ferrying boxes and chairs and rugs down from the main road to the picnic spot, taking the biggest loads, pushing himself forward, claiming precedence on his plot of land.
The guests arrived, Pakistanis and foreigners, a dozen or so of them, and were soon sprawled on the carpets, drinking wine, resolved into several groups. Walking briskly down the steep path, sure-footed, holding a floppy yellow sun hat with a trailing ribbon in her hand, Sonya had said to Rezak as she passed, "Salaam, baba." His heart, his soul melted, as if a queen had spoken to a foot soldier. She had given him charge of the garden, of the trees that she had brought from her homeland, and now she was seeing the results of his husbandry for the first time.
All the other servants knew what to do—Ghulam Rasool poured the wine and passed the hors d'oeuvres, a cook readied the fire and skewered kebabs on metal rods, the gardeners spread out as a kind of picket, to prevent anyone from looking over the walls. Rezak's shyness and diffidence contested with a desire to take part, to show off all the work he had done in the orchard. He squatted under an apple tree, trying not to look at the sahibs, pulling up sprigs of grass, tying them into figures and knots, hoping to be summoned. Restless, he knelt down by the cook and took over the job of tending the fire, pushing aside the weedy boy who acted as the cook's helper.
Sohail Harouni was a handsome, cheerful man with not a care in his life, who enjoyed giving parties more than anything else. After a few glasses of wine, he called a young valet and told him to bring the stereo from the main house and hook it up. A driver raced to Murree, ten kilometres up the mountain, and bought a roll of heavy wire. Glasses in hand, the guests and even the host enthusiastically helped string the wire from a roadside shop down through the trees.
When the party had come far along, when Harouni and the guests were standing in a circle, drinks in hand, gesturing expansively, speaking loudly, Sonya walked away from the group. Looking along the length of the valley, she caught sight of Rezak's cabin, several terraces below the picnic spot. Finding the path, she picked her way toward it, and Rezak, who had been watching her, quickly followed, leaping down a steep bank so that he could receive her at his little hut, saluting.
"It's wonderful!" Sonya exclaimed, circling around the cubicle, Rezak at her heels. "Hey, everyone," she called to her guests, going over to where she could be heard. "Come see."
Short, bowlegged Rezak bustled around, showing off the appliances and the refinements—the pipe that drained the inside spittoon, the cupboards and drawers set into the outside walls for his tools and clothes and kit, windows that could be propped open or removed entirely, a skylight of red glass, thick rush matting on the roof to keep the inside cold or hot, with a rubber bladder fixed to the walls that shot water up through a pipe when he squeezed it, wetting the rushes—evaporative cooling. Sonya poked her head inside the stuffy, lurid chamber, considered the photographs of movie starlets plastered on the walls. The guests peered about, inspecting this nest, its door and windows ajar, like a car on a dealer's lot with hood and trunk propped open.
"If there's electricity, then it's really something," Rezak said, eager, grinning with all his teeth, surrounded by the sahibs and the memsahibs. "I used to have colored lights inside. There's work to be done, that's true. It's all broken from carrying it up and down and all over." In his exuberance, he pulled at a cupboard door that wouldn't open till it tore off in his hand. Even this didn't dampen him. "See, that's one way to take it apart!"
"That's the man's whole life in a nutshell, isn't it?" the Australian Ambassador, a tall man with a correspondingly tall forehead and ginger hair, remarked.
As they were returning to the picnic, Sonya said to her husband, "The poor man should have electricity for a radio and for lighting. He lives all alone here—imagine how bored he is."
"Are you kidding?" Harouni said. "These guys don't get bored."
But, after the party, the wire that had been laid temporarily so that there would be music remained in place—for the next party. Rezak strung lights on the outside of the cubicle, like wedding decorations, and hung a light bulb in the stone hut where he cooked. He bought a radio and, finally, a cheap television, something he had never even thought of wanting. He would lie in his little cocoon, soft red lights glowing, the television volume turned up, and drink cup after cup of tea kept hot in a vacuum thermos, a refinement that made him smack his lips with appreciation.
Sitting in the Kalapani teahouse one morning, Rezak met a young man who lived near his childhood village, high in the mountains.
"The government pushed the road up to Koti," the man told him. "The bus runs from Kowar now. That changed things, you can bet."
Hearing of the places he had known all his life made Rezak restless. He had left home determined never to go back. Now he wondered what his stepbrothers had told the neighbors about his disappearance. He wanted his family to know of his success.
"You and I grew up drinking from the same streams, breathing the same air. You have to accept my hospitality now that we've met. I beg you. Come for a cup of tea, and then I'll walk you back down here." He took the man by the arm and almost dragged him out of the tea stall.
He hurriedly carried a charpoy onto the terrace in front of the stone cooking hut, put a pillow on it, ran inside and lit a fire in the hearth, then brought out a table, wiping it with a rag. Luckily, he had a packet of biscuits and he arranged these on a plate and carried them out with the tea.
The man knew of Rezak's family, but had little news of them. Forgetting his bitterness and the wrong they had done him, Rezak began speaking of his stepbrothers and nephews, of their fertile land, of the well near their fields.
"God has been good to me, more than I deserve. I have only one wish, that he had given me sons of my own, as my brothers have." He ran his hands over his face.
Rezak had not been able to resist boasting of his salary.
The man considered for a moment, his eyes alighting on a locked trunk inside the cooking hut that must be full of clothes and who knew what else. He looked at the neat vegetable patch and at the two goats—Rezak had bought another when fodder ran low in the forest and they were cheap. The man had been shown the weird little cubicle, furnished with a radio, a television even.
"Look, my cousin has a daughter. Something went wrong when she was born, and she's a bit simple. But she can cook and sew and take your goats out to graze. She's quite pretty even. She's young enough to bear you a son. Her father can barely take care of his other children. Why don't you let me arrange a marriage?"
"You're making fun of an old man," Rezak replied. But hope and desire pierced his heart when he thought of it. A woman in his house, even one who was not right in the head! And she could bear him a son, and that would be worth anything at all. Now that Rezak had money, the boy would go to school, he would learn to read and write, become—Rezak could not even imagine what. The son of an old servant at the main house had become a doctor and now continually begged his father to retire and come live with him. Rezak would die happy after that.
They spoke back and forth all afternoon. In the end, they agreed not only that the girl would be without a dowry but even that Rezak would pay a quite substantial amount of money for her, which the family would take in installments.
A few days later, the father delivered the feebleminded girl. The girl's family had not come, and the two men did not celebrate the marriage, but brought the maulvi quietly to perform the nikah. When the father left, the girl followed him and cried, until they were forced to lock her in the hut.
After seeing the father onto the bus, Rezak wandered down through the bazaar, stopping to talk for a minute with the man who sold samosas, saying nothing of his marriage, but saving it for himself. He felt more equal now among these people, the shopkeepers, passersby, families. Someone waited for him also, the house he returned to would not be empty.
The poor girl must be frightened, he thought, and turned homeward, stopping to buy a three-kilo box of sweets, fat yellow ludhoos, ghulab jaman, barfi, shahi tukrah.
He rattled the chain as he opened the lock, so that she wouldn't be startled. She wore makeup, lipstick that had smudged, rouge that made her cheeks almost pink, new clothes made of shiny white cloth—at least that much had been done to celebrate their wedding day. It pleased him that she reached and covered her head with her dupatta—shy before him, her husband.
He sat across from her. She kept her eyes cast down.
He opened the box of sweets, carefully unknotting the string, took a ludhoo, and held it out to her on his palm, whispering, "Take this, it's O.K., don't be afraid." He held it there. "Go on." And after a moment, without looking up, she reached out and took it.
Gradually, she became accustomed to living with him. Once he saw that she would not run away, he let her roam as she wanted. The girl, a tiny thing of nineteen or twenty, had an impediment and spoke not in sentences but rather in strings of sound, cooing or repeating words—her condition was really worse than Rezak had expected—but when she settled in he found that she could more or less cook.
He let her sleep in the stone hut, until one night, as he was watching television in his cubicle, she cautiously lifted the door flap, stood absorbing the lit red chamber for a moment, and then nimbly leaped in, eyes fixed on the television. After that, she always slept with him.
As an adolescent boy, Rezak had been married, so long ago that he couldn't remember what his bride looked like. She had died in childbirth, less than a year after the marriage, and the child had died, too. Now, after so many years, Rezak again had a companion in his home. Life and hope, the flames of individuality that had burned out to nothing, to smoke, again flickered within him. Returning at night from the bazaar with a treat of late-season mangos or a bit of meat, or stopping work in the orchard at noon to have his midday meal, which the girl warmed and served to him with hot chapatis, he looked forward to her chattering. She had a pretty, almost animal way of watching him while he ate, perched beside him, and after he finished she brought him a glass of water from the clay pot. In the evening, before he came in, she made tea, and when he groaned because of the aching in his legs she massaged him. Gradually, he found himself able to communicate with her, and, more important, she communicated with him, showed happiness when he returned at night, cared for him when he felt ill or sad. She did not, however, bear him a child.
Now that his wife cooked for him and pastured the goats, Rezak had less to do, especially after the trees lost their leaves and work in the orchard ceased. His wife sat in the dark smoky hut, cooing to herself. He would often go down to the teahouse in Kalapani bazaar and sit for several hours, watching buses fill and lumber off up the mountain to Murree or to Kashmir, or race, brakes squealing at the curves, down to the cities, honking their horns to call the passengers. He strolled idly through the bazaar, wearing a new woollen vest and carrying a walking stick; or he went to the big house and sat smoking a hookah with Ghulam Rasool.
Returning to his hut at dusk after one of these excursions, he found that the fire had burned out in the hearth and his wife was gone. The goats, too, were missing, although she should have brought them in by this time. Sitting in the cold room, he stared at the calendar nailed up on the wall, which showed an elaborate Chinese pagoda. He rubbed his hands together, trying to control his anger. Twice before, she had disappeared at nightfall, and he'd found her far down in the valley, cowering behind some rocks. When he approached her, she grew frightened and covered her face with her hands.
At dark, she still had not returned. Rezak took the lantern, lit the tiny flame, and went out, the two goats scrambling in, bleating, when he opened the wooden gate that led down into the valley.
One of the neighbors called, "Hey, Rezak, can't it wait till morning?"
"What can I tell you. My poor old lady's disappeared again."
The neighbor sent a little boy to help with the search.
Rezak walked all over and called and called. He went home, hoping that she would be there waiting for him, but he saw no glimmer of light in the cooking hut. As he sat in the cold, the sound of twigs breaking as he laid the fire seemed particularly loud. The fire caught, crackling, slowly warming the room. Mechanically he threw a handful of tea in the kettle, boiled the water, mechanically poured it into the cup. He didn't have it in him to be angry now. Without eating dinner, without turning on the television, as he did every night, he lay alone in the dark cabin, wondering what could have become of her. What if she was lying hurt somewhere in the forest?
In the morning he woke before first light, hurriedly dressed, and went out. He didn't know where to look, which direction to turn. Living alone for years, he had learned not to ask for help. Neighbors would do whatever they could once or twice or five times, but, ultimately, they would grow cold and resentful. He walked along the paths that she might have taken, then deep into the woods to the places where she cut grass. Once, he saw a cloth that he thought might be her shawl, but coming close he saw that it had been rained on and must have been lying there for days.
Finally, he went to ask the Harouni retainers for help. Going into the servants' common room, he found Ghulam Rasool lying peacefully on a charpoy, his unlit hookah beside him. The fireplace chimney had backed up, as it always did, filling the low-ceilinged room with layers of acrid pine smoke.
As Rezak walked into this familiar room, he broke down for the first time. His arms hung loosely as he shuffled up to the bed and stood with his face contorted.
"My wife disappeared," he blurted out, before he had even said salaam. "I can't find her anywhere. She's gone." Flat tears slipped out of his gummy eyes and disappeared into the wrinkles of his face. Remembering himself, he reached down and shook Ghulam Rasool's hand respectfully.
"What do you mean, disappeared?" Ghulam Rasool asked, startled. Squeezing Rezak's arm to make him sit on the charpoy, he called out through the door, "Hey, one of you boys, come here."
Four gardeners answered the summons and, after asking a few questions, ignored Rezak. They huddled together and laid out their plan, eager as a pack of hounds, then headed out, their wooden staffs tapping quickly as they walked off on separate paths.
Late at night, they straggled back, one by one, having found no trace of the woman. In the morning, early, they went out again, determined to find her. They searched the mountains, the farthest terraced fields, went to the nearby villages. The next day, again they searched from dawn to dusk, and then the next, but with less and less determination. One of them asked at every bus stop from Murree down to Rawalpindi. Another went all the way to the girl's family home up in the mountains, almost in Kashmir, but they had seen nothing of her—in any case, she couldn't possibly have made the long journey alone.
Finally, only Rezak kept searching. He forgot where he had already been, returning to the same places, as if this time he might find her there.
One morning, getting ready to go out and continue the search, he sat down again, took off his coat, and lay down on the bed. Imbecile, chattering—but she was gone, dead or stolen, taken to the brothels of Pindi or Karachi. He prepared himself to bear the loneliness again.
Every year at Christmas, the Harounis gave a big party at Kalapani, with roast goose, a twenty-foot tree in the entrance hall of the house, and a ho-hoing Santa Claus for the children. Trucks brought logs for a bonfire from the Harounis' farm down on the plains, so that late at night the servants could grill spicy, greasy kebabs on the coals for the heavy drinkers and mull cauldrons of spiced punch for the rest. The guests came up from Islamabad singly or in long chains of cars, blowing in through the door with wrapped presents and bottles of wine and champagne, which Ghulam Rasool piled on a long table in the hall.
Before dinner, the mistress came into the kitchen. The cook stood rubbing his hands on his apron, sidelined in his own domain, as she took a big bowl under her arm and poked with a spatula at the mashed potatoes, which the cook had already beaten to a creamy smoothness.
Ghulam Rasool had been following her impassively as she performed her inspection.
"Excuse me, Begum Sahib, may I trouble you with a small request?"
"Of course," she said, touching him lightly on the shoulder. He had become accustomed to this, although at first it had disturbed him.
Briefly, he explained about the disappearance of Rezak's wife.
"But Ghulam Rasool, you should have told me right away. What can I do?"
Ghulam Rasool had an encyclopedic knowledge of his master's friends, their power, their wealth, and he took great pride in these connections. When he saw Omar Bukhari, the son of the Inspector General of Police, arrive at the party, he had sent a gardener to fetch Rezak and told him to wait in the kitchen.
"If Bukhari Sahib would speak to the police in Murree . . ."
She went into the living room and found Bukhari looming over a French girl, who had come with someone else, insisting that she must let him arrange a trip into the tribal areas of the Frontier, which were off-limits to foreigners.
"Really, Delphine, you should go—it's amazing, and you'll never have the chance otherwise," the hostess said. "Omar, can I pull you away for a moment?"
Bukhari followed her to the candle-lit dining room. "So, Ghulam Rasool Sahib, what's going on?" he asked.
The Harounis' friends all knew Ghulam Rasool and joked that he had more power than many federal ministers.
Ghulam Rasool explained, emphasizing the girl's attractiveness to make it seem like an abduction by one of the gangs who kidnap or buy women for prostitution—a scenario in which the police could help, since these things generally happened under their protection and they received a cut of the take.
"We'll break the bastards' legs when we catch them," Bukhari, who had been drinking quite heavily, said. "Go fetch the husband."
Rezak came in, trembling, and couldn't explain himself, but stood with a grief-stricken face, expectant, as if his wife might there and then materialize through the power of this important sahib.
Bukhari had dealt with many cases of missing women, and knew that the family was almost always involved. He fixed Rezak with a hard gaze. "Who took her? The father? Did the family take her back?"
"Only God above in his mercy knows, sir—I came home one night and she had gone, I couldn't find her, sir. I'm an old man, I'm nothing . . ."
Recalling the presence of his hostess, Bukhari relented. Flipping open his tiny cell phone, he punched a number.
"Get me the D.S.P. Murree." After a moment, a voice came on the line. "Hello, Qazmi, how are you? This is Omar Bukhari. Yes, everything's fine. I'm in Kalapani, at the house of Mr. Sohail Harouni. The wife of one of his servants has been abducted. I want her back by tomorrow night . . . Yes . . . No, come to the house in the morning and take down the details. I want you personally to handle this." Without saying goodbye, he snapped shut the phone.
He smiled at Sonya. "Done."
Rezak, who understood none of the conversation, which had been conducted in English, crouched and touched Bukhari's knee with both hands, began to speak and then fell silent, bowing his head. Ghulam Rasool raised him up by the arm and led him away.
In the morning, the Deputy Superintendent of Police himself showed up at the house, in his official Jeep, flying a police flag, and accompanied by a pickup full of policemen carrying beat-up rifles. Unfortunately, the Harounis and all the guests had already left for Islamabad. The D.S.P. sat on a chair placed in the middle of the hall, with the quivering staff lined up in front of him.
"Where's the husband?"
Ghulam Rasool, the only one not perturbed by this policeman with stars on his shoulders, explained that Rezak lived at another property, down the road.
"Get him."
Rezak came in, breathless, led by a policeman.
"So, old man," the D.S.P. stated, "they tell me your wife has run away." He began asking questions, in a low voice. Though at first he spoke gently, his tone soon became irritated.
"What you're saying is, her parents sold her to you. Where did you get that much money?"
Ghulam Rasool stepped forward. "Sir, she's not well in the head—this man took her out of kindness as much as anything. And then our sahib is very good to us, he gives us everything we need and more."
"Women don't just fly away on their own. Either this man knows something about it or she's in Karachi by now. The best thing is for him to be quiet."
The D.S.P. looked intently at Rezak for a moment, clasping his hands on his stomach, then stood up.
"Please give my regards to Harouni Sahib," he said to Ghulam Rasool, speaking politely and almost formally. "I am always at his service." He begged off taking a cup of tea, claiming that he had an appointment.
Watching the policeman and his escort drive off, Ghulam Rasool said to Rezak, "Better stay away from the bazaar for a couple of days. He seemed like a pretty rude character."
Just after dusk, four policemen in an unmarked car picked up Rezak from his hut and took him to the police post at Tret, twenty kilometres down the road.
"Did you find her?" he had asked, when they came to his cubicle.
The youngest policeman, the only one in uniform, said, "Yes, yes, don't worry."
But he grabbed Rezak by the shoulder, took his arms, and handcuffed him. Rezak said nothing more, and allowed them to do as they liked.
Only when they put him in the back of the car did Rezak ask, "But what have I done? Where are you taking me?"
"Shut up, baba," said the young policeman, who up till then had been quite gentle.
They walked him into a windowless room in the police station and hung him up on a hook by the manacles around his wrists, so that his feet touched the ground only when he stood on his toes.
He hung on the wall all evening, long past the time when it seemed possible that the excruciating pain in his shoulders and back could be borne. In the next room, policemen came and went, but he was no longer aware of them.
At one point, a policeman who had just come in from outside asked, "Who's he?"
"No idea. The D.S.P.'s guys sent him in. Strip, polish, and paint, I suppose."
"Ah," the newcomer said. He went out, singing, "The night is made for lovers . . ."
After midnight, a large man wearing civilian clothes came into the room. Two uniformed policemen came behind him and shut the door.
"All right, let's see," the big man said. "So, what's your name, old man?"
"Mohammed Rezak, sir." He began weeping and blubbering. "I beg you, I've done nothing, I'm innocent, and now you've hung me up here. I beg you, remember, there's a God above who judges everything . . ."
The large man became suddenly angry. "I see," he said menacingly, gritting his teeth. "I'm the one who's being judged? It's my fault, is it, I'm the one who's guilty?" He slapped Rezak with all his strength. "Where's your wife, you bastard? I know all about it. Nobody took her—you sold her down the road, you pimp, and now you'll tell me to whom and when and for how much." He walked to the opposite wall and back, then came up and looked closely into Rezak's face. "Or perhaps you killed her? She didn't have children? You bought a lemon? Ready for a new one, moneybags?"
He slapped Rezak again, cutting his lip. "You listen to me, I can make you fuck your own daughter if I want to, you'll hump her all night, like a dog fucking a bitch."
"For God's sake, for God's mercy, I don't have a daughter, sir . . ."
"You're really trying to piss me off, aren't you?" And then, to one of the men, "Take him down."
The two uniformed policemen lifted Rezak off the hook and threw him to the ground. Rubbing his hands together, the big man looked down at Rezak appraisingly, as if considering his next move.
"Stretch him out and bring me the strap."
They pulled down his shalwar, carried him to a bench, and stretched him on it, one pulling his arms and one pulling his feet. They had removed his kurta when they hung him up on the wall.
The big man brandished what looked like the sole of an enormous shoe, with writing on one side in thick black script. "See what this says? It says, 'Sweetheart, where did you sleep last night?' Understand?"
Without warning, he swung.
Rezak shrieked, a startled high-pitched sound. He never had felt pain like this, which spread flickering all through his body.
Another policeman came into the room when Rezak screamed and stood by the door, watching, with a grin on his face.
"Come here," the big man said. "You do it, since you're so interested. You need the practice, anyway."
Of course, he could tell them nothing. "I don't know," he sobbed. "She's gone, I don't know anything." After a few strokes, he fell into a rhythm, shrieking when they hit him, then, when they stopped, groaning, "O my God, O my God, O my God . . ."
After beating Rezak for five or six minutes, they threw him into a storeroom.
The D.S.P. stopped at the Tret post on his way down to Islamabad from Murree. The big man stood up and casually saluted when the officer walked in. They shook hands.
"What's going on? Anything new?"
"Call from Awaz Khan Sahib. He keeps asking why we haven't picked up those two clowns from Mariani."
They discussed this, something to do with a road contractor, villagers blocking the line of a new road—they needed to be shown the stick.
As he started to leave, the D.S.P. asked, "What about that missing girl?"
"Someone driving by must have seen her and snatched her. The Chandias say they didn't do it."
Only the most powerful of the gangster clans in the area would have presumed to abduct a woman without cutting in the police.
"And we pulled in the husband and worked on him—he's clean."
The D.S.P. made a face. "You didn't! This is some American woman's pet servant. Tell me you didn't do anything severe."
"He's fine, he's fine. Do you want to see him?"
"No. You're positive, right?"
"I'm definitely positive."
"No marks?"
"Well, sir, no visible marks. I have to work somewhere."
The D.S.P. laughed. "I suppose you do."
After thinking for a moment, he said, "I'll have to go see Bukhari Sahib and explain that she's disappeared off the face of the earth. It's a good idea to put in an appearance there anyway."
"What about the old man?"
"Dump him at home and tell him he better keep his mouth shut."
Shortly before dawn, almost tenderly now, they bundled Rezak into the same unmarked car and sneaked him back into his hut.
"You've tasted it once. Don't make us dose you again. Not a word to anyone—do you understand?"
Rezak stared at his feet. Finally, he nodded his head.
He lay all that day without sleeping, into the dusk, then the dark. His buttocks had swollen up, puffy and white like bread dough, so that he had to lie on his stomach. His mind whirled, without touching on any one thing for more than a moment—the wife he married when almost still a boy, who died so many years ago, then his second wife, the little mentally disturbed girl. His stepbrothers, who took his land, the fruit trees in the garden there in Kashmir and the fruit trees here, brought from America. His things, his television, the day he went to the store and bought the bright-red plastic television.
"Why should I complain? The policemen did as they always do. The fault is mine, who married in old age, with one foot in the grave. God gave me so much more than I deserved, when I expected nothing at all."
He made sure to be perfectly silent about what had happened.
After he recovered, he was left with one last wish. In Rezak's mind, good fortune and grace were wound together, so that the Harouni family's connections and wealth established not simply the power of the household but also its virtue. Ghulam Rasool had served the Harounis for more than fifty years, some of the other retainers had served almost as long. He could never equal that service. But nevertheless the family took him in when otherwise he might have begged in the streets. They gave him the money to live beyond his station, they made him hope—for too much. And when he lost the girl their instruments punished him for having dared to reach so high, for owning something that would excite envy, that placed him in the way of beatings and the police. Now he belonged to the Harounis. This was how he understood justice.
He said to Ghulam Rasool, "I beg you, ask our master to bury me here on this land, in one corner, whichever one he likes."
This became his dream and his consolation. He lived on for another year, then six months more, collecting his salary, never spending a rupee more than was sufficient to keep his body warm. He sold the television, sold the goats. At the end of eighteen months, he went up to Murree, to the stonecutter, and said that he wanted the very best gravestone in the shop, and carved marble to sheathe the rest of the grave.
After his night in the police station, Rezak walked gingerly and made grunting noises under his breath—everyone remarked on how he had changed after his wife disappeared. The stonecutter, seeing his bent, trembling figure, thought, This old bird doesn't know what good marble costs.
But Rezak took out a roll of bills, tied in a greasy handkerchief that he pulled from under his shirt. Blue notes, thousands.
"Well that's different," the stonecutter said, taking Rezak's hand and leading him into the back room. "Look at this piece, now. Look at the color, the grain. Look at the size of that. I swear to God, I've been saving it for my own mother."
No one had seen the old man for several days, and the gardener sent to inquire rattled and knocked and then found him dead in the little cubicle. Ghulam Rasool had the gardeners dig a grave along the wall of the property, and that evening they buried him, just a few people attending the janaza—the servants from the big house, a few men from the bazaar and from houses on the hillside next to the Ali Khan lands. A poor woman from nearby had been paid to wash the body, the maulvi from the mosque in the bazaar said the prayer.
The next Friday, Sonya came up from Islamabad at nightfall, bringing just her young son and his ayah. Ghulam Rasool, dropping a pill of sweetener into a cup of tea, which she took in her room in front of a fire, said, "I beg your pardon, Begum Sahib. The old man Rezak, whom you so kindly put in charge at the Ali Khan lands, has passed away."
The electricity had failed, as it often did up on the mountain. At dusk, by candlelight, the tall rooms of the stone-built house were solemn and chilled, like an empty church or a school when the children are gone.
"Poor poor thing. All alone, and his wife disappeared."
At moments, as now, she felt closer to Ghulam Rasool than to anyone else in Pakistan, his large dark compassionate face, heavy body, his shrewd and yet ponderous manner, his orthodox unshakable beliefs.
He was silent for a moment, then continued, "Please forgive me, but I took the liberty of having him buried in the Ali Khan orchard. He had asked me to speak with you."
Still not touching her tea, looking up at him, as he stood with his hands crossed on his belly, she said gently, "I'm so glad you did, Ghulam Rasool. Of course, Mian Sahib and I would want that."
The old servant had come far by knowing the ways of his masters. Saying no more or less than this, he withdrew quietly, leaving Sonya musing by the fire on having done the right thing for a lonely old man, having done a little bit for the good.
The next morning, slipping out of the house, Sonya took Ghulam Rasool and a single gardener and walked up to the Ali Khan lands. The smallness of the grave surprised her, the mound decorated with tinsel in advance of her visit, the marble stones he had bought stacked beside it. Ghulam Rasool and the gardener said the fatiyah, holding their upturned palms in front of them and silently reciting a prayer, and Sonya stood also with her hands upturned and eyes closed, thinking first of the old man, a life drawn to a close with so little fanfare, and then of her own dead, her father and mother lying under the snow in a Wisconsin graveyard.
When they had finished, she walked around the garden, looking at the fruit trees, the leaves colored and falling as the autumn advanced.
"What would you have us do with this?" Ghulam Rasool asked, leading her to the cabin, which sprouted a television antenna and bouquets of crude plastic flowers, their petals thick as tongues, bought by Rezak soon after his marriage, nailed up along the roof one day, to please his wife's innocent heart. "The old man didn't want his family to have anything from him."
It seemed to her vividly alive, a motionless hirsute presence, the antenna, the flowers, the four massive legs, the pipe that drained the inside spittoon trailing into the grass as if drawing nourishment.
She told them to bring it to the big estate and park it in a shaded corner somewhere not too visible, as a memorial. Her husband, a raconteur, could show it to his guests and tell them about Rezak, the old man who entered service bringing his own house.
At first, the cabin sat inviolate below the swimming pool, locked, Rezak's things still in the cupboards and drawers. Sonya went once to look at it, then did not return, her attention fading. Gradually, like falling leaves, the locks were broken off, one person taking the thermos, another the wood tools—files and a hammer, a plane, a level. The clothes disappeared, the last cupboard emptied, even the filthy mattress pulled out and put to use, taken by the sweeper who cleaned the toilets in the big house. The door of the little cabin hung open, the wind and blown rain scoured it clean. ♦


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Bollywood: Work in Progress – Jism 2
There been news for a long time about a sequel to 2003's boldest movie Jism. The sequel which has so far been titled as Jism 2 was announced way back in 2008. The grapevine was abuzz with the news of the John Abraham Bipasha Basu starrer then.
But then we haven't seen the movie anywhere in the theatres. Finally, today Mahesh Bhatt revealed on the social networking site Twitter, that the screenplay of the movie is currently being written. "Working on Jism 2: We need to give our screenplays the time they deserve to be written."
Posted by Editor on 4 June, 2010
Comments Off on Bollywood: Work in Progress – Jism 2


text:
League tables Home / Away tables Form tables Half-time stats Wide table Scorers table Attendance table Run-in analysis Segments table Relative form Relative H/A performance Matches Matches by date Matches by matchday Results grid Results query Streaks & sequences Goals per match Over / Under Total Goals Goal ranges Average goals Scored / conceded Both teams scored Goal margins Goal timing Goals per 10 min. Goals per 15 min. Scored in both halves First goal Team scored first Opponent scored first Opening goal scored Opening goal conceded Leading / losing Leading / Trailing at HT Goal types Lead durations Lead-taking goals Equalizers
Scored in both halves
|SoccerSTATS.com provides statistics and results on national and international football competitions worldwide. Example of soccer statistics include league standings, form tables, scorers, scoring stats, statistical previews, goal times and attendance stats.
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I am seeing some log enties that look like hacking attempts
Type 1
Dec 26 03:09:01 ... CRON[9271]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Dec 26 03:17:01 ... CRON[9308]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Type 2
Dec 26 03:27:11 ... sshd[9364]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=184.108.40.206 user=root
Dec 26 03:27:12 ... sshd[9364]: Failed password for root from 22.214.171.124 port 47933 ssh2
What does these mean? They usually come in 5's. I enabled
ufw limit ssh. So I think UFW is trottling this. But wonder why are there 2 kinds, 1 authentication failure, 1 session closed.
I suppose I should respond to this by using
denyhosts, changing ssh port & disable root login? What else can I do? Last time I used deny hosts, it blocked me too ... Also can I increase the UFW retry time? Like only allow login 1hour later? Perhaps reduce the login attempts to 3?


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"Meet the new fairy godmother of fertility"
Marie Claire – October 2012
"The older woman's fertility guru"
The Times – June 2012
"We are overjoyed with the birth of our little daughter. Thank you so much for your help and support in achieving this. The medicine gave us a lot of hope in such a short space of time with amazing results." - Mr and Mrs A
"I'm writing to inform you that the treatment I went through in your clinic was a real miracle. I'm finally a happy mum. I cannot find words to thank Dr Zhai for her help. My boy is now almost 7 month old and he is growing fast. I should have written to you earlier but there was so much to do in my life since I had learned to be pregnant. Once again thank you very, very much for your treatment! Dr Zhai you are wonderful. " - Ms K.
"Dr Xiao Ping Zhai is incredibly compassionate and understanding, and her results are very good." - Michael Dooley- Consultant Gynaecologist
"Thank you, I am so grateful for your excellent care, You really are magnificent!" - J.C
"Thank you for everything you have done for us this year, and for giving us hope." - Sally
"A huge thank you for all your help and support. " - Justine
"At 44 I had almost given up hope, thank you once again for all your help. " - Katie
"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help last year." - Lisa
"We would like to thank the entire team at 'The Zhai Clinic' for helping us." - Camelia
"We will never be able to thank you enough for all you help in making our dreams come true." - Helen
"Thank you very much to you and your team, you always managed to make us feel positive and hopeful." - Svetlana
"I'm sure without all your help and treatment this wouldn't have happened. I felt so well and positive going into the IVF and that I'm sure was all it needed to get the end result. She's PERFECT!" - Anonymous
""My beautiful baby boy is now eight weeks old. Our son really is our miracle baby. At 44 I had almost given up hope of having another baby. I really couldn't believe it when, six weeks into my treatment at the Zhai Clinic, I became pregnant. So I really wanted to say thank you and to all of your team. We are very grateful to you." - Anonymous
""Words cannot express our deep thanks for your amazing skills''." - A.N
"Four miscarriages, two IVF treatments and you just sorted us out so quickly – months! We are so proud of our gorgeous son & younger brother. Thank you so much." - Anonymous
"We know that without your help Oliver would not be with us now, and he is worth the wait. We cannot thank you enough for helping us!" - Martin and Denise
"We are so grateful for the help that you gave us, and we have no doubt that without your help this miracle would not of happened, especially after so many years of conventional fertility treatment and numerous miscarriages. I am particulary indebted to you for your continued support when the majority of other doctors had told me to give up hope of ever having a child of my own. Thank you again. " K M
"We are most grateful and feel very privileged to have been under your care. There is hope for those older women out there, and I would encourage anyone in a similar position as we were to try Chinese Medicine. Thank you once again. " Mrs Sarah B
"Nick and I can't thank you enough for all the help you gave us prior and alongside our IVF treatment. " Mr and Mrs P
"I can't believe that our little miracle has finally arrived. Thank you so much for being part and making it all possible for us to have Jasmine in our lives, we really appreciate everything you have done for us. " Lisa
"All that remains to be said is that we will be eternally indebted to you for making our dream, which often felt out of grasp come true. You will always have a special place in my heart. " K & H
"We wanted to thank you and your colleagues for all your help and achieving our pregnancy." Daniel and Sam
"We still can't believe that after 7 years and 5 IVF attempts we finally have a baby. Thank you for all your help and great care." Melanie
"I am very grateful for your treatment alongside my IVF treatment and will always remember how positive and relaxed you made me feel whenever I came into your clinic." Nadine
"I thought you'd like to know that our baby has arrived at last. All is going well and she is really here! We still can't believe she's here and keep going into her room to check! " Sally and Andrew
"Thank you very much for your medical guidance. Alex was born and he is healthy, hungry and happy. We are delighted. Without you it would be a very different story. " Simone
"Huge thanks for helping us to achieve our dream. Words cannot express how happy we are to finally have our beautiful little boy, and we are forever grateful to all of the team at The Zhai Clinic for helping us get there. " Adele and Neil
"Thank you so much for your never ending support and encouragement throughout our visits to you. My pregnancy was so smooth, no doubt due to your continued care. When we are ready to extend our family we will see you again. "
- Anonymous
"Words cannot express how grateful we are to you and your wonderful team, for giving us the chance to have the most precious gift in the world."
- Rebecca and Alan
"I just wanted to say thank you for all your help, herbs and support! I gave birth to a very healthy baby boy."
- Karen and Paul
"I wanted to let you know that we were blessed by the arrival of a second baby daughter and im sure that your treatment to help my FSH condition was responsible for both spontaneous pregnancies. Without your help we would never have achieved our dream of a family, thankyou. "
- Joanne
"Our much longed for baby has now arrived, after a very straight forward pregnancy and labour. I am sure that our son would not be here if it were not for the herbs and acupuncture I had in the months before he was conceived. Thank you very much for all your help. "
- Alison
"Thank you - Two small words but the only ones we have to express how we love and respect you for all you have done. You have without doubt changed our lives and made our dreams come true."
- Daniel and Sam
"Thank you so much for all your care and attention. We still can't quite believe 'our little miracle! He is completely fantastic, Thank you"
- Karen and Mark
"Just wanted to let you know that our beautiful daughter was born in February. I want to thank you so much for helping me to conceive -
after nearly four years of trying I managed to conceive within three months of visiting your clinic and taking the herbs and supplements.
Andrea you may remember I found out that I was pregnant at the clinic having done the pregnancy test in your loo
just before my appointment! You were the first person I told and I think you said it was a first!!"
- Mrs S, London
"Our twin boys arrived safely on March 25th 2013. These 2 miracles would not have been here if not for the IVF preparatory program
I undertook at your clinic. Thank you so much for convincing me to hold off the IVF till I had gone through the 3 month program.
We consider ourselves very lucky to have had twins with the first IVF cycle.Thank you for changing our lives."
- Anonymous
"Thank you for all the teams help. I have recommended Dr Zhai to almost anyone I know struggling to conceive and totally believe she is the reason I got pregnant!!!"
- Ms H
"My wife has been your patient for several years and we would both like to thank you once again for all your support and professionalism.
As a result of the Zhai programme our daughter was born in 2008 and then our son in 2012."
- Mr and Mrs B.H, Czech Republic
"Dear Andy, just to let you know - and of course, Dr Zhai and her team- that the baby is a little girl and everything seems to be progressing well. I'm now 17 weeks. I can't tell you how happy we are!"
- Mrs R.
"We are 24 weeks pregnant now and super excited about the baby arriving at the end of Oct :) A huge thank you to Dr. Zhai for helping us on this journey :)"
- Ms W
"Dear all at the Zhai Clinic - on 18th June our beautiful baby boy was born - a gorgeous baby brother to a very very thrilled big brother and sister and even more thrilled mum and dad!
We have constant battles over who gets to cuddle him and he is current contender for most kissed and cuddled baby in the world!!
And we have you guys to thank for helping him get here - your patience, kindness and positivity will never be forgotten and we thank each of you from the bottom of our hearts.
With all our love and best wishes for the future of your wonderful, life changing business."
- Mrs O.
"Congratulations. 20 years - wow! Hope you and the team are all very well Andrea. I think of you all so often - you are such an important part of our lives. Every time I hear my little boys laugh, watch them play, cuddle them or just hear James say 'mummy' I think how lucky I am and that we have gorgeous Ping and all of you, her wonderful team, to thank for that. Hope you are having a little celebration."
- Mrs A
"I hope you are well. I just wanted to let you know that yesterday I found out that I am expecting which is great news and we are delighted. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you also much for your help with this matter I have no doubt at all it is down to Dr Zhai and her team. You all do a fantastic job!"
- Ms L
"As you know, my sister-in-law has been trying to get pregnant for years. 9 months ago she read your book. As you probably remember, on her way to London she found out she was pregnant !
And finally, today, their baby is born: Joachim. Everything went great.
Thanks again for your help and offering the book. You made a family very, very happy !
Best Regards and hope to catch-up soon."
- Frederick
"Just dropping you a quick e-mail and photo to say a huge thank you for all your help in enabling us to have our beautiful baby boy weighing a very healthy 9 pounds 12 ounces. I have no doubt that without your guidance and treatment we would still be trying to conceive unsuccessfully. I guarantee that if we decide to try for another baby in the next couple of years we'll be making an appointment with you immediately!!!"
- Mrs C.D
"As a patient of the clinic I wanted to share the good news with yourself and the doctors that we had a healthy little boy. We wanted to pass on our sincere gratitude to the doctors whose care we were under. Without them I believe we wouldn't be where we are today. To say we are overjoyed is an understatement."
"We are thrilled to announce the arrival of another Zhai baby, Miss Isabella arrived on 6 August weighing 6.8 pounds. Mum and baby are doing well. Thank you all again for all your help, support and patience - despite the sleepless nights we could not be happier! She is just perfect and adorable."
"We're very (very, very, very !) happy to tell The Zhai Clinic that our beautiful baby girl was born four months ago. The labour was quick, it took three hours from the very first contraction until the birth itself. Everything went well. We want to thank The Zhai Clinic for all the help we've received."
"Dear Dr Zhai and to the wonderful team at the clinic, Thank you so much for all your help and support over the last couple of years. Thanks to you our son was born two weeks ago weighing a healthy 81b 7oz! Thank you again for helping us achieve our dream of having our own baby."
"I wanted to let you all know that after one failed IVF attempt, I conceived the very next month naturally :-) !!! I am currently nearly 5 months pregnant and totally over the moon. Please pass my thanks on to everyone who worked with me over the past year! Should I need to return again at another stage in my life I definitely know where to come!"
"Dear Dr Zhai and team, thank you for helping to make "A" possible, born in July 2014."
"We just wanted to write to thank you in some small way for the help you gave us in having our son. He was born on 19th November. We needed IVF to finally conceive him, but I have no doubt that our treatment with you helped enormously in preparing us so that I was able to conceive. We will always be grateful for your expertise and kindness."
"Thank you so much for giving us the wonderful gift of our baby boy who was born on 28th November, 61b 1oz. We couldn't have done this without you!"
Some happy news... we had a baby girl in early January 2015. She was 8.5 lbs and is healthy and doing well, she was even born with a big mop of dark hair like her Dad. She has even discovered that waking up at night gives her exclusive Irish mammy quality time. Thanks for your help in helping our little miracle happen! Wishing you all the best personally and professionally for 2015!
- Nu
"Enclosed is a photo of the two boys I have which Dr Zhai & team are largely responsible for! Just wanted to let Dr Zhai & her team know that our son was born on 23rd Jan, 8lb 12oz. Normal delivery despite mother's advanced maternal age! Happily avoiding the need to be induced! All doing well, both older brother's being very gentle & protective."
"My husband's semen analysis has significantly improved - he went from having circa 3 million in October (when he started his TCM treatment) to 18 million (!) yesterday and from 30% motility to 70%! We're very pleased."
"We wanted to let you all know that our gorgeous baby boy was born on 19th February, Chinese New Year! We were very pleased about this after all our treatment at the Zhai Clinic. Thank you all for all your support and help with my fertility over the past couple of years, it is so very much appreciated and it was such a key part of our journey."
"I was watching Inside Harley Street on iPlayer this evening and was reminded to do something I have been meaning to do for a very very long time. And that is to thank you so so much for helping me conceive and give birth. I have a gorgeous son who was 2 in February this year. He is sweet, funny, very chatty and bright. Everything we could possibly have hoped for. I just wanted you to know as I wasn't sure if you would have found out by any other means and I wanted to make sure my success story was added to your books! Obviously I meant to let you know soon after he was born, and well, look how time has flown with a small person around!Thank you, thank you. I don't know how it works either but I think what May (your patient) said in the programme about being listened to and having someone on your side was very powerful. That and the fact you discovered I had a thyroid problem that no one else had discovered!! Many, many thanks for the best gift ever and good luck for the future."
"This is a quick note to thank you again for changing our lives forever. Our twin boys conceived through IVF and under your preparatory program are now 2 years & 3 months old and fill our lives with happiness every day. We are blessed and we know that none of this would be possible if not for you. We remain indebted forever."
"We wanted to email you to share our good news, on 14 June our daughter was born. She actually arrived one month early, which was a bit of a surprise. However, we are pleased to report that there were no complications - she weighed a healthy 6lbs and didn't need any special support. We are now back at home and enjoying life with her. Thank you again for all your help and support."
"I would like to thank you very much for your help and care. I delivered my son on 15.06.15 and he is beautiful and was born at 3 kg 495. He is very alert and smiles since a week and half old. I would like to thank you for helping me achieve my dream and the support during the ivf and the pregnancy. It was a difficult pregnancy and the herbs helped me a lot."
"I wanted to thank you for your help with helping me become pregnant after only 2 months of seeing you and taking the Chinese herbal teas (after more than 3 years of trying!) Keep up with the wonderful work that you do!"
"Just to share with you my good news. I have safely delivered my baby girl on 05th July 2015. Born at 2.43kg and 48 cm (small baby but perfect! I cannot express enough my gratefulness for your care and assistance in making this possible for me and my family. All the bitter herbal teas was well worth it!"
- May (Featured in BBC2 documentary Inside Harley Street)
"We are delighted to announce the birth of our son who was born on Sunday 9th August. He weighed a wonderful 3.76kg and both he and Mum are doing very well. We look forward to you meeting him in due course!"
"I wanted to let you know that our baby boy was born on the 19th of May 2016.
He weighed 3 Kg and was 50 cm long, He is a very calm and happy baby.
All our family feel so blessed and is full of joy for our little baby!
My husband wanted to thank you for helping us to make this dream become true! Thank you very much!" - CG
"We are thrilled to be parents - please pass on my news and thanks to Dr Zhai and all her team - I got to know them quite well and was always looking forward to my visits and treatments - regardless of likely outcomes. They were a critical part of my journey to becoming a mother and I am absolutely delighted it has all come together and we now have a precious family" - CC
I have just arrived into this world and my parents want you to know I am here. They are smiling constantly at me and seem to fit enough to take care of me in the future weeks. I was born on the 19th of August in Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium, at 18:08. Also, probably for the first and last time in my life, I will let you all know my weight (3045 g) and height (53 cm). I very much look forward to meeting you all. - EK
I'm happy to say my son has arrived safe and sound into the world, via an (unplanned!) water birth. We are Over the Moon! We are back home now and are doing well, learning each other's languages and indulging our hearty appetites! Thank you all So much for your help in enabling our son to come and make us a happy family.. I don't have all the words to express it just now but I will send a card and printed photo for your album in due course. - SW
Just wanted to let all at Zhai know that we welcomed our son into the world safely on 21st September. He's doing very well and growing rapidly!! Many thanks to Dr Zhai and her team for all their help. - LC
I just wanted to drop you a line, we are on holiday at the moment. Moments like this make me think of you and how grateful we are for your help. I thought you'd like to see a recent picture of my daughter. Here she is on the beach today. - SM
I am delighted to announce the safe arrival of our gorgeous little girl, on 6th December. She is a lovely petite bundle, weighing 6lb12. Many thanks for all your help! - NS
I just wanted to thank you all at the Zhai Clinic that we were delighted to welcome our son into the world on 11 January 2017. We are so delighted with his birth. - EC
Our beautiful boy arrived this morning at 12.49am, 7 Feb, weighing 3.10kg. We have yet to find a name. We would like to pass our eternal gratitude to Dr Zhai and all the team for their help in this journey. - KM
We are delighted to announce the birth of our son, who was born on 11th December 2016 weighing 4 Kgs. Baby was conceived naturally after overcoming many challenges. Both mother and son are doing well. I cannot express enough my gratitude for your care and assistance in making this possible for me and my family. Once again thank you and your amazing team for the care and support. - Ms M
I just wanted to let you know that our beautiful daughter was born on Friday morning by c-section. She was a healthy 7lbs 2oz and she's breast feeding well. I'm on the mend, obviously a bit sore but so very happy, after 8 years of trying for a baby we're both just so overwhelmed and can't quite believe that she is finally here! I've attached some photos of her. It goes without saying that we'll be eternally grateful to you Dr Zhai and all at the Zhai Clinic. I'll be in touch and bring her in to see you once we are up and about.- SR
I wanted to let you know that my baby daughter was born on 21st June at 10.45am weighing 2.2kgs. I have attached a couple of photos. I would like to thank everyone at the Zhai clinic for making this possible. We could not have done it without all the support received and are eternally grateful. - AD
I just wanted to let you know that my daughter B arrived safely on Monday morning at 10.48am. She weighed 8lb 14oz and was delivered by C-Section. We are all doing well and she is also breast feeding well. Thank you for all your amazing expertise, guidance and support. - Mrs C.
I just wanted to write and say thank you to Dr Zhai and team, not only for the gift they have given our family but also for their caring approach in consultations (dealing with a few tears on more than one occasion!) and send my apologies for not being able to come in and share the good news in person and close out the relationship properly.
I wanted to write and let the team know that I am now 14 weeks pregnant. It turns out the last time I was in the clinic; I was actually in the very early days of pregnancy, but didn't know yet. Since then, I have managed to successfully get through the first trimester and been told everything is normal.
Just to let you know, I am pregnant and obviously totally thrilled, please can you let the team know. - SB
I hope this email finds you well. It is coming up to 2 years to the day that we found out we were expecting our baby, under your care. It was a wonderful time and we are so grateful everyday. - SW
We would like to thank you and the rest of your team for everything you did for us. It was a bit unusual to come all the way from France twice a month and drink herbal tea twice a day for a long time. But it was definitely one of the best decisions we ever made. THANK YOU!!! Please share these thanks with the rest of your team as well. - ML
We are delighted to let you know that our son P was born on Thursday evening. Birth was induced a few weeks early, almost 3 weeks before term, as he was expected to be quite big and he was indeed at 4,05 kg and 54 centimetres.
Still thanking you …
As my son O approaches his 14th birthday, I know I will never forget you Dr, Zhai, without whom we would never have had our amazing son. Will never be able to thank you enough. What you do is life changing. - DN
Thank you so much for helping to bring me into this world. My Mummy and Daddy are very happy they found you when they did and will be forever grateful and. Thank you for helping dreams come true. Very best wishes, from AIA.


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Canastota considering changes in English, math
CANASTOTA -- English and math look a little different this year at Canastota Central School.
School board members heard from Roberts Street Principal Tracy Mosher and Peterboro Elementary Principal Jennifer Carnahan on grades K-6 curriculum and some of the changes being enacted in elementary schools.
English language arts will be approached differently this school year. Half of what the students will read will be non-fiction. In addition to the reading changes, testing will change slightly, as well. Students will be asked to approach answering questions with support from their reading assignments.
"Students need to learn to base answers on information that they can show," said Mosher. "Students with a higher reading level retention have a harder time with this, but it is a necessary skill."
"We will also be promoting students' analyzing difficult texts," said Carnahan. "This will make our students become more independent readers."
Students currently read at their own reading levels through guided reading.
Math lessons are also being approached differently this year. In the past, students dealt with sorting-based questions and were not offered enough visual learning aids to understand numbers. The schools will adopt "Go Math," which encourages using blocks to solve problems. This new program will also encourage more difficult word problems that will utilize multiple mathematic functions such as addition, subtraction, and estimation together rather than simply ordering numbers.
Kindergarten and first grade writing workshops have adapted as well, teaching kids to think, draw, write and read. Carnahan said this helps the students retain information faster and the goal of the plan is that they will adapt to reading and writing faster. Students enjoy the writers' workshops, she said.
Older children are given more options and choices for writing assignments as well, opening kids up to become interested in writing.
These changes are part of a new approach to strengthen the schools' test results, and come with other new programs for students to learn faster and more efficiently.
In addition to the presentation on grades K-6 changes, the board also:
o Approved the new APPR plan
o Approved a $50 donation to the LEAD USA program from the Law Office of Marian Cerio.
o Postponed the appointment of a new assistant principal until next meeting.
o Appointed Nick Zupan and John Tyler as varsity wrestling co-coaches; and John Albanese as assistant varsity wrestling coach.


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Melanie Acevedo
Using a pastry bag to pipe the hummus onto the pita toasts saved us a lot of time (and made for nice-looking hors d'oeuvres). You can make your own pastry bag with a heavy-duty plastic bag. Just spoon the hummus into the bag and squeeze it into one corner. Then snip off the corner to make a small hole and begin piping.
- Yield
- Makes 160 hors d'oeuvres
- Active Time
- 1 hr
- Total Time
- 1 hr
- 10 (5- to 6-inch) pita pockets
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- 2 teaspoons paprika
- For hummus
- 4 teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted
- 2 (15 1/2-ounce) cans chick-peas, rinsed
- 1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
- 1/3 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 1/2 cup stirred tahini (Middle Eastern sesame paste)
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup water
- 11 1/2-ounce jar smoked whitefish caviar
- Garnish: 160 small fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
- Toast pitas:
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Halve pitas horizontally and stir together oil and paprika. Brush rough sides of pitas with paprika oil and season with salt. Cut each pita round into 8 wedges and bake in single layers on a large baking sheet in middle of oven 10 minutes, or until crisp.
- Make hummus:
- Finely grind cumin seeds in an electric coffee/spice grinder. Purée chick-peas in a food processor with cumin, garlic, parsley, tahini, lemon juice, and salt and add enough water to make smooth.
- Assemble hors d' oeuvres:
- Put hummus in a pastry bag fitted with a 3/8-inch plain tip. Pipe a scant 1/2 teaspoon onto each pita toast and top with 1/4 teaspoon caviar.
Cooks' notes:
• Pita toasts may be made 2 days ahead, cooled, and kept in sealable plastic bags at room temperature.
&149; Hummus can be made (without lemon juice so parsley remains green) 2 days ahead and chilled, covered. Stir in lemon juice just before assembling.
&149; Hummus can be made (without lemon juice so parsley remains green) 2 days ahead and chilled, covered. Stir in lemon juice just before assembling.
Related Video
Nutritional Info
- Calories30
- Carbohydrates3 g(1%)
- Fat2 g(3%)
- Protein1 g(2%)
- Saturated Fat0 g(1%)
- Sodium49 mg(2%)
- Polyunsaturated Fat0 g
- Fiber0 g(2%)
- Monounsaturated Fat1 g
- Cholesterol12 mg(4%)


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- Living
- Dining
- Bedroom
- Outdoor
- Office
- Storage
- Lighting
- Accessories & Complements
Patricia Urquiola approached the outdoors starting from the theme of woven pattern-reviving and personalising the concept with a traditional look in mind, but giving it a decisively contemporary look without using too much nostalgic influence. Vienna straw, with its decorative geometric shape, was her element of inspiration. The collection is enriched by a series of tables and service elements with steel structures.
|Product Type
|B&B Italia
|Patricia Urquiola
|Year of Design
|Country of Origin
|Armchair Low Back 98w x 79d x 89h cm seat height 38 cm
|Armchair High Back 98w x 81d x 122h cm seat height 38 cm
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White Glove Service is the term we use for our premium delivery service. You may contact us to book the Space White Glove Delivery Service for any deliveries within 100km from the Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane CBD.
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The Space White Glove Service includes delivery by our experienced warehouse team who will deliver, unpack, assemble (if required) your purchase and dispose of the packaging materials.
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Technical Sheet (OUTDOOR_ARMCHAIRS_CANASTA.pdf, 254 Kb) [Download]


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You are Here: 5838
The price does not included the Crisscut center stone. Available upon request but sold separately. Each Christopher Designs ring is hand made with diamonds carefully selected and cut to maximize the beauty of each individual piece. Pricing will vary on out of stock items. Please inquire on current pricing, availability and product specifics before ordering.


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21 May 2012 at 12.35pm | Comment on this article
Imagine an opera where the audience is very much part of the experience. A small group of 150 sits around the orchestra pit, the space around them giving a sense they are in a contemplative state, in a "vanishing point through the middle of the Earth" closed off from the outside. Between states, between worlds, one might experience the sensation of "falling through the floor like a particle, which is held on a space and can be ejected in any direction".
That's the challenge that lies ahead for Wayne McGregor and Max Richter with Sum, an innovative and intimate chamber opera, a piece that relies on one's own personal bank of memories to build narratives, a concept that McGregor defines as "a brilliant collision of things".
Sum is based on neuroscientist and author David Eagleman's best-selling tales of the afterlife or, more exactly, "afterlives" (the book is a spiritual, philosophical and often funny collection of several "after death" experiences) and recently, we wrote about our conversation with Eagleman himself for Wired.co.uk. The author, who is flying in from his home in Houston to attend opening night, is thrilled to see his work cross over into a different format, "It is very interesting for an artist, to put something out in the world and let it become its own thing."
Ahead of the premiere next week, we also chatted to director McGregor who told us about his amazing connectivity with composer Max Richter from the very beginning. They crossed emails, pitching Eagleman's book to each other "literally the same day". McGregor adds, "Max sent me an email saying 'Have you read Sum?' and I sent him an email saying 'Have you read Sum?' so we were both reading the book at the same time and it was really weird. It just felt right. We asked David what he thought about it and he came over to London."
McGregor and Richter instinctively felt that there might be a way to incorporate the stories into a very different type of opera: "Max found a fantastic way of using David's stories and I thought we could use video, so it is more like an installation rather than an opera. It helped us think about designing the piece in a totally different way.
"[Eagleman's stories] would translate very well in an intimate space with people singing them to you. Max writes these beautiful pieces of music with the orchestration, and strings, really rich and haunting melodies but he has a fantastic way of also tapping into memory, with things that make you associate."
Given the book consists of 40 short stories, McGregor and Richter envisaged this adaptation for the stage as a collection of mini operas "rather than just one opera". They picked 16 of Eagleman's tales (including 'Sum' and 'Circle of Friends') and designed a special environment around them, "we are taking out all of the seats of the Linbury, the orchestra pit is right at the centre and there's a projection all the way around the audience so you feel like you are inside the operas."
In that space, three singers perform, alternating song and spoken word. "Sometimes they just tell you the story as if they are sat around a campfire with you" McGregor explains. It was very important for him to allow Eagleman's stories to unfold in this organic, almost informal manner: "The pictures David creates are so vivid, that we didn't want to ruin them. I think that what Max has been able to do, is to reinforce them, the ideas, with music."
Rather like the director's own experience watching the BBC series 'Jackanory' as a child. From a massive armchair, an actor would read children's stories in a simple but engaging way which strongly resonated with McGregor, "I always found that really captivating. No images or animation, just story and you build the pictures yourself. I think what we are trying to do in this is to evoke the personal pictures of everyone else who is watching."


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Approved at Town Meeting, the Town of Raymond is planning to extend the current sidewalk on Route 302 along Main Street to the intersection of Route 121 (Meadow Road).
For more information click HERE.
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Tag: hellebore
4 Posts
4 Posts
If you can't go faster then go further
All about my garden and garden related things
For plant lovers
Connecting People to Nature, Empowering People to Live Sustainably
The trials and tribulations of a professional plant propagator.
Using gardening to manage major depression
The sensory pleasures and earthy delights of gardening.
When finding your dream house isn't just happy ever after
Pesticide free plants grown in Boyle
a garden in progress
Propagating plants from cuttings, divisions, seed, and whatever else. Occasionally featuring gardening and permaculture oriented landscaping.
Mark and Abbie Jury
Writer, gardener, TV presenter
My plant obsession
Gardens, gardeners, and growing ideas
Pottering around my Devon Cottage Garden
Because a community is more than just people


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Local affiliate FOX 45 anchor Mark Pompilio presents a segment by reporter Rhonda Moore, reporting on the second anniversary of Officer Brame's still unsolved murder.
ON NOVEMBER 1, 1999, Dayton police officer Kevin Brame was shot and killed by a coward approaching from behind in the front yard of his estranged wife's home. Officer Brame was off-duty -- but armed with his service pistol -- and returning his kids from a birthday celebration for their grandfather. After 11 years, the killer is still at large and walking the streets waiting to harm others. When those risking their lives every day to protect us are victims of murder, no one in our community is safe.
JusticeForKevinBrame.com is organized by the family and friends of Kevin, in cooperation with the Dayton Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to collate facts of the case, news articles, and information about Kevin's life to help bring justice to the killer(s). No killing is without witnesses. People talk. With your help and support, we WILL solve this Cold Case.
Fifteen years and counting. WDTN-TV Dayton profiles the unsolved cold-case murder of Dayton Police Officer ... Read More »
Held on November 1, 2011, the prayer vigil in Dayton marked the 12th anniversary of ... Read More »
Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl comments on the November 1, 1999, murder of Dayton Police ... Read More »
Development of the domain JusticeForKevinBrame has started. Over the coming weeks and months, please check ... Read More »