text:
Watching 13 Reasons Why would have made me kill myself a few short years ago. It is full of damaging mistakes commonly made in suicide, bullying and rape discussions and it is a genuine threat to people's lives. From glorifying suicide to giving the message that trauma is not meant to be worked through but escaped, this show has a lot to answer for in the mental health community. I am appalled at its popularity and desperately hope that it doesn't get watched by those at risk. Here are 13 reasons why I think it is so bad:
The tone of the main character (Hannah) is demanding throughout, but the most difficult part to stomach is the base assumption made that she has the moral high ground.
When people die it is natural for us to remember them as slightly better than they were. We celebrate their lives and validate our missing them by glorifying their characters and accomplishments. This is healthy and provides all of us with a sense of worth about our living.
When someone commits suicide, this glorification still exists, but it can be more confusing. Of course we should celebrate the lives that have been lived (no matter how long they were), but we should also feel comfortable remembering them realistically.
13 Reasons Why disregards this realism and elevates Hannah to someone with the maturity and moral superiority of all other characters in the show.
This moral high ground allows her to make judgements and demand things. Her having killed herself (and having experienced bullying and abuse) somehow gives her a superior status from which she delves out "lessons on life" to those who wronged her.
Killing yourself will not give you emotional maturity.
Being a victim does not automatically mean that you are wholly without fault.
And we can have discussions about this without going into the realm of victim blaming for rape (which I am certainly against). The difference is that if we give someone moral points based only on the fact that they have experienced suffering (or are a part of a demographic who has) – and not based at all on the morality of their behaviour or actions (which would be more telling) then we are falling trap to a very common and damaging bias ourselves. We then begin to lose moral clarity and compass.
The most frustrating way a film can handle suicide and death is by reinforcing the illusion that we get to experience our aftermath. We have stories about being ghosts and watching how everyone reacts – in order to learn what our world is like without us.
This can create a very damaging illusion in the eyes of a depressed person looking for help: it can separate them from the true reality of death and make them feel like it would be a healing solution. That death would give them the closure that they are wanting.
It makes it seem that we would finally be able to have the difficult conversations with our loved ones, and be understood by our friends as we are. It says that we would be able to experience feelings of vindication as our abusers felt guilt and shame from our deaths.
But the most likely reality is that you just die and decay.
You do not get to watch and feel resolution. Rather, you go from suffering to nothing. Life is incomplete and unwitnessed by you.
Resolution from depression and suffering can only be experienced through the death of their sources and the full embrace of living while you are alive. It is the greatest gift of life that we can change and grow as we experience such wide ranges of emotions and experiences. The satisfaction that we think we would get from seeing our own fame at a funeral can already be had by having healthy relationships with genuine feedback in our living days.
By narrating through the voice of someone who is dead, the show created a dangerous illusion that makes suicide not seem as final and serious as it truly is. Death is silent, we need to hear what hurts you while you can speak.
I was quite in shock when I realized that the name of the show meant what it meant.
Writing a story based completely off 13 reasons to kill yourself creates this idea that there even is a list of reasons why you should kill yourself. This harms those that feel suicidal when "nothing bad has happened" to them, and it harms those who have experienced trauma.
What kind of message is being sent?
If I want to kill myself but haven't been bullied in the specific way outlined in the show am I still allowed?
If I have had the exact things that happened in the show (or worse) happen to me, should I kill myself?
It is important to remember that depression and trauma are not necessarily linked! You can feel suicidal without ever having experienced abuse.
Creating the story from this premise is an insanely poor judgement call. It simplifies the complexity of (the very common) human existential longing for death, and it creates a way by which we can judge the suffering in our own lives and that of others to be worthy or not of killing ourselves.
Focusing on the "reasons why" and not the "reasons why not" to kill oneself is a huge error made by the creators. It proves that the goal of the show was not to prevent suicide but to experience it.
When I was feeling especially suicidal in my early teens I would sometimes fantasize about how my journals might be read like famous last words. That every detail about my life and its dramas would be eagerly understood by others – much like the show.
But this is not the case. All life has tragedy, drama and accomplishment. These are our personal entertainments – the films that we get to act in. But the reality is that much of them won't be obsessed over by others.
At the beginning of her suicide tapes the main character says, "Get a snack and settle in cause I'm about to tell you the story of my life." Not only does this assume that her life and death are for our entertainment, it reinforces the idea that we are owed an audience (her only rules are that the tapes are heard and passed on).
13 Reasons Why gives the illusion of a fame that can be achieved through suicide.
As someone who has spent a huge amount of effort overcoming my own trauma and mental illness I get very enraged by the constant lack of coverage that healthy practices get.
Most advice is given offhandedly in cringe-worthy nagging tones. "If you or someone you know…" And then we tune it out.
Counselling, meditating, healthy habits, medication, and general self development are seen as boring and lame so we stick them in as footnotes.
So rarely are we given a realistic, genuine example that it is possible to fully heal from trauma. That it is possible to experience horrifying things and still feel alright at the end. With specific and "on purpose" work you can truly handle anything in life.
I have proven this to myself by healing my body image, intimacy and sexual issues from experiencing sexual assault. I have been able to work at redefining my deep core beliefs that were damaged through bullying and other abuses. My diagnosed mental illness has released all of its symptoms due to daily habits. After being kicked out, attempting suicide, getting PTSD, supporting suicidal family members, dealing with loved ones' cancer, strokes, and surgery while not being able to afford my stressful University courses, and still choosing to expend the energy to live I have very little patience for media ignoring the practices that allowed me to survive.
Like most, this show gave us all the drama and trauma without providing real (literal) life saving tips. How irresponsible! How useless! I already know what it feels like to experience horrifying things (and so do many), now make our stories worth something by using your voice to show us how to heal.
At some point we need to admit how desirable it is to be tragic. Whether it is a result of us wanting tenderness and attention or being recognized for how hard we work to live, every now and then we want to be the sad character.
The fact that the show made the main character a beautiful version of this, will only solidify it – especially in the minds of young girls.
When I was in high school I certainly felt a bit of enjoyment when I sprained my ankle or experienced a hardship because I knew that it might get me some sympathy. Even still we all enjoy some sad music on a rainy day – for some 13 Reasons Why is a bit of an indulgence into drama and a way to roll around in tragedy. We all have a tendency to poke bruises for the sake of feeling.
But being in high school is hard, we are ignored and confused by who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do. Add to that any sort of abuse (which is unfortunately way too common), or mental illness and you are at grave risk for deeply identifying yourself as the tragic hero.
If you are in this mental state and you watch a show like 13 Reasons Why with the cool and beautiful hero, you might find yourself wanting to be like her.
The more that we have the "hero" as these tragic figures the more we will want to be tragic.
This glorification and popularization of mental illness will move our baseline over towards a dangerous edge where more of us will be closer to suicide.
It is very hard for us at any age to admit our own faults – we don't like to hear hard truths or accept our roles in the bad that happened to us. Of course this is a logical move to preserve our emotional states.
But not being able to admit our responsibility (however small) in the trauma that has happened to us will forever prevent us from healing and moving on. When we admit that we participated in what hurts us we can forgive ourselves. It also humanizes our abusers and helps us understand that much of the ways that we hurt each other is done out of folly and not malicious intent. Once we remember this we can view our lives more positively – if the world is not out to get us than there is hope that our futures will be better than our present suffering.
The show did not endeavour to show character development through self awareness and going through the uncomfortable process of taking responsibility for the things that have happened in our lives. Instead, it gave the message that your suffering is always only the fault of others and it is their job to make up for it…or you'll kill yourself.
While I had already been depressed for years, I never experienced suicidal wishing so strongly as I did after my friend killed himself. Suicide contagion explains the phenomena of one suicide becoming a catalyst for other suicides.
Though I was told that I felt so strongly because I was wanting the same attention he got, it was more that I was suddenly given instructions for getting out of my sorrow (that had now intensified with the regular grief of loss), and they were very hard to ignore.
Depression is numbing and foggy, it tends to dampen our imaginations. Before my friend's suicide I had wallowed around in feelings of hatred and sadness expecting it to continue indefinitely due to some genetic bad luck, I didn't really have a plan to get out. But once I experienced someone else's choice to end their life so closely, I suddenly had creativity back in my own mind. It was like I just remembered that I could die, and that was a very relieving thought.
Getting details about a person's suicide method (as is done in the last episode of the show), gives those who are wanting a way out a quick and easy path. Crying on my apartment balcony in the middle of the night after my friend's funeral, and knowing that it was possible for me to put myself in a casket made me want to jump more than I had before.
If we are depressed, we need a separation from witnessing and learning about the methods of suicide or else our brain will offer up that information as soon as we look for a way out of difficult emotions. Anytime I feel extreme panic, anxiety or depression the images and details about suicide come to my mind as a solution.
So I need to give my mind as little of these ideas as possible when it is vulnerable.
Our brains have good memories for shocking images. 13 Reasons Why's choice to include the suicide scene was an excellent business choice, and a very poor suicide prevention one.
Saying that we want to have an open discussion about a difficult topic does not mean every horrifying thing should be filmed and shared and it certainly doesn't mean that you are harming mental health discussions if you oppose triggering imagery. We don't need to make and share every image that could be shared.
Another way that I was prevented from acting on my suicidal thoughts was by realizing the damaging effect it would have on my family for the rest of their lives. We require a bit of this interconnected social responsibility to keep perspective.
Killing myself would just spread my suffering to those in my life that I loved – and it would likely increase the overall suffering that existed in the first place.
By giving out tapes to all those people who caused her suicide, the main character increased this suffering tenfold. Regardless of what they had done to her, her eerie, graphic, and specific way of telling them how they wronged her would certainly be grounds for each of them to make tapes of their own about her!
The show keeps this suffering loop up – she was hurt and then she hurt.
This kind of story telling is not morally or emotionally nuanced, and again it disregards the reality of suicides. No matter how much a genuine victim someone is they are not excused to cause suffering to others. This show did not address the emotional damage of the other characters as much as it did of the main character – further removing her sense of responsibility (and thereby ours as we identify with the hero).
I cannot expect my abusers to feel the consequences of their mistreatment of me if I do not also feel the consequences of my mistreatment of others.
More of us than we can imagine have experienced abuse of all forms – and to end the abuse cycle we should try our best not to do further damage (by forcing people to listen to tapes about the ways they made us kill ourselves).
One of the hardest parts of dealing with someone's suicide is wondering if you were to blame. No matter how far off of an acquaintance, our brains are capable of creating some comment that we might have said or some action we should have taken to prevent someone's suicide. This guilt complicates grief, and it is something the affected community normally takes years to recover from.
And yet this is the main plot point of 13 Reasons Why.
After watching the first episode of 13 Reasons Why, you can already tell who is going to be the rapist (the white, male jock who is slightly less good looking than the bad-but-good-cause-he's-cute-other jock), who will have dirty secrets (those interested in art or in the "fringe demographics"), and who will be the good guys (the stuttering "friend-zone" boy and the mysterious girl who just moved here and is miraculously beautiful, goofy, cool, experienced, innocent and popular – but not like the mean girls).
Do we really have no better characters to write? Must we keep following this casting of people?
I am realizing over and over again that the degree to which we can create characters in film and book is only as deep as the degree to which we know ourselves. This show is an example of more adults who have gotten their impressions of high school and teenagers stalled and are rewriting these basic stories.
I too remember high school having very similar and boringly typical "characters". But when I spend even a little bit more time analyzing those characters I can see the full flavours of their humanness which are much more complex than we are ever shown on film.
We learn how to behave by acting out scenarios. When we are young we play "house" and other make believe stories to learn in a safe and theoretical way how to emotionally react to situations and how to interact with each other. As we become teenagers we continue to do this, but move on to more complex stories.
We pick a part that we might identify with from the examples we have seen (through media) and then we tentatively act it out in our youth. Sometimes we experience transformations (I "tried on" most of the stereotypical roles throughout my high school years), but overall much of our identity and method of behaving are shaped by which character we feel we are playing in life.
In the case of all shows about high school – I demand a higher standard. Show me the beautiful range of humanity that we authentically have in ourselves. Let me see the interesting ways that we are all a little bit of each (jock, nerd, etc), and write healthy behaviours so that we can at least try to imitate good.
In kindness, I can assume that the show and the book both had good intentions. I believe that their goal was to take us through a story wherein we would feel what it felt like when people bully, and rape so that we could understand why we should try so hard to stop it.
But again, they used the wrong approach.
Using empathy and identification with story telling to teach good morals must be done very carefully. In this case, the show develops those feelings of hopelessness and trauma to the point of making the sensitive watcher feel suicidal too. We identify ourselves with the main characters of media so that we can follow along, be engaged and understand. But in this case the main character led us to a horrifying solution.
We need to keep trying to end bullying and abuse by telling each other how awful it feels. And it is true that we are more often motivated to do this when we can imagine what it would feel like if it was done to us. So perhaps this show should be shown only to those who have no sense of imagination or understanding of why rape and bullying are bad – to those who are incapable of feeling empathy.
But for the rest of us (which is most of the population) who already knew that it caused suffering this show provided no benefit. It seriously damaged a lot of the progress trying to be made by mental health and sexual assault professionals, while also creating a gross glorification of suicide along with a whole host of unrealistic outcomes.
Using the bias that those who have suffered or those who have died have moral high ground and are not responsible makes it easy to use suicide as a weapon.
"In case you're tempted to break the rules…" Hannah has set up a black mail system so that her wishes after her suicide are fulfilled. Rather than taking steps while she was alive, she used her suicide as a weapon for revenge on those who had wronged her.
This is difficult for those who have experienced the suicide of a loved one as this is certainly not always the case. It makes the image of suicide a teen-revenge one and it encourages some to use suicide as a bargaining chip.
Having suicide vindicate Hannah gives the message that it is an effective weapon.
The reality is that the threat of suicide is already used as a weapon more often than we would expect, and that it might work as well as it is shown to work. I have heard and experienced cases where an ex will use it as a way of keeping the relationship going.
Ending our own lives is as about as serious an action as we can make. So it should be treated as such. Call the cops or admit someone to the hospital if they are saying they want to kill themselves.
But when we are shown that it can be used to accomplish things (like the argument that wins all) it will be more often employed as a threat, further diluting the world of mentally ill trying to get help.
This show is a weird mix of Easy A and Pretty Little Liars pumped up with the political inflammation of rape and suicide. It makes suicide cool and casual and the way that is is handled is completely outrageous to those of us who have experience with these topics. Everything about the tone, imagery, music and story is a melodramatic teenage me's dream…and it might have lead to my suicide too.
Could we find a better way to bring light to these issues? Could we hear more from those who are still living through their suffering?
Here is a very good podcast about a woman who's daughter killed herself, and how she has reasoned through the notes left behind: The Mental Illness Happy Hour Podcast


text:
Cybèle Young may have seemed like an overnight kidlit success when her most recent picture book, Ten Birds (Kids Can Press), won a Governor General's Literary Award last fall, but the Toronto-based artist actually began working on it more than 15 years ago.
Young first made her name in the art world, where her miniature paper sculptures have attracted galleries and collectors in Vancouver, London, and New York, and landed her a recent residency in Paris.
In the March 2012 issue of Quill & Quire, Young talks with me about how her art informs her literary work, the transporting power of story, and what readers can expect next.
Here's an excerpt from a short version of the Q&A published on Quillblog:
It might surprise some to learn that you trained as a sculptor. How did you get into publishing?
From a very young age, there was no question in my mind that I was an artist. At the Ontario College of Art, I did all sculpture courses. But in my final year of school, when I was pregnant with my daughter, everything shifted. I took a book-arts class and discovered that books were sculptural, too, on a private yet accessible level. I found myself going to kids' book sections a lot more than I would go to galleries. And I still do.
You started Ten Birds in 1996. How did it finally come to fruition?
I drew most of the pictures for Ten Birds right after my daughter was born. I went to Groundwood Books with it 15 years ago because co-publisher Patsy Aldana is a friend's mother. Then I illustrated a bit for Groundwood while focusing mainly on art – I felt I could only have one focus in addition to parenting.
Three years ago, after Groundwood had agreed to publish another picture book of mine, A Few Blocks (2011), I thought, "Well, I already showed this to Patsy, and we're working together on something else," so I showed it to Kids Can publisher Karen Boersma, whom I'd met at Groundwood. It clicked. We added one or two pages at the beginning and one or two at the end, but other than that, we used only the original drawings.
I have to say, I find it quite remarkable myself that the drawings Young won her GG for were created when she was just out of art school! A good reminder not to throw early projects away, perhaps!
For more answers from Young, read on at Quillblog, or seek out a hard copy of the March 2012 Quill & Quire.
(Image of Ten Birds' cover via Kids Can Press)
Friday, March 9, 2012
Q&A with 15-year "Overnight Kidslit Success" Cybèle Young in Latest Quill & Quire
Posted by Leah Sandals at 1:57 PM
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I think the secondary market prices will be somewhat soft as well.
As for the souvenirs - Overkill & Hotwire ($250 max), Laser Viper or Joe cold weather 3 pack ($250 max), Dee Jay with Armadillo ($300 max). All convention items have been on a downward trend on ebay. Even the 2011-13 items have fluctuated (not the '11 set, of course). I think the fan base has reached the threshold for which they will pay. Everything seems to have stabilized, not increased in value over the last two years. People are only willing to pay $300 for a bagged NF Crazy Legs for so long.


text:
By Ganesh Subramanian
She thinks she is beautiful
But in reality she is pitiful
She thinks she is everyman's dream
But seeing her face in midnight makes a child scream
She thinks she is intelligent
But her brain can't be activated even by a chemical reagent
She thinks she is worldly-wise
But her superficial knowledge is like melting ice
She thinks she is a super star
But she is nothing more than a black stone of tar
She thinks her boyfriend is a Rambo
But who will tell her that she herself is a Dumbo
She thinks she is the cynosure of all eyes
But she is nothing more than a walking dead body hunted by flies
She thinks she wears the best dress in the town
But seeing her colour choice makes even the apathetic frown
She thinks she is a heavenly wonder
But her friends know that she is only a God's blunder
When trying to think, her lips curl
But thoughts don't come to her, after all she is a stupid girl !
Related articles
- Crass stupidity. (momentsoridlethoughts.wordpress.com)
- I'm Stupid! (grumpyoldfarts.net)


text:
Take advantage of Nagpur car rental services. BookCab offers Nagpur taxi cab services at very competitive prices. Our extensive cab network in Nagpur allows you to board the cab from any locality in Nagpur. Nagpur is one of the popular cities in Maharashtra State located in West India. Nagpur has may sight-seeing places to offer.
Bhandara is one of those places that do not need an extensive introduction. Bhandara is a well known city located in the Bhandara district of Maharashtra. Bhandara has lot in store for anyone visiting it. There are many popular places to visit in Bhandara. The main languages spoken in Bhandara are Marathi.
Planning on a trip by road? Sounds good, however hiring a car from Nagpur to Bhandara can get very tedious, especially during holiday breaks, if one has not planned in advance. Well the easiest way to do so is to log onto www.bookcab.in and book your cab for the time span you're looking at. One can even avail ongoing discounts or packages which Bookcab may have during the said time period. Bookcab, has a range of cabs to choose from Tata Indica to Rolls Royce, as per your requirements. You can book a cab at any time from Nagpur to Bhandara and back and be assured of the best of cars and service from Bookcab. So friends, get going and check it out!
Wondering how to reach Bhandara from Nagpur? Bookcab has the best car rental solution for your Nagpur to Bhandara trip with its reliable drivers and cars. Hire a taxi at Bookcab for a car rental trip to Bhandara from Nagpur. Avail hassle free services of online cab booking from Nagpur to Bhandara at Bookcab. Bookcab with experienced and knowledgeable chauffeurs can deliver the best travel experience for your Nagpur to Bhandara cab trip. Online cab booking from Nagpur airport to Bhandara for a hassle free journey is possible at Bookcab. We also provide taxi hire services from Nagpur railway station to Bhandara. In addition to round trip, Bookcab also provides one way car rentals from Nagpur to Bhandara at economical prices. Estimated distance from Nagpur to Bhandara is 63 Km. Journey time for Nagpur to Bhandara would be approximately 1 hour 10 mins. Get all the details about weather info while travelling from Nagpur to Bhandara. Real-time weather forecast at Bhandara is found here. Bookcab provides detailed info about climate like temperature, best time to visit etc. Bookcab has the information about Hotels in Bhandara. Find a place to stay from list of all Luxurious, Cheap and Budget hotels in Bhandara here.
We also provide one way taxi services from Nagpur to Bhandara.
Please click here to find taxi fare from Nagpur to Bhandara for all kinds of vehicles.
(0)92 4100 4100


text:
Monday, December 14, 2015
December Clients of the Month - Caitlin Volpe & Kristene Thieman
I met Kristene about a week after moving to Dallas a few years ago through some of our mutual friends. We had always talked about working out together so we looked into gyms that offered a variety of classes that fit both of our schedules. We did the intro week at Crowbar and became hooked. I think my favorite part about working out at Crowbar is that I have Kristene to work out with. Not only do we hold each other accountable for classes, but you also don't feel like you're working out alone which makes it fun. Being in a class with a bunch of people you don't know can be intimidating at first, but having a friend there with you makes all the difference!
Caitlin and I moved to Dallas around the same time, about 3 1/2 years ago. We met through mutual friends and instantly became great friends! We wanted to join a gym together that would be fun and give us a great workout! We both wanted to become healthier and take classes where we would be pushed to our max!
Caitlin and I try to plan our weekly workouts together if we can! It makes exercising more fun and we hold each other accountable. Sometimes we even make it a friendly competition! We ❤ Crowbar!
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
On Her Watch
- $4.99
- $4.99
Publisher Description
The year is 2071 and all hell has broken loose. As the government tries to control the territories that were once the United States, an armed rebellion erupts . . .
AWOL from her military post, Lieutenant Liz Grant will do anything for the rebels she now calls friends. Her latest mission: return to the Beta Corps army and obtain classified information that could turn the battle in the revolutionaries' favor. There's only one problem: Commander Linc Cutler.
Strong, coldly handsome, and always in control, Linc is perplexed by the beautiful soldier brought in for questioning. He doesn't know if he believes her explanation for why she went missing. He only knows his intense sexual desire for her cannot be denied.


text:
This personalisedfairy themed themed felt name banner makes for great nursery decor and perfect addition to your nursery. It also makes a great gift for any newborn!
Note: Please write full name in order notes
Color: Pink
Shipping & Return
Returns/Exchange Policy:
There are INR50 shipping charges on this product.( Shipping is free for all orders above the value of 1999/-)
Products can be returned only in case of defects. The returned product should be in its original packaging , unused/unwashed and in original condition as received.
To initiate a return get in touch with our customer service team on 9953502522-(between 11am – 8pm, Monday – Friday) or email us on email@example.com within 48 hours of delivery.
Note:Orders for personalized products are not applicable for return or exchange unless due to a defect. Personalized products cannot be ordered via COD. Please expect personalized orders to be shipped within 6-7 days of placing the order.
Not quite what you-re looking for-


text:
Letters reveal stoush over border policy
The Federal Government has released an exchange of letters with the Coalition calling on it to negotiate a settlement on offshore processing. That is something both sides want but they cannot agree on how it should be done.
CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Politics has overtaken the weekend's asylum seeker tragedy off Indonesia.
The Federal Government's released an exchange of letters with the coalition calling on it to negotiate a settlement on off-shore processing.
That's something both sides want but they can't agree on how it should be done.
In a moment immigration minister Chris Bowen will join us, but first this report from Hayden Cooper.
HAYDEN COOPER, REPORTER: Off the coast of Java the solemn search for survivors goes on.
Rescue teams are still setting out and miraculously a group of 15 people was found overnight. Among them, two suspected crew members who are now being questioned by Indonesian authorities.
Family members are growing desperate as they wait for news.
Until now the Australian Government has insisted that this is not a time for politics. Well today it seems the time's changed.
WAYNE SWAN, ACTING PRIME MINISTER: You would have thought it was just possible that Mr Abbott would have agreed to a very straight forward proposition that the two ministers sit down and have a yarn about where we could go from here.
But he's said no to that and that's unfortunate.
SCOTT MORRISON, OPPOSITION IMMIGRATION SPOKESMAN: I think the Government is trying to provide a smokescreen to avoid the need to actually deal with the hard discussions they have to have internally about how they fix this mess.
HAYDEN COOPER: When the Immigration Minister stepped up to hold a press conference in Sydney, it was clear the political truce had come to an end.
He was there to launch a fresh attack on the Opposition Leader, releasing a string of letters between Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Tony Abbott on how to end the policy stand-off.
CHRIS BOWEN, IMMIGRATION MINISTER: I don't believe this situation is acceptable to the Australian people. In fact I believe the Australian have had a gutful of the politicking. They want Labour and Liberal politicians to work together to sort this out.
HAYDEN COOPER: The Prime Minister first wrote to Mr Abbott last Wednesday and the letters reveal a new effort by the Government to resurrect offshore processing.
"It is in the national interest to resolve this matter," she wrote, "Even if we do not agree on the preferred policy response."
The Opposition Leader's reply was blunt. "This is a problem that you have created and it is your responsibility to solve."
In essence the Government was suggesting a meeting between the Minister and his Opposition counterpart so the two sides could thrash out a new way forward and work out their differences.
But without a new policy from the Government, it was rejected.
SCOTT MORRISON: It's I think a very reasonable thing for the Coalition to expect the Government, who is seeking our support, to give us something to consider rather than what sadly, unless the Government is prepared to change its position, will likely be a photo opportunity of discussions which produces nothing.
HAYDEN COOPER: And so as survivors grieve in Indonesia, Australia's politicians are locked in an ugly stand-off. The Government appears at a loss as to how to end the policy indecision. And the Opposition appears unwilling to help, even when a solution could prevent more scenes like these.
There's no sign of an end to the stalemate.
CHRIS BOWEN: We are prepared to talk about this to see if a commonsense solution can be reached.
SCOTT MORRISON: Our message to the Government is simple; put forward a proposal and we'll sit down and talk.
Author Hayden Cooper


text:
Skilty Labastilla
Doris (Chai) Quieta prepares flowers while humming a 1990s pop tune one morning in the kitchen of their makeshift house in Barangay Cologcog, Tanauan, Leyte, while her husband Ferdinand (Nick) looks on. They are off to visit their four children, aged 11, 8, 5, and 1.5 years old, who are now resting in peace along with their grandmother and twelve cousins (all children) in a cemetery nearby. Just four months prior, on the night of November 7th, 2013, the 16 children were seeking shelter along with their grandmother in the latter's sturdier concrete house in anticipation of Typhoon Yolanda, while their parents kept watch of their own flimsier houses within the same barangay.
The typhoon, one of the strongest ever recorded to make landfall, began to be felt in Calogcog by 4 AM of November 8th, packing winds of up to 195 mph. Alas, even while the one-story concrete house the children and their grandmother were cooped up in survived the winds, it was no match for the storm surges that created five- to six-meter-high waves that inundated many parts of Leyte, wiping out houses, vehicles, trees, and leaving more than 6,000 dead. Most of the dead, including the Quieta kin, perished from the rapidly rising waters.
The film Nick & Chai (2014) chronicles the story of the grieving couple as they cope with their loss with grit and perseverance, despite constantly talking about wishing to be simultaneously reunited with their children. The couple obviously trusts the filmmakers enough to welcome them into their home during a most difficult time of mourning for the deaths of one's own children. Young directors Cha Escala and Wena Sanchez reciprocate the trust by respecting the couple's distance and privacy. It is that rare documentary that tackles grief and sorrow up close without being invasive or exploitative, and it certainly never succumbs to misery porn. Sure, the couple is often seen wiping away tears in the film as they recall an anecdote about one of the kids, or when they recount the events of that fateful day. Yet it is the positive spirit of the couple that shines through, and it is what the filmmakers focus on.
Soon after burying their children, the couple scoured through the remains of their home and found Chai's satchel. Inside was a small bag of seeds. The couple, both graduates of agriculture from the Visayas State University, saw it as a sign from their children not to give up on life and to help others with their knowledge on food production. Relief from government and international aid agencies had not yet reached them, so they immediately went about plowing the soil of their backyard lot and prepared it for planting. Their neighbors thought they surely must have gone insane, what with all of their children gone in an instant. The seeds eventually grew into a lush vegetable garden that the couple opened to the whole community for harvest.
Nick and Chai's extraordinary strength in the face of adversity coupled with technical know-how and admirable selflessness to help their community even while they needed help themselves made them a source of inspiration for their neighbors. The filmmakers, by chronicling this wonderful story in a frills-free manner—the film never overreaches beyond capturing the basic essence of humanity—gift us viewers with a renewed sense of purpose, reminding us about our own mortality, but more importantly, about our immense capacity for altruism.
Skilty Labastilla has degrees in Anthropology and Social Development. He is Research Associate at the Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University.
Editor's Note: This review is part of a series of reviews of outstanding films of 2013 and 2014 that we will feature here in the run-up to the YCC Citations Ceremony on April 23rd. Earlier reviews have been featured for Badil (here and here), Porno (here and here), Debosyon (here and here), Pagpag, Lauriana, Quick Change, Ang Kwento ni Mabuti, Babagwa, Norte: Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, Sonata, Mga Anino ng Kahapon, the 2013 Best First Features, Sonata Maria, Sundalong Kanin, Dagitab and Mariquina.


text:
A 50/50 chance
Like slow falling dominoes, Rowan Boyle's family have felt the continuous effects of Huntington's disease their whole lives.
Rowan is the only one of her two siblings that hasn't been diagnosed with the inherited disease that causes the progressive breakdown of functions, such as movement and thinking.
She has a 50/50 chance of testing positive, but she has been preparing her whole life for this 'what if?'
Her mum Dianne Boyle says Rowan's dad, Jacky, contracted Huntington's disease passed down by his mother. That's where it all started.
At the time, Dianne and Jacky's doctor wasn't as knowledgeable about the disease and didn't understand how genetics worked.
"He said it had obviously been wiped out in our family because my husband and his brothers hadn't shown any symptoms," says Dianne. "The doctor didn't understand the genetics of it all and said Jacky was all clear.
"So I had three children and when my youngest Rowan was two-and-a-half, I got a letter from my husband's eldest brother, to say he'd been diagnosed with Huntington's.
"At that stage they hadn't discovered the gene, so there was no test. Instead, you had to wait until the physical signs had become apparent."
As time went by, they discovered that Jacky had it too, but the majority of his symptoms were mainly mental, not physical.
Rowan says it was sad to watch, but helped her better understand what people with Huntington's disease go through.
"It was shocking for me as a young person," says Rowan, "but I think it's really equipped me well for now, as I'm about to go get tested. Growing up in that environment has prepared me well if I have it."
The test involves two counselling sessions, followed by another to get their results, where the gene in found through a blood test.
"With the gene there's a specific repetition of gene sequence," explains Rowan, "so normal people have up to a certain number and then there's a grey area where you will have the gene, but won't show symptoms. Over that number is where you have Huntington's symptoms.
"Everyone has the gene for Huntington's disease - it's just the amount of repetition of that specific code that directs your body to producing the protein that causes Huntington's."
Most people with Huntington's disease develop signs and symptoms in their 30s or 40s, but the disease may emerge earlier or later in life.
Rowan's older brother, Jamie Boyle, says he started noticing little signs of Huntington's disease, but wanted confirmation. He was diagnosed with Huntington's last year.
"I had an inkling before I had the genetic test that I had Huntington's," says Jamie. "My memories and my ability to talk decreased and I started getting frustrated at work, because I couldn't say what I wanted to say."
He also found ways to deal with the twitching of his body which has gradually appeared over time.
"You find ways to deal with it. For me, I always have my legs tucked behind me when I sit down, so that they don't fling out and I need more space," says Jamie.
At the age of 38, Rowan says she has decided to get the test now, because she wants to prepare her family for what may happen.
"I've got a partner now, and we are planning a life together," she says. "I just want to know for sure where it's going to go and how it's going to end up. It's not necessarily for me, it's more for him.
"I want him to be able to prepare because he only really knows about Huntington's from the TV show House, and a few things that mum might have mentioned in the past. I don't think he really has an idea about what could be in store for him.
"It's also about mum as well. I can't imagine what it would feel like for her to see her whole family taken by this disease. That's what breaks my heart the most."
Rowan admits she has had many moments over the years where she thought she was starting to develop signs of Huntington's.
"I'm a nurse," she says, "and Tauranga Hospital has these really grippy floors that I'm constantly tripping up on. Other people say that they do it too, but I'm thinking maybe that's a sign I have Huntington's.
"Things will sometimes slip out of my hands and I'll think 'oh my god it's starting'."
"I think the results will put my mind at ease with things like that. I have two visions of the future, and I'd rather be focusing on just one of them."


text:
See Also: - Five worst moments in musical plagiarism - #ShitRappersSay on stage in Denver
Hip-hop's perennial debate topic "old school versus new school" got literal recently when legendary D.I.T.C. crew producer/rapper Lord Finesse swung a $10 million law suit at Mac Miller, his record label and the mixtape website DatPiff for Miller's use of Finesse's beat for his 1995 song "Hip 2 tha Game." Although hip-hop artists hopping on other people's beats is as old as the genre itself, from "Rapper's Delight" to, well, infinity -- especially on mixtapes -- Finesse contends that Miller's version of the tune, titled "Kool-Aid & Frozen Pizza," launched the kid's career (it did), and that it transcends the normal boundaries of borrowing in hip-hop.
Finesse's complaint isn't that the young Pittsburgh MC rapped over the beat, but that he produced a video for it too, according to a quick exchange the pair had via Twitter. A step too far because it used the beat without proper credit or because it went viral? After all, Miller fails to acknowledge the beat as a Finesse production in the video, which is disrespectful to the guy he claims as such a huge influence. It also formally breaks the line between appropriating and stealing according to U.S. copyright law.
The ironic twist here is that Finesse made the beat by sampling an Oscar Peterson tune, which he may or may not have paid for (Miller says Finesse never did).
The issue might be technological as much as generational. Shooting a music video is way easier than it used to be -- you could shoot most of that video on a cellphone -- so Finesse's standard of how far Miller actually went with the track seems a little outdated. The video probably wasn't much more than a fun afternoon for the youngster and a couple friends.
The difference between the "Kool-Aid & Frozen Pizza" and the millions of other YouTube videos that feature eighteen-year-old kids rapping over popular beats that don't belong to them is that this one blew up and launched the kid's career. Whether the difference was Finesse's beat or not is up for discussion, and the answer might be passed down from a courtroom rather than a street corner.
While it was the internet that started this whole ethical brouhaha, then maybe it should be YouTube that provides judgment as well: When you type "Mac Miller kool aid" into the search bar, the second autofill response is the "instrumental for the Mac Miller song," not Lord Finesse's.
We Believe Local Journalism is Critical to the Life of a City
Engaging with our readers is essential to Westword's mission. Make a financial contribution or sign up for a newsletter, and help us keep telling Denver's stories with no paywalls.


text:
Baruch Emanuel Erdstein is the lead singer and songwriter of a new band called Ingathering, which this year released its debut album, Connection. Erdstein talked to Israel National Radio's Ben Bresky about his music, the Second Lebanon War, the time his house burned down, and what it all means for his identity and belief.
Can't see player? Click here.
Q: Your album is very smooth and relaxing and easy to listen to. Tell us about it.
A: It's a tool to jump-start the redemption. It may seem like a big task, but each one of us can be an inspiration and is responsible to bring the rectification of the world the best we can. Hundreds of years ago the Baal Shem Tov was trying to raise consciousness through stories teaching the secrets of the Torah. So I guess what I'm trying to do what I think our generation needs -- some really high conscious music.
Q: How come you decided to write the songs half in English, half in Hebrew?
A: Originally the project was all in Hebrew, and I actually changed the songs, and the idea of being able to package some essential teachings in a way that more of the world can access was very important to me. Actually most of the album was recorded in the forest between Tzfat and Amuka in the northern Galilee in Israel overlooking the tomb of the great mystic and sage Yonatan Ben Uziel who was known as the translator of the written Torah and along the way revealed many secrets. That's also what we're trying to do with the project: to convey some of the inner meaning of the original Hebrew text.
Q: What is the song 'Places' about? I like the shofar.
A: The shofar as we know is meant to wake us up and to turn us on. The song is based on the text of a book called Neshilat Nefesh from the students of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. The more distant a person thinks they are from what's described on the surface as the realm of the holy, actually the greater potential they have to bring tikkun into the world, so a person should never get depressed and should never feel too far away from G-d and from where they need to be. You hear a lot of very interesting sounds in the background. There's the shofar, also a lot of middle eastern instruments, including the saz.
Q: What's a saz?
A: It's a Turkish string instrument, like a mandolin, but stretched out and over a meter long. There's a lot of oud on the album as well. Ben Canaar plays it, he is the mastermind of music on the album. Also on the album is
Shachar Kaufman.
Q: Why is the album called 'Ingathering'?
A: One of the ideas is that the final redemption of the world is that creation is characterized by unifications and by bringing opposites together. Musically you'll hear this in a song like Places, where you have this heavy funk rock lead almost with a Motown groove to it, but also you have a lot of diverse instrumentation from the Middle East. On the album we have a lot of opposites coming together.
Q: I wasn't exactly sure how to categorize your music.
A: There's some jazz fusion, rock, reggae, definitely some folk and even a little country influence. It's interesting that with all those influences in my background, it wasn't until after I already moved to Israel thirteen years ago that I found this tremendous connection to Motown music. I'm from suburban Detroit where Motown started. There is an idea of redeeming sparks. Each one of us is sent into the exile in order to gather up something that needs to be reintroduced and plugged back into the realm of the holy. So, with the vocals you'll be able to detect a heavy Motown influence.
Q: I think you're the only person in Israel to list Gil Scot Heron as an influence. We used to listen to his song 'The Revolution Will Not be Televised' back in high school.
A: Gil Scott Heron is probably my biggest influence as far as my voice. As a teenager, even the whole idea of using music to make tikkun in the world, to energize people to change their lives even in a political way... music as we know is a tremendous tool. Gil Scott Heron was one of the early ones, certainly he influenced me. The voice on the album that you'll hear is my dear friend Yonatan Streetsong, who also lives here in Tzfat.
Q: Your album really isn't very political like Gil Scott Heron is. It's more spiritual. You don't really lay it on heavy.
A: It was a tremendous effort to tone it down.
Q: So you wanted it to be more in-your-face?
A: Well, when we're trying to convey something we should be aware of the audience. The people I'm trying to reach are maybe not quite ready yet from what I see in the mass media, to absorb the light that we have here in Israel. I'm trying to package that in a way that everyone can connect.
Q: You studied anthropology and then you moved to Tzfat. That's a pretty anthropological place...
A: There's a well-known metaphor that when a person is pointing in any one direction, there's one finger pointing externally and three pointing back at them. That's what I found. I lived in various places, with Native Americans in Alaska, in rural Jamaica as well as various communities in America and a little in Europe. I found in my travels that I was looking outside so much and I knew so little about my own Jewish roots. And so I thought might be a trip around the world, I ended up stopping in Israel and really found something incredible.
Q: Did you go to Tzfat first?
A: It was one of the first places. After a number of years, I came off the road, stopped my physical traveling and entered a real inner world of learning Torah and the especially the mystical aspects.
Q: What's it like to live in Tzfat?
A: Tzfat is said to be a place of beginnings, of revelations -- from the great sages of the post-Spanish Inquisition period to the Kabbalists soon after, to the students of the Vilna Gaon, to the students of the Baal Shem Tov and even today with the big baal teshuvah movement. The people are returning to their roots. Tzfat really has been the center of this exciting new energy. On the cover of the album, there's a big letter yood. The idea of the yood is very connected to Tzfat. It's the first letter of the Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton. It's the first letter of the revelation of the Infinite. There are wonderful people here in Tsfat. A lot of inspiration connecting to the sages here, especially the holy Arizal.
Q: And there's the klezmer festival every year.
A: Yes, and what I think is even more significant, is there's a lot of behind-the-scenes amazing musicians and artists here as well. There's a tremendous renaissance happening here. It still has to hit the surface but we're just waiting. Someday very, very soon the whole world will be focusing on Tzfat. We already have tremendous influence with people coming here and expressing themselves.
Q: Tzfat is a quiet northern town. I think the population triples during the festival .
A: It's true. It's getting less quiet. The light of Tzfat is starting to become revealed.
Q: Do you want to talk about the Second Lebanon War? Tzfat was very effected by it.
A: It's true. Thanks for keeping us in mind. It seems a lot of people forgot about that. Some of the album was recorded during the war. I was hiding out in various apartments in the south but I still wanted to get this album out and used some portable recording equipment during the war.
Q: So you like many of the other people left for a couple weeks?
A: For over a month. It was very, very difficult. In the first few hours of the war a rocket flew right over my head. It's something I hope nobody else has to experience, but it's a reminder of the times that we're living in. We're not in the complete redemption quite yet.
Q: I asked someone after the war if Tzfat was back to normal, and they replied, well, Tzfat is never normal.
A: I don't think we want Tzfat to become too normal. It's never normal and it's growing. Anyone who lives in Israel knows that what's true from one week becomes completely outdated the next week. Things are moving fast and there's no way that we're trying to go back to any time before the war.
Q: What about the rap on the final track? That took me by surprise.
A: I'm not sure I want to talk too much about that. Maybe I'll say something short. The final song is based on mediation from the Ari and there's the flow coming from above to below, from the Infinite Creator down to us. It's not enough for us to receive it all that we actually have to give it back and give ourselves completely over to the divine. This rap is a mediation based on three divine names. there's a drawing of it in the liner notes of the album as illustrated by the Rashash, the great kabbalist.
Q: You have Yonatan Razel on your album. He's pretty well known now. Did his solo album come out before or after Ingathering?
A: Actually before. I've known Yonatan for a long time now. Many years ago, my wife and I had a house fire. Our apartment basically burned down two days before the birth of our first child. We were basically homeless, when our dear friend Rabbi Raz Hartman, who was a soldier at the time, let us stay at his apartment which he was sharing with Yonatan Razel. When we had the baby, we brought her home from the hospital to that apartment and that night it was one of the most amazing parties that the world has ever experienced. Incredible musicians. Yonatan was there with his grand piano. There were violins and cellos and horns and guitars and all kinds of instruments. That night was the night when one of the songs on the Ingathering album came down. I called it Maayan in the Desert. It means spring and it's the name of my daughter.
Back in the day when I used to live in America I used to be what people would call a road rat. I would hitchhike on highways all over North America from Michigan to Alaska to Florida to California to Quebec. Sometimes with a guitar. A lot of these travels really showed me a lot of really deep things about life. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook has many teachings about paths and goals. Often people are focused on the goal and they forget about the path to that goal. Then, hitchhiking for months at a time you become very conscious of the value of the path and the process that each one of us goes through. So this song is very much about the process of understanding that we're here in this world to grow. Each one of us and also the whole world is going through a process and we should revel in that.
For more information on Ingathering visit http://www.ingatheringmusic.com.
To purchase the CD visit http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ingathering


text:
Need an ignition interlock device near Lakewood? Intoxalock is available at Madison Avenue Auto Service, a certified Intoxalock ignition interlock installer. We can install your breathalyzer in cars, trucks, vans and other vehicles.
Madison Avenue Auto Service is a certified Intoxalock ignition interlock device installer. Certified installers can help to answer all of your questions and show you how to use your ignition interlock device. Call us today to schedule your installation appointment and get back on the road with Intoxalock.


text:
STRECKER MUSEUM. The Strecker Museum is a natural and cultural history museum on the Baylor University campus in Waco. It is the oldest continually operating museum in the state. In the 1857 catalog of Baylor University at Independence the trustees requested contributions for a cabinet for "minerals, shells, and petrifactions." Thus began the collections of what became the Baylor University Museum. The university moved to Waco in 1886, and in 1893 university officials established the Baylor University Museum and named Orlando Clark Charlton, professor of natural science, the first curator. Collections were expanded to include zoological and botanical specimens, archeological relics, and cultural material from foreign lands. John Kern Strecker, Jr., became curator in 1903 and served until his death in 1933. Strecker's collections and publication brought international contacts and exposure to the museum. Because of his efforts, the Baylor University Museum was renamed in his honor by university president Pat Neff in 1940. The museum has been located in several buildings around the campus; since 1968 it has been housed in the Sid Richardson Science Building. Curators and directors of the museum have included James J. Carroll, Walter J. Williams, Leo T. Murray, Cornelia M. Smith, and Bryce C. Brown. The Strecker Museum was accredited by the American Association of Museums in 1973. Collection holdings number about 250,000 items. Although the emphasis is primarily on Texas, the collections of the museum are worldwide in scope and include items from all areas of natural science and the history of both Indian and pioneer settlements. Major donors to the collections of the museum include James M. Carroll, George W. Carroll, Kenneth H. Aynesworth, Frank E. Simmons, Bryce and Lillian Brown, Geoffrey S. Dawson, John A. Howard, Frank H. Watt, and William P. and Vara F. M. Daniel.
The museum contains permanent and temporary exhibits and schedules traveling exhibitions throughout the year. The exhibit subjects encompass earth and space, geology, paleontology, botany, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, and man. Features of the exhibits include the world's largest fossil sea turtle, a whale skull, a living exhibit of local reptiles and amphibians, modular furniture, tools, machines and artifacts of human habitation as it developed, a chronological sequence showing man's cultural heritage in central Texas, and an 1835 log cabin. Programs sponsored by the museum include a volunteer organization, a Museum Associates support group, the Strecker Museum Guild, a Junior Naturalist group, regional science and history fairs, and lecture series, field trips, and summer classes for young people. The museum holds an annual Pioneer Heritage Day in the spring of each year to recall the frontier past through crafts and demonstrations of pioneer skills.
Baylor University offers an undergraduate bachelor of arts degree in museum studies through the museum. Students can, through interdisciplinary studies, concentrate in art, history, natural history, archeology, or anthropology. Field research sites have included the Waco Mammoth Site and Horn Shelter Number 2. Museum research associates conduct investigations in their areas of interest and contribute to Occasional Papers of the Strecker Museum.
Since 1986 the Governor Bill and Vara Daniel Historic Village, a twenty-three-building complex donated by the Daniels to the museum, has occupied a site on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco. It is an authentic late-1890s Texas river town with a cotton gin, livery, saloon, barbershop, school, hotel, church, and several types of homes that was previously located on the Daniel Ranch in Liberty. The museum is a member of the International Organization of Museums and the Texas Museum Association. In 1994 the museum had a staff of ten and received 22,000 visitors. The institution was in the process of raising funds for the construction of a separate museum building.
Brent Alan Brown, A History of the Strecker Museum, 1857–1968 (M.A. thesis, Baylor University, 1976). Paula Price Tanner, "Strecker Museum," Baylor Line, April 1987. Paula and Ron Tyler, Texas Museums: A Guidebook (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
Image Use Disclaimer
All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 related to Copyright and "Fair Use" for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, David Lintz, "STRECKER MUSEUM," accessed May 24, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lbs09.
Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Modified on May 3, 2019. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
View these posts and more when you register your free MyTSHA account.
Call for Papers: Texas Center for Working-Class Studies
Events, Symposia, and Workshops
Hi all! You may be interested in this call for papers I received from the Texas Center for Working-Class Studies at Collin College...
Katy Jennings' Ride
Scholarly Research Request
I'm doing research on Catherine Jennings Lockwood, specifically the incident known as "Katy Jennings' Ride." Her father was Gordon C. Jennings, the oldest man to die at the Alamo...
Texas Constitution of 1836 Co-Author- Elisha Pease?
Ask a Historian
The TSHA profile of Elisha Marshall Pease states that he wrote part of the Texas Constitution although he was only a 24 year-old assistant secretary (not elected). I cannot find any other mention of this authorship work by Pease in other credible research about the credited Constution authors...


text:
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Ageing in the EU25: a short introduction.
The 2nd part goes into the projections for all the EU-25 members. It also gives three distinct time periods the EU zone will go through.
"• 2004-2011 – window of opportunity when both demographic and employment developments are supportive of growth: both the working-age population and the number of persons employed increase during this period. However, the rate of increase slow down, indicating that the effect of an ageing population is starting to take hold even if it is not yet visible in aggregate terms. This period can be viewed as a window of opportunity, since both demographics and labour force trends are supportive of growth. Conditions for pursuing structural reforms may consequently be relatively more favourable than in subsequent years "
"• 2012-2017 – rising employment rates offset the decline in the working-age population:
during this period, the working-age population will start to decline as the baby-boom generation enter retirement. However, the continued projected increase in the employment rates of women and older workers will cushion the demographic factors and the overall number of people employed will continue to increase, albeit at a slower pace. From 2012 onwards, the tightening labour market conditions (lower labour force growth together with unemployment down to NAIRU) may increase the risk of labour market mismatch "
"• the ageing effect dominates from 2018: the trend increase in female employment rates will broadly have worked itself through by 2017, with only a very slow additional increase projected in the period 2018-2050. In the absence of further pension reforms, the employment rate of older workers is also projected to reach a steady state. Consequently, there is no counter-balancing factor to ageing, and thus both the size of the working-age population and the number of people employed are on a downward trajectory. Having increased by some 20 million between 2004 and 2017, employment during this last phase is projected to contract by almost 30 million, i.e. a fall of nearly 10 million over the entire projection period of 2004 to 2050."
6 comments:
- Marcelo said...
That's a very interesting forecast, because it gives a concrete date for the expiration of the "easy" solutions (increased work participation, reasonably adjusted retirement ages). If this work holds, then discussing these measures -while necessary in the short term- cannot be taken as "solutions" in any sense of the word. There's only so much demographic slack on any aging society.
Past 2018, it's either massive (and perhaps impossible) migration, the steady contraction your overall labor input... or something else (a massively outsourced and robotized society?)
And 2018 isn't that far away. If you are thinking in terms of society-wide changes, it's right around the corner.
- CV said...
Excellent find Thomas ...
It really shows us some very important trends to look for. I think Marcelo has the pivotal point for governments trying the easy way out ... especially the "increased work participation" is not a solution for the long haul. However, many governments seem to think so.
- David Friedman said...
It sounds as though the study doesn't consider the long run effect of further medical progress--in particular, ways of stopping or slowing aging. Given how far forward they are looking, that may be a mistake. Progress in biological knowledge has been very rapid in the past century, so it wouldn't be surprising if, well before 2050, the aging problem was solved.
- CapTVK said...
The jury is still out on how far medical life enhancement is going to take us. The study makes a mention of that in box 1 on p.19 "Healthy life expectancy – will the extra years of life be spent in good health and
free of disability?". Plus, if people would live longer it would results in even higher future claims on pension systems then in these projections.
Can we stop or slow ageing? At this point in time we don´t really know. Demographers are split on this issue. Some believe we have a natural limit, some believe we´ll continue to see a rise in life expectancy. There´s also a third group that includes Bongaarts who believe that the statistics are messed up and it only seems we are living longing but the actual gains are far smaller due to tempo effects. But I´ll leave that for another post.
- Marcelo said...
I generally lump somewhat radical life extension in the bat of "weird" solutions, because they will most likely involve procedures at the genetic level, artificial tissues, or who knows what, often the very technologies that could improve productivty if applied by the healthy population. Granted, there can be life extension without "radical enhancement" due to legal restrictions (e.g., nowadays modafinil is used medically but not, lawfully, for performance enhancement, although caffeine is), but at least technologically, I'd be very surprised if we can lick aging without enough knowledge of our molecular machinery to also do nifty things with the healthy people.
Bottom line, the timeline seems to me to be:
From now to 2017: Lalala-land, "everything is fine".
From 2018-onwards: Increased fiscal pressure, short horizon "adjustments", and ultimately a choice between or partial combination of
* Radical productivity and longevity enhancement via massive use of biotechnology.
* Massive migrations.
* Severe economic contractions.
If you squit a bit, you can see the seeds of all three possibilities simmering in Japan like Schrodinger cats...
- Admin said...
"Progress in biological knowledge has been very rapid in the past century, so it wouldn't be surprising if, well before 2050, the aging problem was solved."
I'm very much with Marcelo I think here. Progress in scientific knowledge is one thing, but turning that knowledge into meaningful extension of very productive activity into the older age groups is another.
I don't really see ageing as a problem, it is more a sign of progress, but our institutional structures are hopelessly behind the curve. And the way we are seeing the problem, this was my point I think about Richard Sennett and the perceived lack of flexible attitudes in the older populations.
I think in many ways the 2050 horizon is far too long, (although maybe by the time we get there Keynes's idea that in the long run we are all dead will be way behind the curve). 2015 to 2020 looks like a very interesting timeline. This is when many of the 'big picture' issues may well really kick-in.
"If you squit a bit, you can see the seeds of all three possibilities simmering in Japan like Schrodinger cats..."
Quite. And try squinting towards Eastern Germany and Italy while you're at it :):


text:
Gormally Danny. Mating the Castled King
Page 1 of 1
Gormally Danny. Mating the Castled King
Gormally Danny. Mating the Castled King
Every chess player loves to win with a devastating attack. But even beginners know the importance of early castling, so the most significant attacking strategies are those against a castled king. Danny Gormally sheds light on this vital area of the game, arguing that pattern recognition is key to improvement. This book strips away the mystique surrounding successful attacking play, and identifies several recurring motifs which can be applied to specific pawn structures and scenarios. Well-chosen model examples and test positions are complemented by the author's lively writing style.
Danny Gormally is an English grandmaster with a peak rating of 2573, who is famous for his attacking style.
ISBN 978-1-907982-71-2 - 336 pages - Published 30 April 2014
"The exercises are not too difficult and the explanations are pitched at a very good level - just enough variations to make sense of the position, but not too many to make your eyes glaze over. Gormally writes in a very entertaining and picturesque manner: I will never again be able to look at a white pawn on g6 without thinking of the 'Tower of Terror'!"
GM Matthew Sadler, New in Chess
"I've been waiting a long time for a book like this. A beautiful and neatly structured collection of motifs and ideas on attacking play.
I give it an unlimited recommendation for players of any strength."
Lukas Wedrychowski (full review in German)
"I think Gormally hit a sweet spot when trying to balance how many variations to introduce in the text. Maybe in some examples it had less than I wanted them to be, but overall it has everything you need without drowning you in variations.
My conclusion about the book is very positive. I think that Gormally has made a great job with this book and players below 2300 fide will find it very interesting. I do not want to spoil other reviews for you, but if I were to buy one book on attacking chess, at the moment this would be it."
- Posts : 748
Points : 4638
Reputation : 3155
Join date : 2012-04-25
Re: Gormally Danny. Mating the Castled King
Made a clickable table of contents for the PDF - which is now in the PDF :-)
- Guest
Re: Gormally Danny. Mating the Castled King
May I have the PGN?
- Posts : 155
Points : 157
Reputation : -10
Join date : 2018-06-25
Sponsored content
Page 1 of 1
Permissions in this forum:You cannot reply to topics in this forum


text:
All Results in WW100 - Buller at War documents
showing 1-5 results of 78 [ ]
Reg Hird's Letters from the Great War. A collection of letters written by Sergeant Reginald Nelson Hird of Karamea, West Coast to his sweetheart Nellie Dean. Put together by grand-daughter
During 1917, Nellie Dean, my grandmother, was teaching at Ferntown School near Collingwood and corresponding with New Zealand soldiers at war.
In 1918 my grandmother Nellie Dean continued to keep up her war time correspondence with her husband to be, Karamea farmer Reg Hird and friends Herbert Mead and George Smallholme.
In 1919 my grandmother Nellie Dean continued her correspondence with husband to be, Reg Hird. The war had ended, but the army did not return Reg to New Zealand until
Frederick Charles Bettjeman was born in Westport, New Zealand to Catharina Adeline Wilhemine and Johan Jurgen Heinrich Bettjemann.He was educated at Sergeant's Hill and Waimangaroa Schools then began an engineering


text:
"They put us in trucks, took us to the railway, and herded us into freight wagons."
"There were many wagons which were used for bringing cattle to the slaughter. I started to count them, I couldn't see where the wagons stopped."
During the Second World War and the years that followed, at least 2.5 million Soviet citizens were forcibly deported. Hundreds of thousands – most of whom were pensioners, women, and children – took the terrible journey into exile in cold, stinking wagons. They were hungry, fearing of death and full of uncertainty. For some, this exile was permanent.
As part of the Russian Language News Exchange – a joint project among journalists from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine – we have gathered accounts from some of the families who fell victim to this catastrophe.
On 22 June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, violating previous agreements. By that time, hundreds of thousands of Finns, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians and representatives of other populations in the western territories of the USSR had already been exiled to Siberia and Central Asia as potential "unreliable elements." For them, the Second World War started two years earlier, when the USSR and Germany invaded Poland simultaneously, turning the eastern provinces of that country into the western regions of the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republics.
In 1940, the former Romanian regions of North Bukovina and Bessarabia joined the USSR, along with the Baltic republics that who had only gained independence after the 1917 revolution and collapse of the Russian Empire. In the "reunited" territories, the "cleanup" was in full swing up until the German invasion.
The museum of victims of deportation. Photo credit: Ziarul de Garda
The most prominent and influential part of the population – former officers (mainly Poles), politicians, businessmen, priests, and intellectuals – had already been repressed. After this, the authorities moved on to other social groups. The last group of exiles from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia left for the east literally a week before the army of the Third Reich arrived.
Mass deportation was not only practiced during the war; it began earlier. In the USSR, the first peak of mass deportations on social and ethnic grounds occurred in the mid-1930s. The second occurred in the mid to late 1940s, during the war years.
On August 28, 1941, the Soviet Union liquidated the Volga Germans' autonomous region. Their ethnicity, in the eyes of the authorities, made them potential "collaborators."
Even German servicemen were recalled from the front, despite the panic and extreme need for soldiers during the first months of war. According to an article from the independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, the expulsion of Germans was the largest Soviet deportation of the war. Around 1.2 million out of the 1.5 million Soviet Germans were displaced, some of them two or three times.
Deportation of "Retribution"
With the Soviet Army's liberation of German-occupied territory in 1943-44 came the second wave of deportations. Whole ethnic groups were accused of treason and collaboration with the enemy. According to the decree of the Supreme Soviet Presidium on the liquidation of Chechen-Ingush autonomous region, "many Chechen and Ingush people have betrayed the Motherland, they have switched to the side of the fascist occupiers, joined the ranks of saboteurs and spies thrown behind the Red Army lines by the Germans. They created armed gangs to fight against the Soviet government".
Photo credit: Otar Atskureli/ JAMNews
Josef Stalin, who governed the Soviet Union as dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, was afraid of potential spies and smugglers. For this reason, around one million Meskhetian Turks, Ingush, Chechens, Crimean Tatars and people of other nationalities were rounded up and sent away in freight wagons to far-flung Siberia, the Ural Mountains, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
Between 1949 and 1951, a new wave of deportations occurred. Once again, this campaign mainly targeted inhabitants of the USSR's western borderlands. The hero of Meydan TV's article "Deported Three Times," Gyulaly Binaliev, was born 18 November 1941 in the Adigeni region of Meskheti (a part of Georgia). Gyulaly remembers what his father said about the deportation of the region's Muslim population in November 1944:
"Father always meticulously maintained cleanliness in the house, and demanded the same from others. He said that the stench of the wagon during those weeks never left his memory."
Gyulaly Binaliev. Photo credit: Meydan TV
Alikhan Kuradze – also from Meskheti, Georgia (Jam News wrote about him in their article "Return from exile") – was already seven years old by then. He remembers a lot.
"A bang on the door woke me up late at night. The whole village was lit up by headlights. They put us in a truck, took us to the railway, and herded us into freight wagons."
Theodosia was deported from the city of Soroca at the age of 10. Photo credit: Ziarul de Garda
Journalists from the Moldovan publication, Ziarul de Garda met with Theodosia Kozmin. In 1949, 10-year-old Theodosia was deported from the city of Soroca (then part of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic) to Siberia. By that point, her father was already in prison.
"My mother asked them to tell us where they were taking us but they refused to answer," she said. "My mother thought they were taking us to our deaths…"
Men old enough to serve in the army were on the frontline, so it was mainly pensioners, women, and children that took this terrible journey into the unknown. It is also these children who are now retelling their stories about this catastrophe to us today.
According to historians, more than six million people were forcibly deported within the USSR – almost four percent of the USSR's population at the time of the 1939 census. At least 2.5 million were deported during and after the war. As a result, some specialists think that these figures underestimate the true number of victims.
The conditions during "war deportations" were harsh. On their journey to exile, people suffered from starvation, the cold, illness, a lack of basic medicine, and inhumane living conditions. This journey took three to four weeks. Historians estimate that twenty to thirty percent of all those forcibly deported died, either on the journey, or in their place of exile. As a child, the well-known Crimean Tatar geographer Safie Nalbantova was sent with her family to the Urals (the geographical region located around the Ural Mountains in Russia). The only family possession to survive this journey was a 1906 copy of the Quran. They had to sell the rest of their belongings to feed themselves. Her granddaughter, Elnara Nurieva, told us about the difficult train journey to exile:
"I remember from my grandmother's stories that they weren't allowed to bury the dead, they had to throw the bodies out. This is unacceptable in the Islamic tradition. You have to bury them in the ground, you have to read the prayer. The second memory is of how they went to the toilet. There was nowhere to go, they had to use a small hole, which you couldn't even call a window, so they could, in some way, keep the wagon clean. This image from her stories has been stuck in my mind to this day. Really, it was awful".
Photo credit: Elnara Nurieva family archive
Nothing good awaited deported people in their new homes. Exile destroyed their traditional way of life, and their new life was harsh. It was difficult to adjust to the new climate. And only hard labour in the collective farms and lumber mills and initial hostility from locals awaited them.
The Latvian writer Andra Manfelde wrote about her mother's deportation in the book, The Dugout Children. Novaya Gazeta–Baltiya published her story:
"You can't compare 1949 to 1941. The conditions during the first wave of deportations were extremely cruel. Rats ate live humans, people slept in puddles, and as I was told, they even ate mice that the owls regurgitated."
"But what does 'milder conditions' mean? My mother admitted that, for seven years, she was constantly hungry. She barely has any memories left of the journey to Siberia and the first few years there. She was later told that she screamed and cried for the whole 14 days she spent in the crowded wagon."
Seifat Dursunov, like his fellow countrymen, was sent to Uzbekistan at the age of 19. He could only return to Georgia after 70 years.
"The locals were afraid of us. They thought we were cannibals," he said. "But then we got used to each other, we went to visit them, we invited each other to weddings. They had fun weddings, dancing all the time, eating and drinking a lot."
Seifat Dursunov. Photo credit: Otar Atskureli
Theodosia Kozmin says that she remembers children fainting from the heat and stench, the stations, the forest, the heavy rain and the tedious waiting.
"In the place we were taken to, the grass was taller than human height," she said. "We were housed in these wooden barracks, where there were benches, like cut-down bunk beds. Every family was given one bench. They assigned jobs for people. I spent almost a month in the forest. My sister, Evgenia, was paralysed because of these conditions."
In the words of Andra Manfelde: "The family was given a separate house. Looking at the photo, I thought it was a mud hut. There was grass growing on the roof. It was a hut without windows, covered with turf."
The house Andra's family lived in. Photo credit: Andra Manfelde family arhive.
However, shared misfortune and war can unite people. Online news site Caucasian Knot told the story of Alikhan Akhilgov. The Akhilgov family from Ordizhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia) was sent to North Kazakhstan during the harsh winter of 1944.
"At first, we children tried not to catch the eye of the landlady. Our parents told us to be quiet," Akhilgov said. "She also sized us up, figuring out who we were. They said different things about us, that we were traitors, thieves. But when she found out that our uncle was fighting in the war, that our uncle Bashir graduated from Moscow State University, she started to treat us like family. We spoke Russian well. We lived with Liuda until the warmest days. There were a lot of exiled people in that village. Most of them were Germans – they were the first to be deported. There were Balkars, and Russians didn't come here of their own free will either. My mother and aunt Kureysh became friends with our first landlady. Even when we returned to our homeland they kept in touch. They wrote to each other constantly. Life was hard during the war, but even in exile people are still people."
In spite of it all, people adapted. Safie Nalbantova told her granddaughter how she started to dance, albeit under police escort.
"She worked at the philharmonic hall and, in her free time from work at the lumber mill, she would dance. Working conditions at the philharmonic hall were more than hard. When the troupe was asked to dance somewhere outside the village where they lived, she had to go to the commandant and sign out. They sent a guard with a gun to accompany her. If everyone in the group went as artists, then she went as a dangerous criminal."
Photo credit: Elnara Nurieva family archive
The Long Return
It was only after Stalin's death that restrictions on the exiles started to be lifted. But not everyone was able to return home. In his book Against their Will, historian Pavel Polian notes that in war and post-war devastation, there was no one to reclaim land of the exiled people, so the authorities almost forcibly settled those who lived in neighbouring areas or other corners of the countries there. In the 1960s, some of the deported nationalities even got their autonomy back.
But others, such as the Crimean Tatars, were banned from returning. Complete rehabilitation had to wait until almost the end of the Soviet Union. Only a decree from the Supreme Сouncil of the Soviet Union on November 14, 1989 fully rehabilitated these people.
Rehabilitation did not necessarily mean the end of exile. At the time, interethnic conflicts started to break out on the outskirts of the Soviet Union. In the Central Asian republics, where many of the deported remained after they were exiled, there was significant unrest.
"People began to leave en masse. There were fewer and fewer family members and friends there. Of course my family thought: everyone is leaving so we should leave. In Tajikistan, there were separate movements."
Alikhan Kuradze. Photo credit: Otar Atskureli
However, there was nothing waiting for them back home. The question of deported people's rights over their property in their former home countries turned out to be a ticking time bomb. Alikhan Kuradze's family tried to return to Georgia in 1989, to their historic homeland in the region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, but the locals drove them out.
"It was May and it rained all the time. My family lived in a tent. We stayed there for 30 days," he said. "One day we were attacked and those people destroyed our tent. They asked us why we came back, what have we lost here. They did not believe that this was where our roots came from".
The Binaliev family of Meskhetian Turks, who were deported to and settled in Uzbekistan, were even worse off. Following pogroms against Meskhetians in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley in May and June 1989, they decided to move to Azerbaijan and ended up in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
However, in 1992, when the Armenian army stormed the town of Khojaly, they once again became prisoners and then refugees. Gyulaly Binaliev remembers how he was taken prisoner:
"I went down to the basement, that's where the women and children were. After less than an hour, the roof began to crumble and the ground began to shake. We realised that it was a tank. After that, a machine gun pushed through the door and an Armenian soldier stood there, he started to shout: 'Hey, come out Turks!' They called us and the Azeris 'Turks.'"
Conflicts in the former Soviet Union have brought their own sad changes to the fates of those people who were already forced from their homelands once before.
In 1993, three months after a bloody conflict between ethnic Ingush and Ossetians in Russia's North Ossetia region, Alikhan Akhilgov created the foundation "Help for Previously Deported People." At first, he worked with people who had suffered from repression and war. Then, when all the investors – and there weren't that many of them– disappeared, all his energy and care went into the children.
"A few years have passed since then, but the number of disadvantaged children has not decreased," he said. "Deportation, ethnic conflict, the Chechen war… Now there's a war in Ukraine... There is no end in sight. And, as always, children suffer more than others."
/Reporting for this article contributed by Olga Dukhnich, Alyona Churke, Kateryna Aleksandr, Anatoliy Yeshanu, Maria Kugel, Nino Narimanishvili, Otar Atskureli, Elmir Mirzoyev, Nataliya Marshalkovich and Maxim Eristavi as part of the Russian language "Media Network".


text:
BELLINGHAM, WA --- (March 20, 2014) Blue Sea Systems, a Bellingham based manufacturer of marine electrical systems, has expanded the territory of their sales representatives, S.M. Osgood Company. The expansion will support the continued growth of the company's Midwest sales and customer support in the inland marine and recreational vehicle markets.
The agency will continue to work closely with Blue Sea Systems' current technical factory and territory sales representatives.
"Blue Sea Systems' partnership with S.M. Osgood Company has been a catalyst to our growth strategy in the Midwest," says David Johnson, Senior Vice President of Blue Sea Systems. "Their longstanding relationships and proven commitment to customer service is an ideal fit with the technical culture of Blue Sea Systems."
Tim Luehmann, S.M. Osgood's president, leads the Edina, Minnesota based representative group's sales and customer support in the region.
"Our agency is committed to Blue Sea Systems customers and product," said Luehmann. "We are confident the mutual strengths will develop many additional opportunities for both companies".
About Blue Sea Systems
Blue Sea Systems was founded in 1992 based on a commitment to create innovative high quality marine electrical products to improve the safety, simplicity, and reliability of boating. Blue Sea Systems employees are active boaters who apply their passion to designing, developing, and building products that enhance the experience of boaters. For specific product information and to learn more about Blue Sea Systems, visit www.bluesea.com.
About S.M. Osgood Company
S.M. Osgood Company has been a leading marine Manufacturers' Representative agency for over 52 years. The agency's sales territory encompasses the Midwest and Midsouth with the corporate office located in Edina, Minnesota. Contact the S.M. Osgood Company at (952) 937.2045 or by visiting www.smosgood.com.
# # #


text:
What is prayer? A conversation with God – as both our Lord and a friend….
We meet to pray for our villages and the wider world every morning in our churches:
Monday 8am Middle Chinnock – 8.30am Montacute
Tuesdays 8am Norton – 8.30am Odcombe
Wednesday 8am Chiselborough
Saturday 4.45pm St Mary's Stoke.
Night prayer or Compline is offered during Lent in our churches.
On Sunday mornings we have lay-led prayers of intercessions in our churches. To request prayer for a person or situation please speak to the minister or churchwarden before the service.
First Mondays: prayer for our schools.
We meet in Saint Catherine's Montacute 9:15am each first Monday to pray for local schools.
Prayer walking: usually in August we gather to walk and pray for our villages in Montacute, Odcombe and Stoke – please see pew sheets for details.
Individual prayer Our church buildings are usually open daily – and available for private prayer.
Prayer for others: To join a confidential prayer chain -either email or by telephone – please contact Chris Howat (telephone) or Barbara Aldridge (email)
Prayer ministry is usually available after morning services –please ask one of the ministers
Night light 8pm on the first Sunday of June, July and August in St Peter and St Paul, Odcombe: an occasion for personal prayer without words -just candles and quiet music.
Need help praying? contact one of our ministers from the Who's Who page link.
Quiet days are offered in Lent and advice on retreats is available – please ask one of our ministers.
Want to know more about Prayer? Go to www.justpray.uk
Meetings, Groups and activities, find out what's going on across the Benefice on our Events Page
We would love to hear from you. Please contact us via the details on the Who's Who page
'I have come that they may have life in all its fullness' (John 10 )


text:
If your looking to begin building a content marketing strategy for your small business, social media community groups will be your primary source for sharing.
What makes Google+ Communities and LinkedIn Groups so effective for small businesses is that they don't tolerate spam, and users that only participate in the groups to promote their own business are quickly removed from the group or ignored altogether. And while Facebook groups have a high volume of spammers, these types of groups and people will be avoided once people realize that the group holds no value to them. The benefit of Facebook groups is the share number of groups you can find with extremely niche content!
Communities provide small businesses an opportunity to promote their own content to a highly targeted and engaged audience based on location and interest. However, what makes the communities successful for the businesses promoting in this way is when the content you share encourages engagement.
Try and participate in each and every community you post to. Start conversations, engage with others, and always like and +1 content that you enjoyed. Companies that have used social media only to promote their products or services have found that the online communities quickly ignored them.
ThinkDesign podcast discusses what small businesses must do to avoid looking like a spammer and how to use groups on Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn.
What do you think is the best post format for engagement? Share your opinion below!


text:
Delicious coffee, hot fresh food, snacks, ice creams and more…
Cooking when camping is great fun and part of the experience of taking things at a slower pace but how about taking a break from the cooking altogether? After all, you are on holiday!
That's when you'll be glad to discover our Lobb Shack your very own onsite takeaway.
Start your day with some tummy-filling breakfasts or how about a warm and spicy chilli or scrummy curry for dinner?
There's a full menu, including daily specials and not everything will be fried with chips! There is a fabulous range of healthier fare, along with vegetarian and gluten and dairy free options too.
Look out for our longer and later opening times during peak season and busy times.
We use as much local produce as possible to create simple and delicious home-made food for all tastes, so tuck into them at one of our picnic tables in the sun.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Selena and Tim


text:
Page created 26.10.01
On Thursday 25th October 2001 the P.T.A. held a party. The children had a non uniform day to pay for the event and help raise funds. The P 1 - 3s had a Punch and Judy show. P.4 - 5 and 6 - 7 had two separate parties with lots of music and dancing (includng the principal and caretaker!). Many thanks go to the P.T.A. for organising the party so well. Thanks!
We use cookies to track usage and improve the website.
Click here for more information.


text:
Northside Barbell has very strong, passionate and dedicated powerlifting athletes. The Powerlifting Competition Team makes sure that these members are able to develop themselves in the sport of Powerlifting. The competition team of Northside Barbell is an ambitious project designed for the most talented and motivated athletes, with the common goal of training, learning and getting stronger together in order to become the best Dutch Powerlifters!
What does the competition team have to offer?
Joining the competition team
To become a member of the competition team you have to meet the following requirements:
Two times a year invitations will be send for joining the competition team, in September and January. If you think you meet the requirements for joining the competition team, make sure you get in contact with the competition team committee, so they are aware of your interested.
Contact information
If you have any questions in regards to the competition team, do not hesitate to ask!
Mail: [email protected]


text:
There are so many ways to work out choreography. Sometimes I listen to the music and visualise the dance. Sometimes I count out beats. I use the lyrics to suggest motions.
Today I have spread out all of my dance movement cards and sorted through my hoop trick cards to create the foundation of a dance. I like doing this because it ensures that I don't repeat myself too much. You know how easy it is to fall back on the dozen moves you love most. While repetition feels great during practice, it's not meant for an audience. It's not so interesting to see the vortex again and again…and again.
With cards on the floor, I find it easy to move things around, add and subtract ideas, and rearrange the structure for a better fit with the music. When I start dancing, I can peek at the cards to see if I have got all the bits I wanted. Sometimes I add more. I even hand-write new cards if I discover a missing trick or add some new movement concept.
The dance pictured is about a relationship: meeting, wooing, winning, arguing, leaving. The choreography fits the music, but the exact details aren't decided yet. Cartwheel? In my dreams. Perhaps not in this dance.
This choreo will be my entry for the Japan Hoopdance Championship. Video entries are due by the end of the month and the contest is open to all hoopers who live in Japan (and are available to perform on October 19th, 2013 if they win). There are categories for solo, group and children. This is an unprecedented contest in Japan; please consider making an entry!


text:
Hope everyone has enjoyed the rain and we are ready for some cool weather. Happy Birthday to all our Seniors for the month of August. Don't forget in September to come and see us for a free lunch on the first Wednesday of the month, in which the individual's birthday falls in that month.
Next week will be submitting a write up on our Volunteer's of the Month for August, so be sure and watch for it in the paper. Hope to see you at the center daily for lunch at 11:15. We have a great time with visiting and you can get your name in the drawing for a free lunch.
On August 11 we will have our monthly board meeting.
Every Monday night from 6-9 p.m. we would love for you to come and hear some great music. We always have a great group of singers and anyone can come and play or sing. Monday Night Music proceeds help to sponsor our salad bar three days a week.
This month we have a pitch tournament on the 2nd and 3rd Tuesdays at 12:15. Come and have some fun.
We also have a foot clinic by appointment only. Be sure and call the senior center for more information.
The OATS bus serves our community, so if you need a ride, be sure and call and find out the schedule.
Don't forget our Meals on Wheels program. We can use volunteers to help with taking lunch to our senior. We are providing a meal on a short or long term basis to homebound seniors, 60 years or older, who are unable to prepare a nutritionally balanced noon meal for themselves, and are unable to attend congregate meal at the center.
Watch for some updates on an event that will help support our local senior center.
During the hot weather, please, check on your family, friends, neighbors and pets.
Come and check out our Facebook page for updates at Ava Senior.
Don't forget our hours at the Ava Center are 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Call us if you have any questions at 683-5712.