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Click through the below tabs to view numerous resources available about rainwater, stormwater, watersheds and watershed stewardship for residents, educators and children.
Also available:
Get involved and learn about the ways you can clean, protect and enhance the watersheds within the capital region.
The following are a series of watershed videos for both children and the general public highlight topic such as, what is a watershed and how does it function, how have we changed our watersheds and watershed stewardship for residents and business. These resources have been develop with support from RBC Blue Water Project.
A series of watershed illustrations aim to aid educators or students with a graphical understand about how watersheds work, important functions of both natural features and green infrastructure. Theses resources have been develop with support from RBC Blue Water Project.
Brochures for residents and businesses:
Below are a series of best management practices and informational brochures provide information about watershed stewardship and rainwater management at home or for your business.
Ollie the Otter the CRD Watershed Warden program is comprised of tools for children, families and educators to learn about your watershed and suggested watershed stewardship actions. These resources have been developed with support from the RBC Blue Water Project.
Ollie the Otter - Watershed Warden Badge
Kids can earn a CRD Watershed Warden badge! Join Ollie the Otter's team and become a CRD Watershed Warden by learning about watersheds and actively protect your watershed. Read more >>
Watershed Education Lesson Plans
Lesson plans for elementary school aged children are available and can be easily adapted to various grade levels. Read more >>
Get to know the watershed in which you live, work or play. Follow the below links to regional and individual watershed maps, flow diagrams and more that will help you discover your watershed.
Learn more about our watersheds at CRD Watersheds.
Webmap is the CRD's web mapping application. This application provides users with fast and intuitive access to many layers of information including our most recent aerial photography.
Webmap is an upgrade to the Natural Areas and Harbours Atlas that were developed in the early 2000's. The goal of this new application is to provide intuitive access to as much information as possible using a map interface.
The Capital Regional District (CRD) is the regional government for 13 municipalities and three electoral areas on southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, serving more than 418,000 people. Guided by its Board, the CRD works collaboratively to build a vibrant, livable and sustainable region. Read more >>
Main office address:
625 Fisgard Street
Victoria, British Columbia
Canada V8W 1R7
Tel. 250.360.3000
Twitter @crd_bc
Like us on Facebook


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Crosby, Penguins double up Lightning 6-3
Pittsburgh, PA (SportsNetwork.com) - Sidney Crosby had four assists and the Pittsburgh Penguins extended their home winning streak over the Tampa Bay Lightning to nine games with a 6-3 victory on Friday night.
Steve Downie returned to score twice for Pittsburgh after missing the last five games because of the mumps and Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kunitz, Andrew Ebbett and Christian Ehrhoff also found the net in the team's second consecutive win after four straight losses.
Thomas Greiss also played for the first time since contracting the mumps last month and made 32 saves.
Brian Boyle, Victor Hedman and Alex Killorn scored for Tampa Bay, which had a four-game winning streak snapped.
Pittsburgh moved ahead of Tampa Bay for first place in the Eastern Conference with 53 points. Montreal tied the Lightning for first place in the Atlantic with a win over New Jersey on Friday.
The Lightning have been outscored 48-19 while losing all nine games they have played at Consol Energy Center, which opened in 2010. Their last win in Pittsburgh came March 31, 2010.
It was an interesting day for the Penguins, who dealt forward Rob Klinkhammer and a 2015 first-round draft pick to Edmonton for forward David Perron.
Pittsburgh coach Mike Johnston confirmed that Malkin and teammate Craig Adams were involved in a scrap during practice earlier Friday in which punches were thrown.
"Small fight, but nothing bad," Malkin said after the game. "We talked after practice."
Much of the game was played with three officials after referee Mike Leggo vomited on the ice during the first period and skated off with what the NHL said was an illness. Play was stopped for several minutes while the ice was cleaned.
The Penguins took a 3-0 lead after just 13:39 to chase Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop, who faced just 10 shots. Evgeni Nabokov gave up two goals on 18 shots after that.
But Pittsburgh later had to fight off two Tampa Bay rallies to secure the win.
Tampa Bay defenseman Anton Stralman was sent off for tripping just 1:36 into the first period and Pittsburgh scored 20 seconds later when Kunitz buried a rebound behind Bishop from beside the net as he was being shoved to the ice.
Five minutes later, the horn sounded prematurely after Malkin clanked a shot off the goal post. Amid the distraction, Ebbett flipped a backhand over Bishop's glove for his first goal since March 14, 2013, with Vancouver.
Bishop was pulled after letting a rebound trickle off his pads to the other side of the crease, where Malkin hammered it in to make it 3-0.
Later, Boyle got Tampa Bay on the board with 4:49 left in the first, scoring from in front of the crease after Ondrej Palat used his skate to stop Matthew Carle's sharp pass from behind the net.
Hedman pulled the Lightning within 3-2 at 12:48 of the second period, but Ehrhoff restored Pittsburgh's two-goal advantage just over four minutes later on a slap shot from the point.
Killorn's goal 11:18 into the third period again brought the Lightning within one after he fought off defenseman Simon Despres down the right side and took the puck across the crease to beat a sprawled Greiss.
But Downie countered for Pittsburgh just 34 seconds later, waiting out Victor Hedman as the defenseman went to the ice to stop a potential shot, then firing a wrister past Nabokov from the left circle. Downie cored his second goal into an empty net in the final seconds.
It was the third game between the teams in 19 days. The Penguins earned a 4-2 win in Pittsburgh on Dec. 15 and the Lightning carried a 4-3 decision in Tampa Bay on Dec. 23, snapping a 10-game losing streak in the series. They will not face each other again this season.
Game Notes
Ebbett recorded two points on his 32nd birthday ... The Lightning continue a four-game road trip on Sunday in Ottawa ... The Penguins continue a four-game homestand on Saturday against Montreal.

subset: commoncrawl


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Pauline McCabe
2018 Hair Expo WA-NT Hairdresser of the Year
- Hair: Pauline McCabe
- Salon: Rock Paper Scissors Hair Studio
- Photographer: Jeremy Choh
- Makeup artist: Janelle Han
- Stylist: Zoe Van Zanten
Q+A with Pauline
How did it feel to be named as the WA-NT Hairdresser of the Year for the second year at the awards?
It is a huge honour to be recognised for my work by our industry's greats, and to win two years in a row was an incredible feeling.
How does winning a Hair Expo Award impact your salon/business?
After the first award, our business had huge growth. The second award allowed us to grow again, it also platformed who we are and what we do; creating incredible opportunity through sponsorship and education opportunities.
Can you tell us a little bit about how your collection came together and where the idea came from?
The idea came from the shows I had worked on during February fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Throughout all of the shows, there was a strong theme of honouring each model as an individual, looking at their natural texture and who they are and enhancing it. So I had in my mind a collection which was all about the Individualist, someone who goes their own way, in their own style.
I start with an idea, the word Individualist; and then start to develop the idea with drawings – who would the six girls be. There are words, drawings and images that I send through to my collaborators and then they bring their ideas and vision to the collection.
Where do you look to for inspiration for your creative projects?
I am lucky to be surrounded by incredible creatives who I collaborate with regularly, we allow each other the space to have focused play and to create freely. I love art, I have undertaken a double major in fine art so am greatly influenced by art, contemporary culture, music and I love to watch people in the street – ideas come from everywhere. Working on fashion weeks is also incredibly inspiring. I'm just returning from working with Guido Palau and Janelle Chaplin from the Original Mineral team in New York; backstage is basically the University of Hair, so I'm always bursting with ideas on return.
What's your favourite thing about being a hairdresser?
I feel like being a hairdresser is one of the best careers in the world. It's creative, fun, it has so many different routes you can take within the course of your career. I have been an educator, salon owner, art director, session hairdresser, worked on film projects, product development… You can travel the world, collaborate, create, inspire, motivate, learn management, marketing and business skills.
Really, you can just keep growing and learning in the field of hairdressing. For me, that's what keeps me interested; there's always so much more to do, to learn, and to create.
rockpaperscissorsfreo.com.au / @pauline_mccabehair


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CLIA UK & Ireland was formed in May and now makes up part of the world's largest cruise industry trade association.
CleverTouch Marketing has launched The CommsCo in conjunction with former Lewis PR co-founder Ilona Hitel. The agency opens with four staff and seven b2b clients, including Centrix Software and The Mabey Group.
Fourtold, a London-based strategic comms firm with offices in Brussels, has been launched by former FTI Consulting executives Debbie Parriss and Matthew Willis.
Hill+Knowlton Strategies' Charlie Almond has moved to media agency Carat as head of sponsorship PR, a newly created role.
Baufritz, the international eco-friendly house builder, has called in Goodfellow Communications to handle its UK PR and raise the company's profile among consumers.
Noresland has appointed Green Row PR to promote Jarlsberg and Applewood Spreadable cheeses in the UK. The agency will handle consumer and trade press.
The week in global PR
Thermador, the kitchen appliance manufacturer, has called in Finn Partners as its US agency, as it seeks to raise brand awareness.
Papa John's has brought its global PR work in-house, parting company with Fleishman-Hillard after more than eight years with the agency.
symantec, the security software firm, has hired former Waggener Edstrom Worldwide executive vice-president Colleen Lacter as its comms chief.
The Huffington Post has hired Amanda Schumacher, former vice-president of comms for Time Inc's lifestyle group, as vice-president of comms in the US.
The Port of New Orleans is currently on the lookout for a comms firm to help it with a rebranding effort.
RadioShack, the US electronics retailer, has hired Merianne Roth as vice-president of comms, a newly created role.
Burson-Marsteller has launched a partnership in Kenya, called Engage Burson-Marsteller. The agency plans to develop similar partnerships in other African markets.
Hotwire has expanded its digital division, 33 Digital, to Germany. The shop will be led by former Microsoft social media manager Annabelle Atchison.
For more global news visit prweekus.com and campaignasia.com.
The week in healthcare
Tonic Life Communications has taken on five consultants since April, with two more to join in the next few weeks. They are account director Frances Murphy, formerly at Ketchum Pleon; senior account executive Claire Johnson from Say Communications; senior account executive Henry Stanley from College Hill Life Sciences; account executive Edward Lamaison from Hanson Wade; and graduate David Cole, who joins as an assistant account executive.
The NHS' 65th birthday last week was marked by a motorcade of vintage ambulances in Parliament Square, in a protest by trade union GMB against the Health and Social Care Act.
The Department of Health has appointed Dr Ian Hudson as chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The MHRA is an executive agency of the Department of Health and incorporates e-health research service the Clinical Practice Research Datalink and the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. Hudson is currently the MHRA's licensing director and will take up the post in September when Sir Kent Woods steps down.
The public sector week
Wiltshire Council is on the hunt for a PR agency to back a campaign promoting The Enterprise Network, which aims to nurture new businesses in the area through support and financial help. The brief, which is now closed to new enquiries, includes engaging with tenants for the network and raising awareness among a range of stakeholders.
The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has hired Grayling following more than a decade working with Publicasity. The agency was handed a retained brief after a pitch, and will focus on ongoing campaigns and raising awareness of chiropractic treatment in the health sector. Anne Barlow, PR and comms manager for the BCA, said the appointment followed a recent rebrand. She added: 'We want to integrate our social media offer more into our PR, and within the healthcare sector we need to make sure those making decisions such as GPs are aware of our members. It's about showing them how what they offer fits in within a wider care structure.'
London Communications Agency director Luke Blair has written this week's public sector column on press coverage of A&E waiting times and the gap between perception and reality. To read it, go to prweek.com/uk and click on opinion.
The week in the City
Perspective Financial Group, the UK-based financial advisory group, has appointed FTI Consulting to lead comms for its London float. Perspective, among the top 15 financial advisory firms in the UK with more than £2.5bn of assets under management, has said it is looking to raise £28m by floating on AIM. FTI Consulting senior vice-president Ed Berry and senor consultant Tom Blackwell are leading the account.
Elephant Communications has appointed Patrick Muir to its advisory board. Muir was the founder of Lombard Direct and Egg and a former marketing director of Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. He will join David Norman, former CEO of Credit Suisse Asset Management and CEO of TCF Investment, on the Elephant advisory board, and will provide senior counsel to the management team as well as strategic marketing consultancy to a number of international clients.
FWD Group has hired Gug Kyriacou as a director within its financial services division. He was formerly head of PR at insurance broker Le Mans Holdings and a partner at Redleaf Polhill. Kyriacou will be responsible for client handling, account management and new business development and will report to Michael Gaughan, chief executive of FWD PR.
The week in lobbying
Network Rail has drafted in Portland to handle its public affairs needs for the next three years. Portland is taking over the business later this month from incumbent MHP, which reached the final round of the pitch. The rail infrastructure operator had shortlisted eight of 26 applications.
The Whitehouse Consultancy has been appointed by the National Obesity Forum. The agency will create and manage National Obesity Awareness Week 2014, which will take place in January. Whitehouse's brief includes generating sponsorship for the event, in addition to creating PR and public affairs programmes that will highlight what the public can do to tackle obesity. The agency will also aim to secure the support of high-profile figures. Associate director Emma Carr will lead the work.
The Committee on Standards heard from a number of leading public affairs players on Tuesday in relation to All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs). They included PA professionals from Luther Pendragon, MHP and the APPC. The meeting came in the wake of strong media attention on APPGs and PRWeek revealing that a number of public affairs agencies were targeted by journalists in a sting on the industry's relationship with the parliamentary groups.


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23 July 2014
Society's perception of death has provided the inspiration for a University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) architecture student's final year project designing a crematorium centre in Rivington.
Kate Nicholson has designed an environmentally friendly crematorium centre in Rivington, Horwich, for her project entitled the Architecture of Death. Her main inspiration for this piece was based on how death is viewed in today's culture.
Throughout her design Kate has focused on strong themes including the relationship between body disposal and environmentalism, how current cremation methods emit high levels of Co2 and also the frank view that we are rapidly outgrowing current methods of body disposal.
The element of water runs all the way through the 21-year-old's project as not only would water surround the crematorium, but it would also feature heavily throughout the cremation process. Kate felt that water was a metaphor for the line between life and death and she has chosen to not focus on a particular religion in her work.
"My proposal focuses on providing a place of rest which has no religious aspects; it is about remembering the person who has been lost."
Kate, who is originally from Stone in Staffordshire, said: "My proposal focuses on providing a place of rest which has no religious aspects; it is about remembering the person who has been lost.
"I have challenged tradition and addressed the most prominent issues surrounding deathcare; our lack of openness about death, dealing with remains, environmental impact of body disposal, the financial pressures of a funeral and the role of religion today".
Keeping on the theme of nature, Kate's crematorium would be constructed from a mixture of timber and glass allowing the building to feel 'open'; this coincides with how she thinks people's opinions and views should be on death.
Kate's model originated from a floating lantern as within her construction, the lantern represents letting someone go. The budding architect wanted to propose a day of celebration where family and friends can participate in a formal ceremony, personal reflection, a dinner and a spectacle in order to say their final goodbyes.


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State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf made waves Feb. 17 when she said that members of Islamic State were drawn to the terrorist organization due to a dearth of jobs. The Obama administration made it clear Monday that she did not misspeak: White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Mr. Obama is urging members of Congress to draw up the "Islamic State Relief Act" (ISRA), a $1 billion jobs bill that would give jihadis a chance to change career paths.
"When the president hears 'Allahu Akbar!' during Islamic State propaganda videos, he hears something entirely different than most people. He doesn't hear 'God is the greatest!' — he hears "Where are the jobs?" White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday, The Associated Press reported. "'Jihad' means 'struggle.' When the president hears 'jihad,' he knows that the struggle is real for high-paying, respectable jobs. Men don't chop off heads because of some sick attempt to reconstitute the Islamic empires of old — they chop off heads because they're not killing sales records at the local car dealership," he added.
Mr. Earnest's brief overview of what the president is looking for with ISRA made it clear that it would be safe for U.S. sleeper cells to "come out of the shadows" if they wanted to take advantage of educational opportunities. The president faces stiff opposition with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate.
Speaker of the House John Boehner said Monday that he did receive a brief phone call from the president, but that the two are oceans apart on what final passage of ISRA should look like.
"I can't help but think that the president's misreading of the threat posed by Islamic radicals has passed the point of satire and swung around the globe to a place that is wholly absurd," the Ohio Republican said. "He's gone from not calling the Islamic State group Islamic, to saying that job creation will curb recruitment, to finally pushing Congress for a $1 billion jobs bill — primarily for enemies, both foreign and domestic. Someone get me a bottle of antacid pills."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was quick to respond that the U.S. does distribute aid packages to foreign countries. While it would be a first to grant taxpayer dollars to terrorist organizations, lawyers at the Department of Justice assured the president that air-tight constitutional wording for ISRA exists — they just need to find it.
"There will be critics of this bill," Mr. Earnest said, AP reported, "But 20 years from now, when a former Islamic State terrorist is standing behind this very microphone, thanks to the president's jobs bill, who will you thank — the Republicans who fought the president every step of the way, or Mr. Obama?"
Foreign fighters in Raqqa, Syria said they would be open to taking advantage of the president's plan, provided that classes on beheading and slavery were not prohibited. They added that professors should under no circumstances be women, Jews, or gay men.


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Seniors start with two losses
By Scott Cameron on Tuesday, 10 October 2017
The Union senior team started the season with two loses on Saturday.
Missing key players from last season, they were defeated comfortably by Oamaru in the first game after notching up the score of 85 in the first innings. Only Daniel Martin (31) and Scott Kitto (20) made scores of 15 or more as the side struggled to gain any ascendency against the Oamaru bowlers. Jamie Ferris and Nicki Johnson took 3 wickets each while Abrahams took 2.
Ferris was destructive bat in hand almost singlehandedly taking his side to victory. When the total was passed he had 66 runs to his name including 13 boundaries. For Union, Blake James took the only wicket in the innings, bowling Sunderland.
In the second game Union took on Albion, with Albion looking set for a massive score 131/2 after 13 overs. Nathan Smith (56) and Jonty Naylor (56) looked set to push the total but a good fight back from Union restricted the opposition to 170 of their 20 overs. Returning Englishman Sam Bastin was the pick of the Union bowlers taking 3-24 of his four overs.
Union got of to a steady start being 33/1 of 6 overs but with the required run rate starting to reach double figures the pressure mounted. They never got their innings going staying at a run a ball but at the same time losing key wickets at critical times during the innings. When the final ball was bowled Union were 112/9, 59 runs short of victory. Sam Bastin backing up bowling effort top scoring with 34 while Blake James notched up 30. Both were victims of veteran Bradly Kernahan who took the outstanding figures of 5-25 of 4 overs, while Nathan Smith (2-20) and Ewing (2-17) took two wickets each.
Albion 170-7 ( J. Naylor 56, N. Smith 53, R. George 23, J. Cafferky 18, S. Bastin 3-24 )
Union 112-9 ( S. Bastin 34, B. James 30, S. Kitto 15, B. Kernahan 5-25, L. Ewing 2-17, N. Smith 2-20 )
Albion won by 58 runs
Full scorecard for the match
Union 85 ( D. Martin 31, S. Kitto 20, M. Lilley 13, J. Ferris 3-1, N. Johnson 3-30, A. Abrahams 2-0 )
Oamaru 86-1 ( J. Ferris 66no )
Oamaru won by 9 wickets
Full scorecard for the match


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Choose Your Chair and Fabric
Reupholstering the seat of a dining style chair is one of the easiest ways to make a big change with little effort.
This sturdy, comfortable ladder-back is perfect for the worktable in my library. The lines are simple, but the arms have an unexpected curve. Though the finish is nearly perfect, the seat fabric is boring and filthy.
The room doesn't get much natural light, so something bright is best. A geometric pattern would work well with the lines of the chair, but a pattern with some curves will make it more interesting. My final choice is a linen-look cotton with a bright botanical print.
Remove the Seat
Turn the chair upside down, and unscrew the seat from the frame.
Once you've removed the seat, make your repairs to the wood part of the chair -- painting, refinishing, or tightening joints. Make sure everything is dry, not sticky to the touch, before you reattach the seat.
Note: If you encounter a tack strip, a long strip of cardboard with tacks that hold the seat to the frame, instead of screws, just pry the seat off with a flathead screwdriver.
Remove the Old Fabric
Turn the seat over.
Use a staple remover to remove the old fabric. If the staples are stubborn, pull them out with needle-nose pliers.
Save the old seat fabric. You'll need to use it as a pattern.
Note: If the padding is in bad shape, or you just want a softer seat, add a new layer of batting. It's sold in most fabric and hobby stores. Add it to your seat by using the steps on pages 5- 7, but with a sheet of batting instead of your new fabric.
Center Your Pattern
If your new seat fabric has a pattern, turn the seat right-side up and place the new fabric on top. Pressing around the perimeter of the seat, center your pattern. Mark the corners with straight pins.
You can skip this step if your fabric doesn't have a pattern.
Cut Your New Seat Cover
- Turn your new fabric right-side down, and put the old seat cover on top as a pattern.
- Note the locations of your pins from page 4 and adjust if needed, feeling underneath. Line up the corner creases of the old seat cover with your straight pins.
- Weight down the old cover at the corners, and trace around the old seat cover with a pencil or chalk. Smooth out the edges with your hands as you trace it, so your new cover doesn't end up too small. You can pin the old seat cover to your new fabric before tracing if you don't feel confident about smoothing it as you go.
- Remove the old seat cushion, and then cut out your new one, using the pencil or chalk lines as your guide.
- To prevent fraying, use your sewing machine to zigzag or serge around the edges of your fabric. If you don't want to sew, fold tape along the edges.
- Press down your fabric if it's wrinkled or creased.
Note: In this case, there is no need cut the new fabric. Since the fabric was originally a furniture store fabric sample, it isn't much larger than the old seat cover, and the edges are already serged to prevent fraying. Since the cotton is lightweight, the extra fabric on the edges won't bunch, or be too thick to staple.
Attach Your Fabric to the Seat
- Turn your new seat cover right-side down. Place the seat cushion, also right-side down, on top of it.
- If you have pins to mark the corners of a patterned fabric, make sure they are aligned with the corners of the seat cushion.
- Starting with the top edge, staple once in the center.
- Repeat with the bottom edge, pulling the fabric tight before you staple.
- Repeat with each side, and keep pulling the fabric tight before you staple.
- Working one side at a time, staple from the center outward, until that side is completely stapled. As you staple, keep pulling the fabric tight and smooth the fabric underneath from the center. Leave the corners unstapled.
- Repeat on all sides until everything is stapled but the corners.
Keep the Corners Neat
- Grasp one corner of your cover and pull the point toward the center of the seat cushion. Staple.
- Arrange the remaining unstapled corner fabric into small even pleats, pulling tightly. Staple.
- Make sure you don't staple over the screw holes.
- Repeat steps 1- 3 for the three remaining corners.
Attach the Welt
This step is optional.
Welt is often called piping or cording. Using it will give the seat a professional, finished look, and, in this case, adds a nice pop of color. You can buy decorative cording in fabric or upholstery shops, or make your own.
To apply the welt, arrange it along the edge of the seat and staple the lip, the flat edge. When you turn the seat over, only the rounded edge with the cord inside should show.
Reattach the Seat and Enjoy
- Place the seat on the chair frame. Line up the screw holes of the seat and chair frame.
- Get the screws started, so the seat doesn't fall off once you turn the chair upside down.
- Turn the chair over and tighten the screws until the seat is firmly attached. Be careful not to tighten too much; you don't want to strip the holes.
- Admire your new chair.
In this case, the simple cotton compliments the oak. The birds in the pattern make it feel earthy rather than prissy, though it's still a nice contrast to the rather masculine look of the chair. Piping the seat in berry-red boucle grounds the light background of the seat fabric, and adds a nice pop of color.


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Chinese Marketing Analysis
This content was COPIED from BrainMass.com - View the original, and get the already-completed solution here!
The purpose of this paper (e.g. literature review, biblography) is utilized in order to examine the characteristics of Chinese culture which are different from the West (in terms of multicultural marketing) and to examine, the legal, political, social and economic implications of Chinese multicultural marketing and trading.© BrainMass Inc. brainmass.com May 20, 2020, 7:22 pm ad1c9bdddf
Solution Preview
II. Chinese Market Analysis
According to Zhao, Chu & Yi Chen (2010) in this study, it is proposed that market competitiveness plays an important role in determining the influence of perceived managerial discretion on firm performance. According to these authors, in a survey of 169 top managers of Chinese businesses, it was found that in highly competitive markets, perceived managerial discretion and firm performance was positively related to corporate performance. In contrast, these authors point out, where there was little or no competition, perceived managerial discretion and corporate performance were negatively correlated.
Zhao, Chu & Yi Chen (2010) in examining these results suggest that companies operating in highly competitive markets should allow their managers greater discretion in making strategic choices in reacting to the dynamics of the environment. Conversely, these authors point out, companies in less competitive markets should limit their managerial discretion to prevent managers from abusing this power for personal benefits.
In examining another perspective in an analysis of the Chinese market system, Shu and Bian (2003) measure the relationship between market transition and gender gap in earnings in urban China. In terms of the proportion of the gender gap in earnings attributeable to education and occupational segregation having increased over time, this change is disproportional, according to Shu and Bian, occurring largely in the most marketized cities.
In these cities, the significance of market-related mechanisms-education and occupation and industry-placement-has increased, while the contribution of redistribution-related mechanisms, affliation with the state sector, party membership, and seniority, has decreased. These authors conclude that all of these changes indicated that the Chinese market transition is a nonlinear, cumulative process.
In terms of customer and consumer analysis of the Chinese market system, Chan (2009) examines how a Chinese life insurance market is emerging in the presence of incompatible shared values and ideas acting as cultural barriers, and how these cultural barriers shape the formation of the market. Chan points to three mechanisms through which the two forms of culture interact in shaping a new economic practice or the formation of a new market.
First, according to Chan (2009) in citing Campbell (1998) shared meanings and values about the world generates a configuration of folklore, values, moralities and perceptions. According to these authors, this folklore, values, moralities and perceptions in turn mold a pattern of preferences and dispositions that can be compatible or incompatible with the profit-making logic of a new economic ...
Solution Summary
The focus of this paper is interdisciplinary in nature; examining the legal, political, social and economic implications of of Chinese multicultural marketing; and also, in examining the implicatiions of these aspects of Chinese cultural marketing in terms of recent China's ability to transform itself-- with an almost 30% drop in poverty within the past five years or so. Comparisons are also made in terms of the realities of global trade of China with that of the United States and the European Union.


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As capitalism and globalization grow increasingly unpopular, new economic and social models are popping across the world – including India. But they don't always pan out as well as their founding ideals. Case in point is Auroville, a city designed to be a grand utopia without money or government. Mirra Alfassa founded the community in 1968 on principles such as ongoing education, human unity, and research. She worked with French architect Roger Anger to design a galaxy-shaped spiral city that could inspire other "beautiful cities where people sincerely looking towards a more harmonious future will want to live."
Inspired by her relationship with Indian guru and philosopher Sri Aurobindo, Alfassa built Auroville based on a charter that includes four ideals, chief of which include: residents "must be a willing servitor of the divine consciousness" and that the utopia would be a place of "material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity." Today the Indian government supports the utopian experiment with over $200,000 yearly. While the town was designed to hold 50,000 people, around 2,500 permanent residents dwell there (although some put that number closer to 10,000), with 5,000 visitors.
Related: Utopian off-grid Regen Village produces all of its own food and energy
Architecture research is included under the vision for Auroville. According to the city's website, "The dream of building a new city for the future on a clean slate, with the purpose of promoting research and experimentation alongside integral development, has been attracting architects and students of architecture from all over the world ever since Auroville's inception in 1968." Architects in Auroville are encouraged to experiment with environmentally friendly designs, building materials, and technology.
However, it's not always peaceful in paradise. Faced with crime, residents often experience a different reality, even as many in the community continue to work towards Alfassa's dream. Sexual harassment, robbery, and murder are among the crimes that have been committed in Auroville. One resident told a reporter for Slate, "When you start to scratch the surface of Auroville, it's a lot more ugly than from the outside. You start to see all the problems here, and it's deeply layered." The no money idea hasn't quite panned out either; while town visitors must buy a Aurocard with cash, some businesses prefer cash to the Aurocard.
It's not an entire failure. Auroville is home to the Matrimandir, a lovely two-story gold building designed for meditation and reflection. Many of the residents and visitors seem to strive for peace and unity. Half of the city gets its power from solar panels. Free education, organic farming, beautiful buildings, and art are among the community's accomplishments.
Via Slate
Images via Auroville Facebook, Photo: Sanyam Bahga/Wikimedia Commons, and Wikimedia Commons


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Distal Pancreatectomy
Removal of the tail and body of the pancreas is called a distal pancreatectomy. When the pancreatic duct is blocked in the neck region, removal of the obstructed tail and body may be used to fix the blockage. Many times, the spleen, an organ that helps fight infection from certain types of bacteria, is sometimes involved in this disease process with obstruction of the vein that drains the spleen. Removal of the spleen may be necessary when removing the tail and body of the pancreas. If the spleen is removed, patients will receive vaccinations against three types of bacteria.


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Members make a commitment to the ideals of the League of Women Voters. They participate in League activities as personal time and preference permits. There is a place for everyone and every lifestyle.
If you have an interest, please let us know by contacting our LWV president at email@example.com, or you can send us a note with your membership application form.
VOTER SERVICE Committee members are responsible for many of the activities for which the League is best known. Activities include conducting voter outreach and registration efforts; researching the pros and cons on ballot measures; preparing questions for candidates to answer in the Voters Guide; and conducting candidate forums. For more information write firstname.lastname@example.com.
League committees focusing on public policy issues are:


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31-year-old US Army Staff Sergeant Kashif M. Memon from Houston, Texas, was killed in action along with another US Army NCO on 25th October 2012 in Oruzgan Province when their unit was attacked by enemy forces.
SSgt Memom served with the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne) based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He joined the US Marine Corps in 2001 and deployed on several overseas combat missions including Afghanistan. In 2007, he joined the Army as an Infantryman and volunteered to work in Civil Affairs. This was his first deployment to Afghanistan with the Civil Affairs Battalion.
The other soldier killed was Sergeant Clinton Ruiz.


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Back with some more updates!
Not a major visual difference yet, but the majority of the modelling/uving is done, just a few detail pieces left for the base environment. I'm gonna move onto texturing next so we can start to sign off final props. I wanna get the whole environment to a good place before I start thinking about extra props to make the room feel more lived in, such as signs/posters, litter, decals etc.
Any feedback up to this point would be appreciated :D


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Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger's Love Story272
An unforgettable love story and the incredible chronicle of a musical genius and a mathematical prodigy who share a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.
When Jerry and Mary Newport met, the connection was instant. A musical genius and a mathematical wonder, the two shared astronomic IQs, but they also shared something else—they both were diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that affects millions of Americans and makes social contact painfully unbearable. When Jerry and Mary married, they were catapulted into the limelight. They appeared on 60 Minutes and soon were known as "superstars in the world of autism," shining examples of two people who refused to give up in the face of their mutual challenge.
But just when it appeared that their lives would enjoy a fairy-tale ending, their marriage fell apart. The Hollywood feeding frenzy was too much to handle, and they divorced. After heartbreaking years of soul searching, Jerry and Mary remarried. Today, with their union stronger than ever, they have dedicated themselves to helping countless other people with Asperger's and autism lead lives of dignity.
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|5.50(w) x 8.44(h) x 0.80(d)
About the Author
Jerry Newport is an activist and the author of two widely read books in the Asperger's community: Asperger's and Sexuality: Puberty and Beyond (with Mary Newport) and Your Life Is Not a Label: A Guide to Living Fully with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. In addition to coordinating several Asperger's support groups in Arizona, Jerry serves as a speaker on a variety of topics, from Asperger's-specific concerns to broader issues such as bullying and depression.
Mary Newport is completing her bachelor's degrees in music and psychology. She and Jerry live in northern Arizona with their birds.
Johnny Dodd has been a writer at People magazine for a decade and has reported on some of pop culture's biggest stories. His work has appeared in dozens of magazines, but stories of personal triumph those of others and his own are his favorite beat. He lives in Santa Monica, California.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Venice Beach, California
March 1999
The sleeping pills should have kicked in hours ago. I swallowed somewhere close to sixty of them, praying they'd take me away from everything my life had become. I'd thought it all out, all the details. In the event my body wasn't discovered for several days, I'd written a little note, poured out a couple of pounds' worth of seed for my birds, then pulled the curtain closed around my bed, and curled up with Mrs. Willy, my giant stuffed whale. On the other side of the curtain, out by the sliding glass door caked with dirt that rumbled from the Sunday afternoon traffic, my birds sat quietly, staring out into the smog.
I had a hunch they knew.
It hadn't been a good day. In fact, as someone who had endured a lifetime of bad days, the past two years were a new, dismal low. Just when it looked like life was on the verge of being worth living, everything slipped away and turned to shit. Mary was gone and she wasn't coming back. Her birthday was yesterday. I shut my eyes and waited for something to happen. All I knew is that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life alone. Not quite sure why it was taking so long. Certainly seemed like that many pills would do the trick. For an instant, I started to obsess about the number sixty, mulling over what an interesting number it is and how I never imagined I'd die because of it. Sixty is the product of 2 times 2 times 3 times 5. Sixty is the number of degrees of arc covered by the side of a hexagon inscribed inside a circle. Each side equals the radius, and the hexagon is made of six equilateral triangles linked together. Fold them all outside and you get six more, forming a total of twelve, which makes a Star of David with one equilateral triangle for each tribe of Israel.... After a few moments, however, I realized I wasn't in the mood to do any calculations or even to think about numbers. The room began to grow quiet, the traffic a bit fainter. I wondered if I was slipping away.
Lying there, I tried not to remember. A lot of good that was doing. It took me my entire life to find Mary, and now she'd gone away. After only five years of marriage, we crashed and burned. She moved back to Tucson and I'm stuck here. A couple of months ago, it looked like maybe we'd get back together, but it didn't last. Don't know why I let myself get my hopes up like that. It just wasn't meant to be. At least not now. But once upon a time it certainly was....
I still remember that Halloween party I'd organized, the one where I first met Mary Meinel. The year was 1993, which happens to be the sum of the squares of 43 and 12. When you add those two numbers up, you get 55, which is the year Mary was born 1955. The day we met was the 289th day of the year, a perfect square of 17. The number 17 is also unique because it's a prime number and you can inscribe a seventeen-sided figure inside a circle, which is rare.
I'd spent weeks trying to construct a whale costume out of garbage bags and paper. The results were laughably pathetic. Strips of newspaper and bits of chicken wire dangled from its side. It resembled a carcass. I ended up dragging it around the party behind me like a deflated blimp. But my costume also reminded me of how magical AGUA was. Because as ridiculous as my costume looked, everybody complimented me on it. They seemed to understand what I was trying to create, and they were proud of me for even attempting such a feat. This kind of unconditional support whether one succeeded or not turned out to be one of my favorite parts of AGUA.
I got my first glimpse of Mary as I stood in a hallway, waiting to use the bathroom. My bladder felt on the verge of exploding. Mary opened the restroom door, walked out, and the first thing that hit me was her lavender lace dress. Months before, she'd taken a disposable razor to her head and shaved off her hair. Of course, I didn't know that at the time because she'd pulled this crazy-looking Mozart wig down over her scalp. A cluster of powder white locks dangled and danced around her shoulders. Mary had disappeared into the living room by the time I finally ventured out of the bathroom. She was chatting with some other members of my group. I watched her for a little while, amazed at how she lit up the room. I'd never seen anything like it. When I finally summoned up enough courage to introduce myself, the first words out of my mouth were: "When were you born?"
A smile tiptoed across her face. "March 6, 1955," she replied.
It didn't take me long to come up with the answer roughly the same length of time required to inhale. "March 6, 1955, was a Sunday," I shouted excitedly. "That's one hundred and nineteen years after the day they ended the siege of the Alamo, which was on March 6, 1836."
Mary clapped her hands together. "That's cool," she giggled. "I guess you're a savant, too?"
That voice of hers. I'd never heard anything quite like it. The sound of it was so undeniably feminine. Definitely the voice of a woman as opposed to what I was used to hearing at these support group meetings. Half of the women who attended these gatherings were autistic in name only. Desperate to fit in somewhere, they masqueraded as one of us. They stuck out like Jane Goodall sitting in the jungle, hanging out with the chimps. Yet all Mary had to do was open her mouth and you knew she was different. Her words, the way she strung them together, possessed that unmistakable ring of someone who actually enjoyed listening to what another person had to say.
Mary's strange habit of finding another person interesting was a rare trait for someone with Asperger's, a neurological disorder that tends to lock people in their own private, hermetically sealed universe. I've spent my entire life trying to understand this strange, often lonely dimension. And whenever some normal-brained person asks me to describe my condition, I use this analogy: Imagine "normal" as pure water. Now try to picture autism as whiskey. Asperger's falls somewhere in between the two. Compared to autism, children with Asperger's syndrome usually learn to speak at the appropriate age, though the way they say things may not necessarily sound like other kids. They also learn self-help skills, such as how to tie their shoes and brush their teeth, at the same time other kids do. Many of us with Asperger's remain undiagnosed because we discover a way to make a living by capitalizing upon our interests and are forgiven for being a little "off."
This "off-ness" is strongest in areas of social communication. Those of us with Asperger's can be smart, do well in school, and maintain a job while also being incredibly thickheaded socially. For instance, most guys wouldn't ask a girl out more than three times before getting the hint that she wasn't interested. My record was fourteen times, a feat that drove one unlucky young woman to drop the college mathematics class we shared. Men with Asperger's syndrome (and some studies estimate the male-to-female ratio is 4:1) tend either never to summon up the courage to date at all or fanatically pursue a person beyond reason. They believe that their interest and devotion will eventually win her over. It rarely does.
In addition to possessing an average to above-average intelligence, those with Asperger's are often fixated on narrow, intense interests. Conversing with an Aspie can quickly prove frustrating, as he tirelessly attempts to steer a conversation back to his specific area of interest, no matter what others want to discuss. They also tend to take things literally and are oblivious to subtle physical and verbal cues. Their social deficits are often extreme: They either speak too loudly or in a barely audible whisper. They either make too much eye contact or none at all. In other words, when it comes to dealing with people, those of us dwelling on Planet Asperger's just don't get it.
A few weeks after that first meeting with Mary, I was shocked, bewildered, and amazed when she telephoned to ask me a question I hadn't heard in decades: "Do you think we could go out sometime?" A few days later, we hopped a city bus to the Los Angeles County Zoo. I wanted to pinch myself during that first afternoon we spent together, walking among the caged animals. Never in my life had I felt so at ease with another human being, let alone a woman.
Long ago, I'd resigned myself to the unpleasant fact that I'd probably spend the rest of my life alone. The prospect made me so sad that just thinking about it could instantly transform me into a grouch. I'd spent a portion of just about every single day of my life since college daydreaming about how it would feel to fall in love with a woman the kind of love you read about in grocery store romance paperbacks or see in the movies, where two people skip through a field of clover, laughing and holding hands. But I was desperate and so tired of feeling alone, so tired of wondering why I'd always felt like I had this invisible wall encircling me, preventing me from connecting with another human being.
Mary changed all that. She turned my solar system upside down and shook it until all the planets tumbled out. By the time we embarked on our second date, it was clear that nothing in my life would ever be the same. From then on, I actually began to believe that I'd stumbled upon the one woman in existence with whom I could spend my life. That happened on the 344th day of the year, which fell on Friday, December 10, 1993. Mary was thirty-eight years old. I was forty five. We'd known each other fifty five days, which I thought was appropriate because 1955 was the year Mary was born. Even more amazing is if you take the number 55 and multiply it by how many hours are in a day, 24, you end up with 1,320. That just happens to be the number of feet in a quarter mile. My all-time favorite track event in high school was the quarter mile.
Our date started off at the monthly meeting of the West L.A. Bird Club. I was a member. Mary wasn't. But after we recovered from the shock of learning that we both owned cockatiels, it seemed like the perfect place to meet. For years, when neither of us had anyone to turn to, these ridiculously expressive, loyal creatures served as our only friends. They always looked concerned when you stepped out your front door and excited whenever you returned home.
After the bird club gathering broke up, we caught a bus that took us across town to my hopelessly cluttered apartment in Santa Monica. The nighttime air felt out of place for December. It was warm. Then again, maybe it was just my jittery nerves that made the earth seem hotter. Either way, standing this close to an actual female set my mind whirring into overdrive. Decades had lapsed since anything so intimate, so wonderful, seemed on the verge of unfolding. We stood by the front door and I fumbled for my keys. Okay, Jerry, what's it gonna be? Should you ask her to come inside? Then what? Maybe see if she wants to sit on your dirty sofa? Maybe chat her up a bit? Then make your move. Then try to kiss her.... It just might work.
The voices in my head were making me dizzy. "I've got an idea," I blurted out, shoving my keys back into my pocket. "Let's take a walk down to the bluffs. There's something there I think you might enjoy seeing."
"Let's go." Mary laughed. Her lips curled up into the most perfect smile I'd ever seen. Each time she flashed it, my heart beat crazily.
And so, the two of us began our trek down the street to the park, perched up high above the Pacific Ocean. We'd only taken a few steps when I suddenly noticed something. Never in my life, especially not during any date I'd ever endured, had I felt so alive, so absolutely at ease with another person and with myself, so unconcerned with hiding the universe brewing deep inside of me. As Mary and I strolled down Montana Avenue, I suddenly felt as though I'd spent my entire life locked inside a tiny prison cell and in the blink of an eye the walls of my cell had vanished. The sensation of freedom to just be me was dizzying, intoxicating. No longer did I have to pretend to be someone other than who I was, someone who the rest of the world would call normal.
After a few minutes, we came upon a beautifully restored '57 Corvette parked in front of a dry cleaner. The light from a nearby streetlight shimmered off the vehicle's spotless white body. Mary and I stood there admiring it, and before I knew it I was watching the streetlight's glow bouncing off the Corvette's hood, setting Mary's strawberry-tinted wig ablaze. All at once, a domino-like chain of thoughts exploded inside my head. This can't be happening to me. It's all too perfect. Women like Mary aren't interested in guys like me. A voice instructed me to start running and not look back, but I made a decision to ignore it and gently lifted my foot and tapped it against the Corvette's license plate. Mary quickly glanced down at the jumble of numbers and letters on the plate, then looked at me quizzically.
"You want me to do the license plate for you?" I asked.
"Go for it," she laughed, clapping her hands together in anticipation.
"2V0R013," I announced, then quickly plucked the numbers out of the string 20013. My mind began doing what it had done for just about as long as I could remember; it churned out connections and relationships between the various digits. "Hmmm, you know, 20013 is a really fascinating number," I explained.
"Why?" Mary asked. "What makes it so special?"
"Because its prime factors are 3, 7, and 953," I said. "So if you get a 21 in blackjack 953 times, you win enough to pay for the Corvette."
By this point, we've resumed our trek down the sidewalk. Even though I'm not looking at Mary, I can tell she's staring at me. The pressure from her doelike eyes felt like it was burning a hole right through me. I didn't dare look into them. I had a lot of trouble with that. I always had. Gazing into someone's eyes even for a brief instant was like standing on the ledge of a skyscraper and peering down into the emptiness below. It petrified me, thinking that I was going to tumble into the abyss. That was why I didn't bother looking at her. I knew she understood. So I just kept walking, running the license plate through my head, over and over again like it was some sort of numerical mantra.
"20013...20013...20013," I mumbled. "Did you know October 17, 1955, was the 20,013th day of this century?"
"Cool." Mary laughed. There was something magical about her voice and how it rumbled up from deep within her throat. Just listening to it caused my cheeks to get all splotchy. I felt like I might be on the verge of hyperventilating. Up ahead of us, I spotted a battered old Saab with a parking ticket on the windshield. The license plate jumped out at me.
"2BYN467...2467 is a prime number," I explained, wondering if maybe I might be overdoing it with all my number tricks. "Did you know if you change 2467 into a binary number, you end up with 100110100011?" I don't bother waiting for Mary to respond. I'm on a roll now. Sparks are practically leaping off my brain. There's no turning back. Farther up ahead, I spot the plate on a Toyota 4Runner. "32908...that's my father's birthday 3-29-08," I said excitedly, pausing to take a quick breath. "That's also the birthday of Man o' War in 1917, and one day before the birthday of Secretariat in 1970...Actually, Secretariat was born at 12:15 a.m. on the thirtieth, in Virginia, eastern time. So he was really born on the twenty-ninth California time."
Shut up, Jerry. That was what I heard inside my head that all-too-familiar voice telling me to stop all this nonsense before it's too late, before I convinced this truly beautiful woman walking beside me that I was an absolute lunatic. I felt ridiculous. Why on earth did I allow the numbers to do that to me? How could I allow myself to get carried away?
"I'm sorry," I told her. "I didn't mean to go on like that.
"Out of the corner of my eye, I sneaked a peek at Mary's face. The expression I expected to find was one of extreme uncertainty, perhaps even revulsion. But when it hit me that she had an ear-to-ear grin plastered on her face, my mouth dropped open.
"You gotta be kidding me." She giggled. "Don't apologize. And don't ever stop. I love it. The universe is made up of numbers."
"Exactly!" I shouted, floored by the unthinkable notion that I'd found a woman who understood. And Mary truly understood. Every speck of matter in the universe, every single solitary thing in it, was constructed from atoms, all of which are fashioned out of various quantities of particles. Once you begin comparing these quantities, a never-ending array of patterns begins to surface. When I looked at a number that was exactly what happened patterns, relationships, associations emerged and blossomed like flowers. People like Mary, who compose symphonies and paint pictures, experience those sorts of revelations with colors and music. I do it with numbers. For nearly as long as I can remember, numbers have been the single thing I could always relate to, the only phenomena in the world that possessed a sense of order that felt truly reassuring and comforting.
Numbers were all I had.
As we walked, I began to mull over my numerical fixation. And then it happened. Mary was actually grasping my hand. I can't say for sure when she grabbed it. All I knew was that our fingers were entwined and the warm flesh of our soft palms was pressed together. Such a glorious feeling. Nearly two decades had passed since the last time it had happened, when I was in college. Back then, I had plenty of dates. My strategy, although pathetically desperate, was brilliantly simple. I'd hang out in the library. Whenever I spotted a girl with her nose buried in a book, I'd saunter over and begin chatting her up. I've always been something of a generalist, able to spout off an endless array of facts and figures on just about every subject under the sun. Before long, I usually convinced my female targets that I was bright, witty, and most important a regular guy. That was the most important thing for me. By the time I exited the library, I'd usually be clutching the woman's phone number on a scrap of paper. A few days later, we'd go out on a date. Then, without fail, she'd realize the truth she'd been hoodwinked. There was something just not right with me. Sometimes it was worse. They never returned my calls.
Not that I blamed them for writing me off. I was already beginning to do the same thing myself. I just didn't want to admit it. Nevertheless, all my dates became nothing more than excruciating trials of insecurity. The drama unfolding inside my head so consumed me that I rarely paid much attention to my date. All I wanted was for her to think of me as normal. I was obsessed with it. Whenever my date would begin telling me things like where she went to high school, what she was studying, and what she imagined herself doing in the future, I'd never hear a word she said. Instead, I'd be listening to that voice between my ears, the one that either beat myself up or pumped me full of so much self-doubt that I wanted to crawl into a closet and cry. I'd chide myself: What an idiotic thing to say, Jerry!...You sound like a freak!...I wonder what she thinks of me?...When is she going to realize how strange I really am?
No matter how hard I tried, I could never grasp the subtle expressions that flashed across my dates' faces, emotional cues that might have tipped me off to their impression of me at any given moment. Everyone else always seemed able to pick up on these tips. But for me it felt as though I were staring at a wall of hieroglyphs. No wonder I dreaded those excruciating moments when I would run out of words and find myself walking my date to the front door of her apartment or sitting beside her on the couch. Those moments were absolutely unbearable. And that was when the voice would always begin whispering: What now, Jerry? You gonna touch her hand? How about a little kiss on the cheek? What about on the lips?
Why did I endure such tortures? For the simple reason that my only sense of self came from others. I only existed when others thought of me. And I was convinced that the only way others would bother to think of me was if I was seen with the type of partner who would make me look worth knowing.
More than ten years had passed since my last real date. Not that anybody who glanced over at Mary and me would have known it. To anyone watching, we were just two people strolling down Montana Avenue, holding hands. It was all so normal, so easy, so natural. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
When we finally arrived at the park, the waves were hurling themselves onto the beach a hundred feet below, out past the six lanes of busy Pacific Coast Highway traffic. I heard thunder off in the distance. Mary stared out at the water until I nudged her gently and pointed at a wooden sculpture I'd wanted her to see, perched on the edge of the crumbling sandstone cliff. Shaped like a giant oval, it was big enough for two people to stand within. Which was exactly why I'd brought her here.
"Oh, wow," Mary shrieked, when she spotted it. "Far out." She threw her arms up into the air like some evangelical preacher suddenly seized by God Almighty. She began laughing hysterically and rocking from side to side. Her giggles hit me with the force of a small tornado.
"What on earth is that?" she shouted. "A nautilus?"
"I think it's supposed to be some sort of fertility symbol." I shrugged while slowly moving into the hollow wooden cavern inside the structure. "Come on," I whispered, holding my hand out for her to grab. "Come on in here with me." Mary giggled. She looked skeptical, not quite sure what to make of my request. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she thrust out her arm and grabbed my hand. Mary was strong and possessed all the grace of a bulldozer. After a few awkward moments spent trying to maneuver herself into the statue's center, I finally decided to yank her inside, up into my arms. For a few moments, we balanced ourselves and gazed out over the churning, frothing waters of the Pacific. Salt from the waves mixed with the night air and drifted upward, coating our faces. I sucked the dampness into my mouth, down my throat, then coaxed myself into peering deep into Mary's eyes. A pulse of dizziness hit me, but I manage to calm myself.
"I wanted our first kiss to be here," I told her.
All Mary did was smile. She let me pull her close and press my lips up against hers. I knew my technique must be laughable, but amazingly I didn't dwell on it. And for the first time in my life, a kiss felt unmistakably natural. For once, I wasn't caught up obsessing that I was invading someone's territory.
Then, before I knew it, we were walking back to my apartment. All the way there, I wondered what she'd think of my place. To call it a pigsty would be an insult to pigs. It was a true cesspool, filled with snowdriftlike stacks of junk mail, old newspapers, and magazines, notes I'd scrawled at various autism conferences, rough manuscripts of children's stories and poems, letters to editors of local papers, and political fliers from a volunteer stint I did with Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. On more than one occasion I'd set out to tidy up the place, but I couldn't quite pull it off. Every time I attempted to toss something into the trash, a horribly uneasy, anxious feeling descended upon me. It wasn't so much that I feared I'd someday need the item; I just couldn't stand the loss of order and control that came with throwing it out. On several occasions, I packed up the entire mess and moved from one apartment to the next, then went for months before unpacking. Sure, my place was a wretched mess, but there wasn't a single scrap of paper in the place that I couldn't find if I needed to.
The moment we walked inside, I kept glancing at Mary's face. I was looking for blatant, telltale signs of revulsion or queasiness on her part a sneer, a scowl, rolled eyes, or a muffled gasp. Part of having Asperger's meant I was a pathetic judge of facial expression. Even if I saw something, I doubted I'd know how to interpret it.
Miraculously, my mess didn't appear to bother her. We collapsed onto my filthy sofa and began chatting about our birds. I was enjoying the conversation so much that I never had time to browbeat myself. The next thing I knew, we were making out like I'd always dreamed about doing with a real woman.
But something was different. I didn't feel like an invader. If I didn't know better, I'd swear she wanted this to happen. Yet, suddenly, without any warning, Mary stopped in mid-kiss. She closed her eyes, stretched her arms up into the air, and yawned.
She's bored, Jerry. She wants to go home now. You blew it. The voice continued, but I commanded it to shut the hell up.
"Maybe we ought to hop into bed," I stammered, shocked by my bravado. "That," Mary replied, "would be nice."
A few minutes later, we were snuggling together on the bird-eaten brown blanket atop my bed. The sensations from her velvetlike skin pressed against mine nearly overloaded my neural circuitry. One moment it resembled a blowtorch, the next, absolute bliss. I was on the verge of something I couldn't understand, something I didn't have a name for, and for the first time in my life that seemed just fine. Wave after wave of dizziness washed over me. I couldn't speak. All I could do was lie there pathetically and stare up into the ceiling.
"Uhhhh," I mumbled, "I don't have any protection....I wasn't expecting anything like this to happen."
Mary leaned over toward me and slowly opened her eyes. She looked half asleep. "That's okay," she cooed, snuggling up next to me, sliding her willow-like legs beneath mine. "We don't have to do anything. Isn't it wonderful just to be able to lie here together?"
So that's what we did. We just lay there for I don't know how long. Why would I? Time stopped. We held hands. We did not speak. An air of quiet and calm hung over the room like a soft blanket. The only sound came from the pounding of our hearts, mixed with the occasional swallow. For that brief instant, I felt so calm, comfortable, and in control. Even the voice in my head was quiet, too. Or close to it. I heard it whisper: So this is what it feels like? So this is love?
After awhile, the sounds of something moving could be heard from a darkened, cobwebbed corner of my bedroom. My four cockatiels Pagliacci and his wife, Caruso, along with their two children, Cockatiel Dundee and Isadora Duncan had finally summoned up the courage to investigate the strange goings-on in my bed. One by one, they flapped their wings, soared through the blackness, and landed on a nearby curtain rod, just above our heads. Mary opened her eyes and smiled her perfect smile that made my heart tap-dance. They had no idea what to make of the scene unfolding beneath them. I'd never brought a woman into my bedroom before. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd ever even invited another human being into my apartment. The four birds peered down at us with curious looks of concern in their tiny eyes. Pagliacci rocked his tiny head up and down in the air excitedly, then opened his beak and began squawking. Within seconds, the rest of his brood nodded their heads in agreement and began dancing a little jig, their tiny claws clattering as they moved back and forth along the curtain rod.
"If I didn't know better," I told Mary, "I'd have to say they approve of you."
Twenty weeks after that magical night, I stood beneath the gnarled umbrella-like branches of a tired old fig tree and asked Mary to be my wife. The way I saw it, I couldn't have chosen a more auspicious time and place to propose. After all, April 30, 1994, was the 120th day of the year. It also happened to be one week prior to the 120th Kentucky Derby. As numerical fate would have it, that very fig tree we stood beneath first sprouted from the soil on the same year as the running of the first Kentucky Derby. Even more intriguing was that April 30 marked the 28th week since I'd first met Mary at that costume party. Twenty-eight is a big number for me my absolute favorite. How could it not be? After all, when you add up all the numbers that divide into it, you get 28. The same thing happens when you add up all the integers from 1 to 7. You get 28. But the numerical parallels didn't stop there. The more I pondered the situation, the more everything seemed to fit together like a puzzle. Mary's mother was born 28 Saturdays before her father, and my birthday is sandwiched exactly in the middle of both of theirs 14 weeks after her mother's and 14 weeks before her father's. The day I proposed to Mary happened to be a Saturday. And then there's that business about the number 65 the concrete fence that surrounded our fig tree consisted of 65 pillars and Mary's birth occurred on the 65th day of 1955. For a numbers guy like me, it just doesn't get any numerically purer than that. Everything fit together so neatly, so perfectly. All the various components just seemed to belong.
And so I took Mary's big hand in mine and asked, "Will you be my wife?" I looked into her eyes, hidden by the synthetic bangs of her nut-brown wig, each strand shimmering in the sunlight. "I will," she replied. We wrapped our arms around each other and I shut my eyes and rested my cheek on her shoulder. I felt as though I was embracing a lifetime of hopes and dreams. I was excited, relieved, and petrified. All at once, everything I'd ever wanted in life was positioned right here between my arms, but all I'd ever expected out of life was disappointment and rejection. The moment was so perfect I thought I might pass out.
Years before, I promised myself that if I ever could find a woman who truly loved me, all I'd need to do was spend a single day with her. That's all it would take to make me happy for the rest of my life just the memory of our single, perfect day together. But there I was on the verge of something truly unthinkable getting to live out the rest of my life with the woman of my dreams, a woman who loved me just as much as I loved her. Before I met Mary, I'd have told you the odds of such an occurrence were too great for even a numbers guy like me to calculate. But statistical anomalies do happen. Steep odds can be beaten. And for the first time in my sad life, I'd done just that. I'd finally trumped the odds. I'd won the lottery without even purchasing a ticket.
I opened my eyes and realized I wasn't dead. I was merely alone, just like I've been my entire life. It was after midnight. I felt groggy and stupid. Fumbling for the phone, I dialed the number of my supervisor at the medical department at UCLA, where I'd been hired four years before by people with good intentions. But in between my alienating the staff and their dumbing down my workload, I'd become a vastly overpaid gofer. And if it wasn't for my "condition," I would have been fired years ago.
"I'm not feeling well," I mumbled. "I won't be coming in tomorrow." I dropped my head back onto the pillow and hugged Mrs. Willy. I couldn't understand why I was still alive. Nearly sixty sleeping pills and it hadn't done a thing. Good lord, I'd heard of people going out with much less than that. After awhile, a thought that could only be described as comforting percolated up inside my head. Maybe you're not supposed to die just yet.
For the next ten minutes, I pondered that peculiar riddle, staring up at the ceiling until my eyelids got too heavy to hold open. Maybe there's a reason why you're still here, I heard the voice mumble.
Maybe it's time to start finding out why.
Tucson, Arizona
October 1999
It certainly seemed like a feasible plan. First, I'd take the pills. Next, I'd duct tape the garbage bag over my head. Then, just to play it safe, I'd slit my wrists with a razor. I positioned a trash can on both sides of my bed to ensure I didn't make too much of a mess. I had a handful of suicide attempts under my belt, so I pretty much had it all figured out. The trick was really all in the way you slit your wrists. Most people just don't slice correctly. You need to sever the arteries and the only way to do that is by pressing the razor deep into your wrist, an inch or two south of the veins. It really hurts when you do that. But if you don't do it correctly, then all you do is mess up the ligaments in your wrists. Not good. Because not only do you continue living, but you can never use your hands again. I definitely didn't want that. All I wanted was to become nothing, which I had a hunch was what happened when you die. Just a whole lot of sweet nothing.
I'd been thinking about killing myself for the past month. Every day, when I'd walked down the dusty streets of the barrio where I lived in Tucson, on my way to the grocery, I passed a cryptic billboard. It read, You Are Not Indispensable. I never could figure out what it was an ad for, but I felt like it had been written just for me. All day long, I'd think about that billboard, and it never failed to remind me of what a mess I'd made of everything between the two of us. It certainly wasn't entirely my fault, but lately the clouds had lifted just enough so that I'd begun to understand my role in things. I'd come so close to success, so close to finding real love that it hurt. And now all I had to show for our time together was a big empty hole in my chest where my heart used to be.
Jerry stopped by a few days ago. He drove out from Los Angeles to pick up the birds. I don't think he understood what I was intending to do. I needed him to take them away from here. I was afraid to think what would happen to them when I was gone.
If I'd had to guess, I would have thought that about twenty minutes had passed since I swallowed what was left of my bottle of antipsychotic medication. Wasn't too sure exactly how many were in there, but it definitely should have been enough to anesthetize me so I could do what needed to be done with the razor. When I felt the familiar grogginess settle in, I pulled the garbage bag over my head, then wrapped a strip of duct tape around my neck and just sat there on the edge of my bed. The rumble of the trucks roaring in and out of the bottling plant next door caused my bed to shudder. Or maybe it was just my nerves. After a few minutes, the claustrophobia hit me. I tried to pretend it wasn't happening by taking a few deep breaths, but that wasn't easy inside a garbage bag. Then I tried to press the razor against my left wrist. It felt hopelessly awkward since I couldn't see anything. Should have thought of that, Mary, I scolded myself. And that was when I started to have second thoughts about my foolproof way out. It was the middle of a hot afternoon, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the month, and I suddenly felt stupid and hopelessly alone inside this old house, with a plastic bag taped over my head. My heart began pounding. I began to think about things: What were the odds that I'd actually manage to kill myself anyway? After all, I'd read about people cutting off their hands in factories and never managing to bleed to death. I tore the bag off my head. The last thing I wanted was for Jerry to feel guilty if something happened to me here. He deserved better than that. After all, he was my soul mate. That much was clear even on our second date.
That image of us marching along Montana Avenue was tattooed into my memory. I couldn't wash it off, no matter how hard I tried. That was the night all of this craziness started. After that, there was no turning back.
Jerry was anxious. But it was the good kind of anxiousness. Like the way a child gets when he opens his eyes and suddenly realizes it's Christmas morning. I could feel nearly everything going on inside his head without him ever uttering a single word. Autistics can sometimes do that with each other. It's an intuitive thing. We can sense in a way that sometimes extends far beyond words. Although God knows how many times I would have been content to rely solely on words, like a normal-brained person. Perhaps we swap one form of communication for another more mysterious, less understood one? But throw us into a room filled with people whose brains function in a so-called normal, predictable way, and we're hard-pressed to grasp even the most basic display of emotion. The normal world has the same problem with us. To them, we appear distant, alien, and hopelessly detached, as if trapped behind an invisible force field.
I seriously doubted that anyone who spotted us on that December evening would have had the slightest idea about the mind-blowing significance of that night. To any onlooker, we were just two odd-looking middle-aged people out for a walk, staring at license plates and laughing.
Jerry was a sight to behold. I'd never seen anything like him, especially on a date when most guys were usually going out of their way trying to make a good impression. By that point in our lives, I think we were both getting awfully tired of worrying about impressions. I know I was. So I didn't put a lot of thought into the fact that he showed up in the uniform he wore for his courier job a spiffy white pressed shirt with his name stitched in cursive blue thread over his left breast pocket. Jerry had a strawlike mop of hair on his head. Just one look at his coif and I could tell he'd styled with his fingers. It was a look I found attractive, since I've always been a sucker for that tousled boyish look, especially on a big man like Jerry.
Yet what truly attracted me to him was what lay deep underneath all that messed-up hair. I glimpsed it the first time we met. It was that part of him that he'd kept hidden away for all those years and was only now beginning to feel comfortable exposing to others. He possessed a mysterious mixture of boy and man. Jerry could stare at an animal and react with the wide-eyed, goofy wonder of a child. Then, the next thing you knew, he uttered something so profound you found yourself pondering it for weeks.
But more than anything else, I loved to listen to him carry on about numbers. And that night on our second date, when the two of us were wandering down Montana Avenue, I didn't want him to stop because of how happy he appeared finally to be sharing his world with someone. Jerry wove webs out of numbers. He glimpsed relationships among them that few people can fathom. How on earth he could glimpse the common thread that stretches between one number and the next, I hadn't a clue. But then, I didn't really have to just as the average person doesn't have to know a thing about music theory in order to be blown away by the staggering beauty of Mozart's creations. All one had to do was listen to Jerry ramble about his numerical epiphanies to know you were in the presence of a gifted person.
When Jerry finally got it in his head to kiss me, the two of us were shaking like leaves. We both had so many strange feelings, generated by years' worth of frustration, loneliness, and empty hope, that one day we'd find someone with whom we could feel whole and normal. Jerry hadn't been with too many women. That was pretty clear. In contrast, I'd been around the block so many times I needed new tires. Although I'd endured many long stretches of celibacy, back during my tie-dyed hippie days, I bedded plenty of men. Yet all I really wanted was for one of them to see something inside of me that I'd never been able to find myself. Of course, they never did. So I drifted from one guy to the next, always thinking my latest conquest would be my knight, the one who would tell me he loved me, who'd whisper in my ear that I wasn't the freak everyone told me I was.
For as long as I could remember, I wondered why the world seemed so revolted by me, so repulsed. Eventually, I stopped searching for answers and resigned myself to the wretched hand I'd been dealt. If the world wanted me to be a freak, then that was just what I'd be the world's biggest, most revolting freak. My family treated me as though I'd arrived here in a spaceship from some distant planet. To nearly everyone I encountered as a child, I seemed hopelessly off. So I coped the best I could, spending most of my time either laughing hysterically while rocking uncontrollably, or possessed by angry rages that reduced me to a shrieking pint-sized psychopath. Sometimes I'd sit for hours at a stretch, lost in silent, solitary contemplation. On a good day, I could usually be found in the backyard with my arms outstretched, peering up into the heavens, spinning furiously around and around in the grass, lost in the dizzying sensations, laughing like a maniac until I collapsed.
Everything I've written here about my past is the truth as I remember it, pieced together through the haze of my memory. But memories can be deceptive, especially when they're stored in a container that's been cracked as many times as mine has. There are days I believe all the words I've written here to be the literal truth. Other times, I realize that everything I recall from my past is simply the reconstructed narrative of how I experience events, rather than how they actually happened. It's no wonder I have such a rough time deciphering the difference between what is real and what is imagined I've lived a hard life. Part of the time, the road I've taken has led me over mountain peaks, providing me with views so breathtaking I wanted to cry from the sheer ecstasy of it all. At other moments, the journey pulled me through valleys so dark and bleak I yearned to end my life, to be no more.
What I didn't know then, but now have begun to understand, is that I was hardly the only person in my family to suffer from Asperger's. I think we all had it in varying degrees, including my parents. We were a family of hopeless but absolutely brilliant geeks, forever different from the world around us. And through some cosmic genetic joke, I was the most different of all, with a nervous system far too fragile to deal with the chaos of my quirky, wacky family. It wasn't so much that I needed a different set of parents in fact, if it weren't for them I wouldn't have been blessed with all my wonderful gifts for music and art. But in the best of all worlds, I should have been an only child, allowed to develop in quiet and cloistered seclusion. Instead, I was dropped in the middle of what seemed to be a perpetual war zone and I'm still shell-shocked from the experience.
My parents didn't know what to do with me. Nobody did. They both tried their best to love me, but they were terrified of me. Deep down I've always thought they both believed I was insane, a prospect that seemed to confirm their most dreadful fear that the gene for madness ran through our family.
By the time I turned fourteen, I'd grown so out of control they packed me up and handed me over to a paranoid Christian cult in Texas. Actually, I was so mixed up at that point, such a neophyte to the topsy-turvy chaos unfolding inside my mind, I was the one who first suggested it. The group's leader preached that Armageddon lurked just around the corner. My older sister, Barbara, had joined up with the group years before. She raved about the camaraderie and sisterly love she'd found there. So my parents believed this cult, known as the Children of God, offered the perfect holding pen for their wayward daughter. After all, it was either that or an institution. And what parent really wants to ship their child off to the funny farm?
They nearly whooped with relief on that afternoon they dropped me off at the group's muddy, remote compound, then roared off down the highway to freedom. They never looked back, probably because they couldn't bear to. But I stood there in the mud watching them anyway, waiting for one of them to glance back at me, longing for them to raise their eyes and try to catch a glimpse of me in the rearview mirror. I ached to see the darks of their pupils. Instead, they both just sat there in the front seat, ramrod straight, peering through the dirty windshield as my father stomped on the accelerator and sped down that muddy dirt road back to the highway.
Maybe that was why I always had such a difficult time with other people's eyes. When I needed them most, they were nowhere to be found. Since then, it seemed like so much of my life had been spent either repulsed or hypnotized by them. In fact, I don't think I ever truly met a pair of eyes that I felt comfortable with until I looked into Jerry's. He wasn't judging me. I could feel it by the way he looked at me. And that was really what I remembered most about our first kiss. Not so much the awkward movement of Jerry's lips, but that look in his eyes. Pure compassion, understanding, and tenderness. Until that day, whenever I summoned the courage to look into the eyes of one of my lovers, all I saw was my blurry mirrored image gazing dumbly back at me, calling out: "Freak...Monster...Beast."
No one had ever looked at me the way Jerry did. Not once in my life had I felt anyone truly attempt to see me, to focus his vision squarely on me. Not like Jerry did when we kissed for the first time inside that hollowed-out wooden sculpture. And by the time we walked back to his apartment, I was positively smitten. He seemed to feel the same way, only there was something about his klutzy approach at unlocking his front door that led me to believe he had a bad case of butterflies in his stomach. I liked that. I couldn't remember the last time I'd made someone nervous like that nervous in a good kind of way.
Once inside Jerry's place, he took my hand and gently guided me along a narrow trail he'd cut through the mess. I'm extremely tough to offend, but the pungent odor of dust mixed with mildew nearly overwhelmed me. The artifacts from Jerry's world surrounded me his ancient typewriter on the dining room table; the black-and-white head from his Willy the Whale costume leaning against a pile of papers; a broken Zenith television set coated with an inch of dust. We sat there in silence for a few moments, gazing out at his private sea of clutter.
"I have trouble throwing things out," he confessed. All I could do was softly squeeze his hand and smile. I felt his body relax. Somewhere in another room, I could hear the fluttering of wings. I told myself they might belong to angels.
"Would you accept me as your husband?" Jerry asked five months after that night. After years of searching, I'd somehow stumbled upon another human being who finally understood the lonely, frustrating world where I'd spent my entire life. Afterward, we stood there, the two of us, and I looked deep into Jerry's eyes. For the first time in my life, I didn't detest the reflection I saw staring back at me.
But good things don't last. At least, they seldom seemed to in my life. Five years later, I'd pushed Jerry away from me and ran. And now I'd lost more than a friend. I'd thrown away my entire support network. I felt so isolated, I might as well have been sitting on the moon.
"I need to go to the hospital," I shouted the moment I heard my housemate walk through the front door. "I popped a bunch of pills." She walked into my desolate room, stared at me blankly for a moment, then wandered down the hallway to find the telephone and call a taxi. I tried to stand up, but my head was spinning from all those pills. So I just sat there on the bed and waited and stared dumbly out the broken, barrio-dust-covered window.
"They'll be here in a minute," she announced, sounding concerned over having to make the phone call. A moment later, I felt myself stand upright and stumble uneasily out through the open front door, out into the bright, dusty afternoon. The glare made me shield my eyes. All I wanted to do was sleep as I dreamily watched the cab pull up to the curb. It stopped. I smiled. Couldn't help it. Whenever I spotted a taxi, I thought about Jerry and all the years he'd spent driving one on the streets of San Diego. I pulled open the door, collapsed into the backseat, and closed my eyes. For a brief moment, I tried to imagine Jerry was my driver. I tried to pretend I still felt love for him. But just then, as the cab took me away from there, the only thing I felt was failure.
Copyright © 2007 by Jerry Newport, Mary Newport, and Johnny Dodd


text:
On the seventeenth of May 1982, an infant girl of only a few hours old was found in an abandoned stolen car, on the bridge of a dam. Abandoned for no one, for no one came to claim her as their child, no one came to say that they were responsible for this babe, no one came to love her. This was how it was to be, always.
The police called her 'Lotus' after the Lotus Esprit her life was discovered in. 'Ogden' after the dam the car rested over on that day. Lotus Ogden was named and a person.
Lotus tells us the story of her short life, from the abuse at the hands of her adoptive father, to the several foster families, children's homes and detentions. She finds unlikely allies in car thieves and drug dealers but her life of crime extends so much further than any of them ever realise.
So very young, she takes her first life and realises how easy it was, and how no-one would ever suspect the poor, timid, shy little girl who nobody calls their own.
Genre: Crime
L.M.Steel on paper is a scientist, but since the age of seven when she first had a poem read out on childrens radio, she has had a passion for writing.
Lee was born in 1982 in Rochford, Essex and lived on the outskirts of the village of Canewdon.
At the age of six she moved to West Yorkshire with her parents, elder sister and younger brother, where they owned and ran a dairy farm. Due to the egg crisis of 1991 the farm and business was lost and Lee, with her family, was housed in Sowerby Village, with other ex-farmers, redundant miners and former military families.
It was at Newland Junior School, that Hazel Hellowell first spotted Lee had a talent for creative writing and encourage her poetry, resulting in the local paper publishing her first poem: Weeping Willow at the age of 10.
Moving onto Ryburn Valley High School Lee continued to write, but it wasn't until Year 10, where she took up Expressive Arts, that her teachers, Amanda Glover and Jackie Newman also noted Lee had a talent and desire to write and encouraged her to do so. At 14 her second poem was published in 1996 Heartbreaker.
In 2002 Lee went to Washington DC after being nominated by the International Society of Poetry for the Poet of the Year Award 2002. Although Lee didn't win, she did win a Poet of Merit Award.
Lee graduated from the University of Huddersfield in 2011 with a 1st Class Msci Degree with honours in Forensic and Analytical Science.
Lee now lives in Southampton with her partner Alexandra who serves in the Royal Navy, with Lee's Patterdale terrier Cracker
The couple have plans to have a Civil Union in August 2013
Follow her here:


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PREFERRED METHOD. This envelope is located in your pew. Members can use this envelope if they forget to use one of their regular envelopes, or for visitors to our church who would like to contribute!
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text: I am sitting here, literally "dripping" in sweat. In 10 days, myself and four friends will be driving down to Arizona, to backpack to one of the most beautiful places here in the United States. Havasupai. And if you know anything about getting reservations to get down there, is nothing short of a little miracle. … Continue reading Countdown to Havasupai – {10 days}