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Professional Installers of
Playgrounds, Parks and much more!"
Want to learn more about our services?
By Whirl Construction, Posted in Safety Surfaces on June 5, 2013
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When it comes to summertime fun, playgrounds are a popular choice for children. Even if you have a swing set in your backyard, a playground offers adventure and excitement of a different kind for your little ones. Unfortunately, there are times that...(more)
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Click here to learn more about our professional associations
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Copyright 2020 Whirl Construction Inc. Web Development by Hudson Horizons


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Politics in the United States is marketing. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, here comes Killary, as reported by The Washington Post:
Is Hillary Rodham Clinton a McDonald's Big Mac or a Chipotle burrito bowl? A can of Bud or a bottle of Blue Moon? JCPenney or J. Crew? As she readies her second presidential campaign, Clinton has recruited consumer marketing specialists onto her team of trusted political advisers. Their job is to help imagine Hillary 5.0 — the rebranding of a first lady turned senator turned failed presidential candidate turned secretary of state turned likely 2016 Democratic presidential nominee. Clinton and her image-makers are sketching ways to refresh the well-established brand for tomorrow's marketplace. In their mission to present voters with a winning picture of the likely candidate, no detail is too big or too small — from her economic opportunity agenda to the design of the "H" in her future campaign logo.
"It's exactly the same as selling an iPhone or a soft drink or a cereal," said Peter Sealey, a longtime corporate marketing strategist.
As always, spending will reach new heights, and choices and democratic responsiveness will be even closer to zero.
It's going to be a long winter, friends.

subset: commoncrawl


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This seems to be an area which creates a lot of resistance. The idea of being completely under someone else's control is not a comfortable concept for most. Even the truest of slaves find themselves resisting this initially. Giving all one's power over to another person is something that takes a bit of time to adjust to.
Obviously, for this to be successful, one must have a great deal of trust for the person she is submitting to. This seems like a straightforward thing but it can get complicated. Trust is an individual issue. What breaks that trust with one might have a different effect on another. However, trust is a part of all relationships, even outside the boundaries of M/s.
The Master/slave relationship resembles most other relationships with the exception being the dividing of power. In this lifestyle, a slave willing gives all power over to her Master. This is done because of His position as the Master but also because she feels He warrants it. Of course, this provides Him with a great deal of responsibility, something that many overlook. The one-sidedness in this area is what separates a M/s from a D/s. In the later, power is retained in specifically agreed upon areas.
I found the more a slave knows her potential Master, the easier it is to give her power over to Him. Also, the experience that He has tends to calm her uneasiness. When she knows that her Master knows how to handle different situations, the better she feels about giving all her power away. Remember, slaves desire to serve completely. However, if they feel that One is incapable of handling His end of the relationship, she will have some hesitation.
Finally, abusers of power rarely keep a relationship going. For them, it seems to revolve around sex. This is where they focus most of the attention. While sex is a wonderful aspect of the M/s lifestyle, there is so much more to it. Properly training a slave requires have the internal control to use power wisely. Sometimes punishments are warranted. Other times, it is best to show some compassion for Your slave. This is where being able to control One's emotions is critically important. The goal is to have a slave learn and grow. Using the most productive method to that end is crucial.
social bookmarking links:


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Hot on the heels of one of the biggest disappointment in my life, (it seems so dramatic when I say it like that, but I'll explain), I ran the Bugs Bunny trail run, hosted by My Road Less Traveled, yesterday. It was such a hard route. 3.5km of sheer climbing over technical slippery rocks and gravel. Of course, that's just up my street because I'm so dumb! The harder the better. It's just more fun for me when it's impossibly hard. I wonder why that is. I guess life has been quite good for me. I've had a good life. Things have come easily to me and so I choose difficult things because then I feel like I've earned them or I get a real sense of accomplishment from the overcoming. I choose jobs that I have no idea about and stretch my mind and my abilities sometimes way beyond what I'm capable of, but I learn and I grow and it makes things exciting.
Hence my new hobby, making gin. I'm not really a drinker and I don't really like gin. So who better to start up a gin making business than me? I really don't do easy stuff! I started making rudimentary gin earlier this year with a bottle of vodka and a few herbs and flowers and spices. Nice. I love the creative process. I love the scientific process. And it turns out I have a bit of a hand for this. Everyone has been liking my gin. So EP and I discussed a few times and we figured that we would start a gin-making business. We discussed the market that we'd like to capture and we got the ball rolling. This is what running has taught me about making gin:
- In order to make gin, you need vodka. I'm not going to explain the whole process, but I decided to make my own vodka. I bought a still which is a machine which separates ethanol from water in a fermentation. Vodka is ethanol. Yes. Vodka is ethanol. Watered down ethanol. To make ethanol, you need fermented sugar water. No. Sorry to burst your bubble, but most vodka is not made of potatoes because the amount of fermentable sugar you get from potatoes is just not worth the effort. To make sugar water, you need water and sugar and a bucket and a spoon and you need to have run the Comrades Marathon. I know that might seem strange, but while I stood over the 20 litres of water with a six kilogram lump of sugar at the bottom, stirring continuously, it helped to be able to tell myself that I had run the Comrades Marathon and so I could finish this. 3 hours. I stirred that fucking bucket of sugar water for 3 hours. And if I had not been able to tell myself at least 8 times that I had finished the Comrades Marathon, I would not have been able to dissolve all that sugar.
- Once your sugar water is prepared, you add yeast and some other stuff to start the fermentation. The YouTube video said 20 degrees. The instructions on the packet said 28 degrees. I've made bread and I would argue it should be 34 degrees. I trusted the video because at the end of the video, the guy ended up with a lot of vodka which is where I wanted to be. The yeast I used is called Turbo Yeast and promised a 7-10 day turnaround. We were in the middle of a heatwave so I took the fermentation out of what had become the distillery and put it in a cupboard. Checked the temperature, 22 degrees. Perfect. And then I waited. 7 days. The fermentation was going bloop bloop bloop in the cupboard. Evidence that the fermentation was not complete and the yeast was still turning the sugar into alcohol. 10 days. Bloop bloop bloop. 12 days. Bloop bloop bloop. I'm not a patient person. But running has taught me to be patient. It took me two years to run the Comrades Marathon after I had fully anticipated I would run that race 8 months after I told Daniel I'd run it with him. Actually, that's still so funny, knowing what I know. So two years to be ready to run Comrades had prepared me to engage with this bloop bloop with love and patience. At day 13, I went on a distilling course. And I found out things that I wish I didn't know. I almost gave up. There are so many legal hoops to jump through, just to get a shot of vodka into your kitchen and that's without making gin and without selling the stuff. I also found out that my yeast had been struggling along at 22 degrees when I should have been taking full advantage of the heatwave! I move the fermentation into the kitchen where there is adjustable underfloor heating and dialed the heating up to 30 degrees. I also realised that my fermentation had probably run out of oxygen so I whipped some air into the fermentation and continued the bloop bloop process. 15 days. Bloop bloop bloop. I've got this dog. He's curious and clumsy. He investigated the bloop bloop and knocked the air lock out of the bucket. I could have killed him, but I fixed it and continued the bloop bloop process. 18 days. The bloop bloop appeared to have finished blooping. Finally! The fermentation was complete. Allegedly.
- We opened a company called CocoJade Distilleries and we opened a business bank account. All that stuff moved forward. Nothing moved as quickly as I had wanted. Exactly like my legs. Like EXACTLY like my legs. After the fermentation was over, I had to clarify the "wash". It's called a wash once the fermentation is complete. Then I had to degas it. It's full of carbon dioxide after fermentation so you have to get rid of all of that gas. Picture a big 21 litre bucket of Coca-Cola needing to go flat. You can either stir until you need to remind yourself of your Comrades marathon or you can pour that bucket into another bucket, let it settle, pour the bucket back into the first bucket and let it settle and then do that over and over until the wash is flat. Less requirement for a Comrades reminder, but my back…..20 litre buckets full of fermented sugar are heavy, yo! I filtered it a few more times to get a very clear liquid to put into the still. Then on Saturday, I sat the entire afternoon distilling the wash into acetone, methanol and ethanol, leaving the water behind. It's a process, I tell you. You have to watch it all the time and adjust your cold water flow to keep the condenser at the right temperature. And you need to be patient. Yesterday, I wanted to give up on the first hill at Bugs Bunny. What was I running this for? It was hot. I hadn't trained. My back was sore. This was only going to carry on being hard. Just. Give. Up! Making vodka is hard. It takes so long. It takes so much time and sugar and water with no real guarantees. Just to make vodka requires a million forms. If I want to sell vodka, I need to navigate a thousand very expensive legal processes and get all sorts of permits. I won't be able to do it from home because you can't make gin in a residential area and our business model doesn't really warrant a huge property and and and. Sometimes I just want to give up.
As it so happens, yesterday I didn't give up. I didn't die. I didn't come last and I really enjoyed my run. My legs are a bit hungover today which is to be expected because I hadn't really trained properly and I hadn't been doing the necessary gym work. And that's how running has taught me to make gin. Saturday's distillation produced vodka that was less then perfect. I'm so hard on myself that I fully expected that it would come out perfectly. I was so disappointed. How could my vodka not be perfect? But if I'm honest with myself, I didn't do everything perfectly in preparing the wash. Maybe all the sugar wasn't dissolved when I put in the yeast. I should have fermented at 30 degrees for the whole time. I should have stirred it up properly in the beginning, feeding the yeast with oxygen. I should have kept the dog away from the bloop bloop. I should have checked if the fermentation was really over before clarifying. Ag! It got what I deserved. It wasn't perfect vodka, but it was good enough for a first attempt. I didn't win yesterday, but it was good enough. I never win, but I suppose it's always good enough. Running and making gin are teaching me that sometimes you just have to do things that you love with love and the rest will follow. Keep going forward with commitment and focus and eventually, you'll get over the big mountains and you'll enjoy some of it and you'll come to a point near the end where you see an impala leaping gracefully past you and you'll remind yourself why you didn't give up and you'll be grateful that you didn't give up.
Wish me luck with the gin. I have also decided that I will help someone else create a vodka making business and they can supply me with the vodka I need to make gin because making vodka sucks. I'm going to try one more batch of vodka and then I'll hand that over to someone else who wants to make perfect vodka. I want to make gin and that's what I need to focus on. Today I start the second part of the legal hurdles that I will have to navigate. It's actually like Inchanga where you're half way up and you can see the rest of it winding up and up and up in front of you. I seriously feel like giving up on this one, but I won't. At least if I start, I can evaluate the merits of going forward.
I'll be sure to take you on my gin journey. I might even get to like gin, kind of like I eventually got to love running!
Yours in the love of running and gin, I think.


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Stephen Hawking (1942 – 2018) was a British physicist*. He was born in Oxford, England on the 8th January 1942, 300 years after the death of Italian astronomer* and engineer* Galileo Galilei. Stephen grew up in the town of St. Albans about twenty miles outside London. He went to a local* school and afterwards to University College, Oxford. Both of Stephen's parents had studied at Oxford University. He wanted to study Mathematics but that was not possible so he chose to study physics instead. He was an active young man who enjoyed* dancing and rowing.
After he finished his degree, Hawking went to Trinity Hall at Cambridge University to study cosmology*. Whilst he was at Oxford university, Hawking began to have some problems with his health. Sometimes he would fall over or have trouble with his speech. However, it was at Cambridge, where he went to study for a PhD, that his health problems became more obvious*.
After lots of tests doctors diagnosed* Hawking with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (sometimes known as Lou Gehrig's disease). It is a fatal* disease in which the nerves in the body that control the muscles stop working. Those with the disease slowly lose control of their body. In 1963, doctors told Hawking that he had only two and a half years to live. Although the doctors were wrong in their prediction* the disease debilitated* Hawking and by the end of the 1960's he became wheelchair bound*.
Hawking had just fallen in love and he realised that there were many things he wanted to do in his life. He began to take his studies more seriously and started working hard. He married his girlfriend Jane Wilde, another student at Cambridge, and in 1965 their first child was born. They had two more children together but divorced in 1990.
Black Holes
Studying for his PhD in cosmology*, Hawking developed an interest in black holes*. He spent much time studying black holes and he discovered that they release radiation. This radiation is now called 'Hawking radiation' (until then scientists believed that nothing could escape the gravitational* pull of a black hole). Soon after, Hawking became famous and he began to visit and teach in universities around the world.
However, as Hawking's career improved, his physical health deteriorated*. He was no longer able to look after himself. By the 1980s, Hawking needed someone to look after him full-time*. He also lost the ability to speak and was given a voice box. This helped him to communicate with his colleagues and family. He continued to work and he became a bestselling author with his book 'A Brief History of Time.' He later said, 'Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.'
In 1990 Hawking and his wife divorced and after a few years Hawking married his nurse. This marriage did not last, however, and they were divorced in 2006.
Life and death
Despite difficulties in his private life and bad health, Hawking's career went from strength to strength*. He appeared on several television shows such as The Simpsons, The Big Bang Theory and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Hawking spoke recently* about artificial intelligence*. He believed that it would be very dangerous for humans to build artificial lifeforms and nuclear weapons that could 'think' for themselves. Hawking also spoke on the importance of space travel and the need for humans to leave planet earth and explore the stars.
He said that he owed his life to the British National Health Service and he was a strong believer in free health care for everyone. In the last months of his life he started a fight to save the NHS as he was worried that the United Kingdom government were selling parts of the National Health Service to private companies.
Stephen Hawking died on the morning of Wednesday 14th March 2018 surrounded by his family. He leaves behind three children and three grandchildren. His advice to the world, 'Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet…. Be curious.'
Stephen Hawking: vocabulary check
Physicist = someone who studies physics (a branch of science that looks at how the universe is made, matter and energy including electricity and light)
Astronomer = someone who studies the universe outside of earth including the stars and planets.
Engineer = someone who designs and builds engines, roads, bridges, machines etc.
Local = nearby
Enjoyed = liked
Cosmology = the study of the origins (beginning) and development of the universe.
Obvious = easy to understand or see
Diagnosed = to say what a disease/illness is from the symptoms
Fatal = if something is 'fatal' it will kill someone
Prediction = when someone says something they think is going to happen
Wheelchair bound = someone who needs to be in a wheelchair to move around
Cosmology = an area of astrophysics. Cosmology is the study of the beginning and evolution (progress) of the universe.
Black holes = when a huge star has died and become so small that everything is pulled in including light
Gravitational = from gravity, the force that pulls things to earth and holds the planets around the sun
Full-time care = all day and all night
Deteriorated = get worse and worse
Strength to strength = better and better
Recently = a short time ago
Artificial intelligence = computers that have been created to behave and think like humans
Thank you for reading this post on Stephen Hawking, why not try…
Read more about Stephen Hawking


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Pacers deal with Sixers was 11th hour, says Larry Bird
- Pacers traded Danny Granger to Philadelphia
- Sixers send Evan Turner%2C LaVoy Allen to Indiana
Nine years ago, Indiana Pacers president of basketball operations Larry Bird drafted Danny Granger, who would become one of his most beloved players. But on Thursday afternoon, Bird needed to make a quick decision regarding the future of his "favorite."
Ultimately, the need to improve the team's second unit outweighed the personal attachments and Bird pulled the trigger on a deal to send Granger to the Philadelphia 76ers for the younger, more multi-talented Evan Turner and center Lavoy Allen.
"I am excited about it," Bird told The Indianapolis Star Friday afternoon. "(But) all the trades are tough when you get rid of a player I've always admired and went through some tough times with us."
Recently, the top-seeded Pacers (41-13) have struggled – performing inconsistently over the past 10 games for a 6-4 record and losing ground to the Miami Heat who are only 1-1/2 games back in the Eastern Conference standings. Though Bird said the move came as a surprise, it strengthens the second unit and helps prepare Indiana for a long playoff run.
"I didn't think there was going to be anything there (with trades) that we're really looking for, but when this came up and caught our attention, and we thought maybe we should do it. Try to stabilize that second unit," Bird said. "Obviously, Lavoy Allen's another big body that can play and Evan Turner – I like guys who can play multiple positions. You can talk all you want about how he can't hit an outside shot, can't do this. I always look at the positive side of it. I think he's a kid who can come in right away and help us."
Bird, who is currently not in Indianapolis, described the "last-minute" deal that manifested only when Philadelphia called the team with Turner on the table. When the 76ers could not get a first-round pick for Turner – a 25-year-old swingman who can play the point guard through the small forward positions – the team reached out around 2:30 p.m., 30 minutes before the conclusion of the NBA trade deadline.
"What we try to do is go through the league two to three times early in the season. When I left, I told Kevin (Pritchard) to make one more run through the league and see what's there," Bird said, recalling his instructions given to the team's general manager. "(Pritchard) was talking to a couple teams about other things that are really nothing but then Philly called.
"I guess they figured they weren't going to get a first-round (pick) for Evan and they wanted to move him and we were there and we took it. I had to think about it for a while but decided to do it (and) move on."
Though Bird recalled this story in his regular matter-of-fact tone, he couldn't help but express some emotion about the departure of the 30-year-old Granger, who helped carry the team through the dark days after the brawl, several losing seasons and finally the dawn of the Paul George era. Second-year player Orlando Johnson was also released so that the Pacers could maintain the league-limit of 15 players on roster.
"It's just a tough deal," Bird said. "Danny's always been my favorite. I understand the disappointment. A lot of people say that I've been trying to trade him for a year and I haven't been doing that. I even told Danny that. I did tell him if a great opportunity arises, you can't say you'll never trade somebody."
Bird said that he had called Granger but as of early Friday afternoon, had not heard back from him.
"That's normal," Bird said. "I've talked to O.J., I've talked to Evan. I've talked to Lavoy, but it is what it is."
Candace Bucker writes for the Indianapolis Star


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Well! Where do I start with bang bang chicken?
An authentic Szechuan dish, served cold and bursting with flavour, this is one of those dishes that will wow all your friends and be a guaranteed conversation starter at any dinner party.
Served cold, this can be prepared hours in advance with absolutely no loss of flavour!
Recipe type: Main Course
Cuisine: Chinese
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
- 300 grams Rice Noodles
- 1 Cucumber
- 3 Chicken Breasts
- 100 grams Radishes
- 2 Spring Onions
- 1 Red Chilli
- 4 Tbsp Groundnut Oil
- 2 Tbsp Sesame Oil
- 1 Tsp Dried Chilli Flakes
- 1 Pinch Black Pepper
- 4 Tbsp Crunchy Peanut Butter
- 2 Tbsp Soy Sauce, (Stanchi is a good GF soy sauce)
- 1 Lemon, (Juice only)
- 1 Tbsp Ginger, (Chopped)
- 1 Tbsp Water
- Cook the chicken well in advance and let it cool, I prefer to put mine in the steamer for 25 minutes as it is much softer that way, although wrapping in foil and cooking at 200 degrees for 25 mins works just as well.
- Cook the rice noodles and place in a large serving dish to cool
- Thinly slice a whole cucumber into matchstick sized strips, then thinly slice the radishes and spring onion and finally slice the chilli as finely as possible.
- Now, using a couple of forks shred the chicken into tiny pieces and add it along with all chopped ingredients to a bowl and mix well. Once mixed put all ingredients into the serving bowl on top of the rice noodles and place in the fridge to cool
- Add the Groundnut Oil, Sesame Oil, Chilli Flakes, Black Pepper, Peanut Butter, Soy Sauce, Lemon and Ginger to a food processor and blend until blended thoroughly. The consistency should still be quite thick.
- Once the main dish has cooled (10 mins or so) it is ready to serve, place the chilli peanut sauce in a separate bowl and garnish salad with Sesame Seeds.


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As an experienced Schedule 48 contractor with the U.S. General Services Administration, Lexicon Government Services LLC provides services to government agencies through the administration of authorized relocation services.
Averaging 30 years of government relocation experience, our experts can help you build a program tailored to your unique needs. Browse our list of approved contracts and services below.
653-1 Relocation Service Package
653-4 Additional Services
653-5 Agency Customization Services
653-7 Move Management Services


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In his basement, Hubert began the disembowelment.
His knife skillfully pierced the flesh with a surgeon's deftness. Innards strewn across the floor, Hubert then turned his attention to the face.
Afterwards, with a sated grin, he admired his handiwork.
He inserted the jack-o'-lantern candle, ready to lure the next child.
Alison loves a good scare and has a dark sense of humor.


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Sacramento clean cities annual reports
Annual Reports
Our past Annual Reports detailing petroleum reductions related to Sacramento Clean Cities activity are detailed in the links below.
2013 Annual Report
2012 Annual Report
Every three years, Sacramento Clean Cities must go through a Re-Designation process where the coalition essentially demonstrates that it is serving the purpose of the Clean Cities Program. Sacramento Clean Cities was officially Re-Designated on April 12, 2013. Supporting documentation is shown below.
Official Re-Designation Letter
Re-Designation Presentation


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Celebrity Gossip
Net Worth
UK News
Celebrity Gossip
Neil Cavuto Bio, Net worth, Salary, Wiki and Wife
Neil Cavuto Bio, Net worth, Salary, Wiki and Wife
Celebrity Gossip
— Friday, September 8th, 2017
Date of Birth :
Sep 22nd, 1958
Age :
61 Years old
Short Bio
Neil Patrick Cavuto, widely known as Neil Cavuto is an American born television anchor, business journalist and commentator currently working for Fox Broadcasting. He is the host to multiple popular television programs with his own name "Your World with Neil Cavuto", "Cavuto on Business" and "Cavuto: Coast to Coast". Born on 22 September, 1958 in Westbury, New York, Neil Cavuto's is 58 years old as of 2017. Cavuto is married to wife Mary Fulling and has an estimated net worth of approximately $23 million.
Net Worth and Salary
Neil Cavuto is a renowned name in the television industry and has been in the field of more than two decades. According to his bio, he gained his degree in mass communication from St. Bonaventure University in 1980 and went on to garner his master's degree from American University. Cavuto has worked his way up to fame and a respectable position through continuous struggle. His hard work paid off when it was revealed that his total net worth and salary accumulated from his work is calculated to be around a whopping $23 million. He was already working his way towards the profession while still in college when he worked as a White House intern during U.S. president Jimmy Carter's administration. Cavuto was the host for CNBC's popular show Power Lunch as well as contributed to host Today broadcasted on NBC. For over 15 years, Neil served the Public Broadcasting Service and was the New York City bureau chief. In 1996, Cavuto was casted as the managing editor of business news and television anchor of the show Your World with Neil Cavuto broadcasted on Fox News Channel. Since his tenure with Fox News Channel, he has anchored many shows including Cavuto on Business and Cavuto: Coast to Coast.
Marital Status and Affairs
Talking about Neil Cavuto's personal life, it is quite simple and plain. He is married to wife Mary Fulling with whom he tied knots on October 15, 1983. Together, the couple has given birth to three adorable children named Tara, Bradley and Jeremy. The couple have a healthy relationship with no hint of hitch and currently reside together in Mendham, New Jersey.
Height and Weight
Neil Cavuto, age 58 has a very straight-forward and smart personality. He is little over the chubbier side but appears smart in formal attire. He stands averagely tall with 5 feet 10 inches in height and weighs a little more on the scale. He has a very trustworthy face which is a plus point.
Wiki and Facts
Television personality Neil Cavuto is also an author and has published two books named More Than Money and Your Money or Your Life which were New York Times Bestsellers. Cavuto has been recognized for his exceptional contribution in his profession named as the best interviewer by Wall Street Journal, Hellinger Award as well as five nominations for Cable ACE. More information on his bio can be obtained from Wikipedia and other external Wiki pages.


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WE WON Scores "Best Guys Night Out" 2019 AC Weekly Awards. Thanks for hosting a bomb awards night @boogienights_ac @acweekly
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At Scores, every night is a party.
Check out our upcoming events.
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Made from beating one egg white with parmesan cheese and 60gr of cream, a yolk is covered in a small ramekin and some more cheese is added on top. The ramekin's contents are cooked at 190C for 5 minutes and end result is a very rich creamy non soufflé that will keep you up all night.
Categories: Truffles


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Basil Brush to make his Fringe debut
Basil Brush is making his Edinburgh Fringe debut – with an adults-only show.
The national treasure – who was originally created in 1962 – will be performing his show Unleashed at the Underbelly Cow Barn at 6.45pm daily,
He promises to take on 'everything from Love Island to Westminster' alongside nightly guests.
A separate Family Fun Show takes place in the same venue at 1pm for the first two weeks of the festival.
Originally voiced and performed by Ivan Owen, Basil had his own TV show from 1964 to 1984, and he made a comeback in 2002 for a children's BBC series for a further five years.
Since then he has appeared in The Chase, Bruce Forsyth's The Generation Game, The Weakest Link, Celebrity Juice and The Last Leg.
Other comedy acts also announced for Underbelly today include Austentatious, Newsrevue, Rhys Nicholson, Garry Starr, Stevie Martin, Rachel Fairburn, Myra Dubois, Marlon Davis, Geoff Norcot, Harry and Chris, Double Denim and Viggo Venn.
Published: 15 Apr 2019


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Cummings Foundation Commits $2.5 Million in Sustaining Grants
The Cummings Foundation in Woburn, Massachusetts, has announced grants totaling $2.5 million to five nonprofit organizations in the greater Boston area.
The inaugural recipients of the foundation's Sustaining Grants program will each receive $50,000 annually for up to ten years. The program builds on the foundation's $100K for 100 program, which was launched in 2012 and annually provides multiyear grants of $100,000 to a hundred nonprofits in Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk counties.
This year's recipients of Sustaining Grants, all of whom received their final $100K for 100 grant disbursements in 2016 and were automatically considered for the new funding opportunity, are Commonwealth Kitchen in Dorchester, Generations Inc. in Boston, Girls Incorporated of Greater Lowell, Lawrence Community Works, and UTEC (formerly the United Teen Equality Center), also in Lowell. According to the foundation, the winners of Sustaining Grants will be removed from consideration for the $100K for 100 program for the duration of their awards.
None of the winners had applied for funding through the new program and were invited to a foundation-sponsored event under the pretext that they would be able to make a pitch for their organization. "I was absolutely stunned, and our program director and board president started crying," said Tracy Reilly-Ingersoll, executive director of Girls Inc. of Greater Lowell. "The grant will allow us to take the outreach program and put a rocket under it, so to speak, doubling and then tripling the number of girls we serve. That multiplier effect will be phenomenal for our mission."


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May marked some good news for Singapore. In May 2015, the City State welcomed 1.22 million international visitors, a number up by 1.1% over the same month of 2014. Singapore had recorded continuous declines in total visitors arrivals since February 2014.
Does this positive performance mark a turn-around for tourism? While some traditional markets such as Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong or Japan continue to weaken, they are some good news from markets such as China, India or Korea. Chinese arrivals were up by 47% in May, while India and Korea were respectively up by 9.7% and 4.6%. The Americas are also performing very positively since the beginning of the year.
From January to May, Singapore international tourist arrivals reached 6.073 million, down by 4.1% with the worst performers being Southeast Asia (-9.1%), Oceania (-7.7%) and Europe (-4.8%). South Asia is the best performer with arrivals up by 4.5%.


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3D, 4G, Cable TV, CAS, Cisco, Digital Video, DOCSIS, DTH, DTT, Ethernet, FCC, HbbTV, HDTV, Httv, iptv, LTE, Mobile, MoCA, MPEG, OTT, Quad Play, Satellite TV, Telecom, Triple Play, TV Everywhere, VOD, WiFi
Redbox looks to gain from upcoming Netflix rate increase http://trap.it/SnXRsc
Sony readies head-mounted 3D display – FierceCable: bit.ly/oZCjZI
Sony Announces Innovative A77, A65 and NEX-7 Cameras with Full 1080-60p Video http://ow.ly/1euu7G
Orbital Sciences' Taurus 2 Rocket Receives FAA License for COTS Demo bit.ly/qz0mF3
Dell'Oro: GPON equipment sales rise 10% in Q2 2011bit.ly/qccGFW
Winterswijk to consider FTTH expansion bit.ly/pTpsG2
ADTRAN Announced Moundville Telephone Selected Its Broadband Portfolio (ADTN) bit.ly/qSVFoW
Schmidt promises European Google TV launch early next year tvaftertv.com/3ql
Media Institute: Google Is Monopoly FTC Should Rein In – multichannel.com/article/473120…
BBC hints at Google TV access :: StrategyEye – Industry Intelligence ow.ly/1wt9Th
Index To Lead $10 Million-Plus Round In European Square Competitor iZettle tcrn.ch/oxmVL8
Mobile App Inventory On Track To Match Online Display Ad Spend By Year-End: http://t.co/XuWvra4 Mobile Ads Could "Theoretically" Absorb Online Display Spending This Year, But They Won't tcrn.ch/nt2Ngg
Wow! 81% of doctors using smartphones by 2012. Plus 9 more predictions for the mhealth market http://ow.ly/6gSSj
Billion dollar investments for Wi-Fi in healthcare. Nearly 30M health monitoring devices to ship by 2016. ABI Research. http://bit.ly/ojhvXH
A new social-networking service aims to improve the flow of communication by connecting doctors and patients online. http://su.pr/22j4zA
CWNP Blogroll: Mac Apps for Wireless LAN Professionals http://goo.gl/fb/AVub2
50% of tablet owners view movies and TV http://bit.ly/oHrV0v
NEC, Cisco Team on LTE Network Construction, Sales: The two companies will jointly provide equipment for building…http://bit.ly/ozBzRQ
Telecom industry ranks 11th, Internet industry 3rd in new Gallup poll on America's most positively viewed sectors. bit.ly/oIKYgQ
Court battle looms between U.S. and AT&T, T-Mobile http://reut.rs/r5B5MV
Apple releases iOS 5 Beta 7 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch to developers http://tnw.co/okgRyI
TSF restores links for Libyan hospitals and Red Crescent using Mobile Satellite Services http://i.gsat.cl/o13vmM
Channel 4 VOD on the rise http://is.gd/5JZBp3
Netgear Launches Wireless PC to TV Adapterhttp://ow.ly/6iA5C
Ford Evos, The Social-Networking Vehicle Of The Future [PICS]: Social networkers, Ford has created a car just for… bit.ly/nmgNQH
Al Jazeera Sports opts for ASBU satellite multimedia exchange is.gd/A0w9DU
Miso now knows what you're watching, no check-in required dlvr.it/jkGM4
Huawei expects to complete deployment of city-wide LTE network for Hong Kong's Genius Brand by 2012 http://ow.ly/6hojV
Making the Transition to HTML5 – Web Standards Sherpa – icio.us/KMk6XP
New! TV Genius Taps IMAGINASIA to Expand Content Discovery in Asia http://ow.ly/6iwfK
3D, IPTV neglected in demonstrations at major retailers is.gd/lzlDcl
Google launches Canadian YouTube-based online movie rental service tgam.ca/CrSd
TVEverywhere 50% of Tablet Owners View Both Feature-Length Movies and TV Shows on the Device http://ow.ly/6iDHF
Checklist for making the shift to LTE : Telcos need a scalable control plane, dynamic QoE mgmt…bit.ly/pYBUH6
Samsung Galaxy WiFi 3.6 Takes the "Phone" Out of "Smartphone": Catering to the needs of users w… http://t.co/jNhEscO Samsung Galaxy Note (5.3″ screen) is a really big smartphone or small tablet, may hit a sweetspot for mobile web access cnet.co/qxpzL8 Samsung Unveils Dual-Core Galaxy Tab 7.7 And 5.3-Inch Galaxy Note tcrn.ch/mYMkZa
1 in 4 Smartphone Users Exposed to Mobile Ads; Nearly 2 Out of 3 Online Video Viewers Exposed to Video Ads bit.ly/n6n4Qs
The Three Stages of Social TV toadstoolblog.com/2011/08/three-…
iSuppli: The total # of mobile broadband devices grew 57.3 percent between 2009-10. http://ow.ly/6iAnO
httv partners with Metalligence over OTT bit.ly/nc3ZsI
Imagine Communications to Demonstrate TabletTV Streaming at IBC 2011 in Amsterdam bit.ly/qNWxDI
DLA, Inc Selects Interra's BatonTM File-based QC/ Automated Content Verification Software bit.ly/oAIuEB
Ericsson Labs – API Spotlight – Mobile Web Security Bootstrap API – shared secret keys for security –http://icio.us/STSZ0E
Facebook and Spotify reportedly may team up on something later this month http://ti.me/ngjhjG
Carriers and Ethernet Services, Public Ethernet in Metro and Wide Area Networks, 2011-2016 http://www.insight-corp.com/reports/ethernet11.asp
Vodafone to bring YouTube to TV sets in HD http://is.gd/zfz6pj
Either way, Verizon, FTW! 4G Downstream Speeds Faster Than Wi-Fi: zatznotfunny.com/2011-08/4g-dow…
Most Recent Report "IPTV Global Forecast: 2011 to 2015" – MarketWatch – bit.ly/qzB4kj
Espial to provide IPTV services to Vodafone Iceland – Wireless Federation bit.ly/qoczNx
For a glimpse at Hulu's future, look to Japan dlvr.it/jl423
Rostelecom Buys Regional GSM Network in Volgograd bit.ly/qPsdi4
MOSAID Acquires 1,200 Nokia Standards-Essential Wireless Patents and 800 Wireless Implementation Patents. marketwatch.com/story/mosaid-a…
Interesting deal structure> Mosaid sees rescue in its Nokia-Microsoft deal | Reuters reut.rs/opgrhQ
More Android tablets to clog up the shelves tinyurl.com/3cobyfh
TF1 opens ad windows in Switzerland | News | Rapid TV News rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011…
Satellite: ViaSat-1 coverage/footprint mapssatlaunch.net/2011/09/viasat…
Toshiba's glasses free 3D TV launches in Europe as the ZL2 this December engt.co/qoUDM0
The UK's first glasses-free 3D TV has been announced – better start saving up bit.ly/pyY4BO
Germans open to new TV technologies bit.ly/onrXgc
Eircom to start FTTH, FTTC pilots in Wexford, South Dublin bit.ly/o620UY
Mobile shopping: More buzz than buy so fartw.physorg.com/234094482
MobiTV Files For $75 Million IPO – multichannel.com/article/473145… MobiTV's IPO filing is not a pretty picture bit.ly/qwJYSo
Espial to provide IPTV services to Vodafone Iceland bit.ly/nKFvuF
Sony unveils Android tablet models goo.gl/fb/uIdzH
Point-and-click will revolutionize your TV remotebit.ly/nRaNi9
H2O Wireless Intros $60 Unlimited Pre-Paid Plan. bit.ly/pHmubD
Satellite: SkyTerra-2 & EuropaSat updates satlaunch.net/2011/09/skyter…
More Consumers Spending on Streaming and Subscription Models to Watch TV Shows and Movies bit.ly/onSkwr
Prices of LTE devices to drop sharply in 2H12bit.ly/qogBpy [Wrong vendor info in this article. Better info: bit.ly/gSfyvL
IMRG: Tablets top smartphones for m-commerce – Online shoppers are more likely to make a purchase on tablet devices … ow.ly/1evakY
3's iPhone 4 deal offers £169 cashback bit.ly/niTkr0
Envy Makes Further Investment In Avid Systemsbit.ly/qo9H5q
Mediacom's Commisso tells FCC's Genachowski to "live up to the pledge" to protect consumers from practices making cable unaffordable
ViewSonic launches ViewPad 7x and 10pro, budget-friendly 7e to follow in Q4 engt.co/qOBYYS
Utility cabinets are a necessary nuisance for fostering broadband competition bit.ly/pYG6Z1
DirecTV Taps Miso To Offer Synchronized Social TV Experience on.mash.to/o5oy08
Simplifying Metro Service Delivery 'Dynamic'ally: As service providers increase metro network capacity to support… bit.ly/o56yPW
Infonetics – Broadband access equipment market posts largest quarter on record ($2.1B), led by strong PON sales: bit.ly/oziG7f
Iridium Extreme – First Satellite Phone Meeting Military Specifications: The Iridium Extreme is the most advance… bit.ly/qYKCbK
Movies Will Give Sony Tablets Edge: Stringer – Bloomberg bloom.bg/rjqzLt
ADB – Connected TV revenues to top $95B by 2015 http://ow.ly/6iRla
Where does T-Mobile go from here for 4G? bit.ly/q9CjCL
Using Cell Phone Tracking Data To Pinpoint Relief After Disasters http://bit.ly/okaFC9
Strong support for a public safety broadband network comes from Congress following last week's earthquake & Irene http://ow.ly/6hHtC #FCC
Shaw bets on WiFi. http://bit.ly/nEi7eV Shaw ditches cellular for Wi-Fi: Citing competitive concerns, Canadian telecommunications provider Shaw Communications…http://bit.ly/qyvhBR
Cable MSOs top list of fastest ISPs. http://bit.ly/rq7ErW
Do you own a smartphone? Four in ten U.S. phones are now smartphones http://owl.li/6iCK0
Private Media Group Announces New Mobile Partnership for Germany, Austria and Switzerland bit.ly/pzMIhi
MoCA Passes 100 Certified Products Milestone bit.ly/p9RRlG
"IPTV Global Forecast: 2011 to 2015" – bit.ly/qE3IZx
VOX to launch HbbTV service is.gd/cDtrVF
Satellite: Arabsat-5C & SES 2 launch delay! satlaunch.net/2011/09/arabsa…
Wondering what Google TV is truly capable of? Read this review of the service after a thorough examination bit.ly/n21kxW
Mobile advertising to hit $1.1 billion this year. Thus begins the future of online ads? wifi-cs.co/nIDajN
Ericsson Research aids ACTOR development of software to reduce smartphone battery consumption – Ericsson – icio.us/ZQN6BT
How to meet the iPad demand for a scad of Wi-Fi signal strength bit.ly/qyvEes
LIN TV blackout target Mediacom decries FCC's 'Inexplicable Inaction' on Retrans Reforms http://j.mp/o7CSjF Here's the letter of Mediacom CEO Commisso to FCC Chairman Genachowski re: rising retrans & other programming fees: bit.ly/rjQjsl
8×8 bolsters government division, names Vance Raeside to head federal sales – FierceTelecom: bit.ly/nABJFq


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The Affluence Network Bonus
Thank you for visiting TAN in search of "The Affluence Network Bonus" online.
The physical Internet backbone that carries data between the various nodes of the network has become the work of a number of firms called Internet service providers (ISPs), including firms that offer long-distance pipelines, occasionally at the international level, regional local conduit, which ultimately connects in homes and businesses. The physical connection to the Internet can only happen through one of these ISPs, players like amount 3, Cogent, and IBM AT&T. Each ISP manages its own network. Internet service providers Exchange IXPs, owned or private firms, and occasionally by Authorities, make for each of these networks to be interconnected or to transfer messages across the network. Many ISPs have agreements with suppliers of physical Internet backbone providers to offer Internet service over their networks for "last mile"-consumers and companies who desire to get Internet connectivity. Internet protocols, followed by everyone in the network causes it to be possible for the data to flow without interruption, in the right location at the right time.
While none of these organizations "possesses" the Internet together these firms determine how it works, and recognized rules and standards that everyone remains. Contracts and legal framework that underlies all that's taking place to determine how things work and what happens if something bad happens. To get a domain name, for instance, one needs permission from a Registrar, which has a contract with ICANN. To connect to the Internet, your ISP must be physical contracts with providers of Internet backbone services, and suppliers have contracts with IXPs from the Internet backbone for connecting to and with her. Concern over security dilemmas? A working group is formed to focus on the problem and the alternative developed and deployed is in the interest of most parties. If the Internet is down, you have someone to phone to get it mended. If the difficulty is from your ISP, they in turn have contracts in place and service level agreements, which govern the way in which these issues are resolved.
The benefit of cryptocurrency is that it uses blockchain technology. The network of nodes the make up the blockchain isn't regulated by any centered firm. No one can tell the miners to update, speed up, slow down, stop or do anything. And that's something that as a devoted supporter badge of honor, and is identical to the way the Internet functions. But as you understand now, public Internet governance, normalities and rules that govern how it works current constitutional difficulties to an individual. Blockchain technology has none of that.
Many people would rather use a money deflation, particularly those that want to save. Despite the criticism and skepticism, a cryptocurrency coin may be better suited for some uses than others. Financial seclusion, for example, is great for political activists, but more problematic when it comes to political campaign funding. We need a secure cryptocurrency for use in commerce; If you are living pay check to pay check, it would happen as part of your wealth, with the remainder allowed for other currencies.
For most users of cryptocurrencies it is not necessary to comprehend how the process works in and of itself, but it's basically vital that you comprehend that there is a procedure for mining to create virtual money. Unlike monies as we understand them now where Authorities and banks can simply select to print unlimited quantities (I am not saying they're doing thus, just one point), cryptocurrencies to be managed by users using a mining software, which solves the complex algorithms to release blocks of monies that can enter into circulation.
You have probably seen this often where you usually distribute the good word about crypto. "It is not volatile? What goes on if the cost crashes? " to date, several POS programs delivers free transformation of fiat, relieving some problem, but before volatility cryptocurrencies is resolved, a lot of people is likely to be hesitant to keep any. We have to find a way to struggle the volatility that's inherent in cryptocurrencies.
Ethereum is an unbelievable cryptocurrency platform, yet, if growth is too quickly, there may be some issues. If the platform is adopted fast, Ethereum requests could rise drastically, and at a rate that surpasses the rate with which the miners can create new coins. Under a situation like this, the entire platform of Ethereum could become destabilized because of the increasing costs of running distributed applications. In turn, this could dampen interest Ethereum platform and ether. Instability of demand for ether can result in an adverse change in the economical parameters of an Ethereum based business which could lead to business being unable to continue to run or to discontinue operation.
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It should be challenging to get more small gains (~ 10%) throughout the day. Study the best way to read these Candlestick charts! And I discovered these two rules to be true: having little gains is more profitable than trying to resist up to the peak. Most day traders follow Candlestick, so it's better to have a look at books than wait for order confirmation when you believe the cost is going down. Second, there is more unpredictability and reward in currencies that haven't made it to the profitableness of sites like Coinwarz.
Entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency movement may be wise to investigate possibilities for making massive ammonts of money with various types of online marketing.There could be a rich reward for anyone daring enough to endure the cryptocurrency markets.Bitcoin design provides an instructive example of how one might make lots of money in the cryptocurrency markets. Bitcoin is an extraordinary intellectual and technical accomplishment, and it's created an avalanche of editorial coverage and venture capital investment opportunities. But not many people understand that and pass up on very profitable business models made available due to the growing use of blockchain technology.
as Ethereum. The platform allows creation of a contract without having to go through a third party. The third parties involved can contain bank, credit card Business,
You may run a search on the web. First learn, then models, indicators and most importantly practice looking at old charts and pick out trends. When you commence to keep a trading diary screenshots and your comment/forecast. Precisely what is the best way to get confident with charts IMHO. Oh certainly, and don't fool yourself into thinking that you acquire the uptrend will never decrease! Always will go down! You will discover that incremental increases are more reliable and profitable (most times)
It is definitely possible, but it must have the ability to comprehend opportunities regardless of market behaviour. The market moves in relation to cost BTC … So even supposing it's in a BTC tendency down can make money by buying the altcoins which are altcoin oversold trading ratios-BTC. Sure, your purchasing power in DOLLARS may be lower, but as long as your purchasing power in BTC is still growing you will be acceptable.
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Just a fraction of bitcoins issued so far can be found on the exchange markets. Bitcoin markets are competitive, this means the cost a bitcoin will rise or fall depending on supply and demand. A lot of people hoard them for long term savings and investment. This limits the variety of bitcoins that are truly circulating in the exchanges. Additionally, new bitcoins will continue to be issued for decades to come. Therefore, even the most diligent buyer could not purchase all existing bitcoins. This scenario isn't to imply that markets will not be exposed to price manipulation, yet there exists no requirement for substantial amounts of money to transfer market prices up or down. The smallest events on the planet market can affect the cost of Bitcoin, This can make Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency volatile.
This mining task validates and records the trades across the entire network. So if you're trying to do something illegal, it isn't wise because everything is recorded in the public register for the remainder of the world to see forever.
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Here is the trendiest thing about cryptocurrencies; they do not physically exist everywhere, not even on a hard drive. When you look at a special address for a wallet featuring a cryptocurrency, there is absolutely no digital information held in it, like in exactly the same manner that a bank could hold dollars in a bank account. It truly is only a representation of worth, but there is no actual palpable kind of that worth. Cryptocurrency wallets may not be seized or immobilized or audited by the banks and the law. They would not have spending limits and withdrawal constraints imposed on them. No one but the person who owns the crypto wallet can determine how their riches will be managed.
Mining cryptocurrencies is how new coins are placed into circulation. Because there is no government control and crypto coins are digital, they cannot be printed or minted to make more. The mining process is what makes more of the coin. It may be useful to think about the mining as joining a lottery group, the pros and cons are precisely the same. Mining crypto coins means you will really get to keep the full benefits of your efforts, but this reduces your odds of being successful. Instead, joining a pool means that, overall, members are going to have greater potential for solving a block, but the reward will be split between all members of the pool, predicated on the number of "shares" won.
If you're considering going it alone, it's worth noting that the software settings for solo mining can be more complex than with a swimming pool, and beginners would be likely better take the latter path. This option also creates a stable stream of revenue, even if each payment is modest compared to entirely block the reward.
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, LiteCoin, Ether, YOCoin, and many others have already been designed as a non-fiat currency. In other words, its backers argue that there is "real" worth, even through there is absolutely no physical representation of that worth. The worth grows due to computing power, that's, is the lone way to create new coins distributed by allocating CPU electricity via computer programs called miners. Miners create a block after a period of time that's worth an ever diminishing amount of money or some kind of benefit to be able to ensure the shortfall. Each coin consists of many smaller units. For Bitcoin, each component is called a satoshi. Operations that take place during mining are just to authenticate other transactions, such that both creates and authenticates itself, a simple and elegant solution, which will be among the appealing aspects of the coin. Once created, each Bitcoin (or 100 million satoshis) exists as a cipher, that is part of the block that gave rise to it. Anyone who has mined the coin holds the address, and transfers it into a value is supplied by another address, which is a "wallet" file saved on a computer. The blockchain is where the public record of transactions resides.
The fact that there is little evidence of any growth in the utilization of virtual money as a currency may be the reason why there are minimal efforts to regulate it. The reason behind this could be just that the market is too little for cryptocurrencies to justify any regulatory attempt. It's also possible that the regulators simply do not comprehend the technology and its consequences, awaiting any developments to act.
In the event of a fully-functioning cryptocurrency, it might perhaps be dealt as a commodity. Advocates of cryptocurrencies say that this sort of virtual income isn't governed with a fundamental banking system and is not thus subject to the vagaries of its inflation. Because there are a limited quantity of items, this coin's benefit is founded on market forces, allowing owners to deal over cryptocurrency exchanges.


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CNNC wins biggest-amount contract for massive ITER project
CNNC signs the ITER-TAC1 contract at a signing ceremony held on Sept 30. [Photo/CNNC]
The biggest nuclear energy project contract that Chinese companies have ever bid for in the European market - - the ITER-TAC1 contract -- was successfully won by CNNC and the agreement was signed on Sept 30, officials announced.
ITER - - originally called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor - - is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject.
It will be the world's biggest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and its experimental fusion reactor, called the tokamak reactor, is being built in southern France.
A total of 35 nations are collaborating to build the tokamak reactor, which has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy source.
Yu Jianfeng, chairman of CNNC, said at the signing ceremony that the contract was the largest nuclear energy project financial contract that Chinese companies had bid for in the European market.
Not only that, he said, but it was also the first time that Chinese nuclear energy enterprise had successfully participated in international science projects in the form of general contracting.
Officials said the signing of the contract indicated that the high-end market for international nuclear power recognized China's capacity in general contracting, as well as nuclear fusion technology.
At present, a preparatory team for the TAC1 project has completed preparations and plans to be stationed in France for preliminary preparations for the project from the end of October.


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I am a Canadian,
philosophy PhD student and an Assistant Professor of philosophy at a Canadian University. I am interested in philosophy, especially ethics and feminist theory, feminist ethics and bioethics (the ethics of health care). I am also interested in pop culture, video games, cooking, sex and relationships. That is what I will write about most often, I suppose.
I am a philosopher who studies ethics, so I am "full of should," take this just as it sounds. Read the posts with this in mind.
The description of why I chose the name for this blog is copied below. For the original description, see here.
When I was a kid I used to cry a lot when I noticed things I thought were unfair. My parents used to tell me I was a Bakka, which I think was supposed to make me feel strong about my tearfulness. In Fremen legend, Bakka is "the weeper who mourns for all" humankind (from Frank Herbert's Dune). I have always identified with this legend, and I still feel very moved by what I would now call injustice.
I think it is important to note, at this point, that I do not think crying makes me "weak." In fact, I think often crying is the only appropriate response to the things that go on in the world (I wrote about the strength in crying here). We kill each other. We rape each other (I have written about rape culture a few times, see here). We exploit each other. We oppress each other. We dismiss each other. We ignore each other's pain. We pretend the other does not have authority to talk about their own experiences. These are horrible things. Mostly, we don't feel much when we do these things. But we should. I think too few of us cry about these things that clearly demand a response. And not just a cold, dispassionate, reasoned response, but a visceral, emotional response.
Of course, "cry me a river," is also a way of dismissing someone who is trying to tell you about the negative thing they have experienced. I wanted to include the tagline "The river that I step in is not the river that I stand in," as a way of reclaiming the dismissiveness of "cry me a river." Plato attributes the tagline to Heraclitus, although it is often translated differently.
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you" from Wikiquote.
"Heraclitus, you know, says that everything moves on and that nothing is at rest; and, comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says that you could not step into the same river twice," from this lecture.
The point is that everything changes and nothing stays the same. I am not sure I would go as far as to say that there are no permanent persisting objects, but I think the quote can remind us that "crying a river" can be useful when it helps to move things along.
I just found out about an excellent further association with the word Bakka from a comment by KatherineSpins who wrote:
Bakka, phonetically your name matches a word in Amharic that can be roughly translated as "Enough" or "Stop it" – I spent some teenaged years in Ethiopia, and this word was usually used to end a conversation that you had simply had enough of.
So when I saw your name, I gave it the meaning of someone who is tired of the isms and the privileges and the phobias, who has simply said: Enough.
I love this association and I wish I could claim I knew of it before now.
A further association is that 'Baka' means "maybe, might or perhaps" in Tagalog, which I learned from reading this New York Times article. I think this is another wonderful association since it speaks to what could be and how things could be better than they are now.


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Suprasl, Poland
The Monastery of the Annunciation in Supraśl, Poland
St Anthony-Onuphrius of Suprasl, Poland
& St Theodosius of Kiev Monstery in Ukraine
Saint Anthony-Onuphrius of Suprasl Monastery in Poland,
Monk-Martyr in Thessalonica (Greece), from Lithuania (+1516)
February 4
Anthony of Supraśl (Polish: Antoni Supraski) was a Ruthenian monk and martyr, now venerated in the Polish Orthodox Church.
Anthony was born on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into an Orthodox family, although his social status and lay name remain unknown. According to tradition, in his youth he was known for his angry character, having eventually killed a man in a bar brawl. Wishing to atone for sin, he entered the Supraśl Orthodox Monastery some time before 1506, where he received the name Anthony.
Considering his penance insufficient, Anthony asked the abbot for permission to go to a Muslim country, where he might receive martyrdom, which was then refused. Anthony had only received permission to go to Mount Athos, where he made his vows of Great Schema and took the name Onuphrius. He then went to Thessalonica, into the Church of the Theotokos Acheiropoietos, which had been converted into a mosque, and began to pray demonstratively. He was arrested and thrown into prison, demanded by the kadi to convert to Islam, which he consistently refused while attacking the religion. Finally, he was sentenced to be burned at the stake. Going to the place of execution, Anthony continued to denounce Islam, and even spat on the face of one of the guards. At this point, he was fatally hit by a club. His body was burned.
The Monastery of the Annunciation in Supraśl, also known as the Supraśl Lavra is a monastery in North Eastern Poland in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Today it belongs to the autocephalous Polish Orthodox Church and is one of six Orthodox Christian men's monasteries in Poland.


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Edgar Oliver, the poet-playwright-actor, spent some unreasonable part of his boyhood in the car. His mother felt particularly safe there, and she would drive him and his sister Helen to Hilton Head or Statesboro or along the salt marshes that meet the Ogeechee River, or else to nowhere at all. They would drive 150, sometimes 200, miles a day in a hulking white Chevrolet like an overturned bathtub. A hole in the floor revealed the highway. She, the mother, often pulled over to the side of the road to sketch places in ruin, using the steering wheel as an easel. The children half-joked that every dilapidated house she rendered in paint promptly collapsed.
"Weeeell," Edgar says, and this is how he handles questions—by inflating that word and then climbing inside it as if it were a life raft. "Mother had the soul of a restless wanderer, which I can understand. If I could drive now, I would do the same as she did. But I never learned. I guess we imagined that Mother would just always be there to do the driving."
In October, Edgar will star in a one-man show in which he'll summon memories of his youth, in the sixties and seventies, in Savannah, Georgia. "I want to call it 'Helen and Edgar,'" he intones. "Isn't that a beautiful title?" I tell him I think it is. "Oh, goooody!" And then: "If I can convey Helen, I'll be so happy."
The production will run in New York. Edgar has lived and written and performed in that city for thirty-five years and earned himself as many epithets—"the East Village's last bohemian," "downtown New York's avuncular eccentric." But for all of his achievements in theatre and in verse, he is only now finding a more widespread renown. For one thing, the burgeoning live storytelling scene has embraced Edgar; he is particularly beloved by The Moth, an organization that has raised storytelling to performance art and that moves crowds with its events. For another, he occasionally appears on Oddities, a reality TV show about an offbeat antique store, the promotion for which features Edgar admiring a straightjacket.
"Edgar is, without doubt, the greatest raconteur in the world," says George Dawes Green, founder of The Moth and a novelist, "but because he has this lugubrious voice, he often gets hired to play these macabre characters. He's typecast as though he has some sort of identification with death. And I'm annoyed by this because Edgar is less interested in death than almost anybody I know. All of his true brilliance is thwarted by that view of him as an Allen Poe-ish character. Fortunately, the group of thoughtful admirers who do understand him is growing."
George has made Edgar a fixture of his Unchained Tour, a traveling show of storytellers and folk musicians through the South and invariably Georgia, both men's native state. There, increasingly, Edgar is known as the narrator of his own strange life and all of the epithets are reduced to one.
Saint Simons Island is about eighty miles on the I-95 South from Savannah, where we started out early this morning but still an hour late. Already, the school bus—a 1972 Bluebird painted with literary murals—is squealing and sighing like a pair of bagpipes, arousing a communal unease. There are fifteen people on board—five are performers, the rest have varied functions—and also a disheveled cabbage the size of a beach ball that was acquired roadside. On this, its second time out, the Unchained Tour will stop in nine cities in little more than a week. It's day one.
Inside, the bus has been wrecked and reconstituted to look like someone's living room. There are tables and working lamps, collapsible futons, and a reclining armchair that has almost enough space to recline. Edgar has claimed a bench at the front next to his droopy, wide-brimmed hat, which ties under the chin. He has wild, black hair and garbled teeth and is talking about his sister.
"Helen is probably the funnest person I've ever met, you knooow?" Twitchy, two-part chuckle. "A lot of people thought of us as twiiins." His hands are folded over the jacket on his lap—Paul Smith, green plaid, procured at a Salvation Army. Peter, the show's host and a man of remarkable girth and sideburns, nods and leans back into the armchair. Around the thick neck, from which his own twin—a tumor of hair and teeth—was once extracted, hangs the beaded necklace that he fingers to calm his nerves. Everyone is too tired to be nervous.
Joan Juliet Buck, the former editor of French Vogue, is stretched out on one of two white futons, wrapped in a dark coat with a hood, guarding against all sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. She reaches into a bag, rifles through Tiger Balm patches and homeopathic pellets and trail mix, and produces a bottle of smelling salts. "Here," she offers it to Elna Baker, the young, blonde, ex-Mormon comedienne. "A flight attendant gave me these." Elna leans in and then whips her head back as though thrust by an airbag. "It's like a cat pissed in my mouth." Joan grins: "But don't you feel good now?"
A stroke of red paint at the speedometer's forty-five mile per hour mark is less a suggestion than an order issued by the last mechanic who tinkered here. The bus is on its fifth engine that we know of. Our driver, Jose, is smiling into the rearview mirror, shaking the small, shaved head beneath his brown, army-style cap. "I don't like the way it sounds," he says. "Does anyone else not like the way it sounds?" George calls out to the rear. No one responds. The tour's producer, Samita, bends from the seat she's been sharing with the cabbage and reaches with a tattooed arm toward the floor. She knocks a fist against the wood, shrugs. "We didn't even really have brakes the last time."
George's preferred storytellers are, in some ways, the most pained and the least polished. "Great raconteurs never tell stories about their successes," he says. "They always tell stories about their defeats." The idea is that you don't expose much of yourself in recounting your own heroism; if anything, you gain layers. The Unchained Tour runs on vulnerability, imperfection, improvisation, undigested emotion. It moves by way of a thoroughly defective bus that will not be abandoned; it will play to any-sized crowds in any-sized places. Stories are rustled up in rehearsal, reinvented midstream. Storytelling is, by nature, more immediate than any other type of live performance, for the personal episode is not couched in anything—not the lyrics of a song, not a marketable script. But this show in particular asks its narrators to lay themselves open on the stage like pieces of ripe, ruptured fruit, and in this way you come very quickly to know them.
Though they share a founder in George, the Unchained Tour and The Moth (the juggernaut he ultimately left under care of a board) are unaffiliated. "When I started the Moth, we brought a whole array of stories out to the world," he says. "A lot of them were about triumph and success and glowing revelation. But I wanted to work with stories that focused on loss and confusion more than on the stories that we had been doing there, and that they're still doing. Anyways, the Moth knows what its mission is and right now it doesn't have anything to do with driving broken-down school buses in the hinterlands of America."
In performance, Edgar looks like the child of his stories. He cocks his head and raises his eyes slowly, like a boy caught delivering a Valentine. His hands he keeps close, sometimes turning his wrists outwards at the hips, sometimes tying his long, pale fingers together and pressing them to his huddled body. For a first, split second he seems at a loss. He sputters. But then he is in it, proceeding with an almost unearthly timing, the spasms of his voice deeply rhythmic. "I grew up… in Sssaavannah… Georgia… with my mother and my sister… Helen… in a house on East 36th streeeet. I never really felt the lack of a fauuthah. To me, a fauuthah was just something that had diiied." Laughter. "All the men in my family were dead."
For years, Edgar tells, he had a recurring dream ("I would dreeeam this dreeeam many, many nights and I loooved this dreeeam") that would come as he slept in the front bedroom he shared with his mother and Helen ("We were all so tehhhrified of the daa-aahk that it never would have occurred to any of us to have a roooom of our own"). He dreamt of a "beautiful, drooowned maa-aan" who would rise from the frothy, oceanic depths of his bottom dresser drawer, naked. "But I could never see his face because it was always veiled by a pair of my fauuthah's swimming trunks, which really were in the draaawer and were the only vestiiige of my fauuthah that I… had ever… found." More laughter.
Edgar has an impeccable comedic sense, but it is hard to tell if he is trying to be funny. There are no real punch lines here, just the anomalies of his childhood stated without commentary such that you are startled into laughter. Only much later does it occur to you (or, possibly, just to me) that maybe it isn't funny at all, maybe it's the opposite of funny, maybe it's terribly sad, this story of his dead father who left nothing behind but a bathing suit and a raving, girlish widow.
The sound is part Scottish, part Irish, part Southern and overwhelmed by syllables, syllables upon syllables that have left other people's mouths to converge in Edgar's speech. One can understand why the voice is so often pressed into the service of Halloween specials. But it is clearly and truly meant as a vehicle for this. It is part of the story. Indeed it is the story. Besides, Edgar is not so much frightening as he is frightened-seeming. Much of the time, he looks petrified of his audience; he clutches himself as he storytells, giving the impression that he stretches each letter so long because he'd like just to stay and take cover there. An Edgar performance begins as a spectacle, ends as a short symphony. By the time he gives his skittish curtsey, the people are never done. Everyone would gladly hear it all again.
"Edgar knows when he can simply let the room fill up with silence," George says. "And it's an anticipatory silence that may last for a long time without any nervousness. He has these lightning changes in going from great leaps of poetry down to very essential human humor—almost to childish humor and innocence. And there's the great subtlety with which he constructs his stories, never nailing things on the head, but letting us find our way. Often he'll bring back elements that he introduced at the very beginning, so that it really has the effect of the repetition of a theme in music. He'll take such a strange path that often people will say, 'I have no idea—where is this story going?' They just laugh at individual items. But at the end suddenly you feel all these pieces begin to slide magically into place. It's enough to bring tears to your eyes."
Edgar says of his own process, "Weeeell… I just drunkenly write things down."
The group storytells at Captain Stan's Smokehouse in Woodbine, where Captain Stan, a once-model who played in One Life to Live, smokes hogs and sometimes gators in a great metal drum. An Orthodox Roman Catholic priest from Brunswick blesses the bus with holy water but still it has a terrible time pulling away. We take some of the water with us in a bottle, clearly marked so no one will drink it. The cabbage we leave with Captain Stan.
We are nearing the state line, and soon empty fields in Georgia will become empty fields in Florida. "We never went to Florida," Edgar remembers, "except once or twice we drove to the booorder. Mother would stop the car and she would say, 'That's Florida.' And then we would all look across the booorder. And after a few minutes Mother would say, 'Florida is not the South.' And then she would start the car and turn around and drive back to Georgia." His eyes return to the window and we cross into Jacksonville.
In a Florida art gallery like a graffitied warehouse, Elna begins with her story of flying to Siberia to tell her Mormon parents that, at twenty-eight and before marriage, she had lost her virginity. It marries hilarity with a vast and persistent pain, and makes audiences fall in love with her. Which is just as well because, having started late, she is like a teenager in her affections—giddy and eager to lose her heart.
Edgar tells of the "iiivy" that consumed the house on East 36th Street ("We loooved the iiivy and it seemed like the iiivy loved us, tooo") and of the scorpions (really just tiny lizards) that he, Helen, and Mother were convinced were swarming the climbing plants. He tells also of planting watermelon seeds in the soil with kitchen spoons, and then, once we've forgotten about them entirely, of the "albiiinooo waaahtehmelons" that they found pushing beneath their little iron swimming pool. "One day, we were seized with this mad urge to destroy the pooool and so we attacked it, all three of us. And what was lying underneath the pooool was more haaaahrifying than anything we could ever…have imaaagined." Scarcely a word on his mother's palpable insanity. He does, though, direct a torrent of dread and revulsion at the watermelons. "The thought of cutting one open to see what the flesh looked like inside was unbeeearable."
Edgar seems to find lunacy unremarkable. When I ask George about the misplaced drama of it, he says, "All the people Edgar has ever loved have been mad."
The Jacksonville performance has ended and a man offers to cut everyone's hair as a show of gratitude. We sit on folding chairs. He works first on Isaac—one of three young, male, adrenalized filmmakers documenting the tour—clipping the ruddy cloud of a beard that has been eclipsing his face. The offending strands fall to the concrete floor of the venue. Tina, a Savannah journalist and fellow Unchained performer, tells Edgar that she finds his newest book, a tome of construction paper bound with red string, beautiful and sad. "Oh, gooody," he sings, and his hands fly out as if to contain some small explosion. "I looove that combination." She says the book made her cry. "Oh, well, I'm glad that you did. I'm haaappy that you did."
Tina and Joan move to a hotel, but the rest of us sleep on the ground among the hair, on half-deflated air mattresses and futons from the bus. Edgar drowses on his back with his arms folded across his torso, delicate hands pointing toward the corners of the room. I can hear from the shouting outside that someone has won the Super Bowl, but it's unclear who.
We unload the bus on a mechanic and leave to our next destination in a cramped, criminal-looking, white van. There is no room for baggage, except for Joan's paper sack of coconut water and other insipid snacks, and Edgar's green tote, which holds big bottles of Italian red wine in various stages of depletion. Joan has a foot infection ("That's why I have to eat like this vegan bitch," she says, waving a celery stick). V.G., a photographer with a gust of black hair on the one side, has been made responsible for the driving.
"Have you ever seen The Grapes of Wrath?" Edgar asks, his instrument pitching and swelling like the sea. "We're…like the Jooooads!" According to the mechanic, the bus needs a new alternator. Telephone reports reveal that the new alternator arrived, was installed, and promptly burst into flames. Our van smells strongly of menthol from Joan's Tiger Balm patches.
V.G.'s destination is a farm in Live Oak, Florida, that has belonged to the family of George's friend Jennifer for a couple of centuries. It seems, upon questioning, that the farm doesn't have any barn animals or crops—just pine trees and a few cats. "It sounds like rehab," Joan says. "Are you taking us to rehab?" Peter, who has been navigating, turns back to her. "Yes, we're staging an intervention. When we get there we're going to feed you white sugar and Wonder Bread."
We eat the pulled pork and tour the forested grounds. Jennifer leads us to the old farmhouse, which was moved into the brush out back when the new one was built. Her father lived in that old house until he was three. Later, it became a studio for her ceramist, chain-smoking aunt ("I'm so tired of the anti-tobacco movement. I hope I die right here in the woods, smoking this cigarette and maybe drinking some chocolate milk"), and even later, Jennifer's playhouse. Edgar's legs and slight paunch move ahead, seeming nearly to forget the rest of him. He climbs gingerly through the doorway, which slants towards the grass. The farmhouse is pitched at a drunken angle. Felled trees dig into its sides and wooden boards shedding strips of paint jut out like broken ribs into what might have been the living room. Holes in the walls let in the sky; the floors are carpeted with broken pottery. In one room, an ancient baby pram has been tipped over and made to release its grimy little mattress. Edgar surveys the wreck. "Mother founded a society called the Society for the Preservation of Decay," he says. "It consisted of Mother and Helen and me. Mother would have loved this house. And I do, toooo."
Rest is scarce, but whiskey is not. We roll into a town, eat, perform, drink, sleep, wake, and then start over. There is the Thomasville motel where we learn that the bus, having ushered itself to the side of the road, possibly out of displeasure with its third alternator, was accosted by five or eight or ten police cars and one carrying a detection dog.
There is the Zebulon bookstore where George tells a story of his own and the band plays a song about unrequited love, even though the love between its members is very much requited. I sleep in Non-Fiction. The bus comes finally to meet us, but by the time it materializes, one tire is flat. And the spare rejects its rubber shell about twenty minutes outside of town, spewing chunks of black tread like a wrecked teenager. "It sounded," Peter tells one audience, "like we ran over a basket of puppies."
There is the roadside gas station where Joan and Peter buy fake gold grillz. They form an attachment over the gilded plastic that dams up their mouths—she, who once played opposite Meryl Streep in film, and he, a compulsive and longtime stealer of women's underpants, with a mustache like a couple of crowbars. Further down the highway, Edgar samples his first Arby's sandwich and his round, sad eyes brighten with the revelation of it. "The hooorrsseeey sauce! It's luuusscious. It really is the key to eeeeverything."
There is Athens, where the bus, newly arrived, piddles gasoline all over the parking lot of the bar. And there is Canton, where, late at night, Edgar plays "Shoot the Buck" on an old arcade machine, wielding a plastic gun and massacring baby turtles and howling, "Kiiilll! Kiiilll! Kiiilll!" The tour stops in big places and in small places and any place that will feed us is good. But there is something especially gratifying in playing to fifty people. They seem to know that you've spent in gas what you are making now in ticket sales.
Often people recognize Edgar from Oddities. Once, he is approached by an effusive car-rental employee in the Avis lot. "I'm afraid it will drive me maaad," he tells me. "I'm afraid that I'll never be alone again. That there will never be any strangers anymore and that it will drive me insaaane."
There is Savannah, and in Savannah, Helen. She has come from Wheeling, West Virginia, where she lives, to look for a house and also to see Edgar and watch him perform. But it feels as though so many stories about her have actually summoned the woman, made her material. I don't know what any of us gaping onlookers expected of their reunion, but no queer and intimate ritual passes between them. Edgar says, "Helloooo Helen." They hug each other lightly. He makes his way backstage.
Half of Helen's long, wispy hair is piled high and her eyelids, under glasses, are lined in blue. She has a full, open face that must have once been very beautiful. And she is less alarmed-seeming than Edgar, a bit more at ease in the world, though not much more. Every other sentence trails into a fitful, wheezy laugh that stops only to start again, louder and more high-pitched. It sounds like one twittering bird echoing another—and then another, and then another. A hundred tiny, excited little birds in her laugh. A classic Savannah accent is tempered by some faint echo of Edgar's speech patterns. Hers is more of a slurred and nasal muttering, but the expressions are the same—the "Weeeell" and the "Oh, gooody!" and the vast, Germanic "Yaaaa" used for affirmation. When they were young, people called Helen and Edgar "those Transylvanian children." I had imagined her only as an extension of her brother. In his narratives they act together, they are "Helen and I."
Edgar is always being asked if there were ever any storytellers in his family. His mother, Louise, maybe, or one of his grandmothers. He says that Helen is the one who would tell him stories. "Sometimes I wonder how many of my memories became memories through us talking about things that had happened."
Louise grew up in Allenhurst or Hazlehurst or possibly both, but in any case in some small, inland town outside of Savannah. She was the youngest daughter of Benjamin Harrison Gibson, a country doctor, and Edna, who was almost certainly a Jewess of Polish descent. Louise's older sister, Elsie, was a childhood friend of a boy named Edgar, and when Louise was in her thirties, she and Edgar fell in love and were married. Elsie came to the wedding in mourning, trailing black veils. Louise never spoke to her again.
After the wedding, the couple left to Dallas. Louise stored all of her paintings, her life's work, really, at her mother's house, with the intention of retrieving them once she and her husband had settled into Texas. But when she came for the canvases a few months later, she couldn't find them anywhere. Edna had thrown them away: "Now that you're married, you don't need those old things anymore."
Dallas is where Helen was born and also where, a year and a half into marriage, Edgar (Sr.), a chemist, died from a morphine overdose. Louise was ten months pregnant with Edgar (Jr.) at the time. Later, she would tell the children that their father had had a fatal heart attack when they were both infants. This is how Edgar tells of finding out the truth: When he and his sister were sixteen and seventeen, respectively, they persuaded their mother to go with them to Paris for the summer. They got together their passports, gathered money from their grandmother's estate. But as the weather warmed, it became clear that Louise was planning to take them to Washington, D.C., via train, as usual. She had never intended on traveling to Europe.
"And we were hahhhrified, and we stopped speaking to Mother. And we stopped even acknowledging her existence. That was really hard for Mother since Mother didn't speak to anybody except us. Sometimes she would try and say things to us. And I'd say, 'Did you hear anything?' And Helen would say, 'No, it must have been the wiiind.' And I'd say, 'Yes, it was just the wiiind.' And that went on for about two days. And then Mother had a complete breakdown and was following us around sobbing, saying, 'You don't know what I've been throoough! You don't know what it's been liiike! You remember when I told you how your father died? Well, I lied! It was of a morphine overdose two months before you were booorn!' At which point we were delighted, we were so happy to find this out. We were so excited to learn about how our fauuthah had died, we sort of forgot about the trip to Paris."
A purple van pulsing with the bass of some brute song turns the corner onto East 36th Street. A black man is dragging a cardboard box filled with packets of ramen down the sidewalk. The live oak trees are bleached and weary and the pavement is covered in thorned sycamore pods. Helen and Edgar amble, in their dark winter capes, toward their old house—the scorpion house, the site of Edgar's lonely and recurrent dream. They insist that of the entire block, it is the only single thing that's changed. "It was actually a beeeautiful house, which seemed quite big then," Edgar says.
The place is still white, a muddied white, but the stately columns are now bare wood posts strung with colorless Christmas lights. There is aluminum siding where there wasn't aluminum siding. Years ago, in what might have been a fatal visit, Edgar found that the house had become a cocaine distribution center. It's unclear if this is still the case. Helen points out that the back windows have been made smaller and the yard abridged by a little fence, leaving a strip of dirt at the back just wide enough for a car. "Perhaps the cocaine overlord needed the space to make drug deliveries," she says, laughing madly.
They tell about their mother, who used to climb onto the roof of the shed to "shriek and howl and sob with her wild hair flying." Louise was so paranoid that she could not stand even to go shopping. The children bought their own holiday presents with her money. She never cooked, Edgar remembers, but one Christmas was intent on preparing a turkey. Only she couldn't find the roasting pan anywhere. Eventually it turned up in the oven, full with the infested remains of a Thanksgiving bird ("It was green and aaallliiiiive!"). Sometimes their mother would convince herself that there were intruders in the house and once, after a long drive, she called the police to come. They found that the upstairs had been ransacked, but all they really witnessed was her hoarding. Other times Ouija board messages ("The Killer is coming tonight!") drove the family to check in to the nearest Travel Motor Lodge.
They point to the homes of their former neighbors. One, a Mr. Perkins, would haul his shrieking daughter Miriam into the yard and drop the insects that populated his tomato plants down the front of her shirt. (But why? I ask. "Weeeell," Edgar offers, "he was a cruel maa-aan.") Across the street lived a hapless trio of sisters. One was retarded, one suffered from a vicious skin disease, and the last, the eldest, with teased hair, would paint her toenails in the street.
"The retaaahhded girl paid twenty-five cents to watch the puppet shows we put on in front of our house," Helen recalls. "Oh yes, Helen made the most beaauutiful puppets," Edgar says, conjuring a papier-mâché lion. "Yes," she says, "I made them myself, but I must say, they were very beautiful." But they left those puppets at grandmother Edna's house and Edna threw them away, as she was prone to do.
Helen left for George Washington University after high school, but was so miserable there that her mother joined her. Edgar was left alone in Savannah that year. He didn't know how to cook, so he ordered miniature, square burgers and chocolate cream pies from the Krystal drive-in. His mother only sent him thirty dollars a week in allowance, so he, student treasurer of his Catholic military college, embezzled money from the treasury. Later, he would join his family in D.C.; even later, he and Helen would escape their mother, with whom they lived in a Mr. Schweyer's rooming house, and run away to France. French was their secret language, and it was only upon arriving in Paris that they realized that what they had been speaking to each other wasn't really French at all. "But we spoke it passionately and quite fluently, whatever it was," Edgar says.
"Mother just seemed to really think that to have anything to do with other people was to open yourself up to potential horror and trouble. And she was really just content to be the three of us. And it was really fun, you knooow. So we didn't really feel a lack of other people. I think Helen and I were sort of loooners, too. And we never felt like we needed to have other friends our age or anything until maybe I was seventeen. We started to feel a bit that way, and it wasn't so much that we felt we needed other friends our age. It was just Helen and I were so close to one another and we wanted to go off without Mother. And Mother wanted always to be with us. Mother must have felt like she had created some sort of monster, these two people—Helen and Edgar—who just wanted to be alooone."
The siblings moved finally to New York. Two years ago, Edgar published a stage work for the first time, the critical hit East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House, about the strange and, on occasion, perilously deranged neighbors with whom they shared a tenement building there. Edgar lived in that building for thirty-four years, the last fifteen of them entirely alone ("Which was incredible; I loved it"). But one year ago he was asked to relocate and moved to the Lower East Side. "The building was really starting to decaaay. I didn't want to leave, but it seemed like it was time. Living in a building with other people will take some getting used to. It's been a source of great dread to me," he sighs.
"I still haven't dreamt about 10th Street, but I did have a dreeeam about a week after I left. And my dreeeam was in this old house, this old deaacaying house, and it had daaahk green wallpaper and I thought, 'This is such an old, decaaayed house. But I could live here. I could really live here.' And I was starting to get excited about the idea of living there, and then I woke up. And I got up and then I thought, 'Oh, that was Mr. Schweyer's house. I was trying to get back to 10th Street and I wound up at Mr. Schweyer's house.'"
Louise would stay at Mr. Schweyer's house for the rest of her life. (Mr. Schweyer found her dead in her room when Edgar was twenty-six years old.) She left her car behind in the parking lot of the Savannah train station. The sanitation department sent her letters saying that the vehicle was overgrown with vines and being consumed by cockroaches, but she refused to move it. Eventually, the police caught thieves stealing a good deal of furniture from her Savannah home and asked her to come and identify her belongings. She wouldn't. "Mother would not…come back…to Sssaaavannah," Edgar says. The housebreakers were released and they took the furniture with them.
The closing shows are in Atlanta at Manuel's Tavern. Michael, of the folk-rock duo Shovels & Rope, gets behind the makeshift drum kit and raps the snare with a set of sticks in one hand and a maraca in the other, arms churning furiously, looking very much like a human bicycle. Peter antagonizes Michael, threatens to run off with Cary Anne, the nib-sharp, female half of the band. But he is no real menace; half the time they play, which is at opening, closing, and to usher the house into intermission, he is off crying to the side from the passion of it.
After the performers have danced onstage to a final chorus, a group leaves to the tattoo parlor. Michael will ink a shrimp boat across his chest, and Peter will tattoo a Georgia peach modeled after his wife's ass on the inside of his forearm. The rest of us make for a gay karaoke bar where Edgar intends on singing "Moon River." But when we get there, the look on his face is one of panic and he staggers outside—the place has been overtaken by young men gyrating and shouting the lyrics to "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." George says, "We should have known better than to come to a gay karaoke bar on the night that Whitney Houston died." V.G. gives us a lift back to the hotel. Edgar turns to him before exiting the van. "That was beeeaautiful," he whispers, and he is talking about the drive.
In the morning, we converge on the bus one last time, determined to ride it home through to Savannah. The futons are lengthened so we can stretch out, pray. In one tumbledown town, if it is a town, we stop for the worst Chinese food of our collective lives—fried chicken in some pinkish fluid and pools of chow mein—and then the engine refuses to start up again, until finally it does.
"I love being together for the duration of the journey," Edgar says. "Because most of my life I tend to feel like, 'Oh, maybe it's time for me to gooo, maybe I'm overstaying my welcome.' I just feel at a loss for words with people. I'm such a bad conversationalist. But when I'm on tour I feel like, 'Weeeell, I shouldn't be going because we're all in this together until such time as we disbaaand.' And that…is a really…fun sensation."
It is dark, and every time I wake there are flashing lights and the bus is shaking and emitting a sound like the grinding of very large teeth. We blunder into Savannah, stop at a first traffic light. And here the bus wheezes once and dies, having recognized this light as a place of final rest. We leave it inert in the road and, with reluctance, move to the van that has been following behind, just in case. Our first call is to drop Edgar at the Thunderbird Inn, so that he can rejoin his sister. When she comes to the door we, in our sad white carriage, have already faded from view and it looks to her like he was delivered by the night.
Watch the promotional video for the tour here: Unchained from Matt Perry on Vimeo.


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The beautiful former home of one of France's greatest international stars is now on the market.
Edith Piaf, a French cabaret singer, songwriter, and actress, once lived in the eight-bedroom property located in Grasse, in the south of France. Piaf was played by Marion Cotillard in the Oscar-winning film La Vie en rose (2007).
The gorgeous pink house is tucked away in the quiet French countryside, halfway between the two picturesque villages of Mougins and Valbonne.
Undergoing recent refurbishment, the property is of an excellent standard and has a double reception room, salon and dining room, along with the eight bedrooms. But the real highlights are the tennis court, swimming pool and pool house.
An independent caretaker's house also comes with the property, plus a garage and space for a helipad.
The interiors are marked by exposed stone, tiled floors, rustic furnishings and a neutral colour palette.
The gardens are wonderful, with flowering Mediterranean shrubs, mature trees and lawns, creating a perfect sun-filled paradise.
This property is available for €4.5 million (£4 million) through French Entrée.
Take a tour:
Get inspiration, ideas and advice wherever you are! Follow us on Facebook: House Beautiful UK | Pinterest: House Beautiful UK | Twitter: @HB | Instagram: @housebeautifuluk


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Because who doesn't love powder? Back in 2012 I created the first "version" of conepatrol. Back then you could configure powder alerts for a number of resorts around the Pacific Northwest. In more recent years the service was sponsored by Mt. Bachelor, but went dormant during the winter of 15/16.
Friends told me last season how much they missed the service, so I'm bringing it back with a few new tricks. The text-based alerts are still around, but I am now gathering a snapshot of all the key ( well the stuff I look at ) conditions data from mtbachelor.com, and posting them here to the site.
You can click the little "Follow" button on the bottom right hand corner of the site, and have this pertinent condition data sent to your inbox each morning. Each post will have webcam imagery for that moment, so you can get a quick glance at the conditions and make sick plans accordingly.
The site is now powered by WordPress.com – which is the dandiest website hosting platform around, and an even better place to work. Stay tuned for some links to nerd-stuff about how it all works.
Pray for Snow


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We are currently looking for experienced Bar and Waiting Staff to work in this busy and fast growing pub at the heart of the community in Limpsfield Chart. Both full-time and part-time positions are available, which will include weekend work.
You'll be part of a warm and enthusiastic team whose aim is to create a welcoming and happy atmosphere for all our customers. You will need to be friendly, energetic and know how to deliver exceptional customer service.
To find out more about the roles we have available, please give us a call 01883 722209 and ask for Vicky or Joal, or send us an email with details of your previous experience.