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Red Wedge: Tell us a bit about yourself, your "history" on the Left, as the saying goes, and the kind of work you do, both practically and theoretically.
Kate Doyle Griffiths: I always find this a funny question to answer, because it has so many answers. I usually end up talking about my history as a socialist and a political thinker about class issues and labor organizing, but I could write something just as long about my trajectory as a reluctant anthropologist, as feminist and a queer person, about the transformative impact of learning about the South African working class, and that meeting many individual people in South Africa has had on my sense of what is needed and what is possible, about my particular experiences growing up as a white, anti-racist person in the South, about reading Judith Butler when I was 21, or about my childhood fascination with the US Civil War, historical fiction, and Mexican history.
I could probably frame my "coming out" as a revolutionary Marxist around the very particular experience of attending "vanguard" public schools in Houston, Texas in the 1980s and my choice in that environment to become a musician rather than pursue a purely academic track. I don't think that's really a testament to my uniqueness; I think those kinds of multi-layered complexities inflect everyone's stories of how they come to politics, and the kind of political choices that resonate with them over time. Sometimes, I wish these histories were written as accounts of the "worst" political positions and analysis we've had, and how those changed. What I like most about these accounts is the aspect of recording development over time.
I come from a family that was considered and considered itself far left in the context of Houston in the 1980's and 1990's; my dad was a civil rights lawyer and anti-death penalty activist and my mom was a physician on the forefront of the AIDS crisis, which definitely shaped my worldview in pretty fundamental ways. My family has a long history of being "weird" and making it work; its multiracial, aggressively woman-led, with unconventional marriage and childrearing arrangements, and developed, I think a way of making that an ethos. As far as "left" politics, Dad was then and is now a member of Democratic Socialists of America, my mom's parents (Dick and Ruth Doyle) were militant unionists who didn't shy away from the word "Communist," and were active anti-racists, feminists, and anti-war activists in the industrial center of East Texas, "The Golden Triangle." It perhaps does a bit of violence to the memory of my grandparents to air my well supported suspicions that they were at some point Communist Party members, though, because they never told me that themselves, even under pretty close questioning. I could never bring myself to ask my grandfather "are you now or have you ever been," but once when I came back from a summer of union organizing in the Gulf, at about 19, my mom encouraged me to tell him about my union activity. His response was to ask "so are you a communist?" I said no, he said "oh well a socialist then" (with maybe a look of amused disappointment). I said I wasn't and he said "well you must be an anarchist then!," which I also denied, though I was at that point certainly some sort of social anarchist. He just laughed and exclaimed "That's what they all say!"
To put my own history very briefly, I started out as a progressive liberal with particular interest in unions. When I went away to college, I was very much a democracy dork and a policy person, but the Battle In Seattle, and particularly the "Teamsters and Turtles" aspect of things really won me to the potential of direct action as the truly meaningful power behind any real chance for working class politics to emerge. In college, I worked with a heterogenous group of student activists, Students for Social Equality, doing work with United Students Against Sweatshops, and labor support for graduate student workers, clerical workers and other worker organizing on campus, as well as some campaigns beyond campus like greengrocer organizing and laundry workers. It's hard to remember the mood of the period, but compared to now it was decidedly anti-intellectual, pragmatist and in retrospect rather aggressively apolitical. I remember feeling that calling yourself a "socialist" might put you outside the realm of the thinkable; it was then, to me, a scary word. But I was always interested in the theoretical aspect and lucky to be at NYU when many Marxist thinkers were teaching there. "History from Below" really changed my life, as did learning about the working class roots of the black radical and socialist feminist traditions.
My experience in and around the labor movement – during a period when student activists like myself were really seen by a number of union internationals as the answer to the accelerating collapse of organized labor movement – put me in close quarters with some really disappointing moments of opportunism, short-sightedness and cowardice on the part of the bureaucracies of more than one international and a couple of local unions. When I encountered the socialist group Solidarity and the rank-and-file strategy, it really gelled with my sensibilities; more than that, Soli members were among the first experienced activists I met who didn't simply declare every rally and campaign a victory, no matter how small or how defeated, and confirmed some of my suspicions and analysis of the weaknesses of the various strategies – summit-hopping, media-blitz style "solidarity" of moral appeals, student substitutionism and the like. It was also a group of people who had material and experience of shop-floor organizing and could do some "showing" rather than "telling" on that front, all of which impressed me, and reminded me of the kinds of stories my grandfather -- a lifelong shop steward, and perpetual bargaining committee member, who refused advancement into management or apparently in the union – liked to tell over holiday meals.
I've since left Solidarity, though I still have many member-comrades and comrades who are former members, over a drawn-out battle over gender contradictions. Even without that, I would have opposed softening the organizational stance on the Democratic Party, though when I joined I likely would have supported that change. These days, I organize mostly with the International Women's Strike and with a small communist collective in New York called Red Bloom, but I consider Marxists in and from many organizational traditions my comrades both in principle and, as much as possible, in practice.
In IWS and in Red Bloom I have a chance to develop theory and strategy mostly with comrades who are explicitly Marxist feminist, internationalist, anti-racist, pro-immigrant, pro-queer-and-trans, and pro-sex worker, and who are committed to shop- floor and community organizing, which is important to me in terms of my own development and to the task of building new Marxist cadre. A lot of the work is political education. We are in a moment in the USA of a flowering of the "socialist idea;" the DSA has become the largest socialist organization on the US left in some time, and more mainstream progressives are now paying lip service to socialism. Thanks to Bernie and to some of that ongoing electoral work, a lot of the "bite" of the word is waning. It's a good development overall, in my opinion, a really exciting time to be a Marxist. But I think part of the job of the cadre-fied left, especially those of us committed to working class independence and autonomy, is to put some of the "bite" back in a politically meaningful way rather than resting on the laurels of the declining power of McCarthyite scare tactics.
We have two main things to do I think, and we have to do them both at the same time. First, we have to help consolidate a socialist movement that that transcends sectarian identifications and socialist pedigrees like the one I'm writing for you now, and instead create the broadest conditions of unity among socialists in a vision for building working class power, and active solidarity across those lines. That will mean breaking the habits learned from liberals of staying "relevant" by punching left, as well as overcoming the learned helplessness of isolation and smallness. A friend I admire very much recently told me and a couple of worker activists "you are the adults in the room;" a renewed, powerful and organized socialist movement will require many of us and many new socialists to take serious action, take real responsibility, try new things, fail and as another person may have once said "fail better."
The second task may be even more important and is assuredly more difficult. It involves connecting the new socialist bloom with the worker upsurge we're seeing in a new wave of strikes that have been underway this year, and a broader and growing sense of worker militancy. It means connecting the socialists we have with the urgency of organizing where they are – in workplaces, but also in housing struggles, as class militants in fights against police brutality, for black and queer liberation, against the crushing social abandonment of disabled people, children and the elderly, and against the increasingly brutal global regime of borders and citizenship. It means having a strategy to do this, in terms of transmitting what we've learned, really over centuries, about how to build power from the ground up, for connecting the power of strike action, boycotts, occupations, rent strikes and social-strike tactics (like mutual aid, self defense and some of the ways the structure of our movements can give us glimpses of a new society) in ways that build rather than drain our energy. It means encouraging socialists and workers to make decisions collectively on a new horizon which goes beyond defensive actions and individual plans to "get by" or schemes to trick the ruling class into minimal reforms. It means some of us will make our plans to survive with an eye to the best and most strategic places to do this kind of organizing. Those decisions are going to be about not only what kinds of risks it makes sense to take, but also about what kinds of priorities we put first, when and where.
Red Wedge: The theme to this issue of Red Wedge is "In Defense of Transgression." Over the last few years, we've seen cries from some quarters of the Left bleating about transgression, pathologizing broader Left culture – implicitly queer folks, but others as well, notably cultural producers. Indeed, while the core of the complaint from some circles is that the Left are a bunch of oddballs, we are arguing that it is the oddballs that have led our movements. One reads these accounts, whether blaming the anti-war movement and hippies for the election of Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey, or "Tumblr Liberalism" for the alt-right, and one sees both bad analysis and a specific political agenda. What do you think this agenda is all about, and what role do you see transgression playing in our movements today?
Kate: Well the kinds of decisions I'm talking about are inherently transgressive; Walter Rodney called it "class suicide" for a reason, and class suicide is an easier decision to make than ever in an era of outright bald and bold class murder and proletarianization of what might have once been stable professional career tracks. We live in a society organized for profit and for the power of the ruling class. We are channeled into all kinds of decisions, large and small, that suit that organization and that are heavily ideological. What is "normal" in terms of career choices, in terms an ideal family, or man or woman or even simply the social definition of adulthood is by no means common in practice; it's at best an aspirational bourgeois ideal or a set of superficial options among fundamentally similar alternatives. Mostly, it involves being rich enough not to be embarrassed, but it also involves not being too queer; participating in de facto and de jure segregation along lines of race, gender and citizenship in housing and the labor market; getting a job that matches your "potential" or education; or which can afford you signs of stability and affluence. The ideal is a life organized around the moral imperative of providing the best possible future for your children (which you should probably have) or at very least one which keeps you from being "dependent" on your extended family, the state, or other people at all beyond the medium of exchange. But that kind of "normal" is increasingly a pipe dream for anyone who ever had access to it and has always been tenuous-to-unattainable for much of the working class. For some parts of the working class it has always been, in fact, recognized as such and undesirable.
Often the idea that socialists "fail" to connect with "the working" class is rooted in a completely ahistorical and personalistic evaluation of the flaws of socialists, while ignoring the known and hidden histories of transgression that populate the history of socialist, working class and revolutionary history that we can and should draw inspiration from. If we wanted to get into the history of the divide between organized socialists and workers we'd have to talk about the impact of Stalinism as a state ideology on the global working class, of Social Democratic, Liberal and Stalinist drives to "normalize" gender and the family, to naturalize race and nation in the service of shoring up the power of national elites. We'd also have to enumerate the impact of the concerted anti-communist efforts of bosses and the state in USA and around the world, and probably the failures of "socialist" parties as they turned first to nationalist betrayals and then to programs of austerity, as well as to some of the more detailed failures of specific groups and figures in moments where organizing across borders and chauvinisms might have otherwise been possible. But too often the push for "normie" socialism works precisely to elide this sort of conversation in terms of its meanings for building socialist and working class movements today.
Part of this historical elision and what I see as a sort of neoliberal approach to "normal" socialist identity is, I think, that this kind of thing – an injunction to personally "just be normal" – can feel like all we have control over, and satisfies a frustration we've all felt with messy and ham-handed conflicts among socialists. But the point is precisely to get beyond that. The appeal of this kind of socialist cheerleading for normalcy I think runs deep; its an old boring Marxist concept but alienation of our labor from ourselves means our selves are alienated from society and human relationships. We all feel like socially awkward dorks, we're all weird and transgressive. There's a reason "nerd" culture, intricate fandoms and "geek" cultures have become so visible. It's not just a queer thing, but queers have a lot to offer everyone about "coming out" and being authentically your weird self, loving not just who you love, but the ideas you love, the commitments you love that might not map on to that bourgeois ideal, and your dreams for yourself and society. For me, being fully out as queer and as a socialist or a communist have coincided. The lesson, I think, is that the power, or really sense of control, you might gain from being in the closet, whatever closet, is illusory; rarely are you fooling anyone. As much as we aren't going to trick the ruling class into giving us what we want and need, we won't trick workers into socialism or into trusting socialists. In my experience, being "out" in any sense, breeds trust among comrades and militants.
But I think that's the appeal; it can feel like if we just convince everyone we are like them in superficial ways, we can sell our ideas, but, to me, that's marketing, and maybe it's even an expression: "professional" socialization. It's certainly not organizing. When you really get to know people, across the lines demarcated as normal and appropriate to your social position, whether socially or in an organizing context, or both, you learn everyone is strange in some way, and that most people know that. Most people appreciate honesty. So I think sincere socialists can be drawn to this idea. I have been, at times, but its often an expression of lack of experience and confidence. The main thing that convinced me out of it was more of a sense of trust in myself, my organizing skills and my ideas.
That it has appeal, however, is not the only or main reason this anti-left, anti-transgressive meme is being promoted by some prominent socialist voices and isn't the main reason why it's exploitable by the right. The utility of this argument, if we can call it that, has to do with a focus on voting as a socialist strategy and the staying power of the liberal "science" of elections as primarily a demographic one. The idea here is that "the white working class," particularly but not exclusively men, is the Lost Voter Block for "progressive" politics, and that appeals to their economic interests, combined with downplaying the "culture wars" amped up by liberals and the right around trans politics and black lives, can result in quick victories. I think this strategy is a bad one; I think, on its face, it aggressively ignores the class politics taking place in the black movement, in immigrant rights movements, in feminist movements, and in gay/queer/and trans politics, the degree to which these increasingly make themselves plain in the workplace, and sacrifices some of our most important opportunities to unite socialist politics and working class militance in a way that allows us to honestly organize with workers in motion. It condemns liberal "identity politics" while relying on those of us with "identities" to stay committed to the bankrupt politics of lesser-evilism, and fundamentally signals a commitment to the coalitional approach that has long been exploited by both parties and the ruling class as a whole in order to maintain a minority dictatorship of capital and capitalists.
But it may be even worse than that; I don't think it will work on its own terms, that is, simply electing socialists or even more Democrats to office. It relies on an already unrealistic and static account of the commitments and sympathies of working class people, who like me, each have their own individual political stories of change, through relationships, through organization and through action. If any of this works, to the extent that it recruits newly politicized socialists, they aren't going to stay still; we see that I think in a lot of the political expressions of local DSA chapters and working groups, and in even in the development of the Chapo Trap House fandom, which often exceeds its authors in political sensibility and vision. We certainly see it, over just days, in the context of the large teachers strikes in red states. It not only makes no place for those moving left to go, but it also opens the door and affirms the trajectory of those moving towards a militant right populism, and proto-fascist politics. Most of all, I really question the utility or really even possibility of "winning" some sizable minority of the minority of socially conservative workers committed to white identity to voting for Democratic Party politicians. This is clearly a key step implicit in this "normie" sensibility, and in some of its associated and elucidated strategy which asserts Democratic Party ballot lines as politically void, if not cynically, implausibly. Why should we misrepresent our hopes for the Democratic Party, one which almost all socialists publicly agree is beyond reform and captured by the ruling class, and one which at every turn has sold out, not just straight white male workers, but all workers and working class people? Why should we leave open to the right the growing opportunity for a totally new kind of politics, rooted in direct action, independent organization and militancy? That's a dangerous recipe, that in the past has precisely paved the way for fascists. To me, it's a strange kind of pragmatic idealism, borne of a foreshortened socialist horizon, and seemingly also rooted in a kind of self-loathing and lack of confidence on the part of the socialists who advance this agenda. They are, to a person, themselves weirdos, intellectuals, hipsters, rigidly sectarian, "fail sons" in their own minds, deeply embroiled in left "subculture," "weird Twitter" and the like, and really, all manner of not adequately normal.
Red Wedge: You work within the tradition of social reproduction theory (SRT). What would SRT tell us about the role of transgression that we are discussing here, and its relationship to the social movements?
Kate: Well, SRT is both a tradition with a long history – one in which I squarely place Marx and Engels – as well as many of our favorite Bolsheviks, and a great number of thinkers who emerged from social movements historically. It's just Marxism, weaponized as a theory for political action and strategy. In its simplest presentation, it's just (just!) the attempt to theorize, analyze and document the class-in-itself; to look at how we reproduce ourselves in a way that encompasses production-for-profit as a collective endeavor of working class self-reproduction, part of that process of class-making and a specific potential source of class power, while also looking at how those arrangements beyond surplus value extraction shape the possibilities for class consciousness and realities of working class self-activity. But it's also, as we are now defining the field, quite in its infancy. There are many more books to be written, actions to be taken and lessons to be learned. So I hesitate to give a pat, what-does-SRT-say answer about this, because I don't think it says one thing.
I think though that fundamentally Marxist analysis, and so SRT, tells us that when we take what we need to survive, let alone to thrive, what we need to organize and to fight back, we will be transgressive, whether it's our time, dignity, higher pay, health care, or flatly appropriating commodities; whenever we use our capacities for ourselves, we transgress our use and the vision capital has for and of us. Increasingly, doing any of these things literally transgresses the law. That's entailed in the fundamental Marxist idea that we don't share interests with the ruling class.
Not all transgression is politically useful, particularly not individual acts of self-assertion, self-care or individual acts of refusal or disruption; some of that might be necessary or unavoidable but it often depends on and presumes precisely on the arrangements of exploitation and domination we all are born into; this is what people describe but don't really explain when they refer to and use "privilege" as a category of analysis, in my estimation. But where social movements come in, I think, is that different people and different parts of the working class come to realize the need to transgress in specific ways, in groups, at different times. That's not, I think, something socialists can afford to scoff at, to reject or to mock. To the extent that openly identifying as a socialist, (or communist or anarchist) is itself a kind of necessary transgressive subculture, the experience of joining it should give us useful information about the ways people come to politics, why and how they stick with them and develop them, and we should look for these ideas, processes, and steps in other subcultures, countercultures and social movements. Where we see people coming to socialist ideas in groups, even when it's incomplete, mixed and not all there, we should be present and engaged. Class consciousness isn't going to and has never happened all at once, overnight. It's a cultural as well as a political process, or really, hopefully a set of processes.
I think a lot of people on the left really understood and do understand that, at the same time as finding some solace in "normie socialism," we have our own kind of mixed consciousness. We saw that recognition even with the left popularity of something as blatantly weird and transgressive as the "juggalos" turned "struggalos," fans of the Insane Clown Posse, a subculture framed around the inherent transgression and isolation of rural and suburban slum poverty, largely but not exclusively white, and framed around a rap-rock band and outre makeup stylings. Juggalos pride themselves on what mainstream society condemns them for; advocating a surrealist commitment to violence along with proto-socialist values, like mutual aid, anti-fashion, aestheticization of "cheap" non-nutritive food, assertion of body and ability positivity. It's clear that the structural conditions of forced transgression pave the way for a kind of "for-itself" subcultural survival and self-valorization. If EP Thompson were doing his thing today, he'd check out the un-steepled spaces of the Gathering, as much as teacher happy hours, out-of-the-way queer bars, block parties and barbecues, comedy clubs, and Sunday morning soccer and cricket games in city parks.
Much the same can be said for many "social movements" in a much more developed form; specific sections of the working class experience conditions of alienation, exploitation and oppression in specific ways that self-organization and activity bring to the fore. When the black struggle both argues for black beauty and asks us to imagine a world without police and prisons, these are socialist ideas, and ones that go beyond "subculture," intersecting with questions of gender, sexuality and ability. When those movements specifically organize themselves with respect to class antagonisms within the movement, we'd be fools not to pay attention. We could do this conceptual exercise all day, and not just as contained examples but by looking at the way social movements influence each other demanding solidarity and sharper analysis. As a concrete example, the International Women's Strike saw in the internal push-back to Women's March organizing, a call for anti-Zionist, anti-racist, pro-trans and pro-sex worker platforms a kernel of that kind of class antagonism and a chance to popularize the strike as a tool for combating sexual harassment, discrimination and cooptation of a resurgent women's movement by "boss feminism" focused largely on representation and rhetoric. In 2017, that kind of united front socialist intervention was a predictive temperature check on class militancy and organization; our biggest workplace walk outs were district wide teachers' strikes in red states.
This kind of bubbling of social movement consciousness, reflecting the structured conditions of race, gender and sexuality, is similar and concurrent to the way that Marx describes the development of worker consciousness – critically for Marx, or later Harry Braverman – out of quite particular arrangements and innovations of the labor process itself and the process of always-iterative class antagonism over the control of work, between manual and intellectual labor, between workers and the designation of "management," between worker power and bosses' evaluation of the balance between efficiency (and thus profit) and the political and ideological control of work. Rather than see these particular insights arising from specific workplaces and industries as divisive, or too far afield, the Marxist tradition sees in them parts of the whole, the whole being the future of working class actualization as a revolutionary subject. We should regard class antagonism in "social movements" in much the same way.
Perhaps the key SRT insight here is the way in which the labor processes of paid social reproduction by necessity call up questions for workers engaged in struggling over them, larger questions about the reproduction of the entire class, which is why we see class demands and broad strike action emerging among paid workers in education and healthcare. At the same time, we – thinkers in SRT – recognize that the non-waged efforts, increasingly strained, of workers to reproduce themselves as families and communities as themselves a labor process (or set of them) with precisely that kind of potential both for sparking insight, struggle, transgressive action, and connections across the divisions of work, geography, the labor market and more.
A third, maybe distinct, SRT insight is the way in which radical family traditions (those of natal and chosen family), community and organizational traditions can "remember" and valorize precisely the kind of class transgression we need now and have always needed. Oral history, and then history in its written form when done in the voice of workers and subordinate classes, is for anthropologists and historians, itself a process of social reproduction, the only one that gives us memories of previous eras of struggle and of a time before capitalism. History, broadly conceived, is the only proof we have that it doesn't have to be this way, and that "this way" is always really a kind of opportunist, post-hoc justification expedient to ruling class power, and one that necessarily changes over time. For me, one of those stories which always leaps to mind when the question of transgression arises is, again, one my mother, aunts and cousins tell about my grandparents, both while they were still living and at their funerals and wakes.
Living in a union-dominated refinery town – Port Arthur, Texas – my grandparents counted precisely on their coworkers, neighbors and friends to defend them in the face of red-baiting McCarthyism. A carpetbagging anti-communist lecturer was scheduled to present to all assembled in the high school auditorium an instruction on "how to identify communists" in your community. My grandparents, as the story goes, made a late entrance, wearing a red tie and cummerbund and a red silk evening gown, respectively, walking slowly from the back to take seats in the front of the audience. As lore has it, the speaker got the message and declined to appear. They were safe, in one of the USA's worst historical climates for socialism, because the red flag they flew was not a pose or a brand; it was backed up with earned leadership, with shop floor organizing, with anti-racist struggle in a local church, with a lived expression of feminism in the physical presence of my grandmother, and her husband's obvious delight in her power. At my grandmother's funeral, I met workers who told me and all assembled that she and my grandfather had taught them to read, that they were the first intellectuals these now octogenarians have ever met; apparently their weird artistic inclinations (Ruth wrote fiction in a behind-the-house-shed built for the purpose by Dick, Dick painted landscapes and portraits, and carved), nerdy insistence on arguing every point (tiring even to those who loved them), gender egalitarianism, militant anti-racism (they formed a Unitarian church as the desegregated option under Jim Crow) were precisely the things that made them effective organizers. It might not always be safe to fly our red flags high, but given the period of flying red flags in which we find ourselves, I'd argue this is precisely the content we have to fill in, and the kind of frankly transgressive vision any socialism worthy of the name must embody.
Red Wedge: You were deeply embedded in the teachers struggles this spring, notably in West Virginia, and have written about these struggles extensively. What can you tell us about the role of transgression in these struggles? It would seem that there are three dialectically interacting layers of transgression here – first that of the workers transgressing the logic of the bosses, second that of workers transgressing the logic of the union bureaucracy, and finally, subjects of the American state transgressing bourgeois law. Tell us about the interplay of these struggles.
Kate: Well in the case of public school teachers and support staff, transgressing the logic of the boss and the logic of the state are really one and the same. The logic of the state in this simply became increasingly untenable and self-contradictory from the perspective of teachers employed to educate and care for West Virginia's children. On the one hand the state has hired them to spend most of their waking hours on this rather blatantly socially necessary task; on the other hand disastrously low pay, high healthcare costs with limited access, and the fundamentally pressed conditions of work made the task increasingly difficult to impossible. Teachers and all public employees—presumably by dint of their social necessity and importance—were banned from striking and even bargaining collectively, rights any other worker still has. Yet austerity thwarted the work and even the self-reproduction of teachers and support staff. It's a truism that even the most bread and butter strikes really come down to dignity, but in this case the indignity of being trapped in that contradictory "logic" is beyond glaring, and the indignity of poverty among students and in the counties and towns where West Virginia's educators work and live is especially glaring. Survival, with one's own perspective and experience intact, is transgressive.
As far as the unions, operating as minority associations in a right to work state; the bureaucracy is also perched on an intersection of logical and material contradiction. Largely deprived of the state-level levers and nodes of bureaucratic business union power in the public sector, in the firm of collective bargaining, leaders had little choice but to move with the initial call to strike; members and the prospect of members being really the sole means of reproducing their position and interests as leaders. It meant that when they were unable to sell a narrow and unsecured deal for teacher raises they had no mechanism to enforce the deal. They didn't control the strike from the start, which is how it became both an "unlawful" strike and a wildcat, ending when a class demand for across the board public sector raises was met, the workers' minimum program. So the answer is that these transgressions were not really a matter of interplay; they were simultaneous. From the moment an organized militant minority of workers began to build solidarity across job categories, union affiliation and non-affiliation and to prepare to strike to win, they transgressed all three. I think it's important to say here that the subcultural transgression of self-identified and aware socialists, activated precisely by the bloom of the socialist idea, and activating lived experience and history of struggle and strike made that possible, not some capitulation to the day-to-day normalcy of a lobster in a boiling pot.
I'd add a fourth transgression: the transgression of the limit of bourgeois politics to elections and the legitimation of a two-party system. It's possible to see the frequent assertion of teachers especially in early days that the strike was not political as a kind of naïveté or capitulation to Trumpist politics. On the contrary, the strike made direct demands on a state that had imposed austerity under the leadership of both parties and asserted power beyond and extremely in excess of that wielded at the ballot box.
Red Wedge: To focus for one more moment on the issue of union bureaucracy, and to bring it back to the initial critique of transgression. It seems that there is an overlap, tendentially and in practicality, between forces that scoff at the "oddballs" of the Left, posting memes of screaming babies, and forces that doubted, scoffed at, and then later misrepresented the struggles in West Virginia. What does this tell us about the different forces at work within the broader Left?
Kate: Well this gets us into the question of "why can't we do both?," where "both" is the prime directive of socialists to potentiate, build, deepen, and support the kind of working class self-activity and possibility of independent organization we saw emerge in teachers strikes as the first tactic and to repurpose, rebuild or realign the Democratic Party as social democratic or working class vehicle as a second one. As you suggest, the union bureaucracy is a key obstacle to the former activity, and is secondarily a hindrance to the latter goal, however otherwise infeasible that one may also be for bigger reasons, precisely because of the nature of the bureaucracy and its role in the Democratic party. (I would argue that NGOs borne of social movements and formally assigned to advancing formal rights of oppressed groups play a similar role with respect to class antagonism within movements that I previously described.)
"Normie" socialism is at its core an assertion of electoral politics, and specifically those within the Democratic Party, as the horizon of the socialist movement today as opposed to direct action and working class self activity. Most of the loudest voices in this vein have little if any direct connection to the labor movement, either in terms of its leaders or its members, but they have at various times over the last couple of years gone out of their way to pay lip service to "real" workers and unions, imagined as that 70s hard-hat cartoon that was even (especially) then an outmoded stereotype. At the same time these pro-normie ideologists dismiss and sneer at actual particular instances of organizing (like workers in higher ed), cast illegal strike action as an ultra-left concept at least until it is well underway as a mass activity, actively oppose mass anti-fascist action and argue that the self organization of particularly marginalized working class people, whether on the job or in the streets, distracts and detracts from "real" class politics.
When teacher strikes broke out, this tendency was late to the ground game – then, once they paid attention, were all-too-eager to declare victory in advance of the workers themselves, or even in advance of any indication that deal had been secured. Finally, once the question could not be glossed over, they were eager to mold the historic strike wave and first real sign of a potential working class upsurge in 20 years exactly if awkwardly into the shape of "angry white (right-wing, genderless) workers," focused and fighting for basic bread and butter demands and implicitly poised to "turn red states blue." They presented a kind of rear-guard congratulation to workers once they had already won real demands on their own terms, but actively encouraged them to downplay public socialist identification, to avoid solidarity with other socialists, to settle for the minimum program and negotiate the core demand of the Public Employees Insurance Agency after the fact from a place of much less power, and to "remember in November." It coincided with national teacher union leaders pushing this same agenda and with their insisting on strategies to stay in control of "(illegal) bargaining" in the states where strikes spread, often pushing for symbolic protest rather than the indefinite shutdown that won WV. Not coincidentally, the gains in West Virginia represented a highwater-mark for "strike spring" in terms of real gains achieved and consolidated out of teacher struggle.
And in this sense – of being not just a matter of emphasis on elections, specifically of Democrats but of opposition to the strategic deepening and spread of autonomous worker organization and activity by socialists, to the practical unity and struggle utility of a broad and united-in-action socialist movement – the "normie injunction" it is a pretty precise expression of the self-interest of the union bureaucracy. People often present the conflict between direct, mass worker action and Democratic Party politics as something that will happen "down the road," but it's always already happening. It's hard to write about this and not sound abstract or cranky, but to understand the argument it's important to have a sense of what the response of union bureaucrats has thus far been to the sustained decades long attack not only on the working class as a whole, or even on unionized workers and the terms of workers contracts large and small, but for a long, long time directly on the rights of workers to organize and democratize their workplaces. These attacks are always presented as an emergency and a reason to stick with the defensive program of begging from elected officials, but, to me, they are a reason to exit that framework. The one-sided class war we have all lived through until very recently – when workers started fighting back in 2018, making it more of a fair fight – didn't start with Trump, or even Bush Senior, but with Reagan, and it didn't let up in between when Clinton or Obama took the reigns of power. Nevertheless for the period of at least my own nearly four decade lifespan, union leaders have pursued a strategy primarily of getting Democrats elected and appealing to them for nothing more than a slower rate of attack.
This response has been what Kim Moody and others have characterized as an "organized retreat." At times expressed as old-guard clueless myopathy and at other times expressed through a "militant" approach to concessionary bargaining, using consumer campaigns, "show strikes" and other kinds of shortcut, tactical "leverage," really anything at all besides concerted preparation to strike-to-win, with of course a handful of notable exceptions. For union officials, and I think it's fair to say particularly for public sector union leadership, their individual and small-group position as leaders – well-paid and protected from the squeeze on the shop floor and in the realm of social reproduction – the hold on that position depends not on winning gains for workers, or even preventing major losses, but on a two-fold grip on control of bargaining and of offering themselves as brokers to the Democratic Party, a source of a solid voter constituency as well as of well trained and reliable election-cycle activists willing to put leather to pavement and phone to ear to get out the vote for the candidates their union endorsed. The process of this death spiral has seen leaders retreat to smaller areas of control, in terms of labor market sectors, in terms of the number and kinds of workplaces, and in terms of political geography, focusing on reliable blue and union one-party cities and states, even as union density, the legal regime and geographic coverage of closed shop and "blue" strongholds have continued to shrink.
Most horrifically in recent memory, this dynamic played out in the Wisconsin Uprising of 2011, when workers took direct action against a legislative assault on public sector workers. Anticipating West Virginia teachers, Wisconsin public sector workers began pushing the logic of the state, their unions and the electoral mode. The protests took the form of occupation of the state house that developed over weeks and culminated in a kind of de facto general strike; union leaders and embattled Democratic Party politicians led a concerted effort to redirected the energy into a failed recall effort for Governor Walker, effectively neutering the power and potential expansion of the direct, mass political strategy, and resulting in total defeat.
The consequences were dire, lending energy to the spread of reactionary policies and power of right-wing politicians across the Midwest. Right-to-work legislation spread, seemingly overnight across what was once the geographical heart of the United States labor movement, to the point where the final blow of the Janus decision is something of an afterthought, approached with a sense of resignation and by many union leaderships as nothing more than a rhetorical talking point, and focus of fundraising appeals, or at best anemic membership drives.
While this defeat certainly hurt labor leaders too, their weak response can't simply be understood as a mistake. When workers' democracy and organized power begins to exceed the logic of the state, electoral politics and union officialdom, union leaders are caught between a rock and a hard place; they are threatened by the austerity and anti-union assault and the slow demise of their dues base, but they also become extremely vulnerable to ouster by newly organized and angry workers who inevitably begin to criticize and challenge the decades of official union collaboration and capitulation to concession. From the perspective of officials, organized workers in motion are always a more immediate threat to their jobs, no matter how bad things otherwise get.
We see that same model of labor leaders clinging like sharp and dangerous but quite stationary barnacles to rusty the ship of New York State Democratic party machine politics and Governor Cuomo's promises of legislative cover in the face of the Janus decision. Quite concretely this alliance resulted in the blow up of the Working Families Party in the context of the looming New York State governor's race, where union leaders have abandoned WFP, initially organized to both as their vote-counting vehicle and constituency-delivery mechanism, and the face of "progressive" politics in the state. In the face of that party's democratic decision to back "democratic socialist" underdog Cynthia Nixon over the incumbent, the union leaderships endorsed Cuomo because of his promises for state-level Janus protections and in the hopes of union quotas on state-funded construction projects. Whatever the potential radicalism of the rank-and-file in this exciting political moment, and despite the hints of and on-the-ground efforts at building concrete solidarity between workers and social movements in New York, this race is a clear example of the way that (particularly one-party state style) Democratic party politics converts every expression of militancy and hope for change into a calculation of coalition size and a battle of brands; identity politics in the worst possible sense of the term. Union members and working class people generally now face the choice to buck their unions as individuals at the ballot box, opting between voting "socialist" and voting "worker," with a side dish of possibly getting to pick a charismatic woman, "the homo, not Cuomo." I find the slogan (along with Nixon's transgressive and hilariously bisexual reclamation of being "an unqualified lesbian", a phrase which was originally coined as an anti-queer dog whistle diss by a standard bearer local gay politician) to be snappy and amusing, but I find the nature of the choice itself deflating and instructive about the very real and immediate limits of "doing both".
Red Wedge: Tell us about the cultural practices of the strikers in West Virginia. The role of music, chants, apparel, the use of social media, memes, videos and the like? Also, what were the parties like? There's that great passage in Marx's 1844 manuscripts where he suddenly effuses about Parisian workmen drinking and smoking and singing. Can you tell us similar stories about these practices in West Virginia and elsewhere?
Kate: I wish I could say I'd been to more parties! One thing about the West Virginia strike was that people traveled every day from all over the state to come to the capital and so that meant that lots of people had long commutes, and people were managing child care and family responsibilities on top of sustaining an ongoing strike, often with multiple family members involved. It's one reason it was a good strategic decision for the legislature to make its final offer on a Saturday, and something to think about in terms of the overall strategy of these combined occupations and strike as a method – how can we build in more of the movement as an ongoing experience of being together. Often overnight occupations can start to take on that character and that's something I think worth considering.
But teachers in West Virginia really brought their artistic skills to bear and sensibilities to the state house. I was really majorly impressed with the quality and content of the signs people made, and with t-shirt designs. It shouldn't be a surprise that teachers are good with visual messaging, with historical context and with funny puns, but it really was inspiring. There were costumes, references to local and movement history and lots of plays on kids' literature and the classics. Every county and some schools had their own t-shirts, often with particular or just their own favorite slogans, lots of glitter. Music and art teachers and social studies folk really got into it, and bus drivers had some creative bus-related material. The high level and specific content and unique messages also made for great ice-breakers for conversation with strangers, because they are interesting enough to talk about and because people are proud of what they create; something mass-produced placards and identical t-shirts produced and distributed by international unions can't really reproduce. Later state uprisings still had a lot of this quality, but it was noticeable that the degree of coherent militancy where strikes spread coincided with a dominant and homogeneous image of "red for ed" optics. I'm completely down with "red for ed" but we can't lose the energy that's created when strikers feel empowered to produce their own materials, and their own look, and to DIY some of that, together. The visual is completely different – you can see the "parts" of the whole that make up the solidarity in action, you get lots of signage specifically about that; the West Virginia actions were color coded for teachers, support staff and other public sector workers, so you were constantly confronted by an instant reminder that people are in this together but coming from different experiences. It makes it harder to settle for less than victory for everyone who is putting their asses on the line, and for the communities they are representing.
The musical motifs had much the same purpose; in that context a spirited rendition of "Take me Home, Country Roads" was certainly enough to bring me to tears as a non-West Virginian and as someone who isn't really a John Denver fan normally. That song was also a point of unity between activists demonstrating against the abortion ban on the last Saturday of the strike and strikers; it was a weird moment because abortion activists were still locked into a lobbying mentality and tended to think of strikers as a question mark about being on their side when it came to reproductive rights, even though it was clear to me that the vast majority were on board, and among the personally affected. West Virginia and Planned Parenthood folks were a little leery of marching into the statehouse that was unexpectedly full of teachers; I wonder what could have happened if we'd marched in from the rally singing that song? I think the more socialists and activists we have who are able to think quickly in moments like that, the more we can concretely build the politics we so desperately need. Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister also got some play, and I think make the transition out of West Virginia well, though there's nothing wrong with people in New York and everywhere singing some homage numbers to the leadership those teachers there really showed us. I think Twisted Sister is also a great one specifically for student/teacher solidarity, and all y'all should keep that in mind. It was funny to me that "Which Side are You On?" wasn't really one of the big West Virginia picket line hits that I encountered, but I still think we can go ahead and bring that back.
Utah Phillips says that "any song you sing yourself" is a song for protest and revolution, and I can really get behind that. In the context of strikes, songs, even ones with no or bad political meanings in their own right, take on their own new meanings. It's a way people can express and consolidate not only demands but the agenda and the feeling behind the demand, and its so fun to watch that happen.
During the Women's Strike, we got really into singing Destiny's Child "Scrubs" as "scabs" – as in "I don't want no scabs," and it's neat watching those real-life memes spread. Not just songs; in West Virginia, people started wearing bunny ears as a "fuck you" to governor Jim Justice after he called them "dumb bunnies" for not "understanding" the limits of the legislative process. It was such a great response to that, but it was also a cool play on the "pussy hats" of the Women's March. I'd love to propagate it – bunny ears for teacher solidarity and also for solidarity with sex workers!
Red Wedge: In the wake of the Janus decision, one is reminded of Bob Fitch's line that closed shops actually dampened down militancy, and that this will make unions "organize for a change." One can't help but feel some sympathy for Fitch's point here, but in the short-term lives will be damaged, so it is an insufficient argument, a shortcut. What is your assessment for a path forward for labour right now, and what role can cultural workers play?
Kate: I actually don't have a lot of sympathy for the Fitch line on one level; I don't think unions in existing right-to-work states have evinced any new ideas or apparent willingness to leap into action, Wisconsin didn't have the effect of inspiring many come-to-Jesus moments that I'm aware of, really. In New York, where we've been anticipating this decision, there's been some preparation in the form of expanded union cards and some member-to-member work actually, particularly in the teachers union here in NYC, but it's not been up to the gravity of the situation so far, and too subsumed into Democratic Party politics. Here's hoping that it can spark some unintended consequences for the leadership, forge new connections between rank-and-filers and inspire some political ideas and action within the union and beyond it.
I think the red state teacher uprising does tell us something about this dynamic, but that isn't that things just getting bad enough will automatically result in worker militancy; we haven't seen that so far in the Midwest or the Deep South. Instead I think the lesson there is the importance of both socialist organization and relatively open union structures. In this case, the "openness" is a product of weakness borne of union-busting laws, one could imagine that stronger but structurally open unions would as responsive to taking leadership from a similar worker-led upsurge in the way that weak unions were forced to do in West Virginia and to some extent beyond.
I'm not sure I'm the right person to outline a strategy for the labor movement as a whole. But I do have some ideas about what socialists should be doing with respect to worker organizing and the hopeful signs of shop-floor and rank and file militancy we are currently seeing.
I think the main task we face is to spread the strike and build a militant minority; the best tool we have to do so is the experience and lessons of the teacher strikes so far. I think we should both be organizing new workers and organizing in existing unions; we should do so at the level of the shop floor and as open socialists. To do that we have to build both the face-to-face meetings in schools, warehouses, factories, depots, hospitals, offices and shops. To do it effectively, we have to build not only the shop floor organization but also the mechanisms and organization for distribution of those lessons through independent organization – rank-and-file caucuses, independent unions and socialist organizations.


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Again, my apologies for my slackness on the updates and new posts. I have been sitting back and watching some events unfold, getting a good look at the bigger picture. Let's start with the caption above, " What about Comet ISON?" … exactly, WHAT is going on with this "comet?" Astronomers are puzzled, even the ones who report to the MSM are stating that they have never witnessed a comet that behaves in such a way. So one would think that there would be a prioritization to be as updated as possible, all cameras pointing at this object, but where is the info? Bruce Gary of course is right there in the forefront bringing as much as he can, but what about those who have access to much better equipment? What about Hubble? What about images from the rover on Mars? Why the lack of information? Why is it that 9 out of 10 people still don't even know what this is or that it is coming soon? Questions, questions, questions….
If you want to see the projected path and best time for naked eye visibility, go here>>> http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ison/ You can also use Stellarium although you may have to import the data for the Comet which is easy. Perihelion, when the comet gets closest to the Sun, is shown to be on November 28, yes about 3 and 1/2 weeks away. Coincidentally, the 28th is also the first day of Hanukkah due to a rare anomaly between the Jewish and Gregorian calendars. Happened once in the late 19th century, but it won't happen again for over 77,000 years….CLICK HERE FOR MORE>>>Hanukkah-Thanksgiving Again, just bizarre coincidence?… we will see. It is an important, important, important day because it will be the time when we will all see if this "comet" makes it around the Sun or not. If it does, will there some sort of amazing lightshow in the sky as a result? Or… if it doesn't, say it crashes right into the Sun, an object of this size would blow out quite a solar flare possibly. You can go to look at footage from previous Sun-grazers which have in fact at numerous times, caused some sort of solar eruption upon impact. As you can see over to the right side of the page, I have updated the ticker to November 28.
So we have this day coming up very soon and it should prove exciting. Like I said earlier, many astronomers are claiming outright that this "comet" is behaving more like a small celestial body rather than a comet. CLICK HERE>>> Comet ISON PHOTO Shows 'Downright Weird' Space Rock En Route To Sun The speed has increased, the object gets dimmer then brighter, the shape is not normal. Read the link, that's why I put them there for you. If you are one of those who is aware of Comet ISON, share what you know with others. I am actually quite shocked at how FEW people are even aware, especially when EVERYONE should be. Oh but just like a lot of valuable info, it is ignored by the masses so they can focus on something on television. Haven't seen a thing about this on television have you? Now why would that be? Do they know something you don't know? OF COURSE THEY DO, they always do, unless YOU can learn to see beyond them by empowering yourselves with knowledge. I can go on and on and on and on and on and on, but it's up to YOU, not me, to get your ass safely through to the other side. Now I am no idiot, I know these words don't fall onto too many ears, but as long as one of you gets it, then said person helps someone else get it, then WE are doing something to help this insane asylum of a humanity. Remember though, it is only insane because those who are attempting to control it all are insane. Do not let them control you and you rise up above that insanity. Think about that before you rush to believe that you are not controlled. No one wants to be controlled, yet they are afraid to be uncontrolled because they are so dependent on their masters. Don't think that applies to you? Okay, if you say so.
As I get more on Comet ISON, I will update you. You can do your own search to see "current" images, but you're just going to find the same relative pics. Again, I don't know why there is such a lack of footage of this object. If I find out, I'll be sure to let you all know. This month is going to be very exciting, the events coming faster and faster as zero point dawns. Whatever may happen, do not be afraid. Fear is murder, from the inside out. Let go of the fear, more to come. Wide eyes open. Love to all.

subset: commoncrawl


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New items that are now available to reserve in the University Library
Cheasman, C., Everard, R., & Simpson, S. - Stammering therapy from the inside: new perspectives on working with young people and adults - 2013
Dobinson, C. (ed.) - Creating practice-based evidence: a guide for SLTs - 2013
Enderby, P.M. - Therpay outcome measures for rehabilitation professionals - 2015
Herbert, R. - POWERS: profile of word errors and retrieval in speech : an assessment tool for use with people with communication impairment - 2013
Norén, N., Samuelsson, C., & Plejert, C. - Aided communication in everyday interaction - 2013
Merrick, R. - Picture me; children's views of speech, language and communication needs - 2014
McComas, K.L. - Dig in your heels and fight!: How women become researchers in Communication Sciences and Disorders - 2014
Reid, J. - A guide to clinical placements in speech and language therapy - 2014
Volkmer, A. - Assessment and therapy for language and cognitive communication difficulties in dementia and other progressive diseases - 2013
Whitworth, N. - Methods in teaching clinical phonetics and linguistics - 2014


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In an interview slated for the August issue of Forbes, Kanye West has revealed that he's working on something out of this world, a matter of fact it's inspired by a galaxy far, far away.
West says he plans to create low-income housing based off the replica of Luke Skywalker's Tatooine home from the original Star Wars movie.
Yeezy is heading the construction and is even said to be writing notes on the walls for architects on things that he thinks need to change during the build.
Forbes had the chance to check out the homes and described them as "oblong and dozens of feet tall."
There's no word on when the homes will be finished, but the humanitarian force is strong in Mr. West to get this latest project finished soon.
How do you think these houses will affect Kanye's legacy? Do you like Kanye's idea?


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So in an attempt to find healing I went on a "healing" retreat this summer. The kind I am sure some of you have seen only on television. Where people pray over one another and are healed from their aliments instantly. The kind where people speak in tongues and the Holy Spirit moves in powerful ways. And I went, and I believed that God could heal my heart during that 3 day retreat. While I was there I prayed, I cried, I had other people pray over me. I left with a still broken heart. It wasn't healed, or at least not in the way I thought it should be.
But something beautiful did happen on that retreat. I finally stopped caring about being "healed." I left that retreat with the grace to embrace my brokenness and accept it. I stopped praying for healing and just started praying that God would show Himself to me through the brokenness. I finally threw away the timelines in my head and heart of how healed I should be based on the days, weeks, and months. I learned to love myself in the brokenness.
This revelation was big for me. It led me to write a whole talk on it and base our fall A Mothers Love retreat on the theme of brokenness. If you have lost someone or something dear to you and are in search of healing, know that it might not look the way you think it will, and that's ok. I truly believe that I will never be "healed" of Caleb's death this side of Heaven and that is alright. My love for him is so deep that it should leave a mark on my heart, a big scar that is a testament of the pain I endure, which comes from such an intense love.
Thanking God today for the "healing" that didn't come that way I wanted it to and the brokenness I got instead.
"You are God, you are good, forever faithful One, even if the healing doesn't come"
Must admit that I heard this song first on Angela's blog post here. An awesome post about God's love.


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MacOS provides native support for connecting to the IT Services Cisco-based VPN service. Please note that IT Services support the current and two previous versions of macOS only; for details of supported versions please refer to the Apple Mac Support page.
This document contains instructions on how to configure the native VPN client that comes with macOS. In order to use the VPN service you will also need to have the necessary Remote Access Services username and passwords - for details see the main IT Services VPN Service page.
Please make sure that you have read the introduction and general requirements, which apply to all VPN clients, before attempting to configure your computer or mobile device to connect to the VPN.
1. Requirements
There are a number of requirements necessary in order to use the VPN service on Apple Macintoshes; these are detailed below.
- Your computer must be running a supported version of macOS (see Apple Mac Support page for details).
- You computer must already have a connection to the Internet (e.g. via NTL, Compuserve, broadband, ADSL, etc., etc.)
- You must have a Remote Access Services account.
- You must be able to log on as an Administrator of your Mac.
2. Obtaining the prerequisite information for configuring the inbuilt VPN client
As part of the process of configuring the inbuilt VPN client you will need to supply some group configuration information. Members of Oxford University can download a file containing this information from the IT Services Self-Registration Software Registration and Downloads web page. Once on this page select
VPN client from the list. On the next page that appears select
VPN shared credentials. A window containing the information should now pop up on your desktop. Make a note of the
IPSec secret as you will need this information later on (it will be referred to as the shared secret) and then close the window using the close window link.
You have now obtained the information that you need from the Self-registration web pages.
3. Configuring and using the inbuilt VPN client
To use the macOS inbuilt support for Cisco VPN you will first need to open
[System Preferences], which you can do from the dock, the
[Apple] menu or by finding it in the
Applications folder.
From the
[System Preferences] window click the
Network icon to bring up the Network window.
Click the
+ at the bottom of the left hand pane to bring up a dialogue window to add a new network interface. Within the dialogue window make the follow changes:
- set the
Interfacedrop down menu to
- set the
VPN typedrop down menu to
Cisco IP Sec
- change the
Service Namefield to something that is meaningful to you, eg
Finally, click the
Create to add the new interface. This will return you to the Network window with the newly added interface ready to configure. To configure the interface make the following changes:
- set the
Server Addressfield to
- set the
Account nameand
Passwordfields to your remote access account name and password
Next click the
Authentication Settings... button to bring up another dialogue window which requires the following information:
- click the
Shared secretradio button and fill in the text field using the information that you obtained earlier
- set the
Group Namefield to
Click the
OK button to return to the Network window. If you are likely to use the VPN client regularly you may want to include the status of the VPN connection in your menu bar. If you do want to do this you must tick the check box labelled
Show VPN status in menu bar.
Finally, click the
Apply button to complete the configuration for this new VPN interface. The new interface should now appear in the left hand pane indicated by a locked padlock icon. Note that the status of the interface will show as Not connected.
To make a connection to the VPN service simply click the
Connect found on the Network window. (This can be found underneath the
Authentication Settings... button.) Once the connection has been established the Network window will show that the status of the VPN interface has changed to Connected and it will display the connect time and the IP address.
4. Connecting to the IT Services VPN service using the inbuilt VPN client
Once you have configured a network interface on your Mac to connect to the IT Services VPN service you can make a VPN connection whenever you need to. To connect via the inbuilt client:
- Open
[System Preferences]
- Click the
Networkicon to switch to the Network window
- Select the VPN connection you configured previously (in this example called
VPN (OUCS)) in the left hand pane
- Click the
Connectbutton (found underneath the
Authentication Settings...button)
Do remember to disconnect from the VPN service once you no longer need it by clicking the
Disconnect button within the Network window.
Alternatively, if you chose to include the status of the VPN connection in your menu bar by ticking the box labelled Show VPN status in menu bar during the configuration process you can connect and disconnect using the VPN icon in the top menu bar. Look for the VPN icon in the top menu bar and click the icon to bring up the drop down menu.
Simply choose the
[Connect] option from this menu to make a VPN connection. You can also use this menu to disconnect your session once you no longer need it.
5. Further Information
For information on firewalls and IP address allocations refer to the IT Services VPN Service technical details page.
If you have problems with the inbuilt client you may be advised to use the Cisco AnyConnect Client. Instructions are available from the Configuring the AnyConnect Client on Mac OS X Systems page.


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The first human settlements in Sibiu date from the Paleolithic area, and the first documents of the city appear in an archive issued in the late twelfth century by Pope Celestine III.
In the Roman epoch there was a settlement called Cedonia (in the Guşteriţa neighborhood of today). A short journey into the fascinating history of this city will give you the image of this town, its role and importance in the development of the region and even in other parts of the country.
According to historical evidence, in 1241 Sibiu was conquered and partially destroyed by Mongol hordes. But it raised like a Phoenix from its ashes and the 14th century represents the beginning of an unprecedented development period for Sibiu, which, under most favorable auspices, had become the most important city in Transylvania, due to commercial interest.
Sibiu had more than 13 gateways in the city (some scholars say even 14) and some of them are still standing and represent the most important monuments of Sibiu even today.
Poarta Scararilor / The Stair makers Gate is the oldest building in Sibiu, still standing today. Some say it's the first form of fortification, as it is known to have existed ever since the twelfth century. The fact is that the stone gate had been standing there as a major fortifications, probably before the Mongol invasion period. In the sixteenth century the gate undergoes changes and reinforcements, with the reconfiguration of the city by including the Lower Town in the fortified enclosure. It functioned as a gateway for about three centuries; afterwards it received a secondary role by strengthening the Lower Town. It remains one of the most important gates of the medieval period, as all roads, coming from all three Romanian Principalities were connected to this entrance in the city of Sibiu. Is has kept the same purpose until today; it was restored in 2005 and it remains one of the most important monuments of Sibiu.
The Tower Hall is the most important monument of the city, a symbol in itself and few know that is one of the oldest gates that are still standing. Its history overlaps with the one of the city. The name comes from the neighborhood in which it had been erected: during those times, that was the place where the city hall was located.
The Tower Hall served as fire lookout, arrest, warehouse, and in the last two centuries it hosts the Museum of Sibiu. It was rebuilt in 1588, restored again at the end of the 19th century, then in early and mid-twentieth century.
Sibiu medieval period was characterized by economic growth and continuous development.
The society was very well organized and locals formed connections with shoemakers and craftsmen from Moldova and Romanian Country, as well as Hungary and Germany, therefore, this area, just like Targu Mures, Targu Secuiesc, or Brasov was a very prosperous economic center.
Craft and merchant associations in Sibiu have obtained a number of rights and privileges which led to an unparalleled flowering of city life; and rulers of Moldavia and the Romanian Country have granted Sibians with certain facilities, like, for instance, in the 14th century, the inhabitants of Sibiu had monopoly and priority over the trade with Romanian Country. Following the continuous economic development, in 1366 Sibiu was declared "city".
And not just economic, but cultural, as well: the first book written in Romanian language was published in Sibiu in 1544. In 1692, Sibiu became the capital of Transylvania and the connections and influences with the Austrian Empire flourished.
Brukenthal Palace is the most important proof and a living witness, so to speak, of this flourishing period. Sibiu is becoming a promoter of progress in the country: the first railroad was built in 1872, electric current is introduced in 1897, the headquarter is set at Astra Sibiu etc. Throughout the centuries, many Saxon families had settled in the region, strengthening the social, political, cultural and economic connections with their homelands.
Unfortunately, the historical events that followed (World War II and the communist regime) have led to a substantial reduction in the Saxon population in the city, whether as a result of deportations to Siberia initially or subsequently as a result of massive emigration to Germany.
In recent years, with the efforts coordinated by the former mayor of Sibiu, turned Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis the prestige of Sibiu war reestablished and, in 2007, Sibiu become the European capital of culture, together with Luxembourg.
It is one of the most vivid, aristocratic and authentic cities of Europe, where several important artistic festivals take place annually, hosting a great number of visitors from Romania and worldwide.
If you visit Sibiu, you will be introduced to the peak of Romanian and European culture, architecture, cuisine and a great bonus of amazingly beautiful natural environment which surround the city.


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The Well at the Distillery
A Distillery of Living History in Thornton
This historic building has been under Weiss ownership for quite some time. Built in 1857, the site has served as a brewery for over a hundred years. After falling into disuse, we brought the building back to life as a distillery. With a bar and event space, the Well is bringing back the spirit of Thornton.
Click here to visit the Well's Website and learn more about the history behind it.


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What is a DAX Expression?
Basic DAX Syntax
A DAX formula is comprised of an equal sign followed by a function or expression.
- Functions perform operations such as concatenating or adding values, calculating sums or averages, or performing logical tests. Functions usually take some kind of argument, which might be a reference to a column or table. Functions can be nested inside other functions.
- An expression can be used to define a value that can be a literal value or constant, a Boolean test, or a reference to a column containing values. Boolean expressions can be used to define a filter condition, such as [Sales] > 100.
- Operators within expressions, such as a plus or minus sign, indicate how the values are to be compared or processed.
- Values that you use in formulas and expressions can be typed directly into the formula bar as part of an expression, or they can be obtained from other columns, tables, or formulas. However, you cannot reference only a few cells or a range of cells; DAX always works with complete columns or tables.
For example, the following formulas are all valid:
- =3
- ="Sales"
- ='All Sales'[Amount]
- =[Amount]*1.10
- =SUMX(FILTER(Sales,Region="Europe"),[SalesAmount])
- The formula is the full line.
- A function example is "SUMX".
- An expression can be used to define values.
- An operator is just the sign (=, <, etc.), and a value is just the number/value being defined within the expression or used by the function.
Dig Deeper:
Leave comments if you want to help clarify this, and I'll update this article accordingly.
Wherever you go... BOOM! You're there.
- Ninja Ed


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This post is for every single person on this earth. If you have not experienced it before, you will surely experience it in your life. You have experienced with your friends , colleagues , classmate , cousins , neighbor and many more. There are situations when someone make you think "How one can behave such way? That is not fair." But my dear friend as the title says you can not expect everyone to be like yourself. Almighty GOD has made everyone unique. Everyone has their own belief , their own culture , their own value as well as their own thinking process. Probably what you feel for others , the same feeling someone had for you at different situations.
The other situation can be "Good things always happens to others." Then I would say "You are also "others" for someone else." So respect each and every person you meet.


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Lately, it has become quite easy to improve upon your computer's Digital Audio Converter (DAC) with a slew of units from incredibly affordable to stratospherically priced. Now that high-resolution downloads becoming more common, inexpensive USB DACs promise audiophile sound on a budget, especially when combined with some good player software and headphones. Of the two formats for digital audio recordings, the most popular is Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), followed by Direct Stream Digital (DSD) pioneered by Sony.
DSD aficionados speak of a warmer, less sterile analog sound with DSD, as compared to PCM. Others complain about the need to brick-wall filter certain high frequency signals; others insist it makes no difference. With relatively few native DSD recordings, it is being used as a distribution format. Blue Coast records, run by the ebullient Cookie Marenco, often records purely analog, but archives the recordings for distribution to DSD, as well as PCM. She is also recording straight to DSD, so listeners can judge a DSD recording for themselves. One disadvantage, however, is that there are few tools to do post-production work and stay in the DSD format.
Most of the time, with few exceptions, when you play a DSD file through a DAC, it is actually converted to PCM. Even music player software isn't universal in having the ability to handle DSD files. One exception has been Korg's own AudioGate software, which was fully upgraded to a new version with new features. They have even unlocked the player-only version, so anyone can try the software for playback for free; if you own a Korg DAC, it is automatically unlocked to allow the full feature set to shine.
Ah ... but is this the DAC to rule them all? Is there an affordable DAC with integrated headphone amplifier, bus powered by USB, fully asynchronous, that can play DSD files in their native format? And handle other formats like PCM, or MP3? Guess what? The answer is yes - enter the Korg DS-DAC-100M 1Bit USB DAC, which offers native DSD support, as well as PCM, and a promise to even make MP3 files sound better.
First shown in the Korg suite in the Las Vegas Hotel (the old Hilton), the DS-DAC-100M is one of two Korg models sporting similar specs, but differing price points, and connectivity options. I was fortunate enough to get an early model, but it was several months before I could use it. Why the long wait? The short answer is that the software and drivers weren't ready yet. Finally, they released a driver and the unit showed in my list of available devices in System Preferences and in Audio MIDI in the Utilities folder on Mac OSX. The initial beta drivers were finicky to install and use, and I had to uninstall and reinstall several times before the driver worked properly. A newer final version was released in early summer, which solved those issues for my system running 10.6.8, however there are still reportedly issues with newer systems that sport USB 3 ports only, with the workaround to use a USB 2 hub. An update that provides USB 3 compatiblity is in the works according to Korg.
Aesthetically the DAC is lovely. It is designed to sit on your desktop - about the size of a thin paperback book or portable hard drive; it sits flat, and has a textured matte black finish. Its softly curved minimalist design is free of distractions, so it blends into whatever you set it on. A set of micro LEDs gives you a status update, and a front mounted mini-jack for your headphones is at the ready. The rear panel has the USB input, as well as line-level output. As a bus powered device, the headphone amp delivers rich, warm sound, with commendable dynamics into most headphones and earphones I tried. The Oppo PM-1 and PM-2 headphones were a great match, due in part to the Oppo's exemplary sensitivity. However, some finicky power hungry models might not work as well.
Blue Coast Records were kind enough to supply a set of first-rate recordings, which enabled me to test both the DSD and PCM versions. The Korg handled both with ease, as did AudioGate 3.0.2. AudioGate 2's GUI and design always struck me as a mash-up of a Star Trek console married to a jukebox. The new version is cleaner, less design-driven, and a result it is more business-like with a gentle, well-designed interface. The controls are responsive, and it also worked with every other DAC I tried it with including the Oppo HA-1, AudioEngine D3, and Cambridge DacMagic XS.
Once AudioGate 3 authenticates the Korg device, it handles conversions between formats without a hiccup. Most folks may not realize that the lite version is not only a fully functioning app, but it's free to boot! We applaud Korg for making the software as a player-only, for free even if you don't own a Korg device.
In fact, the free version should send a cautionary message to other software companies charging for their player solutions. We should note that the output sample rate for the free player only version is limited to 48 kHz and 44.1 kHz, but it handles high-resolution and DSD files, something that no other free software I'm aware of can handle. Once unlocked, it really kicks into action, with no limitations, and includes Export and Burn Disc functions, editing, and format conversion. Considering it is included bundled with the unit, and price of some competitors' software is almost the same as the DAC, it represents a bargain.
The unit supports DSD playback of 2.8224 MHz DSD data but also the still higher-resolution of 5.6448 MHz, as well as PCM at just about any flavor you can imagine, including: 44.1kHz/48kHz/88.2kHz/96kHz/176.4kHz/192kHz, at both 16 and 24 bit depths.
I tried to ascertain differences between native DSD and PCM versions but to be entirely candid, it was so close that I wasn't really able to trust my own judgment. Cookie Marenca's decision to record in analog and distribute via DSD is unique. Other companies such as Dr. Mark Waldrip's AIX Records, utilize PCM for their recordings, but makes the music available in a variety of formats, including DSD. DSD fans insist that recordings made with it sound more "analog", with a warmer, more musical sound space. I can't really confirm that since I've never been able to record an event with both technologies to compare. It might not even matter since ultimately, the technology employed should be invisible to the listener.
The Korg DS-DAC-100M's ability to play DSD in their native format is important, and at this price point, just about the only game in town. When I compared Blue Coast recordings that were originally DSD recordings, and supplied to me in both DSD and PCM formats, the DSD played natively through the Korg DS-DAC-100M did seem to sound warmer, and very musical. During the CEA conference held in New York recently, a Sony engineer discussed the effort that's being made by Sony/CBS Records to digitize their entire catalog to high-resolution DSD files, a decision that could conceivably lead to an explosion of DSD titles for consumers to experience. The Korg DS-DAC-100M will be well suited to this effort and able to handle those files natively.
The Korg DS-DAC-100M stands out for it's ability to handle DSD files natively, a versatile design that sounds great with everything from FLACs to MP3s. Aesthetically, it is an handsome unit, quiet and assured in its design stance, and at the price with the included AudioGate 3 software, a bargain. The Korg DS-DAC-100M comes highly recommended.
Harris Fogel, Posted 8/31/2014
For more information on the Korg DS-DAC-100M 1Bit Mobile DAC visit: www.korg.com
For more information on Korg AudioGate 3 software visit: www.korg.com
For more information on Blue Coast Records visit: www.bluecoastrecords.com


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You are here : Locations
Keolis manages transit and rail operations in North America from coast to coast. From Los Angeles to Boston, Ft. Lauderdale to Quebec, Keolis is the go-to organization for top transportation authority leaders because we are always "Thinking Like A Passenger" and exceeding customer expectations.
Learn more about our featured operations across the continent by clicking on the location areas below


text: The Institute for Innovation and Social Change is a center at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg. The business of the Institute is to operate and stimulate a development where universities integrate the responsibility to utilize and collaborate with the responsibility of researching and the responsibility to educate. The activities stimulate an academic utilization on a scientific basis.


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This spectacular South Beach home will captivate you with its stunning south-west city, Twin Peaks, bay and ballpark views. The light-filled one bedroom, one bath floor plan features floor to ceiling windows with custom shades, beautiful bamboo floors, walk-in closet, and spacious bathroom with deep soaking tub. Prepare a gourmet meal in the chef's open kitchen, boasting designer Bosch and Sub-Zero appliances and a breakfast bar.
Enjoy recent upgrades including designer-selected lighting and plush bedroom carpeting as well as the 24-hour 1-car valet parking and additional storage. This building is also pet-friendly!
One Rincon Hill is a premier full-service condominium with a 24-hour doorman and concierge. Built in 2008, this luxury high-rise consists of 60 stories and is one of the few South Beach properties constructed on bedrock. This south tower contains high-speed elevators and a large water tank designed to help the building withstand strong winds.
Pamper yourself with hotel-style amenities include fitness center, hospitality room, owners' lounge, deluxe outdoor pool with fireplace and barbecue, open grass area, and plenty of table seating to enjoy an afternoon lunch or dinner. The convenient business center makes working from home easy. One Rincon Hill residents also enjoy access to the fabulous modern amenities at the Harrison tower next door, including the penthouse lounge and state of the art fitness center.
Enjoy the close proximity to the Financial District, the Embarcadero, Ferry Building and the Giants' stadium! Walk to popular restaurant, bars, the Westfield Center and public transportation. The 24-hour valet service and convenient access to 101, 280 and 80 freeways enable an easy commute.
- One-bedroom, one bathroom in a full-service concierge building
- High floor with stunning Twin Peaks, city, bay and Oracle Ball Park views!
- Chef's open kitchen with deluxe Sub-Zero & Bosch appliances and breakfast bar
- Bamboo floors in the sunny living-dining room and kitchen
- Bright bedroom features plush, new carpeting and walk-in closet
- New, designer-selected lighting and newly painted interior
- Custom window treatments
- In-unit washer and dryer
- 1-car 24-hour valet parking and additional storage for this unit
- HOA dues of $1013.24 per month include parking and amenities
- 24-hour doorman & concierge, pool, jacuzzi, deluxe fitness center
- BBQ area and large hospitality room with high-definition DVD theater
- Access to Uncle Harry's lounge on the 49th floor of the Harrison next door
- Walk to the financial district, the Ferry building, shopping, ballpark, restaurants!
- Easy access to freeways and public trans (SFMTA, BART, Caltrain)
Some of the best weather in all of San Francisco can be claimed by South Beach. Found at the foot of the Oakland Bay Bridge, and bracketed by the Embarcadero and the Giants baseball stadium, this is exciting stretch of waterfront city is one of San Francisco's great walking neighborhoods. An affluent area, there are a large number of converted warehouses as well as new construction catering to luxury condos, luxury high rises, and luxury lofts. Take a morning walk to work, or visit the ballpark, or climb aboard your yacht - all of it within your grasp in this enticing section of the city.
Relaxing weekend mornings bring residents down from the high rises to walk dogs, or take a run along the Embarcadero where public art and bayside breezes are all part of the restorative setting. Catch a breakfast at the Ferry Building, while you enjoy the vibrant weekly farmers market. Find a robust cup of Blue Bottle Coffee, and a hunk of intoxicating cheese from Cowgirl Creamery. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, plus the world-famous SF MOMA, are all part of the local cultural universe that surrounds life here. YBCA delivers daring theater, dance, music and film.
The finest in urban cuisine can be found along these block, including Lulu, Azie, South Park Cafe, Delancey Street. Find a boat rental at City Kayak and explore the city by water.
South Beach is luxurious city life at your fingertips, and nothing less.
Laura Kaufman, MBA
Top 1% of San Francisco RealtorsCorcoran Global LivingCalDRE# 01425571415.310.1256 mobile415.277.3752 faxwww.LauraKaufman.com


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On 18 January 2010, the Major Archbishop of the Syro-MalabarChurch, Mar Varkey Cardinal Vithayathil, by his decree (Prot. No. 55/2010) dated 18 January 2010 erected a new eparchy by name Mandya, bifurcating the eparchy of Mananthavady. The new eparchy comprises the four civil districts of Karnataka, namely, Mandya, Hassan, Mysore and Chamarajnagar and has its See in the city of Mandya in the civil district of Mandya. Before the erection of the eparchy of Mandya, the District of Mandya was entrusted to the pastoral care of the Missionary Society of St. Thomas the Apostle (MST) and the District of Hassan, to the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI). The Districts of Mysore and Chamrajnagar were under the direct pastoral care of the eparchy of Mananthavady. Considering the great distance from the eparchial headquarters of Mananthavady, the geographical, linguistic and cultural differences and the differences in the nature of the apostolates undertaken, there were repeated request by the Local Ordinaries to form a separate eparchy in the region of Mandya.
The XVII Synod of Bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church held in August 2008 consented to the proposal and having obtained the assent of the Holy Father in accordance with CCEO c. 85 §1, the new eparchy of Mandya was erected on 18 January 2010. By another decree of the Major Archbishop, Prot. No. 56/2010 with the same date, Mgr. George Njaralakatt, a priest of the eparchy of Mananthavady and who was at that time working as the Vicar General of the eparchy of Bhadravathi was appointed the first bishop of the new eparchy of Mandya. The new eparchy is a suffragan eparchy of the Archeparchy of Tellicherry. Infant Jesus Church, Henkel is the cathedral of the new eparchy and the Episcopal residence is at Kalenahalli, 6 kms away from the city of Mandya.
The Episcopal Ordination of the Bishop and the Enthronement took place on 7 April 2010 at Henkal along with the official inauguration of the Eparchy. The newly erected diocese of Mandya has an area of 17,460 sq. kms with a total population of 44,47,312 of which around 1300 are Catholics. There are 26 parishes and mission stations looked after by 38 priests belonging to the MST and CMI Congregation a few belonging to the eparchial clergy. There are 5 houses of men religious belonging to 4 religious congregations, 79 religious sisters belonging to 5 religious congregations in 20 convents doing ministry in various fields of the apostolate.
In the new Eparchy of Mandya, the population is 4447312. (The population of the whole country is 1 billion).
Kannada people and Malayalees form the majority groups in the diocese. Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, English, and Telegu are the languages spoken in the diocese.
Mandya city is administered by a Municipality headed by an elected chairman and municipal members. The towns are managed by municipalities. The villages and small towns are administered by elected local bodies called panchayats.
The region is well connected by roads.
The diocesan territory stretches over 17460 sq. kms and covers the civil districts Mysore, Chamarajnagar, Hassan and Mandya in Karnataka. Mysore is the biggest city in the diocese. Mandya and Hassan are other important towns in the diocese.
Government and private operators provide extensive telecommunication facilities in the diocesan area. The diocese is well connected by local cable TV networks.
Describe music, song, dance and drama in the region.


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This week, No. 8 Ohio State (6-0, 2-0) heads to Bloomington to take on the Indiana Hoosiers (2-3, 0-2) in a Leaders Division matchup.
Ohio State—Indiana History Lesson And Trends
• Ohio State is 68-12-5 all-time vs. Indiana.
• Ohio State has won 17 straight games against Indiana.
• Ohio State is 24-2-1 all-time in Bloomington vs. Indiana.
• Ohio State is 2nd in the Big Ten with 16 quarterback sacks.
• Urban Meyer coached teams are 67-14 when ranked in the Top 25.
• The last time Ohio State or Indiana won by less than 10 points was 1993.
• Ohio State is one of only 16 unbeaten FBS teams and one of only four at 6-0.
• Ohio State's defense has only allowed 11 100-yard rushers in their last 55 games.
• Ohio State's defense has held opponents to 10 points or less 37 times since 2006.
• Ohio State has held 71 opponents to 21 points or less since the start of the 2005 season.
• Indiana is 39-85 overall since 2002.
• Indiana last defeated Ohio State in 1988.
• Indiana has lost 22 of its last 23 Big Ten conference games.
Final Thoughts and Score Prediction
The Hoosiers surprisingly played very well last week at home vs. Michigan State, but the Spartans rallied from a 10-point, 3rd quarter deficit for a 31-27 win.
The fact that Ohio State and Michigan State battled to a 17-16 Buckeye win gives me reason to ever-so-briefly suspect that Indiana could play the Buckeyes similarly.
The series history, however, carries far more weight with me than the transitive property—and let's face it, Indiana is the worst team in the Big Ten by far. One could even make a case for Indiana and a MAC team like the Ohio Bobcats to swap conference allegiances.
The last time the teams played in Bloomington, Memorial Stadium looked like The Horseshoe, West, overrun with Buckeye fans. The "home" crowd will once again come away pleased with a Buckeye victory.
Ohio State 45
Indiana 13
"To be a champion, you have to believe in yourself when no one else will" - Sugar Ray Robinson


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Home Flipping Jumps to Six-Year High, Fueled by More Lending Options
A total of 51,434 U.S. single family home and condo sales were bought, updated and "flipped" in a resale during the second quarter of 2016.
That's up 14 percent from the previous quarter and up 3 percent from a year ago to reach the highest number of home flips since the second quarter of 2010 — a six-year high, according to the latest update on home flipping from ATTOM Data Solutions, the parent company of RealtyTrac.
A total of 39,775 investors — both individuals and institutions — completed at least one home flip in the second quarter of 2016, the highest number of home flippers since the second quarter of 2007 — a nine-year high.
A big factor in the uptick is an increasing number of lending options for both beginners and veteran flippers, in addition to average mortgage rates that have remained below 4 percent for months.
"Home flipping is becoming more accessible for smaller operators thanks to an increasingly competitive lending environment with more loan options for real estate investors, who are also benefiting from the historically low mortgage interest rates," said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. "That favorable lending environment for flippers has helped to fuel the recent flipping frenzy we've seen over the past five quarters.
Homes flipped in the second quarter of 2016 accounted for 5.5 percent of all single family and condo sales, down from 6.7 percent of all sales in the first quarter — but up from 5.4 percent of all sales in Q2 2015.
A home flip is defined as a property that is sold for the second time within a 12-month period based on publicly recorded sales deed data collected by ATTOM Data Solutions in more than 950 counties — accounting for more than 80 percent of the U.S. population.
Should it be a concern that home flipping is reaching milestones not seen since before the financial crisis? There are a couple of key differences in the home flipping of 2016, compared to 2006 when home flipping peaked during the last housing boom, Blomquist said.
"First, home flippers are realizing a much bigger gross ROI in 2016, averaging 49 percent in the first two quarters compared to an average gross ROI of just 27 percent in 2006," he said. "Second, while an increasing number of flippers are financing their purchases, more than two-thirds are still using cash to purchase compared to about one-third using cash to purchase back in 2006."


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work of IUP art professor emeritus Vaughn Clay will be honored at a public
reception on Saturday, February 13, 2016, from 6:00–8:30 p.m. Hosted by the University
Museum board of directors, it will be held in the first floor atrium of IUP's
new College of Humanities and Social Sciences Building. Admission is free.
has made a gift to the University Museum of 13 works, in various formats, for
long-term display in the new building. Pieces from Clay's Spiritual Series,
Constructivist Series, and Gasoline Dreams series are on display throughout the
building, beginning with "Silver Arrows" in the atrium.
artist will conduct a tour and talk about his work in the building at 7:00 p.m.
addition to Clay's paintings, there are 13 photographs by William Double on
permanent display in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences building.
Double's photos are assorted images from his world travels and will also be on
view during the reception.
For more information, please contact the
University Museum at 724-357-2397.
Pictured below is Vaughn Clay and his painting "Silver Arrows."