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Pseudomonas aeruginosa can employ many distinct mechanisms of resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics; however, in cystic fibrosis patients, more than 90% of aminoglycoside-resistantP. aeruginosa isolates are of the impermeability phenotype. The precise molecular mechanisms that produce aminoglycoside impermeability-type resistance are yet to be elucidated. A subtractive hybridization technique was used to reveal gene expression differences between PAO1 and isogenic, spontaneous aminoglycoside-resistant mutants of the impermeability phenotype. Among the many genes found to be up-regulated in these laboratory mutants were the amrABgenes encoding a recently discovered efflux system. TheamrAB genes appear to be the same as the recently describedmexXY genes; however, the resistance profile that we see inP. aeruginosa is very different from that described forEscherichia coli with mexXY. Direct evidence for AmrAB involvement in aminoglycoside resistance was provided by the deletion of amrB in the PAO1-derived laboratory mutant, which resulted in the restoration of aminoglycoside sensitivity to a level nearly identical to that of the parent strain. Furthermore, transcription of the amrAB genes was shown to be up-regulated in P. aeruginosa clinical isolates displaying the impermeability phenotype compared to a genotypically matched sensitive clinical isolate from the same patient. This suggests the possibility that AmrAB-mediated efflux is a clinically relevant mechanism of aminoglycoside resistance. Although it is unlikely that hyperexpression of AmrAB is the sole mechanism conferring the impermeability phenotype, we believe that the Amr efflux system can contribute to a complex interaction of molecular events resulting in the aminoglycoside impermeability-type resistance phenotype.
Resistance to aminoglycosides inPseudomonas aeruginosa is usually mediated either by specific enzymatic modification of the drug or by an undefined mechanism that has commonly been referred to as impermeability resistance. Aminoglycoside impermeability-type resistance (AGIR) was originally described for clinical isolates of P. aeruginosawith strains exhibiting diminished uptake of gentamicin in energy-dependent phases I and II and no detectable acetylation or adenylylation activity and having ribosomes that were sensitive to the inhibitory effect of aminoglycosides (3). AGIR strains are now commonly characterized as panaminoglycoside resistant in the absence of modifying enzymes, and the characterization of strains exhibiting this phenotype can be inferred from the pattern of sensitivity to aminoglycosides by a disk diffusion-based assay referred to as the aminoglycoside resistance profile (AGRP) (43). Extensive surveys of aminoglycoside resistance in clinical isolates have established the prevalence of the AGIR phenotype inPseudomonas isolates (24, 25, 34, 38, 44). In general, these studies found that among clinical strains of P. aeruginosa, impermeability-type resistance was the single most common mechanism even though it was identified less frequently than that caused by modifying enzymes as a whole. In contrast, impermeability resistance predominates (>90%) among P. aeruginosa isolates from patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) (23).
While much has been learned since the original characterization of AGIR strains, the specific mechanism(s) involved in this type of resistance remains unclear. Impermeability-type resistance has been circumstantially linked with changes in outer membrane composition ofP. aeruginosa, including alterations in the structure of lipopolysaccharide (6, 15, 49), overexpression of outer membrane protein (OMP) OprH (30, 50), and changes in the electron transport chain (4, 5). In this study we employed a PCR-based, subtractive hybridization technique, representational difference analysis (RDA) (20), to examine differential gene expression associated with the AGIR phenotype in P. aeruginosa. These analyses led to the identification of many genes that may be differentially expressed in AGIR strains. One such genomic region, the amrAB locus, was observed to be up-regulated in AGIR strains, including clinical isolates. These genes encode aP. aeruginosa transporter belonging to the resistance, nodulation, and cell division (RND) family of efflux systems (39) and appear to be the same as the recently describedmexXY genes from P. aeruginosa. However, our data shows that the effects of this efflux system in P. aeruginosa are quite different from those described when these genes were expressed in Escherichia coli (26). A knockout of this putative efflux system in an AGIR strain restored sensitivity to aminoglycosides in this mutant. Although these data provide a direct line of evidence supporting a role for AmrAB in the AGIR phenotype, the large number of other genes identified in the RDA analyses supports the hypothesis that impermeability-type resistance to aminoglycosides in P. aeruginosa is more complex. It is likely that mutations in multiple loci are necessary to achieve high-level resistance while maintaining strain viability. In addition, regulatory mutations that affect the up-regulation of theamrAB locus may also result in expression level changes of other P. aeruginosa loci that contribute to the AGIR phenotype.
Bacterial strains and plasmids.The bacterial strains and plasmids used in this study are described in Table1. P. aeruginosa PAO1 was used to generate the spontaneous mutant 2547 by plating 108cells from an overnight culture onto Mueller-Hinton agar (BBL) containing 4 μg of tobramycin per ml. Colonies that appeared after 48 h at 37°C were subsequently characterized for susceptibility to other aminoglycosides. Mutant 2548 was generated in a similar manner by plating strain 2547 onto media containing 32 μg of tobramycin per ml. Biochemical profiles were determined by the API-20NE strip test (Biomerieux), and strains were tested for isogenicity by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) (12). Strain 3579 was constructed by utilizing the pEX-AMRR plasmid to generate a 540-bp deletion within the open reading frame (ORF) of amrR (Table 1; Fig.1). Strain 3580 was constructed in a similar manner utilizing the pEX-AMR3 plasmid for deletion of a 3.5-kb fragment containing the 3′ terminus of the amrA gene and a majority of the amrB gene (Table 1; Fig. 1). Construction of recombinant plasmids and generation of unmarked deletions are described in detail below. Plasmid pAMR-1 (Fig. 1) was constructed by subcloning a 4.9-kb EcoRV-EcoRI fragment, carrying theamrAB genes, from a cosmid library into pUCP20. The plasmid construction was carried out in Escherichia coli DH5α prior to transformation into P. aeruginosa by electroporation (9).
Growth media and susceptibility testing. E. colistrains were cultivated in Lennox L broth or agar (Gibco-BRL). P. aeruginosa strains were maintained on blood agar (Remel) or L agar and propagated in cation-adjusted Mueller-Hinton broth (BBL) unless otherwise noted. Growth curves were determined by dilution (1:50) of overnight cultures in fresh Mueller-Hinton broth and growth at 37°C in a shaking incubator (250 rpm). Vogel-Bonner (VB) medium (46) was used for selective isolation of P. aeruginosa and supplemented with 5% sucrose for negative selection of strains carrying the sacB gene. Strains containing the pXZL34 plasmid were maintained on L agar containing tetracycline and 0.05 mM isopropyl-β-d-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) (48). Antibiotics at various concentrations were used for selection, as follows: for E. coli, ampicillin (100 μg/ml), gentamicin (10 μg/ml), and tetracycline (10 μg/ml); and for P. aeruginosa, carbenicillin (500 μg/ml), gentamicin (200 μg/ml unless otherwise indicated), and tetracycline (100 μg/ml). All antibiotics were supplied by Sigma Chemical Co. (St. Louis, Mo.). MICs were determined by microbroth dilution according to National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards guidelines (29). Disk susceptibility determinations were also done according to National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards guidelines (28). AGRP assay results were interpreted as described by Shaw et al. (43).
RDA.The protocol described by Lisitsyn et al. (20) was modified for use with bacterial cDNA as a means of analyzing gene expression. Total bacterial RNA (3 μg), isolated from mid-log-phase cultures, was DNase treated and converted to double-stranded cDNA. As a positive control, MS2 bacteriophage RNA was spiked into a background of PAO1 RNA at 100 copies per cell equivalent and used as a tester against PAO1. The first strand of cDNA was synthesized in a 20-μl random-primed reverse transcription reaction mixture containing 1× first-strand buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl [pH 8.3], 40 mM KCl, 6 mM MgCl2; Gibco-BRL), 100 ng of primer [2:1:1 mix of N6 (SN)3, and (NS)3, where S = G or C] 0.5 mM deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs), 10 mM dithiothreitol, 5% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and 200 U of reverse transcriptase (SuperScript II; Gibco-BRL). The second strand was synthesized in a 150-μl polymerization reaction mixture containing 1× second-strand buffer [20 mM Tris-HCl (pH 6.9), 4.6 mM MgCl2, 90 mM KCl, 0.15 mM β-NAD+, 10 mM (NH4)2SO4], 0.2 mM dNTPs, 40 U ofE. coli DNA polymerase I, 10 U of E. coli DNA ligase, 2 U of ribonuclease H (all enzymes obtained from Gibco-BRL). All adapter sequences and PCR conditions were as described by Lisitsyn et al. (20), with exceptions as noted. Purified cDNA was digested with DpnII and ligated with oligonucleotide (R-Bgl) adapters. For all ligation reactions, 100 ng of cDNA and 0.5 nmol of each adapter were combined in a T4 DNA ligase reaction (Boehringer Mannheim) at 16°C for 4 h. PCR amplification primed off the terminal adapter sequences was used to produce driver and tester amplicons for subsequent hybridization and selective amplification. Amplicons were purified by extraction with equal volumes of phenol (pH 8.0) and phenol-chloroform-isoamyl alcohol (25:24:1, vol/vol/vol) and precipitated with isopropanol by using tRNA as the carrier. All subsequent PCRs and digests were purified using QiaQuick PCR purification columns (Qiagen) as per the manufacturer's instructions. R-Bgl adapters were removed by digestion with DpnII, and only tester amplicons were ligated with new (J-Bgl) adapters. A 100-ng amount of the adapterless driver amplicon and 0.1 ng of the newly ligated tester amplicon were denatured and hybridized in a 50-μl phenol emulsion containing the following: 1.5 M sodium thiocyanate, 120 mM phosphate buffer (equimolar mono- and dibasic phosphate), 10 mM EDTA, and 12% (vol/vol) unbuffered phenol. Initial denaturation at 100°C for 10 min was followed by three cycles of hybridization (15 min at 25°C) and denaturation (2 min at 65°C) and a final hybridization (15 min at 25°C). A driver-only reaction was included as a negative control for each hybridization and selective amplification. Hybridizations were extracted with 100 μl of chloroform and concentrated to 20 μl over a QiaQuick column. Selective amplifications of the tester-tester hybrid DNA were performed by two rounds of PCR, with priming from the adapter sequence and an intervening mung bean nuclease digest to remove any remaining single-stranded DNA. Primary amplification of the purified hybridization reaction was done in a 50-μl volume as follows: 1× PCR buffer [67 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.8), 4 mM MgCl2, 16 mM (NH4)2SO4, 10 mM β-mercaptoethanol, 100 μg of bovine serum albumin per ml], 0.5 mM dNTPs, 0.2 nmol of primer (same 24-bp oligonucleotide adapter to which the tester was ligated), 5% DMSO, and 2 U of Taqpolymerase. Reactions were hot-started in the absence of primer and incubated for 10 min at 72°C in order to fill in target adapter ends. Primer was added, and reactions were amplified for 15 cycles of 1 min at 95°C and 3 min at 72°C and then finished with 10 min at 72°C. Purified reaction products were digested with mung bean nuclease (New England Biolabs) for 30 min at 30°C and purified again. Secondary amplification, scaled to a 100-μl reaction volume, was as described for the primary PCR, but the fill-in incubation prior to primer addition was omitted. The resulting difference products were subjected to two more rounds of hybridization and selective amplification, with N-Bgl adapters used for the second round and J-Bgl adapters used for the third round, as described above. Third-round difference products were cloned into pGEM-T and transformed into competent E. coli DH10B cells. Colony PCR was used to amplify the inserted difference product with primers directed to the flanking vector sequence. PCR products were sequenced and analyzed by Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) (2) queries of nonredundant public databases, including nucleotide databases (GenBank, EMBL, DDBJ, and PDB) and protein databases (GenBank CDS translations, PDB, SwissProt, PIR, and PRF), and queries at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (29a) as well as by comparison toP. aeruginosa sequences from the Pseudomonas Genome Project.
RT-PCR.A 1-μg sample of DNase-treated RNA was converted to single-stranded cDNA by reverse transcription with the reverse primers specific to the gene of interest. Specific primer pairs were as follows: for amrA, amrA-F1 (5′-CATCAGCGAACGCGAGTACACCGAAGCG-3′) and amrA-R1 (5′-CACGTAGATCGGATCGATCTGCTCGACGC-3′); for amrB, amrB-F1 (5′-CTGGGTGATCTCCCTGCTGATCGTGCTC-3′) and amrB-R2 (5′-ACTCGACGATCTTCAGGCGGTTCTGCAC-3′); and forrpsL, rpsL-For (5′-GCAACTATCAACCAGCTGGTG-3′) and rpsL-Rev (5′-GCTGTGCTCTTGCAGGTTGTG-3′). Primers specific to the constitutively expressed gene rpsL were used as a positive control. Reverse transcription reaction conditions were as follows: 1× first-strand buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl [pH 8.3], 40 mM KCl, 6 mM MgCl2; Gibco-BRL), 10 mM ditheothreitol, 2 pmol of reverse primer per target transcript, 0.5 mM dNTPs, 5% DMSO, 22 U of anti-RNase (Ambion), and 200 U of reverse transcriptase (Gibco-BRL). The same reaction omitting the reverse transcriptase (RT) was used as a negative control. RT reaction mixtures were serially diluted 1:3 in 10 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0), and 5 μl of each dilution was used as the template for PCR amplification with the following: 1× PCR buffer [67 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.8), 4 mM MgCl2, 16 mM (NH4)2SO4, 10 mM β-mercaptoethanol, 100 μg of bovine serum albumin per ml], 0.2 mM dNTPs, 10 pmol of each primer (forward and reverse), 5% DMSO, and 2.5 U of Taq polymerase (Boehringer Mannheim). Reaction mixtures were incubated for 90 s at 95°C and amplified for 35 cycles of 30 s at 95°C, 30 s at 60°C, and 30 s at 72°C and finished with 10 min at 72°C. A 10-μl volume of each reaction product was examined by 1.5% (wt/vol) agarose gel electrophoresis.
Generation of unmarked deletions.Unmarked deletions of theamrR gene in PAO1 and the amrB gene in strain 2547 were generated according to the method described by Schweizer (41). DNA homologous to sequence flanking the region of deletion was amplified by PCR. Primers 5′ for-amrR (5′-CGTCGCGGGTTTTCTGGGATCCCTCTTTGG-3′) and 5′ rev-amrR (5′-GCAGGAATTCGCGATGCGGATTGCGGAAC-3′) generated a 1-kb fragment with BamHI and EcoRI restriction sites introduced on the respective ends and flanking the 5′ end ofamrR. Similarly, primers 3′ for-amrR (5′-GGAAAGCTTGGTGGCGAGGAAGGCATTGG-3′) and 3′ rev-amrR (5′-GCCTCTAGAGCCTGCGCAGTTCTCCCTAC-3′) generated a 1.1-kb fragment with HindIII and XbaI restriction sites introduced on the respective ends and flanking the 3′ end ofamrR. The 5′ and 3′ ends flanking the amrABdeletion region were generated with the same respective restriction sites by using primers 5′ for-amr3 (5′-CGTCGCGGGTTTTCTGGAATTCCTCTTTGG-3′), 5′ rev-amr3 (5′-AGCAATTCGGGATCCGGATTGCGGAACAG-3′), 3′ for-amr3 (5′-CAAGCCTGATGCCTCTAGAGAAACTCTCGC-3′), and 3′ rev-amr3 (5′-GAATCTGGTTCAAGCTTGAGCAGCGCTACG-3′). PCR fragments were amplified with 3 cycles at an annealing temperature of 55°C and 31 cycles at an annealing temperature of 60°C. Fragments were digested with the appropriate enzymes and 5′ and 3′ fragments were cloned sequentially into plasmid pEX18T. The Gmr-GFP cassette from pPS858 was isolated as a BamHI fragment and cloned directly into pEX18T containing flanking ends for amrR. Due toBamHI restriction sites in the amrAB 3′ fragment, the Gmr-GFP cassette and XbaI-digested pEX18T containing flanking ends for amrAB were treated with Klenow fragment and blunt-end ligated. All plasmids were constructed and propagated in E. coli DH5α. The final constructs were introduced into the E. coli donor strain, S17.1λpir, by chemical transformation and conjugally transferred to P. aeruginosa. Transconjugates were selected and propagated on L agar containing gentamicin. Secondary selection on L agar with carbenicillin was used to identify double-crossover events of the Gmr and Cbs phenotypes. In the case of pEX-AMR3, primary selection yielded only colonies which were Gmr and Cbr, or single-crossover events. One of these strains was grown overnight in L broth containing gentamicin. Culture dilutions (10−2 and 10−4; volume, 100 μl) were plated on VB plus 5% sucrose agar containing gentamicin in order to select for the loss of thesacB gene. Colonies arising after 48 h were screened for carbenicillin resistance and propagated on L agar containing gentamicin (100 μg/ml). E. coli SM10 was used to mobilize the plasmid pFLP2, which contains the yeast Flp recombinase, into Gmr and Cbs strains of P. aeruginosaby conjugal transfer. Primary selection for P. aeruginosacarrying the pFLP2 plasmid was done on VB agar containing carbenicillin. Plasmids were cured by streaking colonies onto VB agar plus 5% sucrose and subsequently were confirmed to be Gmsand Cbs. Both strains 3579 and 3580 were confirmed to contain the proper deletions by comparing them to appropriate parent and single-crossover and double-crossover event and strains by Southern blot analyses (45).
Outer membrane SDS-PAGE gels.OMPs of P. aeruginosa were prepared by the method of Poxton et al. (37). Bacterial cells were grown to mid- to late-log phase. Cell pellets were resuspended in 10 mM HEPES (N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine-N′-2-ethanesulfonic acid) buffer (pH 7.4). Cells were broken by ultrasonic disruption, and unbroken cells were removed by low-speed centrifugation (10,000 × g for 10 min). Membranes were subsequently pelleted by high-speed centrifugation (100,000 × g for 30 min), resuspended in 10 mM HEPES with 2% (wt/vol) sodiumN-lauroyl sarcosine, and incubated at room temperature for 1 h. Insoluble membrane proteins were pelleted by high-speed centrifugation (100,000 × g for 30 min) and resuspended in distilled water. Samples were assayed for total protein using the DC Protein Assay (Bio-Rad) as per the manufacturer's instructions. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) was performed on a 12% acrylamide/bis-acrylamide (37.5:1) SDS slab gel and analyzed by staining with GELCODE Blue Stain Reagent (Pierce).
Southern blot hybridizations. SalI-digested genomic DNA (1 μg) was run on a 0.7% agarose gel. DNA was blotted onto positively charged nylon membranes overnight (Nytran Plus; Schleicher & Schuell) by standard alkaline transfer (40). Dry membranes were cross-linked with UV light and probed with random-primed [α-32P]dCTP-labeled DNA. Mutants were confirmed by probing blots with the PCR fragments that were cloned into the recombination vectors. The deletion mutants were confirmed to be unmarked by probing with the Gmr-GFP cassette.
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers.The sequences of theamrR and amrAB genes have been deposited with GenBank under the accession no. AF147719. Other relevant genes can be referenced with the following GenBank accession no.: AF073776(mexGH [P. aeruginosa]), AB015853(mexXY [P. aeruginosa]), and AF072887(amrAB [Burkholderia pseudomallei]).
Characterization of spontaneous tobramycin-resistant mutants.Two spontaneous AGIR mutants were isolated in a stepwise fashion from strain PAO1. The mutants, designated 2547 and 2548, are isogenic to PAO1 as determined by PFGE (data not shown), and they displayed a panaminoglycoside- resistant phenotype, which is characteristic of AGIR strains, in the AGRP assay (Table 2). Strain 2547 showed an intermediate-level aminoglycoside impermeability phenotype, whereas 2548, with no zone of inhibition to any of the tested aminoglycosides, showed a high-level impermeability phenotype. In addition to enhanced aminoglycoside resistance the mutants exhibited other altered phenotypic characteristics compared to PAO1. Neither of the mutants were able to hydrolyze urea, and both displayed impaired growth in culture with rich media (Fig.2).
Identification of the amr locus.RDA subtractions were designed to identify genes that are up-regulated in the mutants 2547 and 2548 in comparison to strain PAO1. Three subtractions were done with an excess of PAO1-derived cDNA as the driver. Tester cDNA was derived from in vitro cultures of strains 2547, 2548, and 2548 grown in the presence of 16 μg of tobramycin per ml. An average of 200 difference products per subtraction were sequenced, and approximately 30 open reading frames (ORFs) were identified from each subtraction. One of these ORFs which was identified in all three experiments was designated amrB based on strong homology (79% similarity of amino acid sequences) to a previously identified efflux pump component that affects aminoglycoside and macrolide resistance in B. pseudomallei (27). BLAST analysis of thePseudomonas genome revealed that amrB was located downstream of another gene, designated amrA, which has homology to the membrane fusion proteins of the RND-type transporters. Homology of the predicted amino acid sequence of AmrB and genomic organization of the amrAB genes (Fig. 1) indicate that AmrAB belongs to the RND family of transporters; however, unlike the previously characterized Mex pumps, no OMP was identified downstream ofamrB. More recently, the sequence of the amrABgenes was found to be highly similar to two other GenBank sequences from PAO1, mexGH (1) and mexXY(26). While the deduced amino acid sequences ofamrAB and mexXY are only 84 to 89% similar, respectively, the restriction pattern published by Mine et al. (26) is the same as that deduced for the amrABgenes. In addition, BLAST analysis of the PAO1 genome (presently more than 99% complete) revealed no other matches for the mexXYor mexGH genes that were perfect or better thanamrAB. Therefore, it seems likely that amrAB,mexXY, and presumably mexGH are the same genes.
AmrR transcriptional regulation of amrAB.The region located upstream of amrA contains an ORF, designatedamrR, belonging to the TetR family of bacterial response regulators (Fig. 1). To determine whether this putative regulator was involved in the transcription of amrAB, an unmarked deletion of amrR was constructed in strain PAO1. The deletion was generated using a gentamicin resistance, green fluorescent protein selectable marker cassette that is flanked by yeast Flp recombinase target sites (17). Generation of an unmarked deletion within a gene by a Flp-based system has been demonstrated in other organisms and shown to cause no polar effects on downstream transcription (8, 21). The resulting strain, 3579, was shown by RT-PCR to transcribe the amrA gene at least 15-fold and theamrB gene at least 12-fold compared to the parental strain PAO1 (Fig. 3). The transcription levels in strain 3579 were approximately equivalent to those in a strain carrying amrAB on a multicopy plasmid, strain 3582, but are still approximately sixfold less than those of the spontaneous mutants 2547 and 2548 (Fig. 3). It has been shown previously that otherP. aeruginosa strains that overexpress Mex pumps have mutations in their respective transcriptional regulatory genes (18, 35, 36). However, sequencing of the amrRgene in both 2547 and 2548 revealed no mutations in either the putative 5′ promoter region or the amrR coding sequence compared to wild-type PAO1. Therefore, although it is apparent that amrRcan negatively regulate transcription of amrAB, loss of this regulatory function does not seem to be the cause of the up-regulation observed in mutants 2547 and 2548. However, we recently identified anrplA mutation in strains 2547 and 2548 that theoretically would result in a truncated form of ribosomal protein L1. Complementation of mutant 2547 with a wild-type copy of therplA gene restored aminoglycoside sensitivity, growth rate, and amrAB transcription levels back to PAO1 levels but did not complement the urease defect (16).
Deletion of amrAB from strain 2547 results in a reduction in MICs of aminoglycosides.To determine whether the increased transcription of amrAB contributes to the AGIR phenotype of the laboratory mutants, an unmarked deletion ofamrB was constructed in strain 2547 by the same system described above. Strain 3580 (2547ΔamrB) shows MIC values returned to within a fourfold difference of wild-type (PAO1) levels for four of the six aminoglycosides tested (Table3). Both kanamycin and tobramycin also showed reduced MIC values compared to strain 2547, but in these cases the changes were less than or equal to fourfold. Strains 2547 and 3580 did not show differences in the MICs of any of the other nonaminoglycoside drugs tested, and in addition, the deletion ofamrB in strain 3580 did not complement the other phenotypic characteristics, slow growth and lack of urease activity, seen in strain 2547 compared to PAO1.
Up-regulation of amrAB alone does not alter MICs of aminoglycosides for strain PAO1.Despite the overexpression ofamrAB in strains 3579 and 3582, the MICs for these strains did not change significantly relative to those of PAO1 (Table 3). Since MexXY has been shown to associate with OprM in E. coli(26), we investigated the possibility that OprM might contribute to an increase of aminoglycoside resistance in strain 3579, which overexpresses amrAB (mexXY) as a result of an unmarked deletion of the amrR gene. Transformation of strain 3579 with the plasmid pXZL34, which has been shown previously to express OprM under the control of an IPTG-inducible promoter (48), resulted in strain 3737. Growth of strain 3737 in 0.05 mM IPTG did not impact susceptibility to any of the antibiotics tested (data not shown). In addition, we analyzed outer membrane preparations made from strains PAO1, 2547, and 2548 by SDS-PAGE to look for differences in the levels of the OprM. These gels revealed a dramatic decrease in the amount of OprM present in strains 2547 and 2548 compared to PAO1 (Fig. 4), indicating that OprM is unlikely to be the outer membrane component associated with this efflux system.
amrB transcription is increased in CF clinical isolates that display impermeability-type aminoglycoside resistance.In order to address the possible clinical relevance of the Amr system, we used RT-PCR to examine amrB gene expression level differences among clinical isolates with varying AGRP phenotypes. Transcription of amrB can be detected in clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa that display an impermeability phenotype at levels that are at least 6- to 15-fold greater than that of strain PAO1 (Fig. 5), and gene expression is generally higher in the AGIR strains (Fig. 5A) compared to those clinical isolates with a sensitive phenotype (Fig. 5B). In particular, the isogenic clinical isolates 1168, 1250, and 1249 have AGRP phenotypes (Table 2) and amrB RT-PCR results that mimic directly those of PAO1 and the mutants 2547 and 2548. A trend towards increased amrB transcription was not observed in strains that produce aminoglycoside-modifying enzymes or have multiple AGRP phenotypes (data not shown).
Drug efflux is a prevalent mechanism of antibiotic resistance inP. aeruginosa. Until recently this mechanism of resistance had been seemingly limited to quinolones, β-lactams, tetracycline and chloramphenicol (14, 31). However, new evidence for B. pseudomallei now indicates an even broader potential for efflux-mediated acquired and intrinsic antibiotic resistance. The recently described B. pseudomallei genes, amrAB, have been shown to contribute to the intrinsic resistance of this organism to both macrolides and aminoglycosides (27).
Aminoglycoside impermeability-type resistance is poorly understood despite the fact that it is the predominant manifestation of aminoglycoside resistance in P. aeruginosa isolates infecting the lungs of CF patients (23). In this study we show that spontaneous mutants of PAO1 displaying the AGIR phenotype also display up-regulation of the amrAB genes. The deletion of the amrB gene resulted in the reversal of the panaminoglycoside resistance phenotype, and in contrast to the recent work describing expression of the mexXY genes in E. coli (26), our data did not show any change in the MICs of a number of quinolones and macrolides for strain 3580 compared to those for strain 2547. It was shown recently that the frequency of emergence of fluoroquinolone resistance in a triple deletion strain of PAO1 (ΔmexAB-oprM::Cm ΔmexEF-oprN::ΩHg ΔmexCD-oprJ::Gm) was essentially undetectable (22). These data would argue against the role of an additional efflux system actively contributing to quinolone resistance in P. aeruginosa. Using disk susceptibility assays we did detect small differences in the zones of inhibition for lomefloxacin, norfloxacin, and ofloxacin for strains PAO1, 2547 and 3580 (Table4). However, the comparison of these subtle differences with the changes seen in the MICs of quinolones for strain PAO200 (ΔmexAB-oprM) (Table 3) leads us to believe that the observed quinolone effect is more likely to be the result of regulatory cross talk with other efflux systems rather than an affinity of AmrAB for quinolones. Recent data demonstrating coordinated regulation of expression for the MexAB-OprM, MexCD-OprJ, and MexEF-OprN efflux pumps (19) supports the possibility that altering the expression of a single pump may have downstream effects on any number of other efflux systems. In fact the apparent decrease seen for OprM in the mutants 2547 and 2548 compared to PAO1 would be consistent with the quinolone disk resistance data noted above and support a hypothesis of coordinated regulation between MexAB-OprM and the AmrAB efflux systems.
Although it is clear from our studies that amrAB can play a role in aminoglycoside resistance, up-regulation of theamrAB genes alone in wild-type P. aeruginosa(PAO1) did not affect susceptibility to aminoglycosides or any of the other antibiotics tested, including quinolones and macrolides. This is not unexpected since RND-type systems are known to require three proteins for active efflux of drugs from the cytoplasm, an inner membrane RND-transport protein, a periplasmic membrane fusion protein, and an OMP (11, 31-33). It is likely that the lack of enhanced resistance displayed by the above strains is due to the absence of corresponding expression of an appropriate OMP. Recent observations by Mine et al. suggest that OprM could be the proper accessory protein for AmrAB (26). Nonetheless, SDS-PAGE gels of outer membrane preparations revealed that very little OprM is even present in the mutant 2547. Our results suggest that the OMP that acts in conjunction with AmrAB in affecting aminoglycoside resistance inP. aeruginosa is unlikely to be OprM but instead some other yet to be identified protein. There are many potential choices for an OMP that will function with the AmrAB pump. Analysis of the newly sequenced PAO1 genome has identified ten potential RND-type drug efflux loci. Four of these loci, including the Amr locus, lack downstream OMPs. Additional phylogenetic analyses have identified three large families of OMPs, each consisting of 18 to 27 members, and numerous smaller families in the genome (13). One large family is most closely related to those proteins previously characterized as having a role in antimicrobial efflux and contains a subfamily that is most related to OprM, OprN, and OprJ. Comparisons of trees generated using these OMPs and the corresponding proposed cytoplasmic membrane and pump components suggests that in some cases there has been a shuffling of the OMP genes relative to the periplasmic and cytoplasmic membrane components of the efflux machinery (13). This is reminiscent of a previous report on other efflux OMPs that suggests that the OMP components evolve independently of the other components (33). The genome analysis reveals a complex set of efflux systems and corresponding OMPs and highlights the need for additional understanding of how these systems may be interrelated and regulated.
Despite the fact that AGIR has been observed in the clinic for decades, the molecular mechanisms of this phenotype are still not well understood. The RDA experiments presented in this study identified a large number of genes that are potentially involved in this type of aminoglycoside resistance and suggest that the AGIR phenotype is multifaceted. While we have shown here that the AmrAB efflux system can contribute to aminoglycoside resistance, it seems that efflux may be only one of the factors that can contribute to this phenotype in spontaneously occurring mutants of P. aeruginosa. The ability to generate stepwise mutants resistant to increasing levels of aminoglycosides (i.e., strain 2548) and the up-regulation of theamrAB genes in a one-step, low-level resistant mutant, strain 2547, in addition to other phenotypic differences, such as reduced growth rate and lack of urease activity, also support the theory that AGIR is a cumulative, multifactorial process. While we have shown here that the amrR gene can negatively regulate transcription of amrAB, the mutation in 2547 resulting in up-regulation at the amr locus does not seem to be related to the amrR gene. Alternate regulatory pathways for the currently characterized Mex pumps are just starting to surface. For instance, a recent publication has demonstrated growth-phase regulation for the mexAB-oprM system and shown that this regulation is not dependent on MexR (10). The rplA mutation we recently identified in strains 2547 and 2548 and its link to aminoglycoside resistance require more study. However, this mutation may affect some global regulatory function that results in deregulation and hyperexpression of amrAB as well as many other genes. In any case, it seems that the functional regulation of this pump is quite complex and the identification of other regulatory systems affecting the expression and function of the amr locus could shed light on the pleiotropic effects noted above.
The association between the AGIR phenotype and hyperexpression of the AmrAB efflux system was initially observed in a laboratory-generated mutant of PAO1. However, the potential relevance of this system to the AGIR observed in clinical isolates is also supported by RT-PCR data demonstrating substantially increased transcription of amrABin clinical strains displaying the AGIR phenotype when compared to a genotypically matched sensitive isolate (e.g., 1168, 1250, and 1249). Because amrAB up-regulation alone does not appear to be sufficient to affect aminoglycoside resistance and becauseamrAB hyperexpression may not be universally necessary for AGIR one would not expect a direct correlation betweenamrB expression and resistance phenotype in all strains. However, a general trend of higher-level amrB expression was observed in clinical isolates displaying the AGIR phenotype compared to sensitive isolates. These studies support the hypothesis that the AGIR phenotype is the result of a complex interaction of molecular events and suggest the possibility that multiple molecular scenarios may result in similar AGIR phenotypes. The latter point may contribute to the difficulty in understanding the exact mechanism of this type of resistance. Ultimately, understanding the complicated and potentially diverse manifestations of impermeability resistance may require looking beyond aminoglycoside resistance to other phenotypic differences among this population and perhaps in the process redefine the nature of impermeability resistance. In conclusion, we believe efflux of aminoglycosides by the AmrAB system to be one of the contributing factors in the multifactorial AGIR phenotype, but further study will be necessary to understand the intricate aspects of this type of resistance in P. aeruginosa.
We thank Herbert P. Schweizer at Colorado State University for providing the bacterial strains and plasmids used for construction of the unmarked deletions, Robert E. W. Hancock at the University of British Columbia for providing the pXZL34 plasmid in addition to his knowledgeable insights, Paul Phibbs and Steve Lory from the University of Washington, Seattle, for the PAO1 strain, Maynard Olson at the University of Washington for the P. aeruginosa cosmid library, Romesh Gautom at the Washington State Department of Health, Seattle, for PFGE, L. Goltry and E. Tolentino for oligonucleotide synthesis and DNA sequencing efforts, and M. Lagrou and S. Mizoguchi for informatics support.
- Received 11 May 1999.
- Returned for modification 1 June 1999.
- Accepted 30 September 1999.
- Copyright © 1999 American Society for Microbiology


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After my enthusiastic start on the front garden in February, progress has been slow, mostly due to frozen ground, high winds and snow.
February saw me clear the bed at the bottom of the drive, order some woodland plants and plant them. The snowdrops made a brave attempt to flower despite being covered in snow several times. One Snakeshead Fritillary flowered beautifully before losing it's lovely purple colour after the last covering of snow. But the remainder are definitely growing, as are the bluebells, but I'm not sure I'll see any flowers until next year.
At the same time as working on the woodland bed I started at the very top of the main front garden, which is on a steep slope and tiered. My plan is to tidy all the tiers up, see what pops up over the summer, add a couple more shrubs and plant some herbs.
One of our first jobs when we moved in was to clean the windows. Not an easy task with the house on a steep slope as it's difficult to find safe places to put up ladders. Even the local window cleaner refused! So, the shrubs at the very top of the garden needed cutting back to allow a ladder to anchor into the soil.
I can't wait to see the twiggy one come into leaf, there are plenty of small buds. It looks like it has an amazing colour in the autumn, if not the summer too.
A few days later I was able to get out into the garden again. Now those two shrubs were cut back I could tackle the weeds underneath them.
Whoever created this tiered garden put in a lot of work. Each layer has a weed suppressing membrane covering the soil with a few inches of bark on top. It must have been done many years ago as most of the bark has decomposed and the membrane just tears when it's touched. Needless to say, the weeds are growing through. It soon became apparent that as much of the membrane as possible needed removing in order to dig out the deep weed roots. It was going to be a slow project.
I now have a process – weed the top layer and then move it to a cleared section. Pull up the membrane (which rips away in small bits) and dig out the weed roots, then put the top layer back. Much to my surprise, it's very satisfying!
Whenever I needed a break, I pulled out all the old Crocosmia leaves. I like Crocosmia very much but it does spread everywhere. This is the case in my new garden, so I'm digging out lots of Crocosmia bulbs with the weeds, on purpose!
Once I'd weeded around the top two shrubs, I moved down to the next tier and ended up with a bare patch, crying out for another plant. So off we went to the garden centre, returning with a Mahonia. I love it's spiky looking leaves which contrast well with the more regular shaped leaves of the other shrubs. Next winter I should have some beautiful yellow flowers to match the yellow in the leaves of it's neighbours.
Then came the "Beast from the East". Twice!
No more work on the garden until last weekend, when the sun came out and I got warm enough to strip down to a T-shirt!
The poor Mahonia looks a bit worse for wear, with browning leaves. I think it may have winter burn. It hadn't had chance to properly settle in. I'm keeping an eye on it and hoping it'll recover.
Continuing my process – clear top layer, pull up membrane, dig out roots, put top layer back – I ended up with another gap. I had two small lavenders and a rosemary waiting to be planted out. So in went one of the lavenders. Although the soil is quite heavy, it's very well drained, due to the steep slope, so I'm hoping any lavenders I plant will thrive. Next door has quite a few, which look a bit sad after the snow but they were lovely in December when we moved in.
Sitting on the wall to admire my work, I realised there were lots of bees in the Heather. I was sooooooo happy! Bees and Butterflies, the name and inspiration for this blog. I want to attract wildlife into both the front and back gardens, especially bees and butterflies. And here were the bees!!! Unfortunately no matter how still and patient I was with my iPhone camera, I couldn't capture a photo of any of the bees.
Then came another first for this year.
The gardening tools were put away, and the motorbikes came out. A ride out into Derbyshire to enjoy the sunshine, the never boring scenery (no matter how many times we see it), spotting new lambs and getting a bit chilly at the top of Snake Pass which had only been reopened a few days ago. There was more snow up there than I expected and the small lake/mountain pond was iced over.
What a lovely day. Here's to many more beautiful days ahead, sharing my time between gardening and motorbike riding.

subset: commoncrawl


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by Michelle Ali
This blog first appeared within the VE-SO Portal in March, as one of the regular updates for school E-Safety Officers. It now appears here for general information.
The impact of the Snapchat update
It's fair to say that the recent major update of Snapchat (27/01/15) caused a huge uproar among Snapchat users. Most people's biggest problem is that they can no longer see their contacts "best friends" i.e. their most frequently contacted. People don't like this because it was always good gossip to see who had been messaging who.
However, another serious issue surfaced recently with users reporting that the app is burning through too much background data.
In the screenshot at the bottom of the article, you can see Snapchat having used over 40MB in the foreground (while the app was open) and a little more than 250MB in the background. In a span of a week, the app burned through a quarter of a gigabyte.
Snapchat introduced a discover page linked to news feeds from various sources such as CNN, National Geographic, and People. Users complained about the app quickly draining battery life, causing crashes, and sucking up background data.
Fortunately, users can prevent Snapchat from running in the background. Go to Data Usage under your phone's settings menu and look for Snapchat. If it's giving problems, it is likely to be at the top of the list of apps. Tap it and select the Restrict Background data option.
Snapchat can't be held responsible for the things people do using its service, but the company should jump on this issue quickly if it doesn't want customers taking up pitchforks over the potential charges on their cell phone bills. With any luck, it's already on it.


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Representative Lee Zeldin [NY-1] has introduced H.R. 2460, legislation designed to increase the availability of adult day health care services for severely disabled veterans. If enacted, the legislation would reimburse state veterans homes for the provision of adult day health care services to severely disabled veterans who are eligible for, but do not receive, full-time skilled nursing home care paid for by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with no cost to the veteran.
Under current law, veterans who require nursing home care due to a service connected disability or who have a VA disability rating of 70% or more can receive full time nursing home care inside a state veteran home at no cost; however, the law does not allow those same severely disabled veterans to benefit from adult day health care, which is a less costly non-institutional alternative many prefer. H.R. 2460 would amend existing law to authorize VA to pay state veterans homes a per diem rate that is 65% of the per diem otherwise payable for full time skilled nursing home care for these same severely disabled veterans.
Adult day health care, which is currently offered by only three state homes, provides comprehensive medical, nursing and personal care services combined with social activities for physically or cognitively impaired adults. Under this program, veterans are brought to the state home for 6-8 hours where they can receive any necessary medical care — including physical, occupational or speech therapy — as well as nutritional and social services. Adult day health care allows severely disabled veterans who might otherwise need skilled nursing services to receive them several times a week while continuing to live at home.
If enacted, H.R. 2460 would enable more state veterans homes across the country to offer adult day health care programs for these deserving veterans. It would also provide important relief and support for their family caregivers.
Please contact your elected officials to urge them to cosponsor, support passage, or to thank them for cosponsoring H.R. 2460 during the 114th Congress.
As always, thank you for your advocacy and for aiding DAV in support of our mission of empowering veterans to lead high-quality lives with respect and dignity.
Click the link below to log in and send your message:


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Houdini was born Erich Weicz in Budapest in 1874. His family moved to the US when he was four. He fell in love with theatrics early in life, performing circus acts in his back yard. He was also an athlete as a racer, a cyclist, a swimmer and boxer.
Bess, Wilhelmina Beatrice Radner, was part of a singing and dancing act, the Floral Sisters. She and Harry met while performing in the same venue and three weeks later, they were married. Both families were opposed to the marriage as Houdini was Jewish and Bess came from a Catholic family. It was years before Bess's mother would speak to her.
They began to perform together as The Houdinis. Harry soon bypassed the magic acts to concentrate on handcuff escapes. They took their act to Europe making headlines as Houdini escaped from handcuffs installed by police forces across the continent. Appearances were sold out and Houdini became a household name. On a cruise in 1914 they met Theodore Roosevelt who was so taken with Houdini he invited him to meet his grandchildren.
When they returned to the US, he moved beyond the handcuffs to a variety of increasingly more sophisticated escapes, a crate in a river, a straitjacket hanging from an airplane.
Bess was unable to have children-she was small, underdeveloped and never menstruated. She gave her full devotion to Harry. He said of her, "All my fights when she thinks I am right she is alongside, helping me load the machine guns."
Houdini's interests were wide ranging from aviation to spiritualism. He was devoted to his mother and was so shaken by her death he fainted at the news. This led him to an obsession with death and a new interest in spiritualism. He became friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a devout believer, but the friendship waned when Houdini realized how naive Doyle's beliefs were and how easily people could be taken in. Houdini then spent years debunking spiritualists and earned many enemies in the process. He believed he could put the debate to rest by giving his wife a secret phrase only she would know and then try to contact him after his death.
Harry died of a ruptured appendix in 1926. His last words were "I'm tired of fighting."
For the next ten years on the anniversary of his death, Bess held seances, attempting to make a connection. No medium was ever able to discover a link to the secret phrase Harry had given Bess.
The tenth year, she said, "Houdini did not come through. My last hope is gone. I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me-or to anyone. It is finished. Good night Harry."
Bess died on a train journey at the age of 67. Her family would not permit her to be buried beside Harry in the Jewish cemetery at Queens. Bess is interred in the Catholic Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne NJ.


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Publication Date
As students flood the campus to begin the new school year, there is one group that offers a unique—and welcome—point of view to discussions of war and peace: veterans who have experienced firsthand the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, seen the rising tensions in South Korea, or served on ships dispatched to the latest world hot spots.
University of Central Florida
STARS Citation
Clark, Jim, "Veterans at University Offer Different Perspectives for Students, Faculty" (2017). UCF Forum. 270.
UCF Forum note
Information presented on this website is considered public information (unless otherwise noted) and may be distributed or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credit is requested. We recommend that UCF data be acquired directly from a UCF server and not through other sources that may change the data in some way. While UCF makes every effort to provide accurate and complete information, various data such as names, telephone numbers, etc. may change prior to updating.


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Walt Disney Concert Hall illuminated by Refik Anadol. Photos: Dustin Downing.
Take it from Verdi. These lines -- uttered by a court confidante speaking to the king who demands exclusive loyalty of those around him -- seem eerily familiar today:
"Sir, half the world submits to your rule but you cannot rule yourself."
Yes, the words jump out at you -- if, that is, you read about tweets and leaks in our nation's ongoing political imbroglios and also if you are lucky enough to snare tickets for LA Opera's season opener, "Don Carlo" at the Music Center Pavilion, which is the roaring success championed by our perpetual world wonder, Plácido Domingo.
That's not all. The great composer who, in 1867, allied himself to great thinkers and writers of historical tragedies penned these words, too, for the king's advisor, based on Schiller's play:
"Sir, may you never be likened to Nero."
But here it's all wrapped in the powerful music drama, the haunting arias with their mind-bait melodies, the dark grandeur and daunting atmosphere of political treachery. What's more, you can see it unfold: a monarchy that falls into craven collusion with the church (executive and senate?); power grabs that pass between the two like a traded football.
Verdi, great anti-cleric that he was, laid it out with polished zeal. He even included a love triangle with father and son connected to the same woman, as per Schiller.
Morris Robinson as the Grand Inquisitor and Ferruccio Furlanetto as King Philip II in LA Opera's 2018 production of "Don Carlo." Photo: Cory Weaver.
Fortunately, for this 2006 production's revival, the values still carry the day -- if not Ian Judge's original, finely gauged, illuminating details now smudged by a successor who inserts some clunky/junky effects. It's the cast's individual enactments and singing, though, that shine most brightly. Especially, the stunning presence of Domingo, a slim, relatively youthful 78 -- yes, 78 -- an unheard of age for any singer boasting sturdy vocal cords and resonant tones, however lowered his top notes.
In fact, the audience did not recognize him as he came onstage. No clapping. For this once, a star entrance went unacknowledged.
Yet here was Rodrigo, trying to gain favor with the court for his beloved friend Don Carlo, trying to rescue him from doom for opposing his father King Philip. Although not a big-time baritone, the erstwhile tenor still has his distinctive, ringing sound and that gave him away, regardless of how he looked or even comported himself.
As the title character, Ramon Vargas sang fervently, although hardly anyone could displace the memory of Luis Lima -- the Argentine tenor seldom seen these days on U.S. stages -- who once etched this crown prince with depths of gripping despair.
But Ana Maria Martinez was a stricken Elisabetta, her gorgeous, soft high notes and unflagging legato a thing of purity, her entreaties compelling. A dozen years since he first appeared here as Philip, Ferruccio Furlanetto still is that regal yet fearsome monarch who could sit slumped in sorrow as he sang "Ella gemmai m'amo" confessing to himself that his Elisabetta never loved him. Also, Anna Smirnova brought burning rage to Eboli, with her robust mezzo. And Morris Robinson's Grand Inquistor issued volumes of hot basso brimstone.
Powering the whole thing from the pit was James Conlon who got his orchestra to thunder out Verdi's dramatic declamations in a taut, urgent reading. Get there while you can (through Oct. 14).
But with downtown in mind, don't forget (how could you?) that the LA Philharmonic is embarking on perhaps the grandest season of its Grand Avenue occupancy. The orchestra counts 100 years since it began, back in Philharmonic Auditorium across from the Biltmore, before there was ever a Music Center, and way before there was a Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Yes, that's some kind of milestone. And centennial celebrations are vibrating around the city. In fact, ever since the New York Times critics have recently declared the LA Phil this country's most innovative and most important, it's been pandemonium. (You do remember that years ago LA and all it encompassed, including its orchestra -- the one excluded from "The Big Five," which identified as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston -- was deemed a cultural desert, disparaged non-stop by eastern seaboard artistic arbiters, no?)
Well, well, well. Here we are. And the Philharmonic meisters are suggesting their 21st century-ness by invoking new design/program efforts of "deep neural networks, machine intelligence...data made beautiful."
And nothing could have illuminated that better than a gala 100th birthday celebration concert that exploded on the steel skin of Frank Gehry's Disney Hall, its remarkable exterior panels visualizing Refik Anadol's electronic kaleidoscope of Philharmonic moments (nightly through Oct. 6 and on video.
What can be gleaned from all this, as if we couldn't already guess, is that the days of unadorned, theatrically bare, unvisualized, non-enhanced music-making -- just the music, ma'am -- are nearly over.
But for one gala night that tipped its hat to an audience of city VIPs and club-going Angelenos the celebrating orchestra turned to what its director Gustavo Dudamel called art without borders. (Ah, we like the idea of no borders!) And what that boiled down to was stellar pieces by John Adams, that contemporary icon, and lots of popular stuff, with singers Chris Martin and Corinne Bailey Rae, drummer John Densmore et al -- all of it presupposing that pop entertainment belongs under the aegis of art.
With "California Soul" the byword, this gala pointed to the state's composers: André Previn (via Berlin), Frank Zappa, Adams (a "native" for decades), Julia Adolphe (a new "native" at USC for now) with a beguiling showpiece, aptly titled for the occasion, "Underneath the Sheen" revealing its long-lined mournful mysteries.
Martin and Dudamel. Photo: Craig T. Mathew
But the pure blow-away moments came in Adams' "Wild Nights" from "Harmonium." It was here that we understood the meaning of the Philharmonic's hundred virtuosos, why there would be a celebration mounted anyway, but for the monumental thrill of their collective playing -- this piece, this way, under this conductor, with this brilliant chorus (LA Master Chorale). The rest is...lots of clap your hands, rock your body, etc.
None of that folderol filled the air space at the orchestra's last classical Bowl concert, led by the gifted Karina Canellakis, with a centerpiece nod to that other centenary celebrant Leonard Bernstein -- whose "Age of Anxiety" featured its foremost champion, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (decked out in an eggplant metallic suit for the occasion).
Motifs and styles easily came to mind in this terrific performance, especially that of Beethoven, oddly enough. For in a very slow solo part, Thibaudet suggested the same utter alone-ness, the searching single-note reflections so insistent in Beethoven's piano sonatas. The more we hear Bernstein the more defined his profile and the more appealing is he in this present day.
With any luck, so will there be more to see of the very talented choreographer Seda Aybay, an Istanbul import whose local troupe Kybele Dance Theater came to the Broad Stage.
While so many follow a single trend -- lately it's been a focus on staged body mechanics -- Aybay has a distinct sense of dance as total theater. She uses all its facets, a camera-lens-format opening, for example in "Sun Rises From The East" that encloses a figure in black vertical frame. It confines what we can know. It creates suspense in its black-ness and limitation. It says something. And then that figure, the exceptional Alan L. Perez, starts to resemble a moving sculpture, under a cloak, to slowly reveal a woman winding her way around his body. Finally they become two separate people standing upright in an abstracted marriage.
Turning to satire, Aybay's "Noir" employs black-and-white film with Carl Owens' script narrated as a voice-over. It uses as background music Bernard Herrmann's "Vertigo," brilliantly, along with Pat Guillem's chic period costumes and Rully Akbar's cleverly noirish on-screen illustrations to great effect. To think this relatively unknown company, packing so much talent, now exists here is a boon to us all.
And, as a bonus, the Broad Stage now hosts Santa Monica College faculty discussions with this first event and others to come.


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Hi all,
I want to encrypt a few columns containing personal information is my database (mysql). I want that to be internal to mysql and not in php, so I can still query it if needed (even if decrypting on the fly makes it slower), so I was planning to use AES_ENCRYPT and AES_DECRYPT.
Nothing crazy so far, taht's fairly standard, my question is how to make my models manage that ? I'd like the models to automatically build queries (select + insert + update) managing the encryption for me.
For example: instead of executing:
SELECT myEncryptedColumn FROM myTable;
--> SELECT AES_DECRYPT(myEncryptedColumn, "myKey") FROM myTable ;
INSERT INTO myTable (myEncryptedColumn) VALUES (value);
--> INSERT INTO myTable (myEncryptedColumn) VALUES (AES_ENCRYPT(value, "myKey"));
Is there anything in phalcon for that, or do I have to overwrite all the models methods myself ? Cheers


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Do you want to learn about the cases the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Professional Committee's Local Professionalism Panels have been handling so that you can better recognize and prevent unprofessional conduct?
Do you want to try to avoid receiving a Florida Bar complaint or know what to do to defend one?
Do you want to learn about some important changes to the Rules Regulating the Florida Bar that can have a significant impact on your practice?
Please Join the THBA for a free member luncheon and CLE (applied for) to learn about these topics from experienced attorneys who defend Florida attorneys in disciplinary proceedings, against Florida Bar Complaints, and other professional matters.
P.O. Box 2714Tampa, Florida email@example.com


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Duct Cleaning
Heating and cooling systems can become inefficient due to dust buildup and can potentially worsen health conditions such as asthma and allergies.
Ducts can be filled with construction materials, dust, pollens, and whatever your kids like to stick down your vents. Homeowners can use duct cleaning to lower electric and gas bills and help keep their living spaces clean.
Dryer Vent Cleaning
Cleaning dryer vents is another service that can be done with our duct cleaning equipment.
Clogged dryer vents are a very serious and real fire hazard. As the dryer vent becomes clogged with combustible lint, it decreases the dryers efficiency and can also increase the heat in the vent to the point of catching the lint on fire.


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Welcome to the
Williamson County Local Towns:
Click Here for More Williamson County News
The F.I.P.S. code is 47187.
Latitude: 35.7808, Longitude: -86.7221.
There are more sites for other counties and towns across the State of Tennessee available.
In fact, we host pages for every State, County and Town in the U.S.!


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I have to start this post with a confession; I've never been what you'd call an 'art lover'. There is some art that I love. Some. It tends to be the really ultra dramatic stuff. And by that I don't mean expressing fearsome emotions or catching a moment of history. I mean stuff that is just physically big. The bigger the better. And ideally made of metal. And if it's on canvas, it needs to be bright, bold, textured.
I am not a man who appreciates nuance when it comes to art.
This week, as part of Leeds Digital Festival, The Lumen Prize Exhibition came to Leeds Dock, bringing with it seven award-winning pieces of digital art.
This, it turns out, was my kind of art. And it was my kids' kind of art too.
The highlight, surely, was Portée (captured below in a setting far more grand than a disused building on Leeds Dock, but you get the idea, I'm sure). Blue illuminated wires criss-cross the room. And in a corner, sits a piano. The premise is kind of simple, and kind of wonderful. You shake, touch, bang the giant wires, something triggers in the piano, the keys hit down, and a chord or phrase is played. And repeat.
The theme that starts here and stays with me is agency, interaction and immersion. This is not art you passively observe. This is art that doesn't just invite you to engage with it, it needs you to engage with it. I've always felt something of a passive observer of art. It's there, I see it, I move on. With this piece. I'm – we're – in control, and part of the joy and intrigue, is thinking, 'how have they done this? When I pull this wire, what happens where to play those notes'.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Metamorphy needs you to bang, push and pull at its silk screen to create colours, the illusion of flames and an uncanny sensation like you're opening some kind of cosmic wormhole.
Man-A uses a smartphone app to bring a large piece of work to life, flickering and moving on your phone screen. My son was hooked, and Moc – his clear favourite – brought trees and other flora shooting up and flowering to the sound of his voice.
My daughter – younger by a couple of years – was particularly taken by Passages which scans the people in front of its projected screen for movement, captures it, before allow the images it captures to disintegrate. It looks similar – and more brilliant – than it sounds, look:
As a parent, seeing this stuff is so exciting. Firstly because it's obviously really clever, and well, pretty cool. Secondly, because of what it gives you and your children. A chance to play with art, and to create something by being part of it. It moves art into a new sphere. An infinitely more appealing sphere (well for my family anyway). It's one where technical 'fine art' skills are no-longer the bottom line, where the division between artist and observer begins to blur.
It encourages you to be involved in art. To think about art in a different way. Maybe – who knows – my kids are learning that art is something we all do. Not just something 'artists' do. Which means that they feel invited to create and to consider themselves artists themselves.
When they're a little older, who can imagine what new technology will enable people to do and create under the banner of 'art'. Maybe they might feel like they want to harness that to do something themselves. Or they may not, whatever. But the important thing for me, right now, is that art isn't something static, but something involving and exciting that can exist across more than one of your senses, and it's something we can all be a part of.


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After reading an article in the Pitch imploring me to see the Master and Margarita at the UMKC I knew I had to go. The Master and Margarita is one of only a few books that I read more than once and discovered something new every time. It is also one of a few Russian masterpieces that no matter how well translated could not be fully understood by a foreigner (that would be you); it's somewhat similar to me trying to decipher Cris Packham's pop-cultural references (not that I don't try). The book was written during the times of the strictest censorship when even a hint of anti-Soviet criticism could literally threaten the writer's life and that's why Mikhail Bulgakov had to insinuate just as much as he wrote down. The average Soviet reader could easily read "between the lines" and see the satire in the most innocent dialogues and descriptions. Some of the references were to the specific characters in the author's life and are not easily recognizable but the barbs thrown at the Soviet bureaucrats, censors, informers, dimwits, careerists, sellouts and the regime itself were obvious to the people who still encountered them in their everyday life for another 50 years after the book was written.
Not too many people risked producing it on the stage or on the screen, it could not be easily condensed and the characters were so well-known and beloved that any such attempt would be criticized by the fans. That's why I was pretty skeptical going to the UMKC performance. I didn't expect the cast to have an understanding of the book required to convey it onto the stage and it couldn't possibly be shortened to fit into the regular length of the theater performance. What I saw was pretty amazing and truly one of the best theatrical performances I've seen in my life – honest, funny, enthusiastic, smart, inventive and, although not very close to the book, with plenty of Blugakov's spirit in it. Once you get past the fact that some male roles are played by girls (i.e. Koroviev and Azazello), the character of the devil – Woland is wearing hooves, and the Cat Behemoth is a black guy with the red Mohawk dressed in some kind of leather corset and a shaggy trench coat, everything else falls in place. The actors were outstanding but Patrick DuLaney who played Woland was on par with the Russian actors who played this role in the movie versions of the Master and Margarita. He was able to convey Woland's millenniums-old age, his exhaustion with life, his disgust with people which could only be defeated by the true love and selfless sacrifice. Julane Havens as Margarita was also very impressive, as a sensitive, sensual, defenseless but determined woman ready to sacrifice everything just to be with Master. The actress who played Hella gets a special mention, nice job keeping every male eye locked on the stage!
I also would like to specifically praise the costume and stage design. The Soviet people are all dressed in the same gray uniforms lovingly adorned by red stars; even their underwear is gray (as was revealed later and you missed it). I also liked the use of projection screens.
During the show I (illegally) made a few videos, sorry, serious-looking-bearded-usher-guy, I didn't spend years in the KGB school in the USSR to be told what to do by the Man.
(By the way, in the bottom part of these videos you'll see a jackass who didn't feel it was necessary to take his stupid hat off in the theater; maybe the usher should have concerned himself with this view-obstructing clown instead of making sure I can't record a low-quality video.)
After the show I overheard one lady ask her friend if she enjoyed the show, "it was too weird" was the reply. It's hard to convey the whole complexity of the book on the stage to an unprepared viewer, but to people who understood it was an amazing effort worthy of a professional venue.
P.S. Alan Scherstuhl is my new Facebook friend on the condition that I will never have to pronounce his last name.


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Our Philosophy
We believe
- Ames Middle School students and staff have the responsibility to support a caring environment, promote a sense of belonging, and encourage learning experiences that develop self-esteem.
- Ames Middle School staff have the responsibility to meet the intellectual, social, physical, and emotional needs of sixth, seventh and eighth grade students.
- The needs of Ames Middle School students are best met within small communities of learners.
- Students and staff at Ames Middle School should respect the uniqueness of each individual and work cooperatively.
- Parent and community involvement is integral to a successful school program.
- Diverse teaching strategies empower teachers and students to create a flexible learning environment.
- An interdisciplinary approach to instruction has great value.
- Students should be encouraged to become responsible for their own behavior, learning, and citizenship in a democratic society in preparation for integration into the global community.
- The Ames Middle School educational program emphasizes both the skills development and the understanding of the content necessary to promote lifelong learning.
Developed by Ames Middle School Staff
Fall, 1993. Revised Spring 2005.


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Old faces
Went to a high school teacher's retirement party today. (Is that what you call those things?)
A year or so back we had heard she'd be retiring right around now, so I decided to keep in touch in case anything special would be organized. She was our Latin teacher, and her classes were definitely among the most fun ones. It was an optional subject, so everything was very laid back. Open-book tests, anecdotes, watching mythology-inspired Disney movies. And she herself was "the sweetest little grandma", never strict and always peppy.
Managed to get five people total to show up, which is three more than I had originally expected. It was nice seeing her again (though it doesn't look like she's aged much at all, guess she can't get any older) and she was a bit surprised to see old students of her show up. Apparently she wasn't allowed to invite any, but we sort of invited ourselves.
Amazing how quite a few teachers still remembered most of us by name. Guess you get a knack for that when you have to memorize hands full of new names every single year. Always makes me feel a bit guilty when I can't quite remember theirs.
Also a shame how the barbecue was teacher-only, but what can you do.
~ Fang


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For days the whispers have been getting louder, and that sinking feeling in our stomachs has been getting stronger. Only three days ago on this very site, I mentioned a tribute to our darling llama Juan Martin, who's been out of commission for way too long and needs to get well better soon! The rumours the damage was more intense have been circulating for a while now and today it was confirmed – Delpo will be having wrist surgery today, and could possibly be out for the rest of the season.
For this lady on Court Thirteen, my first live encounter with the Llanky Llama was at the AO 2009 quarterfinal. While Fed didn't give the boy much of a chance, it was the first time I'd seen him play, and I found him to be quite the adorable one. He went home that night, but I hadn't forgotten him, and watched like a proud Mama on my little Livescore box that morning in September. (USO sucks for time differences, I don't think I've watched a match in years – just FYI). At Kooyong this year, the clever ladies at Court Thirteen in charge of scheduling (here's looking at you, @Laypesh) decided we would attend on day one rather than day two.
Let us now be grateful to the genius of L, who ensured that we saw JMDP in what was to be his only appearance at Kooyong before pulling out to save the wrist – THAT GODDAMN WRIST. That same wrist that had him struggle to Blake over in Hiisense, while poor Mama was only metres away in RLA, watching Juzzy and Lena battle it out in the Round 2 QF. Thanks to the Australian Open iPhone app, we were able to ascertain he'd despatched Jimbo and were certain he'd make it all the way down.
Alas twas not to be, and one gorgeous summer afternoon at Hiisense, the boy showed Marin he just didn't have the stamina anymore. He headed home with his wrist in tatters, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of him since.
Here are ten reasons you should all grab your prayerbooks and hope for a speedy recovery for Mr Juan Martin:
10. He's a little llanky llama with awesome delts.
9. Adorable half smile on said llama face.
8. His heavily accented English gives good presser.
7. His Spanish gives even better presser.
6. Oh yeah, he plays tennis too.
5. And he's not too bad at the sport, if I may say so myself.
4. He managed to beat Rafa in a grand slam, and, even more importantly, stayed off the shitlist. Cos we love Delpo.
3. He beat Roger Federer.
2. He beat Roger Federer, in a grand slam.
1. He beat Roger Federer, in a grand slam final.
How can you not love the guy?
Get well better soon, Juan Martin!
Note: Pics copyright by my not-so-talented-self and the lovely M.


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Sunday, February 27, 2011
The Subjection of Women
The Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill (and Harriet Taylor Mill?)
John Stuart Mill, it turns out, was a feminist. His wife, Harriet Taylor, probably gave him some of the ideas for this book; she way well have helped him write it.
While Mary Wollstonecraft tried to convince her audience that women would become better if they were treated better, Mill asserted that it didn't matter whether or not women as clever or as moral as men; being human beings, they should have equal rights regardless of individual qualities.
I enjoyed reading this book, and actually finished it a few weeks ago, but I'm afraid I haven't got anything terribly worthwhile to say about it. It's a good selection for this years Feminist Classics project, though, and you should read it. The edition I read was quite helpful and included a collection of reactions from Mill's contemporaries, though I would have liked to see information on Harriet Taylor as well.
Posted by Jean at 3:20 PM No comments:
Week 9: All Clear
All Clear, by Connie Willis
I zoomed through this second half of the story that started in Blackout. Three historians are trapped in London during the Blitz--or is it four? And is the reason that they're trapped because the space-time continuum has been damaged, or something else that they haven't thought of?
The story is riveting, and Willis jumps between about six different viewpoints to give you little pieces of the puzzle. The author's tendency to take a very, very long time to tell her story is evident here, but the ride is awfully enjoyable, so don't mind. It's very worth the time.
All the talk of Agatha Christie novels put me in the mood to read a few, and to re-read (for the zillionth time) Willis' time-travel comedy, To Say Nothing of the Dog.
Posted by Jean at 2:54 PM No comments:
Week 9: We've Got Issues
We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, by Judith Warner
Judith Warner started out to write a rant about the overdiagnosis and overmedication of children in this degenerate age of pressure to perform. She was going to denounce perfectionistic parents who gave their normal, if boisterious, children drugs in order to get better grades out of them or give them an edge in a competitive world. The trouble was, she discovered that the story everyone knows isn't actually true. So We've Got Issues is her effort at documenting the actual state of modern child psychiatry--and I'd recommend it to anyone struggling with these difficult issues.
We hear a lot of things like "Kids didn't have ADHD or bipolar disorder when we were kids!"--but that's not really true. A lot of children were simply labeled stupid or bad or delinquent. Children with severe mental issues were not seen because they were often simply institutionalized--for years at a time--and given Haldol or other strong tranquilizers; if they stayed at home, they did not usually attend school. They were invisible, but they existed. Now they are much more visible, so it seems as though this is a new problem that must be caused by a sick society or bad parents, but that is not the case at all.
That isn't to say that things are wonderful now. Most children who suffer from mental disorders are not treated, or are not treated well. The psychiatric profession has undermined its own credibility by getting too friendly with drug companies. There has been a lot of progress, but boy is there a long way to go. Still, Warner's descriptions of new treatments offer a lot of hope, if we can just figure out a way to get the treatments to the people who need them.
Warner's chapters on parents' struggles to help their children interested me a lot. We talk about parents who go for the easy fix, who drug their children so they won't have to parent them, but in fact the vast majority of parents will go to superhuman efforts to help their children and will only accept medications as a last, hated, resort. It was really interesting to me to see that Warner's data confirmed my own experience that mothers are very reluctant to medicate but will eventually accept it, while fathers really hate it and will often simply refuse to engage at all.
There was also quite a bit about the tendency to blame parents for their child's problems. It's very easy to believe that the only reason a child would develop ADHD or serious mental illness is because of bad parenting. This reaction seems to me to very often be a sort of superstition, or a defense mechanism; if you can believe that these problems only happen to kids with bad parents, they'll never happen to you, because you are (or would be) a good parent, which will keep you safe and in control of the world. This all sounds very familiar to me, because my daughter has severe food allergies, and it's quite common for people to assume that I'm either overprotective and making it up, or overprotective about hygiene, which causes the allergies. It's much less vicious in my case, but it's the same superstition. And yet the more scientific progress we make, the more we find out that allergies and mental problems both seem to have genetic components that interact with the environment in unpredictable ways.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Victorian Literature: Under the Greenwood Tree
Under the Greenwood Tree, by Thomas Hardy
This was recommended to me as the book to read if you want to read Hardy, but don't want your heart ripped to shreds and then stomped on. And in fact I'm glad I read it; it's a nice story, sweet but not overly so, and my heart survived intact.
The story concerns a resident of Mellstock village, one Dick Dewy, a young man who is quite ordinary. He falls in love with the village's schoolmistress, Miss Fancy Day--a bit above him on the social scale. The story of their courtship, with its stumbles and blocks, is interesting because they're both ordinary human beings with virtues and flaws. Fancy isn't really quite the angel Dick thinks she is, but we hope she learns from her mistakes.
This is my fourth Victorian book, so I'm done with the "Sense and Sensibility" category! Yay me.
This was recommended to me as the book to read if you want to read Hardy, but don't want your heart ripped to shreds and then stomped on. And in fact I'm glad I read it; it's a nice story, sweet but not overly so, and my heart survived intact.
The story concerns a resident of Mellstock village, one Dick Dewy, a young man who is quite ordinary. He falls in love with the village's schoolmistress, Miss Fancy Day--a bit above him on the social scale. The story of their courtship, with its stumbles and blocks, is interesting because they're both ordinary human beings with virtues and flaws. Fancy isn't really quite the angel Dick thinks she is, but we hope she learns from her mistakes.
This is my fourth Victorian book, so I'm done with the "Sense and Sensibility" category! Yay me.
Posted by Jean at 2:44 PM No comments:
Week 8: Blackout
Blackout, by Connie Willis
I love Connie Willis' time travel books, which posit a future where Oxford historians travel back in time to study the past. No objects can be carried into the future, and it's a relatively new science that sometimes has unexpected issues arise. So there are no commercial interests; time travel is just for historians with a penchant for discomfort and danger. Willis' previous major time-travel books are Doomsday Book (excellent, very very sad) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (a Victorian comedy with lots of in-jokes about 30's mysteries).
In Blackout, several different historians are in England during the early days of World War II. The story bounces between Dover/Dunkirk, a country manor filled with refugees, London under the Blitz, and a couple of other locations that are a little more mysterious. The historians find themselves trapped, unable to get back to their own Oxford, and the story stops right in the middle because Blackout is really just the first half of a giant novel that got divided in two. The second half, All Clear, is now available and I'm going to go pick it up from the library today! I put off reading Blackout so I wouldn't have to agonize, as I saw many people doing last year when it came out.
Willis is fascinated with the Blitz and WWII, and she really pours a lot of work into this book, making it as realistic and detailed as possible. It's a nice long novel, hard to put down and well worth reading.
Posted by Jean at 1:02 PM No comments:
Week 8: After the Quake
After the Quake, by Haruki Murasaki
Murasaki is an eminent surrealist Japanese novelist, and I've had some of his books for years, and I mean to read them this year. So I got this particular book from the library; it's not one of the ones I own at all. This is a collection of short stories, all set soon after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The earthquake is nearly always kind of incidental to the stories here. There is a girl who likes bonfires. A man raised in a cult that calls him the son of God spends a day tailing someone he thinks might be his father. Another man meets a giant talking frog who asks for his help in saving Tokyo. That one was my favorite.
I will be reading more Murakami.
Labels: 52 books, read around the world
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Week 7: People of the Book
People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
I've read a couple of Geraldine Brooks' nonfiction books about women's lives in the Middle East, and I was curious to see what she would do in a novel. This is an art history/literature mystery novel, which I always enjoy if it isn't all Da Vinci Code-y. It's definitely a cut (or two) above Dan Brown, and I really liked it.
The plot centers around a real illuminated book: the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest known Jewish medieval books, which was made in Spain before Ferdinand and Isabella threw all the Jews out in 1492. It eventually ended up in Sarajevo, where it has twice been saved from destruction by Muslim librarians, so it is a national symbol of tolerance as well as one of the most valued books in the Bosnian collection.
Brooks takes all the known history of the Haggadah and makes up a story for it, alternating between the protagonist, Hanna--an Australian book conservator--and chapters that move progressively further back in the book's history. Although Hanna is somewhat difficult to like, it's a pretty good story.
I've read a couple of Geraldine Brooks' nonfiction books about women's lives in the Middle East, and I was curious to see what she would do in a novel. This is an art history/literature mystery novel, which I always enjoy if it isn't all Da Vinci Code-y. It's definitely a cut (or two) above Dan Brown, and I really liked it.
The plot centers around a real illuminated book: the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest known Jewish medieval books, which was made in Spain before Ferdinand and Isabella threw all the Jews out in 1492. It eventually ended up in Sarajevo, where it has twice been saved from destruction by Muslim librarians, so it is a national symbol of tolerance as well as one of the most valued books in the Bosnian collection.
Brooks takes all the known history of the Haggadah and makes up a story for it, alternating between the protagonist, Hanna--an Australian book conservator--and chapters that move progressively further back in the book's history. Although Hanna is somewhat difficult to like, it's a pretty good story.
Posted by Jean at 1:22 PM 1 comment:
Labels: 52 books, read around the world
Week 7: At Home
At Home: a Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson
I've been looking forward to getting my hands on Bryson's new book, which is a sort of mish-mashy history of homes, comfort, and private life in general. It didn't disappoint me; although you can't trust him to be exactly accurate on every point, Bryson never fails to entertain and do some informing as well. His trademark style is pleasant to read and abounds in descriptive adverbs that add humor and interest. (Though I did feel that he used grimly an awful lot this time around.) Some of his favorites are cherishably, staggeringly, alluringly, and curiously.
Bryson's general plan is to wander through his Norfolk house--a former rectory--room by room, and write about topics that are generally connected with what the room is for. So in the dressing room, he talks about the cotton trade and corsets. The study, which is sometimes invaded, gets a long and horrifying discourse on mice, rats, and other critters, and the bathroom chapter features plenty of enthralling information about London sewers.
The house was built in 1851, the same year as the Great Exhibition, and that gets plenty of play, as well as anything else that happened in that eventful year. Although Bryson talks about homes in many periods of history, and wanders over to America at times, England in the Victorian era gets the most space, with the Georgians coming in second because they loved architecture so much. There's plenty to talk about, and it's a fun book.
The main result of reading it is to make you very, very grateful for your nice comfy bed, your central heating and modern plumbing, and your general lack of coal fires, arsenic-soaked wallpaper, and cholera plagues.
Posted by Jean at 1:00 PM 1 comment:
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Week 6: A Room With a View
A Room With a View, by E. M. Forster
It's a long time since I read about Lucy and George, and I felt like revisiting them. And you know what, this book is just lovely to read. It's well-written and interesting and full of undercurrents to think about.
It put me in the mood to watch the movie again too!
Posted by Jean at 12:37 PM 2 comments:
Labels: 52 books, classics, read around the world
Week 6: Dectection Unlimited
Detection Unlimited, by Georgette Heyer
I love to read Heyer's Regency novels, and I love cozy British mysteries, so of course I wanted to read Heyer's mysteries. They were well-regarded, but this one was terrible. I'm quite disappointed. It took me days to slog through, it wasn't interesting, and it was hard to tell half the characters apart. Don't bother, find something else to read!
Posted by Jean at 12:25 PM No comments:
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Take a Chance: Are Women Human?
Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers
This choice was generated by "What Shall I Read Next?", a website that will recommend books to you based on the last thing you read. I entered War in Heaven, by Charles Williams, and this short book of Sayers essays was on the list, which consisted mainly of titles by Inklings.
The title is, of course, a bit ironic. There are only two essays in the book, both asserting that women are simply human beings, just as men are, and that therefore they should be treated no differently. Each has personhood as an individual, and assigning classifications is utterly pointless except for the most transient purposes.
The essays are nicely witty and pointed in the usual Sayers style, and very worth reading. I'd never heard of them before, so I'm glad that the Take a Chance challenge pointed me to the book. Maybe for my next choice for this challenge, I ought to try to move out of England!
Posted by Jean at 8:00 PM No comments:
Labels: Take a Chance
Friday, February 4, 2011
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
I read this for my American history project, but I figure it counts as Victorian literature too!
Uncle Tom's Cabin was written as anti-slavery propaganda for white Northerners who, I suppose, didn't know much about the realities of slavery. It was a huge success and was very influential for the abolitionist cause, though now its Victorian sentimentality comes off as melodramatic and overdone. Uncle Tom, who was written as a Christ figure, has gotten something of an unfortunate reputation as a weak and servile character. (Yes, he's not very realistic, but neither is anyone else!) "Uncle Tom" became a stock character in minstrel shows, with little resemblance to Stowe's virtuous Christian protagonist.
As a novel, the characters are types and the whole thing comes off as unlikely. But accuracy wasn't the point anyway; she wanted to inflame feeling against slavery and so she succeeded at her task.
Interestingly, for much of the novel, slave owners are depicted as more virtuous than you might expect--certainly better than real slave narratives of the time showed. Nearly all of the slave owners are kind, well-meaning people; I suppose so that the targeted white readers would sympathize with them and not feel attacked, and so that Stowe could make one of her main points: no matter how kind an owner was, a slave could never feel safe. Those kind owners fall into debt, or hardship, or they get angry or they die, and then all the nice promises are meaningless if they aren't backed up with legal documentation. And anyhow, everyone would prefer freedom in poverty to slavery in comfort. So she wanted to really emphasize that even when slavery was used in an "ideal" way, as slave-owners often insisted was nearly always the case, it was still an awful system. I think she didn't want to give anyone a way to say "Well, if we just curb the abuses, it would work,"--she wanted to show that even the best possible case was hopelessly corrupt and wrong.
The book is full of unusually well-treated slaves brought up with educations by their owners (not usually their actual parents, for the separation of families is a major theme), who are then sold off to fates unknown. The plight of women is of particular concern; Stowe makes the girls' expected destinies very clear--though of course she never says anything outright. Her female characters are the ones who courageously figure out ways to run away from slavery and save their children, while Uncle Tom stays behind to bear the consequences. He could run, but he chooses not to in order to save others.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is really worth reading for the insight it provides into pre-Civil War America. I don't really think it's a work of great literature, but that wasn't what Stowe was trying to do. Reading it with its context and goal in mind is the way to do it. (Which puts me in mind of The Pilgrim's Progress, another popular classic that is classic because it was popular and hugely influential, not because it's a great literary work.)
For a realistic look at slavery, I would recommend the two classic autobiographical works Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
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Is it too late now to say sorry?
Ben A. Pruchnie, Getty Images
Is it too late now to say sorry?
Justin Bieber's newly unveiled wax figure inside London's Madame Tussauds museum attempts to recreate a performance by the Biebs where he's singing and dancing to his Skrillex and Bloodpop-produced song "Sorry," and while it does bizarrely resemble the pop star, there's something about his facial expression that screams a sadness. And to make matters
better worse, he's ******* and forced to take selfies with overzealous Beliebers. (Justin Bieber Cancels Tour Meet & Greets, Says They're 'Mentally And Emotionally' Exhausting).
From Madame Tussauds:
"The limited run experience will literally make it rain, with soaked dancers joining Bieber's likeness as his anthem, 'Sorry', belts out in an energy packed performance worthy of one of the world's most celebrated entertainers. The 22 year old singing sensation's figure is *******, showing a toned torso off to perfection, with Bieber's trademark tattoos also carefully recreated and wearing dropcrotch shorts and tartan long johns, accompanied by a white bandana."
This is perhaps why Justin Bieber was seen running around Amsterdam in a "disguise."
Better luck next time!
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