text:
Nati Baratz 's film Unmistaken Child
Documentary of 28-year-old Nepalese monk Tenzin Zopa's four-year, and eventually successful, search throughout Nepal, Tibet, and India for the child calculated to be of the proper age — only one to one-and-a half years old — to be the reincarnation of his beloved master, the widely revered Geshe Lama Konchong.
Shot against the profoundly beautiful, craggy hillsides that ground Tenzin Zopa's search, the film shows the dual nature of the young boy who is both child and identified as the reincarnated master. As a toddler, Tenzin Ngodrop must at once pass traditional rites and tests of soul memory before he is identified as Geshe Lama Konchong's reincarnation — eventually offering blessing to the many Tibetan Buddhists who comes recognizing his identity — and undergo, as the little boy that he still is, such rituals, in scenes both traumatic to him and touching, as the shaving of his head for his new monastic life.
The scenes between Tenzin Zopa and the child are inexpressibly tender and knowing, speaking to the continuity of love, as the gentle monk nurtures in Tenzin Ngodrop the soul that in its previous body cared for him from his seventh year forward.
Unmistaken Child is available at Netflix.
Electronic Technologies & Consciousness (Guest author: Julie J. Nichols)
Our society's growing engagement with electronic technologies leaves its mark on our neurological and musculoskeletal systems. If our bodies and our consciousness are inextricably connected, then our obsession with technology also impacts that mysterious part of ourselves that makes us who we are, as individuals and as a species. The question is not so much whether technology affects human consciousness as how we want to co-create the reality our electronic tools are making possible.
Every new technology we humans have invented has subtly changed our experience of our physical structure.
The wheel greatly expanded humans' limited movement on foot, modifying forever our ancestors' dependence on the lower limbs. Similarly, writing by stylus, pen, type, and now electronic keyboard has altered our ability to communicate face to face. Each expansion transfigures our existing sense of space and time.
More recently, the Great Depression, the development of the atom bomb, and the Cold War gave rise to postures and facial sets very different from the body language of most Americans under 30 today. Baby Boomers remember in their bones the formal, controlled — even judgmental — expressions and professional presentation of parents who came to adulthood during the Depression and World War II, marking their need to maintain the appearance of order in times of great hardship. Such outward expressions make for a big contrast with the informal, even sloppy appearance, easy smiles, and indifferent hand and facial gestures of Millennials, who no longer perceive their bodies — or their lives — as having the same limitations their elders experienced. In just a couple of generations, we're already seeing major changes in adaptation to technology, in the role of the physical body in daily life, and in the very consciousness of our culture.
Any use of technology, electronic or not, changes brain structure, whether practicing Beethoven's "Für Elise" on the piano or shooting baskets on a court. These changes are discernible on scanning instruments and in muscle aches and pains. In both brain and muscles, new structures are created, new connections forged, by real-time, four-dimensional, bodily interaction with the technology of the piano and the ball court.
Pushing buttons on a keyboard synthesizer causes synaptic changes that are going to have their own structure. Say an amateur player uses her reading eye and brain to decode a set of instructions and to select color-coded or word-inscribed buttons to push. It's the machine making the music. The amateur player is not interpreting with her own fingers and mind the complex phrasings and voicings that express the intentions of the composer's and musician's hearts. And, although some argue that this mechanical music has its own virtues, playing a synthesizer involves less nuance, less subtlety of hand and finger coordination, and much less complexity. On a piano, such interpretation expands the neural connections, the consciousness, of the player, whether amateur or professional.
In the same way, playing Wii games as virtual sports does get our muscles moving. But a player serious about basketball proficiency requires the feel of the ball in the hands, the actual swish of the ball through the net. Through interaction between the body and the technology of ball and basket, neurons make necessary new connections among brain, eyes, ears, muscles, and nerves. These connections expand consciousness in ways dimensionally different from the effects of pushing buttons and focusing on screens. To stare at a screen and pretend to throw a ball is quite different from doing so in reality, where constant minute distractions in space and time and inconsistencies in balance, weight and mass require that the human player must negotiate continuous infinite adjustments. It's this negotiation that results in real-time proficiency. Remember that line about "10,000 hours of practice" being the baseline of proficiency in any endeavor? Ten thousand hours of Wii games will give you proficiency in — Wii games.
It's clear that some of the current obesity epidemic is the direct result of increasing technology use. If we always sit in front of a computer monitor, television set, or movie screen because the infrastructure of our society encourages it — because doing so is built into the very architecture of our lives — well, the results are clear. Our increasingly fat-ridden anatomies reflect our belief that passively receiving and storing energy is the desirable norm. We forget that physical health depends on a lively reciprocity between energy input (food and drink, vitamins, and light) and output (movement, work, rest). Perhaps we actually begin (want) to believe that it doesn't matter. We lose sight of the ineffable truth that the body is designed to evolve with our consciousness, and vice versa, that we might co-create reality through free intelligent choice — that our body's health and capacities matter for the good of the world we inhabit.
Digital natives, born into the world of electronics technologies, take for granted the so-called need to "plug in"; to multi-task through several different media simultaneously; to access information far more rapidly than their parents ever could; and to stay connected to "friends" far and near throughout the day without interruption. For the current generation of American youth, anxiety comes not (as it did for their grandparents) from the notion that physical, bodily, worldwide real destruction could descend without warning from the button-pushing of a faraway madman. Instead, it comes from the thought of being without cell phone, Internet connection, or multitudinous apps on a handheld screen. Where their elders feared for their bodily safety — for their lives — Millennials fear the body's virtual loss, no longer sensing that it is its strength, capacity, and independence that matter for survival. Millennials' dependence on electronics to keep them connected to friends, family, and information — their sense that safety, survival, pleasure, and pain aren't bodily issues but electronically-regulated ones — may be the characteristic that most distinguishes them from the generations that came before.
Futurists wax enthusiastic about the potential of robotics, nanotechnologies, and genetic engineering to alter our very idea of what is human. However, the addictive call to stay "plugged in"; the prioritizing of the game on the cell phone over the fellow traveler on the bus, ski lift, or hiking trail (as pictured in many TV ads); and the inability to arise and attend to embodied actuality find their beginning in curiosity and exploration, develop into habit, and then curtail the ability to choose. It behooves us to remember that human physical structure, human consciousness, and technology evolve together.
Alone, Together.
Devaluing the needs and capacities of the first for the siren call of the last inevitably damages the sacred entity in the center.
What "bounces back" quickly in your sensory reality during those rare moments — perhaps on a vacation — that you "unplug"? And what in your body feels disturbingly unfamiliar or missing?
The Body's Measure
Let's do the math (very, very roughly):
- 3,000 miles: 3 years.
- That's 1,000 miles per year: really, only 3 miles per day.
- That's a pretty leisurely pace.
- But: taking 12 hours of travel-time to do those 3 miles.
- What could possibly take that long, and be worth 12 hours of travel time per day, over three years, to complete?
He has to get up from this posture, walk his feet forward two paces, and begin the process again, his hands only somewhat protected by their wooden clogs. After three years of this daily 12-hour practice, he has a bone growth on his wrist and a wound on his forehead that won't heal. He doesn't mind.
prostrate over the full 33 miles that circle the sacred Mount Kailash, a journey that takes two or three weeks.
The prostrations performed in pilgrimages of any length are meditations, focusing the mind through repetition. The site of the meditation is the performer's own body. Its exhaustion, soreness, even its sores serve as reminders that the believer is not his body, and that the body itself is only an illusion of separateness, a misrepresentation of a deeper, non-dual reality.
Along with both social and spiritual bows, prostrations are of course acts of surrender as well, bringing the head below the heart, sometimes so significantly that one has experiential understanding that one's head is not the center of the universe. In doing prostrations, one is literally upsetting the head's seeming dominance.
We could lay this a different way: Prostrations, we could argue, are also ways of knowing. Measuring the earth in four-, five-, or six-foot lengths is a means of coming to knowing it intimately. In the course of becoming a human inchworm, one learns not only the earth's size, but one's own.
The ancient world used human beings as the measure of space. A foot, a nose, an arm, a finger offered the basic length of measure. Remember the cubits used to measure Noah's ark? They were literally (in Latin) a forearm's length, going fingertips to elbow. In some cultures, the practice of mapping one's measure onto the land remains quite alive. In South India, for example, the kalaris, or red clay huts that are used for martial arts practice are built on the measure of the guru's own foot size: it's length 42 times the guru's foot long, it's width 21 foot-lengths.
A very contemporary example of using the body's measure as a way of knowing comes up as an elementary-school math exercise. In his book Learning with the Body in Mind, Eric Jensen suggests that kids measure items around the classroom with parts of their body and report the results: "This cabinet is 99 knuckles long." Kids come back excitedly to share their discoveries, finding that, although each person's palm's width is different, the measurements by their bodies take them more into a sense of unity than ultimately of difference — and that the world not only submits to their measure but invites their awe at how much bigger it is than they.
Nanette Sawyer's Hospitality the Sacred Art: Discovering the Hidden Spiritual Power of Invitation and Welcome
In the midst of her book on cultivating hospitality, Reverend Nanette Sawyer recalls a meditation retreat she attended years prior. As the retreat closed and attendees lined up to receive the blessings of the spiritual teacher, Sawyer felt an uncontrollable craving for a moment of personal contact with her. Ignoring the line of devotees in front of her, she frantically waved a personal card she had written and repeatedly called out the teacher's name, each time a bit louder, in the hope of catching her attention.
When finally the teacher turned her attention to Sawyer, entirely ignoring the card she held in her hand, she felt in the teacher's darshan, or blessing gaze, the reflection of her deepest self back to her, allowing her to ground and solidify those parts of herself that felt she needed some form of external validation.
We often think of hospitality in the context of opening one's arms to friends, neighbors, and strangers. Instead, Sawyer uses the story to demonstrate the power of another form of hospitality, that of making room for and welcoming the hidden, harder-to-accept dimensions of oneself. The teacher's gaze held Sawyer in a receptivity to her self, in all its darkness and neediness, and to make them equally welcome in her psyche. It allowed her to face the aspects of herself she had been trying to escape. It allowed her to do something she encourages her readers to do as they foster hospitality with family, neighbors, strangers, enemies, and creation itself: to face her own deep estrangement.
Sawyer's book is not an especially original work, but it draws together many different kinds of human experience under a three-part model of hospitality that joins an essentially inward attitude, "receptivity," with a way of being with others, "reverence," and with the outward actions that spring from "generosity." In so doing, and with a selection of practices that permit reflection on hospitality to self, others, creation, and God, she helps us think about ways of staying open and of creating a home for all
Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
A Harvard brain scientist who suffered a massive stroke in her late 30s, Jill Bolte Taylor has unique qualifications to understand the decimation of many of her left brain's functions as each occurred. Once she recognized she was having a stroke, she exclaimed to herself, "How many scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain function and mental deterioration from the inside out?"
Ironically, the very capacities Taylor would need to use to make sense of her condition were the very ones to be damaged, some for years to come. In her memoir of the stroke, Taylor retells, blow-by-blow, the collapse of the brain functions associated with recognizing and producing language. What she gains through her stroke is a mystical experience of the unity of all creation, which she postulates can only happen once the left brain is quieted.
Thus, the book offers what could be considered both a participant-observer's account and a scientist's analysis within the emerging field of neurotheology, which attempts to associate precise, "objective" locations in the brain with mystical experience. Blogger Elizabeth Kadetsky (http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/living-in-the-moment/?emc=eta1) likewise remarked the similarity of her mother's state of mind, once Alzheimer's disease had set in, to the state aspired to by Eastern and Western yogis alike and celebrated in Patanjali's first yoga sutra, often translated as, "Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind."
As she realized she was having the stroke, Taylor recognized she was losing the associations between bits of knowledge she knew she possessed. She then dropped a perduring sense of her purpose in phoning for help, and finally lost the ability to recognize the numbers on her doctor's business card as anything but squiggles. Yet in her debilitated condition, Taylor was at war. Part of her wanted never to return to the land of language, to the argumentative, even arrogant, scientist she characterizes herself as having been. For what she experienced, as her consciousness centered largely in the holistic perceptions of the right brain, was the sense of the reality of her being, the fluctuating boundaries of the self. No longer taking as real either her own personality as Jill Bolte Taylor or that personality's attachments, she found she felt no obligation to be "Jill Bolte Taylor." Rather, she realized, "I am a fluid."
Gradually, through years of rehabilitation and tender re-parenting by her mother, Taylor miraculously recovered her full capacities, learning how to perform as she had once done Jill Bolte Taylor once again in her public speaking engagements by studying previous performances on videotape.
In My Stroke of Insight, Taylor relies heavily on her scientific background and her perceptions from within the stroke state. While she gives credit to the findings of analytical brain scientists, she heroicizes her own brain's adventure, never acknowledging those experimenters in the direct experience of reality associated with both Eastern and Western meditation practices. Yet, in addition to documenting their own experiences in first-person accounts and in guides for practice, Buddhist meditators have had their brain patterns while in meditation widely studied in the Western laboratories Taylor champions.
The pioneering achievement of My Stroke of Insight, therefore, is not its evocation of an enforced state of consciousness similar to self-realization, but rather its systematic portrait of intellectual and perceptual breakdown–uniquely undertaken by psychonaut Taylor.
A Practice in Engaging the Ritual Dimension
Consider a ritual in which you are a central character–not the kind you have to wait a lifetime for, but one in which you participate virtually every day–saying goodbye. The act has both a ceremonial (a more outward) dimension and a ritual function.
To illustrate, I once went to a lecture by an Indian professor, who opened his session with a prayer: May our time together be filled with learning; may no enmity divide us from each other.
I had never considered that any kind of personal distaste, hatred, or conflict could divide one from another in the context of a lecture. After all, isn't a lecture an intellectual exercise or, at most, an intellectual exchange? We come and leave as attendees to a lecture.
Yet this visiting professor showed all of us the potential of the lecture format to be replete with ritual content. Bracketing the event as one in which common learning ought to be central, he altered the more typical view that I held. One could see it as something more than an event in which one comes to and leaves as an individual mind (carried around by the body as a tripod for the brain).
Instead, perhaps even a lecture is an experience through which we might recognize our shared purpose in coming to understand the text at hand and be in relationship with a respected teacher and a social body.
Goodbyes are similarly relational.
What can a goodbye accomplish?
Two possibilities:
- cleansing the relationship of any unspoken "enmity" or anything else that might divide, and
- generating authentic expectations for the continuation of contact on another occasion.
What do your goodbyes not merely look and sound like, but accomplish?
Try this:
For a day, make a complete goodbye with each person you meet.
I had never considered that any kind of personal distaste, hatred, or conflict could divide one from another in the context of a lecture. After all, isn't a lecture an intellectual exercise or, at most, an intellectual exchange? We come and leave as attendees to a lecture.
Yet this visiting professor showed all of us the potential of the lecture format to be replete with ritual content. Bracketing the event as one in which common learning ought to be central, he altered the more typical view that I held. One could see it as something more than an event in which one comes to and leaves as an individual mind (carried around by the body as a tripod for the brain). Instead, perhaps even a lecture is an experience through which we might recognize our shared purpose in coming to understand the text at hand and be in relationship with a respected teacher and a social body.
Goodbyes are similarly relational.
Blending in, Busting Out: Choices in Social Costuming
As many a miserable celebrity has wondered, is there any escaping your body in public life? How unintelligible or indecipherable can you really make it?
Aside from being a too-famous actor or singer, say you're a criminal wanting to escape detection, a stalker trying to keep an eye on your prey, or an undercover operator trying to pass unnoticed. You have two tasks before you: first, to try to diminish the physical markers that make you seem distinctively to be you — the way of dressing, the body shape, the hair style and color. These things can be changed within a day.
Some things don't submit as readily to alteration. Changing one's height is not so easy, but the early 19th-century French detective widely acknowledged as the father of modern undercover detective work, Eugène-François Vidocq, demonstrated an aptitude for this. As one observer of Vidocq's day described, "He is a remarkably well-built man, of extraordinary muscular power, and exceedingly active. He stands, when perfectly erect, 5 feet 10 inches in height, but by some strange process connected with his physical formation he has the faculty of contracting his height several inches, and in this diminished state to walk about, jump, etc."
It's something to aspire (down) to. Those who can change the so-called "unalterables" have the greatest chance of passing unrecognized.
Second, once you've removed the things that make your everyday body stand out, you want to add in those physical and social things that will help it blend in into the given environment — whether it be the swagger of a biker gang, the stillness from the seemingly invisible back of an uninspiring high school classroom, or an unobtrusive street stride where you intend mischief on an as-yet-to-be-determined pedestrian. The Russian spies recently apprehended in Long Island did what their neighbors did: "infiltrated" the PTA and cocktail parties. A neighbor saw them as entirely of her world, telling The New York Times, "But they couldn't have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas!"
Some people who abandon their identities in order to enter a second world — federally protected witnesses, for example — end up believing in the person they have costumed themselves, outside and in, to be. Literature and film are rife with tales of undercover operators who "go bad" — who, that is, are convinced by the social world they have entered, at first as outsiders, that they actually are who they pass themselves off as being. The alterations to their customary appearance contribute to the sense of a changed identity.
How do self-costuming adults use these techniques? Costumes prepared for the elaborate masquerade balls of the 17th and 18th centuries, extravagant as they were, attempted both to make the dancing partygoer personally unrecognizable and to be equally outrageous as all the othercostumes at the dance — whether the dancer was playing a character from the Italian theatre or a count, a shepherdess, or a gondolier. They both subtracted the telltale signs of the everyday person and added signs of fitting in, even through extravagance. They werealso designed as vehicles of seduction for both the ball and afterward, their memory magnifying the wearer'sallure once she or he was back in conventional clothing.
Costuming for contemporary Halloween celebrations works a bit differently from this. For at these, far from being concealed, one's own "best" distinguishing features may be on display in ways they are not the rest of the year — a pair of legs in a nurse's (?!) fishnet stockings; a pair of usually concealed breasts pushed up for display in a strangely bustiered witch's costume; a man's surprisingly luscious lips filled in in lipstick for a drag costume. They are designed for recognition and to elevate the qualities of the existing body rather than disguise them.
And because of scanty social conventions that govern just how original or extravagant any individual's costume is expected to be, blending into a group can be quite limited.
Perhaps, as with 18th-century masquerade costumes, part of the desire behind the distinctively sexual displays adults may make at Halloween time is not only to draw an evening's attention but also to change others' perception of one's body during the rest of the year: that demure girlfriend of a sort-of friend of yours is actually a wildcat underneath; the socially orthodox lawyer in the office four down retains an air of sensuality throughout the year. As everyday bodies blend visibly back into the social scenery, pesky memories return of that freer behavior on that one day a year many of us rebel simultaneously against our usual social structure, using our bodies as our parade grounds.
Comment from Jan Edwards: All your issues are thought provoking, but I have a particular interest in clothing and what people say about themselves by how they dress. My years as a costumer taught me that my job was basically to stereotype people. Especially when I was doing commercials because the 15 or 30 second spot required that the clothes say a lot at a glance.
Who's the Who of the Body? Adventures in Bodily Misrecognition
You're in a conference room, wondering why all these seemingly intelligent people around the table can't seem to remember what this "follow-up" meeting is a follow-up to. You all remember there was a "launch" meeting two weeks ago, but from among the nine (occasionally prodigious) brains around the table, there doesn't seem to be a whole one to be assembled from all the pieces that has a hope of reconstructing what decisions you all made.
And then there's that young fellow you're pretty sure is the lover of the long-lived VP sitting two seats down. The innocent keeps offering ideas that sound suspiciously like his man-friend's. Why are they beaming at each other as each thinks he's thinking his own thoughts?
Many of the world's mystical traditions tell us that the apparent separateness of bodies covers over a deeper reality: that there is a seamless continuity between you and all those who are apparent "others": Not only is your neighbor as yourself, your neighbor is yourself. So is everybody (and — guess what? — everything) else.
Aside from our religious or spiritual perspectives, in our everyday rounds we live out what could be considered a very rough but down-to-earth, social counterpart of the idea that bodies do not house distinct selves. Identity can be intersubjective. We think the thoughts others have shared with us as if they were our own, as in the rapid volleying of the same idea between the lovers at the conference table. We carry forward our parents' judgments while not recognizing their source (probably far before even them). We catch the mood of the testy traveler verbally assaulting the airline employee at the ticket counter.
That intersubjectivity can extend from the phenomenon of more than one person thinking the same thoughts or experiencing each other's moods to the sharing of identity through physical likeness — think of identical twins' potential for experiencing themselves as a collective being, perhaps in response to other people's confusion of one twin for the other.
I find that I think of the sharing of selves across bodies in connection with the frequency with which I am taken to be someone else in public places. Here's what happens:
I've made a special trip to a suburban mall, and am striding swiftly toward the "anchor" store that carries the cosmetics brand I'm seeking. Echo! I hear a woman call out from where she is sitting. I keep walking: that's not me anyway. Echo! she exclaims again, her voice edging toward me this time with lightning bolt edges. Why the urgency? I wonder. And, people name their children that?
The woman's no longer sitting, she too is striding, with energy and toward me, a smile tinged with anxiety on her face. Though she's not holding her arms open to me, she walks in an open-hearted way.
She thinks I'm Echo. Hesitantly, I think I should be kind: this woman will be disappointed, her tender heart tumbled a bit, when it turns out I am not her long-lost friend (relative?). It's only as we get within about eight feet from each other, that her expression of joy, as at a surprise reunion, turns. Yet it's not disappointment I'm reading on her face, but apparent confusion. I'm not her younger sister's best friend from home; there's something about me that clues her in. Yet, because I remind her so much of Echo, in a sense I'm also not not her.
The woman stays glued to me after asking me my name. The woman, who without apparent embarrassment introduces herself to me as Pamela, seems fond of me — like longtime fond. Why does she hang on, as if she's hoping that through gentle persistence I will be Echo after all? We chat a bit. She tells me about her sister's friend and how long it's been since she's seen her, about the time Teresa and Echo carried the regional debate team. She wants to hang on. Soon it seems she's talking to me as if I were Echo.
And what's happening to me? From the very point at which I recognize that she has mistaken me for someone else, I have been somewhat willing to play the part, to give the woman the experience of recognition and reunion. In some sense, if I look that much like her, aren't I Echo (whoever she is)? At a certain point, I'm not just humoring Pamela: I'm entertaining the idea that, on some plane, in some respect, I am Echo.
|Obama opposite his Indonesian lookalike Ilham Anas in Reuters photo
Over and over again this happens: something like the same self appearing in different bodies. The Indonesian Obama lookalike is a local celebrity peppered with questions about American politics. Your new girlfriend looks an awful lot like your last one, and for some reason you think you've already told her the things you only told the beforehand woman. The teacher at your kids' school routinely punishes both of the twins when it's only Natalia who goads the other girls at recess. An auditorium full of (probably) heterosexual men raise their hands, indicating they believe Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are gay because they played cowboys in love in Brokeback Mountain (and they still look rather a lot like themselves).
The Hindu dictum Thou Art That has been interpreted to mean that the self we take ourselves to be is none other than the universal self present in all. Personality can be taken on and shed at will; indeed, it has always been only a put-on. Thou Art That suggests that the fact of having different bodies or shells should not be taken to represent genuinely distinct selves. Add to that the phenomenon of mistaken identity, and, in a sense, neither the self nor the body can be said truly to "belong" to any one. They are both slippery surfaces — which is why, in literature, meeting one's doppelgänger, or physical double, is tantamount to coming face to face with one's own death — the death, that is, of one's ego. Save a lot of money on your Halloween costume and check the mirror; a character is ready for the playing, no special accoutrements needed.
|"Doppelgaenger" oil painting by Sarah Snazell.
Physical Education
Moving to learn is not just for kindergartners: it's for everyone who has a body.
While young students regularly play with "manipulables"– props that help them "get" concepts in math and literacy, older ones can deepen their understanding of cell mitosis or the concept of checks and balances in American government. They can gain the feeling of an historical period or culture, or acquire, through their bodies, deep understanding of otherwise abstract artistic and mathematical principles such as contrast and symmetry. The potential for learning through active strategies is both wide and deep.
Adults, too, can be powerfully affected by moving to learn. Paradoxically, it may be those adults who are not confident movers for whom learning through the body can be the most affecting, in part, learning psychologist Dawna Markova argues, because bodily activity activates the deepest, most unconscious modes of understanding for them.
As teachers become willing to wrestle with the extra work of making activity centers, the vulnerability-enhancing playing of experiential simulations, or the practicing of yoga with their students to enhance their social-emotional learning, they re-experience what their students do — the awkwardness, uncertainty, and jagged learning curve of trying to acquire an understanding for the first time. They not only provide but have powerful learning experiences.
Using their own bodies in their professional roles, teachers help students build both passion for the learning they face together and trust for where the teacher is trying to take them; it also inspires them to higher levels of achievement.
What follows are suggestions for integrating movement into the general education classroom experience. Teachers don't need to be either "perfect" or "graceful" to do this. All they need is a willingness to try alongside their students. A grand leap from "just read about it" or "just talk about it," it's literally a "just do it"!
Trying Out Putting Learning on Its Feet
1. Build trust.
As you participate with your students and learn more about movement that you can use in your classroom, be mindful of any attempt to exploit the study of mind-body disciplines such as yoga, tai chi, and other martial arts for the purposes of classroom management or control. This can be a swift way to destroy the trust you have worked long to cultivate with your students! While it is true these practices can instill significant learning and health benefits for the students, including the ability to self-soothe, to direct attention, or to contribute to a caring classroom environment, students can readily sense the difference between adults who bring them these methods in order to control their behavior and those who treat their bodies respectfully, as students' own.
A speech therapist in one of my workshops was flabbergasted by the improvement in rapport between her and one of her students, a boy with ADHD and receptive and expressive language delays. Together they did simple yoga balances — such as the popular Tree pose — and practiced conscious breathing. Afterward, she reflected, "Seeing his teacher trying to balance, and teaching him how to fall using muscle control created a different type of relationship between us. We had sorely needed something positive. It was powerful."
2. Even though this work is highly motivating, set realistic expectations.
Nowadays, children may be as divorced from their bodies as once only adults were! A teacher of fourth and fifth graders was able to get her students to develop an impressively wide array of synonyms for the words calming, energizing, and focusing — the types of yoga poses they would practice together to enhance learning readiness. However, once they got up on their feet and began practicing, she reported back, students had difficulty accessing actual body sensations and putting names to them.
Students who don't even realize they're flying off the handle can't instantly calm themselves: they need first to become aware of their anger, frustration, fear, sadness, or other negative emotion. Learning to articulate their feeling and bodily states will precede students' ability and willingness to explore alternative expressions.
3. Recognize opportunities for making a concept real to a student physically.
The body is available to help with many different types of learning, which is why I like to refer to kinesthetic intelligences, in the plural. In some learning tasks, simple bodily repetition of a motion solidifies the learning "in the body," as when learning to use scissors. In others, pairing a motion with a musical or verbal cue can help to embed learning in memory: think of the scene in the film Akeelah and the Bee in which the main character spells "effervescent" perfectly as she beats time jumping rope. Kinesthetic learning also pairs beautifully with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and spatial tasks, such as discovering one's relationship to a poem by moving as it is recited, learning to tell time by becoming a "body clock," or participating in social simulation games — all examples of successful lessons implemented by teachers I have worked with.
4. Don't confuse learning through movement with performing through movement. Rehearse, don't perform.
Much of the literature on multiple intelligences has answered to teachers' anxiety about how to assess learning activities that are not paper and pencil-based. It's thus easy to confuse kinesthetic learning with kinesthetic assessment, the sometimes-inauthentic performances of learning that have so often been inelegantly used to determine what children understood from a unit.
Preparing for a performance is quite a different task than putting learning on its feet. For most students and most body-based learning activities, the true learning that is available resides in the experience of figuring something out using the body, in the "rehearsal." When a student experiments, on his feet, in order to discover the meaning of a Langston Hughes poem, he is simultaneously thinking critically in ways that affect his movement and moving in ways that develop his thinking. Similarly, acting out where on the ill-fated Titanic the poorer people and the wealthier would have been housed offers students more potential for insight and for meaningful connections about social class in its historical perspective than does the performance of the eventual scene for the class. Consider giving more weight to students' approach to rehearsal than to their performances.
5. Keep students' (and teachers') bodily experience their own.
Be careful that, as you bring students' bodies into play in the classroom, you let decisions about how they use their bodies reside with them. As a Chicago-area third-grade teacher said, students "are capable of making appropriate decisions about what their bodies need." Give students freedom not to participate, for whatever reason, so long as they are not distracting the others. More often than not, given the opportunity to watch first, and see a teacher who's "in there," moving along with her students, students will come and participate, once they're ready.
Remember that the teacher's willingness to model, her respect for students' bodily experience, and her exercising of her imagination about ways to use physical activity to reach learners are all much more vital to students' learning experience than her expertise as a mover. Put on your own "thinking feet" and, with your students, take them for a walk.
What have you learned through doing, trying, practicing– whether in a class or "on the street," either recently or long ago?
And if you're looking for further ideas about how to put learning and thinking on their feet, see some school-ready resources in the post below.
School-Ready Resources for Kinesthetic, or Body-Based, Learning
Armstrong, T. (2000). Multiple intelligences in the classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Bryner, Andy, and Dawna Markova. 1996. An unused intelligence: A handbook for implementing the five disciplines of learning organizations. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press.
Campbell, L., Campbell, B., & Dickinson, D. (2004). Teaching and learning through multiple intelligences. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Campbell, M., Leibowitz, M., Mednick, A., & Rugen, L. (1998). Guide for planning a learning expedition. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt.
Fontana, D., & Slack, I. (1997). Teaching meditation to children: Simple steps to relaxation and well-being. London: Thorsons.
Gilbert, A. G. & Smith, H. P. (1992). Creative dance for all ages: A conceptual approach. American Alliance for Health and Physical Education.
Griss, S. (1998). Minds in motion: A kinesthetic approach to teaching elementary curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Jensen, E. (2000). Learning with the body in mind: The scientific basis for energizers, movement, play, games, and physical education. San Diego: The Brain Store.
Komitor, J. B., & Adamson, E. 2000. The complete idiot's guide to yoga with kids. Indianapolis, IN: Alpha Books.
Rotz, R., & Wright, S.D. 2005. Fidget to focus: Outwit your boredom: Sensory strategies for living with ADD. New York: iUniverse.
Schewe, M. L. (2002). "Teaching foreign language literature: Tapping the students' bodily-kinesthetic intelligence." In G.
Bräuer, (Ed). Body and language: Intercultural learning through drama (pp. 73-93). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
Spolin, V. (1986). Theater games for the classroom. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Walling, D. R. (2006). Teaching writing to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Wenig, M. (2003). Yogakids: Educating the whole child through yoga. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang.
Wilhelm, J. R. (2002). Action strategies for deepening comprehension: Role plays, text-structure tableaux, talking statues, and other enactment techniques that engage students with text. Jefferson City, MO: Scholastic Professional Books.
Wormeli, R. (2005). Summarization in any subject: 50 techniques to improve student learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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PromptWorks volunteers make a site to take care of neighbors during the COVID quarantine
PromptWorks volunteers make a site to take care of neighbors during the COVID quarantine
Poor implementations of Neumorphism may be unusable for people with visual impairments, but by following some of these guidelines, it's possible to avoid those pitfalls.
This MLK Day, we hosted a workshop with trainees from Hopeworks in Camden.
Being a woman in tech can be isolating. It can be hard to feel like you belong when you're often the only woman in the room.
Six months after finishing her apprenticeship, Leigh Passamano reflects on her experience.
General guidelines that anyone can follow to make a meaningful contribution to open source software.
Sarah gives you a heads up about her favorite talks from Strange Loop 2017
Why we're putting down roots deep in the heart of Texas.
Today is our apprentice's first day, but we started the learning process months ago. We discovered some not-so-obvious lessons about the challenges of hiring an apprentice in a professional services setting, and what we're tackling over the next few months.
Dustin talks about his favorite talks from PyCon 2017
How to have an advantage when landing your first full-time programming job.
Check out the Flatiron School's interview with Mike Nicholaides, CTO and co-founder of PromptWorks.
How to avoid heartbreak when submitting conference talks.
PromptWorks interviewed Flatiron School fellow Erik Aylward about his experience switching careers, completing a code bootcamp, and job hunting for his first developer position.
Introducing a new Ruby gem for building elegant queries without SQL strings.
Yvonne Chen shares her experience and insight on what it takes to facilitate a good meeting.
Emerging themes in code literacy and teaching.
A look at how a Philly nonprofit is trying to create a new generation of coders.
Brian describes highlights of the 2016 DC Baltimiore Perl Workshop.

subset: commoncrawl


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Why does this person deserve the School Spirit Award?
Mrs. Wasilewski is one of the 7th grade science teacher at the Middle school. This is her first year teaching at Millstone. She has started a program where the students are raising Diamond Back terrapins to later release into the Barnegat Bay. The students have learned so much about our local ecology and how important the Bay is to our ecosystem.


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Optimal Stabilization Policy When Wages and Prices are Sticky: The Case of a Distorted Steady State
NBER Working Paper No. 10839
Erceg et al. (2000) show that when both wages and prices are sticky, maximization of expected utility is equivalent to minimizing a loss function with three terms, involving measures of the variability of wage inflation, price inflation and the output gap respectively. Here we generalize their analysis, most importantly by not assuming the existence of output and employment subsidies that eliminate the distortions resulting from market power in goods and labor markets, so that the equilibrium level of output under flexible wages and prices would not necessarily be optimal. We show that a quadratic loss function can still be justified that involves the same three terms, albeit with different relative weights and a different definition of the output gap. Many conclusions of Erceg et al. are thus found to apply more generally. However, we argue that in the presence of significant steady-state distortions, simple rules of the kind that they examine are likely to approximate optimal policy less closely than is suggested by their numerical results.
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w10839
Published: Pierpaolo Benigno & Michael Woodford, 2005. "Optimal stabilization policy when wages and prices are sticky: the case of a distorted steady state," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), pages 127-180. citation courtesy of
Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:
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2-3 марта! Соревнования по ледолазанию «ICE CAMEL 2013»
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City of CoronaHome Menu
Streets: Lights, Sidewalks, Sweeping, and Trees
The City of Corona works to keep the City's streets in excellent repair.
The City of Corona is responsible for maintaining and repairing the City's roadways, sidewalks, curbs, gutters, lights, trees, and catch basins. Our staff strives to provide the residents of Corona with dependable, quality service.
Looking to request service?
- To request minor repairs and/or maintenance of a City sidewalk, roadway, curb or gutter, please call Maintenance Services at (951) 736-2234 or submit an Online Service Request.
- Major rehabilitation and construction of street facilities is handled by the Capital Improvement Projects Section of Public Works. For service, please call (951) 736-2266 or submit an Online Service Request.
- To report emergency conditions, please call the Corona Police Department at (951) 736-2330, option 3.
Street Tree Maintenance
Trees not only beautify the City of Corona, they also cast welcome shade on streets and sidewalks.
Help us care for the trees in the City:
- See a City tree that needs pruning - or has roots pushing up a sidewalk or that you would like assessed for removal eligibility?
Please contact us at (951) 736-2234, or fill out an online form.
Note: This number and form are for trees maintained by the City of Corona.
- View list of Street Trees Approved by the City of Corona Maintenance Services Department
Street Lighting
With nearly 11,500 street lights to maintain, the City works hard to ensure efficiency and safety for all vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic.
The City of Corona manages three Lighting Maintenance Districts (LMD), LMD 84-1, LMD 2003-1, and CFD 2011-1. These Lighting Maintenance Districts pay for the costs of ongoing maintenance and improvement of public street lights and traffic signals, which provides special benefits to properties within the boundary of the District. Special benefits are defined as improvements that increase the desirability or value of property directly associated with the enhancements. Assessments are established on a "zone-by-zone" basis and are paid by the property owners annually for a portion of the maintenance costs in their zone.
To read more about the Lighting Maintenance Districts 84-1 and 2003-1, please visit the Landscape Management Districts page.
To report a problem with a street light, please call (951) 736-2234, or place an Online Service Request.
Street Sweeping
The City of Corona contracts with Clean Street, Inc. for street sweeping services. Has your street been missed or do you have other concerns? Call the Maintenance Services Department at (951) 736-2234.
The City's goal is to ensure that all arterial, residential, industrial and alley roadways are kept clean. Maintaining clean streets keeps Corona beautiful and assists in complying with the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) requirements.
View Interactive Street Sweeping Map
Enter your address number, then select your street to see the street sweeping schedule.


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As instant messaging and texting grows in popularity, the need for messenger etiquette has become a bigger requirement. Texting and instant messaging has become the preferred communication for younger people, supplanting email.
Here are some basic etiquette points for instant messaging:
1) Use the "away" feature responsibly. Do not say you are "away" and leave your computer for two hours. You can be away for up to 10 minutes. More than that, you should log off.
2) Respond to comments within 1.5 minutes. If you take longer, other people participating will assume you are gone or you don't care.
3) If you are in a group conversation and somebody else wants to be invited to join, ask the members of the group if it is ok to include this other person in the conversation. It is rude to impose somebody else's presence on others.
4) If you use acronyms, make sure the people involved in the conversation know what they mean. Otherwise, your message could be misinterpreted.
5) Say "good bye" before you sign off.
6) Be careful of what you write in your instant messages. Conversations can be saved and used against you at any time. The document can be printed or forwarded to the wrong people. Keep that in mind.
7) Wait for your party's response. Don't send message after message asking for response.
8) Don't type in CAPITALS. It is shouting and it is rude.
9) Use your judgement when you use emoticons. Some of them can be misinterpreted and the conversation can take the wrong turn.
10) If you are in a common room using a computer, turn the sound off to not disturb the others. This gesture is highly appreciated.
These simple rules can take you a long way in your relationship with others, your computer friends and the ones sharing the room with you. Consideration to others is never wrong.
We would love to hear it! Share your experience about how good Internet etiquette (including cell phones and other electronic gadgets) has made the difference for you!


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To connect your Custom Search Engine account with Google AdSense, visit the Make money tab in your search engine's control panel.
Fill in the form with the email address that you use with your AdSense account, your zip code, and the last 5 digits of your phone number. We'll use this information to connect your Custom Search Engine account to your AdSense account and you can start making money immediately.


text: So how does autopilot work exactly? If I'm driving toward a person or a house or a wall, does the car automatically sense it in automatically stops? I was told that auto braking is standard and not part of the $2500 AP package. So what are you paying extra for? Blind spot detection? Helping you stay within the lanes on the freeway?


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Tata Sky 1 Month Dhamaal Kids Pack SD
- Tata Sky DTH Channel Pack: Dhamaal Kids Pack
- Tata Sky DTH HD Channels: 0
- Tata Sky DTH SD Channels: 189
- Region: ROI
- Duration: 1 month
- Tata Sky Set Top Box Type: High Definition (HD)
Call us: 022-61392200
Standard Defination(SD)
Forget the poor performance of local cable network and bring home Tata Sky DTH Set Top Box. The program guide gives you all the information that you require regarding what is available with this package. With this DTH set top box, you can view only those programs that you want anytime. With a wide range of features and functionalities, it makes for a completely user-friendly system. Now you can order this compact entertainment package with a 12-month warranty at your fingertips. Unlike generic DTH set top boxes, Tata Sky offers a host of exciting services such as Actve Services and Showcase, our Pay-Per-View movie service. Tata Sky DTH also gives you the luxury to select the shows of your choice through innovative packaging offerings such as Make My Pack and TruChoice. When you buy Tata Sky DTH Dhamaal Kids Pack, you can be sure that you will be able to get a good deal of usage out of it since it can withstand harsh weather of every kind.
Pack Details
|Pack Name :
|Dhamaal Kids Pack
|Pack Duration :
|1 month
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Channels Details
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|Dolby Digital Surround
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|1 Year On Set Top Box
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Olivine Atelier You Are Loved Gift Box Set
$29.00 was $39.00
or make 4 interest-free payments of $7.25 fortnightly with More info
This product is currently sold out.
2 oz (60ml) of Love + Salt
2 oz (60ml) of Love + Roses
Love + Roses is 100% natural, vegan, cruelty-free, eco-friendly (the glass bottles are reusable and recyclable) and made in small batches with love in the Pacific Northwest of America.
100% vegan and animal friendly
What it does: Silkens and tones skin, refreshes weary hair and makeup, uplifts the spirit.
How to use? Mist liberally on face, hair, and body for instant hydration and soul-affirming aromatherapy.
Ingredients: Unconditional love*, Water, Glycerin, Rosa Damascena Flower Water*, Cassia Augustifolia Seed Polysaccharide, Radish Root Ferment Filtrate, Phospholipids, Hydrolyzed Oat Protein, Panthenol, Phosphorus, Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate, Calcium Pantothenate, Magnesium Salicylate, Zinc Gluconate, Moringa Seed Extract, Dextrin, Rhodiola Rosea Root Extract, Rosa Damascena (Rose) Flower Oil*, Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower Oil*, Polysorbate 20, Flower & Gem Essences.
1 Gift Box full of LOVE
All prices are in AUD (Australian Dollars)


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To make a reservation or inquire about booking a large party at the Cat and Fiddle Pub
please fill out the information below.
If you are looking for a youth team wrap up party please let us know and we will tell you about our special packages!
For Fundraising please see the FUNDRAISERS tab up top and make sure to read the information package and submit a fundraiser form.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Thank you for your interest in booking your party at the Cat & Fiddle.
You will be hearing back from us soon to confirm your reservation.


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My entirely handsewn, somewhat insane corded petticoat. The petticoat is made from two widths of cotton broadcloth and is 90 inches around. It's corded with 62 rows of Sugar and Cream crochet cotton, which is about 1/8 inch in diameter. The cords are sewn in with a running stitch. The petticoat is gathered evenly all around and closes with a button on the left side.
Pictures from Costume Con 23. I decided since so much work went into the corded petticoat and corded corset, that I wanted to wear them around. Plus, since I wore them Sunday, it was much easier to get ready for the historic masquerade that night, since I'd already have the corset on :)
A side view and a view of the petticoat under two flounced petticoats, a plain petticoat and my 1840 dress. Though the petticoat does flatten somewhat under all that weight, it still gives good support and keeps things from wrapping around your ankles.
A close-up of the cording.


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In the latest episode of Fuse's digital series Backatcha, Gabby Glaser and Jill Cunniff—aka 2/3 of Luscious Jackson—recount some of their first albums, videos and major festival gigs. Somehow, it involves Debbie Harry clutching a terrified-looking puppy, but hey, rock n' roll is a crazy business.
"Sheryl Crow came on stage to play harmonica and our DJ didn't realize that she was going to play harmonica," says Glaser, recounting a stage flub right off the bat. "She's about to play, and then he put on the sample of harmonica... and she's like, 'What the heck is going on?!'"
Luscious Jackson were one of the acts to join the positive, feminist festival Lilith Fair in the '90s, and they share a shot of festival founder and organizer Sarah McLachlan practicing with them backstage. "She came out on stage with us pretty much every night," says Cunniff. "All the girls would sing, and they'd really show off!"
Looking back on 1992's In Search of Manny, Luscious Jackson's first record, they say the art was inspired by an unexpected muse. Glaser's mother dated a 17-year-old named Manny when she was 34, and photos of him around the house inspired the cover for their first album.
"He embodied our childhood in a way, that crazy '70s free spirit," recalls Cunniff. "We grew up in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side in the '70s, and it was such a different time in New York. We were using '70s sounds on In Search of Manny—we used a lot of '70s funk sounds, and soul. I guess I responded to the fact that he was this major '70s character with the open shirt."
So how does Blondie work into all of this? Luscious Jackson were over at famed producer Tony Visconti's house recording "Fantastic Fabulous," and Harry "sang with [Cunniff] on the chorus and did a bunch of stuff. Amazing person."
Their first video, "Daughters of the Chaos," was shot on the sly without a permit, with Tamra Davis (Billy Madison; Half Baked) directing and Spike Lee on cinematography. "We just ran around L.A. in really silly clothes," says Gabby. "It was great kind of looking like hookers! Actually, when we look back on it, we did look like hookers, but we had no idea back then." Jill laughs. "We thought our style was really awesome!"


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It's an Aladeen S#!$ Storm of hilarity.
This movie is really really REALLY Aladeen but at the same time it is also Aladeen. What's that? Can't understand what the blazes I am saying? Oh well allow me to clarify. In the movie, the word "Aladeen" is used as either the word "good" or "bad". So let's go back to my original comment shall we?
This movie is really really REALLY Aladeen (Bad) but at the same time it is also Aladeen (Good). There. I think that should clear things up.
Here's the best way to describe this movie: RIDICULOUS. You know it, I know it, Everyone knows it. However there are some movies that CAN pull off being completely ridiculous and still be funny. This movie does actually end up being in the category of good yet RIDICULOUS.
The jokes are insane, offensive, racial, and sometimes disgusting in all points of the movie. I will not spoil it (because it was the most hilarious scene in the movie), but the Helicopter scene will definately piss off some people who do not have that kind of sense of humor. Honestly I don't want people to get upset at this part. It's just how Sacha Baron Cohen is really. If you've seen BORAT or even BRUNO for that matter, and you are now seeing THE DICTATOR, then honestly I am assuming you are used to his sense of humor by now.
I honestly am expecting everyone who goes to see this movie to understand that this really is just an excuse to go see something that is completely hysterical. Don't expect oscar worthy performances, or groundbreaking cinematography here.
While the movie is really funny I would like to point out something important about this film:
The story is not very good and honestly is a twisted version of "The Prince and the Pauper". I was shocked to see stars Anna Farris (well not that shocked for her case), Ben Kingsley, John C. Reilly, and even Edward Norton (yeah EDWARD NORTON is in this movie. He has a 30 second cameo that shows him just getting done having sex with some unimportant chinese dude. I AM Dead Friggen Serious Here!) are involved with this film. I think that people who are in this kind of movie are really just asking to be "less respected". Sigghhh… Sometimes taking a really big check from Hollywood is not the greatest idea.
Honestly that's really all I can say about this movie.
To sum up here is what I am saying briefly: Movie is really bad when it comes to plot and story overall, but is absolutely hysterical. I would only recommend it ONLY if you are used to Sacha Baron Cohen by now.
To end this review, I have put the link to the Aladeen Song here: Click Here.
IMDB Score: 7.0
My Score: 5.0 (for story level) and 8.0 (for comedy level)


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He is among 22 Republicans receiving a perfect 100% score, as rated by the Conservative Review.
Related reading -- the ultimate puff pice, actually
The hopeful signs in the first 100 days of a freshman congressman. (The Hill, 5/1/2017)
Instead, Gallagher's first 100 days have been refreshing and may portend the type of congressional vision offered by a new class of millennial leaders. Gallagher appears intent on offering bold reforms to address key policy concerns that have the potential to unleash American ingenuity, while at the same time taking the necessary steps to secure the homeland.
What he has done is align himself with the most conservative members of Congress.


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SRUTI – Sing | Record | Upload | Thirai | Isai
SRUTI is a "First Of It's Kind Global Online Singing Contest Exclusively For Tamil Film Songs".
SRUTI is an idea conceived by singers and Jury members of the popular music reality show on Zee Tamil, SaReGaMaPa, Vinod Venugopal & Reshmi.
Vinod Venugopal – Singer/Entrepreneur is a seasoned musician who has sung supporting vocals for composers like Ilaiyaraaja, MSV, Vidyasagar and has performed alongside leading playback singers of Tamil Cinema like Chitra, Sujatha, Karthick, Srinivas, Unni Menon, Shweta to name a few.
Reshmi – An acclaimed playback singer with over 300 songs to her credit. Her hits include Manasukulle Dhaagam Vanello (Autograph) & Unnai Ninaikeve (Jay Jay). Has performed with legends like SPB, Chitra, Sujatha.
SRUTI breaks the shackles of geographical regions, proximity and physical presence by giving a platform to participate in a singing contest from the comforts of one's home. Our goal is to become the largest community of Tamil music singers in the world who produce authentic, yet groundbreaking performances. We shall connect aspiring singers
to the magic world of 'Tamil Movie Musicdom.'
We look forward to creating a niche space for music aspirants to use this forum as a launch pad for the constant Talent hunt that goes on in the Kollywood industry.
The Process
The whole competition runs online.The contestants use our website www.singinsruti.com to register & submit their entries. The entire competition is spread over 60 days, 2 age categories, 5 rounds & in 7 genres.
The entire campaign for the competition is run on our facebook page
SRUTI Season 1 was launched with the blessings of Ghatam Vidwan Padma Bhushan Sri.Vikku Vinayakram & Playback Singer Sujatha.
Season 1 had 4 age categories and was launched on 1st August 2018 & the finals was on 2nd October 2018.
The finalists of Season 1 went on to appear on popular Music Reality Shows like Zee Tamil SaReGaMaPa & Vijay TV Super Singer.
SRUTI Season 2 is set to launch on 6th November 2019 & the finals is going to be held on 19th January 2020.
SRUTI Season 2 will be in 2 Age Categories ie Juniors (upto 15yrs) & Seniors (above 15yrs)-Sathish, PRO:AIM
www.singinsruti.com | www.facebook.com/singinsruti
Ph : 9841071971 | E-mail : firstname.lastname@example.com


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I should be spending my time typing up 40 or so references for a paper I'm working on, but I think in properly researching Monday links I'm showing that my priorities lie in the right place…we will start off with Seth Meyer's opening ESPYs monologue.
Steve Jobs press conference…collegehumor dot com style.
The best, best of craigslist, post I've ever seen.
Why oh why do I find watching a robot learning to flip pancakes entertaining?


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Audix OM-2 Mic with Cable and Stand 4 Pack
Sku #585978000000000
Dynamic Microphones
- Write a Review
45 day price guarantee, 45 day return policy, 100% secure shopping
Complete stage package for four vocalists.
Includes 4 Audix OM2 handheld dynamic mics, 4 Gear One 20' mic cables, and 4 Musician's Gear MS-220 tripod mic stands with fixed boom.
Audix OM2:
The American-made Audix OM2 is a hand-held dynamic vocal microphone designed primarily for live performance. With a hypercardioid pickup pattern and a frequency response of 50-16k Hz, the OM2 mic has the same well-balanced, comfortable profile as Audix's high-end touring vocal microphones. The OM2 featuries a low reflective black e-coat finish.
Transformerless design, low impedance, and balanced output allow interference-free performance even with long cable runs. A dent-resistant spring-steel grill and sound pressure handling capabilities in excess of 140dB add to the Audix OM2's road-worthiness.
Gear One Microphone Cable:
For serious-minded musicians, Gear One's XLR cables have the strength and durability to withstand more than everyday use. Since your cable is your sound, this XLR mic cable's superior wiring allows your signal to be quiet, eliminating frustrating hums, buzzing, and crackles.
Musician's Gear MS-220 Tripod Mic Stand with Fixed Boom:
The MS-220 Tripod Microphone Stand has a thread adapter and tubular legs. Its adjustable height from floor to top thread is 35" to 61-7/8". The 30-1/4" fixed boom is not adjustable.
- :
- Transducer Type: Dynamic
- Frequency Response: 50 Hz- 16kHz
- Polar Pattern: Hypercardioid
- Output Impedance 250 ohms
- Sensitivity: 71.5dB
- Capsule Technology VLM Type B
- Off axis rejection >25dB
- Maximum SPL: >140dB
- Cable/Connector: 3 pin gold plated male XLR
- Polarity: Positive voltage on pin 2 relative to pin 3 of output XLR connector
- Housing: Zinc alloy
- Accessories: adjustable mic clip with 5/8" 27 thread stand adapter, zippered carrying pouch
- Dimension: (L x D): 6.73" x .944" (shaft)
- Weight: 10.5 oz/298 grams
- :
- Thread adapter
- Tubular leg
- Adjustable height from floor to top thread 35" to 61-7/8"
- Fixed boom: 30-1/4"
- :
- Sturdy construction for enhanced signal and performance
- Flexible mic cable design eliminates kinks and twists for a tangle-free performance in-studio and onstage


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Almost 20 Northern Territory plants and animals been added to the federal government's threatened species list.
The conservation status of two already threatened animal species have also been upgraded while the southern marsupial mole has been removed from the list altogether, the NT Department of Land Resource Management says.
The department's species conservation director Simon Ward is pleased to see the marsupial bouncing back and says they're incredibly difficult to track because they inhabit some of the Territory's most remote areas.


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A Memorial Service for
Julie Sassano-Robbins was held on Wednesday, December 10, 2008
at Crossroads Church of Denver in the main sanctuary.
Tom Stipe, Julie's pastor of over twenty years was the officiating pastor and a reception followed the service at Crossroads.
The order of service for the memorial was as follows:
Memorial Service
Crossroads Church of Denver
December 10, 2008
In Celebration of the Life of
Julie Sassano-Robbins
November 23, 1954—December 7, 2008
Prelude Music and Opening Hymn–Kimberley Rose Peters
Scripture Reading–Maryellen Stipe
Kevin Rodgers–Representing John Robbins
Judy Crewell–Representing the Robbins Children
Nikki DeWolf–Representing the Sassano Family
Cheri Baenisch—Representing Friends
Maryellen Stipe–Representing Brothers and Sisters of Crossroads
Memorial Message Pastor Tom Stipe
Closing Music Kevin Rodgers
Maryellen Stipe shared the following eulogy:
I first met Julie when she was a young mom and came as a visitor to our church. She had been encouraged to a deeper relationship with Christ by a young man that she worked with. The young man attended church here and Julie responded to his invitation to meet him at one of the services; she first visited as his guest. Julie loved our church from the beginning and soon realized that she had found a church home. She began attending regularly and brought her children with her.
Kacey was just a baby when they started coming to Crossroads and I have a son who is one year older. I first remember meeting Julie as we checked our children into the nursery. Thomas is now 21, so that is how long Julie had been a part of us (almost 20 years). Kacey and Thomas were friends throughout Sunday school and went on to attend Ralston Valley High School together, we always had that in common.
I really became friends with Julie when she began attending women's ministry events and as it would turn out Julie would become a devoted participant in women's ministry throughout the years. My fondest memories of Julie will always be working in the Lord's service along side her. I will never forget Julie's enthusiasm as a ministry co-worker who was always available to help with any event that catered to the needs of women.
I remember Julie from the beginning as always being very passionate about her faith in Jesus Christ and she began serving very soon after she started attending the church. Julie was always about pitching in and helping–and as she did so–she would always share a part of herself. She would share freely about her life and faith with anyone who would listen.
She loved her family dearly and they were second only to God in her life. In addition to John and her kids, we also all knew about the clan in Montana and all the nieces and nephews as they came along. Julie always gave of herself self-sacrificially to her family–whether it be those related by blood or her church family here at Crossroads.
We will all miss Julie's vibrant personality in our midst; she always brought a smile and was the eternal optimist. (And I really appreciate people like Julie because I can tend to be a pessimist.) I will always be personally grateful for her positive outlook and I will forever value the up-beat contribution she made to any team she ever served on. Julie had a quick wit and always kept us entertained with her comebacks. She was a character!
She contributed tirelessly to Crossroads with her time and energies. She poured herself into what ever she became involved in—and as far as her involvement in women's ministry—she did it all. She came to Bible Study, she was a mentor mom for MOPS and most of all she loved to help with the events.
Julie never missed a women's retreat and she was a faithful volunteer who helped every year with the Christmas Tea. Her greatest contribution to the teas was as the food prep coordinator and she and (later she and Kacey) would run that area with precision. She was a general when it came to leading women in serving others.
She was best known for her version of Devonshire cream. No one could make it like Julie. She would go up in the kitchen by herself shut the door and emerge with a heavenly concoction no one could ever match. This year we had the caterer try to make it and not even the professionals could do it as well as Julie.
Julie's other great love around the church was to work in the nursery and she was a faithful volunteer with the babies for years. She loved babies and babies loved her. She would work side by side with Dick Becker and (those two could run a nursery) the little ones—under their charge–always had the very best of care. She had a magic touch with them and could calm them down and make them happy like no one else.
I got a chance to visit Julie at the hospital during this last stay. I am not an avid hospital call pastor because I don't do well seeing people in pain and I have been known to pass out. Well Julie knows this about me and was kind of surprised when I came through the door—she was concerned about how I would do. I did fine however and Julie joked with Judy about it the next day. When I visited I told her how proud we all were of her and what an inspiration she had been as she fought the good fight battling the cancer. Towards the end I visited Julie one last time and told her how much we all loved her, how much we would all miss her and I said good-bye for all of us.
My love goes out to John, Kacey, Ian and the rest of the family as I know their hearts are aching like all of ours. I pray that God's comfort will be with us all. Julie is in heaven and is experiencing joy and peace and Jesus like never before—we are the ones experiencing loss, loss of the friend that we loved so much and it is right that we should grieve together. But let's also remember where Julie is today and be happy and celebrate for her—because she has finished what really was a difficult journey and is finally home.
To view condolences and rememberances of the life of
Julie Sassano-Robbins
Please view the page entitled "Remembering Julie Robbins"
which is listed in the "Pages" sidebar.
You are invited to add your rememberances of Julie of to that page
Please feel free to add your comment there.


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Lately I'm taking a hard look at all the stuff I'm bringing with me, all the selfmade projects and items, all the clothes.. And now I just need to pick carefully the items that I truly need. For example; The crossman airgun that I will be taking with me is the heaviest item in the kit, It is nothing but an airpistol with a shoulderstock. And a shoulderstock makes shooting easier but if I have to, I will leave it here to safe space and weight. Then there's the thick blanket I was planning on taking with me for sleeping, It takes up so much space that I can't put it in the bag and have to strap it on top of the bag. But do I realy, truly, need to bring it with me? I will be leaving during the hottest months of the year.. Could I not just sleep in my clothes? When winter comes making a blanket myself with fur isn't such a strange idea.
At the moment I'm looking at each and every item and ask myself 'Is it usefull?' I have to keep it real.. All I realy need to take with me is Clothing, Food and several smaller items that are extremely usefull and that cannot be made in the wild (Compass, Fishinghooks, Maps, Firesteel etc).
3 more months left and bored like hell because I have less stuff to do. I am still working on my field manual, something I will write about later on.
The Cranberries - Zombie


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Call Now - 01254 390542
Terry (Teresa) Tyrrell
Peacefully on Friday 25th December in White Ash Brook Care Home, Oswaldtwistle, Terry aged 87 years.
A dearly loved wife of the late Christopher, a much loved mother of Bernard and Jane, a dear mother in law of Carmen and Mick, a dear sister of Michael and a treasured nana of Rachael, Matthew, Emma and Stacey.
Her funeral service will be held on Friday 8th January, 2016 at Accrington Crematorium, at 11.00am. Flowers are welcome c/o Barton & Hallworth Funeral Service, The Old Foxhill, 136 Union Road, Oswaldtwistle. Tel: 01254 390542.
Hyndburn Funeral Service Accrington


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FAB = Fashion and Beauty 😉
I recently ordered a few things from YesStyle for the first time. I took advantage of some coupons during Black Friday and I'm pretty happy with what I got!
First are these cute panda tights. I love pandas! The tights fit well — I sometimes found Korean hosiery too small (although this is a Japanese brand, mind you). I also like that they give the illusion of knee highs, but I don't have to pull them all the time like knee highs.
I also got this oversized, warm knit sweater. Oversized sweaters/tops seem to be a "thing" with Korean girls (from what I saw). I grew to like the style. It's not as pink as I thought — more of a very pale pink. I love it though!
I also got this t-shirt and suspender skirt set. When I opened the package I was worried it wouldn't fit because it looked very small. Although the shirt is snug on me, it's not uncomfortable. The skirt is just the right length too. I found, in Korea, that I had to really check out skirts/dresses because most Korean girls don't have as much going on in the back. That meant dresses could go from being cute to somewhat obscene on me lol.
Although I do have some qualms with how it's constructed. Honestly, the zipper wasn't put in well (as in, it shows more than it should), but it's not that terrible.
The make-up is from Tony Moly. Totally cute packaging, and I really like the products. The are, unfortunately, not available on YesStyle anymore so I'm not sure if that means they are out of stock, or if Tony Moly no longer sells them.
[edit] I found both products at Jolse.com!
Panda's Dream So Cool Eye Stick
Here's another look at the outfit:
Overall I'm pretty happy with YesStyle, and I'd order from there again. Have you guys ever ordered from there?
Thanks for reading!
(P.S. I now have a Facebook page – Oh My Happy Dae!)


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Technology Demonstration
We have two demonstration sites established in the satellite center in Trece Martires City and in ATI-Region IVA Complex inside the UP Los Banos to showcase appropriate cultural practices on organic fruit trees and heliconia production. In the satellite center, various fruit trees and vegetables are planted in about .5 hectare lot. In ATI-Region IVA, different species of Heliconias are planted in about 500 meter lot and 250 fruit trees planted around the vicinity. The two sites has been maintained since 2002. Harvested heliconias served as adornment in the training halls since 2003 and the trees are already bearing fruits since 2007.


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Wow! I finally have a political blog. I can't tell you how often my wife and the dogs have encouraged me find a bigger audience for my passion for political debate.
Why am I calling myself "Democrat Dave?" My good friend, a grassroots and PAC political consultant–Amy Showalter–gave me this moniker many years ago during a conference we attended in Newport, Rhode Island. I've been called worse! So, I'm going to go by the moniker "Democrat Dave."
I care deeply about our country and our standing in the world. George Bush has made us the laughing stock of the world. He didn't achieve the lowest approval rating of any President without effort. It's time to move on to a new vision, to new hope for our future. It's time to put our focused efforts and energy into electing Barack Obama. I applaud Joe Biden for joining Barack on the ticket. Great choice. Great leaders choose strong people.
I plan to write often. Stay tuned.
All the best…Democrat Dave


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Our Mission
Owl Child Care provides nurturing, play-based early learning to support each child in realizing their potential while giving families peace of mind.
About OWL CHILD CARE SERVICES OF ONTARIO
Soaring high since 1981, Owl has provided a nurturing environment and we are now welcoming second and third generations of children into our care. Owl has grown to seven centres in Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, serving over 1000 children each day! Our vision, mission, values, beliefs, and accomplishments have all contributed to our success as being a leader in providing quality care for children 3 months to 10 years of age.
Our registered Early Childhood Educators (RECEs) use play-based learning to maximize each child's developmental potential. Play-based learning builds upon children's natural inclination to make sense of the world through play. The six primary areas of learning are; Creativity/innovation, Health & physical activity, Language, Numeracy, Personal and social development, and Science.
With Owl's nurturing educators, nutritious snacks and lunches prepared on-site daily, and outdoor activities twice per day, it's no wonder we have a strong reputation in the communities we serve.


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Mel B is opening up about the health scare that caused her to temporarily lose her eyesight.
The Spice Girls member was hospitalized last week after she'd supposedly gone "totally blind" after something rendered her unable to see with her right eye. An insider told the Daily Mail, "Mel was frantic and screaming that she couldn't see a thing," and therefore was rushed to London's Moorfields Eye Hospital on Friday (May 17).
After undergoing treatment, a spokeswoman for the 43-year-old told the publication Mel's situation was "under control."
Now, Mel, who is recovering from the episode, took to Instagram Tuesday (May 21) to speak about what actually happened.
"Just so you know the real truth. I had an awful experience last week when I went blind in my right eye and my left eye went blurry," Scary Spice along with a black-and-white image of her sporting an eye patch. "… just to be clear I was NOT ok and this has NEVER EVER happened to me before … I was actually in a lot of pain and very very scared but thanks to the incredible eye specialists in A&E at London's Moorfields Hospital and after at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital I was diagnosed by and eye specialist with severe IRITIS in my right eye and UVEITIS in my left eye."
These conditions are characterized as the inflammation of the iris of the eye, and can also cause redness, pain and blurred vision, as Mel described in her account. She lost vision in her left eye 20 years ago after a botched laser surgery.
Thankfully, "multiple prescription heavy duty eye drops and other medication" are keeping the inflammation at bay, though Mel says the condition may not go away for another 3-4 four months.
As of yet, the singer is still expected to embark on the Spice Girls reunion tour starting May 24.
Get well, Mel!
Photo: Getty Images


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Today, Planned Parenthood of Kansas (PP) is decrying the just-passed pro-life insurance bill, HB 2075, that Missouri enacted in 1983 and that Blue Cross of Kansas City has implemented in Kansas for decades.
HB 2075 includes the contents of a pro-life bill filed by Rep. Pete DeGraaf (R-Mulvane) that removes abortion from being automatically covered in standard private health plans, other than those obtained to prevent the death of the mother.
Kansas insurers will be allowed to offer abortion coverage only through individually-purchased riders, which the AP reported as costing $2. READ MORE on the new bill here.
The real reason PP is squawking is that they'll be losing their cash-cow: insurance-paid abortion.
Kansas statistics show over 40% of abortions are repeats, i.e. the second, third , fourth or fifth time the same woman has obtained an abortion! Unquestionably, when employers are freed from buying elective abortion coverage for their employees, abortion numbers will be reduced.
In their media release,PP is claiming the pro-life provisions were advanced due to improper legislative procedure –quite ironic considering PP has been stalling 107 criminal charges for 8 years.
That was the tactic used all week to try to stop the bill by Sen. Ruth Teichman (R-Stafford). She dropped her objection when she got provisions in the clean-up bill she wanted –and left Sen.Pete Brungardt (R-Salina) to try to strip out the pro-life insurance bill on the Senate floor Thursday night by formally challenging it under 'procedural Rule 3'.
The state revisor's office advised acting-Senate president, Sen. John Vratil (R-Overland Park), that the procedural Rule could be equally interpreted as allowing or not allowing the pro-life bill. Pro-abortion Vratil chose the "not allowed" position and Sen. Ty Masterson (R-Andover) challenged Vratil's ruling.
The Senate upheld Masterson, by a vote of 21-18, that the pro-life measure was permitted in the conference committee report. The Senate then approved the conference report and sent it to the House by a vote of 28-10.
The House initially rejected the conference report due to objections from Rep. Virgil Peck (R-Tyro) about the group insurance component, but hours later, the House passed the report 86-30. During debate–yet again–about Rule 3 , the House voted 77-31 to support the ruling of acting Speaker Rep. Jene Vickrey (R-Louisburg) that the pro-life insurance measure was permitted in the report.
In the final round of debate, opponents to the pro-life measure were state Reps. Barb Bollier (R-Mission Hills), Ann Mah (D-Topeka), and Annie Kuether (D-Topeka). Supporters were bill sponsor, Rep. Pete DeGraaf (R-Mulvane), and House Judiciary Chairman, Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe).
If the new federal healthcare law is not struck down, the state exchanges will begin in 2014, and states are allowed to prevent abortion coverage. The language of HB 2075 would also prevent any future 'Obamacare' state health exchanges from including abortion coverage.
Though PP's press release today said they are considering a lawsuit,
that is a lot of bluster. Courts are reluctant to get involved with analyzing the internal actions of legislatures, particularly when the paper trail shows the rules were followed!
As to lawsuit threats, an action earlier this week doesn't bode well for Planned Parenthood. An Obama-appointed federal judge declined a request by Planned Parenthood to issue a temporary restraining order blocking a new Indiana state law yanking PP's taxpayer funding.


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Complete the form below and we'll get back to you with availability and prices. You can also email us at [email protected], or if you really want to kick it old skool, you can call Kim on 07411 845 752.
We are all about connecting with people. That means you could never write too much about yourselves! Knowing who you are and what's close to your heart is just as important as details of your day. Let us know what makes you tick.
We have limited availability and are only able to join around 30 weddings each year (we wish we could do more!). Being able to be fully present with each couple on their wedding day and give the same thoughtfulness & attention to their images afterwards, as well as having a healthy balance with family life, is super important to us. Don't hang about if you've got a date in mind!
** Now taking bookings for 2019/2020 **


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Posts tagged 'statistics'
Top Careers after Retiring from the NFL
Just in time for the Super Bowl, the analytics wizards at LinkedIn have created an infographic about what National Football League (NFL) players do after hanging up their cleats:
NotJobs: I'm Clearly the Best Candidate!
Suzanna Lucas, The Evil HR Lady, is one of my favorites. Earlier, she wrote the perfect takedown of an applicant with an entitlement attitude: I'm Clearly the Best Candidate–So Why Am I Not Getting the Job?
To start the discussion, the applicant ponders:
I heard that 85% of the time it's not the most qualified candidate that gets the job. I'm still searching for that 15% job.
I'm doing something wrong in the interviews. I've been a finalist a few times now but not gotten the job. Sadly, I used to be good at interviewing.
Anyways, if nothing else you could tell me a couple of great subject lines to use.
The Evil HR Lady responds:
A great couple of lines will not get you a job. Neither will the idea that you're not getting the job because hiring managers hire the less qualified person 85% of the time. And, if there's ever been a made up statistic, that's one of them.
To be honest, as long as no one is lying on their resume (and that is a big caveat), that by the time you've made it through the resume screen and the phone screen, all candidates being interviewed could do the job and are qualified. It's doubtful any recruiter or hiring manager is saying, "Gee I need an accountant who is experienced in Hedge funds. So, let's bring in this guy who has experience and 3 other people who don't have a clue about that area!" Nope. All the people interviewing will have the necessary experience.
You said you used to be good at interviewing, but now you are not. May I gently suggest that you probably have never been spectacularly good at interviewing, but have been in situations where there were fewer qualified candidates to choose from.
It's the market…
See the Evil HR Lady's article here:


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Waiting on WednesdayWaiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine in which we spotlight an upcoming book release we're especially looking forward to!
Here's my pick this week:
The Throne of Glass Colouring BookI don't usually feature colouring books as WoW picks, but an exception had to be made. And here's why: most of the fandom colouring books that have come out recently already have movies or television shows. Which means we already have some visual concept of the world in question. With a Throne of Glass Colouring Book, we're entering fresh territory. Other than our imaginations, (GLORIOUS) maps and some truly spectacular book covers, the world of Throne of Glass remains a mystery. Which is why the idea of seeing some of my favorite characters and scenes brought to life is SO.FREAKING.EXCITING. Woo! Set to release the same day as Empire of Storms, it's clear that 1) Sarah J. Maas is trying to kill her fans -with joy- and 2) that day will forever be known as the day that was made of awesome.
by Sarah J.Maas
Expected Publication: September 6th 2016
by Bloomsbury Children
For the first time, fans of Sarah J. Maas's sweeping New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass saga can experience the vivid imagery of her expansive world. Celaena battling the ridderak in the catacombs, Chaol in the gardens of the glass castle, Manon riding her wyvern through the Crossing, and many other favorite moments, characters, and objects come to life as readers explore the vibrantly detailed realm of Throne of Glass. Stunning original black-and-white drawings will bring fans deeper into the series than ever before-making this a must-have companion to Sarah J. Maas's beloved books.
...You know you are, don't even pretend.


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About our School
Our school has been judged by Ofsted to be a good, positive & supportive Primary School based in Bolton for children between the ages of 4 years and 11 years of age.
The School is situated within the parkland area of Haslam Park and we are very lucky to be surrounded by beautiful trees and wildlife.
The school is a multicultural school and we pride ourselves on making everyone feel valued.
Visits to the school by prospective parents/carers are encouraged at all times.


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The Cover: Full of lies! First of all, they spend the whole trilogy talking about how rundown, dark, dank, and terrifying the house is, yet on the cover it's a lovely, well-lit mansion. Did the artist even read the book? Obviously not since he did NOT include our hero's (Brandt) necklace (which is hugely significant later), painted only one girl (Jinny) that was no more important than the other two girls in the book, and a ghost skull impaled on three spikes (which also didn't happen). Minus ten for realism ghost-artist! P.S. Brandt's hair is awful. AWFUL.
The book revolves around the new family that's moved into the House of Evil. The two parents and their son, Brandt, just moved from Mapolo, which is described as "a tiny, remote island in the Pacific" but is actually a region in the Congo. Why all the lies R.L.? Anyhoo, we know right away that something is up with this family since they constantly refer to Brandt's "condition" but never say what it is. I immediately assume epilepsy! I don't know why… it seems like a "condition" that parents might tip-toe around? Well it's a mystery for most of the book… a mystery that will BLOW. YOUR. MIND. But not in a good way!
We're off to a quick start with death in this one! In the first chapter, the family cat is killed. (Sorry Grocery Crush!) It's impaled by a spear. Harsh! That's how you know it's a Fear Street Trilogy: it doesn't play around with tension fakeouts. And by the next page, the family is over it. Oh Fear Street, never taking the time to properly mourn. Other creepy stuff happens: Brandt is attacked by a crazed raccoon (Awesome, I know), his shoulder is bitten by the ghost of Cally Fraiser, he thinks his father is dead and his closet is full of green smog that tries to kill him (this is never actually explained…)
But enough about the gore, lets get to the whore(s)! Brandt is apparently the best looking guy to ever walk the Street Fear, since girls are just throwing themselves at him! Klutzy blond Abbie just shows up on his doorstep (ready to seduce) while he meet Jinny and Meg at school. And even though Jinny has a boyfriend, you know she wants to jump Brandt's bones. They always do. I guess since the boyfriends in Shadyside always end up being serial killers, they try not to get too attached?
Jinny's BF convinces Brandt to try out for the basketball team (because he's over like 5'10) and Brandt does, even though he emo's about his condition. His condition makes it hard for him to be active for very long. Dear lord, did R.L. give a main character cancer? That's almost … too cruel for Fear Street! But then in the next chapter we get another "condition" clue: when Brandt hits his elbow on the floor, he immediately has a huge bruise. So Brandt … is a hemophiliac? Well maybe not, since in the next chapter, Brandt raises his arm and it falls out of the socket… sick. And also hilarious. Does this happen to people? What IS this condition?!
Well it doesn't stop him from gettin' around! He makes a study date with Jinny on Saturday, a real date with Meg on Sunday, already forgetting he had a date with Abbie on Saturday! What a slut. I hope his condition gives him occasional ED. I mean why not? Nothing else about this "condition" makes sense. Of course for that to happen, these kids would have to move past first base. Which never happens.
So accidents start happening to his dates (karma for playin' around? Only R.L. knows). Jinny goes for some juice in the kitchen-of-garborater-horror and gets her wrists slashed. Ick! Funnily though, his parents are only pissed at him for having a girl over when they weren't home. HA! Way to have your priorities in order Mr and Mrs McCloy! Don't they know that Fear Street residents don't actually have working genitalia?
Brandt gets harassed by a dark shadowy ghost a bunch of times in this book too. Including one time in the halls of his schools, which just seems so un-scary. Also, we're never really told what he thinks these are. I mean, he's freaked out by them, but does he think they're ghosts? His subconscious? Does he think he's going crazy? So many possibilities! Well, three at least.
Ick the next big part involves Brandt discovering the body of the former family's youngest son, James Fraiser. So he really was in the walls! At least that's where Brandt found him. His skeleton was propped up in a wall, clutching the skeleton of a puppy (L) Umm… that's not really what happens when a body decomposes. Their shiny white bones aren't left standing perfectly upright, holding other skeletons. I bet his teeth were chattering too, like a wind-up toy! Ah well, whatever makes the plotline easier for R.L.!
More stuff happens to Brandt's groupies. Abbie nearly gets crushed to death by a suit of metal armour. From the South Pacific Island he used to live on. You know, those huge metal suits that the people from the South Pacific are known to wear… Anyways she's okay, but the next day when Jinny and Meg come over (to seduce him), they accidentally shoot each other in the neck with poison arrow darts. Random! So basically, if Brandt's dad didn't keep all these incredibly dangerous weapons in the house, no one would get hurt? Maybe Brandt's "condition" is that he keeps bumping into the potentially fatal weapons his parents keep lying around the house!
Well we've come to the part I've been eagerly anticipating: the big reveal of Brandt's condition! And R.L. couldn't have done it in a cheesier way. I mean, I honestly don't think it would be possible to make the ending of this book any more absolutely insane than it is. Enjoy.
Abbie turns out to be the ghost of Cally Fraiser. Expect we already knew this since Abbie only ever turned up INSIDE Brandt's house. Which he never questioned (dumbass). Anyways, she decides she wants Brandt to stay with her forever (as her undead boyfriend) and chops him in the head with a hatchet!! Which I'm guessing she also stole from Mr. McCloy's box labeled "Dangerous Weapons to Hang on Wall Haphazardly". But the hatchet isn't the best part. Brandt doesn't die! I'll let R.L. do what he's best at: butchering books and teenagers.
"Brandt's arm reached up. He yanked the hatchet from his skull. And tossed it to the floor. It was his turn to smile.
As his smile widened, Cally's face clouded in anger. 'What's going on here?' she demanded. 'Why didn't you bleed? Why aren't you dead?'
'My condition –' Brand began
'Condition? What condition?' she demanded. (*PS How did she miss that? His parents talked about it in EVERY chapter!)
'You can't kill me,' Brandt told her. 'I'm already dead!'"
That's right people. BRANDT IS A MOTHER EFFING ZOMBIE.
We learn that Brandt died on his South Pacific island and the medicine man took the life force of a hobo and put it into Brandt's freshly dead corpse. He has to constantly wear a necklace with the toenail clippings (sick sick sick) of the hobo to retain said life force. Anyways, right after he finishes explaining his miraculous recovery to Abbie/Ghost of Cally Fraiser, the black shadowy ghost appears behind her. It's the ghost of the hobo! He's come to take his life back! WTF?! Was he just waiting for the most dramatic moment to do this? Stalking Brandt until a time where he thought "Ah, this will provide the most dramatic irony!"? Then the best thing happens. The hobo steals the necklace back and:
" 'My heart is beating!' the drifter cried joyfully. 'I'm alive!'
He vanished silently down the stairs."
UMMM WHAT? He just walks out? Then what? Hops a plane back to the South Pacific? Starts a new life there? Sets up shop in Shadyside maybe?? He's not pissed at Brandt and wants revenge?! I think out of all the possible endings to that story, this made absolutely the least sense. Just… w.t.f.
So the story ends with ZOMBIE Brandt shriveling up and poof-ing away (ala Buffy) and the Ghost of Cally Fraiser emo-ing about how lonely she is. All she wants is a boyfriend!
Okay. I can't even offer any excuses for this book. It was flat out awful. Let's talk about ZOMBIE Brandt's ZOMBIE condition, shall we? Most importantly: why did he get a huge bruise when he fell down if he can't bleed, as exposition-ed by Abbie/Ghost of Cally Fraiser. Why did his arm just fall out of its socket? And why can't he run for more than five minutes? Are there zombie rules I don't know about? I mean, he could RUN so he wasn't a shuffling, drooling zombie. But apparently he could fall to pieces from a vigorous gust of wind? I guess I understand why his parents tip-toed around the issue and called it his 'condition'. I certainly wouldn't want to be reminded my son was a horrible freak of nature that I created.
I give the book two hatchets-embedded-in-zombie-skulls out of five. Because that scene was awesome, and the rest was a huge waste of my time. And now yours! Up next: The Third Horror!