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WILLIAMSTOWN — In the 1950s and '60s, a rash of American artists revolted against the idea that art should express emotion. They all of a sudden wanted art to be cooler, more detached, more rational and objective.
Some, like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, turned to found objects, photography, and other forms of mechanical reproduction. Others, like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, embraced the aesthetics of machines and industry.
Still others sought refuge in the purity of rational ideas, in systems and seriality. The greatest and most rewarding of these was Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), whose work is the subject of an exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art called "Sol LeWitt: The Well-Tempered Grid."
Organized by Charles Haxthausen, a professor of art at Williams, the show explores LeWitt's long obsession with the grid, which he used, writes Haxthausen, as a "generative matrix" of his art. At the same time (although more in the catalog than in the show), Haxthausen examines LeWitt's affinity with the logic of musical composition, and especially that of J.S. Bach (hence the allusion in the title to Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier").
It's a relatively small show, but it contains a surprising variety of work made over half a century. There are sculptures on floors, walls, and plinths, drawings, prints, wall drawings, furniture, paintings, photographs, models, diagrams, and artist's books. We trace the development of LeWitt's work from early, clumsy-looking paintings that riff on the sequential photographs of humans in motion by Eadweard Muybridge (Muybridge presented his photographs in the format of a grid) to grids in two and three dimensions that grow in complexity according to all kinds of intriguing logic.
Ideally, you should go from seeing this show to the retrospective of wall drawings that stretches over three floors at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in nearby North Adams. Even if you've already seen that astonishing installation before (I have walked through it more than a dozen times since it opened in 2008), you'll see it with fresh eyes after "The Well-Tempered Grid."
The timing of the turn away from the subjective in art is fascinating. On the one hand, society was about to enter a state of unprecedented upheaval. It would be an era of high passions, of radical — and radically indulged — subjectivity, with liberating but anarchic consequences. A counterreaction in art toward something cooler, steadier, more emotionally detached might therefore begin to make sense.
But on the other hand, if the 20th century had taught humanity anything about itself, it was surely that the application of unbending logic, and blindly following orders, could result in astounding barbarity. Trench warfare, gas chambers, suicide pilots, "mutually assured destruction" — there was apparently no limit to the carnage that an idea, logically executed, could unleash.
Why, then, were artists so eager to cultivate an art that sounded so willfully inhuman? Why did LeWitt talk so blithely of "letting the system do the work"? Why did he seem so happy to emphasize that "once the idea is established in the artist's mind . . . the process is carried out blindly"? And why did he choose, most famously, to insist that "the idea is the machine that makes the work"?
Wasn't this a strange — and, given recent history, strangely timed — rebuke to the suspicion of ideas and abstractions that had once held sway over American art and poetry (summed up in William Carlos Williams's "No ideas but in things")?
In histories of postwar art, the cool, detached art of the minimalists and pop artists is usually explained as a reaction to the romantic mythology of the Abstract Expressionists — artists like Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko.
Which is fine as far as it goes. But something wider was going on. Artists, like everyone else, were looking for a bulwark against encroaching chaos. They found it not only in industry, science, and the logic of mathematics, but also in the art of the past. There was in the '60s, most notably, a renewed interest in the remote classicism of Piero della Francesca. Piero met a craving, as Bernard Berenson put it, "for the inexpressive, the ungrimacing, the ungesticulating; for freedom from posing and attitudinizing." Posing and attitudinizing, it suddenly seemed, were a real danger.
Art historian Kenneth Clark saw Piero as an antidote to "the frenzied and fitful character of modern painting." And Philip Guston wrote: "Without our familiar passions, [Piero] is like a visitor to the earth, reflecting on distances, gravity, and positions of essential form."
As for LeWitt, some of his earliest extant drawings, made in 1958, are studies of Piero's frescoes at Arezzo. "When I made these drawings I had reached a low point of my art-life," he said. "Piero appealed to me for his sense of order."
These drawings are not included here. But what I hadn't considered before this show was the susceptibility of artists in the '60s to another genius of remoteness, another investigator of essential forms, and an enemy of posing and attitudinizing: J.S. Bach.
Now that I have, LeWitt (and this is surely the mark of an important show) makes sense to me in ways he never did before. If Haxthausen hasn't exactly discovered a key to LeWitt's work (many people — not least the artist himself — have made the connection between his creative methods and musical composition) he may be the first to pick up that key and actually unlock a door with it.
In what way were LeWitt's methods similar to a composer's?
When most people make the connection, as Haxthausen notes, they talk about the wall drawings. The wall drawings derive from written instructions that are subsequently executed on walls by other people. The analogy with musicians performing a composer's score is obvious.
LeWitt enjoyed the fact that his wall drawings required the involvement of other people (as LeWitt scholar Veronica Roberts emphasized in a recent lecture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts). He relished the fact that each version of a wall drawing was bound to be in some way different from the last, and that the "performance" of his wall drawings could take place in multiple places and would continue after his death.
But it goes deeper. LeWitt relished the tension between the ideas that generated his art (which tended to be simple expressions of permutations applied to geometry and color) and the visible manifestation of those ideas. The source of that tension is that, while the idea behind a work can often be sensed, it is not always possible to see, or fully grasp.
Exactly the same holds for the music of Bach. You may know, if you have been told, that his "Well-Tempered Clavier" is divided into two books, each made up of 24 preludes and fugues, arranged in pairs progressing in an ascending scale through every possible key, from C major to B minor. But how many of us could grasp all this and explain it to others just by listening to it?
It's the same with much of LeWitt's work: A lot of the time, although the work is the logical outcome of a given set of rules, those rules cannot be grasped simply by looking at it. Only after you have read the instructions, or looked at one of LeWitt's diagrams parsing the work, does it fully make sense. And yet even without the benefit of having it all unpacked in this way, it's possible to grasp the presence of an idea, a structure, and the beauty of its manifestation just as it is in Bach.
LeWitt once quoted Charles Ives approvingly: "Who said music had anything to do with sound?" It's the same in his art (and in art generally): What is invisible, and even what is difficult cognitively to grasp, can wield enormous power.
The key here, as Haxthausen writes in a very satisfying catalog essay, may be the idea of "invention." Bach, of course, used the word in some of his titles ("Two Part Inventions," "Three Part Inventions"). Musicologist Laurence Dreyfus describes the "invention" as more than just a thematic idea: It is an actual mechanism for discovering ideas and triggering elaborations.
So this is what LeWitt meant when he talked about the idea as a "machine that makes the work." What this show is really about is how the grid was, for LeWitt, the "invention," the mechanism for triggering a veritable cascade of variations and elaborations.
As always with LeWitt, what comes as a surprise is how hypnotic, engaging, and witty his work can be. I loved, as an example of the latter, a gridded sheet of paper titled "A Square for Each Day of the Seventies," and dated 1980: It is eight tiny squares short of a perfect square. I enjoyed, too, the play of shadow created by his various cubic sculptures, and I was mesmerized by the many drawings and prints that build up gossamer networks of cross-hatched lines, always according to LeWitt's implacable logic.
It's hard not to pick up on a pedagogical streak in LeWitt's work — a teacher's delight in building patiently on first principles, taking art from simplicity to complexity, and taking the rest of us along for the ride — or as far as we are able. (It's surely no coincidence that the most famous book of art pedagogy, John Ruskin's 19th-century "The Elements of Drawing," begins by setting a task that involves creating, by means of cross-hatching, a consistent field of tone in a square. Very LeWitt.)
What I found myself querying was the notion that — as Haxthausen puts it, and as the wall text in a nearby, related exhibition about the grid in art reiterates — the grid is a "neutral framework." The grid is not, of course, as neutral as we like to think. It exists nowhere in nature. Instead, it has a track record as an incredibly potent framework — an "invention," you might say — for the human domination of nature (and of fellow humans).
LeWitt, I don't believe, thought about it in this way. But since his work expresses in some way a dream of purity, it is occasionally worth slapping ourselves awake from that dream, lest it take us where we don't want to go.
In the end, this intelligent and thought-provoking show reminds us, if nothing else, that the idea that art should aspire to the condition of music, as Walter Pater put it in the 19th century, inspired artists well into the second half of the 20th — and it still does.
Sebastian Smee can be reached at email@example.com.


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I was moving eggs from the 18 egg carton to a 12 egg carton that fits in our egg tray. I couldn't help but wonder at the different sizes. These eggs all came from a Costco egg carton that said Large.
But these eggs were radically different sizes as you can see.
I looked up how big eggs should be for each grade and found this useful piece in the Kitchen blog - though its focus was on whether you could substitute a large egg for a medium in a recipe. Not on honest labeling.
I don't have a food scale - though my new bread book strongly suggests I get one - so I just had to eyeball it. One egg is about 2 inches long and the other closer to
Costco, who's grading your eggs?

subset: commoncrawl


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|Gilmore Girls enamel pin set from here
When I say 'I love Gilmore Girls!' that is absolutely an understatement. I grew up watching during Saturdays (back to back with Will & Grace at Studio 23! Kabarkada mo! :P) the endless mother-daughter witty verbal sparring and fell in love with every quirky character in Stars Hollow. It was an amazing and intelligent show to grow up with when I was just about the same age as Rory. And I identified with Rory: I was one of those book-loving and "Sports? What sports?" private schooled girls of the world. I love how the charming little town of Stars Hollow is, like, hidden from the world and is just a turn of a corner away from being discovered, all the movie and book references, the outrageous amount of junk and Chinese food they consume, the funniest and crankiest character that is Michel, Rory's ambitions, Lane's taste in music, the love triangle, the odd traditions, everything!
I'm writing this because, yes, I've known about the Gilmore Girls revival (which was called Gilmore Girls A Year In The Life) which will be shown at Netflix next month (I swear I cried happy tears when I first learned about this news), and I've been rewatching it for a few days now. Though, okay, I will be absolutely honest here: I've begun to hate Lorelai's character and a bit more things on the show. I have the same feeling as I did when I wrote this after revisiting my favorite film, Reality Bites. I had this light bulb moment: Lorelai is a manic pixie dream girl! (*more exclamation points*) And it dawned me that the worst character on the show is nope, not Emily and Richard, not Jess, not even Taylor, it's Lorelai herself! I hated how even though everyone explicitly tells her Luke always had a thing for her, she dismisses it and toys with him! I guess with age comes wisdom, no? Or maybe I've lived long enough in this world to know that life isn't as peachy as in Stars Hollow or you wouldn't really meet the love of your life by coincidentally having a copy of his favorite book (yes, Team Jess 4EVER!)
BUT it still doesn't change the fact that Gilmore Girls will always be close to my heart and I would still recommend it to anyone looking for something to binge on a weekend or a holiday. Anyway, if you're just as ecstatic as me about them making a short but sweet come back or all the buzz got you curious or you're just looking for something to watch (and love or despise haha), here's a few clickables you can read to get yourself (re)acquainted with the cuckoos of Stars Hollow!
BUT it still doesn't change the fact that Gilmore Girls will always be close to my heart and I would still recommend it to anyone looking for something to binge on a weekend or a holiday. Anyway, if you're just as ecstatic as me about them making a short but sweet come back or all the buzz got you curious or you're just looking for something to watch (and love or despise haha), here's a few clickables you can read to get yourself (re)acquainted with the cuckoos of Stars Hollow!
1. Still not convinced? Here's 8 Reasons You Have To Watch Gilmore Girls.
2. Because you will never catch Rory without a book: A list of all the referenced books the entire show.
3. The mother and daughter are cinephiles! A rundown of all the films mentioned in Gilmore Girls! My Films 2017 list perhaps?
4. Chad Michael Murray! Seth Macfarlane! Masi Oka! Krysten Ritter! During reruns, I would often catch myself saying, "Oooh! [Insert name of present day star here]'s at Gilmore Girls!" Here are more of them!
5. Who's the best boyfriend? Dean, Jess or Logan? Here are some statistical analysis (LOL) as we weigh on who's the best choice. I don't really care about this because, again, Team Jess 4EVER! I really, really loved Dean for her but they don't have much common ground and he lacked ambition.
6. Justifying Jess again: this.
7. And just in case you want to watch just the best of Jess Mariano. Haha.
8. Lane Kim is one of the underrated characters of the show. (Along with Michel and Sookie!)
9. She was so kickass, I never expected what happened to her in the final season.
10. Speaking of Season 7, a lot of people didn't like the way the show ended. It could be because that creators and executive producers Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino were not part of it anymore so somehow the show lost its AS-P touch. But it wasn't that bad, right?
11. Are you re-watching the series again in preparation for the revival (like me)? I kind of resonated on some points on this post.
12. Okay. If you don't want to binge but would like to know the lowdown before the revival, here's a cheat sheet.
They say some things are better left in the past. But it would be so nice to see everyone (except Edward Herrmann 😞) and how things have turned out! Can't wait for November 25!


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Subscribe To Lorne Michaels' Brothers In Atlanta Gets Series Order At HBO Updates
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The mastermind architect of the admittedly narrow field of weekend late-night sketch comedy over at Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels is about to divvy up some his talent even further over to HBO for a new comedy series. The show will be called Brothers in Atlanta, and it will star a pair of comedic talents who, in the past, have helped facilitate Jimmy Fallon's slow-jamming of the news with the likes of notable guests like President Barack Obama.
According to a report from Deadline, HBO has given a series order to the pilot for Brothers in Atlanta, which will star its duo of creators in Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin, both former writers for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and the short-lived David Alan Grier topical show Chocolate News. It seems that their work with Fallon's late-night antics have proven fruitful with a connection to Lorne Michaels. The overlord of NBC's late-night lineup was attached to two other HBO pilots in the past, and will now bring his wealth of experience to Brothers as a producer. The pickup adds yet another killer comedy to the HBO lineup, just after the recent acquisition of popular web series High Maintenance.
Apparently structured as a situational comedy, Brothers will depict the life of an Atlanta duo of best friends who find themselves navigating the perils of life, while looking for a cohesive direction. Riddle plays Langston, a slacker whose aspirations of being a professional DJ aren't exactly matched by the actual effort he puts into the idea. Salahuddin plays Moose, who, unlike his Atlanta native friend, is relatively new to the city and is having his own career complications with his job as a backup singer with dreams of stepping into the forefront. However, it seems that with Langston's proclivity for jumping on get-rich-quick schemes and Moose's alienating personality, the duo of ne'er-do-wells will have a hilariously hard time chasing the American dream.
Riddle and Salahuddin actually first got themselves on HBO's radar in 2013 with another comedy pilot in which they played news reporters; in Atlanta, no less. Now, momentum for their latest project has already moved quick enough that Brothers in Atlanta has nabbed its first set of co-stars, starting with SNL alum Maya Rudolph, who has worked with Riddle and Salahuddin in the past. Rudolph will play Moose's boss, Shirle, a has-been R&B singer who, despite seeing her success crest in the 1990s, is still no-less a difficult diva of a boss to the vocal backer. Additionally, the famous Will Smith offspring and After Earth star who gave us a new take on the crane kick in The Karate Kid remake, Jaden Smith, is also set to play the teenage neighbor of Langston, whose noisiness is also coupled with a possibly sinister income source.
Overall, it sounds like an intriguing, unpretentious character study with two stars who have been playing off each other's comedic quirks since they attended Harvard together. Now, with the platform of HBO, we could be seeing a potentially off-the-wall, yet smart sitcom that explores the lives of African Americans in modern Atlanta with hopefully hilarious results.


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Guest Post by Denise May Levenick, The Family Curator, author of How to Archive Family Keepsakes (Family Tree Books, 2012).
It's not surprising that The Heirloom Registry was born when Dan and Mike Hiestand wanted to share the story of their heirloom grandfather clock. Watches, clocks, and timepieces of all shapes and sizes have been favorite family keepsakes for generations.
Houstory Publishing and I share a common interest in preserving family treasures, and I'm delighted to share a few tips for clock care from my new book How to Archive Family Keepsakes with readers of The Houstory Hearth Blog.
Join the Blog Book Tour for How to Archive Family Keepsakes January 10-26, 2013 for author interviews, book excerpts, giveaways, and more. Visit the Blog Book Tour Page at The Family Curator website for the complete schedule.
Saving Time: Caring for Heirloom Clocks
Timepieces are one of the most popular family heirlooms passed on from generation to generation, and with proper care and regular maintenance you can help keep your keepsake watch or clock ticking well into the next century.
Most clocks consist of two distinct parts, the clock itself and the outer case. Grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, and mantle clocks are often made of wood and metal parts. Decorative clocks may be constructed from brass, bronze, marble, plastic, or other materials. Wristwatches, pocket watches, and ladies' brooch watches are usually cased in silver, gold, or a combination of materials.
If your antique clock isn't working or keeping the correct time, don't try to repair or clean the interior workings yourself. Clock repair and maintenance is a specialized skill, and your local jeweler should be able to refer you to a certified clock repair shop. They can also show you how to wind the clock mechanism and recommend a routine for maintenance that will keep it good working order.
Many antique clocks and watches require daily attention to keep running, and this is often the best way to keep the timepiece in working order. Clocks should be cleaned and oiled every two to three years to avoid undue wear of moving parts. If your clock needs replacement parts that are no longer available, or the cost makes repair impractical, enjoy it as an heirloom decorative object.
Care for your clock will depend on its construction material:
Wooden Clocks
Like any fine wooden furniture, wooden clocks, are especially susceptible to swelling and shrinking from extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity. They will do best in a room that is comfortable for everyday living, not too hot, too cold, nor too damp.
Treat wooden clocks as you would fine wooden furniture. Do not use aerosol furniture polish or waxes; instead dust regularly with a soft cloth and use solid paste wax annually to keep the wood clean and supple.
Metal and Stone Clocks
Care for metal and stone cased clocks by dusting and polishing with a soft cloth.
Keep china figural clocks in a glass cabinet if possible to minimize dust and potential damage.
Most clocks contain metal working parts, and will benefit from a clean dry environment.
The best housekeeping is often a routine that is regular and minimally disturbing to the item itself. Keep your heirloom clock in a location where it can be enjoyed, yet is out of the path of likely damage. A living room or dining room can be a better choice than a family room filled with active children and pets.
Working or not, clocks are time-honored family heirlooms and a wonderful reminder of a family legacy.
Find more ideas for sorting and organizing inherited family treasures in How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia & Genealogy Records by Denise May Levenick (Family Tree Books, 2012).
Guest Post from How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia & Genealogy Records by Denise May Levenick (Family Tree Books, 2012). Copyright, 2012, Denise May Levenick. All Rights Reserved.
How to Archive Family Keepsakes (Family Tree Books, 2012) ISBN 1440322236
Paperback / eBook Family Tree Books, Amazon.com, Scribd, iBooks, Barnes&Noble.com. 10% Savings Coupon ShopFamilyTree.
Join the Blog Tour
Join the Blog Book Tour for How to Archive Family Keepsakes January 10-26, 2013 for author interviews, book excerpts, giveaways, and more. Visit the Blog Book Tour Page at The Family Curator website for the complete schedule.
Proceeds from the sale of How to Archive Family Keepsakes during the Book Tour will help fund the 2013 Student Genealogy Grant founded in 2010 in honor of Denise's mother, Suzanne Winsor Freeman.
Blog Book Tour Giveaways
Comment on daily Book Blog Tour Post
Tweet the Tour Twitter @FamilyCurator #keepsakebooktour
Share the Tour on FaceBook, Google+, Goodreads
It's easy to enter to win a free copy of Denise's new book or one of the weekly giveaway prizes. All you have to do is leave a comment to the Blog Tour Post hosted at one of the official tour blogs. Random winners will also be selected from social media comments on Twitter, FaceBook, and Google+.
Each blog tour post comment gives you one chance to win; one entry per post per day, please. Leave a comment at each stop on the blog tour and increase your chances of winning. The lucky names will be announced each Saturday during the tour at The Family Curator.
About the Author
In every family, someone ends up with "the stuff." Denise May Levenick is a writer, researcher, and speaker with a passion for preserving and sharing family treasures of all kinds. She is the creator of the award-winning family history blog, The Family Curator www.TheFamilyCurator.com and author of the new book How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia and Genealogy Records, (Family Tree Books, 2012).


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Every year since 2009, the German International School Washington D.C. has applied and been approved for participation in the Maryland Dept. of Education (MSDE) Non-Public School Textbook Program every year since 2009. Under this program, textbooks in English are supplied to the GISW for students' use on loan for the school year. Due to this program the DSW has been able to pass savings for textbook purchases, amounting to a total of approx. $100,000, on to parents.
Currently, textbooks for the subjects English (Elementary School and Upper School); History (DIA and High School) and Biology (DIA) are being provided to the students. Further details can be found in the description of the program. Applications for participation in the Nonpublic Student Textbook Program are assessed by the MSDE on a year-by-year basis. In order to be considered for participation in the program, the MSDE requires that the School maintains an inventory of all books and that lost or damaged books are paid for or replaced by students.
To fulfill these requirements, student and parent cooperation is essential. Responsibilities and obligations are outlined in the Agreement and Confirmation of Receipt - Elementary School and the Agreement and Confirmation of Receipt - Upper School which students and parents will have to sign prior to receiving an MSDE textbook.
The completed agreement needs to be turned in to the respective teacher (English, History, Biology) during the first week of school of a given school year.
The benefits of this program can only be achieved with the cooperation of students and parents, the efforts of the respective teachers and a parent-volunteer who coordinates the application, ordering and administrative process and the required inventory controls.
Should you have any questions about the program, please contact the MSDE Coordinator at email@example.com.


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Greetings! I do hope all my fellow Americans had a wonderful Independence Day. God Bless America!
As summer heats up, so does that great American pastime, baseball. When you and the kids aren't watching or playing baseball, how about opening up a delightfully imaginative book about the sport? Take a look at Pirates at the Plate. The story and illustrations are by Mark Summers. The actual words are written by Aaron Frisch.
This book caught my eye right away with it's detailed scratchboard illustrations. The picture on the cover reminds me a bit of Norman Rockwell's famous illustration: "Gossip".
The Pirates "arrr" facing the cowboys in this rollicking story. But that's not just their team names. No sir. They are pirates and cowboys! Some of them be fictional, like Hopalong Cassidy, Long John Silver, and Captain Hook. Some of them be real, such as Wild Bill Hickok. And don't forget Calico Jack, the pirate who designed the Jolly Roger.
Pirates at the Plate is a fun read-aloud. My third graders kept trying to figure out just what was going on. The ending encourages our youngsters to get involved in good old-fashioned play where imagination is at bat.
Maybe you and your kids will be inspired to make some of your own scratch illustrations. You might learn more about the characters in the book. Perhaps you'll head outside for your own game or two. Let your imagination soar!


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Game Info: Enlapiscina
It's summer time and it's hot! So, you decide to go for a dip at the pool. First you need to put on your swimsuit and matching sandals.
How to Play:
This game is played with mouse only.
Tags: Accessories, bags, Clothes, Clothing, Costumes, Designs, Dresses, Fashion, Jewelries, pants, Sales, sandals, shoes, Shop, Shopping, sports shoes unlimited, Style, Trend


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Winter blues have finally set in. I'm sick of seeing snow, ice, and people falling on their butts. Okay, the last part will never get old, only because I have the humor level of a 10-year-old. Jennifer left last week for Vietnam. I'm so jealous that I felt like going to the airport and buying the first ticket to a warm destination.
The only good thing about this week are the new music releases: Cold War Kids, Iron and Wine, and Amos Lee. ALL AT ONCE. Plus, there's a new Peter Bjorn and John single. If none of those appeal to you, then I'd suggest resorting to Gucci Mane's "The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted" because despite his poor taste in facial tattoos, the album is poppin'. Also, I'm attempting to find a way to incorporate "Brrr" into everyday conversation. (This is in addition to N.Dubz's "BRAP!")
source: Citizen Couture, Fashion Gone Rogue, ffffound.com
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
your faith was an illusion
Posted by kittenmasks at 9:08 AM
Labels: inspiration
2 comments:
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Stay Organized and Fight Spam With Server-Side iCloud Email Rules
Like many email providers, Apple gives users a way to configure server-side rules for iCloud email accounts. Server-side email rules will filter messages before they reach any of your devices, allowing you to sort, forward, and trash certain email automatically as soon as it hits your iCloud account. One of the most useful features of server-side email rules, however, is dealing with spam or otherwise unwanted email. If you just can't get a company to stop sending you crap, you can filter 'em right out of your incoming email, and you'll never see their stuff again. Hooray!
To set up and configure iCloud email rules, you'll first need to log in to iCloud.com. Once you're logged in, click on the big blue email icon.
Once the Mail section loads, look for the gear icon in the lower-left corner of the browser window. Click the gear, and then choose Rules.
The Rules window will pop up in the middle of your screen and, by default, will be empty. Click Add a Rule.
iCloud email rules work like "if-then" sequences. You set a certain condition, for example, if an email's subject line contains the words "flaming grill," and then set an action to perform if an email satisfies that condition (e.g., move to trash, move to a specific folder, forward to another email address). Speaking of the "Flaming Grill," let's continue to use them as our example, because I have no idea where this place is but they insist on sending me marketing email.
In the screenshot example above, I configured my rule to check for the words "flaming grill" in the subject line and, if it sees any messages arrive which meet that condition, move those emails straight to the trash. Once you've configured your rule, click Done to save it. Any rules you create will begin to process new email going forward, and they may take a minute or two to start working depending on how snappy Apple's servers are that day.
If you need more than one rule, you can click Add a Rule again and repeat the process for different criteria, such as checking for a particular sender's email address, a recipient's email address, or even a CC'd email address.
When you have more than one rule, however, you'll need to take the order of the rules into account. You see, it's possible for an email to satisfy more than one rule, so how does iCloud know which rule takes precedence? It's simply a top-to-bottom order, with the rules at the top of your list getting a go at new emails first, and then having the messages filter down if necessary. You can rearrange the order of your iCloud email rules at any time by clicking and dragging on the three horizontal lines at the far right of each rule's row.
If you ever need to change a rule's criteria, or delete a rule, just click the info icon (the blue lowercase 'i' in a circle), and you'll be able to see and edit the rule or choose to delete it. For more information on iCloud email rules, check out Apple's support article. Once you get the hang of how the rules work, your interactions with annoying companies and filthy spammers will be a thing of the past!
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This program is for athletes ages 18 and up who are interested in learning and practicing the sport of rowing in a fun, supportive environment and those who have taken a learn to row class but want to refine their technique. Participants will learn how to properly handle rowing equipment and will master the basics of the sport including sweep rowing* (one oar per person) and sculling (two oars per person).
*if there are enough participants
Tuesdays and Thursdays 5:45pm – 7:15pm
No classes the week of July 4th.
Term 3: Tuesday, July 10 – Thursday, August 2
Term 4: Tuesday, August 7 – Thursday, August 30
Term 5: Tuesday, September 4 – Thursday, September 27
NOTE: Terms with insufficient registration may be cancelled.
Coach: Term 3 - Jody Klenk
Cost: $150 per term
- 8 classes per term
- Payment due at the start the term
- Requires swim test, compliance with the safety policy, and a signed liability waiver
- NOTE: THE FIRST CLASS IS INDOORS IN THE WESTFORD RECREATION PROGRAM ROOM at the Millwords 22 Town Farm Road Westford.
Click here to register: Registration
If you have questions about this process, please contact our Membership Director.


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Expansive curved display. Top-of-the-line performance. Sharp 13-megapixel camera. Excellent split screen and floating window multitasking.
Awkward rear-mounted buttons. Display is not full HD. Two iterations behind the latest Android version.
Bottom Line
The LG G Flex shows off the potential of curved display technology, but it's the fast performance and top-notch multitasking prowess that make this loaded phablet more than just a tech demo.
It's big, it's curved, and it flexes. The G Flex ($299.99 with contract) is a curio in the smartphone world and may indeed have started as a tech demo for the curved display and LG's manufacturing muscle. But get past the headline-grabbing features and you're left with a compelling extra-large phablet. The G Flex is absolutely incredible when it comes to watching videos or playing the latest high-end games thanks to the panoramic, immersive effect of its 6-inch curved OLED display. It also features one of the best multitasking implementations I've seen, truly capitalizing on the expansive screen real estate and the blazing fast quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor. I wanted to dismiss this phone as nothing more than a gimmick, but turns out the curvaceous G Flex has real chops. The Flex isn't for everyone, though, and our Editors' Choice for phablets remains the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 thanks to its tighter display and dizzying array of features.
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Design, Display, and Call Quality
The G Flex is essentially a stretched out and vertically arched LG G2, complete with razor thin bezels and that awkward rear-mounted button array. Measuring 6.32 by 3.21 by 0.31 inches (HWD), it's all screen thanks to that huge 6-inch display. I'm still not a fan of those rear-mounted buttons, but at least they feel more natural with the curvature and size of the Flex, and you can still tap twice anywhere on the screen to wake the phone. Speaking of the back, LG trumpets the Flex's "self-healing" properties—it dispensed with some lighter scratches from my fingernails, but taking a sharper object to the Flex left permanent scuffs in my tests.
Note: The slideshow below is of the Sprint LG G Flex, which is physically identical to the AT&T Flex.
With its vertical curvature, the G Flex fits awkwardly into front pants pockets and felt equally out of place in my back pocket; it poked out and was asking to be lifted, even by the most inept pickpocket. True to its name, the curved phone flexes when pressed against a flat surface and then springs back to shape when released. The feat of flexibility lends a level of durability to the phone and the plastic screen technology definitely makes it less shatter prone, but I'm not sure how I'd actually carry it around if it were my everyday phone.
The 6-inch display is made from LG's new plastic substrate OLED technology, curved to a radius of 700mm, which the company claims is the ideal curvature for a device this size. It features a full RGB subpixel matrix (not PenTile), but it leaves a lot of pixels on the table with its 720p resolution. That works out to 245 pixels per inch, which is a far cry from the G2's 423 ppi. Pull up a text heavy website and compare the two side by side, and you'll see an immediate difference. The display's colors also run cool, as OLEDs tend to do, and the max brightness isn't all that impressive. The latter is less of a problem here, as the curved display really does cut down on glare by a significant amount.
I didn't really expect the curved screen to really do much for the Flex in real-world use. After queuing up some HD content on Netflix and YouTube, though, I found myself taken with the expansive, gently curved display. It's not just the size, which in and of itself is great for media, but there's something engrossing about the design here—it made me forget I was watching video on a phone. I'm a sucker for panoramic and wide-angle photography, though, so maybe it's evoking something similar for me. Games and other visually impressive content benefit equally from the design as well.
LG also claims that the curved design improves call quality, which in theory makes some sense since the mic is marginally closer your mouth. I'm not really sure I can detect any real advantage thanks to its design, but call quality was, for the most part, very good in my tests. Volume in the earpiece gets plenty loud, and voices on the other end of the line sound clear, if a bit on the harsh side. Transmissions through the mic were easy to understand, but they had a digitized edge and wavered in and out at times. Noise cancellation was excellent, neutralizing a loud engine truck feet away from my test call. Inside the Flex is a specially designed, curved 3500mAh battery. In an initial run, the Flex discharged less than 10 percent of its battery after a 4-hour call, and lasted for 16 hours looping a video with screen brightness set to max.
The Flex supports AT&T's UMTS (850/1900/2100MHz), GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz), and LTE (700/1700/1900MHz) networks. I tested on a clear day in New York City and pulled down 3-5Mbps down and 2-4Mbps up when connected to LTE. That's pretty slow, but I saw almost identical results on an AT&T HTC One X+ I tested side by side, so I'll chalk it up to congestion in my area. There's also dual-band 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and GPS.


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The Nd:YAG Laser has been the true workhorse in removing well-defined brown spots for more than a decade. Most patients require only one treatment and the results are dramatic. Unlike the FotoFacial or IPL treatment, there is some mild irritation to the skin which usually lasts a few days to a week. Patients with melasma and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation or those with more diffuse hyperpigmentation and brown discoloration should choose other options.
Removes brown age and liver spots (lentigines)
Removes freckles
Removes tattoos
Removes brown birthmarks and Nevus of Ota
Usually one - two treatments
Minor irritation to skin only
Minimal risk
A Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser creates a special wavelength of light that is absorbed by the pigmented lesions. The light vibrates and shatters the pigment breaking the melanin into micro-particles thus lightening up the lesion.
The spot turns gray or white for a few minutes which is a natural response of the skin as it absorbs the energy. The spot then darkens and slough off completely within one to two weeks.
Disclaimer: Results may vary from patient to patient.


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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Most mornings last year, Terrance Wise left home before his three daughters woke up, to head to his $9.30-an-hour job at Burger King.
And after working his second job of the day, as a $7.47-an-hour cook for Pizza Hut, he returned home 16 hours later, around 11 p.m., after his daughters had gone to sleep.
"The kids started saying, 'Daddy, we never get to see you,' " said Mr. Wise, 35.
The situation worsened when Burger King cut back his hours and his fiancée was sidelined from work with a back injury. Despite his working two jobs, he and his family were evicted from their apartment, leaving them homeless for three months.
His financial struggles while working in fast-food jobs since age 16 help to explain — not surprisingly to many friends and colleagues — why he has emerged as the leading voice of a nationwide movement of fast-food workers clamoring for a higher wage. Two years after 200 fast-food workers walked out in a one-day strike in New York, the walkouts have spread across the country and become the largest labor protests in the nation in years.
On Thursday, the Fight for 15 campaign staged another wave of one-day strikes, this time in more than 150 cities, with home care aides and convenience store workers joining the protests in several of them. Mr. Wise was at the forefront in Kansas City, demonstrating outside McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's restaurants.
"I have never seen a movement like this," said Mr. Wise, in his crisp tenor voice. "We've seen how the civil rights movement won civil rights and we've seen how women won the right to vote. Those things weren't given to us. People faced hoses and beatings.
"Some people even died. We have to bring the same pressure for today's times and make the companies listen to us. We have to do whatever it takes to win."
Often speaking with the cadence of a preacher, Mr. Wise has inspired friends and co-workers. Some say his appearances on NPR or MSNBC remind them of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He traces his speaking style to a time when, as a precocious young golfer in Columbia, S.C., he was invited into the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. "I was really committed at that age to the Bible and learning the ministry," Mr. Wise said. "People called me 'Bible Boy.' "
He spent his childhood in public housing, with his mother earning so little as a Hardee's restaurant cashier that she sometimes could not pay the electricity bill. "We never owned a house; we never owned a car. We had to take our clothes to the laundry in a shopping cart," Mr. Wise said. "It was really a bad neighborhood — they said the way out was to play sports or sell drugs."
While he played golf and basketball and was an honors track student who won prizes for public speaking, his two brothers went to prison for selling drugs. Even then, Mr. Wise held two jobs — at KFC and Wendy's — during high school. He wound up dropping out because he couldn't juggle school with a work schedule that often ended at 2 a.m.
The pay for fast-food jobs was bad then and still is, he said. "What we're asking for is realistic. We took in $1,200 the other day at lunch hour at my Burger King. The six workers there cost them $60 or so for that hour. So I see they can pay us $15," Mr. Wise said.
As leader of the Fight for 15 campaign, Mr. Wise is sometimes a calming presence, sometimes an inspiring activist.
When the movement needed an emissary to address the N.A.A.C.P.'s national convention to persuade the group to endorse a higher wage, it sent Mr. Wise, who is not paid for his work for the movement. When 1,200 members of the movement gathered in July for a convention, Mr. Wise led a crucial segment that rallied votes behind a risky plan to commit civil disobedience.
And last week, Mr. Wise oversaw a nationwide conference call in which workers, gathered at meetings in 50 cities, loudly approved plans for Thursday's strike — the eighth in a wave of one-day strikes.
"My kids are living in poverty. It's hard getting just the basic necessities, and they truly are the reason I fight," Mr. Wise told the workers in the conference call. "It makes me angry, and you should be angry, that these billion-dollar corporations are robbing from my kids and your kids. So we're going to have to stand up and fight back."
In September, they fought back. Mr. Wise led a sit-in outside a McDonald's here, and 52 workers were arrested. Nearly 500 fast-food workers and supporters were arrested nationwide that day. The ones in Kansas City wore red T-shirts that read, "We Are Worth More," and sang civil rights songs.
At first, Mr. Wise resisted the push to head the national effort. He eventually gave in, with a sense that this was a role he has been preparing for his whole life. "I feel like that's what I was supposed to do," he said.
Kendall Fells, national organizing director of Fight for 15, said, "Terrance is a natural-born leader, and he is doing a good job bringing in other leaders."
Fast-food companies play down the protests, saying the one-day strikes are not strikes and hardly affect their operations. Industry officials often call the movement a union front — indeed, the Service Employees International Union has spent more than $10 million to underwrite the movement, seeing it as a powerful lever to raise pay for low-wage workers nationwide.
McDonald's says it pays its workers competitive wages and warns that a wage increase will hurt small and medium-size restaurant businesses. Burger King says it has provided entry-level jobs for millions of workers.
Brad Jones, Missouri director of the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group, criticized the $15 fast-food wage effort. "They're not looking at your independent pizza guy, your deli on the corner, your little bar and grill," he said. "If these folks have to increase their wages by $5 an hour, it's really going to be detrimental to them." He said that if restaurants had to pay $15, they would hire far fewer young workers for entry-level jobs.
With his fiancée, Myosha Johnson, back at her job as a home care aide, Mr. Wise and his family are back in an apartment. (During their homeless months, they stayed with her brother.) Still, the circumstances are problematic: Because of an inadequate heating system, their daughters sleep on the living room couch rather than in their bedroom, which lacks a radiator. To warm the apartment one recent 10-degree night, the family left the oven on, its door open.
Their gas was recently shut off when they could not pay the $348 bill. They receive $240 a month in food stamps for their daughters, 13, 11 and 9. They couldn't afford the annual back-to-school items that might have spared the girls an embarrassing episode — classmates mocked them for wearing the same shoes as the previous year.
Upset about seeing so little of his children, Mr. Wise quit his Pizza Hut job, which had involved a 90-minute bus trip from his Burger King job. He said he had grown frustrated that in his three years at Pizza Hut, his raises totaled just 22 cents, taking him to $7.47, from $7.25, the federal minimum wage.
"My store manager showed me a sheet explaining the pay policy," he said. "It said the maximum raise was 25 cents over three years. She said, 'If I gave you 25 cents, that means you're perfect.' "
Suzy de la Cruz, who works with Mr. Wise at Burger King, said he persuaded her to join Fight for 15. "I respect Terrance," she said. "They overwork him just like they overwork me."
Mr. Wise insists that a $15 hourly wage is not an impossible dream. "The way to achieve it is to get all types of low-wage workers involved," he said. "We have to build a movement for all low-wage workers."


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Queen Esther's Beauty Shop
Today we are doing some social-emotional and sensory play! It has been such a long day getting five children to their various parties and obligations. My 8-year-old decided that we should set up a beauty shop while we had our devotions so that I could relax, and Rosie could brush my hair, lotion my hands, and put sparkles on my eyes. She gathered all the supplies and took pictures of the process! It was a wonderful idea, and Rosie enjoyed listening to the story and treating Mommy like Queen Esther. Rosie is the kind of little one who makes messes if she doesn't get enough sensory input, so after a day in the car, lots of slippy lotion was a great treat.
It was such a nice relaxing time, and Rosalie was listening carefully to our devotion. Like her mama, she listens better when she has something to do with her hands! We talked about looking forward to the offering at church this weekend, which is benefiting a women's and children's shelter. Our children had an opportunity to work for some friends this week and were paid today. Today's teaching helped them see that they can be a bridge to the King for some suffering families. They are eagerly awaiting this weekends offering to bring their gifts in honor of the Baby King.
When you unwrap your worth in the Gift of Christ, you release your grip on all the other gifts. You are loved and carried and secure, and what else do you need when you have Him? You are free, free, to lavishly give away your gifts when all your value, worth, joy and riches are in the greatest of gifts.
-Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp


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Pikes Peak Test Lab's extensive calibration capabilities encompass a broad scope of accredited disciplines, used in the pharmaceutical, process, utility, aviation, manufacturing and many other regulated industries.
With our DSCC certification and NIST traceablity, as well as ANSI/NCSL Z-540 and MIL STD 45662a compliance we can meet your quality needs. Please call us for our fee-structure or utilize our online quote request service.
Our electrical and dimensional calibration services include minor repairs in both areas. We provide on-site calibration services to our customers as well as at our own environmentally controlled laboratory facility.
Contact us for our fee structure.


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Chic Soleil
Summer 2011
Early this summer we shot some game day inspired dresses from web-based trend setter Chic Soleil. Check out the new Chic Soleil website and online store they've been quietly constructing. CS will be adding new designers and brands frequently to their already impressive list of fashion designers, as well as expanding with a men's department by years end.
Once on the Chic Soleil site I strongly advise checking out the original and inspiring jewelry collection from Peyton Tyler. All PT's pieces are uniquely hand picked from NYC and placed together like each necklace or bracelet is it's own work of art.
Working with these guys always provides both a fresh outlook and some good laughs.
Pictured below is a featured dress by Ashford (front/back, $79). Chloe necklace by Peyton Tyler ($70). Dason bracelet by Peyton Tyler ($60).


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Looking for the best natural anti inflammatory product? You will not be short of choices as the market is currently flooded with hundreds of brands in various forms and names. Picking out the best though, might prove to be confusing. To help you out, here is an overview of the green lipped mussel (GLM) supplement which we believe is the best there is.
Why green lipped mussel?
GLM is a type of shellfish that is native to the clean waters of New Zealand. They are rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, complex carbohydrates and various vitamins and minerals. The indigenous people of the country, the Maoris, have long touted the efficacy of this mollusk in promoting healthy bones and joints and in alleviating pain caused by arthritis and other inflammatory conditions.
The Maoris have gone so far as to say that arthritis and inflammation-related disorders are something unheard of among them, owing mainly to their consumption of this much-loved marine product. To get the best out of this shellfish though, one has to consume it raw; something that not all of us can do given that raw shellfish is unpalatable to most of us who are not used to eating it that way.
Are you getting the best natural anti inflammatory supplement?
The good news is that there are a handful of GLM supplements available in the market right now, which means that we can gain the nutritional benefits of the shellfish without having to eat the mollusk unprocessed. But are all green lipped mussel supplements as effective as the raw shellfish?
The answer, sadly, is no. We all know that converting a raw product into a commercially viable supplement involves certain procedures. Some manufacturers cook, freeze or stabilize these shellfish to come up with the end material, with most of them claiming that theirs is the best natural anti inflammatory supplement.
What makes a GLM supplement brand the best?
A green lipped mussel supplement prepared through freezing, cooking or stabilizing can help reduce inflammation and reduce joint-related pains. However, its potency is unlikely to be at the same level as a GLM supplement prepared without the use of any of these three procedures.
The thing is, cooking or freezing or stabilizing green lipped mussels actually decreases their nutritional value, hence providing an end-product that is not as effective as the raw material. The best option for consumers is to look for a GLM supplement that has been prepared without the use of any of these three processes. Only then can they say that they are using that best natural anti inflammatory product and taking a supplement that has the same level of potency as raw green lipped mussels.


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5 Ways To Make Chefs Hate You
Chefs are not, for the most part, happy people. Let's get that out of the way. They work long hours, they have hardly any home lives to speak of, and they spend their whole day being mad at people who hate them right back. It's a rough job. But it doesn't make it any easier when diners (in their minds, anyway) go out of their way to make them miserable. And while there are many ways diners can make chefs hate them, these five are surely near the top of the list. Read more >
Chefs are not, for the most part, happy people. Let's get that out of the way. They work long hours, they have hardly any home lives to speak of, and they spend their whole day being mad at people who hate them right back. It's a rough job. But it doesn't make it any easier when diners (in their minds, anyway) go out of their way to make them miserable. And while there are many ways diners can make chefs hate them, these five are surely near the top of the list.
The Refire. One of the circumstances that has conspired to make chefs unhappy is the lack of a consensus regarding what terms like "medium rare" mean. So some guy orders a medium-rare steak, thinking that medium-rare means pink; when he gets a steak that actually is medium-rare, which is to say, with a warm red center, he sends it back to get it cooked more. Argh! The chef's bowels churn with frustration, and it is all he can do not to burn the thing to a cinder in retribution. Even worse is the lady who orders a steak well-done and then complains that it's dry and chewy.
The Deconstructionist. Remember the scene in Five Easy Pieces when Jack Nicholson wants to get a chicken salad sandwich on whole-wheat toast, with tomatoes instead of potatoes? Though it's now considered a countercultural archetype for standing up to The Man, cooks have always been on the side of the waitress. They put together complicated dishes, which takes a lot of work; it takes even more work to make sure all the stuff is ready and the procedure for assembling it under heavy fire is down. Now some oaf wants to swap out the pomme puree for carrots, or wants the sauce in a little container on the side, or some other ludicrous request. It might be OK on a slow night, but on a busy one it just makes for pandemonium.
The Bubble Boy. A few years ago, even the most skeptical of chefs were ready to believe guests when they said a doctor had forbidden them to eat anything with lactic acid. Or glutens. Or wheat. Or whatever. That was believable enough at first; after all, there is always some portion of the populace troubled with rare and painful complaints. But once every other person started to demand special treatment, not a few chefs blew their tops. Kenny Shopsin, the famously irascible New York cook, claims that the tipping point came for him some years back when a lady who claimed to be lactose intolerant ordered a burrito and a side of pancakes, despite the fact that the latter is mostly milk. "[H]er need to make her burrito special was not about... being able to drink milk. It was her need for control." Shopsin kicked out the lady and her whole table; but most chefs don't have that luxury. They can only seethe.
The Inspector General. The Portlandia skit in which two annoying hipsters cross-examine a waitress about their chicken's provenance was a broad burlesque, but not made up from whole cloth. There really are customers who ask a million questions about the ingredients. Are they organic? Are they local? Where does the meat come from? Encouraged by some health-forum screed, or the idle chatter of their equally annoying peers, this bunch pretends that they aren't going to order whatever the answer is, and—like Kenny Shopsin's burrito lady—are seen by the kitchen as control freaks. To make matters worse, this bunch often overlaps with the food-intolerance crowd.
The Yelper. Of all the things that torment chefs, and send them into impotent rages, surely the most vexing are bad Yelp reviews, written with multiple capitals and plenty of exclamation marks, by some nameless and hateful mook who ate there once and had to wait five extra minutes for his chocolate milk.
Of course, this is just the short list. The long list is still being written, and will only end when the last restaurant goes out of business, or the last chef dies of aggravation.
Josh Ozersky has written on his carnivorous exploits for Time, Esquire and now Food & Wine; he has authored several books, including The Hamburger: A History; and he is the founder of the Meatopia food festival.
Related: How to Get Into the World's Most Exclusive Restaurants
100 Restaurants Worth a Pilgrimage
World's Greatest Restaurant Views


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Translated into:
"An excellent resource for the journey…The authors' gracious approach does not minimize the pain adults feel about their relationships with parents who have hurt them. Neither does it offer platitudes. Instead, the Fields and Hubbard outline concrete steps to do the necessary work of forgiveness in order to move forward into a life of freedom. An excellent resource for the journey."
- Publishers Weekly
"Leslie Leyland Fields and Jill Hubbard take us into raw, messy stories so we can be transformed by that mysterious and painful grace in the force called forgiveness."
—Scot McKnight, Northern Seminary
"If our families are to flourish, we will need to learn and practice ways of forgiving those who have had the greatest impact upon us: our mothers and fathers."
Do you struggle with the deep pain of a broken relationship with a parent?
Leslie Leyland Fields and Dr. Jill Hubbard invite you to walk with them as they explore these questions:
- Why must we forgive at all?
- How do we honor those who act dishonorably toward us, especially when those people are as influential as our parents?
- Can we ever break free from the "sins of our fathers"?
- What does forgiveness look like in the lives of real parents and children?
- Does forgiveness always require reconciliation?
Through the authors' own compelling personal stories combined with a fresh look at the Scriptures, Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers illustrates and instructs in the practice of authentic forgiveness, leading you away from hate and hurt toward healing, hope, and freedom.


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Heyyy Friends!
It's been a while! I must say, I'm constantly amazed when I check in to see that I still have followers! I call you all my faithfuls…here for more than just painted furniture and design. You've been instrumental in helping me along this journey called life and I give thanks for you!
Today marks seven months since my son passed away. My body wants me to curl up in bed and close myself off to the world but my heart wants me to share him! So, I'm gonna share some goodness with you, a heavenly reminder from my kid, who amazes me in spirit even more than he did in the flesh. It's actually a post I've been trying to write for weeks but just couldn't find the words…one of the biggest challenges I've faced in trying to keep my son's voice alive! I never really feel like my words adequately convey the deep emotion or do him justice. Bare with me as I try to make it all come together with written words.
I was leaving a job site several weeks back, rushing to get from one place to another when I got behind the slowest driver in Saline County! My "why today?" sigh to sent me straight into the pit of "why-ville". Why-ville is a really shitty place, a valley along this journey that I hate to visit. Nonetheless, I find myself there periodically, questioning the universe about all the circumstances that make up my life…why me, why this, why NOW? The valley is full of doubt and fear and I'm determined to find a way to detour it. For now, I just work as hard as I can to not get stuck there. #transparency
So, the super slow driver finally turns {at the pace of a turtle, y'all} and I rejoiced, only to meet another frustration a few blocks later at the four way stop! The guy to my left stopped lonnnng before me but just sat there. Our eyes met as we were waiving one another to go ahead and in that moment, he reminded me of Todd. He had thick curly hair that was stuffed under a cap and the way he waived me on, in such a laid back way sent chills throughout my body. I sat there frozen for what seemed like forever until he slowly proceeded out into the intersection, turning in front of me. As soon as he turned I noticed this in his back window:
A SKATEBOARD! All the wheels were spinning and my heart almost pounded out of my chest! I raced ahead to get a closer look but didn't get to follow for long. He turned just a few blocks later on Mann Rd, sending me into full blown tears!
"Man", drawn out in his mellow, laid back voice, was a word Todd used all the time. He called people by it, added it into sentences and almost always ended an interaction with "take it easy, mann". That on top of the skateboard was just too much to bare. I pulled my car over and wept, sinking deeper into the valley of "why-ville"! He comforted me in that moment and as he'd done so many times before, he used a familiar object to communicate a powerful message.
You see, just a few weeks before Todd left to go on tour with his band, he spent $200 on a skateboard I'd encouraged him not to buy. He'd worked hard to save his money for their tour and I saw the skateboard as a total waste of money. And even though he'd owned a board since he was seven and never really had any major accidents, it was something that always concerned me. He was grown though so I just did that head shake thing, like, okay. Your money, kid!
At 9:30 on the night of June, 22, 2016, just a few weeks into the tour, Todd fell off the board and broke his right hand in three places. I can't even describe my level of anxiety and panic getting that call! He was in Galveston, Texas which felt like a million miles away. It was the first time as a mother I felt completely and utterly helpless! I wanted him home right then and tried to get him to fly out the next morning but he insisted on pushing through and continuing the tour as a one handed drummer. I was worried but I'm so glad he pushed on. He played a few more shows and got to experience some amazing things including "finding his tribe" in New Orleans. He made it all the way to Florida before the pain got to be too much. Plane tickets were a fortune and he didn't want to put me out so he convinced me to just get a bus ticket. That's when his two day journey home began. He walked over 25 miles in the sweltering heat of Florida and Alabama, rode on a crowded bus for over 30 hours, and spent countless hours at bus terminals, all with zero pain relief. I'd waited up on him and could barely keep my eyes open as I drove but that all changed when I saw his sweet face! He was standing on the corner with a smile almost as big as his fro and a shirt that read " Enjoy Life & Live". We had a good laugh about the irony of the shirt given his last few days in it. The bus wasn't as easy as he thought it would be but he had no complaints. He was so thankful to home. We spent the ride home talking about all the cool people he got to meet and how his shirt and artfully decorated cast prompted much conversation. I got him fed and cleaned up before capturing this sweet pic:
I'd never been so happy to watch him sleep! The next few months were rough. He had two surgeries to repair the bones and tendons. He had a pin sticking out the top of his hand for six weeks which he swore was picking up some sort of radio frequency that radiated through his hand. He went through some hellacious rehab too but he did it all with a smile…living up to the sentiment on his new favorite shirt.
I told you all that to say this…that same skateboard I was so pissed about Todd buying, made everything I just told you about possible. It led him home to me, right where he was suppose to be. It gave me four of the best months I've ever experienced with Todd and memories that will cherish forever. A cardiac rythym disorder which could have taken him at any time on his journey spared him until he was here with me. Unlike Galveston, I was able to get to him on October 12th when he called. I got to comfort my baby on his way out of this world. I got to hear "I love you, mom" one last time. As painful and traumatic as his last moments were and still are for me, they are moments many grieving parents were never afforded.
I was meant to be behind the slow driver that busy day. He made it possible for me to meet the guy at the four way stop. My kid needed me at that intersection at that very moment to see that skateboard. As I sat on the side of that country road, I heard him loud and clear:
You don't have to know all the answers, mom! Nothing happens by chance. Nothing is random. Just know the ending is already worked out…for your good! Enjoy Life & LIVE!
When I tell you he was ever present after that, I mean it! He has held my hand through so many "whys" in the last month and has given me signs daily to reiterate the point. I guess that presence and constant push to share the message is what led me to pull my car off the interstate last Thursday and post this.
The next morning, I woke up to several Facebook "like" notifications and a new friend request, all from the same person. My eyes were still adjusting to the bright screen but I could tell the profile bubble of the person had the ELAL t-shirts on them. My heart began to race and I clicked over quickly to find this:
First of all, I'd posted that pic several times and even used the hashtag…this time though, another person was searching! That's why I was led to share it at that exact time! It was meant to pop up in Eric's feed! My mind was racing at the thought that this man remembered my kid and he used his WHOLE name!! Something that has become so important to me! I was a screaming, crying mess! I accepted the friend request and reached out to him immediately. So many things made more sense after conversing with him. Not just for me, but for Eric as well. The story Eric shared in his post and in our private conversations warmed my soul! That glowing face he described took me right back to that 2am bus pickup and made the skateboard message all the more significant! Todd was meant to continue on…that meeting was purposed!
I don't care what anyone says, the spirit never dies! It continues on forever and is still used by our Creator to bless! Not only did this all come together to bless Eric {my baby made sure his inventory was returned} and I, it came to help me to wrap up the lesson I've been trying to put into words…one I knew Todd wanted me to share with others! I could hear his sweet voice say "here's your blog post, mom"!
Enjoy Life & Live! Stop getting so caught up in the circumstances. Stop questioning the why! It's ALL for a reason!
The boys and I got a sweet package from Eric today! Shirts with a sentiment that has grown to embody my son's life! Tattoos have been inked with those words in his honor! Thank you for adding to Todd's story, Eric and being used by God to drive home this lesson for me! I can't wait to meet you!
P.S. There are only a few people on the planet who call me "Ang"…they are the folks who know me best! I'm glad my kid got to meet this soul! I hope he continues to do what God has placed in his heart. I hope he continues to fan the fire and dream big. Todd wants him to as well.
"What Do You See In Me"- an original song by Todd Allen Davis. Let it be, friends. #enjoylifeandlive #rollon #onpurposeforapurpose #OHTP #OliviasHopeandToddsPromise


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I even received a few tweets like this from some of my followers, and those I follow.
Even though this may not be evidence my account was in fact hacked, it did create a profound awareness that I should be more diligent with my passwords on sites that I consider to be "trivial". We work on many projects for high profile companies, and take our internal password and security very seriously. We use complex passwords like this "6 OM-mzt 9_S$YA%xi6" and manage, protect and rotate these with incredible care.
But like many people, with my personal/recreational sites, I am just not as serious or cautious (call me lazy) with passwords I use or frequency with which I change them. (personal financial accounts aside).
So, putting into practice our Flawless Execution Methodology, we use in our client projects. I debriefed this event, and captured lessons learned that I am now putting into "Action".
- Change all Personal Passwords Immediately
- Use Harder Passwords
- Leverage a Password Manager so I can stay "Lazy" but Secure
My company NovoLogic, is all about making the lives of people we come into contact with better not worse. So after apologizing to those I may have caused stress with the potentially hacked twitter account @novologic, I decided to write this post and share some of the information I have found around Personal Password Managers.
I found 3 Personal Password Managers which are free. 2 of which are rated very highly by PC Magazine.
These Products allow you to have different and complex passwords for your different sites, but access them from one secure password. So if one of your on-line accounts get hacked your other accounts are safe, since they all have different passwords. something most of us are guilty of not doing.
- Dashlane - is a newer personal password manager but get very high ratings from PC Magazine. It is a little more limited in the number of Operating systems and Browsers it supports, but they seem to be working hard to expand this. It is available for Mac OS X and Windows and has an App for iOS devices.
- Norton has recently released Norton™ Identity Safe which it is offering for Free until October 1, 2012. If you download it before then it will be free of charge forever. No strings attached. this might be a great option for those who use Norton Antivirus.
- LastPass 2.0 - is a new version of a Password Manager that has been around for a while. We actually leverage this for our client and work protected systems, and like Dashlane gets very good marks from PC Magazine. LastPass gets a leg up for me as it works with a very broad range of operating systems and browsers.
The Real Lesson Learned here is that while someone hacking into my recreational/social account does not cause me any direct personal or financial harm, it could do something worse, it could cause serious damage to my credibility and reputation. The perception from others who I have never met but who may have received a less than flattering tweet from me could do damage that could be very hard to repair.
So learn from my mistake and leverage a Password Manager to help reduce the possibility of your account and your reputation from being compromised.


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Live Music by the River at Queen's Wine Bar & Beer Garden will feature live music from Rockville on Saturday, July 28th. The bar opens at 4:00 pm and music will begin at 6:30 pm. Our bar features a large selection of quality wine and beer from around the world. Food is available to purchase at this event. No outside food or beverages permitted. 21+ only please.
Back to All Events
Earlier Event: August 10Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" at the Golden Chain Theatre
Later Event: September 21Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare at the Golden Chain Theatre


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Like a typical scientist, I gave Aaron a small set of questions to answer in my last post, and he opted to kind of, sort of, answer one of them in incredible detail. That's ok though, Aaron. I really appreciate your tree analogy and think it works very well in describing the way that science works. We do understand the forest pretty well now! This idea is a big reason why I was excited to begin working on Mars science after I finished up my degree in 2009. Oddly enough, to talk about that, I should probably start with CEDAR.
The timing of his post is somewhat interesting, as I know Aaron is having a fun time at the yearly Coupling of Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) conference as I write this. CEDAR is one of the main regular meetings for people that study Earth's upper atmosphere. As a graduate student, I attended CEDAR every summer and always looked forward to heading out west to attend the meeting and hear first hand what other people were working on. But over the four or so years that I attended those meetings, I thought that I noticed a bit of a trend. Lots of people (including me) were working on and presenting pretty much the same thing that they were last year. On top of that, it seemed like every year I would observe a conversation between some of the older guys in the field on what the current direction of the upper atmospheric (UA) community was and why, whatever it was, it wasn't great and it needed to change. The thing was, even that conversation was the same every year. It seemed like no matter who was leading the CEDAR community, they all felt that the community as a whole needed to decide on the research priorities, and yet those priorities never really seemed to evolve either at the individual or the community level.
This is the mindset that I had when I was presented with the opportunity to join the Mars atmospheric community. Truthfully, the work that I started doing at Mars wasn't all that different from the stuff that I was doing at Earth. But the Mars community was in a completely different stage in the scientific community evolutionary process. The database of observations of the Mars atmosphere was, and still is, immensely smaller than that at Earth and observations of the neutral upper atmosphere, the part of the system that I am most interested in, were basically non-existent (seriously- we would run our Mars model and compare temperature results to 5 or so individual data points obtained a few decades ago). On top of that, there is an extremely compelling reason to know about the Mars upper atmosphere; you need to know the temperatures and densities up there if you want to be able to figure out how fast Mars's atmosphere is escaping. The loss of Mars's atmosphere is one of the biggest open questions in the planetary science community. AND, On top of all that, when I joined the Mars community, NASA was getting ready to launch the first mission dedicated to studying Mars's upper atmosphere, MAVEN, specifically to address this question. Needless to say, when I started pointing my computer at Mars, we were really in the "Wow! A forest!" phase.
It's been interesting to compare the state of the two communities as someone that has their feet in both. There are many people that study both Earth and Mars. The two systems behave very similarly, so it makes sense to do so. I wonder if they see the Earth upper atmosphere community in the same way as I do: maybe a little bit lost in the forest but continuing to identify interesting trees to study. I took a few years off from attending CEDAR when I finished grad school, but I did go back to a meeting in 2014. I left that meeting feeling like things hadn't really changed in the community in the few years that I stopped paying close attention.
The other thing that struck me as interesting in Aaron's discussion was his reference to predicting the weather in space. I think we agree here. Today in 2017 there is already a lot of vested interest in understanding and knowing the current and near-future conditions in near-Earth space. Corporate, governmental, and individual dependence on spaceborne technology that is susceptible to bad space weather is only going to grow. Concerns about the interconnectedness of the electrical grid, especially in North America, and how it would fair during a major geomagnetic storm are large enough to have caught the eye of President Obama. If we ever want to have a truly permanent human presence off planet on even a small scale (I mean, I guess the ISS is permanently manned, but three or four people in low Earth orbit out of seven and a half billion doesn't really even quality as small scale), we absolutely have to better understand and and be able to better predict space weather.
There are many people working on this problem, and I think it is the problem in the upper atmosphere and geospace community. Still, while being able to forecast bad space weather does require improved understanding of the underlying physical processes that actually cause the weather, I think the biggest issues preventing us from having good forecast models have nothing to do with physics. Instead, they are technological ones: lack of data and insufficient predictive models. Addressing these two issues doesn't necessarily require the services of a space physicist. What we really need is an expert computer scientist and a billionaire that wants to launch a bunch of stuff to space. What's Elon Musk doing right now?
Anyway, Aaron, you've transitioned a bit over the years from being an upper atmospheric physicist to more of a Renaissance man: building satellites, studying hurricanes, now you are even dipping your toes in the Mars and Venus waters. What did you see in the UA community that made you want to explore other areas? Are you just interested in all the things? Where you chasing funding? I'm interested to hear more of the story about why you went in the direction that you did and how important you think it was for you, or anyone for that matter, to not just focus on one or two things in their research or professional life. I think about this question constantly as I make decisions, almost on a daily basis, on how much of my time I want to spend doing research vs. how much time I want to spend trying to make my Department, College, and University a better place for the students that go there. But, that's a different part of the story.


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Mueller Community
Posts: 221
Joined on February 7th, 2008
Anyone know a good lawyer?
on May 26th, 2010
A local roofing company deposited several tons of roofing material on our roof today. We do not need a new roof, or at least we did not before today. They have already attempted to contact us, but I'm not going to call them back until my blood pressure subsides. If anyone has suggestions of what I need to do to document this, in case legal action is necessary, I'd appreciate it (I already took photos).
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Mueller Community
Posts: 81
Joined on March 2nd, 2009
Anyone know a good lawyer?
on May 26th, 2010
Section 28 of Texas Penal Code would apply. Criminal mischief is out because the actor has to have been knowingly and intentionally engaging in the behavior.They will probably argue that the damage was not "knowing and intentional" because someone likely made a mistake and went to the wrong address.
It likely falls under section 28.04 - reckless damage or destruction, which is a class C. misdemeanor. The amount you would be entitled to is outlined in section 28.06.
I'd contact APD and your insurance company, as you will likely need an appraisal of the damage and estimates for repair.
damage or destruction attorney
Texas law is not very good about awarding $$ for emotional distress caused by damage to property. I would contact an attorney prior to entering any agreement with the contractor in terms of payment. I would think it would be covered by insurance, with the exception of your deductible. You might have to bring a civil suit if your costs exceed that which would be covered by your insurance company, but would have to weigh the cost of what you would be likely to receive with what the legal representation would cost you.
Unfortunately the only attorney's I know happen to be family law/criminal attorneys who handle issues other than property crimes.
- Daniel Estabrook
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Mueller Community
Posts: 221
Joined on February 7th, 2008
Anyone know a good roofer?
on May 27th, 2010
Thanks much, Daniel
I'm thinking perhaps I started out this conversation on the wrong foot. It appears the roofer likely made an honest mistake, and readily admits it. The company was, in fact, one of two roofers who bid on our roof after the 2008 hail storm that destroyed so many of our brand new roofs. They were the losing bid, but on price not quality. I think that explains why I was in their system, and when someone in Round Rock with the exact same name as me! ordered a roof, they plopped it on my house instead. D'oh!
If you think about it, it's ultimately Elton John's fault, you know, 'Daniel my brother..'
Would be nice to wake up tomorrow without 3 extra tons of roofing on top of my house, having dreamed it all. Heck, I might be asleep right now!
Failing that, I think someone's going to be buying me a new roof.
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Kevin McGillicuddy
Mueller Community
Posts: 164
Joined on April 27th, 2010
Anyone know a good roofer?
Kevin McGillicuddy
on May 27th, 2010
J. Conn Roofing is a very good roofing company here in Austin (no personal relationship with them - they've replaced a roof for me before and came highly recommended to me). If you're looking to have someone do an estimate or bid to repair or replace your roof (other than the company that "donated" the materials to you) I wouldn't hesitate to contact them. With respect to who should pay, while you could make a homeowner's claim under your own policy, your going to have a deductible that will cost you a lot. So, I'd pursue the roofing company that made the mistake. Their liability insurance carrier should be notified once you make a claim against them and you won't have to pay a deductible like you would with your own homeowner's carrier. You might end up with a disagreement over whether you need to replace vs. repair your roof or the cost of either of those, but that's another reason for you to get your own estimate.
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Mueller Community
Posts: 1151
Joined on November 25th, 2008
Anyone know a good roofer?
on May 27th, 2010
I've used and would recommend Freeman Co.:
. Lots of esperience, not the lowest price but they were willing to negotiate price vs. time of year (cheaper in winter)
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Darreen haris
Posts: 1
Joined on March 15th, 2017
Anyone know a good roofer?
Darreen haris
on March 15th, 2017
The roofing industry has its own separate needs, and this calls for a different method for rating providers that will be an additional qualification to generic state licensing. To be specific, look for a Roofing contractor who is industry certified.one of my friend works with
Roofing Contractor Margate
. They are certified and highly recommended.
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Allen Smith
Posts: 1
Joined on November 6th, 2017
Anyone know a good roofer?
Allen Smith
on November 6th, 2017
I have recently come across with
Roof Repair Miramar
to install new roof in my home. I must say they have done an amazing work and their charges are also very reasonable. . .
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Alex Kalssen
Posts: 1
Joined on April 23rd, 2019
Anyone know a good roofer?
Alex Kalssen
on April 23rd, 2019
Thanks for your suggestions but we have
roof repair davie
here that help us in all roofing emergencies pretty well.
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Minnesota Districts
of Minnesota school districts surveyed by USDA say they participate in farm to school activities.
Another 15% of districts surveyed plan to start farm to school activities in the future.
(Note: of the 689 school districts in Minnesota, 77% completed the USDA Farm to School Census.)
invested in local food in Minnesotawith the average school district spending
13%of their budget on local products.
School districts in Minnesota are currently buying the following types of local foods:
22%meat or poultry
of Minnesota districts surveyed plan to increase local food purchases in the future.
Minnesota school districts are serving local items throughout the school day. In Minnesota local foods are being served at the following times:
19%Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program
At least
school gardens are growing in MinnesotaTend and water those gardens; their benefits are well documented!
In Minnesota,
32%of School Districts
Are Engaging Preschool Childrenin Farm to School Activities.
In Minnesota,
Of School Districts Are Using Local Foods in Summer Meals.
Learn more about these results. See the details
Based on a tally of the number of votes received, the school district above was selected as a stand out in Minnesota.
What we heard during the nomination process:
As a lunch lady for school district 181, I can tell you that our farm to school program is AMAZING. The produce is beautiful, nutritious AND delicious! Our kids are lucky they get to try a variety of fresh fruits and veggies!
Congratulations to all the school districts in Minnesota conducting farm to school programs.
From buying local food to planting school gardens to teaching kids where their food comes from, Minnesota is 'bringing the farm to school.' Peruse the list below for more information on the great work taking place in Minnesota.
Find Your School District
Can't find your district?
It's because USDA does not have a record for your school district.


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BDR attacks ProSolo, emerges scathedTuesday, June 27th, 2006
Wanting to get their butts kicked by the finest the Northeast has to offer, four BDR members (Mei, Slava, Ben and John) entered the Washington, DC ProSolo at Fedex field.
The first day was dry and fast, despite the ominous forecast. Shockingly, John was in 5th place after the first set of runs. In the second set, John was paired up with Courtney Cormier. After the dust had settled, Courtney went from 6th to 1st and John went from 5th to 10th. John would like to think that it was his driving that pushed Courtney to pull that off
Sunday brought mechanical trouble for the team. Meiandslava's MR2 was leaking oil at a good clip and Ben's Evo was having recurring symptoms of the PS pump issue from the previous week. Their cars were not destined for the rain. John plodded through the rain and had the 5th-fastest Sunday time in STX.
Results are posted on the results page.


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How cool would it be to wear your favorite game piece as jewelry?! Bank of Memories & Flowers now carries awesome scrabble piece and mahjong tile necklaces.
You can find them at the Pewaukee location. The tiles shown have beautiful one of a kind floral and nature designs on one side and a scrabble letter or mahjong pattern on the back side. These fun pieces can be paired with any outfit and they are perfect for the game lover you know! Stop by and grab one today, you will definitely win!


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165 Billions of Dead Things
I've avoided the topic of creationism for long enough, and my Kickstarter backers must be appeased! Here's why I haven't been in a rush to bring it up:
I do not make the common mistake of conflating skepticism and atheism. To quote the eloquent Daniel Loxton, "atheism is an albatross for the skeptical movement. It divides us, it distracts us, and it marginalizes us." (2007 Essay: Where Do We Go From Here). Anecdotally, I know plenty of critical thinking catholics, methodists, and others. I also know plenty of atheists who believe in alternative medicine, conspiracies, and other woo. Freethinking does not imply critical thinking, and vice versa.
Because of this, as a rule, I do not mix skeptical activism and arguments about value systems – be they religious or political. Every community, demographic, and individual has certain irrational beliefs that exploit their value system. Nobody is exempted, which is why I would rather address specific irrational ideas rather than trying to tear down value systems entirely. I would argue that it is not the role of skepticism to attack religion, except in the cases where specific claims wander into the arena of scientific skepticism. Examples of religious claims that can be categorized as pseudoscience would include young earth creationism, intelligent design, and faith healing. All of which put forth a testable claim about how the world, biology, and medicine works, respectively.
This is all a long way of saying that attacking specific pseudoscience claims such as creationism is NOT an attack on Christianity itself, or on those who hold Christian values. Case in point, the Catholic Church does not oppose evolution* (see comments). I think it is important to make this distinction between believed "facts" and personal values. Very often, wrongful interpretation of facts leads to behavior and beliefs that are counter to one's own value system. An example would be environmentalists who oppose nuclear power, but that's a controversy for another day. This has all gotten very serious, so here's an addictive tune to lighten the mood:
Of course, I'm throwing a nod to evolution into the comic by including archaeopteryx as one of the biblical bird "kinds". As explained by Answers in Genesis "Evolutionists have pointed to fossils of the iconic Archaeopteryx as the earliest example of birds evolving from reptiles. It was the quintessential "missing link," though creationists countered that it was just a bird, similar to those flapping around today. A new find is forcing evolutionists to sideline Archaeopteryx and change their story." I couldn't resist.
I'm also mixing various doctrines of Ken Ham's Creation Museum and affiliated organization Answers In Genesis in this joke. Ken Ham maintains that dinosaurs did in fact make it on to the Ark, but went extinct later, referencing dragon mythology as evidence of this. However other Answers In Genesis sources state simply that dinosaurs couldn't fit on the Ark, ignoring the fact that most dinosaurs were small.
If you haven't already, watch the Nye/Ham debate in it's entirety, and followup interview with Bill Nye in the Skeptical Inquirer. This debate is an example of how to demonstrate the irrationality of an idea (Ken Ham's creationism) while respecting and appealing to the values of Christianity.
Welcome to the creation museum, an exploration of biblical theory.
Wow, the dinosaurs had saddles?
We lived alongside them until the global flood.
Forget hippos on the Ark, take triceratops instead!
I wish.
Really, what was Noah thinking? "You're cool archaeopteryx, the rest of you can beat it."


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A NIGHT AT THE BALL: The Lookingglass Theatre's Junior Board adds a new concept for its popular Madhatter's Ball - a Alice in Wonderland theme. The event will have a performance of Lookingglass Alice located inside Water Tower Water Works, followed by an event inside The Ritz-Carlton. Proceeds from the tonight's events will support the operation, expansion and outreach of Lookingglass' Education and Community programs. 7:30 p.m., Ritz Carlton, 160 E. Pearson.
FASHION FORWARD: Jbar at The James hotel kicks off its exclusive "Summer of Love" tonight with a trunk show style fashion event featuring looks from ultra-chic retro retailer Sofia boutique. Specialty cocktails include the "En Vogue" and "Live Lovely." Discounted fashionable brands include ELTIF by Julie Lampert, Halston Heritage and Lighting Bolt.6:30 - 8 p.m., 610 North Rush St, 312.660.7200 for reservations
ROCK OUT: The Summer Solstice Concert features My Peoples who will be rocking out their West Coast beats. Your first drink is complimentary! 7:30 p.m., LaSalle Power Company, 500 N. Lasalle., Tickets are $10 in advance, $14 at the door.
SHOW YOUR RAINBOW PRIDE: Kick off Gay Pride Weekend at Jokes and Notes. Get some laughs from lesbian comedians Karen Williams, Sapna Kumar and Cameron Esposito. 7:30 p.m. - 10 p.m., 4641 S. King Drive., $15 plus two-drink minimum.


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Inspiring Young People and new businesses to learn about Enterprise, Self Employment and Entreprenuership, GetSet for Business is a not-for-profit organisation that provides Enterprise Education in Schools and Communities as well as providing one-to-one support to new and growing businesses.
We work with young people in schools, colleges, universities, community groups and support groups to inform and inspire Enterprise learning and Entreprenuership in an innovative and interactive way.
We develop tailored and bespoke workshops specific to the type and age of the audience and learning objectives. Our workshops are focused around setting up real trading mini enterprises and whether the age of the group is 7 or 30, they develop a range of skills which will improve and enhance future entreprenuerial and career opportunities.
The workshops are fun and interactive and not only benefit the group but can also raise critical funds from profits received from the trading enterprises.
We also help new businesses start-up and grow. If you have a business idea or are a trading business looking to maximise potential, get in touch for a free consultation
As a not-for-profit organisation, our programmes are highly competitive. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.
Click here to watch a two minute video of our Key Stage 2 School Enterprise Project
|Enterprise Learning helps young people to:
|Improve important life skills such as confidence, teamwork, creativity and planning.
|Create marketing materials and learn about business promotion and customer care.
|Be Responsbile for a particular role within the team and manage tasks assosciated with that role.
|Prepare financial budgets and business plans for the project and manage cashflow.
|Calculate costs, set prices and find innovative ways to maximise gross profits.
|Negotiate with suppliers and other stakeholders, work as a team and present results.
|Create a real mini enterprise, sell goods and services and generate funds for the establishment.