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Top 10 Most Expensive Homes in Florida
Also known by the name of "The Sunshine State", Florida is really one of the most expensive places in the US. In comparison to this state, the states that go further up North, the cold can be really biting and can cripple you for enjoying your time outside your home. It also happens to be one of those lands that have managed to attract a large number of athletes and celebrities who love to spend some nice time in the state. Moreover, you also have numerous options for buying a home in this awesome piece of land mass. If money is not much of a problem for you, then indeed you can for the best and most expensive homes in Florida. So for giving you some idea and choices, here are the 10 most expensive homes in Florida.
10. 252 Bal Bay Drive-$ 25 million
Built in the year 2012 for a price of about $ 25 million, this home features 7 bathrooms and 8 bedrooms. The total area measures for about 1 to 2 acres. In addition to this, you are also given the facilities of boating with an awesome view of the ocean.
9. 5050N Bay Road-$ 25 Million
The front as well as the back view of this home is really amazing. Built in the year 1936, it occupies an area of about 8517 square feet. With 10 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms and a view of the skyline, this home is really elegant. Moreover, there are also 4 separate guest suites which you can also utilize at times. It is really a perfect home for those who love to host wild parties and gatherings.
8. 30 Star Island Drive-$ 32 Million
Comfort and convenience do come at a price. Measuring about 16 thousand square feet and equipped 11 bedrooms and bathrooms, this might be the right home for you. It had been constructed in the year 2012, so you might not need to worry about the renovations and other necessities. Moreover, it also has a second floor that is totally separate and contains a pool, gym and a spa. So, it can be stated here that is more like a home that lies within a home. I would like to term as one of the best homes in Florida.
7. 40 Star Island Drive-$ 35 Million
This is yet another expensive and luxurious home that is located in The Star Island Drive. Constructed in the year 1925, this home occupies an area of about 9854 square feet with 7 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms equipped with all the best facilities for you. There are also two separate guest houses which have also been loaded with all possible facilities and charms. On seeing this house, you would also come to know about the elegant styles and designs that the homes had many decades back. If that is enough, then the additions of an entertainment area, swimming pool, a fountain and a gazebo is going to make you think twice about it.
6. 5 Star Island Drive-$ 35 Million-11,980 Square Feet
This Miami Beach heaven home had been constructed in the year 1996. In addition to the 9 bedrooms and about 11 bathrooms, this expensive home also features an exotic swimming pool, a dock for the boats and much more. Not to forget that the fact that is a property located on the water front due to which you would also be able to have a view of ocean.
5. 42 La Gorce Cr-$ 37 Million-Miami Beach
Measuring for about 16,977 feet and with an excellent architectural design, La Gorce Cr. features its eleven bedrooms and its 14 bathrooms. The reason for its name is its location on the beautiful La Gorce Island. In addition, you also have a high fi gym, tennis court, tiki bar, garage, a safe room and much more. Furthermore, you also have a space for having a large yacht at the back side where the three teak docks are located.
4. 17 Indian Creek Drive-$ 38 Million
The construction process for this house was completed in the year 2002. It now covers an area of about 16,070 square feet and encapsulates 5 bedrooms and bathrooms. The entire landscape on which the home stands has been channelized to look elegant and luxurious. On seeing the internal and external structures, you would come to reason that it has been made keeping into view the Mediterranean style. You would also be able to take a fantabulous view of the Miami Downtown from here.
3. 5800 N-Bay Road-$ 40 Million
Featuring 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, vaulted ceiling, classical theatre and a wine cellar, this home is really the one that redefines the beauty and comfort of living in Florida. It had been constructed in the year 1929 on an area of about 12,153 square feet. Furthermore, the house has also been loaded with a Tensui Water Purifier system, security doors and Lutron Systems, thus making things easier and safe for you.
2. 12 Indian Creek Drive-$ 45 Million
Now this home is really quite expensive, but the price is nothing compared to the things and facilities you are being offered. Occupying an area of about 21,746 square feet and equipped with 7 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, 12 Indian Creek is really a wonderful place to be. It is located right in front of the famous and exotic Biscayne Bay. In addition to the excellent ocean view, it also contains a theatre, yoga room, wine cellar, gym, elevator, a library and much more. You would also be excited to hear about the infinity pool and the wonderful cabana house it features.
1. 1116 Ocean Drive-$100 Million
Now here we have a location that is more like a dream house mansion. It had been built in the year 1930 and it originally belonged to Gianni Versace. Measuring for about 23,462 square feet and having 10 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, this place is really ravishing. The pool which it contains measures for about 54 feet. Moreover, this mansion also faces the Atlantic Ocean and is really the most famous location to live in Florida. So, now you do have a chance of living in the worldwide known Ocean Drive.
Source: real estate answering service


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It's Back to "Business as Usual" for Live Exports
The RSPCA has slammed the decision by Australia's Government to relax new animal welfare conditions for live sheep exports only months after they were introduced.
In an Export Advisory Notice distributed to industry representatives last week, the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources confirmed that, as of November 1, stocking density reductions for sheep would be relaxed by 37.5 percent from the restrictions put in place in July this year.
"This is an outright capitulation to the demands of live export companies and clearly shows that this Government is placing profits ahead of animal welfare," said RSPCA Australia's Senior Policy Officer Dr. Jed Goodfellow. "While Minister Littleproud talks tough on animal welfare, his actions are what count. This decision means it's back to business as usual for the live sheep trade."
The increase in stocking density will allow exporters to load three 50kg sheep into a space that is barely larger than a square meter.
"At these densities sheep will not be able to lie down at the same time, nor will they be able to easily access feed and water troughs, over a journey of some three to four weeks at sea," said Goodfellow. "The Department of Agriculture knows full well that this decision has no scientific basis whatsoever, and they confirmed this publicly in Senate Estimates hearings on May 24 this year."
The move also ignores the advice of the Australian Veterinary Association which advised Government that the stocking density reductions introduced in July were "the minimum amount needed to alleviate adverse welfare outcomes and must be implemented across all body weights and all months of the year."
It has only been six months months since the nation was shocked by footage of what Australian sheep experience on board live export vessels, Goodfellow says. "The Government is obviously hoping we have short memories. It's now up to the Australian public to show them that's not the case."
Whistle-blower footage aired on 60 Minutes in April showed thousands of sheep suffering severe heat stress; sheep caked in melted feces and urine; injured and sick animals left to die slowly; decomposed bodies left in pens with living sheep and pregnant ewes giving birth and their lambs dying.

subset: commoncrawl


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Hey y'all!
Carrie has been nominated for the second year in a row for an Aussie country music award - CMCs (Country Music Channel's) Music Awards! As I always say, this is our CMT!
Mama's Song is up for Music Video OTY which Keith won last year for 'When Summer Comes Around'! Carrie was up for this with Undo It & Temporary Home last year!
Voting is now open up until Feb 20th! I will put up voting details soon!
Carrie also should be up for International Artist OTY (which Taylor won last year) aswell when that nomination comes out Jan 1st!
Congrats Carrie!
Great news!! Will be looking for voting info...
Just found the link to vote: CMC Music Awards 2012 *|* Home
You just need to give them your name & email to be eligible, and it's one vote per person, per day
There is a voting thread for this:
http://www.carriefans.com/forums/car...cmc-award.html (Vote For Mama's Song Music Video To Win Carrie Her First Australian/CMC Award!)
Yep we do thanks, if ya's are up for it! There's a voting thread with all the relevant required information to do so in the voting threads section.
Thanks for voting everyone who is! Only 1 week to go before CMC narrow it down to the top15 according to votes!
Btw, the iconic Play On pic of Carrie is featured on the country section of our Sanity music website I just noticed! Very cool
Buy Play On: Deluxe Edition Carrie Underwood, Country, CD | Sanity
Awesome! Hopefully she can make the final 15!
Voted -- hope Carrie made the list.
Carrie is also featured on our all genre So Fresh Christmas 2011 cd w.'Hark The Heralds Angels Sing'!
'Do You Hear What I Hear' is on CMCs Country Christmas!
Search for them if you like.
Voted for Carrie don't worry..
Yay it's Jan 1st here in Aus & awesome news - Carrie has made it to the final round of voting for music video OTY top15 (Mama's Song) & also has been nominated for International Artist OTY! Woohoo our hard voting has paid off! Thanks everyone who voted & let's continue it!
All the info is in the new voting thread!
Keith & Taylor fans got both their nominated vids in the top15 & will be hard to beat but we can do it! Our advantage is that Carrie has 1 song/video nominated this time compared to last year w.2 where the voting was split...so hopefully this happens with Swift & Urban this time.
Amber Lawrence also got through to the top15 so thx everyone! Please help vote for Amber for Oz Artist OTY in that category! Much appreciated!
Let's get Carrie her first Aussie country music awards in 2012! Voting goes for the next 2 months approx!
Happy New Year everyone & it's 3am Jan 1st 2012 here in Aus & I'm goin to bed!lol!
That's great news!!! Thanks for the info. I don't see a new voting thread yet but I'll vote as soon as I find it. Happy New Year Adrian!!!
When I went to vote today I noticed that they are asking for a contact number -- should we use our phone number or a number from Australia?


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China Continuing Pointers to Strong Economic Growth For 2011Economics / China Economy Nov 17, 2010 - 05:42 AM GMT
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: BEIJING, People's Republic of China – While other investors are busy rounding up all sorts of economic data, tea leaves and fortune cookies in an attempt to figure out China's economic situation next year, I'm heading out the door once again to take a look at hairy crab prices.
Because of the timing of this trip, I'm a bit late in the season – but not enough that I won't be able to get a good reading on this surprisingly accurate indicator of China's economic health.
The delicious little morsels come into season each fall, and are regarded as a delicacy – not to mention as an important indicator of this Asian giant's wealth and prosperity. People flock to various restaurants to eat them. The tiny little guys are given as gifts to business partners, family members and others. Live hairy crabs are even being sold in vending machines in such big Chinese cities as Shanghai.
As consumerism continues to supplant exports as an engine of growth in China, market-watchers look high and low for the best gauges of the country's outlook for growth. My two decades of work in Asia has steered me toward some surprising – and surprisingly accurate – economic indicators. Hairy crabs is one example (in fact, here at Money Morning, where writers and editors seem to come up with names for everything, this has been dubbed "The Hairy Crab Indicator").
If you've never eaten a hairy crab, they're certainly an acquired taste. Usually served steamed – with a splash of soy sauce – they can be oily, or even downright messy.
Hairy crabs are usually smaller than the Dungeness crabs many Americans are more familiar with. These freshwater crustaceans start to fatten as soon as the autumn chill cools the Yangtze River Delta. That adds to their taste and desirability.
These crustaceans get their name from the clumps of fiber-like yellow hair that grow on their undersides, their legs and around their pinchers. Hairy crabs have been harvested in the Jiangsu province for hundreds of years, and have been a stomach-pleasing favorite for just about as long. From Jiangsu, the crabs are shipped to Shanghai and even Hong Kong.
When China's feeling pinched, hairy crab sales drop and prices plummet. At the moment, they're up 30% from last year to a staggering 680-700 yuan per kilo (roughly $105) or more – which suggests just the opposite. Record prices, to be sure, which point to prosperity.
In other words, what this says to me is that China's domestic economy is on the move, that people are flush with cash to spend on such luxuries and that they're anxious to impress.
This stands in stark contrast to the 80% drop in hairy crab prices I reported in early 2009 – right before Chinese equity markets crumbled to levels not seen since the Asian Financial Crisis a decade ago, or during the SARS epidemic in 2003.
Obviously, hairy crabs aren't a perfect indicator, given that there are a whole host of variables that can affect pricing. For example, a salesman in the the Nieji Yangchenghu Crab Store in Beijing's Changping District told the Global Times that this year's record prices probably reflect of combination of factors – including rising transportation costs and reduced crab output thanks to unusual weather and strong demand.
But I'll take 'em nonetheless, because the demand is what makes the difference. And demand is an indication of the "New Consumerism" that continues to take hold here in Mainland China.
I wish you were here to join me. I'm heading over to Fang Liang Xieyan, which is the Beijing offshoot of an old Shanghai favorite. I'm hoping to score a few ounces and a crab banquet for between 380RMB to 1,680RMB – or roughly $56 to $250, depending on my order.
Fang Liang Xieyan, 16 Dong Sanhuan Bei Lu, Chaoyang District (tel. 6508 9022). Open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily. Set meal 380RMB to 1,680RMB.
Actions to Take: If you understand that Beijing is rebalancing China's economy to emphasize internal consumption over export-driven growth, you'll also understand that you need to invest (or adjust your investments) accordingly.
I suggest you get started this way:
•Root out those companies on U.S. stock exchanges that have already made up their minds to participate. Three examples that immediately come to mind consist of fast-food icons McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD) and Yum! Brands Inc. (NYSE: YUM), and semiconductor-equipment giant Applied Materials Inc. (Nasdaq: AMAT). McDonald's just because it's the first western non-financial company to float yuan-denominated "panda bonds" to fund market expansion in China. Yum! operates the Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell chains – each of which are doing well with China's growing consumer class. Applied Materials relocated its solar research-and-development arm to Xian knowing that it will be able to develop a full line of global products there – and also sell directly into China.
•Invest in small-cap Chinese companies in the healthcare, infrastructure and urbanization businesses. Some – like China Integrated Energy Inc. (Nasdaq: CBEH), which is an integrated fuels play – are pretty straightforward, while others, like Chinacast Education Corp. (Nasdaq: CAST), which is involved in private secondary education, may take some digging to identify and understand.
•Pick up one or more of the small-cap, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) centered on China's markets. I particularly like Morgan Stanley China 'A' Share Fund Inc. (NYSE: CAF), for instance, because it's focused on China's tough-to-acquire "A" shares. Thanks to its unique structure, it's one of the very few ways investors can currently participate with direct ownership in China.
[Editor's Note: Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald predicted a number of years ago that investors would see a big swing in IPO deals toward Asia, and specifically China. U.S. companies will list there. And they will even seek to raise more and more of their money there as the global capital markets become less Wall Street-centric.
That's the kind of foresight that's made Fitz-Gerald such a success as an investor - as is evidenced by the near-perfect record he's maintained in his Geiger Index advisory service. If you missed out on part or all of that stunningly profitable run, don't despair: He's looking for the same kinds of profit opportunities in his newest service, The MicroQuake Alert. To find out more about MicroQuake, please click here.]
Source : http://moneymorning.com/2010/11/17/....
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The brain conversations with self is slowly going away. A decision to remove myself from this game gives me the opportunity to examine my own actions. My own actions were removing me from the knowledge of God's will and the power to carry that out. As in war I was attacking the weakest point. Today I remove myself from that battlefield. Knowing this, the heated brain can deal with everyday functions. Sleeping patterns are better.
The ability to write about this diseased brain has come back, slowly. Today I think I may return to being a crazy philosopher.
Author: harold


text: I've always been a big fan of shrines. I've had a large personal one for about 17 years. There was a point where it took up a whole corner of my room. I don't have the luxury of that kind of space anymore. Thankfully my spouse has a very good eye for detail and symmetry. He's never really said specifically that he is making shrines but that's how they feel to me and it's how I treat them. We went on a cleaning and rearranging rampage today. We are planning on relocating before the end of the year, hopefully six months, so we have to make things more presentable for both our sanity and to appeal to potential buyers. I am a borderline hoarder, I'm better then I used to be but there is a good amount of old stuff that still needs to be cleared out. Combine that with our tendency to procrastinate and it becomes a bit of an issue. ANYWAYS back on topic…shrines! In our cleaning today we set up some nice displays(*cough*shrines!*cough*). The photos of the one with multiple candles I did myself. The others my spouse put together. He calls the statue-candle holder tree, "Old Man Willow". He was also the one who found it and was immediately drawn to it.


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SPRINGDALE, Ark. (KFSM) — The Northwest Arkansas Naturals announced a new clear bag policy will be implemented at Arvest Ballpark during the 2019 season.
The ballpark staff says the clear bag policy is intended to enhance public safety while creating more convenience for fans when entering the main gates of the ballpark.
They say that the goal is to minimize the time spent searching bags and purses as fans enter the stadium. This season each fan with a ticket is allowed to bring one clear bag or a small clutch purse as well as a clear unopened bottle of water into the ballpark.
The following bags will be permitted at Arvest Ballpark:
- Bags that are clear plastic, vinyl or PVC and do not exceed 12" x 6" x 12"
- One-gallon clear plastic freezer bag (Ziploc bag or similar)
- A small clutch purse, no larger than 4.5" x 6.5", the size of the palm of your hand, with or without a handle or strap
Officials say all bags will be screened prior to entering the stadium and childcare items (diapers) are allowed but must be in an approved clear bag.
Fans who require medical supplies or devices into the stadium are not subject to the clear bag policy but will be required to go through the bag check lines setup near the main gate so that it can be screened.
Officials say the following items are not allowed in Arvest Ballpark:
- Firearms/knives or weapons of any kind
- Alcoholic beverages
- Banners or signs
- Beach ball
- Coolers or containers
- Drones
- Food and Non-alcoholic beverages
- Laser pointers
- Noisemakers of any type
- Pets (with exception of service animals)
- Skateboard/hoverboards
- Tobacco of any kind (including e-cigs)
- Long-handled or full-sized umbrellas (short-handled, compact umbrellas allowed)
The Naturals return for the 2019 season at 6:35 p.m. on Thursday, April 4 when they play the Springfield Cardinals (Double-A Affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals).


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9 Symptoms You're Pregnant, Because Your Body's Telling You To Pay Attention
Whether you're trying to get pregnant or not, there comes a time in most women's lives where they wonder if they're pregnant. Before calling your doctor or shelling out money for boxes of pregnancy tests (seriously, they're kind of pricey), there are some signs you can look for to help you figure it out. Admittedly, things can get really confusing because so many pregnancy symptoms mimic period symptoms. It may be really hard to discern between what's PMS and what's pregnancy, but thankfully, there are common symptoms you're pregnant to use as your guide.
There are no shortage of stories of women who are pregnant and have no idea. It does happen and it's not totally bizarre in fact. According to an article in The Huffington Post, one in 450 expecting women don't know they're pregnant until 20 weeks or later. One in 2,500 don't know until they're in labor. For many women with normal pregnancies, symptoms present themselves pretty early on and there is no mistaking certain physical changes.
I knew right away I was pregnant with my daughters because I experienced about every sign of early pregnancy, before I ever got in to see my OB-GYN. I'm not sure if that's lucky or not, seeing as how horrible I felt in early pregnancy, but it did help me stay away from booze and coffee (because both looked and smelled gross to me in those early pregnancy days). Here are nine red flags you're probably pregnant that can help you figure it out even before you pee on a stick.
1. You Missed Your Period
I knew within two days of missing my period that I was pregnant with my daughter because I don't miss periods. Ever.
For those that have consistent and predictable menstrual cycles, the missed period can be a dead giveaway. Baby Center recommended that if you have regular periods and you miss, it's best to get a pregnancy test right away, instead of waiting to feel other symptoms.
2. Your Boobs Are Sore
If you experience sore boobs with your period, this could be a confusing one. Although, for me, my boobs hurt exponentially more in early pregnancy than I had ever experienced in my whole menstruating life. Basically, it was torture to put on a bra.
According to Web MD, breast changes are very common signs of early pregnancy. The surge in hormones right after conception can make your breasts feel sore, fuller, heavier, and tender to the touch. As mentioned on the site, the area around the nipples, or areolas, may also darken a bit if you're in the early stages of pregnancy.
3. You Have Cramps
Again, another period symptom that's also a pregnancy symptom. According to American Pregnancy, cramping in early pregnancy is totally normal and nothing to be concerned about. It's caused by your uterus expanding, muscles stretching, and ligaments lengthening.
4. You're Bloated
Are your pants feeling a little snug? Before you get the beautiful bump, you may get the bloat. Even though your uterus isn't huge in early pregnancy, your abdomen may start to bloat a bit, as explained in the aforementioned Baby Center post. You can thank early pregnancy hormones for this. Obviously, this mimics menstruation too, so it might be a good idea to keep an eye out for other pregnancy symptoms before definitely thinking you're pregnant.
5. You're Spotting
This may be an alarming symptom, but it's not anything to worry about. Light spotting in early pregnancy is caused by implantation, as explained in the aforementioned Web MD post. After your egg is fertilized the embryo travels to the uterus where it implants itself in the lining. Implantation bleeding is an early sign of pregnancy, and totally normal. If you're concerned about any blood you're seeing, and you think you might be pregnant, it might be a good idea to call your medical provider.
6. You're Really, Really Tired
Find yourself falling asleep earlier than usual?
My typical bedtime is around 11 p.m., but when I was newly pregnant with both of my daughters, I could barely keep my eyes open come 7 p.m.
According to Today's Parent, fatigue is a sign of early pregnancy that plagues many women in their first trimester. (It is exhausting making eyeballs and feet.) As explained in the same article, the extreme tiredness usually stops at the end of the first trimester or whenever the placenta is fully formed.
7. You Feel Nauseous
Good ol' morning sickness. That name is deceiving because anyone that's suffered from it will tell you it's actually morning, noon, and night sickness.
The queasy feelings usually start around six weeks, according to the Mayo Clinic, but can start as early as two weeks after conception. The nausea usually subsides in the second trimester. As explained on the site, the actual cause of morning sickness is unknown, but the surges of hormones in early pregnancy are thought to be the culprit. Severe morning sickness, may be a sign that there is a thyroid issue, so it's best to contact your doctor right away if you are vomiting a lot or are dehydrated.
8. You Have Food Cravings Or Aversions
The first week after I missed my period I had an insatiable taste for fresh oranges. I have never particularly liked oranges in my whole life, and all of a sudden I was downing glass fulls.
According to March of Dimes, food cravings or aversions are a sign of early pregnancy and they can last throughout your whole pregnancy. No one is entirely certain what causes them, but the shift in hormones and heightened sense of smell in pregnancy may have something to do with it.
9. You Have A Headache
Tension headaches are pretty common in early pregnancy, according to Baby Center, and are thought to be caused by the hormonal roller coaster your body is on.
According to the aforementioned article in Today's Parent, those who experience hormonal migraines pre-pregnancy may find that early pregnancy triggers these headaches more frequently.
It may be hard to figure out if you're pregnant or about to get your period in many cases. If you are experiencing several of the symptoms above and just want to be sure, taking a pregnancy test or getting into an OB-GYN can't hurt. Putting your uncertainty to rest is totally worth it, no matter the outcome.


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Hello, my name is Gambit and Benjie!
More about me
Male (Small). Schipperke - Adult - DOB: 2012.
I am good with: Cats
Shelter: * Barking Mad Network
Location: Gauteng
Tel: 063 040 6071
Mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Gambit & Benjie are sadly losing their family to emigration. They are sterilised, vaccinated & dewormed. They are fearful of storms so will need to be part of a family that can help them feel safe during storms & fireworks. They are housetrained, walk well on a leash & are needing a new home together. They are sweet natured little dogs who love to cuddle and spend time indoors! Benjie is scared of children due to having been teased so he would need a home where there are no children or older children preferably over 16. He is also scared of domestic staff.


text: I'm not sure what's going on, but today is apparently my day for internet issues. So I'd better make this post a quick one. Basically I was experimenting with different colour combinations and ended up using three shades of green for a thank you card. SHADES OF GREEN The three shades of ... VIEW POST


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‐ John Kerry says that climate change is a weapon of mass destruction. We assume that means that he will support a war against it, then bug out after a few years.
‐ If there is a single lesson that the Obama administration is committed to not learning, it is that economics involves trade-offs. A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office contains what the administration must surely receive as good news: Its plan to raise the minimum wage to the Democrats' new target of $10.10 could lift as many as 900,000 Americans out of poverty. The bad news is that it would cast 500,000 Americans into joblessness. Just in December, the president claimed that there is "no solid evidence" that raising the minimum wage costs jobs. Now there is. He is not changing his mind. That is because raising the minimum wage is not about raising wages, but about developing a wedge issue for the 2014 election. The scandal of the moment is not that the minimum wage is so low, but that in an Obama economy it is important to millions more people than it should be. The Democrats want to raise the minimum wage; the Republicans should concentrate on raising workers up from it.
‐ Congress voted to raise the debt limit. It was the sensible thing to do, as the deficit cannot immediately be brought to zero in a responsible manner. It would have been better to couple that increase in the debt limit with a plan to scale back the federal programs for the elderly that are driving the federal government's long-term debt problem. The debt ceiling has never seemed likely to be a way to force such action. All of that is the bad news. The good news is that Republicans have never been more unified in support of entitlement reform. The better news is that we have elections in a few months.
‐ Federal judge Arenda Wright Allen, an Obama appointee, threw out Virginia's law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In place of legal reasoning the decision contained a lot of editorializing, and not of a very high caliber: "We have arrived upon another moment in history when We the People becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect." "We the People," you will recall, created a lawmaking process that did not involve the perfecting arts of judges. Wright Allen, on the other hand, might not recall that: The opening lines of her decision confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence. It is a fitting error, since the legal crusade for same-sex marriage has never shown the slightest concern for getting the law right.
‐ The Obamacare mandate, which is currently set to kick in when a firm hires its hundredth employee, creates a very strong incentive for businesses with approximately 100 employees to lay off a few of them to avoid the mandate. Unsurprisingly, some businesses are responding to this incentive by laying off a few employees to avoid the mandate. Now the IRS has announced that businesses will be required to certify that they are not responding to economic incentives by laying off a few employees to avoid the mandate. That is the Obama philosophy in a nutshell: design a policy that creates perverse incentives and, when people begin to respond to those perverse incentives, have the IRS issue a decree reading: "There shall be no perverse incentives." Having their economic interests working at odds with their sense of honesty vis-à-vis an IRS form is surely not a new experience to most American businesses, which is an indictment of sorts in and of itself, but the real tragedy of Obamacare's perverse incentives is that they will remain regardless of what masterly prose goes out on IRS letterhead.
‐ Matt Bevin, Mitch McConnell's challenger in the Kentucky Republican Senate primary, has the unenviable task of painting the minority leader as a RINO. One item of Bevin's indictment is that in the disastrous fall of 2008 McConnell supported TARP. But so did Bevin: On October 28, Bevin, who was then president of Veracity Funds, an investment fund, told his investors in a report that TARP was a "positive development." What both McConnell and, apparently, Bevin grasped in 2008 is that how to respond to a financial panic is a matter of judgment rather than the rigid application of principle. Unfortunately, Bevin seems to have taken the rigid application of principle as his campaign platform, which is why this story is not a positive development for him.
‐ Having caved on everything else that her champions hold dear, Texas gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis went full circle in early February, dissembling even on the position for which she rose so quickly to fame. Expressing a vague antipathy toward abortions after 20 weeks, Davis explained that her "concern, even in the way the 20-week ban was written in this particular bill, was that it didn't give enough deference between a woman and her doctor making this difficult decision, and instead tried to legislatively define what it was." This, of course, is sophistry and nonsense, and Davis quickly walked it back. But that she has been reduced to peddling such equivocation demonstrates nicely that being the darling of the Left nationally is not the ticket to electoral success for a Texas Democrat. Since Davis announced her candidacy, she has taken conservative positions on firearms, taxes, education, fracking, and a host of other issues that are certain to upset her base. "Stand with Wendy," the slogan commands. But that's hard to do when she's in motion.
‐ The Obama administration is fond of blaming things on climate change. Among the events that it has falsely attributed to that impressively protean cause are the Central Great Plains drought of 2012, Hurricane Sandy, and the wildfires of the West. The latest crisis to be given the designation is the California drought, which the president and his staff claim is the product of mankind's behavior, and which John Kerry recently used as an overture to his view that "climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction." Inconveniently, the scientists on whom the White House so flippantly relies for comfort disagree. "I wish I had a really good answer for this," Daniel Cayan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told the San Jose Mercury News in January. But he doesn't, so he's admitted that California has had similar droughts in its history — including one in 1976–77 — and, like his colleagues and the wide environmental movement, has taken to "scratching his head." Would that Obama could display such humility.
‐ American labor unions have long relied on violence and intimidation to make dues-paying sheep out of workingmen, and Michigan's Operating Engineers Local 324 is carrying on that tradition by publishing a hit list of workers who have declined to submit to its tutelage. The workers of Michigan, now a right-to-work state, have a choice about whether to join a union; the unions also have a choice about whether they include those non-members in their collective-bargaining agreements, which of course they always do, because they are attempting to defend a monopoly and do not wish to acknowledge that there are workers outside their jurisdiction. The Michigan union has begun publishing a list of "freeloaders," as it calls them, non-members who are covered by its negotiations — even though they never asked to be. Which is to say, the union has labeled these men "freeloaders" for the receipt of alleged benefits they never sought, resulting from representation that the union in effect forced on them. It is typical of the modern labor movement that it can use the word "free" only in a pejorative.
‐ Chattanooga-based Volkswagen employees, meanwhile, handily rejected a bid from the United Auto Workers to represent them. Millions of dollars in UAW money and a xenophobic tirade from President Obama, who framed the vote as a contest between the interests of "American workers" and "German shareholders," could not move them, and the UAW went down in glorious ignominy. Non-union autoworkers in right-to-work states, who build everything from Mercedes SUVs to Japanese economy cars, are paid about what new hires at UAW shops are paid these days, but they are not obliged to tithe to unions, and their productivity is not hobbled by byzantine UAW work rules, a recent volume of which weighed in at 22 pounds. The desperate UAW, which has lost some 75 percent of its membership in recent decades, can be counted on to keep trying to unionize the so-called transplant factories, and without much resistance from the managements, which naïvely believe that their collaborative working relationships with their European and Japanese unions can be replicated with such an organization as the UAW. Unions are the enemies of workers, and, increasingly, vice versa.
‐ Obama has nominated Debo Adegbile to be the assistant attorney general for civil rights. Adegbile is a leftist: a champion of racial quotas, a believer in "customary international law" when American law proves inconvenient, etc. He defended Mumia Abu Jamal, the Left's favorite cop-killer. (Abu Jamal killed Philadelphia officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.) He will, in short, fit in well at Eric Holder's Justice Department. Republicans, who are tempted for good reason to campaign against Obamacare this fall, should not neglect to mention the president's other offenses against sound and constitutional governance — and this nominee is a fine exhibit.
‐ We agree with President Obama that "the killing of innocents is never fulfilling God's will," as he declared at the National Prayer Breakfast in February. We wish he agreed with himself. Only a decade ago in the Illinois state legislature he fought legislation to protect the lives of some infants born after attempted abortions. "Freedom of religion matters to national security," he said, again at the prayer breakfast, seven weeks before the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear cases involving the HHS mandate requiring even citizens with religious objections to subsidize abortifacients for their employees. Here too the president's actions clash with his words, and we agree with his words, as far as they go — freedom of religion is more than a means to an end. It may matter to national security, but it also matters, period.
‐ When he ran for president in 2008, Barack Obama said that President Bush had blown U.S. foreign policy, embarrassing our friends, creating new enemies, and besmirching our good name. He would do things differently. Have you listened to his latest ambassadorial nominees? They are bundlers — big campaign donors — and bunglers. The proposed ambassador to Norway was a laughingstock at his hearing. He has never been to Norway. The proposed ambassador to Iceland has never been to that country, either — which is not so bad, because how many people go to Iceland? But the bundler who is slated for Argentina has never been to Argentina — which has been a fashionable destination for years. Rich kids like to hike in Patagonia, and they also like to hang out in "B.A." (Buenos Aires). The bundler slated for Hungary was a laughingstock, like the bundler slated for Norway. An unofficial slogan for Obama's reelection campaign turns out to have been "Binders full of bundlers."
‐ Senator Rand Paul, represented by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, filed a lawsuit claiming that the NSA's collection of telephone "metadata" (usage records but not content of communications) violates the Fourth Amendment. It is a publicity stunt, not a serious constitutional challenge. Paul styles himself a "constitutional conservative" in the Framers' mold. But the Framers' Fourth Amendment protects four categories of intimate personal property — one's person, home, papers, and effects. Phone records are the property of service providers, not Paul and other phone subscribers. Unable to rely on the original Fourth Amendment, Paul claims an "expectation of privacy" in the records. But the same progressive Supreme Court that legislated that addendum to the Fourth Amendment squarely held in 1979 that phone users do not have such an expectation: They knowingly "convey" usage information (e.g., number dialed, time, and duration) to service providers. Besides being legally frivolous, Paul's suit overstates the NSA's record collection (it is reportedly about 20 percent of usage, not all 300 million Americans' records) and concedes that the NSA does not keep names and addresses, just phone numbers. The claimed Constitution-shredding plays better in fundraising letters than it will in court.
‐ In February, Attorney General Eric Holder called on states to restore voting rights to ex-convicts. Predictably, Holder focused on imagined racial antipathy and failed to address his opponents' actual argument: that societies may reasonably exclude from their lawmaking processes people who have shown that they do not respect the law enough to follow it, and, too, that it is justifiable for polities to require the allegedly redeemed to demonstrate that they have changed. Holder has a point: Too many Americans are denied the vote in perpetuity. But his remedy sweeps too broadly. Rather than simply restore voting to all, a better approach would be to treat the reentry of citizens into society as we treat the naturalization of immigrants: First impose a period of time in which the individual is expected to stay out of trouble, then review the felon's record in depth, and, finally, hold a formal ceremony in which rights are restored. A missed opportunity.
Obama's Pyrrhic Stimulus
If it were Kevin Hassett's turn to occupy this space, it's a good bet he would be writing about the stimulus, which just turned five years old. He might even have a chart (hopefully a pie, as I like pies). How much did it cost? How was the money spent? How much return did we get on the "investment"? Etc.
The White House has its own, selective, answers to such questions. Five years ago it popularized the locution "saved or created." With its latest apologia it introduced another novel yardstick: "job years."
Now of course, measuring employment in units of time is not unheard of, but politicians normally just brag about the jobs, not the job years. When they roll out a new term, you know it's because the old one was inconvenient. The chief benefit of "created or saved" was that it was unfalsifiable. As I like to say, I do or save 500 push-ups every morning. So it is with job years. By measuring the amount of aggregate work being done, the White House could hide the fact that a lot of it was temporary make-work. Like a plate of chicken wings at a Super Bowl party, one minute the jobs were there and everyone was excited, another and they were gone. Five years on, there's very little to show for it, save perhaps some liquidation-sale-priced Solyndra coffee mugs and mousepads.
But I will leave the economic value of the stimulus to Hassett and his fellow warlocks. Because the real cost of the stimulus was political, not financial. Indeed, as I've been arguing for years now, it cost Barack Obama much of his presidency.
People forget now, but before the stimulus the president had a real mandate to do something about the economic crisis. He was riding high in the polls. The question of whether he was a moderate was a live issue. And many Republicans were either eager to work with him or afraid to be seen opposing the first black president too stridently.
I remember talking to a political consultant back then who — with the sort of cynicism one wants, or at least expects, in assassins and political operatives — fretted that Obama would give the Republicans a slice of the stimulus to do with as they pleased. Let the appropriators and logrollers wet their beaks and they just might sign on to the whole thing. Not all of them, but more than enough to make the thing bipartisan in the eyes of the press and the public. If that had happened, the economy would have been a bipartisan disaster, and the tea parties might well have become a third party before the midterms, possibly leaving Nancy Pelosi in charge.
But the Democrats were greedy and the president naïve. He thought he could claim the stimulus was bipartisan if there were "tax cuts" in it, even if he never consulted with Republicans and the tax cuts were not in fact tax cuts (much like his later insistence that Obamacare was bipartisan because Romneycare had an individual mandate). As a result, the Republican caucus balked, almost unanimously.
As a result, the Democrats kept ownership of the economy and the Republicans learned they could defy the White House without paying a political price (Lyndon Johnson would have co-opted Republican allies upfront or punished dissenters with their favorite horse's head in their bed the day after the vote). In fact, GOP opposition played well back home, encouraging even more opposition. Washington was poisoned.
And now we're all looking.
‐ As the cost of college continues to increase, the wage premium enjoyed by degree-holders continues to grow, too. But a new report from Pew finds that this isn't so reassuring. Holders of today's pricey college diplomas aged 25 to 32 earn 62 percent more than high-school grads, whereas early Baby Boomers earned just 30 percent more at the same age if they had a degree. Why is it widening? Millennial college graduates are earning more, but just 8 percent more after adjusting for inflation. The bigger difference: Median earnings of twentysomethings with just a high-school degree are 13 percent lower than they were in 1979, when the Boomers were the age the Millennials are now. Worse, spending time at college without getting a degree saddles young adults with debt without giving them much earning power. Sending more kids to college — the typical politician's response to the college premium — is no solution to this problem. We need growth in the economy more than in college enrollment.
‐ In 1884, Congress passed a law authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to "regulate the practice of representatives of persons before the Department of the Treasury." It used that authority to enforce standards for lawyers (for example) representing taxpayers in an audit. In 2011, the IRS decided that it could use the language to regulate tax-return preparers as well. Three judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals have now struck down the IRS power grab because the preparers are manifestly not representing or acting as agents of their clients, let alone doing so "before the Department of the Treasury." If the IRS wants to impose these regulations, it will have to get Congress to authorize them — or wait until Obama appoints judges who are less concerned about the separation of powers.
‐ New York City's new Sandinista mayor, Bill de Blasio, has gotten off to a predictable start: using the machinery of city governance to punish the political enemies of the public-sector unions who put him in power. Those enemies are children — and de Blasio means to ruin their schools. Tens of thousands of New York children attend the city's nearly 200 charter schools, which are public schools that are administered with some autonomy from the city's unions. The previous administration had budgeted $210 million to bolster charter-school operations, and de Blasio proposes to seize it. Astoundingly, he also proposes to begin charging these schools — which are, we emphasize, New York City public schools — rent. Because New York real estate is so expensive, most charters are "co-located," meaning that they are housed in buildings that also house traditional schools, putting unused space to useful ends. New York's charter schools have excellent records, and parents clamor to get their children into them. But the unions will brook no competition, especially competition that shows them up.
‐ Canadian journalist Tarek Fatah received a note in January from a student at the University of California, Berkeley: "I've been told by one of my professors I will be required, as part of my grade, to start a Twitter account and tweet weekly on Islamophobia. I can't help but feel this is unethical. This is his agenda not mine." The assignment was for a class titled "Asian American Studies 132AC: Islamophobia," taught by lecturer Hatem Bazian, the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization that lobbies against Israeli "apartheid" and in favor of divestment. Fatah wrote to Bazian to inquire why he was using students in a "political exercise to propagate a specific message to the Twitterverse." The lecturer explained that "my course is designated as an American culture community engagement scholarship class." That "Islamophobia" is a salient feature of American culture is not open to debate, apparently: Fatah notes that "no student I have seen on Twitter has yet posted a tweet saying Islamophobia is a myth, nor has any student challenged the validity of the term." One suspects such tweets might not earn top marks from Bazian.
‐ As the deadline by which Connecticut residents were required to register their newly redefined "assault weapons" came and went, it began to dawn on politicians of all stripes that they might have pushed their employers a step too far. Explaining that as few as 15 percent of owners may have complied with the rule, Republican state senator Tony Guglielmo told the Hartford Courant: "I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register. If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem." Thus, in a fit of misbegotten passion, has the state of Connecticut created enough felons to run a small city. And why? Because lawmakers became irrationally obsessed with a type of rifle that is used so infrequently in crimes that the FBI doesn't even bother to keep track of the numbers.
‐ The Olympic movement had a worthy political goal: offering an opportunity for displays of national pride, in a forum of respectful brotherhood. The logistics of sponsorship, however, dictate that when the host country is despotic, despotism infects the proceedings. Contemporary Russia is not Communist China or the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, previous Olympic hosts. But it is a lumbering, ambitious, thuggish state that plunked a winter Olympics in a summer resort, splurged billions on slapdash construction, and confers hosting privileges on Vladimir Putin, the bargain-basement czar. NBC, the television rhapsode of the event, gabbles about Russia's Soviet past as "one of modern history's pivotal experiments" (which is true — but what of the results?). Western journalists make fun of their lousy hotels, then go back to covering the figure skaters. It is all a little sad, a little sordid, and utterly predictable.
‐ We are only two months into 2014, but we may have the Statement of the Year already. T. J. Oshie starred in a U.S. hockey win over Russia in Sochi. Told he was a hero back home, Oshie responded, "American heroes are wearing camo. That's not me."
‐ In the act of criticizing the Vatican for its response to the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child threw the ball away. Here was an opportunity to strengthen the hand of Church leaders who advocate maximum preventative measures, maximum transparency, and maximum solicitude toward victims. Instead, the committee badly confused matters with the report it issued in Geneva last month. Besides including among its recommendations policies that Church spokesmen say have already been instituted, it urged the Holy See to change its teachings on homosexuality, contraception, and abortion, this last item offered up, without irony, in a document grounded in a professed concern to protect children. Not noted in much of the coverage of this controversy: The U.N. itself, with its ineffectual response to the sexual abuse of minors by U.N. peacekeepers, has a worse record on this issue than does the institution to which it's preaching.
‐ Ukraine, which had been edging away from the threat of civil conflict, has jumped headlong into a revolutionary struggle that may mutate into civil war. On February 18, parliament debated a bill to restore constitutional limits to the president's power, but the measure was killed on procedural grounds by the speaker, who was widely assumed to have acted on instructions from President Viktor Yanukovych, who is in turn widely suspected of doing the bidding of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Demonstrators tried to march to parliament but police blocked them. Clashes erupted, and the day descended into battles and bloodshed. Clashes took place elsewhere in Kiev and around the country. The opposition, both in the streets and in parliament, should have the sympathy of everyone outside the Kremlin. Ukraine is facing a civil war almost solely as a result of Putin's aggressive determination to regain control of Russia's most important colony. That must influence the West in dealing with Russia over the whole range of foreign policy. The reset button will have to be reset.
‐ The European Union gets nervous at the thought of too much democracy: Any member that lets its citizens vote on a treaty and gets the wrong answer is bluntly told to try again. This is one reason Switzerland, with its long tradition of binding referenda, has never joined. Now the EU is gearing up to punish the yodel yokels who, by a hair-thin margin, have just voted to greatly restrict immigration into Switzerland. Imagine, letting the people decide for themselves whether they want a huge influx of foreigners! José Manuel Barroso, president of the open-borders-happy European Commission, warned of "severe consequences" for the uppity Swiss, and unamused Eurocrats called off scheduled negotiations on a variety of EU–Swiss agreements. We are not uncritical fans of direct democracy, or of every European nationalist party that took heart from the Swiss result; but it is refreshing to see citizens wresting control of this important issue from the great and the good. If only we could pull off the same trick in this country . . .
‐ As we go to press, Venezuela is imploding, and exploding. There have been massive street demonstrations, in which three have been killed. The so-called president, Nicolás Maduro, has banned further demonstrations. In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected, legitimately. Then he went about the Castroization of the country. He worked hand in glove with the Castros, and so has his successor, Maduro, who took power when Chávez died last year. Independent media have been strangled. The shelves are bare, as happens when socialist thugs seize power. Maduro, in a gesture intended to deflect blame, has expelled three U.S. diplomats. At this point, the United States should do all it can to support Venezuelans who long for the democratic country they once had.
‐ Belgium's parliament approved a law making it legal for doctors to kill children. The measure, which extends Belgium's 2002 euthanasia law to minors, requires that children be experiencing "constant and unbearable suffering" and show a "capacity of discernment" in order to request death at the hands of their physicians. Parents must give written consent, and a psychologist must determine that the child is capable of understanding the consequences of his choice. The Socialist-party senator who sponsored the legislation, and who is a doctor, dismissed the idea that children were not capable of making such a choice by saying that suffering tends to make them more mature than many adults. "This is an act of humanity," he told the New York Times. No, it is an act of barbarism.
‐ The penniless swindler, the impotent seducer, the despised demagogue — moralists who are jokers (and vice versa) can come up with endless variations on the theme of nemesis, but nothing beats the real-life instance of the jihadist instructor in a camp north of Baghdad who carelessly used live ammunition in a bomb-making class and detonated himself and 21 of his students. The story did not have an entirely happy ending: Fifteen would-be terrorists were merely wounded. Ordinary Iraqis laughed at the mayhem. They should laugh whenever they can: Terrorist violence in Iraq has reached the levels of 2007, as the hard-earned gains of the surge have been frittered away.
‐ Facebook now gives its users 51 genders to choose from, but who's counting? Sex, in modern argot, refers to biology, but gender is what we pick for ourselves. Man has always been able to cultivate and violate his nature: It is his glory, and his temptation. The revolutions and upheavals of the last century applied that freedom to love and eros. But in the third act came the academy: haven from ordinary life, preserve of niche-making careerists, and pool of willful and impressionable kids. From these materials gender theory has constructed a new scholasticism, replete with terms such as "agender," "neutrois," and "two-spirit." Us, we'll sing along with Alberta Hunter: I want a two-fisted, double-jointed, rough and ready agender. I want a hard-working, no-shirking, good and steady agender . . .
‐ Back in October, Brian Farnan, a student leader at McGill University in Montreal, sent an e-mail to his classmates to cheer them up during midterms week. "Honestly midterms get out of here," it read, and included a doctored photo of President Obama kicking a door. Several students complained that the photo was a form of racial microagression — a politically correct term for those "everyday insults, indignities, and demeaning messages sent to people of color." In January, three months after the incident occurred, Farnan was forced to issue a formal apology, by the Equity Committee of the Students' Society of McGill University. His punishment was light, really: He could have been suspended and lost his leadership position. "The image in question was an extension of the cultural, historical and living legacy surrounding people of color — particularly young men — being portrayed as violent in contemporary culture in media," Farnan wrote in his apology e-mail. "I am deeply sorry." Farnan has nothing to be sorry for, and his punishment is an affront to free speech. On the bright side, perhaps the student complainants have a future at MSNBC?
‐ With the death of the traditional liberal-arts education and the subsequent expansion of acceptable subjects of study to include whatever one can put the word "studies" after, it seems that nowadays just about anything is considered worth learning about. Perhaps it is under this guise of an "expansive" and "well-rounded" education that the University of Michigan, a public institution, hosted a Bondage, Dominance, Sadism, and Masochism class titled "Kink for Beginners" as part of a three-day-long sex-a-palooza on campus, Sexpertise 2014. The kink class promised to teach students about "safety, communication, and other tips" as well as about the basic "concepts" of BDSM. Lesson one: The taxpayers are the masochists.
‐ The women of Wellesley College awoke one recent morning to find, in the middle of a snow-covered campus lawn, a hyper-realistic, eerily banal statue of a nearly naked male sleepwalker: eyes closed, arms outstretched, belly sagging, mouth agape, and, creepiest of all, wearing tighty-whities (boxers with the Harvard seal would have been much less threatening to Wellesley's impressionable bluestockings). Many of the students at Hillary Clinton's alma mater said the statue reminded them of an obnoxiously lecherous older man; the campus museum's director replied that she was glad to see everyone talking about art. A petition to have it removed attracted more than 500 signatures, with the sculptor no doubt mentally converting each one into a hundred-dollar bill; it was the biggest controversy since last fall's uproar over whether the presence of "transgender nonconforming" students makes it "cis-sexist" to call Wellesley "all-female." Does Facebook have a category for somnambulistic trans-statues?
‐ Aficionados of 1970s – '80s Los Angeles punk rock fondly remember bands like the Weirdos, the Urinals, and the Germs, but reigning supreme was the band X, whose early albums still show up on many critics' best-of lists. Their songs chronicled drug abuse, sex, crime, and betrayal on the fringes of L.A.'s demimonde; but now lead singer Exene Cervenka has put away punkish things and, like the people Troy Senik writes about elsewhere in this issue, is fleeing California — for, of all places, Texas. She explains to Rolling Stone: "When I moved to California in 1976 . . . it was barefoot hippie girls, Hells Angels on the Sunset Strip, East L.A. lowriders, the ocean and nature. It was this fabulous incredible place about freedom. Now when I think about California, I think of a liberal oppressive police state and regulations and taxes and fees. . . . It makes me happy when I see people in Texas open-carrying. It makes me feel safe. I'm not even a gun owner, but I'd like to see a gun rack in every pickup truck, like my boyfriend had when I was fifteen years old in Florida. An armed society is a polite society." After all these years, punk rockers are still finding ways to outrage conventional sensibilities.
‐ The most famous tree in golf was "Ike's Tree," the pine on the 17th hole at Augusta National that made the tee shot on that hole tricky. The tree is no more: It was felled by a rare ice storm in Georgia. Eisenhower would be very pleased. The tree was named for him because he was so frustrated by it. (Ike was a member of Augusta National from 1948 until his death in 1969.) In 1956, when he was president, he proposed having the tree removed. The club fathers said, "Nothing doing." Augusta National is the last place that some people would consider democratic. But can you imagine anything more democratic than a golf club's telling the president of the United States, who had won World War II, to stuff it?
‐ Her married name for 55 years was Shirley Temple Black, but she made her name as Shirley Temple, child star of the late Thirties. In the YouTube clips of her hoofing it with the great tap dancer Bill Bojangles Robinson, her precocious professionalism and her spunky personality still shine. When age shoved her out of stardom — she could play a sprite, not a Venus — she did not implode into booze and aimlessness. She raised money to treat multiple sclerosis, competed in a Republican primary for a congressional seat (she lost), and had a useful career as a diplomat, serving as a delegate to the United Nations and ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, taking the last post in 1989. She cheered America in the Depression, and was in at the death of Communism. Dead at 85. R.I.P.
‐ How good was Sid Caesar? Consider the testimony of WFB, who, one night in the very early Fifties, turned on the television (still a newish device) and thought he had lost his senses; there was a man speaking French, but WFB, who was fluent, could not understand a word. Then the penny dropped: It was Sid Caesar, giving one of his arias of doubletalk. Yakking like a furriner was only one of the many routines by which Caesar ruled Saturday night. American popular entertainment has continuities running right back to vaudeville and minstrel shows, yet every new medium needs pioneers who find just the right spin for the old shtick. Caesar was TV's first funnyman. His middle years were wasted by depression and drink, but he came out of it finally, welcomed back to sanity by the legions of his comic protégés. Dead at 91. R.I.P.
Obamacare Revisionism
The debate over Obamacare has hit a holding pattern of positive spin and disappointing results. Enrollments in the exchanges are up, supporters crow. That's true enough, but the administration is not on track to hit its goal of 6 million by the end of March, a goal that has already been revised downward. (At the end of September, Kathleen Sebelius, asked to define what success would look like, said "at least" 7 million.) The exchanges seem to be enrolling a lower percentage of young people than the administration had sought, too.
The administration announced another delay in the employer mandate, this time for businesses with 50 to 99 employees, so long as they swear they have not downsized to that level of employment to escape the mandate. That's not a sign of health for Obamacare — or for the rule of law. The law sets a date certain for the implementation of the employer mandate, and it makes no distinction between mid-sized and large companies. The administration is rewriting the law as it goes along.
Obamacare seems likely to expand health-insurance coverage by a modest amount but at huge expense. Republican senators Tom Coburn, Richard Burr, and Orrin Hatch have outlined a proposal that would achieve more for less — including less coercion. Their Republican colleagues should make the case for that alternative. In the meantime, they should again push to delay the employer mandate through legislation rather than presidential edict, to delay the individual mandate as well, and to bar the door against any taxpayer bailout of insurers that lose money in the exchanges.
Conservatives have a relatively simple task: In the short run, limit the damage of Obamacare and weaken the coalition behind it; in the long run, build support for a better way. In the interim, liberals seem likely to speak of Obamacare as though not imploding counts as an achievement. They do not have much else to brag about.
Remembering Hillary
The phrase "Clinton fatigue" entered the political lexicon during the previous century; by this point, we surely must have entered the age of Chronic Clinton-Fatigue Syndrome. But the recent making public of the so-called Hillary Papers — the notes kept by her close friend Diane Blair during Mrs. Clinton's tumultuous White House years, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon — sheds additional light on the character of the "co-presidents" who just will not go away.
It transpires to nobody's great surprise that Mrs. Clinton was more than a passive victim in the sexual scandal that preceded her husband's impeachment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. She was a callous political calculator who bemoaned not her husband's mere infidelity but the lack of discretion he exhibited in initiating a dalliance with a "narcissistic loony toon" — her description of Monica Lewinsky — rather than limiting his adultery to somebody who would be easier to "manage," in Mrs. Blair's paraphrase. But Mrs. Clinton's contempt was not limited to Miss Lewinsky: When Senator Bob Packwood found himself in trouble over allegations of sexual harassment — inconveniencing Mrs. Clinton, who had been counting on his support for her health-care scheme — the first lady complained that she had grown "tired of all these whiney women," according to Mrs. Blair's papers.
The Clintons are our national grotesques. At the height of the Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton, who had immovable support among black voters, began using black leaders as the political equivalent of human shields — Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus prominent among them — while his minions smeared prosecutor Ken Starr, characterizing him as a racist, a sex fanatic, and a monomaniac. President Clinton strutted into church waving a Bible the size of a telephone directory while Democrats painted his critics as the second coming of Roger Chillingworth, if not Padre Torquemada.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, after bitterly dismissing the cookie-baking, "Stand by Your Man" model of wifehood, did precisely that. (The chocolate-chip-cookie recipe she shared with Good Housekeeping was excellent; Bill would later plagiarize a cookie recipe for a cook-off against Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama.) After being humiliated by her husband, she apparently grew accustomed to humiliation: How else to explain such performances as her remarkable Stepin Fetchit impersonation — "Ah don' feel no-waze tahred" — for the benefit of the First Baptist Church in Selma, Ala.?
Mrs. Clinton, an inevitable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, can be counted on to use the Democrats' "war on women" rhetoric to advance her cause, even though she was, according to the papers of a woman she described as her "best friend," a main enabler of a very nasty campaign against a great many politically inconvenient women — not only Miss Lewinsky and those who endured Senator Packwood's attentions, but all the women whom the Arkansas political mafia, commanded so ably by James Carville, portrayed as "sluts," "trailer trash," etc. President Clinton used women for his own ends; so does his wife.
Senator Rand Paul, who has made a point of drawing attention to this new material about the Clintons, is right to do so. He is mistaken if he thinks that he can use this to knock the woman generally regarded as the most competitive Democrat out of the 2016 field. The fact is that Republicans could not beat the Clintons with this material back when the president was sodomizing interns in the Oval Office and semen-stained dresses were being spirited around Washington. The material will have even less political efficacy all these years later. It may be of some historical interest to have a few more grains on the scales with which we weigh out the measure of the Clintons' personal and political corruption, but that judgment is long since past. Fortunately, Mrs. Clinton's career in the Senate and, especially, in the State Department, where she was predictably dishonest but unexpectedly incompetent, provides much evidence in the ongoing case against her presidential campaign. That campaign began before many of 2016's voters were born, and most Millennials do not know what a cattle future is, anyway.


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The Nama Sankirtan was lead by Sankarji's family from Bay Area California.
Narayananji from Boston talked about the significance of satsang and the importance of Guru Krupa. We have learnt the fact from various discourses that human birth is indeed very rare. The main of human birth is to attain liberation. Our Guru Maharaj very beautifully says that realization is pure and pristine Krishna Bhakti. When one performs Krishna Bhakti for the sake of Bhakti which is devoid of any condition or cause then that is verily Mukti.
"Nija bhakthargalae jivan mukthargalae"
True devotees of the Lord are indeed Jivan Muktas. And true Krishna Bhakti is indeed Mukti. We can see such a Krishna Bhakti in the life-history of Prahalada, the Gopis of Brindavan. Our Guru Maharaj says that it is very difficult for the people in the age of Kali to develop that intense Krishna Bhakti. So he preaches the steps that one should follow to develop that pure Bhakti for Lord Krishna which is untainted with any desires. How is Krishna Bhakti attained? It happens only through Nama Sankirtan. So how does one develop conviction to Nama Sankirtan? It is verily through satsangs. We all know that it is very rare to get a satsang. One would need abundant Guru Krupa to be blessed with a satsang. When being part of satsang, he would get the flair of Nama Sanakirtan. By chanting the Divine Names of the Lord would instill Krishna Bhakti and when that Bhakti is untainted, it is verily Mukti.
Knowing the fact that Guru Krupa is causeless and has no time factor attached to it. It only comes by His sheer will and wish. It is due to the good merits accrued over so many births that one may be blessed with Guru Krupa. But we are all truly blessed to be in the abode of our Guru Maharaj.
Our Friday satsang is an endeavor to chant the Divine Names of the lord and to reminisce his glories.
Following this, Ramyaji from San Jose spoke on Guru Mahima thus,
Guroh anugraihivena puman purnaha prashantayae
Says Srimad Bhagavatham. A man attains the state of completeness only by the grace of his guru's grace and blessings.
"Gurvilla viththai pazh" goes a saying in tamil.
"Sthothriyam brahma nishtam" says the Upanishadas. A guru is the one who is very knowledgeable in all the Shastras and has well understood its essence and follows the path shown by the Shastras and it is he who has attained Brahmanubhuti.
The Upanishads preach the path of Sharanagathi to one such guru. So how do we attain a Uttama Guru. We very well know that our efforts will be futile if we try to find a Guru ourselves. Instead of searching for a Guru, if we instead search for the Lord, we will get a Guru.
Well it is not very easy for everyone to attain a Guru just like that and it is to be said that the Lord also has certain guidelines to direct a soul to a Uttama Guru. A devotee of the highest order and for one the Lord thinks of showering his grace, for whom he decided to break the transmigration of births and deaths and having them attain Moksha, he doesn't take those devotees to His holy Feet directly but only through a Guru. This is the Lord's way.
If we perform the Bhakti from the bottom of our heart by abiding to the path shown by dharma, and if that unconditional Bhakti is directed towards the lord, then the Lord Himself will lead him to a Guru. We cannot find a Guru by our means. We cannot go and experiment gurus after gurus to see if he is indeed a Uttama Guru. When one gets cheated even in worldly affairs, what to talk of spiritual life? We do a business with a dear friend of ours, but we develop some ill-feelings and we develop enmity and we stop doing business. When one attains a Guru who is indeed not a true Guru, then what he loses is not just money or anything but he has wasted his entire birth. When the Guru doesn't possess Jnana, how can he impart Jnana to his disciples? Can a blind man show another blind man the way? When that Guru itself is not going to attain moksha, how can he show the path of moksha to his disciple?
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa very beautifully once said that a small snake once desired to eat a big frog. So the snake tries to swallow a little portion of the big frog, but, that snake is not capable enough to swallow the whole frog and so after some time, both of them die. Akin to this is that fact that if one attains a guru who is not a Jivan Mukta then not only the devotee will not reach the heavenly abode but also that Guru as well.
So who is a Uttama Guru? A sadguru is one who bestows you with Gnana and Bhakti and throws you unto the Holy Feet of the Lord without your knowledge.
If you go and ask a devotee as to what his Guru was doing when he went to see Him. He would say,
Srihari charana dyana paarayanam
He was meditating on the Holy Feet of Lord Sri Hari.
Sritha jana taapa trayasam haranam
The devotee would say "I had some worries in my mind and decided to talk to him about that to find some solace. But since he was meditating on Lord Hari, and when I went and sat in front of him my mind was filled with peace".
Aananda Bhaashpa poortitha netram
If you look at his eyes, you can experience the tears of joy in his eyes.
Since he is constantly meditating on the beautiful Lord, the Guru becomes
Adbudha roopam poolagangitha gathram
His body is so beautiful and experiences horripliation in ecstasy.
So what do we, as devotees of Sadguru do? Meditate upon this uttama guru
Sri gurum eva sadaa bhavayae… hrudayae
At another instant of time, when you ask a devotee as to what he was doing he would say
Bhagavthamrutha rasikam sumukam
Bhava bhaya banchana charitham lalaitham
He expounds Srimad Bhagavatam with great vigor. We all know that by listening to Srimad Bhagavatam the disease called samsara will be cured.
And how was he explaining Srimad Bhagavatam? The devotee says "Oh I don't know whether it is hundredth time he is preaching Bhagavatam to his disciples.". But every time he says, it looks like it is the first time he is discoursing on Srimad Bhagavatam and he is filled with joy and vigor when he expounds on it. He explains in a manner akin to how a teacher teaches a small child. He doesn't show off his knowledge and only tells the essence of Srimad Bhagavatam .
After Bhagavatam what did your guru do? He would say
Srihari keerthana chaturam susvaram
Sripaduka kruta nardanam sugunam
He was singing the glories of the Lordm dancing softly.
So who is fortunate to be blessed with such a Uttama Guru
"Pratipadam ha Krishna Krishneti gayantham"
It is only for that devotee who is immersed in the thought of Lord Krishna.
Prasanna mukham bhaktha hridi nivasantham
Once you have seen such a Sadguru, you don't have to take efforts to meditate upon this Guru. His 'Prasanna mukham' [pleasing face] will bring His dyana into your heart.
What does he bless his devotees who come to have his darshan
Krishna Prema vitarana seelam
His very nature is to bestow the love for Krishna which he possess to his devotees. And
Kruthartha jana gana mangala moolam
If you are fortunate enough, then you will be blessed with such a Sadguru.
Thirumoolar in thirumandiram says the darshan of a sadguru will lead the mind into a peaceful state.
"Thelivu guruvin thirumeni kanthal
Thelivu guruvin thirunamam sepal
Thelivu guruvin thirvarthai kettal
Thelivu gurvarul chinthithal dhaane"
Guru's darshan, meditating on the guru, abiding by the guru's words and always thinking about the guru will purify you and bestow you with Jnana,
If we take the life-history Ramana Maharishi. Ramana once had a question about death and that question in turn gripped him with fear. Through self-inquiry, he attained the Supreme State and yet came to Thiruvannamlai.
He has composed several songs on Lord Arunachaleshwara. The most popular is the Aksharamanamalai [a series of 108 songs]. His Guru was none other than Lord Arunachala –
"kuttramuttraruthennai gunamaai panithaal guruvuruvaai olir arunaachalaa'
He enjoys calling that Arunachaleshwara as guru and not as Lord!
Akin to Ramana is Arungirnathar. He also did not have a Guru. He was also ordained by Lord Muruga. Of the numerous compositions on Lord Muruga, he says,
Santhatham bandham thodaralae….
Japamalai thantha sadgurunatha
Even though it was Lord Mwho gave him the Japamala, he calls Lord Muruga as the Sadgurunatha.
Uruvai Aruvaai Ulathaai Ilathaai
Maruvaai Malaraai Maniyaai Oliyaai
Karuvaai Uyiraai Gathiyaai Vithiyaai
Guruvaai Varuvaai Arulvaai Guhane
Just like how we all have a family doctor, family deity, it is very important to have a guru.
Sant kabirdas in one of his dohas very beautifully says that "If at all both the Lord and the Guru come and stand in front of him, he would first prostrate to his Guru and then to the Lord." There is a beautiful reason as to why he says this. A mother takes every step to bring up the child right from the first day of her pregnancy till the child becomes independent. When the child grows up and becomes very learned and earns a very respectable position in the society, the father proudly tells everybody that it is his son.
Similarly a guru, takes everyone unto his feet and bestows them with Jnana, Bhakti and Vairagya and eventually throws them unto the feet of the Lord even without their knowledge.
Koorathaazhwaar was a great devotee of Sri Ramanuja. He hailed from a place called 'Kooram'. He used to feed a huge number of devotees everyday. His Guru Bhakti was unique. He knew no other God other than Sri Ramanuja.
Once, Lord Sri Varadaraja (of Kanchi) told Kacchiappanambi, "Why don't you fan us in the 'sayana gruha', where we are locked up every night?" and Kachiappa Nambi instantly agreed. One such night, it was past midnight when the Divine couple heard a clinging noise. The Mother asked the Lord, 'What is the noise at such a late hour?'
The Lord explained, "Our devotee Koorathaazhwaar is closing the door of his home after offering food to all the pilgrims. It is verily the sound of his doors being closed."
At once, Lakshmi (the Goddess of wealth) remarked, "Is there any dearth of Koorathaazhwar's wealth?"
Kacchiappanambi who was listening to the divine conversation as he was fanning the Divine couple, couldn't wait for dawn. He wanted to share this exciting news with Koorathazhwar an expected that the latter will jump in joy on learning that the Goddess of wealth had blessed him in this manner.
In the morning he rushed to Koorathaazhwaar's home and with much joy said, "Last night the Lord and His Consort spoke about you."
With excitement writ large on his face, Koorathaazhwaar asked, "What did they speak about me?"
When Kachiappa Nambi spoke about the Divine Mother's remark about Koorathaazhwar's wealth, a shadow of sorrow covered Koorathaazhwaar's face.
He lamented, "Oh, Did they speak only this about me? Did not allude to me as a speck of dust at Sri Ramanuja's feet? Did they speak only about my wealth? And, you have come rushing to me to tell this?" He was extremely dejected. He at once walked out of his ouse renouncing everything. Such was Koorathaazhwar's Guru Bhakti!
The satsang ended with prayers and Nama Sankirtan.


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Senior News
The following programs are listed for February at the Trumbull Senior Center.
The Center at 23 Priscilla Place is open Thursday evenings until 7 p.m. For more information and to RSVP, call 203-452-5199, unless otherwise noted.
The Center provides transportation for medical, social, and nutritional needs to Trumbull residents who are age 60 and over and/or age 55-59 and disabled, five days a week. Rides are for those traveling to and from the senior center, medical appointments, legal appointments and nutrition programs.
The Senior Center provides medical transportation within the following towns/cities: Trumbull, Bridgeport, Stratford, Monroe, and Shelton. Contact Ashley Grace at 203-452-5137 to schedule a ride.
AARP Tax Aide — Appointments necessary. For the tax year 2018, AARP Tax Aide certified volunteers will offer free income tax preparation at the Trumbull Senior Center from 9 a.m.-noon each Wednesday from through April 10. For appointments at the Senior Center, call 203-452-5199. What To Bring: A copy of your 2017 tax return, social security statement, SSA 1099; all tax forms received for tax year 2017 (W2, 1099, etc.); end of year investment statements; documentation to support itemized deductions or credits claimed (medical, taxes, contributions, education expenses).
Income tax preparation — The Trumbull Library, 33 Quality St., is also offering free income tax preparation on Fridays from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Call: 203-452-5197 and ask for the Information Desk.
Quebec, Canada Tour Presentation — Presented by Tours of Distinction, Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 1 p.m. Come along and join for a presentation on a tour to Quebec. Experience true French Canada on a five-day tour, including Quebec City. Refreshments will be served. RSVP.
Elder Law Discussion — Thursday, Feb. 21, 5:30 p.m. Attorney Lyn Eliovson will return and present a round-table discussion about elder law. RSVP.
Alzheimer's Disease Clinical Research Studies — Monday, Feb. 25, 1 p.m. Everyone welcome. Great for Caregivers. Join for an informative session presented by Peter McAllister, MD, Board-Certified Neurologist and Director of New England Institute of Neurology and Headache. Attendees will learn about Alzheimer's disease and available trails for those with and without the disease. Participants will gain an understanding of how clinical trials provide promising new strategies for treatment, prevention, diagnosis, and cures. Refreshments will be served by Middlebrook Farms of Trumbull, a Benchmark Community. Sponsored by Caring Hospice Services. RSVP.
Caregiver Support Group — Monday, Feb. 25, 2 p.m. Are you caring for a loved one? Join this group and share your feelings in a safe environment among others who are going through the same experiences. You can learn about resources, caregiving strategies and other valuable tools to provide support. Most importantly, you'll find out that you're not alone. To RSVP, call Ashley at 203-452-5135.


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Daily Archives: December 27, 2016
YR End Thoughts.
Laff For The Day.
The Point Of No Return.
There's an aviation term used once you reach beyond a certain point while flying where it becomes The Point Of No Return, where you can no longer go back to where you started if a problem should arise, but, rather, you have to go forward, towards your destination,and continue on, perhaps as you wouldn't have enough fuel to return, or you're flying in the middle of an ocean, for example, and you can't turn around and go back from this point onward, you have to keep moving forward, you can't change your mind and go back, and you have to stick with your plan. A certain "line" has been crossed and you can't move beyond it, and that's how I feel with my toxic family. I've just had enough of their exclusion, cruelty, ridicule, belittling, mocking, provoking, and emotional abuse. It feels like I have reached The Point Of No Return.
I have reached The Point Of No Return with my toxic family. I feel like a line has been crossed and it cannot be re-crossed. I can't ever go back to the way it used to be, when the kids were younger(and nicer) back when they used to love me and tell me they loved me and show me they loved me, before they grew up and morphed into these nasty disrespectful , mouthy ingrates that treat me like dirt, copying how they see my hubby and mother also treat me(Where do you think they learned it from?). I also feel The Point Of No Return has been reached as a line has been crossed and I can't go back; I've had enough of their mistreatment, criticism, disdain, demeaning,hate, and rejection of me, and no matter how hard I try it still never makes any difference; they still hate me, exclude me, ignore me, and bully me so I'm just done trying, as what's the use? I feel like I'm just wasting my time. I can't "make" someone like me. I can't "make" someone be nice. I can't "make" someone be kind. All I can do is try but it reaches a point where it's just no use anymore.Now I just give up and want to walk away and never look back.
I've reached The Point Of No Return.
Even for Christmas only 2 of the kids even cared enough to get me gifts, and it's not the gifts themselves I'm concerned about here but rather the thought put into them and the love that inspires you to get the gift in the first place, that someone was thinking of you,and I got all the kids gifts(since I had some $$$$ this YR) yet only 2 cared enough to think of me, and the "weed" calendar the second-oldest got me I'm still not even quite sure if she got it because she thought I'd like it……or if it was mocking me(with my family I can never tell)…and the 20 YR old and 9 YR old also gave presents to everyone except me,too, in a deliberate snub,and it's just mean to purposely exclude someone anyway but even more so on Christmas! Christmas is supposed to be a time of giving, sharing, love, and harmony, NOT exclusion, rejection, hate, and revenge.
The kids were also laughing about me and saying how I had this "phase" where I "thought I was a holy Saint" ……except that I never did; I never said that, thought that, or believed that; it's a lie, and now they're just making shit up,trying to make me look stupid, bad, crazy,and ridiculous, and I was soooo mad at Buddy as well(I've never been so mad at him,and, in fact, I think this was the first time I can remember even being mad at him!) as it was really bad freezing rain and I had him out to pee except he wouldn't…..he was being stubborn and just…refused…..but he wasn't going in the house until he peed so we were out there for an hour and I was just sooooo fed up so then I came in and just put him out in the backyard and told him he could come inside when he peed……and right away he peed, the little f*cker….
Then the kids all start hassling me, saying how "mean" I am to "Poor Buddy"(for tossing him out in the yard), etc… so quick to judge and criticize me (for getting mad at him, even though I was stuck out in the freezing rain, which made the street like an ice rink, for an HR as he refused to pee!) yet none of them would ever stand out there for an HR with him like I did, so they should just shut the f*ck up!! The 15 YR old was being a lying two-faced phony as well; to just me she purred, "Time to sell Buddy! He's ugly anyway!" but then just minutes later, to the kids she croons, "Ooooh, poor dog! Is she being mean to you?"
This is the kind of crap I get from them all the time. I'm done. I'm so sick of this shit.
I'm thinking of maybe doing myself in again. The suicide feelings are back again. Your heart, spirit, and soul can only be broken so many times.I just can't keep doing this.I want my family to see what they do to me, the damage they cause,how it makes me feel, and to know how serious it is.


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There is practical evidence that Pau d'Arco can be used to help to treat colds, flu, sore throat, and yeast infections, and there is laboratory evidence that the herb contains compounds that help protect against tropical diseases, specifically malaria, schistosomiasis, and tropical fevers.
South American studies show that this herb can help fight fungal infections, like athlete's foot.
We offer cut and sifted bark.
Helps cure fungal infections
Helps fight parasitic infection
Promotes good digestion
Lowers blood sugar


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Think back to the time when you were a young child and enjoyed having a great afterschool snack. Often, it was the highlight of our day and it certainly put a smile on our face when we came home and were able to destress in this way. Now that we are older, we still may look back with fondness on those days but we now have the opportunity to share them with our children.
There are many things to do to make afterschool fun for your kids but one of the best options is to include these backyard bug snacks. Not only are they totally adorable, they are also quite healthy and are a great choice that any caring parent would want to share with their children. Just be sure to make extra, because there will be some for playing and some for eating.
For Butterflies
celery stalks
peanut butter
mini pretzels
candy eyes
For Caterpillar
wooden skewers
candy eyes
icing gel or edible black marker
For Ladybug
grapes tomatoes
black olives
candy eyes
icing gel or edible black marker
For the Caterpillar
Skewer your grapes (we used about 8 for one caterpillar).
Stick your candy eyes to the first grape in the skewer using icing gel.
Use the black icing gel to draw a smile on your caterpillar's face.
For the Butterfly
Spread peanut butter into a 3-4″ long piece of celery.
Stick two pretzels into the peanut butter (these will be the wings for your butterfly).
Stick two candy eyes into the peanut butter at the front of the stalk of celery.
For the Ladybug
Place a piece of cheese on a round cracker.
Cut a cherry or grape tomato in half and place on the cracker (these will be your ladybug's wings).
Cut a black olive in half and place on the cracker (this will be the head of the ladybug).
Using black icing gel, stick your candy eyes on the olive to form your critter's face.
Create black dots on the wings of your ladybug using black icing gel.


text: This image is a stylized representation of a nautilus, which is a sea creature, a living fossil, closely related to the ammonite which swam in ancient oceans millions of years ago. This fossil is often associated with change, resiliency, and overcoming obstacles. It is an image for growth and evolution. Following the spiral you will cross similar points and each crossing will change your depth of perspective. For us, this is an excellent symbol of the therapy process.


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Saturday 21st August, 14.00 Woven Gold
Annie Blaber /Jessica Maryon-Davies/ The music group at the Helen Bamber Foundation
Woven Gold is a group of musicians seeking refuge from human rights violations in their own countries – Burma, Congo, Guinea, Iran, Kenya, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Uganda. They collaborate with outstanding international musicians to create their own compositions and perform. They will perform a collection of their songs; from their recent album Much More Than Metal, new songs and works-in-progress for a piece entitled Consider the Lillies.
Woven Gold, set up in 2007, is a self selecting group of refugees fleeing persecution that meets weekly with musicians who donate their time to arrange songs from their own countries compose and perform. For Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2010 they will perform songs from their album Much More Than Metal, premiere songs they have written this year, and work in progress for the cantata Consider the Lilies.
They launched their album Much More Than Metal at the Roundhouse in December 2009. They have performed at the British Museum, The Young Vic, and in 2010 in The City of London Festival and the Hackney World Music Festival.
In November 2010 Woven Gold will perform a dramatic cantata, Consider the Lilies, which they inspired and are involved in creating with composer John Barber and writer Peter Cann. Celebrating resilience, courage and creativity in the face of despair, the premiere will feature, alongside Woven Gold, counter tenor Michael Chance, soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, baritone Omar Ebrahim and mezzo soprano Yolanda Grant-Thompson. Howard Moody will conduct the concert with his orchestra, La Folia, the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields and the New Foundling Choir made up of Camden primary school children. Woven Gold is part of a Creative Arts Programme set up by the Helen Bamber Foundation, which believes that creative interaction is an integral part of the therapeutic process.
"We are all outcast people; we are not allowed to do anything. But in Woven Gold we have a sense of belonging. I feel it"s my place; I am part of a community. I can feel a sense of achievement. I feel so alive when I am with the group." Humera, from Pakistan
"Woven Gold gives you a family, you are happy when you are with the group, and that encourages you in life." Barrie, from Guinea-Conakry
WOVEN GOLD is a group of musicians seeking refuge from human rights violations in their own countries – Burma, Congo, Guinea, Iran, Kenya, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. They collaborate with outstanding international musicians to create their own compositions and perform. They will perform a collection of their songs, some from their recent album Much More Than Metal, new songs and works-in-progress for a piece entitled Consider the Lillies.
Music & Words: Woven Gold
Composer & Keyboards: John Barber
Composer & Guitar: Jack Ross
Percussion: Genevieve Wilkins
Performers: Woven Gold, the music group at the Helen Bamber Foundation
John Barber, composer, keyboard and gamelan player, is a founder member and leader of Woven Gold. Recent projects and commissions include a new oratorio based on Hansel and Gretel with Glyndebourne Opera, The Last Genie – a collaborative theatre piece with the Royal Opera House, Dance for oboe and piano, A Winged Spark for female chorus, premiered at the South Bank Centre, Rapunzel, a community opera and Songs of Innocence and Experience – a work for ensemble, soprano and Tower Hamlets school children based the poetry of William Blake. Collaboration is a central feature of John's work, which encompasses work with professional singers and orchestras as well as with non-professionals for, among others, Spitalfields Festival, Wigmore Hall, and Opera North. He performs and records with Woven Gold and his band firefly.
Jack Ross, composer, guitarist and percussionist, is a founder member and leader of Woven Gold. As a composer Jack has been commissioned to write pieces for sinfonia ViVA, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Opera House and City of London Sinfonia amongst others. He has performed with Marianne Faithful, John Surman and Herbie Flowers, at many major venues and
festivals nationally and internationally, and performs and records with Woven Gold and his band firefly. Jack is committed to education work, leading creative song-writing and instrumental workshops with organisations including Spitalfields Festival, Wigmore Hall, The Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Opera, Royal Academy of Music, and Aldeburgh Festival.
Genevieve Wilkins, an Australian born freelance percussionist based in London, is also a founder of Woven Gold. She is a member of "ensemblebash", UK"s premiere percussion ensemble as well as a founding member of "The G Project", an exciting new collaboration with cellist Gabriella Swallow. Genevieve also performs regularly with composer Andrew Poppy"s "Sustaining Ensemble", Dekata Project and has recently joined the band of jazz/world bassist Nathan Riki Thomson. As a session musician, she has performed with and/or recorded with Lionel Richie, Akon, Joanna MacGregor, Nash Ensemble, Karen David, DJ Panko (Ojos de Brujo), DJ Pathaan, Alex Wilson, Gavin Bryars, Steve Schick and was a founding member of renowned flamenco fusion group Alcazaba. www.genevievewilkins.com