text:
In Jerusalem and Other Poems1997-2017Tamim Al-Barghouti
published 2017 6" x 9" • 80 pagesISBN 9781566560238 • paperback • $15.00 •
Whether lyrical, narrative, or allegorical, whether about the chess game or Jerusalem, these poems continually surprise us with their images, insights, and juxtapositions. The poet scoops up the everyday and hitches the freight to a broader social and historical memory. Al-Barghoutis is an educated imagination. Sharif S. Elmusa, poet, scholar, and translator
Tamim al-Barghoutis poetry rings with irony, fury, scorn, and despair, as well as moments of tender sympathy. Like a tragic chorus who see and tell of what they see as truthfully as they can, he fashions the historical injustices and daily trials of existence as a Palestinian-Egyptian into varied poetic forms. Drawing from classical Arabic literary tradition, he revisits and re-invents fable, satire, philosophical dialogue, parody, prophecy, elegy, and lyricism; and the results flash with wonderfully original, often witty, mordant fantasy. This collection of his writing in translation is very welcome. He is celebrated all over the Arab world for his charismatic performances, and although something is lost in translation herethe excitement of the original Arabic sounds and rhymes and rhythmsthe translations resonate with his uniquely forthright voice, as he witnesses and critiques the relentless destruction of justice and freedom in the Middle East today. In the steps of Mahmoud Darwish, Al-Barghouti is remembering the role of poetry in building the country of words, where language puts up a resistance, history and reality tilt, and an alternative world can be imagined.Marina Warner, novelist and scholar
Born in 1977, Tamim Al-Barghouti is probably one of the most widely read Palestinian poets of his generation. His poetry readings are attended by thousands, sometimes packing stadiums and amphitheaters. The reception of his poetry among a diverse audience from various backgrounds and age groups is a testimony to the vitality of the centuries-old tradition of classical Arabic poetry. The poems in this collection were written in Cairo, Ramallah, Amman, Washington, DC and Berlin between 1997 and 2017.
In 2007, Al-Barghouti's long poem "In Jerusalem," which describes an aborted journey to the city, became something of a street poem. Palestinian newspapers dubbed Al-Barghouti "The Poet of Jerusalem." To this day, his posters hang on the streets of Jerusalem and other Palestinian cities, where key chains are sold with his picture on them. Sections of the poem have even become ring-tones blaring out from cell phones across the Arab world, and children compete in memorizing and reciting it. "In Jerusalem" and other poems by Al-Barghouti have also had millions views on various TV Channels as well as on the internet, winning the poet an exceptional celebrity status in the Arab World.
On the January 26, 2011, one day after the Egyptian Revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, Al-Barghouti wrote the lyrical poem "Hanet"; its Arabic title roughly translates as "It's Close." With the internet down, he faxed the poem to a Cairo newspaper, copies of which were distributed in Tahrir Square. Soon after, Al-Jazeera TV Channel broadcast a recording of it and a video of his reading was projected in the Square every couple of hours on makeshift screens.
Tamim Al-Barghouti published six poetry collections in both colloquial and classical Arabic, including Meejana (1999), Al-Manzar "The Scene" (2000), Maqam Iraq (2005), Fil Quds "In Jersualem" (2008) and Ya Masr Hanet (2012), and two academic books on Arab politics and history. He received his PhD in political science from Boston University in 2004, and has since taught at Georgetown University, the Free University in Berlin, and the American University in Cairo. He was also a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Studies 2007-2008. A columnist since 2003, writing in Egyptian and Lebanese dailies, Al-Barghouti has been associated with the 2011 uprisings, and with political activism in Egypt and Palestine. He is currently based in Beirut and works at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia.
Interlink Books
Media Reviews
Al-Barghouti has established himself as a master of Arabic language and historyan achievement unmatched in his generation of literati. Al-Ahram Weekly
Submit a Review »


text:
Y'know, there's some awesome stuff in here and I'm afraid I just don't compare But I'm gonna post anyways, just to see what happens. Hopefully constructive criticism, but we'll see.
Anyways. The Evil DJ is a recurring character in our corner of the Brikverse; why is he Evil? It's not his lack of violence (such units quickly become Zombies or trash-can fodder) and it's not for being too violent, if there is such a thing (doubtful.) Nope. The Evil DJ does atrocities that make Heetlur shudder in his sleep, thae horrible crimes that Satan wishes he could do.
Evil DJ plays Rick Astley at 2 in the morning with the amps turned up to Eleven.
Sooo, I thought I'd share his shiny new AmpMobile, which he intends to use for just this purpose.
The Evil DJ (Right) and AmpMobile. I wonder what the radio is for.
From the rear, showing off the main B.A.A. and engine (underneath)
A view of the cockpit (as it were), showing the turntable, the lab top, a martini glass, and a few other scanty details here and there.
Notes: Obviously, I need moar light, but there's some lamps sitting around somewhere so all I need to do is find them. I'd like some better goodies underneath, though I think I did a decent job obscuring the ugly lazy bits.
Why no, it doesn't have wheels. This is intentional, as is the scant decor up top. Wheels are a bit of a pain in the sizes I have them, so I rarely bother for smaller vehicles like this. The lack of detail up top makes it easier to board, since there's less space taken up by greebles.
What's your opinion?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
May 17, 2005
MEDFORD, Mass. - Forty-nine players from 24 teams were named to the 2005 All-New England First, Second and Third teams it was announced by the New England Intercollegiate Baseball Association (NEIBA), Tuesday afternoon. The Engineers garnered two selections as Wayne Duggan was named to the Second Team and Kyle Zeller secured a spot on the Third Team.
Duggan and Zeller's appointment marked the second time in team history that MIT has featured two players on the All-New England team. Peter Hintregger and Ian Sommerville completed the feat for the Engineers in 1993, while Joel Morales was the last Tech player to fill a spot on the all-star squad after getting the nod in 1996.
The Cardinal and Gray continue its season with its first appearance in the ECAC Championships since 1996. MIT topped the 20-win plateau for just the third time ever this season, and locked up the No. 5 seed for the regional tournament. The Engineers travel to
ECAC Championship Seeds
Bridgewater State St. Joseph College Curry College Endicott College
Keene State Babson College Brandeis University


text:
March 8, 2008
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Behind eight place-winners and a plethora of school records, MIT women's track and field recorded its best finish ever at the ECAC Division III Championships, as the Engineers finished second overall out of 51 scoring teams. Moravian College topped the standings with 56 points, followed by MIT with 42.5, and Bates which was third with 42; scoring was tight at the top as second through seventh places were within just 5.5 points.
Tech led the competition after 16 events and the fifty-plus teams that scored points over the two days picked up additional points in the final five races, but only the winner could tally enough points to pass the Engineers. MIT boasted a record number of qualifiers for the ECAC Championships this year while the large entry roster contributed the big points needed to be at the top of the final rankings.
Capping her season in the thrower's circle, senior Aline Thomas achieved her second personal best and second NCAA provisional qualifier of the weekend on Saturday after placing fourth in weight throw. Her spin of 50'7.25" added nearly two feet to her best and makes her only the second Engineer to crest 50' in the event. In the shot put on Friday, Thomas tossed a personal-best 42'2".
Amy Magnuson contributed massive points to the MIT attack and delivered new records in both the hurdles and long jump. After leading the qualifiers from the prelims behind an Institute-record 8.15 in the 55-meter hurdles, Magnuson shattered the school and meet record during finals with a clip of 8.04. Despite the sensational performance, Magnuson finished in second as the winning time of 7.98 turned in by Sumer Rohrs of Frostburg State sparked the two fastest times in the nation this season.
Magnuson closed her weekend another record in the long jump. She spanned 17'6" en route to fourth place, as well as eclipsed Nalini Gupta's school-best jump of 17'3.75 from 2004. On Friday, Magnuson finished 20th in the triple jump, bouncing out 34'3".
Junior Andrea Bradshaw pulled the Institute 800m mark down another tick in a strong third-place finish. Her final time of 2:16.89 marked her fourth re-write to the event this season.
Bradshaw was part of another record-setting performance on Friday, as her split in the 800m set-up Jacqui Wentz's anchor mile leg in the distance medley relay. Adrienne Bolger and Leanne Veldhuis ignited the Engineers' NCAA provisional run as MIT finished third in 12:17.06.
In addition to Bradshaw, Wentz and Veldhuis returned for individual events on Saturday. Wentz picked up two important points with a seventh-place finish in the mile (5:12.26) and Veldhuis placed 12th in the 600 at 1:20.15.
Emily Hwang completed the scoring for MIT on Friday with a third place tie in the pole vault after clearing 11'0.75". Karen Fisher scaled a personal best 10' 6.75" and tied for 12th.
The indoor season ends with the NCAA Championships next weekend, with only Magnuson a guaranteed entry at this point, as provisional qualifiers will have to wait a few days for the selection process.


text:
Commodities are something many investors can relate to. What's not to like about gold, crude oil or cocoa?
Some commodities have been on a tear in recent months, while others not so much. In fact, the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index, a global commodity benchmark tracking 19 commodities that are mostly U.S. traded, was down about 7 percent in 2011.
In 2010, the CRB index rose by 15 percent compared with a 13 percent gain for the S&P 500. Several individual commodities continue to greatly outperform the broader market year-to-date, affecting equities and indexes particularly exposed to fluctuating commodity prices.
CNBC's analytics team compiled a list of the 10 best and worst performing commodities in the CRB index for this year, based on the closing prices on Dec. 28.
By Giovanny Moreano
Posted 30 December 2011


text:
communications and other stuff
Labels: What if
posted by james @ 9/08/2008 02:03:00 pm
0 Comments
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home
Hey there. Thanks for stopping by and looking at my blog.
I'm interested in brands, brand experiences of all kinds, creativity and that sort of thing. so this blog mostly deals with that.
What else? I'm a senior creative working for a UK charity. I've recently become a dad.
I'm a member of 26. I collect rubbish signs. I also dabble in a bit of fiction writing when I get the chance.
Hope you like pushes emotional buttons, thankyaverymuch.
View my complete profile
Subscribe toPosts [Atom]


text:
YOUR Evening Chronicle can now announce the shortlist for the first ever Community Champions Awards.
In September, we asked you to put forward the selfless souls who make Tyneside a better place to live so we could give them recognition as part of our new awards.
You responded by naming dozens of individuals for the nine categories in the awards – from Champion Child of Courage to Armed Forces Champion.
Our panel had a tough job whittling down the nominations but now we can reveal those who have been short-listed.Related content
The lucky nominees have been invited to a glittering awards ceremony on Thursday, November 22, at the County Thistle Hotel in Newcastle.
In our Champion Child of Courage category, sponsored by Northumbrian Water, brave Ashington six-year-old Archie Anderson is in the running.
The schoolboy, who suffers from cerebral palsy, flew to America for a major operation called selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) to correct his legs so he can play out with his friends.
Little Chloe Metcalfe's story also touched our judges hearts. Chloe, seven, from Consett, County Durham, suffers from an extremely rare genetic condition which has left her partially sighted and unable to walk.
Professor Josef Vormoor has been shortlisted in the Champion Health Worker category.
The Chairman of Child Health at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary is involved with the Sir James Spence Institute and has seen the unit become one of Europe's leading centres into research into the treatment of childhood cancers.
In the Armed Forces Champion category, sponsored by G4S, Sergeant Dan Henderson, of Gateshead's Ryton, has made the cut.
He saved his colleagues from almost certain death when he spotted a Taliban roadside bomb while serving out in Afghanistan.
In the Community Champion Award, sponsored by Newcastle Institute for Renewal, cancer survivor Joanne Smith is in the running. The mum-of-three set up the Gateshead-based charity FACT (Fighting All Cancers Together).
Ashleigh Smithson, regional events manager with the Evening Chronicle Events Team, said: "Congratulations to all of the finalists of the Community Champion Awards 2012, I know that it was extremely difficult to select a shortlist.
"But after a lot of deliberation I am sure that the awards really will reflect the North East's Community Champions."


text:
Aug 23, 2011
With the new Porsche Boxster Spyder, Porsche is introducing a new lighter version of the mid-engine roadster Porsche Boxster at the 2009 Salon in Los Angeles in December, the specification of distinctive style and techniques that represent the true , purest form of the Porsche sports car - easy, powerful, open roofs, and very effective.
This is precisely the formula already used in the creation of the most successful sports and racing cars throughout the history of Porsche, from the legendary Porsche 550 Spyder in 1950 for the RS Spyder Le Mans Prototype car if successful in Motorsports today.
The new model range has become the third version of the Boxster, Boxster and Boxster S, which combines, but it stands out clearly at first sight, other versions are equipped with mid-roadster, simply because the Spyder has been developed primarily for use outdoors. Low, soft light spreads far behind and is intended to protect drivers and passengers in the bright sun, wind and rain. When closed, the soft one measure of extra-low side windows and two unique bulges is a striking piece of the back door, stretched, and has an elegant silhouette reminds Porsche Carrera GT.


text:
"With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization. May be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the life of the men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come and almost all outwards things will be different because of what they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. May be that in ten to twenty years from now that if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but agree with George - that automobiles had no business to be invented."
- From the Orson Welles film, "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)
Sunday, June 24, 2012
"With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization."
at 6:40 PM Posted by Gary
2 comments:
- Mr. Homegrown said...
fWow. Got to get around to seeing the rest of this movie.
- August 27, 2012 at 10:27 AM
A friend and I were discussing this topic the other day. I agree with the concept that while the automobile is a "liberating" technology in some ways, it is also a profoundly antisocial technology which exacerbates sociopathic tendencies. Think about all of the POWER given to people by a machine which also largely isolates you from other human beings.
- September 18, 2012 at 2:30 PM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Space-Savers for Small Closets
Small city apartments often come with equally tiny closets, but with a few tricks, tools, and a little discipline, you can make the most of every last inch. Here are a few of my favorite tools for maximizing even the smallest closet space.
1. Elfa Shelving System from the Container Store
A good closet system is the best investment you can make when it comes to making the most of limited closet space. (Platinum elfa reach in pictured.)
2. Handbag File from Amazon, $10
This handbag file makes use of vertical space and serves the double purpose of protecting the bags.
3. Huggable Hangers, set of 34, from Target, $17
Huggable hangers will quite literally double your available space. They are slim, stackable and nonslip.
4. Universal Bookends from Amazon, $5.40
Universal bookends are perfect for holding bags and clutches upright on a shelf.
5. Over the Door Organizer from West Elm, $79
A multipurpose over the door organizer can be used to make the most of the space, however you see fit.
6. Box with Compartments from IKEA, $10
A lightweight, compartmentalized box can serve as a makeshift drawer and be stacked on closet shelves.
7. Vertical Organizer from IKEA, $8
The perfect vertical organizer for a scarf collection.
8. Shelf Organizer from Brylane Home, $30
Touted as a "Parking lot for purses," this organizer is sized to fit a regular shelf.
9. Double Hang Closet Rod from Wayfair, $12.11
An easy, non-permanent way to double existing rod space.
10. Pant Hanger from Bed Bath and Beyond, $7
A tiered hanger streamlines pant storage.


text:
|See more photos
The first weekend in August, my husband and I visited documenta 13 in Kassel. The amount of art, live performances, and film on offer at documenta 13 is simply overwhelming, so we picked out a few artists whose work we definitely wanted to see and saw a number of other interesting works incidentally while wandering through the installation spaces.
My husband, being a conservation biologist, was interested in American artist Claire Pentecost's installation of soil shaped like gold bars at the Ottoneum. The concept of soil being as valuable as gold is very relevant to our times as we enter the post-oil era. (b. 1956, artist profile) (artist website)
I happily stood in line for ages to get into the William Kentridge (b. 1955) installation "The Refusal of Time" (2012) in the Hauptbahnhof North Wing. Kentridge's animation has been highly influential – one can see the influence in the charcoal animations of Japanese experimental animator Naoyuki Tsuji, for example (see: Angel). "The Refusal of Time" is projected on 5 screens with a mechanical machine in the middle. It explores the various ways humanity has tried to capture time: metronomes, pressurized clocks, time zones, music, and so on. There were elements of animation (stop motion, drawn) and live action with Kentridge himself even appearing in some scenes. It is a complex work and I wish I could have spent the whole day in the installation just to be able to take in the diverse elements at work in it. Learn more about the installation in this interview with the artist.
Also high on my list of things to see were the paintings of Canadian artist Emily Carr (1871-1945, CBC article) on display at the Neue Gallerie. I had previously only seen a couple of her paintings in person at the McMichael Gallery in Ontario. It is such a different experience to see her work in person than reprinted in books – they create a certain atmosphere that is hard to put into words. The seven paintings on display were of her later work and the influences of Fauvism and Cubism were very evident. Dark and hauntingly beautiful pieces.
As much as I love Emily Carr, she seemed a bit out of place in the documenta. She seemed to have been selected to balance out the two Australian artists sharing a room with her – Margaret Preston (1875-1963) and Gordon Bennett (b.1955) – whose work is also influenced by aboriginal art. All three were surrounded by conceptual and installation art – which represents the bulk of documenta works. The neighbouring room, for example, featured the work of Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967), which was perhaps the most popular installation at the documenta. "Leaves of Grass" has been featured widely on magazine covers and newspaper articles – it has mass appeal not only because of the immensity of the project but also because of the popular subject matter: pictures cut from 5 decades of Life magazine (see Guardian review). The link to Carr is that Farmer is also from British Columbia and attended the art college named after her – but it terms of style and subject matter these two could not be more different.
Japan was represented at documenta 13 by Shinro Ohtake (b. 1955, official website). Ohtake is known as a collector from his ongoing series of "Scrap Books" (1977-) to the strange collages and ephemera decorating the "I Love Yu" Bathhouse in Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture (article). Ohtake's "Mon Cheri: A Self Portrait as a Scrapped Shed" installation in Karlsaue Park shares much in common with the "I Love Yu" Bathhouse. "Mon Cheri" is an example of a "snack bar" – the kind of hut one might find frequented by eccentric locals at an off-the-beaten track seaside town. The neon sign was apparently found by Ohtake ten years ago and the Scrapped Shed was inspired by a defunct snack bar in Uwajima.
We could hear the Mon Cheri snack bar before we could see it as we traversed through the expansive grounds of Karlsaue Park. At first the music was tinny and difficult to recognize, but as we got closer the song changed and I heard the familiar strains of Kyu Sakamoto's rendition of the Jimmy Jones hit "Good Timin'." The snack bar has been installed under an impressively huge tree, and boats of various kinds are strewn around the bar on the ground and in the tree. There is also a small caravan next to the snack bar. The snack bar is covered with newspaper and magazine clippings from both Japan and Germany. The bar was wall-to-wall with a collection of junk from bicycle tires to a guitar and even miniature video screens displaying abstract videos.
The junk in the tree caused a number of German commentators to suggest that this was a reference to the devastating tsunami of March 2011, but the title of the installation suggested to me that this was a much too literal interpretation. As a self portrait, it seemed to me that the artist sees himself as being formed from the random detritus of popular and disposable artifacts of modern culture. One could detect a sense of humour in the way in which the objects and clippings had been assembled – Ohtake appears to both love all this junk and be aware that all these things are simply fleeting in their nature.
Judge for yourself by checking out my photo album of Ohtake's installation.
documenta 13 runs until September 16.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
31 August 2012
Japan in Germany 9: Shinro Ohtake at documenta 13
27 August 2012
Hiroshima International Animation Festival 2012
The biannual Hiroshima InternationalAnimation Festival 2012 came to a conclusion today. The final competition consisted of 66 works selected from 2,110 entries from around the world. The international jury included Aleksandra Korejwo (Poland), Igor Kovalyov (USA), Irina Margolina (Russia), Kosei Ono (Japan), and Marv Newland (Canada) – whose classic film Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969) was screened on 16mm at my 10th birthday party and had a profound effect on me ;) The international honorary president of the festival was Peter Lord of Aardman. A selection of Lord's works were also screened at the festival.
The winners are as follows:
Grand Prize
I Saw Mice Burying a Cat (Dmitry Geller, China, 2011)
Hiroshima Prize
Kali, the Little Vampire (Regina Pessoa, Portugal/France/Canada, Switzerland, 2012)
Debut Prize
Sticky Ends (Osman Cerfon, France, 2010)
Renzo Kinoshita Prize
Futon (Yoriko Mizushiri, Japan, 2012)
Audience Prize
Head Over Heels (Timothy Reckart, UK, 2012)
Special International Jury Prize
It's Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt, USA, 2011)
Ursus (Reinis Petersons, Latvia, 2011)
Sunday (Patrick Doyon, Canada, 2011)
Tram (Michaela Pavlátová, France, 2012)
Chinti (Natalia Mirzoyan, Russia, 2011)
Special Prize
two (Steven Subotnick, USA, 2011)
Howl (Natalie Bettelheim+Sharon Michaeli, Israel, 2011)
The Little Bird and the Leaf (Lena von Döhren, Switzerland, 2012)
The Great Rabbit (Atsushi Wada, France, 2011)
Muybridge's Strings (Koji Yamamura, Canada/Japan, 2011)
Read more about the winning films at the official website for Hiroshima 2012.
Seven works by Japanese artists made the official competition:
The Great Rabbit (Atsushi Wada, 2011) (read review)
Muybridge's Strings (Koji Yamamura, 2011) (read review)
The Light (Yuka Sukegawa, 2010)
Rain Town (Hiroyasu Ishida, 2011)
SPONCHOI Pispochoi (pecoraped, 2010)
Yonalure: Moment to Moment (Ayaka Nakata + Yuki Sakitani, 2011)
Futon (Yoriko Mizushiri, 2012)
In addition to the competition, this year's festival celebrated the 30th anniversary of ASIFA-JAPAN, which was founded by the co-founders of the Hiroshima festival – the current ASIFA president Sayoko Kinoshita and her late husband Renzo Kinoshita (read more about them). The ASIFA-JAPAN 30th Anniversary Special Program celebrated the works of its members through screenings of their animated works and an exhibition of objects related to their works including puppets, paintings, books, and installations.
I was deeply disappointed not to be able to attend the festival this year as there were many special presentations I would have loved to have seen: a Jiří Trnka Special Program to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth; an homage to the late Nobuhiro Aihara (see poster for this year's festival), whose works are so rarely screened outside of Japan; and a focus on animation from Norway. There was also an omnibus presentation of the best in recent world animation, a special on contemporary Japanese animation, a program for children, and a program on works by students. In a nod to the founding ethos of the festival, a selection of peace-themed films were also screened dedicated to "the spirit and the heart of Hiroshima."
cmmhotes 2012
22 August 2012
Ink Brush Animator Reiko Yokosuka
I first became aware of the beautiful ink brush animation of Reiko Yokosuka (横須賀令子) when I saw Kihachiro Kawamoto's renku animation Winter Days (2003). Yokosuka was one of several notable women animators (which I discussed in my Forum des Images postings earlier this year) to participate in the collaborative project. Her interpretation of stanza 24 by Yasui (1658-1743) is minimalist in comparison to the animations of Keita Kurosaka and Yuko Asano that precede and follow her. Delicate lines of black ink brushed onto washi paper flow gracefully across the screen transforming into a path on which a veiled lady in a broad hat walks. As it begins to rain, ghostly forms of bamboo appear behind her as she removes her hat and veil and closes her eyes to take in the elements. The vignette ends with the woman dancing in the wind, her long hair and kimono swirling around her as she transforms into a tree.
Yokosuka's animation style comes out of the tradition of sumi-e (brush painting) and she has experimented with the medium since her very first animated short Illusions (1981). Yokosuka was born and raised in the small city of Hitachinaka in Ibaraki Prefecture where she developed an interest in both the natural and supernatural with trees, mermaids, and the spirit world appearing regularly in her works (source). Growing up she was a fan of the female mangaka such as Ryoko Yamagishi (山岸 凉子, b. 1947), whose work often has occult themes, and the "founding mother" of modern shōjo manga Moto Hagio (萩尾 望都, b. 1949).
In 2003, Yokosuka participated in the Laputa Top 150 Japanese and World Animation poll where she revealed a fondness for an eclectic range of animation styles foreign and domestic, popular and alternative. Among the mainstream works that she listed were Horus: Prince of the Sun (Isao Takahata, 1968), Disney's Fantasia (1940), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki, 1984), the anime adaptation of Takashi Yanase's Ringing Bell (Masami Hata, 1978), and even Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996). Works she lists by her fellow alternative animators include: The Man Who Planted Trees (Frédéric Back, 1987), Hedgehog in the Fog (Yuri Norstein, 1975), Dojoji Temple (Kihachiro Kawamoto, 1976), Revolver (Jonas Odell/Stig Bergkvist/Marti Ekstrand/Lars Olsson, 1993), The Snowman (Dianne Jackson, 1982), The Restaurant of Many Orders (Tadanari Okamoto/Kihachiro Kawamoto, 1991), The Sand Castle (Co Hoedeman, 1977), ATAMA (Keita Kurosaka, 1994), PULSAR (Katsushi Boda, 1990), The Bead Game (Ishu Patel, 1977), Bavel's Book (Koji Yamamura, 1996).
In addition to ink brush on washi paper, Yokosuka has experimented animating with coloured pencils, pastels, watercolour, and even copper. Her works are quite difficult to track down, but fortunately the Sapporo Short Fest did a retrospective of her works in 2009 and posted sample clips from some of her films online:
A Piper (aka Crater Tree, 1987):
Movement (2003):
GAKI Biwa-Houshi (2005):
She also did a short short called Monban (Gatekeeper) for an animation omnibus sponsored by Open Yokohama which they posted earlier this year:
Yokosuka is currently based in Sapporo. For more information, check out her official homepage (JP only). I also just posted her profile on the Japanese Animation Filmography Project.
Bavel's Book (バベルの本, 1996)
In many ways, Koji Yamamura's animated short Bavel's Book (バベルの本, 1996) marks the beginning of his maturity as an artist. In terms of technique, Yamamura very early became a master of the craft of animating frame-by-frame by hand, but from Bavel's Book on his films start to engage more deeply with literary and philosophical themes. Inspired in part by the short story "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges, Bavel's Book is reminiscent of Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte, 1979) in its depiction of the magical world of a book come to life.
One winter's day, a young boy and his little sister race to catch the bus but are disappointed when they miss it, despite the fact that an older bald man boarding the bus spots them approaching. They sit down on the bench to await the next bus, panting from the exertion, and discover that the man has left a large leather-bound book on the bench. Upon opening the book, the children are blasted with hurricane force winds that shoot out of it. To the children's wonderment, when the wind abates the ancient tower of Babel grows out of the pages of the book. Peering inside a hole at the top of the tower, the boy sees a hexagonal library with hexagonal galleries. This is Yamamura's interpretation of Borges' famous Library of Babel:
"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. . . From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below – one after another endlessly. . . In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite – if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infinite. . ."
- Borges, "The Library of Babel", Fictions (Penguin Modern Classics), p. 65
A miniature figure of the bald man is sitting at a large desk in the centre of the lowest level of library reading a book. As he turns the pages, strange figures and shapes seem to come out of the book as if by magic, and just as mysteriously disappear again. When the man leaves the library, the boy reaches down to grasp the tiny book. Opening it he finds that he and his sister are transported to the sea where they fish from a pirate ship and drag their giant catch up the sand of a desert island. They roast and eat their fish peacefully, unaware that danger lurks underneath them in the form of a giant sea monster. Can the children use their imaginative powers to save themselves from the monster? You must watch the film for yourself to find out!
The layers of depth to the story are mirrored in Yamamura's trademark layering of the image using an animation table. He employs a variety of techniques including drawn animation, cutouts, ink splotches – Yamamura is never a purist – he uses whatever materials he needs in order to get the visual results that he desires. Bavel's Book is complemented by an inspired soundtrack composed by the microtonal pop group Syzygys (Hitomi Shimizu + Hiromi Nishida), who frequently collaborate with Yamamura (Pacusi, Atama Yama, Kafka Inaka Isha, etc.). The film brought Yamamura widespread acclaim including awards at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival and the '97 Seoul Animation Expo. It was featured in the Panorama section at Annecy 97 and is one of ComicBox's picks for the 30 Treasures of World Animation that did not make the Laputa 150 in 2003.
*** A note on the title: In Japanese, "Babel" is written in katakana バベル. The character ベ (be) is also often used to represent "ve" in Japanese as they do not have an equivalent to the "v" sound in their language. For example Venezuela is written ベネズエラin katakana which would be rendered "Benezuela" in romaji. Thus the "Bavel" in the official English title is likely the result of the word "Babel" being translated to katakana and back to romaji again. Confusingly, the compound ヴェ is also sometimes used for "ve" as in the city of Verona (ヴェローナ). Transliteration is not an exact science. ***
cmmhotes 2012
The film is available on the following DVDs:
Order from Japan via cdjapan:
Order from Japan via cdjapan:
Order from the USA:Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor and other Fantastic Films by Koji Yamamura
16 August 2012
kingyo (2009)
The young female protagonist of kingyo (2009) is dressed in a maid's costume and wanders the streets of Akihaba offering maid tours of the district for ¥10,000. Business is going slowly except for an odd request by a creeper, but then the woman (Luchino Fujisaki aka Rukino Fujisaki) encounters her former university professor (Takao Kawaguchi) who pays for a tour in order to enjoy an hour of her company.
Sensei looks tired and haggard and we soon learn that the pair were once lovers. When the woman broke it off, she gave sensei the parting gift of a pair of goldfish which he took home and gave to his wife (Amane Kudo). Affairs, even when both participants are single, more often than not create an emotional mess when they go sour but when a spouse is cheating it adds the pain of deceit and disloyalty into the mix. Visual cues suggest that sensei loved both his wife and his lover and is torn apart by the fact that in caring for the beautiful goldfish his now recently deceased wife was unwittingly nourishing his memories of his former lover. The man's dilemma is eloquently expressed not only in the face of the talented performance artist Takao Kawaguchi playing the sensei, but also in director Edmund Yeo's innovative use of the split screen technique.
Split screen is a technique that goes back a long way in cinema history, but in my opinion it has not yet reached its dramatic potential. It has been used for comic effect – as in the Rock Hudson/Doris Day romantic comedy Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) and these days is often used to liven up music videos or concert footage. A number of directors have used it successfully for dramatic effect such as Norman Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and Bruce McDonald's The Tracey Fragments (2007). Yeo's use of the split screen is similar to that used by Roger Avary in The Rules of Attraction (2002): showing two actions that are happening simultaneously. It works both to build tension (such as the parallel actions of the sensei and the student in Akihabara) and to add atmosphere to scenes (two shots of same scene: the wind blowing the curtains gently as the wife observes the goldfish in their bowl. It also adds suggestive story information as in the brief split screen of the wife and the lover.
The most difficult section to shoot and edit must have been the dialogue between sensei and the student during his "tour" of Akihabara. Yeo used a two camera set-up and it all looks very minimalistic and graceful, but having worked on film shoots in Toronto, I imagine it must have been technically very challenging to get the lighting and camera positioning right.
Like Love Suicides (2009), kingyo is another adaptation of a short story by Yasunari Kawabata. The original story "Canary" (1924) featured canaries instead of goldfish. Yeo informed me that he thought goldfish were more Japanese than canaries, and they certainly look stunning in close-ups. The choice of fish reminded me of Kuniko Mukoda's short story "Mr. Carp" which involves a former mistress giving her married lover a koi fish. If I remember correctly, the starring fish evokes feelings of guilt on the part of the man.
It is a beautifully shot and edited film. Yeo has a delicate touch when it comes to creating atmosphere in his films. I was particularly taken with the actors' performances – particularly Kawaguchi who has an extraordinarily expressive face. kingyo made the short list for best short film at Venice in 2009 and won awards at the Larissa Mediterranean Festival of New Filmmakers and the Eibunren Awards 2009.
This is the third in a series of reviews of the short films of the award-winning Malaysian filmmaker Edmund Yeo (b. Singapore, 1984). A graduate of Murdoch University in Australia, Yeo has been based in Tokyo since 2008 when he moved there to pursue a Master's degree at Waseda. His films have received wide acclaim at international festivals including Cannes, Pusan, and Rotterdam.
Edmund Yeo Filmography (homepage)
Chicken Rice Mystery (2008)
Fleeting Images (2008)
Love Suicides (2009)
kingyo (2009)
The White Flower (2010)
Afternoon River, Evening Sky (2010)
Inhalation (2010)
Exhalation (2010)
Tada's Do-It-All House (まほろ駅前多田便利軒, 2011)
The fictitious town of Mahoro in Kanagawa prefecture is one of those inbetween communities framing the edges of Metro Tokyo. Not a major city center in itself and with most people commuting to jobs in Tokyo, there's really not much of interest going on. It doesn't even draw tourists as it's too far from the sea and not in the mountains. The people who live there don't really have much ambition to leave, and if they do, they usually come drifting back.
At least, that is how it seems to Keisuke Tada (Eita), who runs a benri-ya (do-it-all-house) near the train station. He advertises himself as a jack-of-all-trades doing everything from babysitting a chihuahua to working as a handyman. He's handsome and seems intelligent, so it is a bit of a mystery as to why he is doing such low paying work instead of working for a company in Tokyo.
Order from cdjapan:
This mystery is the main element that creates tension in the film and awakes our curiosity to learn more about him. The mystery deepens one evening when, after finishing up a job spying on bus drivers for their suspicious boss, Tada discovers that the chihuahua he is babysitting has gone missing from his truck. He finds the dog sitting on the lap of a guy who looks a bit down on his luck at the bus stop. It turns out that this man, Haruhiko Gyoten (Ryuhei Matsuda), went to school together with Tada, and that Tada had been responsible for Gyoten seriously injuring himself on a table saw during shop class.
Gyoten uses this old injury to guilt Tada into letting him crash at his place for the night. One night turns into several days, and before long Gyoten is a permanent fixture at the benri-ya tagging along on jobs as Tada's semi-reluctant assistant. Although he seems like a deadbeat, there are many clues that Gyoten too may have once had a regular job. He chastises Tada for not marketing himself properly and wonders why Tada, who seemed to have a promising future in front of him, is stuck in a dead end business.
Both men also seem determined to stay on the fringes of life, but they keep getting pulled into sticky situations due to their natural desires to help others. They are drawn into action by a young boy called Yura (Kota Yokoyama) whose mother (Manami Honjou) has hired them to pick him up from cram school. They start to realize that Yura's strange behaviour is more than just insolence but is hiding the fact that someone is using him and they decide to help him get out of his predicament. This subplot is tied up with another subplot about a "Columbian" prostitute called Lulu (Reiko Kataoka) and her fellow prostitute and house mate Haishi (Anne Suzuki) and the dodgy men in their lives.
The film is adapted from Miuri Shion's bestselling novel of the same name which won the Naoki Sanjugo Prize in 2006. It starts out well, and the relationship between Tada and Gyoten evolves in an interesting way. Both Eita and Matsuda are excellent actors and the mystery surrounding their circumstances generates interest in what little plot is retained in this adaptation. Unfortunately, the film has trouble sustaining interest and has many moments that just don't make sense at all (yes it's great to rescue a prostitute from a stalker but throwing her onto a train without belongings/money/somewhere to go/telling her friend is a bit odd to say the least). One could argue that the directionlessness of the plot mimics the directionlessness of the two main protagonists, but the there are just too many head-scratching moments that lessen one's enjoyment of the film. The film's biggest flaws are the one-dimensional female characters who would be laughable if they weren't so disturbing.
Director Omori Tatsushi won international acclaim for his avant-garde directorial debut The Whispering of the Gods (2005). While Tada's Do-It-All House shows that he is quite good at getting great performances out of his male actors, the film just suffers from a problem quite prevalent in contemporary Japanese films: weak editorial decisions. With a few nips and tucks to the second half of the film, this could have been a great star vehicle of Eita and Matsuda.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
This film screened at Nippon Connection 2012:
10 August 2012
Osaka Hamlet (大阪ハムレット, 2008)
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- Polonius, Hamlet I,iii, 78-9
Polonius` words of farewell to his son Laertes in the first act of Hamlet sum up the moral message of director Fujirō Mitsuishi's live action adaptation of Hiromi Morishita's award-winning manga Osaka Hamlet. The film intricately intertwines the coming of age stories of three brothers – Masashi, Yukio, and Hiroki Kubo beginning with the death of their deadbeat Dad. Embarrassingly, their mother (Keiko Matsuzaka) does not appear to be in mourning at all and even more worryingly, their long lost Uncle Takanori (Ittoku Kishibe) moves into the house and tries to make himself useful.
There could not be three more unalike brothers than the Kubo boys. The eldest, Masashi (Masahiro HIsano), is a quiet, bookish type who is inspired to boldly come out of his shell when falls head over heels for a beautiful, wayward older woman he meets by chance. In order to get to know Yu-chan (Natsuki Kato) better, he poses as a college student and even humours her cringe-worthy father fixation.
The middle brother, Yuki (Naoyuki Morita) is a thug who bullies others and seems to enjoy getting into violent scraps with other thugs. When he hears that the geek of the school has called him "Hamlet" he is at first offended because another kid at the school has a hamster named "Hamlet". Upon threatening the young man over the perceived insult, he learns about the play by Shakespeare and is actually interested enough to take his first book out from the library. At first, he cannot comprehend the language in the play, and has another outburst when he discovers Hamlet's unusual relationship with his mother. The most interesting part of Yuki's character development is how he comes to terms with Shakespeare's text. Another Shakespearean element to Yuki is his capacity for extreme violence which recalls some of Shakespeare's bloodier plays (ie. Mercutio vs. Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet).
The youngest brother, Hiroki (Tomoya Otsuka), is coming to terms with the fact that he would rather be a girl. His family is remarkably understanding – even the thug Yuki whom one could imagine harassing people for being different. "Koki" sports an androgynous haircut and wears a pink T-shirt. The one person he identifies with most is his Aunt Aki (Manami Honjo) who is in the hospital with cancer. Aki is also a bit different and enjoys role play and dressing up in costumes. Some of the more touching moments in the film come when Koki visits his aunt in the hospital.
Even Koki's classmates are supportive of him being true to himself. When they decide to put on a class production of Cinderella, they collectively decide that Koki would be the best to play the lead role and cast a girl in the role of the prince. The climax of the film comes when the play is put on and poor Koki has to endure taunting from three bullies in the audience as well as bad behaviour from other parents. This was the most uncomfortable scene in the film as the acting was over-the-top and extremely unlikely. First of all, it is not unusual in Japanese culture for men to play female roles, and secondly, the dialogue was really unlikely. It turned an otherwise decent film into a TV sitcom for a few scenes.
The storylines of each of the family members have one thing in common: role play. Masahi is pretending to be older than he is and role playing the father Yu-chan never had, Yukio has carefully constructed a tough guy façade for himself, and young Hiro-kun is getting to live out his fantasy by playing Cinderella in his school play. Even their uncle is playing at being a house husband, even though he himself is not sure he is able to fulfil that role in their family.
The theme of role play and even the plot have much more in common with A Midsummer Night's Dream than Hamlet. Like A Midsummer Night's Dream, Osaka Hamlet has three interlocking plots and is a kind of comedy of errors. It's a decent little drama with much of the credit for originality of plot going to the excellent mangaka Hiromi Morishita.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
I saw a special screening of this film hosted by Nippon Connection in Frankfurt. It is also available on DVD:
01 August 2012
Love Suicides (信, 2009)
When love goes sour it can bring out the worst in people. Sounds and gestures which were once held dear transform into irritations for the heart gone cold. Edmund Yeo's Love Suicides (2009) tells the tale of a woman (Kimmy Kiew) who has been abandoned by her husband. She and her daughter (Arika Lee) live a quiet, simple existence near a rice paddy field in rural Malaysia.
The daughter takes pleasure in the few things she has to play with: she diligently practices on her woodwind recorder or plays with a red balloon that hangs limply on the string. Brief letters marked airmail begin arriving from the husband which mysteriously suggest that he can hear every sound the girl and her mother make:
"Dear wife, don't let the child play the flute. It's too noisy. My heart aches."
"Dear wife, don't send the child to school wearing shoes. It's too noisy. My heart aches."
"Dear wife, don't let the child eat from the porcelain bowl. It's too noisy. My heart aches."
Although the woman and daughter appear to be completely alone, the woman follows her husband's instructions to the letter. The daughter says nothing, but her words and actions suggest a growing sense of anger and resentment. In the excerpt below, the mother is force feeding the daughter because the little girl is not allowed to eat on her own from the porcelain bowl:
There are many ways to read this short tale – the film itself being an interpretation of the even darker short story of the same name by Yasunari Kawabata. From my perspective, it is a tale of abuse. The quietness of the film – the excerpt above features the word of dialogue, there is no music and only a few incidental sounds (the recorder, shoes on gravel, the waves on the shore) – intensifies the tension that builds in the film. It is a tension that leaves unspoken the at worst physically violent and at best verbally abusive relationship that must have existed for this mother to unquestioningly follow out her husband's cold written instructions.
Cinematographer Lesly Leon Lee (vimeo) has done an inspired job shooting the film in cool colours and dark shadows. Each sequence is beautifully framed. The profoundest shot for me was the one of the mother lying on a tangled web of a fishing net. It is an eloquent metaphor for the situation she finds herself in.
The original short story is one of the many gems contained in the Kawabata The Palm-of-the-Hand Stories collection translated by Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman. Love Suicides premiered at the Festival Paris Cinéma 2009 and Yeo won Best Director for the film at the China Mobile Film Festival 2009 and the Doi Saket International Film Festival 2010. The film was produced by Greenlight Pictures.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
This is the second in a series of reviews of the short films of the award-winning Malaysian filmmaker Edmund Yeo (b. Singapore, 1984). A graduate of Murdoch University in Australia, Yeo has been based in Tokyo since 2008 when he moved there to pursue a Master's degree at Waseda. His films have received wide acclaim at international festivals including Cannes, Pusan, and Rotterdam.
Edmund Yeo Filmography
Chicken Rice Mystery (2008)
Fleeting Images (2008)
Love Suicides (2009)
kingyo (2009)
The White Flower (2010)
Afternoon River, Evening Sky (2010)
Inhalation (2010)
Exhalation (2010)
Fleeting Images (2008)
"Time, which changes people,
does not alter the image we have retained of them."
- Marcel Proust
Cinema grew out of the human desire to capture the fleeting images of our lives in some kind of permanent record. Image, time and memory were favourite themes of the recently departed filmmaker Chris Marker (1921-2012) and this short film by Edmund Yeo is an homage to Marker's meditative, poetic documentary Sans Soleil (1983).
Like Sans Soleil, Fleeting Images is narrated by a woman who conveys her interpretation of letters she has received from a close male friend. The letters are a poetic contemplation of the passage of time and the tenuous strands of fate that connect people of varying circumstances, times, and places together.
Instead of drawing on T.S. Eliot or Racine as Marker did in Sans Soleil, Yeo turns to Proust for inspiration. Memory is the central theme of Proust's great work À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913–1927). Sights, sounds, and smells trigger involuntary memories from the past for the narrator and the novel was groundbreaking in its exploration of how we perceive time.
Although Fleeting Images is only 10 minutes long, Yeo manages to capture the essence of his Proustian theme using montages of contemporary images and motifs. The letters are sent to the female narrator (played by Nicole Tan but narrated by Tsai Yi-Ling) by email, and the life experiences of blind Indian children and elderly Tibetan refugees are contrasted with imagery of the modern streets of Tokyo. These fleeting images haunt the letter writer as he seeks to understand the world as it is seen by others. There is a sweet little montage of animation by Julian Kok as the letter writer wonders if the world of the blind children's imagination could possibly be more colourful than we imagine.
The disconnect that city dwellers have with the natural world is represented in the film with great poignancy when the letter writer despairs of being completely oblivious to the setting of the sun while caught in the swelling sea of humanity flowing through the streets of Shibuya. The setting sun becomes a motif for the passage of time and it recalled for me the Buddhist notion that impermanence and change are the undeniable truths of our existence. For the cynical viewer, Edmund Yeo's Fleeting Images may dip a little bit too far into sentimentality, but for such an early, experimental work by a young filmmaker I think this may be forgiven.
Fleeting Images won the Grand Prix at the CAN CON Movie Festival in 2009 from an international jury which included film critic Chris Fujiwara and director Naomi Kawase.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
This is the first in a series of reviews of the short films of the award-winning Malaysian filmmaker Edmund Yeo (b. Singapore, 1984). A graduate of Murdoch University in Australia, Yeo has been based in Tokyo since 2008 when he moved there to pursue a Master's degree at Waseda. His films have received wide acclaim at international festivals including Cannes, Pusan, and Rotterdam.
To learn more about Edmund Yeo visit his official website.
Edmund Yeo Filmography
Chicken Rice Mystery (2008)
Fleeting Images (2008)
Love Suicides (2009)
kingyo (2009)
The White Flower (2010)
Afternoon River, Evening Sky (2010)
Inhalation (2010)
Exhalation (2010)
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


text:
Help Desk
Work Request
A-Z Index
Academic Calendar
Event Calendar
ECU News Services
About Us
ECU Now Blog
Auction benefits family medicine residents fighting cancer
Katherine and David Strickland react after learning Katherine Strickland's residency assignment last March. Photo by Cliff Hollis
GREENVILLE, N.C. (Dec. 31, 2009) — Two family medicine residents at East Carolina University benefited from the generosity of their peers during a silent auction held Dec. 21.
ECU and Pitt County Memorial Hospital employees and friends contributed a total of $3,800 in winning bids for photos by Dr. John Stanton, a Brody graduate; photo calendars by Dr. Laura Zimmerman, an ECU resident physician; dinners at local restaurants; and more all to raise money to help Drs. Katherine Bray-Strickland and Anna Hudson, who are battling cancer, cope with medical expenses.
Dr. Daniel Becerra, one of the auction organizers, is a fellow family medicine resident. "The last thing these two people, who've inspired a lot of people at Brody, should have to worry about is medical bills," he said.
Becerra was a classmate of Bray-Strickland's at the Brody School of Medicine; they graduated in May. Hudson is a 2008 graduate.
Bray-Strickland was diagnosed with maxillary osteosarcoma, a cancer of the jaw, in 2005 and has had two recurrences. She praised her fellow residents for their work.
"It has been incredibly beautiful how the residency program has come together to support Anna and myself," she said. "The support has been a real source of strength for us. And I personally am so pleased that there are plans to help the program continue to help other residents having medical issues."
At Match Day in March, when graduating medical students received their residency assignments, Strickland received a standing ovation when her name was called and she walked up to retrieve her envelope.
"Katherine was a M1 student when she was diagnosed with cancer," said Dr. James Byrd, a clinical professor of internal medicine. "The first year of medical school is the most challenging. During the time away from Greenville, when the diagnosis was confirmed and treatment initiated, she never missed a beat and finished the year in good academic standing. And she did it with a fabulous smile and inspiring attitude."
Byrd said he and his wife, Dr. Lee Byrd, also a faculty member at Brody, bought 100 bracelets Becerra had made to "tell Katie's story to current M1 students." The bracelets are inscribed with the words "always believe" and "never back down."
Becerra said he would like not only to help Bray-Strickland and Hudson but also establish an emergency fund to help any resident faced with unexpected expenses. He thinks such a fund would help recruit residents to ECU and PCMH.
"We not only care about patients. We also care about each other," Becerra said.
Editor's note: Katherine Bray-Strickland died Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010.
Doug Boyd
| 252-744-2482
East Carolina University
ECU News Services
1001 E. Fifth St.| Greenville, NC 27858 USA | 252.328.6481 |
Contact us
© 2019 |
Terms of Use
Report a Barrier


text:
For years, most of us have focused on counting calories to lose weight. But the frustratingly simple formula of "calories in versus calories out" rarely equates to the success that most dieters crave. So let's consider how food quality and the way our bodies process food affects weight loss.
One of my clients was recently quite shocked to hear that I don't take a multivitamin. I do take probiotics and vitamin D on a daily basis, but have never gotten into the habit of taking a multivitamin. I'm not a nutritionist and thus am not going to make any recommendations. But as luck would have it, the Wall Street Journal published a debate in it's April 12th Big Issues edition between Dr. Meir Stampfer, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Eliseo Guallar, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. We'll skip the long and short of their debate and get right to the short version.
Dr. Stampfer sees multivitamins as low-cost nutritional insurance. He believes that multivitamins are no substitute for a healthy diet and rank much lower in importance than not smoking, getting adequate exercise and maintaining a healthy weight. But he also believes they can be a small part of an overall healthy lifestyle. Dr. Stampfer does site the Physicians Health Study II which found an 8% reduction in cancer risk for multivitamin takers.
Dr. Guallar on the other hand worries that individuals may see taking a multivitamin as an easy fix for a poor diet that could encourage a false confidence. He also sites the lower cancer risk of the Physicians Health Study II, but sites a second study showing that unhealthy dietary habits caused 300,000 deaths from heart disease, stroke and diabetes in 2012. Therefore, he would prefer to keep people focused on diets rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and fish, and all of the behaviors which help them avoid a wide range of preventable diseases.
As a cancer survivor, I like the idea of reducing my risk even if only slightly. So on my next trip to the grocery store, I think I'll tuck a bottle of multivitamins in among the fruits, veggies and legumes. I can stop at the store on my way home from the gym.
I spent a good portion of the day yesterday reading "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink. It's a good read and a wonderful alternative to the many diet plans that exist today. I thought I'd share a few of the high points of the book.
- Over 95% of people who lose weight on a diet gain it back.
- When on a diet, our bodies and minds fight us. Deprivation diets that cut daily intake from 2000 calories to 1200 calories a day are stressful and can slow down our metabolism. But the body doesn't really notice a smaller reduction of 100 or 200 calories per day.
- In order to reduce our calories by 100 to 200 per day, we need to re-engineer our personal environment and set up either "tradeoffs" or "policies" that work for us.
An example of a "tradeoff" would be the following: "no potato chips unless I exercise today."
An example of a "policy" would be the following: "I don't eat second helpings of any starch. If I want a second helping it has got to be fruits or vegetables."
- The author suggests that you pick 3 policies or tradeoffs that you are sure you can follow each day and try to lose weight slowly as in .5 lbs. per week. This can lay the foundation for long term habits that can help someone lose 24 lbs. over a year and keep the weight off.
Here's some more food for thought.
- We consume more from large packages.
- Increasing the variety of foods increases how much everyone eats.
- Simply thinking of food can make us hungry. When we think of food, the pancreas starts to secrete insulin which lowers our blood sugar level and makes us hungry.
- The more hassle it is to eat (like pomegranate seeds or a whole artichoke), the less we eat.
- The longer we sit at a table, the more food we are likely to eat.
- If we eat with one other person, we are likely to eat 35% more food. If we eat with a group of 7 or more, we will generally eat 96% more than when we are alone.
- The best part of a dessert is the first two bites.
There is lots of blame to go around for our "obesigenic" environment. But on the other hand, with more than 200 daily decisions that most of us make about food, constantly tracking every bite might work for the short term but can grind most of us down for the longer term. The gist of this book is an effort to get readers to go from mindless overeating to mindless better eating. Wansink states that "the best diet is the one you don't know you are on." I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to lose weight. If you don't buy the book, at least go to his website which is www.mindlesseating.org.
A few weeks ago I wrote about purchasing Tony Horton's 10 Minute Trainer and was waiting for delivery. Well, I do have it and while it looks great, I can't provide a review yet as it has been sitting on my dining room table. Now this doesn't mean that I haven't been exercising. I've been working out quite a bit at the studio where I work and going to my favorite yoga classes. I know that this defeats the "10 minute" purpose, but I guess this all comes down to developing a new habit. Even a 10 minute workout DVD can sit on a dining room table until the habit is there.
Today I'd like to write about Drs. Oz & Roizen's "You Losing Weight." I'll critique the book as soon as I get a copy. But I recently received a beautiful flyer from Prevention Books and was enticed to return the postcard and get a copy directly from Prevention. The flyer offered a 21-day preview with some bonus books (Secret Age Erasers, Supermarket Survival Guide, and Doctor's Home Remedies) for 4 easy installments of only $7.99 or a total cost of $31.96. A nice offer overall, but when you've got 2 sons in college like I do, every penny counts. So I went to Amazon.com to add it to my wish list. I use Amazon's wish list to remember books that I might want to purchase later or borrow from the library before I make a purchase. To my great surprise, I found "You on A Diet" on Amazon in paperback for $7.77 and on Kindle for about the same price.
When anyone sells us anything, the best way to get us to act is to appeal to some "pain" or problem that we can't seem to resolve. So if you've been trying to lose weight unsuccessfully for a while, a nice flyer that states that you can "eat your fill and fit into slimmer jeans" has as much appeal as a pint of Ben and Jerry's to a starving dieter. But before you put your wallet on a diet as well, check Amazon and your local library first. Slimmer jeans plus a fatter wallet sound like the best of all worlds to me.
Early this morning, I turned on the TV and became fascinated by an infomercial promoting Tony Horton's 10 Minute Workout. I really like the idea of exercising in 10 minute sessions because a short workout can be both effective and doable. After doing a bit of exploring, I discovered that the basic 10 minute workout can be purchased from both Horton's Beach Body website and Amazon. If you are pressed for time and could benefit from short workouts, should you consider this purchase? Well, I did buy the basic plan thinking that it might help me squeeze some extra activity into my day. I'll write another post after I've had the opportunity to try the workout, but here is my initial view of whether it's appropriate for most exercisers.
I love the idea of squeezing 2 or 3 short workouts into those inevitable 10 minute periods between major projects, visits, cooking, etc. And the cost of the basic program at $79-$89 is around the cost of just one personal training session in the Chicago area. However, I have two concerns with the program. First, the exercises in the infomercial were mostly multi-joint exercises. Working out two groups of muscles simultaneously can be very efficient, but if you don't have good body awareness it can be challenging to do safely and with good form. Second, all of the individuals demonstrating the exercises were able to do so with perfect body mechanics. What happens if your knees cave in because your glutes are weak, or your knee and lower leg roll in because you are flat footed? What happens if your shoulders are rounded from hours spent working on a computer? What happens to many is that instead of looking like the cover model on Men's or Women's Health in 8 weeks, they find themselves injured and visiting the physical therapist.
In years past, we were most likely to see physical compensations only in people over the age of 40. Nowadays, we see them in individuals of all ages (even teens) due to hours sitting at computers and overtraining in youth sports. All in all, if you don't have really good body awareness or are completely free from mechanical compensations, you may want to get some personal training before starting a challenging exercise video program.
If you know that your body awareness is keen and your body mechanics are healthy, then the 10 Minute Workout might work for you. If you aren't sure but want an effective and safe home workout, please look at my events tab under this website for my "Workout at Home" package. If you are interested and live within 10 miles of my home suburb of Wilmette, IL, I'll be happy to work with you.
When I go to our local running store to buy shoes, it isn't unusual for the staff to ask me if I pronate. I do, and for years I've sort of worn that label like some type of merit badge. I wear orthotics and buy running shoes with good arch support, but why should this matter anyway?
First of all, pronation means that you don't have much of an arch in the inner foot. Sometimes this is referred to as having "flat" feet. It isn't unusual to see someone who pronates only on one foot, or even pronates (rolls in or flattens) on one foot and supinates (rolls to the outside) on the other. Pronation can impact all of the joints above the foot and generally makes the lower leg and knee roll inward, can make the same side hip droop and sometimes causes elevation of the same side shoulder. When the joints are misaligned due to pronation, walkers and runners can experience shin splints, low back pain, knee pain, plantar fasciitis, pain in the joint of the large toe and tendonitis in the lower extremities. Furthermore, it takes a lot more energy to run or walk when the body is misaligned. If you know or think that you pronate, there are a few simple things besides orthotics that can help correct it. First, you can sit with bare feet on a small towel and scrunch up the towel by curling your toes under until the towel is bunched up under your foot. You can also try picking up marbles with your toes or doing standing heel raises with your toes rotated in (pigeon toed). Pronators can have tight calf muscles so a standing wall stretch might help. Sometimes knees roll in because of weak glutes as opposed to or in addition to pronation and strengthening the glutes might be helpful. You can do so by lying on the floor with your soles down and knees up and heels fairly close to the butt. Your ankles, knees and hips should be in a straight line. Contract your butt muscles and lift your hips off of the ground (bridging) and lower them back to the floor. You can repeat this for 12 to 20 times as long as you can do it pain-free. If you are doing this correctly, you should feel a decent contraction in the glutes (butt). If this is too easy, lift one leg off the floor with the knee flexed and do the bridging exercise with one leg at a time. Whatever you do, please don't ignore pronation because it can cause pain and dysfunction from the ankles on up.
Takeaway: Got the winter treadmill blues? Try http://jog.fm/ for a playlist that matches your run/walk/jog speed. And if you're stuck inside because of foul weather, try ramping up the incline to increase resistance on the treadmill so it feels a bit more like running or walking on the ground.
As I walked to work at 6am today in a wind chill nearing zero, I started thinking of how futile it would be if one of my New Year's resolutions was to diet. After a 20 minute walk into a freezing Lake Michigan headwind, I treated myself to a small mocha coffee and enjoyed every sip. If your resolution is more exercise and the cold is preventing you from getting out, I'm sure it's not preventing you from taking a shower, brushing your teeth and talking on the phone. The following exercises won't replace cardio, but they will address three areas of weakness that I frequently see with my clients.
- If you wash and rinse your hair twice when you shower, do the second wash with your non-dominant arm and hand. If you've got weak rotator cuff or shoulder muscles on your non-dominant side, you'll be surprised at how fatigued they can get with a vigorous wash and scalp massage.
- Stand whenever you talk on the phone. Even better, pace and talk. And even better yet, put your back against a wall, slide down the wall into a squat position and maintain an "air bench" while you talk on the phone.
- Improve your balance by standing on one foot while you brush your teeth. You can alternate feet if you like. Though if you can't stand on one foot for at least 15 seconds, it might be time to see a trainer about working on the core and glute strength necessary for good balance.
Takeaway: Since I also work as a wilderness guide, I love being outdoors in all temps and actually have friends who guide trips to both the North and South Poles. However, we can all be at risk for frost bite and hypothermia when exercising in cold weather. Here's a link to a handy chart from the National Weather Service that can help you decide if it's safe to venture out. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/windchill/index.shtml
One of my favorite tricks when I'm running or cross country skiing is to wear a light jacket so that I don't get overheated and to keep a warmer "puffy" jacket in a small backpack. When I start to cool down at the end of my session, I put the heavier jacket right over my lighter wear.
Last week I wrote about why you might not want to join a gym as part of your New Year's resolution. Now I want to be clear about the fact that I'm not discouraging gym membership for those who will truly use it. However, I've seen so many people sign up for year long memberships and quit after four to six weeks that I'd just like everyone to slow down a bit before they get stuck with an automatic debit to their credit card every month for a year.
So let's say that you don't belong to a gym, aren't ready to commit to personal training or joining a gym but could use some help getting started with your New Year's Resolution to get healthier. Or maybe you've been going to group exercise classes and want to exercise at home because you are worried about the current flu epidemic. Here are a few resources you might want to take a look at.
- The CDC has some very basic videos that are appropriate for people who currently are not exercising or haven't exercised in some time. They include cardio suggestions and basic weight lifting exercises that can be done at home. You can find them at www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/videos/index.html
- Maybe you have been working out, need something a bit more intense and are confident you can do so in good form. Check out http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2013/01/25-of-best-you-tube-workout-videos.html for 25 Utube workouts with everything from Jillian Michaels to Zumba.
- Finally, for 71 ways to lose fat and be healthier in general, check out http://blogs.menshealth.com/bellyoff-nutritionist/71-ways-to-lose-fat/2012/06/05/?cid=sf_twitter#ixzz2HfsZQVk9
Takeaway: You can get a free 15 day trial to Yoga Vibes (www.yogavibes.com). If your streets and paths aren't a sheet of ice, you'd like to start running and have a smart phone, try C25K (short for couch to 5K). I think I paid a few bucks to get the version that excludes ads, but it's a good way to get ready for spring races.
I'm not sure what percentage of the population includes losing weight and getting fit as a New Year Resolution, but I'd venture a bet that it's well over 50%. One of the first steps that many people take is joining a gym. When I worked for a large YMCA, there were so many people on the cardio machines at 6am for the first 6 weeks of the year that my ears actually hurt from the noise and I started wearing ear plugs. But by mid to late February, most of the "newbies" had dropped out and we were back to the three dozen or so regulars who had been working out for years. If you are thinking of joining a gym as part of your New Year's Resolution, here are a few things to consider.
- See if you can "pay as you go" for a few times before you sign a month to month contract. Many gym's will let you work out for $15 or so a time. If you commit to paying as you go for 4 to 5 sessions before signing a costly contract you can experience the parking, commute, staff and classes and see if you like it enough to make the big money commitment. If you spend $60 for four visits, maybe you can negotiate that $60 off the yearly cost if you decide to join. It can't hurt to ask.
- Remember that the job of a membership advisor is sales. If they offer you a great deal that is only valid for one day, walk away. I get at least four emails a month from local gyms so there will be plenty more deals to come during upcoming months.
- An annual membership can cost anywhere from $600 to several thousand dollars per year. You can hire a personal trainer for four to six sessions to give you an individualized workout that you can do at home. You can probably complete your home workout in the time that you might spend driving back and forth from the gym, parking and getting in and out of the facility.
- If you still want to join a gym anyway, see if you can wait a few months. Organizations are more likely to waive membership fees and give you a better deal when they aren't swamped with people wanting to join.
- If you have dual goals of working out and reducing debt, look on Amazon.com for the top selling workout videos. Before you buy, see if your local library has them on the shelves. And if you have cable, you are likely to find quite a few good exercise classes on TV.
- If you do eventually sign up for a gym, see if you can post somewhere for a workout buddy or get a friend to join with you. A close friend of mine has been working out at a gym 3 xs per week for years at 5am because she goes with her sister.
Takeaway:Check out "The Costco Connection" magazine January 2012 edition for Costco members for a great article about your rights as a consumer when joining a gym. And here are a few more cost cutting ideas for getting more activity into your life. 1) See if you can rent snowshoes somewhere and get out in the winter. Nearly anyone can snowshoe. 2) If you have a cleaning service, cancel them for 3 months, vigorously clean the house yourself and save the money for airfare to some place you've always wanted to go. 3) Go to an animal shelter and volunteer to walk the dogs.
A study in 2000 from the New England Journal of Medicine shows that most people gain about .8 lb. during the holiday season. This weight gain may not seem relevant but when the same subjects weighed in a year later, not only had they maintained the holiday gain but they also ended the year 1.4 lbs. heavier. Over a period of 10 years, this adds up to a cumulative weight gain of 14 lbs. Here are 12 ideas that might help you get through the season minus .8 lbs. This list is meant to get your creative juices flowing because the best ideas are the ones you come up with on your own. So write your own or check off the ones on my list that you like and rate your likelihood of success on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being completely unlikely and 10 being absolutely certain of getting it done. If you score less than 7 on any idea, choose another idea that ranks at least a 7.
- Schedule your bed times like appointments so that you are sure to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night.
- Follow every alcoholic drink that you consume with an 8 oz. glass of water.
- If you lose your willpower for bad foods after drinking alcohol, drink sparkling water instead.
- Eat an apple with one tablespoon of almond butter 30 minutes before leaving for a party or dinner. Or just eat the apple.
- Choose one or two small desserts at a party, eat just 3 small bites of each and find a way to discretely dispose of the remainder. (Remember that chocolate and grapes are toxic for dogs so slipping either to a begging pet is an absolute "no-no".)
- Get 30 minutes of cardio even if you have to break it up into 10 minute segments. Try marching, walking, climbing stairs or jumping rope. You might even offer to walk a neighbor's dog if you know that they will be away for a day. Or get on a stationary bike and watch TV.
- Eat slowly by chewing every bite of food 30 to 40 times.
- If you want to eat candy, take half a serving and cut each piece in half. For example, there are 9 pieces of Hershey's kisses for 200 calories a serving. Take 4 and cut each in half for 8 small pieces at 88 calories.
- Track your food intake. There are many smart phone aps for this or just buy a mini notebook and write your foods down with a pen.
- Plan to eat 5 to 9 fruits and vegetables a day. Start breakfast with frozen berries on your yogurt or cereal and add an orange. Have an apple mid-day and veggie soup or salad for lunch. Start dinner with a cup of veggie soup and you are well on your way.
- Do circuit weight training or cardio interval training and get a session in every other day.
- If it's safe, get out and do an activity that you usually only do during warmer months. Bundle up and go out for an hour of tennis, biking or a walk on the beach. Invite friends and neighbors to a park for Frisbee, soccer or football. It can really be fun to dress in layers and get out in the chill. Of course, if you have snow, there are many options for fun.
Most are small ideas, but combining two a day for the next 10 days might stave off that .8 lb. And we can all stick with anything for just 10 days, right???
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Years!


text:
Pair charged in Chicago honor student's slaying
Photo: Courtesy of Damon Stewart
FILE - This undated file family photo provided by Damon Stewart shows 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton of Chicago who was was shot Jan. 29, 2013 while she talked with friends in a park about a mile from President Barack Obamas Chicago home. First Lady Michelle Obama will join some of Illinois most recognizable politicians and clergy to mourn the 15-year-old honor student whose death has drawn attention to staggering gun violence in the nations third-largest city. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Damon Stewart, File)


text:
Immediate Help (855) 260-9932 Contact Us
"The day of the loan, he called us and told us we could actually lower the interest rate that day if we wanted to wait a few days, which I don't think many lenders would ever do. So it was a great experience, I'd recommend him to anybody."
"He gave us the best rate and our closing costs were comparable to the major banks out there. So you know, he was excellent, his rate was amazing and he's just been a great person to work with. I have no complaints. We wish that we had gone with Drake sooner. We just had a really good experience with him and his team."
"We loved working with Drake. He was very prompt answering all of our questions and walking us through the loan process. I will definitely recommend him to others who are considering these loans."
"I had a great experience! Sheila kept me in the loop with the whole process. No complaints at all. Thanks guys."
For more information, please don't hesitate to reach out to us!!!


text:
Need to find a particular title or speaker? Just click on the "Word Title Search" at the bottom left-hand corner, and type in a key word or phrase.
WELCOME to our online catalog, featuring audio sessions of our Christian conference partners, from classics to contemporary studies.
Click here for Recent Conferences & Lectures
"Hold fast the form of sound words..." (2 Timothy 1:13)
© copyright 2018 | sound word associates | all rights reserved


text:
Originally published on Sept. 20, 2012
Call it a case of delayed gratification.
Very delayed.
Seven years delayed, actually.
The reward for all that waiting was, for five area men, a few seconds of face time on screen, their voices providing a backdrop for a somber movie scene - and their names in the credits.
"And then it says, 'Campfire Singers,'" says Huntington resident Rick Henly, one of the five, as he watches the credits for "DogJack" roll nearly to the end.
"And there we are."
The credits list five names - Henly; his son, Drew Henly; Rich McConnell; and Jim Kline, all of Huntington, and Gary Bugge, of Fort Wayne.
As members of the Civil War-era vocal group the Company Singers, they had piled in a car on a weekend in 2005 for a five-hour-plus trip to Darlington, PA. Their assignment: provide some ambience around the campfire as the soldier-actors in the movie contemplated a coming battle. They finished their part in the movie about 1:30 the next morning, then piled back in the car for the return trip to Huntington.
They waited for word that the move had been completed.
And waited.
Then waited some more.
And then ...
"A couple of weeks ago, Jim Kline's daughter called and said, 'Hey Dad, I found your movie at Walmart,'" Henly says.
Only days after that discovery, each of the five got the DVD of the movie - a DVD they'd been promised seven years earlier - in the mail.
"We never did get our poster," Henly says.
"DogJack," played in a few theaters but never widely released, was now available for public consumption.
The independently-produced movie, based on a book of the same name written by Florence Biros, was inspired by the true story of a young Union soldier and his dog, Jack, who becomes the regiment's mascot during the Civil War.
"They made this movie on a shoestring," Henly says.
The Company Singers, a group that now performs together very infrequently, got involved when the producers put out a call for re-enactors.
"If they need anybody to sing songs around the campfire, we're the group," Henly remembers thinking.
Several emails later, they'd made a date. The Company Singers were scheduled to be a part of a scene that would shoot on Aug. 6, 2005.
Once they had piled out of the car in Pennsylvania at the appointed place and time, they found a group of people huddled in a circle.
Someone said, "That's it; we're done," and the singers became a little concerned. When someone else told the singers that shooting had been shut down for the day following a series of disagreements, they became downright worried.
"We said, 'Wait a minute, we just drove over from Indiana to be in this campfire scene," Henly says.
"Come back tomorrow or Monday," they were told. That wasn't going to work - Drew Henly, 14 at the time, was set to leave for Michigan the following day for a Boy Scout outing.
The singers were invited to stay for dinner, where author Biros herself was among the servers dishing up the food.
After dinner, McConnell made a suggestion.
"Let's get out the instruments and start singing," he said, and they did.
They wandered around the movie site, singing to anyone they encountered.
During the impromptu concert, they made an impression: "You guys sound pretty good," one member of the movie crew said; and, "You should be in the movie."
"Finally, somebody of importance came out of the dormitory and asked if we could come back tomorrow," Henly says.
The Company Singers explained that no, they couldn't; and the man in charge finally agreed to pull everybody back and film the campfire scene.
By that time, they'd been singing for two or three hours.
"My voice was pretty shot after singing so long," Henly says. "Rich's was, too."
But this was their big chance, and they weren't going to miss it.
"When I got into Company Singers, my goal was to get into a movie," Henly says.
After debating between two songs _ "Goober Peas" and "Nearer My God to Thee" - the directors finally choose the second song, reasoning that it would fit better with the somber mood of the night before battle.
And so with strained voices and smoke in their faces, the Company Singers began to sing. They sang the song over and over and over again, accommodating different camera angles and stopping to teach the actors the words so it would appear that they were singing, too.
"We finally got done at 1:30 in the morning," Henly says. "Then we got back into the van and drove back to Indiana.
"We had a great time. It was fun, but it made for a very long day."
"DogJack" premiered in 2009 at the Soldiers and Sailors Hall in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Company Singers repeated the trip to Pennsylvania to sing at the hall prior to the movie screening.
"DogJack" was shown at several film festivals, winning Best Drama at the San Diego Black Film Festival, but the Company Singers had pretty much given up hope of ever seeing the movie - until Kline's daughter found it at the local store.
While the movie was never widely released in theaters, it is now available for rent through Redbox and for purchase at several department stores and book stores.
[1] http://huntingtoncountytab.com/feature/18821/case-delayed-gratification-earns-five-area-men-screen-time-credits-movie-finally-out


text:
Aug. 28, 2006
MACON, Ga. - Lipscomb's senior forward Ben Page has been honored for his offense as the Atlantic Sun's first weekly player-of-the-week for the 2006 men's soccer campaign.
Better late than never was Page's motto in Lipscomb's season opening win over Birmingham-Southern. Trailing 2-0, the Bison standout nearly single handedly mounted a huge comeback on his way to being named A-Sun Player of the Week. Page assisted on Jorge Suarez's goal in the 85th minute, cutting the BSC lead in half. The Woodstock, Ga., native converted on a penalty kick with just over two minutes left in regulation that knotted the match. Finally, seven minutes into the overtime session, Page beat a group of defenders before unleashing the game-winner from 15 yards out. The junior forward becomes just the second Bison to collect A-Sun Men's Soccer Player of the Week honors. Page is majoring in History.
The Atlantic Sun Conference hands out offensive and defensive Player of the Week awards weekly during the 2005 soccer campaign.
The Bisons, 1-0, are back in action Tuesday afternoon at 5 when Central Arkansas visits for a non-conference game.
The game can be heard through the Internet on Lipscomb Live.


text:
Editor's note: Peter Bregman is chief executive of Bregman Partners Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of "Point B: A Short Guide to Leading a Big Change". He writes a weekly column, How We Work, for HarvardBusiness.org.
Peter Bregman says there's no point in being outraged by Gov. Mark Sanford's actions.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- "Daddy," my 7-year-old daughter, Isabelle, asked me this morning at breakfast, "Who is Mark Sanford, and why is he on the news?"
I received two phone calls about Sanford on Wednesday afternoon. One was from a liberal Democrat who was outraged. "What a hypocrite!" he said. The caller asked whether I knew what he had said about a case of an unfaithful congressman. "He said, 'He lied under a different oath, and that's the oath to his wife.' And all that family values stuff! C'mon."
The other was from a conservative Republican. "It's terrible what's happening to Sanford." He told me, "He's a good guy. The press is tearing him apart! They're lingering on all the sordid details. Give the guy a break."
Here's what's interesting: When I asked each of them about the impeachment of Bill Clinton, they flip-flopped. The liberal Democrat was angry at the press, and the conservative Republican was disgusted with the former president.
We all have a lens that pre-determines how we view the world. We read the papers, watch the news channels and appreciate the opinions that confirm our biases. We've already made up our minds, and we like to confirm that we're right.
We also love to be outraged. We love sentences that start with, "Could you believe ..." or "How could he ..."
In this case, as in most cases, the outrage is understandable, because Mark Sanford did something he shouldn't have done. We could all agree, I think, that he should not have abandoned the state for several days, he should not have lied about where he was, and he should not have been unfaithful to his wife.
But save your outrage for Iran or Darfur, for situations where people are being tortured and trampled and killed.
We need to understand this situation for what it is: human weakness, poor judgment, personal longing and complicated relationships. The question is, how are we -- each one of us personally -- going to respond? I'd like to make a suggestion:
We should empathize.
Regardless of what you think of his behavior, no matter how you feel about adultery, whatever your views of Mark Sanford as a politician or a person.
Here's the tricky part: Don't just empathize with Mark. Empathize with Jenny, his wife, and their boys. And with Maria, the mystery woman in Argentina. And with the press for doing their best to decipher and report the details. And with the people who are outraged. Don't take sides. Try to truly understand, without judging anyone, how everyone got to where they are and how each one feels.
Now, that's hard. But it's worthwhile, because very little good comes from disgust and outrage. Mostly, those reactions simply serve to separate us from each other and, perhaps more important, ourselves. And from our own feelings of vulnerability and weakness. It's useful to get in touch with those feelings, because they help prevent us from making the same mistakes.
It's just too easy to become a hypocrite, to have one standard for people we like and another for people we don't, to judge one person and then excuse another when basically they both did the same thing.
Outrage doesn't get us very far in situations like this. Right or wrong, true or false, black or white might be how we'd like to see the world, but that's not how the world is. The world is full of "I don't knows" and "maybes" and "I hopes" and "I wishes." And we're all fumbling through trying our best to make the decisions that will make us happy.
It's useful to empathize because then we understand how these things happen. Mark Sanford is all too human, just like each one of us. He didn't make one stupid decision. He made lots of small decisions that couldn't be categorized as smart or stupid until, at some point down the road, it becomes one or the other.
"It began very innocently," Sanford said in his news conference, "as I suspect many of these things do, in just a casual e-mail back and forth, in advice on one's life there and advice here. But here recently over this last year, it developed into something much more than that."
That's how bad and good things happen. Ponzi schemes, affairs, embezzlements and also marriages, careers, wealth. Lots of little steps that slowly, over time, bring us to a place we may or may not have planned to be. A place that may be constructive or may be destructive.
I am not saying that Sanford shouldn't be held accountable. He should. But we should hold him accountable with compassion, not with anger. With understanding not with pitchforks. With the recognition that if we were closer to the situation, to the people involved, we would understand the complexity. And there's always complexity.
"Sweetie," I responded to Isabelle, "Mark Sanford is the governor of South Carolina, and he did something he shouldn't have done. He lied."
"Why did he do that?" Isabelle asked.
Now we're getting somewhere.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bregman.
All About Mark Sanford • South Carolina • Relationships


text:
Beginselen van Europees en Nederlands Mededingingsrecht
- Author(s):
- J.F. Appeldoorn; H.H.B. Vedder
- Year:
- 2013
- Size:
- 16 x 24 cm
- Pages:
- 321
- 9789089521156
- Edition:
- Paperback
- 828
- Print/edition:
- 2
Written in Dutch language, this second edition is the leading textbook on European and Dutch competition law. The book is aimed at advanced law students and provides an excellent introduction to competition law. Attention is paid to the economic and political context in which competition law is applied. Apart from a clear overview of the applicable law (Articles 101-108 TFEU and the Merger Control Regulation), the book also touch upon various unresolved topics within competition law. This critical approach makes it suitable also for practicing lawyers in need a thorough and critical analysis of the law.
About the authors
Prof. Hans Vedder is professor of Economic Law at the University of Groningen. He is also honorary judge at the Leeuwarden Appeal Court and Member of the Advisory Comittee on Appeals to the Netherlands Competition Authority.
Dr. Jochen Appeldoorn is lecturer Competition law at the University of Groningen and a Member of the Advisory Comittee on Appeals to the Netherlands Competition Authority.