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Dr. Quantum's Little Book Of Big Ideas: Where Science Meets Spirit160
Paperback(New Edition)
Respected among scientists and spiritual leaders alike for his pioneering work combining scientific and spiritual thought, Fred Alan Wolf (aka Dr. Quantum) is, as Deepak Chopra states, "one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness." Featured in the wordofmouth indie hit, What the Bleep Do We Know?!, Dr. Wolf is a physicist who knows how to put complex sciencebased ideas into terms that even sciencephobes can understand. With clarity and a sense of humor, Dr. Quantum presents Big Ideas in the form of both short quotes and longer excerpts and covers topics ranging from the construction of our everyday reality to our relationship to one another. Dr. Quantum's Little Book of Big Ideas is a perfect gift for anyone interested in the realm where science meets spirit.
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About the Author
Fred Alan Wolf earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UCLA and has taught at San Diego State University as well as the University of London, the University of Paris, the HahnMeitner Institute for Nuclear Physics in Berlin, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition to being featured in What the Bleep, Fred Alan Wolf is a frequent radio guest and has appeared on television programs such as the Discovery Channel's The Know Zone (as the resident physicist) and PBS's Closer to Truth. He is also a member of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars, winner of the National Book Award, and the author of nine books including Mind into Matter, Matter into Feeling, and The Spiritual Universe.
Read an Excerpt
Dr. Quantum's Little Book of Big Ideas
Where Science Meets Spirit
By Fred Alan Wolf
Moment Point PressCopyright © 2005 Fred Alan Wolf
All rights reserved.
Asking yourself the deeper questions opens up new ways of being in the world. It brings in a breath of fresh air. It makes life more joyful. The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery.
I remember a particular day when I was playing in the front hallway of my apartment building. I was barely eight years old. I stood at the top of the stairwell and looked down wondering if I could fly down the nineteen or twenty stairs reaching to the ground floor from our first-floor apartment. Without thinking, I skidded down the stairwell with my feet only barely touching the leading edges of each step. I was on the ground floor in a flash, and I had not slid down the banister, nor had I placed my feet on any of the steps.
When I grew older and remembered what I had done that day, I realized it was impossible. My feet just were not long enough to go from one step edge to the next without my falling flat on my face. Was this just a dream of super powers, or had I actually skidded down those stairs?
So why is understanding the quantum universe important? Because it excites a feeling of delightful deliciousness — life takes on a new vision. First you find out why it is that you may think the way you think and what conditions have arisen to make you feel that way, and then you can find out how to change them. Quantum physics offers new ways of thinking and new ways of being in the world, which I think improve the various things you do, whether it's taking a walk, talking to somebody, or driving your car. To anything you may basically feel is not enjoyable for you, it can add an aura of joy, because the new metaphors provide fresh ways of thinking and approaching every aspect of your life.
Quantum physics is also important because it contributes to the amazing spectrum of new technologies. I don't think there's a device around that doesn't have a little computer in it somewhere, and that is quantum physics in action. The whole digital age is impossible without quantum physics. And, quantum physics' effect on biology and medicine is enormous. The biggest scientific problem facing our twenty-first-century culture is the relationship of mind to body. With all of the new medicines coming out, and the new insights we're gathering about what constitutes health, quantum physics may just be what we need to really grasp how ancient spiritual views of the body and modern scientific views prove that consciousness can alter reality, and so all illnesses may become as outdated as smallpox is today.
Quantum physics ...
consists of a well-defined set of rules which work in a universal way. Yet what it predicts about the world is not how the world appears. It predicts, among other things, strange overlaps of reality, parallel realities, and objects being in two or more places at the same time.
provides new metaphors to understand life's experiences.
can change your life!
The movement of life may at times seem chaotic, but it is not. It moves like a gigantic wave and we are caught atop it. If we try to direct the wave, we'll find ourselves in constant battle with it. If we learn merely to survive in the wave's wake, we become victims of it. But we do have another option: We can grasp the rules of the wave's movement and learn to surf it skillfully.
To attempt to become spiritually enlightened without realizing the world of mythology within us is a serious mistake. People who attempt this often find themselves "in battle with the devil" or "in fear of evil."
the power of myth
When that first curtain opened to God's Magic Theater, a great void appeared. And then, according to one myth called Science, the void exploded into the Big Bang. Following another myth called the Bible, in the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. These seemingly very different points of view—these myths called the Big Bang and the Word—appear entirely irreconcilable: one deals with the physical universe of matter and energy and the other with the mental universe of mind and information. But, could these two views actually be saying the same thing? Could it be that in some way what we describe about the universe—how we exploit it to derive meaning from it, how we determine what it is, and what it is doing—establishes the very universe we speak and write about? Does the act of learning something, turning our experiences into meaningful symbols of discourse, create both the physical thing being observed and the laws of order it seems to obey?
The answers to these and other questions will come from a harmonizing of the relationship between the "in here" world of information, meaning, and knowledge with the "out there" world of matter, energy, and existence. This reconcilement is precisely what I mean by a new alchemy.
Perhaps we could move closer to proving the existence of mind by asking: Does matter influence mind?
Well, we can observe matter influencing matter when a dropped egg hits the floor—certainly the floor drastically affects the egg. And when we take a mind-altering substance such as alcohol or a pain-numbing drug, we feel its effect on our ability to be alert or feel pain. So, we tend to believe that matter influences mind. We could say, therefore, that mind and matter exert a force on one another. But since mind cannot be scientifically discovered, this force cannot be found strictly via the fields of physics or physiology or even psychology. No, we need a new field, the field of new alchemy, which incorporates the overlapping insights gained from all three of these fields; which seeks to reveal the secret connection between matter and mind—seeks to reveal the force that we intuitively believe real.
We all seem to know what we mean when we say that an event has occurred. We mean that something happened. We also mean (although we don't usually say so) that someone has observed the event. We take it for granted that events could have occurred, even though no one was there to observe them. After all, that proverbial tree we come across, lying on its side in the forest, must have fallen with a great crash of sound as it thumped the ground in its grand descent. Events such as sound-wave production must happen regardless of the presence or absence of beings with ears or other organs that can sense these events. Right?
Such a viewpoint is quite natural and is called objectivism. This philosophy states that all reality arises objectively, externally, and independently of the mind. Knowledge of this reality comes from reliably based observations of objects and events—things that happen to these objects. But suppose science proved that objectivism was wrong. Then what? It would mean that all reality is not objective; that reality has to have a subjective quality to it (called mind); and that mind has to affect and possibly even change what we sense as objectively "out there." In brief, it would mean that there is no absolute "out there" unless there is a mind "in here" that perceives it.
The observer effect says that there is no reality until that reality is perceived. This profound insight tells us that we alter every object in the world simply by paying attention to it. In this alteration, both the object of our attention and the mind of the observer change. Because we usually don't pay attention to ourselves in the perception process, our immediate experience usually won't seem to indicate that our actions of perception changed anything. However, if we construct a careful history of our perceptions, they often show us that our way of perceiving indeed changes the course of our personal histories.
Thus the world is really not as it seems. It certainly seems to be "out there" independent of us, independent of the choices we might make. Yet quantum physics destroys that idea. What is "out there" depends on what we choose to look for.
Reality is not just the physical world; it's the relationship of the mind with the physical world that creates the perception of reality. There is no reality without a perception of reality.
Would you be here, exist in physical form, if no one observed you? In a real sense, the answer is no.
Mere observation is enough to alter the history of anything or anyone, even a whole country.
observer effect
By observing, each observer separates into a self and a thing. Often that thing is one's own face, body, or personality/belief structure.
The very notions of heaven being separate from earth, mind separate from body, free-will separate from determinism, life separate from death, and in fact all duality, all opposites, wherein we pose an inside and outside, a boundary line, a nation, an island, a membrane, a distinction—all and more, are not primary facts.
Yet, we unconsciously strive to keep this secret buried inside ourselves. We unwittingly work at maintaining the status quo. We unconsciously choose to live under the illusion that everything is as we see it. This is not only a fundamental truth for you and me, it is the deep secret of the universe's existence: Hide from one's essential self. It is God's great trick; and it only works because we agree to believe the trick. If we can stop believing it for one minute, one second, even one millisecond, and allow our consciousness to become aware that we have stopped, we will see the trick revealed.
At some point in our lives, somehow, somewhere, just for an instant, the unveiling of the great mystery comes to pass. God, the magician, raises the curtain, reveals the trick just slightly, and we glimpse the illusion. But, we don't shout, Wow! No gasps of wonderment fill the theater. Something becomes distinguishable from nothing in a single creative act, but we trick ourselves into not seeing. And so it goes. No applause fills the air. We sit back, watch the show, breathe a sigh of relief, and say unconsciously, "We'll never figure this one out, might as well just accept it."
Distinctions are not real. They are fleeting whispers of an all-pervading, subtle, non-expressive potential reality. The world is not made of separate things. Mind is not separate from matter. And you are not separate from any other being, animal, vegetable, living, dead, or seemingly inanimate matter. The kingdom of heaven and the island of hell lie in you. In you lies everything you have always wanted to know. A vast potential urging itself to arise and become something lies in you. In you, like a coiled serpent waiting to spring forth from your deepest shadows, lies every creative moment that exists, has ever been, and will ever be.
This has been, is, and will always be, the secret of creativity: breaking free of separation.
Within your own mind and body lies a majestic story filled with drama, pathos, humor, intelligence, fantasy, and fact. It is no less than the story of the entire universe, particularly its own creation, transformation, and ultimate purpose. And while most stories require a separated listener and a storyteller, in your story the listener and the storyteller are one. The way in which you go about telling a story to yourself—a story that includes you—actually points out that without you there wouldn't be a universe! This story called you unfolds into a panorama of life, literally a you-niverse. And it involves the sacred transmutation of mind into matter.
Why do we have this essential quality of being that we all feel and can speak of, and resonate with, with a single word called "I"? Everyone seems to have this very definite sense of I-ness, even though I can't necessarily go inside of your body and feel your Iness. My speculative thought about it is that what I'm feeling as my I-ness is exactly the same as what you feel as your I-ness—that there really isn't any separation there. I-ness is the one quality which, although it appears to divide us, is actually unifying. It's a unity of our common experience.
We walk around with the unconscious ideas that we've been taught, which define us as separate, distinct: "I am this; I am not that. I am good at this; I am not good at that. I am wonderful; I am terrible." These ideas have been ingrained in us since childhood and are reinforced by others, often family members, who have known us for a long time. But, they don't know us! They only know what they choose to see and think about us. And we don't know them! We only know what we choose to think and see about them.
These are the story lines of our existence. They are not mere wisps of non-inert energy. They are weighty. We embody them, so to speak, and after a long while we carry them with us as if we are walking around with a mass on our shoulders. We have each bought and sold ourselves on certain stories and in our discomfort they bring us a sense of comfort. Any idea or thought that runs counter to our stories, even if it could improve our emotional or financial situation, we quickly push down into a safe, comfortable zone of unthinkability. We have learned, without thinking, how to transform information into matter. In order to break free, in order to have a new experience, a shamanic awakening, a new vision, we have to break free of the illusion that we are separate from anything else—in particular, that we are separate from what we desire. This has been, is, and will always be, the secret of creativity: breaking free of separation. If we don't do that, we don't create.
Matter arises from mind—a vast field of influence commonly envisioned as the Mind of God.
There really is only one Mind, and the thoughts that you're having, while they may seem very personal to you and very self-contained within your own head at the moment, those thoughts are being thought everywhere by everybody at some time in some form. Not necessarily in the same way that you're thinking now, but they're part of a collective consciousness—or of the One Mind.
What is "my self"? Why do I even recognize myself as an individual separate from other individuals? Well, let's look at it this way. If I am a member of a tribe, my concept of self is different than if I am, say, a member of a closed family unit. My behavior, in turn, depends on how I see myself. For example, soldiers fighting in a war view themselves as part of a larger unit; and they behave quite differently toward those outside of their unit, particularly enemies, than they would if they were village people greeting strangers. Thus, how we become aware of the world around us is to a large extent dependent on how we think about our individuality in relation to our environment.
Think about what group or "tribe" you most identify with and how this identification determines your thoughts, beliefs, and behavior. What happens when you change your tribal affinity? A new "you" emerges.
Everyone you see "out there" in life or in your dreams is just a mirror of your own unmasked self. Each is "you," although each wears a different mask/persona, each deals with his or her own karma, seeks his or her own dharma, vows to do, to live, and to play out the role assigned to him or her by the cosmic screen actors' guild.
Our thoughts are representative of the universe's thoughts.
The principle of complementarity says that when you look at something a certain way, that's what you see; when you look at it another way, you see something different.
So, just because you see things one way doesn't mean that's the way they really are. You can see them another way—it may be a very different way from the first way—but it doesn't mean that the second way is the way they really are either! As Walt Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." Each of us is large, containing multitudes! We are not just confined to our bodies.
Only in the great multiplicity of life can we see the One.
principle of complementarity
The principle of complementarity says that the physical universe can never be known independent of an observer's choices of what to observe. Moreover, these choices fall into two distinct, or complementary, sets of observations called "observables." Observation of one observable always precludes the possibility of simultaneous observation of its complement. For example, the observation of the location and the observation of the motion of a subatomic particle form complementary observables. Hence the observation of one renders the other indeterminate or uncertain. So the more objective we are in our observations, the more difficulty we will have in dealing with spirit, and the more likely we will become drawn into the material world. Conversely, as we become more spiritually awakened, the less concern we will feel for our material existence.
By choosing to see the world one way, complementary ways of experiencing become hidden or inaccessible. While these hidden views no longer appear to the mind as objective qualities visible in the world as things, and remembered in the mind as memories, they remain part of the unconscious mind-world as possibilities. Upon a change of choice that brings forward the complementary way of experiencing, these previous hidden views become apparent—"out there"—while the previous qualities vanish in the physical world but remain as the contents of memory. A magician uses this trick to fool us into seeing a thing as it was prior to his sleight of hand.
Our choices—no matter how logical and meaningful they may appear—are among sets of what physicists call "complementary variables." These variables literally have magical and far-reaching consequences, actually altering past, future, and present moments of our lives. Yet because of the illusory normalcy of these observations, we appear to be controlled by them and not the other way around.
Excerpted from Dr. Quantum's Little Book of Big Ideas by Fred Alan Wolf. Copyright © 2005 Fred Alan Wolf. Excerpted by permission of Moment Point Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
A Mini Intro to a Little Book
More mind-bending titles by Fred Alan Wolf from Moment Point Press
About the Author


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Catalysts, Volume 8, Issue 5 (May 2018) – 50 articles
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Cover Story (view full-size image) The cover design represents the core idea of our research, which is the exploitation of woody [...] Read more. The cover design represents the core idea of our research, which is the exploitation of woody biomass waste to produce bioproducts (mainly charcoal) that could replace fossil fuel utilization in metallurgical industries, helping them reduce their massive CO2 emissions. For this purpose pyrolysis has been proven as a suitable technology, however, in order to make process profitable and sustainable a proper catalytic optimization of the vapors composition is mandatory. The picture shows the characteristic closed carbon loop associated to biomass, the wastes produced from forest activities are pyrolysed and the vapors thermal-catalytically treated. The charcoal and pyro gas are then used by the metallurgical industry and finally the CO2 is fixed again by the growing plant species. View this paper.
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Best Graphic Story
I wanted to like this, and possibly I will like this. The four issues collected here are clearly just the opening act of a larger story; A Nation under Our Feet is apparently slated to run across three volumes of Black Panther. But what's here is alienating, assuming the reader knows more about Blank Panther backstory than I did. What happened to Black Panther's sister, and why doesn't he have any control over his own country? Or, if this stuff isn't preexisting backstory, it's just alienating. There are definitely some neat things going on here. I liked the sense of Wakanda as a real place with factions and tensions and multiple competing histories, and I liked the two lesbian warriors who go rogue (though no one properly explains what is the organization they went rogue from), and Stelfreeze occasionally does some really arresting stuff with his visuals, and the idea that a superhero whose core identity is being a superking has to confront a popular revolution is cool, and leads to good quotations about power and leadership. But at times this book felt like epigrams strung together with imagery, not a story.
In the discrete story stakes, Monstress is somewhere above Paper Girls and below Ms. Marvel. Events come to a climax, but there's clearly a much bigger story we're only beginning to see. But what a story. Sana Takeda's art is absolutely gorgeous, a pointed contrast to the often horrific events it depicts. In a fantasy world inhabited by five races-- humans, gods, Ancients, Arcanics (human/Ancient hybrids), and talking cats-- a seventeen-year-old Arcanic girl goes into the dark heart of humanity to root out the secret of her own existence, something relating to the Old Gods. There's sometimes too much to keep track of, but the core characters are pretty great; I particularly enjoy Maika's friend the world-weary cat Ren, and also I have a lot of affection for the improbably cute fox Arcanic, Kippa. Lush stuff, and a series I will definitely continue to read. If it loses out to Paper Girls, it's only because Paper Girls just hits my buttons in a way this does not, as I tend more toward sf than fantasy.
A group of bicycle-riding children living in the Midwest in the 1980s encounter something out of this world. I guess 2016 was a bit of a moment for this-- it's like Stranger Things but with preteen girls. Anyway, this was good: funny at times, horrifying at others, inventive in the way that Brian K. Vaughan often is of late (I mean, I liked Y: The Last Man a lot, but this and Saga show that he's upped his game since), and Cliff Chiang is one of my favorite comics artists, so I'm happy to see him show his stuff on something creator-owned instead of being relegated to Green Arrow and Black Canary or whatever. This is clearly the first chapter in a larger story, not a story complete in itself, which partially motivates my placement of it here. Stands on its own more than a volume of Black Panther but less than one of Ms. Marvel. I don't have a problem with that in a general sense, it's one of the things that attracts me to the whole serial comic book medium, but will Vaughan and Chiang stick the landing? I want to know that before I praise it too effusively. I guess this is a limitation of the Best Graphic Story category I don't know of a way to overcome, except maybe in renominating the entirety of Paper Girls as complete work whenever it comes to a conclusion.
I ended up being very torn about the relative rankings of the two Brian K. Vaughan comics, and torn about potential tie-breakers: do I break the tie by going with a return to a world I enjoy? Or do I count inventing something new as superior? In the end I decided that I could appreciate Saga, Volume Six more than Paper Girls 1 because there's a coherent story and thematic unity about prisons (the ones we're put in and the ones we put ourselves in) in volume 6 of Saga, while Paper Girls feels more like it just stops without resolving story or theme. Plus it might just be the familiarity that makes me like the Saga characters more, but that's still something, and I'm going with it. There are no cute walrus farmers* or exiled robot princes in Paper Girls.
Ms. Marvel is one of two comics I buy on a monthly basis, so this was actually the only finalist in this category I'd read already; I brushed back through the issues (vol. 4, #1-6) instead of rereading the whole thing. In the two story arcs collected here, Kamala fights gentrification in Jersey City (it turns out to be a HYDRA plot) and accidentally creates an army of duplicates of herself. There's a lot of good teen stuff here: learning how to deal with friends in romantic relationships, learning how to find your limits, learning how to deal with family members in romantic relationships. The second story is in particular just brilliantly hilarious; Nico Leon draws an amazing army of Ms. Marvel duplicates, and the bit where Kamala's friend Bruno summons Loki is delightful. Ms. Marvel is one of the best things going right now in superhero comics. The only bad thing about this volume is that Adrian Alphona, who drew most of G. Willow Wilson's original run, only draws ten pages of it. I have actually liked Takeshi Miyazawa since Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, but Alphona defined Kamala and her world, and I'm sad that as it's gone on, he's drawn less and less of it for whatever reasons.
It was a tough choice for me between The Vision and Ms. Marvel, but I guess in a tie I give the pip to the first volume of something new over the fifth volume of something not quite as new. The Vision places the Avengers' best synthezoid in the D.C. suburbs with a newly constructed family (one wife, two kids) as he takes up a new job as the president's Avengers liaison. Things quickly get out of control, though, as the Visions are subject to prejudice from the locals and assault by supervillains in suburbia. King is a brutal, economic writer (if I'd been a supporting member of Worldcon earlier, I'd've nominated his excellent Omega Men run) who brings something really special to the way he tells this story (great captions!), and Gabriel Hernandez Walta matches his sensibilities, with a simple style that belies the brutality underneath this world (our world) and a great way with facial expressions. Walta's Visions hit the uncanny valley perfectly.
Best Novel
This was the only Best Novel finalist I just completely bounced off of-- I enjoyed everything ranked above it to varying degrees, but I just could not get into this book. That said, I wouldn't object if it won; it seemed like the kind of book that could be someone else's cup of tea (and it must have been many people's cup of tea to end up a finalist), but it very much was not mine. Too frustrating and inexplicable to be interesting or enjoyable.
The top three books were hard to rank; the bottom three much more easy. Though Death's End probably has more of sfnal interest than A Closed and Common Orbit, sf is about more than neat ideas-- a good novel also needs a compelling story or stories, and Death's End did not, whereas as I got emotionally involved in A Closed and Common Orbit... despite not wanting to! And the ideas in Death's End just weren't as interesting as those in the first two Remembrance of Earth's Past novels in any case. If all three books had been as good as The Three-Body Problem, I could see this ending up higher on my ballot, but Death's End was not as good as the first two, so oh well.
Even if I did end up getting a bit misty-eyed while reading A Closed and Common Orbit, and even if it provides a complete adventure in a way that The Obelisk Gate and Too Like the Lightning it did, it's still hard for me to claim that it's better than those books. I mean, it's very good, but if science fiction should invent new realities for the purposes of thought experiment (and though that's just one thing it does, but it's an important one to me), A Closed and Common Orbit is just not as ambitious as the other two. It's a strong slate that could push a book this emotional this far down, I think.
I found this tough to rate versus Too Like the Lightning, I think partially because both are incomplete works-- The Obelisk Gate is reasonably satisfying on its own, but it is pretty clearly the middle chapters of a longer story, meaning that in some sense it will have to be judged retrospectively, once I have complete information on how that longer story succeeds. But I did really like it regardless.
I will note that this is, like, impossible. All the Birds and Obelisk Gate and Closed and Common and are all three very strong books that did not nail things 100%. Each book has elements that makes it award-worthy, and aspects that hold it back no matter how great it is. I ended up ranking All the Birds here because I felt like it satisfied me more than Obelisk Gate, yet lacked the ambition of Too Like the Lightning. On a different day I could probably totally rejuggle everything under my first-place choice and still be satisfied with the resultant list.
Though this is no more a complete story than The Obelisk Gate, possibly even less so as the book doesn't really have an ending, kind of just coming to a stop that will be picked up in Seven Surrenders, Too Like the Lightning feels like the greater achievement to me, in that Jemisin is revisiting a world (even if she is fleshing it out in doing so) while Palmer is establishing a new one, and quite successfully at that.
Best Related Work
7. Women of Harry Potter by Sarah Gailey
Not actually a book (I guess a "related work" doesn't have to be but usually is), but a series of blog posts on Tor.com, five as of the end of 2016 (six now), discussing female Harry Potter characters. Gailey doesn't write academic-style criticism; these are very enthusiastic tributes more than anything else, which often felt like they reflected what fans want the characters to be like more than what they actually are like. Well written, I guess, but they left me cold.
6. No Award
I'm having a hard time justifying the idea that the Hugo Award would go to a series of five so-so blog posts. (Kameron Hurley won the category in 2014 for a single blog essay, but that essay was much better than any of these.) On the other hand, even though I didn't like Traveler of Worlds very much, I can see how someone might like it, so I ranked it higher than No Award.
If you hang on to Robert Silverberg's every word, this might be the book for you. It's hard for me to imagine why you would, though, as I found the questions and answers here largely superficial. Zinos-Amaro rockets through scintillating questions such as, what kind of food does Silverberg like to eat? and how does he organize his day? But even when Zinos-Amaro asks interesting questions, Silverberg largely fails to answer them interestingly; a big deal is made about Silverberg's travel and how it broadened his mind, but when Zinos-Amaro asks for an example, the best Silverberg can do is to explain that he got lost once and his wife's iPhone's GPS saved them, so he learned smartphones aren't that bad. Whoa! It also would have been nice if Zinos-Amaro had edited out the bits where he asked Silverberg a question and Silverberg said he had no opinion on the topic. Plus Silverberg goes on rants about how people in their thirties have no manners when they eat out. Scintillating! I haven't read much of Silverberg's fiction (no novels, just a few short stories); possibly if you did, you would like this more than me. Silverberg rags on Thomas Hardy for a few pages and, well, I know who I think will endure in that contest.
This book collects a diary Carrie Fisher kept during the filming of Star Wars in 1976, a mix of poetry and prose written about her relationship with Harrison Ford, framed by Fisher's take on that relationship now. Interesting enough for what it is, and I suppose it's nice to have story out there-- but there's actually not much of a story there. Ford was in his mid-thirties and married and away from home (Star Wars was filmed in the UK), while Fisher was nineteen and acting more worldly than she actually was, and they had sex on the weekends but little connection-- Fisher was kind of in love, but then they flew back to the United States and it was all over. There is the occasional real interesting moment, like an incident where she really connects with Ford when she flawlessly imitates his walk. Fisher's thoughts on the way Leia and the Star Wars phenomenon shaped her life are interesting, though it would have been nice to have heard more about her returning to the character for The Force Awakens, which she only alludes to. Like a lot of the book, though, this section feels padded, as if Fisher is vamping to fill up space to justify this being its own volume. It's quite short, but it's still too long.
This was a fun collection of various pieces of nonfiction Gaiman has written across his career, ranging from 1989 to 2016. It's a hodgepodge (or an olio as the LA Times crossword might say) of speeches, introductions, newspaper columns, and all sorts. There's a lot to like here: Gaiman is a lively, engaging writer, enthusiastic in his appreciations, and usually humorous. There are only so many introductions you can read in a row, though, especially as Gaiman comes across as vaguely skeptical of the whole concept of the introduction, but my main takeaway from reading this was how invested Gaiman is not just in the genre of speculative fiction, but its fandom and its fans. We could do a lot worse. (Also, his thoughts on genre contrast in interesting and productive ways with Le Guin's below.)
A collection of essays on topics related to feminist geekdom, some previously published (mostly on the author's blog), some original to the book. The very best one is an analysis of masculinity in True Detective, which really effectively blends the critical, the personal, and the political in a way that illuminates both True Detective and general cultural trends. I also really liked the last essay, about llamas as a metaphor for how stories shape our perceptions of history. If they had all been as good as those two (and some others were), this would have got my top spot, I think, but Hurley has a tendency to wax in generalities that prevents her from being as insightful as she might.
I'd place this book almost on a par with Gaiman's collection, as they're pretty similar works. What gave Le Guin the edge for me was its focus (at over 500 pages I eventually got tired of Gaiman's ideas in a way I didn't with Le Guin's 300) and her book reviews, which are more critically successful than anything in Gaiman's book, as fun as it was to read.
Overall Thoughts
I feel like both Best Graphic Story and Best Novel were very strong categories this year. I remember looking at some shortlists a few years ago when Best Graphic Story was first being implemented and being flabbergasted at the abysmal quality of some of the stuff; though I didn't like Black Panther, I can see how someone else might, and the other five works ranged from very good to great in my estimation.
Similarly, I'd be pleased if anything in my top four won in Best Novel; I thought they were all great books in very different ways, and ranking the top tier especially was completely impossible. Space opera, epic fantasy, utopian sf, hybrid speculative fiction-- all very different breeds of genre fiction, but all doing what it ought to do best. I look forward to reading the follow-ups to A Closed and Common Orbit, The Obelisk Gate, and Too Like the Lightning. My guess is that Too Like the Lightning or All the Birds will win, but I think it will be tight.
Related Work I enjoyed the least of these categories. Le Guin is great, of course, but if the other two book categories are pushing the genre forward in new and interesting ways, there's something retrograde about a category dominated by authors who came to prominence in the 1950s (Silverberg), the 1970s (Le Guin), and the 1980s (Gaiman), and one who's famous for being in a movie. I mean, this category is always going to be backward-looking by nature, but I don't feel like it needs to be this backward looking.
In Two Weeks: I react to the actual award winners, and also sum up my thoughts on this whole Hugo process.
* A walrus who farms, not a farmer of walruses.


text: Midwood paperbacks sold for 35 cents or 50 cents for some of the "Specials." Depending on where you were in the country in 1962, you might have found Wait Your Turn on a wire spinner rack in certain types of stores. Spinner racks were everywhere, and occasionally some Beacon or Midwood books would find themselves making the squeaky turn on the rack as greedy hands pawed at the latest titles. Spinner racks of paperbacks and comics were in so many places in addition to bookstores; pharmacies, delicatessens, tobacco shops, liquor stores, even shoe stores or a haberdashery (I know you all remember haberdasheries). Those spinner racks helped clean the surplus coins from your pocket. In the age of plastic "debit card" money, such concepts must seem alien. Jason Hytes, about whom I know nothing, wrote quite a few sexy titles for Midwood. Frankly, Wait Your Turn is saucier than most Harlequin romance novels published today. The first chapter alone is sexier than a Kim Kardashian selfie. This is hot stuff but not pornographic. The vivacious Connie Vincent eagerly awaits her husband Eddie's release from prison. She hasn't been with a man since Eddie went away, and Connie is a woman with strong sexual needs. With instructions to wait for Eddie at the White Sands hotel, she meets Ralph Jamison, the hotel owner, who promptly seduces her with some wine. Connie enjoys the immediate tryst although she soon regrets it. Eddie catches her with Jamison later and vows revenge. Suddenly, Connie is Jamison's mistress while Eddie is out there somewhere plotting his revenge. Connie begins to wonder if she isn't a nymphomaniac. Up next is Larry McDonald, a hotel guest who can't keep his eyes off her desirable figure. Meanwhile, Connie is following Jamison's orders and keeping company with various hotel guests whose hands are often gliding admiringly along the firm roundness of her buttocks and other delectable parts. Connie is both disgusted and excited by her own actions. This panting action goes on for some time but in chapter eleven a sudden outburst of violence changes everything. The remainder of the novel is a gritty contrast to the melodramatic sex of the early chapters. Eddie is back, sadistic and crazy, and the conclusion is rushed but at least offers Connie a break, as you would expect. Author Hytes demonstrates a grasp for crime writing and action. It made me wonder what his other books are like so I may track some down. Wait Your Turn is a generally solid novel, sometimes erotic, and occasionally suspenseful. I consider it one of the better titles I've read from Midwood.


text:
Book II Chapter XVII
She slept all night, without stirring, without dreaming, and awoke naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She felt her old self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted, or a shadow had been swept away from between her and the sun. Her head was clear. The seeming iron band that had pressed it so hard was gone. She was cheerful. She even caught herself humming aloud as she divided the fish into messes for Mrs. Olsen, Maggie Donahue, and herself. She enjoyed her gossip with each of them, and, returning home, plunged joyfully into the task of putting the neglected house in order. She sang as she worked, and ever as she sang the magic words of the boy danced and sparkled among the notes: Oakland is just a place to start from.
Everything was clear as print. Her and Billy's problem was as simple as an arithmetic problem at school: to carpet a room so many feet long, so many feet wide, to paper a room so many feet high, so many feet around. She had been sick in her head, she had had strange lapses, she had been irresponsible. Very well. All this had been because of her troubles――troubles in which she had had no hand in the making. Billy's case was hers precisely. He had behaved strangely because he had been irresponsible. And all their troubles were the troubles of the trap. Oakland was the trap. Oakland was a good place to start from.
She reviewed the events of her married life. The strikes and the hard times had caused everything. If it had not been for the strike of the shopmen and the fight in her front yard, she would not have lost her baby. If Billy had not been made desperate by the idleness and the hopeless fight of the teamsters, he would not have taken to drinking. If they had not been hard up, they would not have taken a lodger, and Billy would not be in jail.
Her mind was made up. The city was no place for her and Billy, no place for love nor for babies. The way out was simple. They would leave Oakland. It was the stupid that remained and bowed their heads to fate. But she and Billy were not stupid. They would not bow their heads. They would go forth and face fate.――Where, she did not know. But that would come. The world was large. Beyond the encircling hills, out through the Golden Gate, somewhere they would find what they desired. The boy had been wrong in one thing. She was not tied to Oakland, even if she was married. The world was free to her and Billy as it had been free to the wandering generations before them. It was only the stupid who had been left behind everywhere in the race's wandering. The strong had gone on. Well, she and Billy were strong. They would go on, over the brown Contra Costa hills or out through the Golden Gate.
The day before Billy's release Saxon completed her meager preparations to receive him. She was without money, and, except for her resolve not to offend Billy in that way again, she would have borrowed ferry fare from Maggie Donahue and journeyed to San Francisco to sell some of her personal pretties. As it was, with bread and potatoes and salted sardines in the house, she went out at the afternoon low tide and dug clams for a chowder. Also, she gathered a load of driftwood, and it was nine in the evening when she emerged from the marsh, on her shoulder a bundle of wood and a short-handled spade, in her free hand the pail of clams. She sought the darker side of the street at the corner and hurried across the zone of electric light to avoid detection by the neighbors. But a woman came toward her, looked sharply and stopped in front of her. It was Mary.
"My God, Saxon!" she exclaimed. "Is it as bad as this?"
Saxon looked at her old friend curiously, with a swift glance that sketched all the tragedy. Mary was thinner, though there was more color in her cheeks――color of which Saxon had her doubts. Mary's bright eyes were handsomer, larger――too large, too feverish bright, too restless. She was well dressed――too well dressed; and she was suffering from nerves. She turned her head apprehensively to glance into the darkness behind her.
"My God!" Saxon breathed. "And you. ……" She shut her lips, then began anew. "Come along to the house," she said.
"If you're ashamed to be seen with me――" Mary blurted, with one of her old quick angers.
"No, no," Saxon disclaimed. "It's the driftwood and the clams. I don't want the neighbors to know. Come along."
"No; I can't, Saxon. I'd like to, but I can't. I've got to catch the next train to F'risco. I've ben waitin' around. I knocked at your back door. But the house was dark. Billy's still in, ain't he?"
"Yes, he gets out to-morrow."
"I read about it in the papers," Mary went on hurriedly, looking behind her. "I was in Stockton when it happened." She turned upon Saxon almost savagely. "You don't blame me, do you? I just couldn't go back to work after bein' married. I was sick of work. Played out, I guess, an' no good anyway. But if you only knew how I hated the laundry even before I got married. It's a dirty world. You don't dream. Saxon, honest to God, you could never guess a hundredth part of its dirtiness. Oh, I wish I was dead, I wish I was dead an' out of it all. Listen――no, I can't now. There's the down train puffin' at Adeline. I'll have to run for it. Can I come――"
"Aw, get a move on, can't you?" a man's voice interrupted.
Behind her the speaker had partly emerged from the darkness. No workingman, Saxon could see that――lower in the world scale, despite his good clothes, than any workingman.
"I'm comin', if you'll only wait a second," Mary placated.
And by her answer and its accents Saxon knew that Mary was afraid of this man who prowled on the rim of light.
Mary turned to her.
"I got to beat it; good bye," she said, fumbling in the palm of her glove.
She caught Saxon's free hand, and Saxon felt a small hot coin pressed into it. She tried to resist, to force it back.
"No, no," Mary pleaded. "For old times. You can do as much for me some day. I'll see you again. Good bye."
Suddenly, sobbing, she threw her arms around Saxon's waist, crushing the feathers of her hat against the load of wood as she pressed her face against Saxon's breast. Then she tore herself away to arm's length, passionate, queering, and stood gazing at Saxon.
"Aw, get a hustle, get a hustle," came from the darkness the peremptory voice of the man.
"Oh, Saxon!" Mary sobbed; and was gone.
In the house, the lamp lighted, Saxon looked at the coin. It was a five-dollar piece――to her, a fortune. Then she thought of Mary, and of the man of whom she was afraid. Saxon registered another black mark against Oakland. Mary was one more destroyed. They lived only five years, on the average, Saxon had heard somewhere. She looked at the coin and tossed it into the kitchen sink. When she cleaned the clams, she heard the coin tinkle down the vent pipe.
It was the thought of Billy, next morning, that led Saxon to go under the sink, unscrew the cap to the catchtrap, and rescue the five-dollar piece. Prisoners were not well fed, she had been told; and the thought of placing clams and dry bread before Billy, after thirty days of prison fare, was too appalling for her to contemplate. She knew how he liked to spread his butter on thick, how he liked thick, rare steak fried on a dry hot pan, and how he liked coffee that was coffee and plenty of it.
Not until after nine o'clock did Billy arrive, and she was dressed in her prettiest house gingham to meet him. She peeped on him as he came slowly up the front steps, and she would have run out to him except for a group of neighborhood children who were staring from across the street. The door opened before him as his hand reached for the knob, and, inside, he closed it by backing against it, for his arms were filled with Saxon. No, he had not had breakfast, nor did he want any now that he had her. He had only stopped for a shave. He had stood the barber off, and he had walked all the way from the City Hall because of lack of the nickel carfare. But he'd like a bath most mighty well, and a change of clothes. She mustn't come near him until he was clean.
When all this was accomplished, he sat in the kitchen and watched her cook, noting the driftwood she put in the stove and asking about it. While she moved about, she told how she had gathered the wood, how she had managed to live and not be beholden to the union, and by the time they were seated at the table she was telling him about her meeting with Mary the night before. She did not mention the five dollars.
Billy stopped chewing the first mouthful of steak. His expression frightened her. He spat the meat out on his plate.
"You got the money to buy the meat from her," he accused slowly. "You had no money, no more tick with the butcher, yet here's meat. Am I right?"
Saxon could only bend her head.
The terrifying, ageless look had come into his face, the bleak and passionless glaze into his eyes, which she had first seen on the day at Weasel Park when he had fought with the three Irishmen.
"What else did you buy?" he demanded――not roughly, not angrily, but with the fearful coldness of a rage that words could not express.
To her surprise, she had grown calm. What did it matter? It was merely what one must expect, living in Oakland――something to be left behind when Oakland was a thing behind, a place started from.
"The coffee," she answered. "And the butter."
He emptied his plate of meat and her plate into the frying pan, likewise the roll of butter and the slice on the table, and on top he poured the contents of the coffee canister. All this he carried into the back yard and dumped in the garbage can. The coffee pot he emptied into the sink. "How much of the money you got left?" he next wanted to know.
Saxon had already gone to her purse and taken it out.
"Three dollars and eighty cents," she counted, handing it to him. "I paid forty-five cents for the steak."
He ran his eye over the money, counted it, and went to the front door. She heard the door open and close, and knew that the silver had been flung into the street. When he came back to the kitchen, Saxon was already serving him fried potatoes on a clean plate.
"Nothin's too good for the Robertses," he said; "but, by God, that sort of truck is too high for my stomach. It's so high it stinks."
He glanced at the fried potatoes, the fresh slice of dry bread, and the glass of water she was placing by his plate.
"It's all right," she smiled, as he hesitated. "There's nothing left that's tainted."
He shot a swift glance at her face, as if for sarcasm, then sighed and sat down. Almost immediately he was up again and holding out his arms to her.
"I'm goin' to eat in a minute, but I want to talk to you first," he said, sitting down and holding her closely. "Besides, that water ain't like coffee. Gettin' cold won't spoil it none. Now, listen. You're the only one I got in this world. You wasn't afraid of me an' what I just done, an' I'm glad of that. Now we'll forget all about Mary. I got charity enough. I'm just as sorry for her as you. I'd do anything for her. I'd wash her feet for her like Christ did. I'd let her eat at my table, an' sleep under my roof. But all that ain't no reason I should touch anything she's earned. Now forget her. It's you an' me, Saxon, only you an' me an' to hell with the rest of the world. Nothing else counts. You won't never have to be afraid of me again. Whisky an' I don't mix very well, so I'm goin' to cut whisky out. I've been clean off my nut, an' I ain't treated you altogether right. But that's all past. It won't never happen again. I'm goin' to start out fresh.
"Now take this thing. I oughtn't to acted so hasty. But I did. I oughta talked it over. But I didn't. My damned temper got the best of me, an' you know I got one. If a fellow can keep his temper in boxin', why he can keep it in bein' married, too. Only this got me too sudden-like. It's something I can't stomach, that I never could stomach. An' you wouldn't want me to any more'n I'd want you to stomach something you just couldn't."
She sat up straight on his knees and looked at him, afire with an idea.
"You mean that, Billy?"
"Sure I do."
"Then I'll tell you something I can't stomach any more. I'll die if I have to."
"Well?" he questioned, after a searching pause.
"It's up to you," she said.
"Then fire away."
"You don't know what you're letting yourself in for," she warned. "Maybe you'd better back out before it's too late."
He shook his head stubbornly.
"What you don't want to stomach you ain't goin' to stomach. Let her go."
"First," she commenced, "no more slugging of scabs."
His mouth opened, but he checked the involuntary protest.
"And, second, no more Oakland."
"I don't get that last."
"No more Oakland. No more living in Oakland. I'll die if I have to. It's pull up stakes and get out."
He digested this slowly.
"Where?" he asked finally.
"Anywhere. Everywhere. Smoke a cigarette and think it over."
He shook his head and studied her.
"You mean that?" he asked at length.
"I do. I want to chuck Oakland just as hard as you wanted to chuck the beefsteak, the coffee, and the butter."
She could see him brace himself. She could feel him brace his very body ere he answered.
"All right then, if that's what you want. We'll quit Oakland. We'll quit it cold. God damn it, anyway, it never done nothin' for me, an' I guess I'm husky enough to scratch for us both anywheres. An' now that's settled, just tell me what you got it in for Oakland for."
And she told him all she had thought out, marshaled all the facts in her indictment of Oakland, omitting nothing, not even her last visit to Doctor Hentley's office nor Billy's drinking. He but drew her closer and proclaimed his resolves anew. The time passed. The fried potatoes grew cold, and the stove went out.
When a pause came, Billy stood up, still holding her. He glanced at the fried potatoes.
"Stone cold," he said, then turned to her. "Come on. Put on your prettiest. We're goin' up town for something to eat an' to celebrate. I guess we got a celebration comin', seein' as we're going to pull up stakes an' pull our freight from the old burg. An' we won't have to walk. I can borrow a dime from the barber, an' I got enough junk to hock for a blowout."
His junk proved to be several gold medals won in his amateur days at boxing tournaments. Once up town and in the pawnshop, Uncle Sam seemed thoroughly versed in the value of the medals, and Billy jingled a handful of silver in his pocket as they walked out.
He was as hilarious as a boy, and she joined in his good spirits. When he stopped at a corner cigar store to buy a sack of Bull Durham, he changed his mind and bought Imperials.
"Oh, I'm a regular devil," he laughed. "Nothing's too good to-day――not even tailor-made smokes. An' no chop houses nor Jap joints for you an' me. It's Barnum's."
They strolled to the restaurant at Seventh and Broadway where they had had their wedding supper.
"Let's make believed we're not married," Saxon suggested.
"Sure," he agreed, "――an' take a private room so as the waiter'll have to knock on the door each time he comes in."
Saxon demurred at that.
"It will be too expensive, Billy. You'll have to tip him for the knocking. We'll take the regular dining room."
"Order anything you want," Billy said largely, when they were seated. "Here's family porterhouse, a dollar an' a half. What d'ye say?"
"And hash-browned," she abetted, "and coffee extra special, and some oysters first――I want to compare them with the rock oysters."
Billy nodded, and looked up from the bill of fare.
"Here's mussels bordelay. Try an order of them, too, an' see if they beat your Rock Wall ones."
"Why not?" Saxon cried, her eyes dancing. "The world is ours. We're just travelers through this town."
"Yep, that's the stuff," Billy muttered absently. He was looking at the theater column. He lifted his eyes from the paper. "Matinee at Bell's. We can get reserved seats for a quarter.――Doggone the luck anyway!"
His exclamation was so aggrieved and violent that it brought alarm into her eyes.
"If I'd only thought," he regretted, "we could a-gone to the Forum for grub. That's the swell joint where fellows like Roy Blanchard hangs out, blowin' the money we sweat for them."
They bought reserved tickets at Bell's Theater; but it was too early for the performance, and they went down Broadway and into the Electric Theater to while away the time on a moving picture show. A cowboy film was run off, and a French comic; then came a rural drama situated somewhere in the Middle West. It began with a farm yard scene. The sun blazed down on a corner of a barn and on a rail fence where the ground lay in the mottled shade of large trees overhead. There were chickens, ducks, and turkeys, scratching, waddling, moving about. A big sow, followed by a roly-poly litter of seven little ones, marched majestically through the chickens, rooting them out of the way. The hens, in turn, took it out on the little porkers, pecking them when they strayed too far from their mother. And over the top rail a horse looked drowsily on, ever and anon, at mathematically precise intervals, switching a lazy tail that flashed high lights in the sunshine.
"It's a warm day and there are flies――can't you just feel it?" Saxon whispered.
"Sure. An' that horse's tail! It's the most natural ever. Gee! I bet he knows the trick of clampin' it down over the reins. I wouldn't wonder if his name was Iron Tail."
A dog ran upon the scene. The mother pig turned tail and with short ludicrous jumps, followed by her progeny and pursued by the dog, fled out of the film. A young girl came on, a sunbonnet hanging down her back, her apron caught up in front and filled with grain which she threw to the buttering fowls. Pigeons flew down from the top of the film and joined in the scrambling feast. The dog returned, wading scarcely noticed among the feathered creatures, to wag his tail and laugh up at the girl. And, behind, the horse nodded over the rail and switched on. A young man entered, his errand immediately known to an audience educated in moving pictures. But Saxon had no eyes for the love-making, the pleading forcefulness, the shy reluctance, of man and maid. Ever her gaze wandered back to the chickens, to the mottled shade under the trees, to the warm wall of the barn, to the sleepy horse with its ever recurrent whisk of tail
She drew closer to Billy, and her hand, passed around his arm, sought his hand.
"Oh, Billy," she sighed. "I'd just die of happiness in a place like that." And, when the film was ended. "We got lots of time for Bell's. Let's stay and see that one over again."
They sat through a repetition of the performance, and when the farm yard scene appeared, the longer Saxon looked at it the more it affected her. And this time she took in further details. She saw fields beyond, rolling hills in the background, and a cloud-flecked sky. She identified some of the chickens, especially an obstreperous old hen who resented the thrust of the sow's muzzle, particularly pecked at the little pigs, and laid about her with a vengeance when the grain fell. Saxon looked back across the fields to the hills and sky, breathing the spaciousness of it, the freedom, the content. Tears welled into her eyes and she wept silently, happily.
"I know a trick that'd fix that old horse if he ever clamped his tail down on me," Billy whispered
"Now I know where we're going when we leave Oakland," she informed him.
He looked at her, and followed her gaze to the screen. "Oh," he said, and cogitated. "An' why shouldn't we?" he added.
"Oh, Billy, will you?"
Her lips trembled in her eagerness, and her whisper broke and was almost inaudible "Sure," he said. It was his day of royal largess.
"What you want is yourn, an' I'll scratch my fingers off for it. An' I've always had a hankerin' for the country myself. Say! I've known horses like that to sell for half the price, an' I can sure cure 'em of the habit."


text:
Bob & Jacqueline Patten English Folk Music Collection
George Withers interview, part 09
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Shelf mark
1CDR0013976 (copy of C1033/280)
Recording date
Is part of (Collection)
Bob and Jacqueline Patten Collection
Recording locations
Wadebridge Festival, Wadebridge, Cornwall, England, UK
Upton, Eddie (speaker, male interviewee), Withers, George, 1924- (speaker, male)
Patten, Bob (speaker, male)
Patten, Bob
George Withers talks about his father. Dad joined the North Somerset Yeomanry [later The North Somerset Yeomanry/44th Royal Tank Regiment] before the First World War and was 'one of the lads on the Somme'. He was an 'excellent singer in his time', he liked drawing room songs such as The Trumpeter, his favourite song was Friend of mine. Mother accompanied him on piano but didn't like playing in public, she was delighted when one of her daughters (George's eldest sister) took over from her, George's sister used to accompany him as well but since her death he's 'had to learn to sing by myself'. Dad used to criticise his breathing. 'He was a good singer and a good father and a source of a lot of songs', he enjoyed a drop of cider in the evening. They had a couple of orchards on the farm. Cider making 'is all activity for a bit, then you screw the press down and then you sit back quietly, wait for the cider to finish running before you go up and have another screw on the press, and have another go, and while your waiting for the cider to run you sit back with the old hurricane lantern going and stories and songs change hands then'. As a kid he remembers Dad and Jim Darbiton [?] another old soldier, singing The Soldiers song (Bungay Roger) [Roud Folk Song Index No. 1735].
Metadata record:


text:
Regeneration Officer
- Location: Broomhill Depot, Kilsyth Road, Kirkintilloch, G66 1TF
- Salary: £32,027.00 - £37,081.97 per year
- Contract Type: Permanent
- Position Type: Full Time
- Hours: 35 hours per week
Applications for this job cannot be made online. Please refer to the advert for further information.
Job Summary
We are seeking a motivated and enthusiastic Regeneration Officer to assist in the delivery, audit and management of place based urban design and development projects throughout East Dunbartonshire.
Reporting to the Regeneration and Town Centres Team Leader - the role will require you to:
• Initiate, develop and lead a range of regeneration projects and services.
• Consult, engage and negotiate with stakeholders and partners
• Assist in the development and implementation of policies, strategies and action plans.
The successful candidate must be educated to degree level in a relevant discipline or extensive demonstrable skills, knowledge, experience and competence in project management and urban design.
East Dunbartonshire Council is known for delivering award winning inclusive and innovative projects working in partnership with the local community.
For further information about this position, please contact Isla Hamilton on 0141 578 8640.
PVG / Disclosure Scotland
The following criteria applies to all roles within East Dunbartonshire Council where PVG/Disclosure checks are essential criteria
Where the post you are applying for is considered Regulated Work under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act, 2007, successful candidates will be required to join the PVG Scheme, or undergo a PVG Scheme Update check, prior to confirmation of employment being made by East Dunbartonshire Council.
Please note, successful candidates will be expected to meet the cost of the relevant check which will be deducted from the successful candidate's first salary payment.
In specific circumstances the payment could be deducted in instalments from an employee's wages following commencement of employment. Approval in such circumstances will be made by HR Services Lead.
Should an employee leave in advance of the payment being deducted, the full amount will be deducted from the employee's final salary.
The criteria outlined above will apply to existing employees of East Dunbartonshire Council who apply for roles for which a PVG/Disclosure check is required.
Charter of Commitment
The commitment by East Dunbartonshire Council to job applicants is as follows:
• Individuals will be treated in a polite, friendly and welcoming manner.
• Equalities monitoring will be conducted to ensure a fair and equitable process with screening being carried out to anonymise sensitive information such as age, gender and disability.
• The information that we receive will be treated in confidence and with discretion. Only the relevant HR representative/team and the relevant service will see the application form.
• We will encourage and welcome applications from applicants under the disability symbol. Where the essential criteria are met an interview will be offered to those applying under the disability symbol.
• We will be pleased to make any reasonable adjustments to ensure accessibility at the interview.
• We will advise you within reasonable time after the closing date if you have not met the interview criteria. (Normally within 4 weeks)
• We will advise you of meeting the criteria for interview normally within 3 weeks.
• We will advise you if you have been successful or unsuccessful at the interview stage as soon as practically possible.


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Hilton Set To Welcome Doubletree by Hilton Jeddah Al Salamah District
Upscale new hotel is expected to open in 2020
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia & MCLEAN, Va. - Hilton (NYSE: HLT) today announced the signing of a management agreement with Fahd Abdallah al-Harbi & Sons Limited to open DoubleTree by Hilton Jeddah Al Salamah District in Saudi Arabia. The hotel is expected to begin welcoming guests in Q1 2020.
"Saudi Arabia features our largest pipeline in the Middle East, and we are pleased to be expanding our portfolio in the country with the addition of this property," said Carlos Khneisser, vice president of development, Middle East, North Africa & Turkey, Hilton. "As Saudi Arabia's second largest city and the biggest seaport in the Red Sea[1], Jeddah is a key business and leisure destination. We are delighted to have signed the first DoubleTree by Hilton property in Jeddah and are confident that the upscale brand is a good fit for the city."
DoubleTree by Hilton Jeddah Al Salamah District will be conveniently located just 10 kilometres from King Abdulaziz International Airport. It will be near Al Madina Al Munawwarah Road, the main artery connecting the airport with the rest of Jeddah, offering easy access to Jeddah's business districts. The 114-guest room hotel will feature a fitness centre, outdoor pool and spa, and will also offer a business centre, large multifunctional meeting room, meeting room and boardroom. Dining options include an all-day dining restaurant and a lobby café.
"We look forward to welcoming travellers to Jeddah with DoubleTree by Hilton's unique style of hospitality, which begins with our signature, warm DoubleTree cookie upon arrival and continues with excellent service throughout a guest's stay, said Dianna Vaughan, senior vice president and global head, DoubleTree by Hilton.
Jeddah has a large port and is home to several company headquarters, making it a logistical and commercial hub. In addition, King Abdulaziz International Airport offers direct flights to destinations around the world, and expansion plans are expected to increase the capacity of the airport to approximately 80 million passengers by 2035[2]. The airport also features a Hajj terminal built specifically for pilgrims going to Makkah - Jeddah acts as a gateway to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah,. The area is also a popular destination for travellers within Saudi Arabia because of its location along the coast of the Red Sea and its range of retail and dining options.
Fahd Abdalah Abdelrahman al-Harbi, the principal shareholder of Fahd Abdallah al-Harbi & Sons Limited together with Finesse Al Finesse, the owner representative and CEO of Vin & K development company, said, "We are very pleased to have partnered with Hilton to open this upscale hotel. DoubleTree by Hilton is a leading brand globally with a strong presence in Saudi Arabia - we are confident this hotel will meet the highest standards in international hospitality."
View more news about DoubleTree by Hilton at http://news.doubletree.com/
[1] http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/biggest-cities-in-saudi-arabia.html
[2] http://www.jed-airport.com/
About DoubleTree by Hilton
DoubleTree by Hilton is a fast-growing, global portfolio of more than 590 upscale hotels with more than 136,000 rooms across 48 countries. For more than 50 years, DoubleTree by Hilton has continued to be a symbol of comfort for business and leisure travelers around the world, from welcoming guests with its signature warm DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie, to serving the local community. DoubleTree by Hilton offers contemporary accommodations and amenities, including unique food and beverage experiences, state-of-the-art fitness offerings and meetings and events spaces. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits. To make reservations, travelers may visit doubletree.com. Connect with DoubleTree by Hilton on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Learn about the latest brand news at newsroom.hilton.com/doubletree.
About Hilton
Hilton (NYSE: HLT) is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 18 world-class brands comprising more than 6,200 properties with more than 983,000 rooms, in 118 countries and territories. Dedicated to fulfilling its mission to be the world's most hospitable company, Hilton welcomed more than 3 billion guests in its 100-year history, earned a top spot on the 2019 World's Best Workplaces list, and was named the 2019 Global Industry Leader on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. In 2020, Hilton CleanStay was introduced, bringing an industry-defining standard of cleanliness and disinfection to hotels worldwide. Through the award-winning guest loyalty program Hilton Honors, the 108 million members who book directly with Hilton can earn Points for hotel stays and experiences money can't buy, plus enjoy instant benefits, including digital check-in with room selection, Digital Key, and Connected Room. Visit newsroom.hilton.com for more information, and connect with Hilton on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.Download Article Photos
Media Contact
Maya Chacko
Hilton – EMEA +971 0 56 991 8574


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Like most of America, you are probably counting the days until the 2016 Presidential Election is over and, frankly, we can't blame you. When the cast of Veep says they are worried they can't top this sort of bizarre, never-ending storyline you know it's something out of the ordinary. That's why – and we hate to break this to you – it's gonna be quite awhile until the nation gets this out of its system. It's also one reason you can expect a filmed movie or mini-series to hit the big or small screen about this Shakespearean tale sooner rather than later.
Other editorial outlets have tackled the idea of an 2016 election movie and no disrespect to those imaginative casting directors but we've decided to tackle our suggestions a bit differently.
Most importantly, we're giving you first, second and third choices for each role because you can probably count the number of studio movies that locked the initial picks for each role on two hands. There are also a number of tertiary players while fun to cast in a Saturday Night Live skit aren't necessarily needed beyond a scene or two for a larger film or miniseries. That's one reason why you won't see Jeb Bush, Eric Trump or Donald Trump, Jr. on this list. There are also people who became public figures with varying degrees of impact on the campaign such as Khizr and Ghazala Khan or Ken Bone that are likely better served in archival footage (the same can be said for a number of newscasters as well).
Keeping that in mind, here is our dream cast for the inevitable movie or mini-series about the 2016 Presidential Election. And no matter what your party affiliation there's one thing we can all agree on: let's hope someone other than Oliver Stone directs this baby.


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For every kid that studied well and got above average grades, there was always that one kid who, no matter how hard s/he tries, still could not get a passing grade.
I am that kid, and looking back, I was very thankful that I had a mother who was a strict and stern taskmaster. Between the two of us, we were able to come up with several ways of ensuring that I passed all my subjects.
Because my young mind would much rather be focused on computer games rather than hitting the books, my mom set up a reward system in exchange for passing my quizzes and exams.
She also assisted me in my studies, constantly asking questions about a certain topic and gently doing corrections on any mistakes I made during the review.
In other words, her level of parental involvement was motivatingon for me to do well in my studies so that the effort she put in helping me study will not go to waste.
Whenever I studied for my exams and quizzes, my mother would always ensure that she limited my gaming time. This was her way of reducing distractions before exam week so that I could focus on hitting the books and reviewing my notes.
She also prepared a place inside our home that was free of noise from the outside and was also well-lit so that I did not have any problems reading my notes for my quizzes and exams.
For her, an ideal environment was necessary for me to focus since I was struggling with all the distractions around me.
I was the type of kid who did not value the importance of balance because I focused more on having fun, rather than studying my lessons for my quizzes and exams.
To remedy this situation, my mother assigned me a timetable where she listed activities that I can do within a certain period. This served as a guide for me to limit the hourstimes I spent playing games and watching television, and allowed me to dedicate time to studying.
For a rambunctious kid like me, an organized timetable was a godsend and my mother put in the work of ensuring that I followed it down to the letter.
Most kids would tell you that they find studying boring and dull, and would rather play games
and bond with their friends, rather than going to the library to study their notes.
I had the same thought as a kid. But and because my mother wanted me to excel academically, she told me to get used to studying little by little.
This entailed getting into the habit of studying for small amounts of time at first, gradually extending the time I spent studying so that I could adapt easily. It eventually resulted in me developing a love for studying not only during class but also outside of class.
Thus, with my mother's help, she slowly helped me ease into the habit of studying while reducing the effect on my mood.
I was never the kid who received honors and awards at school, nor joined any academic
competition at school. Neither did I enjoy listening to teachers lecturing during class time.
In order to cultivate a focused attitude towards academics, my mother provided real-life examples of successful people and the attitudes that they developed in order to become what they are today.
Since my mother was also studying for her Masters' degree, we studied together, with me slowly emulating her. In other words, she served as an example to me. This has allowed me to develop a focused attitude towards studying.
Thanks to my mother's assistance, I was able to overcome my poor performance at school leading to low grades and allowed me to succeed at school and taught me values like focus, time management, a never-give-up attitude, patience and the ability to be flexible with my schedule being important factors that helped me excel in my academics.
These are me and my mother's experiences, and they may be different from yours, and the ways in which you found solutions to your own kids low grades may also be different, but in the end, the most important factor is that you, the parent, are involved in your kids academic development.
However, do not discount the possibility that your kids' problems are psychological or mental in nature and, if so, need to be diagnosed by a licensed psychiatrist or a doctor that specializes in mental illnesses.


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"The Cut is [also] about my personal journey through cinema, and the directors who I admire and who influence my work. Elia Kazan's America America is a very important influence. So is the work of Sergio Leone, how he used framing. It's also an homage somehow to Scorsese. I wrote this film with Mardik Martin, Martin Scorsese's very early scriptwriter who wrote Mean Streets and the first draft of Raging Bull. […] We spoke a lot about obsessional characters in Scorsese films. […] The film deals also a lot with my admiration for Bertolucci, and Italian westerns and how Eastwood adapted Italian westerns. And the way we try to catch the light, always having it behind us, is very inspired by the work of Terrence Malick."
"Filmmaking is entertaining, and should stay entertaining. […] When I was a kid, 10, 11, or 12 years old, I was how boys are or should be—I was into war. You had to become a soldier. […] But not so long later, when I was 14 or 15, I discovered films like Platoon, or Mississippi Burning by Alan Parker. I was 16, and I remember watching Mississippi Burning, and the next thing I did after I left the cinema was become a member of Amnesty International. Film has an impact."
"With films, you don't have to be a preacher. I want to entertain, I want people to see the stuff and to be entertained with it, but you can smuggle stuff in there with it. There's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the John Ford film… […] This is a political message in a Hollywood western. Look to Iran or China: filmmakers in China get arrested just because they do films. That means people see your films. Hollywood used that. […]"
"There's a very bad thing happening all over Europe; more and more arthouse movie theaters are closing. There is still an audience, but less. DVD, Internet, and maybe less education gives them less impact. […] Certain arthouse cinemas are like churches to me, they are very, very spiritual; watching a film can be a spiritual experience. The multiplexes also play the arthouse films, but these films cannot compete. Certain films need time to get discovered. They need to breathe. They need people to speak about them on the streets. […] When arthouse films are playing in multiplexes, after one weekend, if they're not a hit, they're out. This is such a tragic thing. But this is democracy, this is the market, this is capitalism."
"Cinema is a collective experience. Many people sit together, there's a lot of seats, and you want those seats to be filling up. I'm not that egoistic, to say 'No, I only want to do a film for me, I don't care.' That's not true. For sure I do them for me, but I hope I can share it with as many people as possible. I can't hide or fool you, anyway—everything is there."
(A.V. Club, August 20, 2010 & The New York Times, August 26, 2014)
Director & screenwriter
1995 SENSIN, YOU'RE THE ONE! (Sensin, du bist es !) – court métrage/short
1996 WEED (Getürkt) – court métrage/short
1998 SHORT SHARP SHOCK (L'Engrenage – Kurz und Schmerzlos)
2000 IN JULY (Julie en juillet – Im Juli)
2001 WE FORGOT TO GO BACK (Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren) – doc
2004 Head-on (Gegen die Wand) * – Ours d'or/Golden Bear Berlinale 2004
Visions of Europe – segment THE EVIL OLD SONGS (Die alten Bösen Lieder) *
2005 Crossing the bridge: The sound of Istanbul – doc *
2007 THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (De l'autre côté – Auf der anderen Seite) * – Prix du Scénario/Best Screenplay Festival de Cannes 2007
2008 New York, I Love You – collectif
GERMANY 09 (Deutschland 09) – segment BEING MURAT KURNAZ (Der Name Murat Kurnaz)
2009 Soul Kitchen * – Prix spécial du Jury Venise 2009
2012 Polluting Paradise (Müll im Garten Eden) – doc *
2014 The Cut (La Blessure) *
* also producer
2006 TAKVA – A MAN'S FEAR OF GOD Özer Kiziltan
UOMINI D'ONORE Francesco Sbano – doc
2008 CHIKO Özgür Yildirim
2009 Min DIT (The Children of Diyarbakir) Miraz Bezar
2011 UFO IN HER EYES (Un ovni dans les yeux) Xiaolu Guo
BLUTZBRÜDAZ Özgür Yildirim
2012 FRAKTUS Lars Jessen
MAMAROSH Momcilo Mrdakovic


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Click on pics to view larger images
At a glance...
In its day, the Ford Escort was a machine not to be messed with. Even the
stock 2.0 litre Escort could rip along quick enough to snap at the heels of some
V8 bruisers with engines well over double the cubic capacity.
Ahhh, those were the days.
Today, the Escort – with 25 years of use and abuse behind it – struggles to
keep up with Mr and Mrs Average's family hack. Nobody quivers with fear when a
li'l Escort pulls alongside.
But don't write off the ol' Escie just yet!
Andy of Queensland owns one of the wildest street-reg Escorts in
Andy has an English background, but that didn't stop him heaving out the stock
Pommy motor from this one owner '79 Mark II Escort. You see, Andy purchased the
car with the intention of going insane.
"I knew I wanted either a Mazda rotary or a Nissan SR20," says Andy. "The
Cosworth turbo engine is just too expensive."
"In the end I dropped the idea for the rotary because they seem a bit
temperamental and the SR20 has a great reputation."
Once Andy sourced a late-model S13 half cut, he got stuck into the conversion
in his home garage. We're told the swap necessitated a modified cross-member, a
relocated steering rack, trans tunnel mods and some stuffing around with the
engine height. A custom tailshaft is fitted.
The factory management system was fine when working with the stock T25G
turbocharger, but a Haltech E6K programmable management system with a Malpassi
reg and 650cc injectors were recently roped in to provide adequate fuelling.
Converting to an EFI engine also meant a complete rework of the fuel lines and
installation of a Bosch primer pump, custom 3 litre swirl pot and a Bosch 044
main pump. The fuel tank is a custom fabrication kinda reminiscent of the ol'
SLR 5000 "drop tanks".
One of the benefits of a low kilometre Japanese import engine is you don't
have to take the risk of a full engine rebuild. Andy left the SR20 intact but
got stuck into the bolt-ons to liberate a bunch of kilowatts.
The standard turbo was exercised up to 20 psi before Andy bit the bullet and
went for a custom exhaust manifold and big huffer. The tubular exhaust manifold
you can see was fabricated by a friend and locates a 500hp XTR turbocharger. A
Turbosmart 35mm external wastegate limits turbine speed to prevent
overboosting. Boost is set to around 20 psi using a conventional bleed
arrangement, but Andy plans to switch to a Turbosmart E-Boost.
View this Escort from the back and you could be excused for thinking the 3
inch tailpipe is pure wank. Well, it would be if it were the stock motor – but
this is far from stock! The full-frontal view lets it be known that this is an
Escort to be taken seriously. Andy has integrated a custom intercooler into the
nosecone. The piping between the intercooler and throttle is also equipped with
a Turbosmart blow-off valve.
To help the lightweight Ford get its grunt to the ground, Andy has fitted a
mini-spool diff following the repeated breakage of a Borg Warner LSD. It's fair
to say Andy is pretty tough on his car, judging by the number of gearboxes he's
consumed over the past 2 years. Two 'boxes have been destroyed and Andy isn't
too pleased when it happens – a gearbox swap necessitates removal of the entire
engine... At least he can keep an eye on the condition of the Exedy heavy-duty
clutch and lightened flywheel!
One of the most recent mechanical changes to the car is fitment of a pair of
high lift Tomo camshafts. Andy says these released about 15kW in the top-end,
bringing the tally up to 253kW at the wheels.
Yep, that's right. Two fifty-three RWKW in a Ford Escort weighing 950 –
1000kg! Andy is pretty casual when he talks about the amount of performance on
tap; "Yeah, it's done an 11.9 at 119 mph with a couple of problems so I think it
should go quicker..."
The stocko suspension would run an' hide when asked to cope with that level
of performance so Andy has upgraded to lowered King springs and Pedders shocks
at the front and reverse eyelet reset leaf springs and
Monroe shocks at the rear. Slapper
bars also serve to reduce axle tramp off the line. New urethane bushes have been
thrown in everywhere.
Rear tyres very important in a machine like this and Andy is rapt in his
choice of 205/50 15 Toyo DOT approved semi-slicks. These offer great bang for buck.
The brake upgrade is a serious one.
Andy runs with a pair of Volvo 4-pot calipers biting BMW discs at the front
and a Nissan R31 Skyline discs at the rear-end. These upsized discs live behind a set
of 15 inch MiniLite alloys. A Group 4 rally-style pedal box is also
Inside, the cabin is a comfortable but hard-edged place to be. You'll find
Sparco Evo seats and pedals, Splitfire gauges for rpm, boost, oil pressure and
water temp, a shift light, harnesses, Momo wheel, fire extinguisher and Pioneer
sound system. A roll cage and a rear firewall provide the extra safety Andy
feels is warranted.
Andy is a pretty handy kinda fella so he had no problems rejuvenating the 25
year old Ford body. Some rust was removed from the bulkheads, new rubber seals
were fitted, the panels straightened and a coat of Honda Civic red was laid on
top. The spoilers you can see were sourced from Europe,
there are clear lens taillights and a host of eye-caching stickers.
"Yep, it has everything you need to get pulled over and defected," says
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text:
- Steve Fulton
- (719) 542-2268
Contact Dealer
Request A Test Drive
Make An Offer
Used 2016 Kawasaki Versys 650
Vehicle Description
Reduced!!! Really clean adventure bike with extras... Flat black paint in amazing shape. 650cc. Both tires are near new. Removable side and rear hard bags. Runs and looks like new!!
2016 Kawasaki Versys 650 Specifications
- Sport Touring
- 649 cc


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About this Tree
tree is a native Basswood
(Tilia americana). The tree grows to 60 to 80 foot in height with a spread that is 1/2 to 2/3 of height. The tree has been used extensively as a street tree throughout the mid-west. Like elm, it requires pruning when young to develop a strong central leader.
Michael Dirr describes the tree as "A tall stately tree with numerous, slender, low hung, spreading branches; pyramidal in youth; at maturity the lower drooping down then up, forming a deep, ovate, oblong, or somewhat rounded crown." (Adapted from Manual
of Woody Landscape Plants, Dirr, fifth edition.)
A Suitable Site
The growth rate is medium but soil conditions largely govern the rate. The tree transplants readily and prefers moist deep fertile soils. It tolerates partial shade. The tree is subject to damage from foilage feeding insects, and can be defoliated by Japanese beetles.
Observations from Audubon Park:
We have just begun to plant Basswoods, based on the health and beauty of the trees in Cave Hill. Our first trees were planted in 2009, and were severely root bound and took a year to settle in. Four out of five trees started growing well last year; one tree was moved because the site seemed too wet. We will be planting smaller trees again this year.