text:
County-District-School (CDS) Codes
The CDS (County-District-School) code system is an administrative
convenience designed to provide the California Department of Education
(CDE), the Department of Finance, and postsecondary institutions
with a basis for tracking schools.
This 14-digit code is the official, unique identification of a school within California. The first two digits identify the county, the next five digits identify the school district, and the last seven digits identify the school.
CDS codes are not assigned to programs. Evidence that the entity is a school rather than a program is provided by the governing board action approving formation of the school and board action establishing the school. Governing boards can act only by a majority vote at a public meeting (Education Code sections 1011, 1013, 1040, 35163, 35164; Government Code section 54950 and following (the Brown Act)).
CDS Guidelines and General Information
- Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions related to CDS administration and using the Online Public Update for Schools (OPUS)-CDS Web application to submit changes.
- Definition of a School
CDE's definition of a school for data management purposes.
- School Code Assignment
Criteria for assigning school codes.
- Information Sheet for Charter Schools
Information for making changes to, or starting new charter schools.
- CDS Codes for Statewide Benefit Charter (SBC) Schools
Guidelines for obtaining CDS codes for Statewide Benefit Charter schools.
- Closing a School Best Practices Guide
Guidelines for making the decision to close a school.
School and District Updates
Updates to school and district information may be requested by authorized local educational agency (LEA) personnel using the OPUS-CDS application, or the CDS forms posted below. Changes initiated by the public must be routed through the LEA CDS coordinator.
Online Public Update For Schools (OPUS)
Web application used by authorized LEA CDS coordinators to submit changes regarding a school or district including contact information, agency name, school type, grade span, status. etc.
- OPUS-CDS Web Application
Application used by authorized LEA CDS coordinators to notify the CDE of updates to the Public School Directory. A user name and password is required to access this application.
- OPUS-CDS Application and Resources
Access the OPUS-CDS Web application, as well as useful information for using this application.
School Forms
- Application
for a County-District-School (CDS) Code (form CDS-01; formerly known as the TSD-01 form) (DOC; Revised 18-Jun-2014)
This form is used to open a new school or district.
- Change Request for
a County-District-School (CDS) Code (form CDS-02; formerly known as the TSD-02 form) (DOC; Revised 21-May-2013)
This form is used to close a school and to make changes regarding a school that cannot be made using the OPUS-CDS application. Requests made using this form must be submitted by authorized district personnel.
Returning Forms to the CDE
CDS Administration
Educational Data Management Division
California Department of Education
1430 N Street, Suite 6308
Sacramento, CA 95814
District Reorganizations
District Reorganizations
List of district reorganizations, name changes, and new or retired districts.
Resources for Obtaining Information About Schools and Districts
- California School Directory
Online application for obtaining contact and general information about California schools and districts.
- Public School Database (downloadable)
Downloadable file of California public schools and districts.
- Nationwide Search for Public Schools
National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) online application for locating public schools nationwide.
- Nationwide Search for Private Schools
NCES online application for locating private schools nationwide.
- DataQuest
Online application for obtaining data for California public schools.


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
In the mid-1980s, journalist Joel Sappell and a colleague began a five-year examination of the Church of Scientology that would ultimately produce a 24-article series. It would also change Sappell's life in ways both mystifying and unnerving. Decades later the onetime investigative reporter investigates what happened to him.
I'd never heard my wife so upset. "The dog's been poisoned," she said into the phone. Her quavering voice was scared and panicked. Soon I would be, too. It was late 1985, and I'd just checked into a San Diego hotel with Bob Welkos, a reporter—like me—at the Los Angeles Times. Bob and I had been sent out of town by our editors in the turbulent wake of a story we'd written about the Church of Scientology. In it we revealed for the first time the secret teachings of church founder L. Ron Hubbard, who traced the origins of mankind's ills to a galactic battle 75 million years ago, when an evil tyrant named Xenu reigned supreme. The story made international headlines, and the church was angry. The paper thought it would be best if Bob and I disappeared for a few days until things cooled down. So I'd packed a bag and headed south while my wife, Linda, stayed behind with our 13-year-old shepherd mix, Crystal.
Now the loyal dog I'd rescued from a Huntington Beach shelter a year or so after my high school graduation was dying. "She's frothing and convulsing," Linda told me from the vet's office. Crystal's illness had come on suddenly, she said, and the vet couldn't pinpoint the cause. All we could do was keep her sedated. "Things like this don't just happen," Linda cried. A month or so later, after countless doses of phenobarbital failed to calm Crystal's frightening seizures, I placed her on a gurney one final time and held her as we put her down.
Did I have proof the Church of Scientology was to blame? No. But I was haunted by the warnings I remembered getting at the start of what would become a five-year investigation of the church. More than one source had told Bob and me to keep an eye on our pets. Others who'd run afoul of church leaders had lost beloved animals under suspicious circumstances, they claim—but I hadn't listened.
Not long after Crystal fell ill, I got another call—this one from Los Angeles Superior Court judge Ronald Swearinger. I'd never spoken to him, but I was covering a nasty civil trial over which he was presiding that pitted the Church of Scientology against a former church member who claimed he'd been relentlessly harassed. Thousands of Scientologists from across the country had converged on downtown Los Angeles to protest the trial and what they perceived as Swearinger's religious bigotry. Now he was reaching out to me.
"I hear your dog was poisoned," the judge said softly. I was startled. It's highly unusual for judges to contact reporters during a trial, especially when they've already been accused of bias. There was a pause as Swearinger took a breath. "My dog was drowned," he said, referring to his collie. "We found him dead in our pool. He'd never go near the water on his own."
More than four years later, in June of 1990, the Los Angeles Times published the six-day series Bob and I had written on the Church of Scientology—one of the most comprehensive pieces on Scientology ever undertaken by an American news organization. In 24 stories based on thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews, we tackled everything from Hubbard's bogus biographical claims to the organization's high-pressure sales techniques to the intimidating tactics employed against perceived adversaries such as Bob and me. Personal experience had taught us how the church and its leaders—first Hubbard and then his successor, David Miscavige—had made psychological warfare a spiritual imperative.
The usual rules of journalistic engagement didn't apply. Hubbard was both guru and general to his worshippers, lacing his writings on theological affairs with militant directives on how to blunt enemies. "If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace," Hubbard told his flock. "Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way."
And they did. Crystal's death, as it turns out, was just the beginning of a series of events that rattled through our lives. Which is why, a few days before Halloween, I board a Texas-bound plane from LAX to pay a visit to the man who once ran Scientology's intelligence operations, the highest-ranking person to defect from the church since our series ran. He is also a man the church now brands "a defrocked apostate" and "pathological liar." Nonetheless, I'm going to see what he may know about what happened to me.
Throughout my newspaper career—from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner to the New York Daily News to the Los Angeles Times—I was hooked on investigative reporting. I loved its crusading populism and the adrenaline rush of the hunt. Over many years I'd dug into everything from corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department to the stranglehold of the Mob in New York's Little Italy to the fishy financial dealings of L.A. mayor Tom Bradley during his final months in office. But no story had prepared me for how difficult our investigation of the Church of Scientology would prove to be—or how obsessed Bob and I would become.
This feature was originally published in the January 2013 issue of Los Angeles magazine.
When I first pitched the idea to the Times's city editor, I envisioned something far more modest. I'd learned that a fired LAPD sergeant had been hired as the church's top private investigator and had tapped a former colleague for help. The police department was disciplining that officer for improperly authorizing the Scientology investigator to covertly videotape a hostile ex-church member. Good story, my editor agreed. But there was a bigger one to tell. Scientology at that time was facing a wave of litigation; just two months earlier an Oregon jury had awarded $39 million to a woman who said the church defrauded her with claims it would improve her eyesight and make her more intelligent. My editor brought Bob, a fellow Metro reporter, on board and told us to start digging. He wanted the definitive portrait of Scientology.
Back then I knew nothing about the church other than that actors John Travolta and Kirstie Alley were among its members. While in high school, I'd once wandered into a Scientology outpost on Hollywood Boulevard and agreed to take a free personality test. But I headed for the door when they tried to sell me one of their courses—a first step along the church's "bridge to total freedom" that I today know can cost thousands upon thousands of dollars to complete.
At the heart of the church's teachings, which are based on the writings and lectures of Hubbard, is a belief that a person's spirit, or "thetan," is immortal and passes from one body to the next through reincarnation. The goal of Scientology is to liberate the thetan from painful experiences that over the ages have diminished its powers and created emotional problems in the individuals it has inhabited. These painful experiences are known as "engrams," some of which, Hubbard preached, were the result of galactic wars and bad guys like Xenu. Through one-on-one counseling sessions, or "auditing," adherents identify and purge these engrams, thus restoring power to the thetan and spiritual and physical health to its host. This is accomplished with the help of a lie detector-type device called an E-meter.
Today the church says Hubbard's theology has millions of followers across the world, with the highest concentration in L.A., where Scientology has amassed vast real estate holdings as well. But high-level defectors have put the number of active members closer to the tens of thousands.
For most reporters who've gone toe to toe with Scientology, fascination with the group doesn't end with the publication of their stories. I've followed Scientology for years. But that's only part of the reason I'm headed to Ingleside on the Bay, a tiny enclave (population 615) a half hour from Corpus Christi on the Gulf Coast that's now the home of Mark "Marty" Rathbun. For me this is personal: I want some answers.
Bob Welkos and I used to joke that sooner or later all Scientology executives end up defecting from the church, despite their signed commitments to serve the organization for a billion years—from one reincarnation to the next. And that's exactly what Rathbun, the 55-year-old former Scientology spymaster, did in 2004 after an ugly falling-out with Scientology's top executive, David Miscavige, a high school dropout whose rise to power after Hubbard's death Bob and I had been among the first to chronicle.
Miscavige had grown up at Hubbard's knee, one of the elite "Commodore's Messengers" who were charged with ferrying Hubbard's orders throughout the Scientology empire. While Hubbard was on the lam in the early 1980s, dodging lawsuits and investigations, Miscavige became his only link to the outside world. After Hubbard's death in 1986, Miscavige, a fierce infighter, consolidated the unrivaled power he enjoys today as chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, which controls the copyrights and trademarks of Scientology. Rathbun was Miscavige's handpicked choice to confront "external threats."
For nearly five years after his defection, Rathbun kept silent about his 27 years as a church member. Then, in a 2009 series in the St. Petersburg Times, he surfaced with a vengeance. He alleged—with witnesses to back him up—that Miscavige had unleashed a reign of terror on the church's upper managers, punching, kicking, and choking them when they failed to follow orders or perform to his exacting standards. Next came CNN's Anderson Cooper with a week of reports called "Scientology: A History of Violence." Rathbun again took aim at Miscavige (even as he admitted to Cooper that he, too, had beaten up Scientology executives). On CNN and in the St. Petersburg Times, the church countered that Miscavige had harmed no one and has numerous affidavits from church members to support him. They say Rathbun was the violent ringleader, one of the reasons he was expelled.
Then in a Vanity Fair cover story this past October, Maureen Orth wrote of a bizarre effort by Miscavige to find a gorgeous Scientology bride for his best friend, Tom Cruise, before he'd married Katie Holmes. Rathbun was identified in the story as Cruise's auditor, entrusted with guiding the star through confessionals to unburden his thetan. Among other things, Rathbun accused Miscavige of violating the sanctity of these sessions by using what Cruise revealed about himself to manipulate the A-list actor. (The church has denied Rathbun's allegations, calling Orth's account pure fiction.)
During the five years I investigated Scientology, Rathbun had been the tight-lipped chief of Scientology's operations to monitor, track, and intimidate people like me. Now, even as I watched him reinvent himself in the media as a self-styled Martin Luther, leading a reformation of the church by encouraging members to join him as an "independent Scientologist," I couldn't forget what had been done to Bob and me on Rathbun's watch.
Although I work in government as a deputy to Los Angeles County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky these days, I'm still a reporter at heart, and my adventures with Scientology were like an unsolved cold case. When I saw Rathbun quoted so widely, my journalist's instincts took hold. After so many years, Rathbun's emergence from the shadows represented my first and best hope at getting the truth from someone who was at the tip of Scientology's spear.
So I tracked down his e-mail address and reached back across the decades. "When last we spoke," I wrote, "we were, to put it mildly, on opposite sides." I proposed a meeting, saying only that I'd like his help with an idea I had for a personal story. In three minutes he was back to me, polite and friendly. "All in all I think you all did some pretty balanced work," he wrote. "Sure, let's talk."
Even before I arrive, my communications with Rathbun make me feel as if I were an old college buddy coming to visit. First he offers to put me up in his guest apartment (I decline). Then he says he can pick me up at the airport and drive me each day between his house and my hotel (I rent a car).
As I pull up to Rathbun's white wood-sided home at the end of a cul-de-sac along a canal, he heads down the front steps and greets me in the driveway with an enthusiastic handshake. He looks like a regular guy—cargo shorts, sandals, a well-worn plaid shirt covering a middle-age paunch. The last time I saw Rathbun he was in his twenties. His athletic six-foot frame was clad in the strange spit-and-polish mock Navy uniform of Scientology staffers, members of the so-called Sea Organization, or Sea Org—and he was glaring at me. Today he reminds me of a high school gym teacher. His blue eyes have a friendly crinkle at the corners as he smiles at me for the first time, ever. "You look great—the same, except for more gray hair," he says, not mentioning that we both are showing a lot more scalp than we used to.
He invites me inside, and soon I'm being fed a home-cooked spaghetti lunch by his wife, Monique. I can't remember feeling a bigger disconnect between the trappings of an interview and the subject matter I plan to cover. I've come here to interrogate a man about the way I think he and others tried to make my life miserable, but first I'm sharing a meal with him at his kitchen table. Sitting across from each other, I'm struck by something else: the aura of intimidation Rathbun once cultivated is utterly gone. Without the power and resources of the Church of Scientology behind him, he is just another baby boomer like me.
I can remember when the playing field was not so even. Bob and I were subjected to everything from spurious legal actions to plain bullying. We knew of three separate sets of private detectives who were rummaging through our lives, questioning old friends, bosses, and people we'd interviewed. Our credit reports, meanwhile, showed numerous inquiries from an assortment of car dealerships. When we contacted them, all insisted they had no idea who among their employees had made the illegal checks—or why.
Almost overnight our lives were plagued by mysterious, untraceable events. Bob and I were a team, and what happened to one felt like it was happening to both. This "patina of terror," Rathbun tells me, was Scientology's desired impact. "You were everywhere," he recalls as we drink water out of jam jars. "And it was really pissing off Miscavige…. 'Fucking weasel Sappell. Fat fuck Welkos.' This is the way the guy talked." The message, Rathbun says, was clear: "Crush them."
Our spouses were affected, too. One morning my wife, a kindergarten teacher, was leaving for work when a process server sent by the church's lawyers jumped out from behind a hedge with a subpoena for me. Another day I listened to Bob on the phone at work as he struggled to calm his wife. She was home alone and somebody had dropped Forest Lawn burial brochures on their doorstep. It would happen more than once, and one afternoon she even saw somebody scurrying away. Then there was the night when upwards of four California Highway Patrol cars, lights flashing, pulled Bob over as he drove home on the 710 freeway. He was ordered out of his car and given a sobriety test. After he passed, Bob asked why he'd been stopped; an officer said they'd been told he was weaving dangerously.
The next day the Times's security chief, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department official, made some inquiries and discovered that the pursuit had begun when a man called the CHP and said he was tailing a drunk and would direct units to his location. The caller said he was a Los Angeles police officer.
I'll never forget the night I came home to my second-floor apartment in the Fairfax District to find an LAPD detective's business card stuck in my doorjamb. "Call me," he'd written on the back. When I did, he said I'd been accused of a serious assault that required investigation. A man complained that I'd pushed him down a flight of stairs after he knocked on my door to inquire about a vacant apartment. I then allegedly chased him onto the front lawn, where I kicked him and smacked him with a rental sign.
I told the detective that at five-feet-six and 130 pounds, I was a talker, not a fighter. I also informed him I was working on a series about the Church of Scientology and suspected a connection. About a week later the detective called back. He was recommending that prosecutors take no action, he said, because the complainant couldn't be found; he'd lied about his name and address. And so it went, one crazy-making episode after the next.
The reporting process was exceptionally contentious. We had hostile face-to-face sessions with church leaders and their battery of top-dollar lawyers, one of whom bellowed at us, "If you want a fucking war, you've got one!" Miscavige, who in those years had yet to publicly take the helm, refused to talk to us at all. It took us months of grinding negotiations to schedule interviews even with the church's PR squad, whose primary objective seemed to be to scare the newspaper's lawyers and kill the series.
When Bob and I arrived at one of Scientology's many well-appointed Hollywood buildings for the interviews, we were ushered into a large room and told to sit at a table barely large enough for side-by-side chairs. Several church representatives were seated behind a roomy table on a dais in front of us. Hot, blinding klieg lights were aimed at our faces, as were an array of video cameras, in violation of our negotiated agreement that allowed for only one. Our hearts racing, we walked out, returning a few days later only after the lights and extra cameras had been removed.
We weren't the first reporters to suffer Scientology's wrath. In the 1970s, the church's Guardian's Office—or GO—undertook a massive campaign of burglaries, harassment, and dirty tricks against foes in the government and the press. Nobody got it worse than Paulette Cooper, who in 1971 wrote the book The Scandal of Scientology. She was framed by GO operatives, who obtained stationery with her fingerprints on it and mailed a bomb threat to the church. Cooper was indicted but later cleared. Eleven ranking members of the church were sentenced to prison, including Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, who oversaw GO's many criminal acts.
In the early 1980s, the Guardian's Office was replaced by the Office of Special Affairs, with Rathbun at the helm. Scientology executives insisted that investigations into perceived enemies, if necessary, would henceforth be handled by private detectives hired and overseen by attorneys representing the church—or so went the cover story. Rathbun says the investigators were paid through the church's attorneys but reported directly to him and his staff. "We had to pretend like all that stuff was behind us," Rathbun says of the church's covert operations. "But that was total subterfuge."
Rathbun is pacing in his living room, taking drags off an electronic cigarette. He's got a bad back and needs to keep moving, which means I'm mostly looking up at him from his couch. He might as well be on that dais. Monique—a dark-haired woman with a soft voice and watchful eyes—sits close by, perched at a small table near their front window, quietly tapping away on a laptop. The "catbird seat," they call it. I get the feeling she's listening as a witness.
As our interviews stretch over hours, I strug-gle to control the conversation. It's not just Miscavige's alleged wrongs or the future of the church that Rathbun is hell-bent on discussing. In wandering monologues he swings between riffs on the secret to B.B. King's creative longevity to the genius of Ronald Reagan's PR advisers to the "dictatorial evolution" of Hubbard in the 1960s. I'm not sure whether he's using his old Scientology tricks to dominate our communication, but this long-awaited sit-down soon begins to remind me of my last meeting with church executives.
Yet slowly I make progress. I recount the saga of our hostile interviews with the church, and Rathbun nods, as though he still appreciates a job well done by the old team. "The whole idea was to make you feel small—intimidated—and to back you off," he says. Videotapes of our interview sessions, he says, were promptly delivered to Miscavige, who micromanaged the church's response to our every inquiry. "He got off on seeing how uncomfortable you [were]."
Getting Rathbun to take responsibility for his own actions proves harder. Case in point: When I ask about the private investigators who dogged us, he quickly asserts, "I never hired an investigator to investigate you." A moment later, however, he concedes that what he means to say is that he never personally hired an investigator. He says the "intel" guys under him took care of that job for him. "It goes through that machine, and I'm just getting reports," he says so matter-of-factly that we could have been talking about the weather or holiday plans. "It's all a blur, but I remember beaucoup intelligence reports on you guys during that entire era." After Miscavige read those reports, Rathbun says, "I shredded all that stuff…. There could be no trace of it."
Rathbun's answers to questions about Bob and me often are like that—they begin as denials and after some pushing and prodding from me, end up as vague confessions. Sometimes he seems to be having a dialogue between the new Marty and the old. My questions, he tells me at one point, make him feel like he's undergoing Scientology auditing, triggering memories of troubling events so he can be freed of their sway—only without the E-meter.
Rathbun says, for example, that the church obtained Bob's and my personal phone and financial records from private detectives who bought them from sources specializing in that sort of skulduggery. "It had to be two or three steps removed," Rathbun says, so the church would be insulated from the covert transactions. In that way, he reasons, the church did nothing illegal to us.
"What you were doing was still illegal," I counter. "Yeah, you're right," he says. "You accused me, and I'm not denying it. I guess the lines got blurred over time."
When I bring up the phony assault complaint and Bob Welkos's CHP stop, Rathbun says he would have never tolerated such things. But then he acknowledges there were "volunteers" in his shop who'd come from the church's disbanded Guardian's Office and who continued to harass people, possibly us. "That really bothered me. It couldn't bother me if it didn't happen. It happened a lot," he says, employing his odd, circular reasoning. "So here I am defending myself, but at the same time I gotta say…I'm not perpetuating that. But, of course, I am because I'm allowing it to continue."
Rathbun insists he was only following orders. Miscavige, he says, nurtured a "real hatred" for Bob and me. "He's got everyone in the conference room trying to figure out how to stop Welkos and Sappell," Rathbun recalls. "You're working for the enemy…. You were part of this machine, a deployed agent. The L.A. Times was demonized."
For Miscavige the stakes were high, Rathbun says, higher than we knew. Our series represented an early test of the young firebrand's ability to navigate a serious challenge at a time when the church was trying to emerge from scandal and enter the mainstream. Among other things the church had paid millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements to ex-members to keep them quiet about their run-ins with Scientology and to avoid even bigger financial and public relations hits down the road.
"We need to back the Times and Sappell and those guys down," Rathbun remembers Miscavige ordering. But they couldn't. Rathbun says the church hoped to get us to believe that with "the kind of intrusion we're going to do in your life, it's not worth messing with us." That intimidation didn't work with Bob and me, though Rathbun says it usually did. Of all the journalists who make inquiries into the church, he says, "you guys who write are the exception, not the rule."
The Church of Scientology did, however, get the last word—with our words. After the series was published, the church blanketed Southern California with a three-month ad campaign that quoted positive-sounding snippets from the series. These edited quotations—words that Bob and I wrote—were plastered on more than 120 billboards and nearly 1,000 buses. Typical was this one: "The Church of Scientology…has weathered crises that would have crippled, if not destroyed, other fledgling religious movements—testimony to the group's determination to survive." The billboards included the story's date, the newspaper's banner, and our bylines. The church even bought an obscure sign a block from my house in Silver Lake, on a street I drove every day. I had a hunch that was no coincidence and later was told by a church insider I was right.
Rathbun volunteers that he was responsible for plucking those passages out of the stories but credits Miscavige with the concept. "He saw the series as a loss, but he turned it into a win because the billboard campaign was his idea," Rathbun says. "In his version of reality, he has 'outcreated' you."
Today David Miscavige is no longer secretly pulling Scientology's strings, the way he did in the days of Bob's and my reporting. Back then the only time we glimpsed him was in a Los Angeles courthouse hallway as he rushed past, refusing to utter a word as our photographer snapped a rare shot of the small but powerfully built young man. Now 52, Miscavige, who's always immaculately tailored, travels the world from Hamburg to Pasadena, officiating at gala dedication ceremonies for dozens of new or lavishly restored churches of Scientology. He's described on the church's Web site as Scientology's "ecclesiastical leader" and perhaps more important, as "L. Ron Hubbard's trusted friend."
Under Miscavige's stewardship, the Web site says, Scientology has doubled in size during the past five years and has positioned itself as a true "21st Century religion" through its stunning state-of-the-art multimedia operations, some of which will be based in a Hollywood studio the church bought in 2011 for $42 million. But in some ways Miscavige and the church he rules remain unchanged. Combativeness is in their DNA.
Rathbun once enjoyed the perks of riding shotgun with Miscavige, who lives in a well-appointed bungalow at the church's "International Base" outside the Riverside County city of Hemet, 80 miles from downtown L.A. But not anymore. For the past three years, ever since Rathbun was quoted in those St. Pete Times stories about Miscavige's alleged violent streak, the defector has been hunkering down in Ingleside on the Bay, warding off blows from church members and operatives.
In a boxy, two-story house across the cul-de-sac from his home, Rathbun says, a private investigator has set up shop, installing video cameras behind reflective windows. The P.I. in question is the same one Rathbun says he hired in 1988 to dig up dirt on two high-level Dallas defectors, a husband and wife whom Bob and I interviewed. One evening, while driving the narrow road that leads from Rathbun's house to the main highway, I see a man in a silver Crown Victoria fly past me in the opposite direction while talking on a cell phone. It's the private detective from across the street.
The church isn't hiding the fact that Rathbun is being watched; a surveillance photo of him having lunch with The New Yorker's Lawrence Wright on the patio of a restaurant was published in a 2011 special edition of Scientology's Freedom Magazine. The publication skewered a 24,000-word piece Wright had written that same year on Scientology, an article he's expanded into a book due out this month. When I contact Wright, he says of the photo, "Marty had told me he was being watched, but it seemed brazen to publish it." Wright says he was left with the impression that "the church had hired a private investigator to stalk one or the two of us and was proud of that."
Similarly, for six months straight a video crew from an outfit called Squirrel Busters Productions shadowed Rathbun around town, provocatively pushing video cameras in his face. It got so nutty that neighbors began putting up "No Squirrel Busters" signs and turning on lawn sprinklers to shoo them away. (A "squirrel," in Hubbardspeak, is someone who provides Scientology services outside the technical expertise of the mother church. By that definition, I think Rathbun is a squirrel. He calls himself a "heretic.")
An edited compilation of the Squirrel Busters' footage comes to life when you click on the Web site whoismartyrathbun.com. "Marty Rathbun may see himself as a peaceful and honest good old boy who wouldn't harm anyone," the video's voice-over says. "But if he took a good look in the mirror, he'd see his true image: an unhinged leader of a small, South Texas cult. A man with a militia mentality and a long history of violence."
During my visits, whenever a car starts or a door slams, his eyes dart toward the windows, often in sync with those of his wife. I keep wondering how traumatic this must be for the quiet Monique, who met her husband on Match .com in 2006, before all hell broke loose. Today she sits in that catbird seat like a sentry. Rathbun says the message he's being sent is this: "You think you can leave the cult? The cult will follow you to your freakin' grave."
I tell him that readers of this story will probably think he's getting what he deserves. After all, this is the same treatment he once dished out. For the first time during my visit I see a flash of the aggressive Marty I remember. He stops pacing in the kitchen, where I'm seated, and stares at me. "That's what they'll think if that's what you write!" he says, his voice rising as he points a finger at me. It's not a matter of opinion, I say. Those are the facts. "I've taken a lot of hits in the last three years," he says, softening his tone. "I've been working off a lot of karma for what I've done." Now, he says, "the scales are even. I've built up a reservoir of good karma that I can draw on."
These days Rathbun's self-professed good works involve "decompressing" people who've left what he calls "corporate Scientology." He audits them, as he once did Tom Cruise, to help identify traumas that are holding them back from a state of "clear." Rathbun is still a true believer in Hubbard and the value of his writings, but he makes a distinction between the scripture and the structure of the church. A bookcase in his living room is lined with Scientology's tomes on spiritual and managerial matters, along with the book that started it all for Hubbard in 1950, the best-selling Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.
Rathbun has self-published two scathing books on Scientology's management and maintains a popular blog called Move on Up a Little Higher, on which he encourages readers to flee "Scientology Inc." and publicly profess their independence. Preaching the inevitable collapse of Miscavige's Church of Scientology, Rathbun seems intent on positioning himself atop a rival movement of disaffected Scientologists, wielding the same take-no-prisoners style he once did against reporters and church critics.
"There is a reason DM fears me like no other," Rathbun says, referring to Miscavige by his initials, as do many in the church. "Because he knows in his heart of hearts…that I'm his worst nightmare for one reason and one reason alone: I have no price." Unlike other ex-church members who reached out-of-court settlements in the mid-1980s, Rathbun says, he can't be bought. "Everybody has a price and I don't."
He says Miscavige used to be what the church needed: a leader who was "really accomplished at this whole Machiavellian maneuvering in times of power pushes and power plays." He credits Miscavige with going straight to the top of the IRS to finally obtain tax-exempt status for the church in 1993, agreeing to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement.
But Rathbun says Miscavige is undermining the movement, embodying the secretiveness and combativeness that had become the defining traits of his reclusive mentor, Hubbard, in the final years of his life. What's more, he accuses Miscavige of taking the church's "greatest PR asset and turning it into its greatest PR liability." He's talking about Cruise, "the epitome of the wound-up Scientologist."
Rathbun accuses Cruise and Miscavige of creating a distorted public perception of Scientologists as condemning and self-righteous, full of "synthetic enthusiasm." Take Cruise's run-in with Matt Lauer on Today a few years back, when he accused Lauer of being "glib" and of promoting the use of antipsychotic drugs among kids. Or the widely viewed video of Cruise at a Scientology gala, where Miscavige awarded him the church's first Freedom Medal of Valor. In the video Cruise suggests that Scientologists are so powerful that they should feel obligated to stop at traffic accidents because only they can truly help in such situations.
But it was Miscavige's alleged behavior at the church's sprawling management and residential compound outside Hemet that Rathbun says prompted his defection. He says he saw violent abuses inside the walled-off "Int. Base," where top executives who were deemed underperformers by Miscavige were allegedly placed in confinement and subjected to beatings and forced confessions. This occurred, Rathbun says, in a double-wide trailer called "The Hole." "Anybody who was anybody got holed," he says. He admits he delivered some of those beatings but says he took some, too. Although the church insists Miscavige never laid a glove on anyone, Rathbun alleges that the chairman of the board punched him in the midsection and ended up hurting his own hand. "He started freaking out, screaming at the top of his lungs, 'The motherfucker wants to kill me! He's evil!' " Rathbun says. "Just because I didn't take it."
When I leave Rathbun's house each evening, I head to my hotel and start what feels like a second workday. Behind a little desk, I listen to Rathbun's recorded voice for hours while transcribing our interviews. Then I stay up way too late reading his new book, The Scientology Reformation: What Every Scientologist Should Know. In other words, I'm all in again, and it's stirring up memories of the last time I was in this world of doublespeak, character assassination, private investigators, and paranoia. Each night before I enter my hotel lobby, I scan the parking lot to see if I'm being watched. Inside Rathbun's house, whenever there's a noise outside, I find myself peering out the windows just like him and his wife.
Throughout my time here I can't help noticing that Rathbun's dog, Chiquita, is often at my feet. In fact, the plump little Chihuahua-chow-corgi mix has been a constant presence—on our walk along the bay, on our talks on the deck outside, sometimes just sprawled on her back, paws in the air, on the couch next to Rathbun, who clearly adores her. She's also there when I raise the issue of dead pets.
We're sitting facing each other in the living room. He's on one well-worn couch; I'm sinking into the cushions of another. I decide not to start with Crystal. Let's talk about dirty tricks, I say. What about animals? Before I can get out another word, Rathbun sits up straighter.
"No fucking way," he says. "It just couldn't happen." If pets were harmed, he speculates, it was probably by some "third party" who wanted to make the church look bad, a frame-up job. He says IRS agents investigating the church in the mid-1980s "were certain we were involved with chopping up animals." What? That's something even I hadn't heard. Then he mentions the late judge. "Swearinger said his freakin' dog got drowned."
My heart pounds. I've waited nearly three decades to confront someone from the Church of Scientology about Crystal. "I know about Swearinger's dog," I say. "He called me."
"He told you privately?" Rathbun asks.
"Yes," I say, my spine stiffening. "He heard that my dog was poisoned."
Rathbun's face falls, and for a moment he grows quiet. "Your dog? Are you kidding me?"
"No, I'm not kidding you," I say. He looks rattled. "I'm telling you," he insists, "this was absolutely verboten."
I tell him I don't buy his blaming third parties. That's when Rathbun changes course entirely. "Before you even came here, I'm telling you, I watch out after my dog," he says, as Chiquita lounges nearby. "I don't put it past the sons of bitches, you know what I mean?"
By late afternoon of our third day together, I start to sense that the mood isn't as chummy as when I first strode up the steps of Casablanca, as Rathbun calls his home. I turn off the recorder and snap shut my notebook in a gesture that says I'm done. I tell Rathbun it's time for me to get rolling, even though my flight won't be taking off for a couple of hours. As I make my way to the door, Monique gives me a hug, and I thank her for opening her home to me. Together Rathbun and I walk out into the Texas heat. "This has been kind of fun," he says. Fun isn't exactly the word I'd choose, I think to myself. Rathbun nods in the direction of his Ford F-150 pickup. "I'll follow you out to the road to make sure you're not being followed by anyone else," he says. When we get to the main highway, he turns one way and I turn the other. I watch him disappear around the bend in my rearview mirror.
Heading for Corpus Christi International Airport, I'm nervous again, hyperaware that my determination to land this story—like the original story—may have reverberations in the lives of others I care about. Before embarking on this effort, I'd run the idea past my family. "Are you sure you want to do this?" my second wife, Mona, asked. Yes, I assured her. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to investigate my own story. I also talked to my two grown kids. My son was one month old when the L.A. Times gave birth to our series, and my daughter had yet to arrive. I didn't want to scare them, but I advised them to keep their eyes open. Same with Bob Welkos, my reporting partner. I'd given him the heads up, too.
As I hit the tarmac in L.A., I realize I need to make two more calls. The first is to my ex-wife. It's been years since I've spoken to Linda. I'm concerned that if I write about her and Crystal, she may get a visit from church agents in the forests of Colorado, where she now lives.
Linda and I split in 1987, when I was more focused on Scientology than on our marriage. That period was brutally hard on her, too, although I'm embarrassed to say I never deeply reflected on how much so until a couple of years ago. Going through some old papers at home, I found a carefully handwritten log Linda had kept of the phenobarbital doses she gave Crystal during the weeks we tried to keep her alive. I say "we," but looking back I know that it was mostly Linda. I was too busy with Scientology. As much as any church member, I was immersed in the universe Hubbard had created—often to the exclusion of the people and events of my own world.
When I get Linda on the phone and tell her I'm writing about Scientology again, she lets out a knowing "Oh, boy" and recalls that process server who jumped out from the bushes and gave her a start. We laugh about how crazy things were during that period, but there's no laughing when we talk about Crystal. "It was so sad," she says, "so horrible to watch." I begin to tear up. I tell her I've always felt guilty that my job may have brought harm to the dog we both loved. I thank her for taking such good care of Crystal. Tacitly I'm also thanking her for putting up with my obsessive pursuit of a story, for her patience, for talking to me now. Before saying good-bye, I make her promise she'll call if she gets any uninvited visitors.
My second call is to the Church of Scientology. The church's international spokesperson frostily directs me to e-mail a description of what I'm writing, along with specific questions. Six days later I receive an eight-page letter that begins with a question of its own: "Why is it that 22 years after you spent an epic five years writing your insufferable six-part opus for the Los Angeles Times you still are unable to give it a rest?" It goes on to call Rathbun "obsessed like a stalker." Neither Miscavige nor the Church of Scientology has done anything wrong, the letter says. That punch in the stomach from Miscavige? "False and defamatory." Miscavige's "real hatred" toward Bob and me? "We can assure you Mr. Miscavige never said such a thing nor did he spend time obsessing over the two of you." The purloined phone and financial records? "Once again, we can only say that Rathbun is telling you what he thinks you want to hear." The CHP stop? "The Church had no knowledge of or involvement in Mr. Welkos' traffic stop and we have no idea whether Mr. Welkos drives dangerously or in a safe manner or not at all." The fake assault complaint against me? The church "had nothing to do with any false complaints…we also had nothing to do with any traffic, parking or tickets for littering you may (or may not) have received during your life." And finally, what about the deaths of pets? "We like pets, don't kill dogs and are sorry for the loss of your dog more than twenty years ago…. In other words, Joel, the stories may make for juicy midnight Internet gossip, but they are, each and every one, lies."
In lectures and missives to his followers, L. Ron Hubbard used to claim that serious illness inevitably befalls those "suppressive persons" who seek to impede Scientology. "Literally, it kills them," he wrote. Rathbun remembers Miscavige espousing the same view one day as he listened with relish to an intelligence report from a spy about a reporter who'd begun taking antidepressants. "That's what you get for fucking with us," Rathbun recalls Miscavige saying. "You drive yourself insane attacking Scientology." (The church's response? "Oh, please.")
Perhaps they know of such cases, but I'm not among them. As corny as it may sound, I know that the Scientology project taught me powerful lessons, the biggest among them being how to push through fear and self-doubt. If given the chance, I'd do it all over again. After we published our series, I remember thinking no professional challenge would ever be harder, and that has turned out to be true. While I can't say for sure what drove me—common sense be damned—to seek out Rathbun and write this story, I think it has something to do with proving to myself that I'd not only survived but thrived. The patina of terror didn't back me down.
As I write these words, my one-year-old dog, Phoebe—another rescue pup—is sleeping blissfully in the next room. I think we both could use a walk.
Joel Sappell spent 26 years as a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times. This is his first article for Los Angeles.
This feature was originally published in the January 2013 issue of Los Angeles magazine.


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By CHELSEA DAVIS Courier staff writer
The Ottumwa Daily Courier
---- — OTTUMWA — A months-long battle to secure a contract between the city and the firefighter union has finally been settled.
This week, the Ottumwa City Council approved the three-year contract between the city and the firefighter union, the Ottumwa Association of Professional Firefighters Local 395, International Association of Firefighters (AFL-CIO-CIC).
The contract will go into effect July 1 and last through June 30, 2016. It includes a 2 percent sliding scale the first year and a 2 percent across-the-board base salary increase in years two and three. The contract will also increase EMS pay.
Gary Doud, president of the union, said the union had been pushing hard to get the 2 percent sliding scale for all three years of the contract, though they were only able to obtain it for one. The sliding scale, he said, would allow the department to distribute pay raises where they feel is necessary, meaning raises would depend on job description, rank and education.
"That was to get us closer to other fire departments in comparable groups," he said. "It took seven months to bargain, and out of those seven months, we didn't ask for any extra money. All we were wanting to get out of the whole deal was a sliding scale."
All other city bargaining unit contracts (library, municipal, police and public works) have been settled.
"The important thing is they agreed, along with our other five unions, to allow us to tweak the health insurance deductibles in years two and three of the contract so everyone's in line," said City Attorney Joni Keith.
Councilman Brian Morgan said the agreement is a "good example of concessions being made on both sides."
Following mediation, the proposed agreement was taken to the council in January, which was rejected by the councilmen 5-0, and the city's October proposal was re-offered.
"This contract I don't think should have taken over seven months to finish up, for the issues that were out there," Doud said. "And we didn't have a whole lot of issues out there."
On the city side of the table sat lawyer Mike Galloway, Ottumwa City Attorney Joni Keith and Ottumwa Fire Chief Tony Miller. The union side contained Doud, union negotiator Jack Reed and Ottumwa Fire Capt. Pat Short.
Monday was the last chance for approval of the contract. Otherwise it would have proceeded to arbitration on Thursday.
"We did give up the years of sliding scale we were pushing hard for," Doud said. "This did not need to drag out that long."


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The Super Bowl matchup is finally set, as the San Francisco 49ers will take on the Baltimore Ravens on Feb. 3 for the Lombardi Trophy.
Football's last game of the season is more than just a gridiron contest, though, as millions of fans and novices alike crowd around the television to enjoy fun and food.
So, we're asking our faithful Patch readers to share their favorite gameday recipes with their neighbors right here in the comments section of this article.
Do friends and family flock to your couch for the spiciest Buffalo chicken in New Jersey? Maybe it's the nachos and world-famous dip that lands you at a friend's house. Either way, let us know, and enjoy the game!
Here are a couple recipes to get you started:
Wendy's Super Easy Super Bowl Guacamole
- 1 bag of ripe avocados (4) from Trader Joe's
- 1 container of fresh salsa from Trader Joe's (spiciness dependent on your taste)
- 1 – 3 large cloves of garlic, pressed or finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 bag of tortilla chips
- Peel and pit avocados.
- Mash the avocados in a non-metal bowl (if one or more of them seems a wee bit under-ripe, chop instead of mashing).
- Drain the fresh salsa well (I usually use the lid to squish the salsa down and pour the liquid into the sink) and add it to the mashed avocados.
- Add the pressed or chopped garlic and the cumin.
- Mix well, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.
Buffalo Chicken Meatballs (adapted from Rachael Ray) - serves 8
- 2 pounds ground white meat chicken
- 1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, pressed or finely chopped
- 1 cup cilantro or parsley, chopped
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
- 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
- 1 cup hot sauce (such as Frank's or Cholula)
- 3 scallions, green and white parts thinly sliced
- Store-bought, good quality blue cheese dressing for dipping
- 1 bag pre-cut celery sticks
- 1 bag pre-cut carrot sticks
- Preheat oven to 400ºF.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground chicken with the onion, garlic and cilantro or parsley, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Shape the chicken mixture into balls—you should have 32 meatballs in total.
- Arrange the meatballs on a wire rack on a foil-covered sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil.
- Bake until the meatballs are cooked through and golden brown, about 10-12 minutes.
- While the meatballs are baking, melt the butter in a large, flat bottom pan over medium heat.
- Add the hot sauce and whisk to combine.
- In the pan, toss the baked meatballs in the hot sauce to coat (you may do this in batches) and transfer to a serving platter.
- Place the blue cheese dressing in a small serving bowl and garnish with chopped scallions.
- Serve the meatballs with toothpicks alongside the blue cheese dressing, celery and carrot sticks.


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PORTLAND - Do you ever wonder why your craving for sweet and salty snacks seems to increase at night?
An OHSU researcher is part of a new study suggesting your evening munchies may be tied to a rhythm in your internal body clock.
"The rhythm that we've uncovered may well contribute to the epidemic of obesity," explained Dr. Steven Shea. "It's groundbreaking."
Shea collaborated with colleagues at Harvard and Brigham and Women's in Boston. A dozen patients were watched round the clock for 13 days.
"They were in a specialized suite where we controlled light which helped us regulate their body clocks," he said.
The study determined that at about 8 p.m., our desire for sweet and salty snacks increases and it's tied to evolution.
"At one time, we needed to store up on fats at night so we were ready to go out and hunt and gather in the morning, but that's not the case anymore."
The rhythm in our body clock or circadian system can make it challenging to drop weight.
"After looking at these results, it tells me if you want to lose weight you should probably go to bed earlier," Shea recommended. "That way you're sleeping during those dangerous hours."
He points to Sumo wrestlers as a good example. The successful ones, he says, depend on heavy eating of salty, starchy foods at night.
"So if you want to lose weight, do the opposite, eat heavier in the morning hours and lighter in the evening," concluded the OHSU researcher.


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3 - 12 September 2013
Join a weekend of science show fun with Surfing Scientist, Ruben Meerman and Cogs the Robot.
The science of sex, myth-busting and musings with Dr. Karl, Natasha Mitchell from ABC's Life Matters and Prof Rob Brooks from the Sex Lab at the University of NSW.
One hilarious night with three amazing comedians: Simon Taylor, Justine Rogers and Simon Pampena.


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This regular column is for Dungeon Masters who like to build worlds and campaigns as much as I do. Here I share my experiences as a DM through the lens of Iomandra, my Dungeons & Dragons campaign world. Even though the campaign uses the 4th Edition rules, the topics covered here often transcend editions. Hopefully this series of articles will give you inspiration, ideas, and awesome new ways to menace your players in your home campaigns.
If you're interested in learning more about the world of Iomandra, check out the wiki.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT. Early in the campaign, on the island of Kheth, the heroes destroyed a cursed cauldron hidden deep inside an underground temple. This act triggered a curse that caused the dead to rise all across the island. The shambling horde chased the heroes back to the fortified village of Tyrak'n, where they made their final stand. I drew a map of the village's palisade wall on a wet-erase battle map, and beyond this wall I arrayed a legion of D&D miniatures—skeletons and other undead critters. There must've been at least fifty of them.
Many levels later, the village of Tyrak'n was again threatened, this time by goblins hiding out in the Feywild. The goblins were using a ritual to create a fey crossing, allowing them to surreptitiously invade the village without having to breach the palisades. When the heroes caught wind of the goblins' scheme, they ventured to the Feywild and assaulted the goblin stockade, which was filled to the brim with nearly one hundred of the villainous little buggers (as well as a few dozen hobgoblins and bugbears).
When it comes to throwing monsters at my players, the more the merrier.
I love minions. To me, they're like popcorn. I can't get enough of them. Every now and then, I dive into my collection of pre-painted plastic minis and sort them into armies that I can, at some future point, throw against my players. Skeletons. Goblins. Gnolls. Orcs. Ogres. Yuan-ti. Githyanki. Giants. Minions come in all shapes and sizes.
The 1 hit point minion is one of 4th Edition's great contributions to the D&D legacy. Minions are fun for the players insofar as they provide instant gratification; all it takes is one good sword swing or one magic missile to drop a minion, while a good area-of-effect power might annihilate an entire group of them in one fell swoop. They're a godsend to the DM, who doesn't need to waste time tracking hit points.
The Dungeon Master's Guide has a simple formula for the power level of a minion compared to a standard monster. I say forget the math! When a battle calls for minions, give the players everything you've got. And I mean everything. What's the worst that could happen? I'll tell you: The heroes might be overwhelmed and defeated. In my campaign, that's never a showstopper. If you're the type of DM who sees this potential outcome as an opportunity and not a campaign-ender, then you'll probably agree with me that you can never have too many minions. Give the players the fight they've been hankering for all week, and let the popcorn fall where it may.
Don't get me wrong: Sometimes it makes sense to include only a handful of minions in an encounter. What I'm referring to are those momentous occasions when you want to impress and terrify your players with what they're up against. When an enemy has the advantage of sheer numbers, players start to think twice about their conventional monster-slaying tactics; true, a wizard's fireball can kill twenty minions as easily as one, but if that still leaves twenty more minions on the table, the heroes could find themselves in serious trouble. They might even be forced to retreat or (gasp!) surrender.
When I build encounters, I balance them without factoring minions into the mix. That's not in keeping with the rules as written, but the DM has license to break the rules (as long as he or she does so fairly, consistently, and openly). Depending on how the minions are arrayed and when they show up has a lot to do with their effectiveness on the battlefield. If they're neatly arrayed in tight clusters for all the heroes to see, the wizard will make sure they're not around very long. On the other hand, if they're spread out, or if they only appear when certain conditions arise, they can truly change the complexion of the battlefield and force the players to reconsider their tactics. For example, I sometimes keep minions in reserve until the bad guy summons them, and I often keep extras behind my DM screen in case the player characters are having too easy a time.
When I think of minions, I think of the big fight scenes in all three films of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. For some reason, the image of Aragorn fighting orcs always springs to mind, and I think to myself, "I will never get tired of watching Aragorn kill orcs." Most of my players are the same way: They long to play out battles against seemingly overwhelming numbers of foes and watch their heroes carve and blast their way through enemy lines.
Although minions come with specified XP values, it's ultimately up to the DM to decide how much XP the characters receive for defeating them (and don't let any rulebook tell you otherwise). I tend to "ad hoc" the XP awards for minions. If the minions prove to be instrumental, then I might award full XP for them. On the other hand, if the minions aren't terribly effective, I might award none.
If you follow my advice and start bombarding your players with veritable armies of minions, be advised that the goal should not be to annihilate the party. If that's your objective, it's a lot simpler just to drop an asteroid on them and be done with it. No, your goal as the DM is to entertain the players by creating in-game situations that are perilous and fun, and minions are merely tools toward that end. If the heroes start dropping like flies, consider that the bad guys might stabilize them and take them prisoner. Many great adventures begin with just such a setback or defeat.
Until the next encounter!
—Dungeon Master for Life, Chris Perkins
Awhile ago, I ran a "Best Villain Ever!" contest. This contest is similar, only the objective is to create a really cool minion monster. You've seen the minions in the Monster Manual and Monster Vault books. Here's your chance to design one of your own and share it with DMs around the world! I'm not handing out prizes for this one, I'm afraid. The best you can hope for is the prestige that comes from having your work appear in an upcoming Dungeon Master Experience article.
Send your minion stat block to email@example.com by 9 AM PST on June 16, 2011, with the following subject line: MAGNIFICENT MINION! At the end of your minion stat block, type your name and whereabouts (for example, "Smedley Rohrbacher, Happenin WY"). And no, that's not a real place. Your entry doesn't need to be long; in fact, the best minions are often the simplest, usually with no more than a couple powers or traits.
I'll pick the minions I like best, share them in an upcoming article, and talk about why I chose them and why I think they're cool additions to the D&D game.
As a DM, how do you roll?
Which of the following minion powers do you like best?


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Typical areas of the ongoing commercial nuclear power industry research at the Westinghouse Science and Technology Department include: The Hot Cell Facility; Autoclave Laboratory; The Materials Characterization Laboratory; Chemical Processing; Probabilistic Reliability and Advanced Optimization Methods
Examples of new technologies and innovations of the Department include: Silicon Carbide (SiC) Detectors; Pulsed Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA); The IRIS Reactor; Modeling to Support Risk-Informed Optimization.
The Hot Cell Facility provides Westinghouse with the capability to perform a full range of metallurgical investigations on any non-fuel component after service in a reactor environment. The hot cells have also been used for extensive research projects, particularly in the areas of irradiation effects on pressure vessel steels and reactor internal materials that have led to improved safety analysis and plant maintenance procedures. Over 50 plant component, critical-path investigations have been completed in the 25 years of the facility's existence, allowing engineering analyses which have helped power plants return quickly and safely to service.
The Science and Technology Department operates a high-pressure Autoclave Laboratory with 32 operating autoclaves that simulate the temperature, pressure, chemistry, and operating stresses that are experienced in a pressurized water reactor system. The laboratory was completed in 1998 and features computerized autoclave control and remote data access.
The Materials Characterization Laboratory is designed to obtain physical, structural, chemical, and topographical information on solid materials and surfaces. The laboratory occupies over 6000 square feet of space and employs the following techniques:
Chemical Processing facilities include a state-of-the-art analytical laboratory and extensive engineering and modeling software capabilities for thermodynamics (the NASA CEA code with a Westinghouse augmented database of over 3000 compounds) and chemical process simulation (ChemCad for Chemstations). Areas for which these facilities are being used include the design and optimization of Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel's Columbia Site and Western Zirconium Plant. Chemical engineering support is provided in the areas of uranium dioxide and zirconium production, uranium fluoride processing, environmental engineering and resource recovery, radioactive waste handling, and nuclear power plant chemistry and auxiliary operations. New technologies and concepts that enhance manufacturing processes and power plant operations are investigated and recommended for development.
Probabilistic Reliability and Advanced Optimization Methods (such as evolutionary algorithms) support the development of such new services as risk-informed piping in-service inspection, risk-informed steam generator inspection, and nuclear asset management. Our expertise in probability theory supports Westinghouse and commercial nuclear power industry regulatory initiatives. Innovative decision analysis methods are used to help Westinghouse make decisions in light of risk and uncertainty, manage research project portfolios, support marketing efforts, and direct industry initiatives on generic issues. Statistical analyses, including advanced methods for regression, acceptance sampling, and design of experiments, enable quality control and manufacturing process innovations.
Following are examples of new technologies and innovations:
Silicon Carbide (SiC) Detectors are wide bandgap semiconductor devices that have demonstrated their operability as detectors for alpha particles, neutrons, gamma rays, and X-rays, at temperatures up to 700 degrees Celsius and for prolonged times in intense neutron/gamma environments. They are being developed for many Westinghouse applications including:
Recently, these detectors were applied successfully as part of a submersible fuel rod gamma-scanner during measurements at an operating PWR fuel pool.
Pulsed Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA) is being developed by Westinghouse for the nondestructive assay of toxic metals (examples include mercury, cadmium and lead) in waste containers. It is currently the only nondestructive assay technology demonstrated for this application. Westinghouse is currently teaming with BNFL Instruments to build a first-of-a-kind PGNAA 55-gallon drum assay prototype for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Other Westinghouse Electric Company applications of PGNAA that have been investigated include:
IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) is a pressurized light water reactor being developed by an international consortium led by Westinghouse Electric Company and including twenty-one organizations from ten countries. Industry, utilities, laboratories and universities are represented in the consortium. IRIS is an integral (all primary system components are inside the vessel), modular, medium size (335 MWe) reactor which features enhanced safety, simplicity and competitive economics. IRIS adopts a safety-by-design approach where most accidents are eliminated altogether or their consequences/probabilities lessened. Consequently, all but one of the Class IV accidents (the ones with the potential for radiological release) are eliminated, the core damage frequency is estimated to be of the order of E-8 and IRIS intends to be licensed with no emergency response requirements. Some of IRIS unique features are incorporation of control rod drive mechanisms inside the vessel (eliminating the possibility of head failures), 48 months' maintenance interval, extended (up to four years) refueling intervals, desalination and district heating co-generation capability. The project is well into the preliminary design phase. NRC pre-licensing application started in 2003 and will be completed by 2005, to be followed by design certification in 2008-2010 and deployment in 2012-2015.
Modeling to Support Risk-Informed Optimization of in-service inspection of commercial nuclear power plant steam generator tubes has been developed. The model features a novel application of probability theory to produce estimates of the maximum number of degraded tubes to be left in service and still achieve reliability targets, and an advanced mathematical optimization module to achieve the minimum sampling required to demonstrate a stipulated confidence in not exceeding such a maximum.
Board of Directors Biographies
Location Map
Research &Technology
Nuclear Power PlantExporters'Principles ofConduct
Environmental,Health, andSafetyManagementSystem
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Women InNuclear


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Single and Parenting
First Baptist Church will host Single and Parenting group meetings for single parents to share advice and encouragement from 6-7:15 p.m. Wednesdays, beginning Jan. 22, in room B-302, 218 S. Academy St. The class requires a $15 workbook that can be purchased during registration. To register, call 919-467-6356 or go to www.caryfbc.org/discipleship.
Celebrate Recovery
Summit Evangelical Covenant Church will host Celebrate Recovery meetings for people recovering from hurting, hangups and habits at 8 p.m. Wednesdays at 590 Westhigh St., Cary. For more information on Celebrate Recovery, go to www.celebraterecovery.com. For more information on the churchs program, go to www.summitnc.org or email email@example.com.
Bible studies
• First Baptist Church of Carys winter session of Bible studies will start the week of Wednesday, Jan. 22, at 218 S. Academy St. For more information, call Charlene at 919-467-6356 or go to www.caryfbc.org/discipleship.
• White Plains United Methodist Church has opened registration for adult Bible studies. The church is at 313 SE Maynard Road, Cary. For more information, call 919-467-9394, go to www.wpumc.com or email firstname.lastname@example.com.
• The Apex congregation of Jordan Lutheran Church will read the Bible together starting Sunday, Feb. 9. The congregation meets at Beaver Creek Cinemas, 1441 Beaver Creek Commons Drive, Apex. For more information, go to jordanchurchnc.org/the-story.
Bible study for widows
First Baptist Church of Cary will offer an eight-week class, The Undistracted Widow Living for God After Losing Your Husband, from 9-11 a.m. Thursdays, starting Jan. 23, at 218 S. Academy St. To sign up, call Charlene at 919-467-6356 or go to www.caryfbc.org/discipleship.
First United Methodist Church - Cary will host a 13-week series of GriefShare meetings starting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at 117 S. Academy St., Cary. For more information, call 919-467-1861.
Financial Peace University
Good Shepherd United Church of Christ will host a Financial Peace University class at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at 1050 NW Maynard Road, Cary. For details, call 919-181-1441 or go to www.gsucc.org.
Movie night
Westwood Baptist Church will host a movie night for singles at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24, in the Fellowship Hall at 200 Westhigh St., Cary. For more information, call the church at 919-469-9393.
Blood drive
Christ the King Lutheran Church will host a blood drive from 2-7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 3, at 600 Walnut St., Cary. Donors must be 17 or older and weigh at least 110 pounds. People with appointments will get priority seating, but walk-ins are welcome. To sign up, go to tinyurl.com/CTK-Feb-Blood-Drive.
Greg Buchanan performs at Westwood
Harpist Greg Buchanan will perform at Westwood Baptist Church from 6:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5, at 200 Westhigh St., Cary. For details, call 919-469-9393.
Jobs for Life
Dorcas Ministries will host the free, eight-week Jobs for Life program on finding and applying for jobs from Thursday, Feb. 6, to Friday, April 4, at 187 High House Road, Cary. Register by Friday, Jan. 24, by calling 919-469-9861, ext. 201, or emailing email@example.com.
Seasons of Love
White Plains United Methodist Churchs Seasons of Love Valentines Day dinner will start with hors doeuvres at 5:30 p.m. and dinner and live music by Grace Notes at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, at 313 SE Maynard Road, Cary. Dinner costs $25 per person and is limited to 48 people. Proceeds will be donated to the PAGE Arts Endowment Fund. To sign up, call 919-467-9394 or go to www.wpumc.com.
Contemplative worship service
Woodhaven Baptist Church offers a new contemplative worship service with meditation from 8:30-9:15 a.m. Sundays at 4000 Kildaire Farm Road, Apex.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Holly Springs United Methodist Church hosts There is a Solution Alcoholics Anonymous group meetings from 7-8 p.m. Tuesdays at 108 Avent Ferry Road.
Sisters in Support
White Plains United Methodist Church will host a support group for women who have or had breast cancer from 7-8:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month at 313 SE Maynard Road, Cary. For more information, email Lee Heathcoat at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Raleigh Christian Womens Connection
The Raleigh Christian Womens Connection meets the third Tuesday of the month from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the N.C. State University Club, 4200 Hillsborough St., Raleigh. Amy Wright will talk about decorating for the new year, and Willie Bongiorno will give a presentation, The Garden of Life, on Jan. 21. Lunch costs $16; a free nursery is available. To register, call 919-337-8003 or email email@example.com.
Family support ministry meeting
A family support ministry organized by Mary Williams-Farrington and the Pardoned by Christ Ministry meets the second Tuesday of every month. The ministry provides support for people who have been incarcerated or who have or have had an incarcerated family member. For details, contact Williams-Farrington at email@example.com or go to www.pardonedbychrist.org.
Overeaters Anonymous
Fuquay-Varina United Methodist Church hosts Overeaters Anonymous meetings from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Wednesdays in room 126, 100 Judd Parkway. The groups supportive meetings dont include weigh-ins, diets or fees. For more information, call 919-557-7712 or 919-771-1393.
Labyrinth meditation
Cary Presbyterian Church offers a labyrinth meditation walk from 5:30-7:30 p.m. the first Wednesday of each month at 614 Griffis St. For details, call 919-469-1337 or visit www.carypresbyterian.org.
Cancer support group
A cancer support group meets the second Wednesday of each month from 7-8:30 p.m. in Room WC108 at Colonial Baptist Church, 6051 Tryon Road, Cary. Details: Phyllis Travers, 919-233-0355.
The Knights of Columbus Council 12119 hosts jackpot bingo at 7 p.m. Thursdays at St. Bernadette Catholic Church, 1005 Wilbon Road, Fuquay-Varina. Doors open at 6 p.m. Food and beverages available. Details: Al Munno, 919-557-7718, or Sonny Butler, 845-797-0830.
Celebrate Recovery for Women
Celebrate Recovery for Women meets at 6 p.m. every Friday at North Cary Baptist Church, 505 Reedy Creek Road, Cary. The group helps women with hurting, hangups and habits. Details: 919-469-8023.
Brown Bag Ministry
The Brown Bag Ministry, which feeds more than 1,400 people a week, is looking for middle- and high school-age volunteers. The group meets at St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church in Apex about 9 a.m. Saturdays. Volunteers prepare bagged meals and hand them out in Raleigh. The group usually finishes by 1 p.m. Details: www.brownbagministry.org.
Send faith listings to firstname.lastname@example.com.


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July 2014
What is the Colorado Mountain College Summer Technology Institute?
The Colorado Mountain College Summer Technology Institute is a week-long, technology-packed learning adventure. Institute students will learn about the technical, creative, and business aspects of technology. Students will work in the new CMC Computer Lab, accessing state of the art hardware and computer applications and work with experienced instructors who are professionals at the forefront of their fields. Students will learn web site development, digital photography, e-commerce shopping carts, Photoshop, video production and editing, and more. At the end of the week, teams of students will apply and present all of their new skills in the form of a final team capstone project.
Institute Mission
The mission of the Colorado Mountain College Summer Technology Institute is to provide participants with an opportunity to experience the dynamic, multi-faceted worlds of technology in a week-long enrichment institute.
What to Expect
- An Extraordinary Learning Adventure
- Lot of Hands-on Projects Using State of the Art Computer Labs
- Four Fantastic Instructors: Small Student-to-Instructor Ratio
- Technology Teamwork Adventures
- Colorado Mountain College Summer Technology Institute Swag
- Fun! The Best Week of Your Summer
General Information
- Summer Technology Institute 2014 Flyer
- Institute 2014 Dates: 07-21-2014 to 07-25-2014
- Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm
- Daily Lunch, Snacks, and Drinks Provided
- Tuition: $495
- Enrollment: 15 Students
Registration & Tuition Information
- Dillon Campus: Sheri Weinman: 970-468-5989 x2801
- Breckenridge Campus: Ronda Westhoff: 970-453-6757 Ext. 2620
- Lead Instructor: Robert Cartelli: 970-453-6757 Ext. 2629
Accuplacer is used as an assessment tool for college readiness and placement into mathematics, reading and English classes.
The fee is $10 per subject (3 subjects total) and is non-refundable.
Payment is due before testing.
You must have an application on file prior to testing.
Please bring your picture ID and college ID number.
Cell phones and beepers must be turned off and out of sight upon entering the testing center.
Only one retest per subject per semester is allowed.
Students must wait a minimum of one week to retake a test.
Testing at Dillon is in room 11.
Visit Bordeaux, one of France
Uncover your grill and discover the flavors of India. Just because you don't have a traditional chula or tandoor doesn't mean you can't cook with Indian flare. You will learn recipes for chicken vindaloo, curried cauliflower/spinach, and ginger shrimp tikka pita. 07/25/2014 – 07/25/2014, Course # CUA-901-VE06, Syn # 83056.
Go to WebAdvisor Continuing Education to search (use the Syn #) and register and pay for class.
Find Your CE Class & Register
Spend an evening in Paris gazing at the Eiffel Tower as we learn to prepare Leeks Vinaigrette, Pommes Frites, Ratatouille, Chicken Fricasse with Tarragon and Mushrooms, Potage Escargot and topping it all off with a delicious Tarte au Pruneaux.
Syn# 82999
Cost $44
Go to WebAdvisor Continuing Education to search (use the Syn #) and register and pay for class.
Find Your CE Class & Register
Meets the requirements for American Red Cross, Professional Rescuer CPR or American Heart, Association Basic Life Support for those who, work in emergency services, health care, and other, professional areas. Material presented in the course is basic patient assessment, basic, airway management, rescue breathing, and CPR for infant, child, and adult patients. American Heart Association materials are used. Text required and must be purchased. Cost: one-half credit hour of tuition.
Syn# 83032
Go to WebAdvisor Continuing Education to search (use the Syn #) and register and pay for class.
Find Your CE Class & Register
If you already have a working knowledge of your Mac and OS X (Mavericks), and you want to take it to the next level, then this class is perfect for you. You will explore the App Store where you can download apps that extend the functionality of your Mac with the hundreds of free and paid options. You will also learn about Mac's iLife and iWork suites. Finally, you will examine iCloud and other services to take your computing and storage on the road. Basic computer skills required. 07/26/2014 – 07/26/2014, Course # CIS-901-VE13, Syn # 83204.
Go to WebAdvisor Continuing Education to search (use the Syn #) and register and pay for class.
Find Your CE Class & Register
Week 1: Cake baking. Week 2: Frostings and fillings. Week 3: Putting it all together. Join Chef Felicia for this three-step class and take home one delicious cake. 07/27/2014 – 08/10/2014, Course # CUA-901-VE07, Syn # 83717.
Go to WebAdvisor Continuing Education to search (use the Syn #) and register and pay for class.
Find Your CE Class & Register
Fall registration begins at 8 am.
This college engineering course will help students learn about engineering design process, apply math, science and engineering standards to hands-on problems, use Autodesk Inventor, a 3D modeling software, and document their work using an engineering notebook. The curriculum used for the course is provided by Project Lead the Way, the nation's leading provider of engineering curriculum for students.
Dates: Monday, July 28th – Aug 8th, 2014
Time: 8:30am to 12:30pm
Enrollment capped at 20 students
3 credit class
Course code EGG-140 #83334
Students must be 16 years old.
All students must fill out CMC application for this class.
If student is under 17, they must complete the underage process to register for this class.


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Gov. Chris Christie's former chief of staff, Rich Bagger, will be part of the First Friday's speaker series next week in Summit.
Bagger who has had a longtime connection to Union County, is currently a vice president at the Summit-based pharmaceuticals firm Celgene, and holds a seat on the Board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The Westfield resident was the town's former mayor, and has had a political career that includes time as a state assemblyman for the 22nd District, followed by a 21st Legislative District senate seat.
"He's going to be talking a lot about his experiences in Trenton and discussing what's going on with the Port Authority," said Joe Steiner, head of the .
For more on Bagger, check out his bio on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's website.
Bagger will stop in Summit to speak at the First Friday's breakfast event from 8a.m. until 9:30a.m., Sept. 7 at the . Tickets can be purchased at www.suburbanchambers.org.


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By James Niedzinski
Staff Writer
---- — ESSEX — Town officials began preparing for a public forum about what to do with the northern sections of Conomo Point last night.
The sale of lots on the southern half is nearly complete, as Town Administrator Brendhan Zubricki said 34 of the 39 purchases and sale agreements have already been approved. Three other agreements should come before selectmen by the end of the year, he said last week.
Town officials are now beginning to aim their sights on plans for the northern part of the point. Last night, during a meeting of the Conomo Point Planning Committee, talks began with Brown Sardina, the Boston-based urban and architectural design firm hired to come up with proposals for the site.
Committee Chairman Mark Lynch said last night's meeting was to determine what will be discussed during a public forum on Conomo Point scheduled for 7 p.m. Dec. 6 in the Essex Elementary School cafeteria.
"A big part of this is community input," he said.
Lynch cited the 99 percent voter turnout during the elections earlier this month, and added he hopes residents get just as involved in plans for Conomo Point, which can be an "emotionally charged issue" for some people.
James Heroux, Brown Sardina's principal landscape architect, added the meeting was and the public forum will be community-based and community-oriented.
"A lot of this is getting people to the same point, how to proceed with certain goals," he said Thursday afternoon. "We want to acknowledge to goals of the town residents and Conomo Point residents."
Lynch said Brown Sardina has not presented any proposals yet, but is required to do so by February.
Heroux said Brown Sardina won the contract to survey the site last month. And Zubricki confirmed Brown Sardina was hired for $50,000 for consultation and proposals.
Heroux has had experience with small, historic towns such as Essex in the past.
In the request for design and proposal services, Heroux wrote to Zubricki and selectmen that he was hired by the town of Port Royal, S.C., for a similar project.
Heroux led a design team in Port Royal charged with developing a community on town land that, if used for residential and retail use, would expand the town tax base.
While Lynch said nothing proposed by Brown Sardina would be final, the committee is hoping for a great turnout of public input at the Dec. 6 forum.
"We've been posting on Facebook pages, having signs up near Town Hall and doing reverse 911 text alerts," he said. "We want everyone involved."
James Niedzinski can be reached at 978-283-7000 x3455 or at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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5 tips you'd never think of for personalizing stock photos in social media
by Darcie Defoe -
Image is everything. It's common sense really, but a lot of social media metrics prove that images can boost the reception of your content whether it's a blog article, Facebook post, or tweet. And we've all seen the success of image-centric sites like Pinterest and Instagram. So, how can you make the most of your online efforts without having to become a professional photographer? With a few easy practices using stock photography you can not only improve your social media efforts, but you can make an impression on your readers that makes you memorable. Let's look at five things you can do today!
1) Define your "Signature Style"
Before you open your browserRead full article


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The Pastor and parishioners at the Karen Street Baptist Church believe someone has targeted the church.
In the past few weeks the church has been egged and a metal sign cracked.
Both were reported to Omaha Police on Thursday, November 15th but the damage to the sign was done a few days prior.
According to the police report the pastor decided not to report the damage unless there was another incident.
The congregation did not have to wait long. The dozen or so eggs thrown at the building did damage to the siding, windows and door of the church.
A total estimated damage from the two incidents was not listed on the police report.


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By Emily Pearce
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
FOLLOWING a series of revelations over his living arrangements, it has now been reported MP Andrew Turner rents a London flat from the wife of a parliamentary colleague.
Mr Turner was named today (Tuesday) by the Daily Telegraph as one of several MPs engaged in the practice, sparking criticism about rent deals at taxpayers' expense.
It was reported that Mr Turner rents his Victoria flat from Lady Alexandra Hill, the wife of education minister Lord Jonathan Hill.
Mr Turner's partner and parliamentary assistant Carole Dennett told the County Press today Mr Turner did not know Lady Hill owned the one-bed flat when he agreed to rent it around two years ago.
He did not know Lady Hill personally or her husband, other than having worked with him some 20 years ago, she added.
"It was done through an estate agent. We only found out afterwards who owned the flat.
"It's absolutely a coincidence," she said.
When previously asked by the County Press if Mr Turner rented from another MP, he said he did not.
Miss Dennett stressed Lord Hill was a member of the House of Lords, not an MP.
"There was no intention to mislead," said Miss Dennett.
At the time the County Press asked about his living arrangements, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority had not disclosed the names of MPs' landlords and Miss Dennett said Lady Hill had the right to ask for privacy.
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by Cecil Giles
21st November 2012, at 14:56:52
Apologies for double posting, but on reading the statement from Ward House Financial Services I notice that his Independent Financial Advisor stated that he had reviewed all of the MP's financial affairs and gives a professional opinion on his integrity as "excellent".None of us have been privvy to such disclosure, nor do we have any basis upon which to form a true opinion. I would argue that to make statements such as he has goes to show that he is willing to put his own reputation on the line...I don't know any other acolade greater than that!
21st November 2012, at 14:46:27
Well, it is peculiar insofar as he MUST work and live in two different parts of the country, has no set working hours, must run his office on expenses and has an eager press and public critical of his contractual benefits. Our MP has not been investigated by the police nor has he been accused of fiddling the public purse (as many other have).In my working life, my employer has always paid for my digs when I have needed to stay away from home and has even paid for my meals when away!Do I think the MP has misled us...noDo I think the MP works hard...yesWould I want to do his job...noIs the MPs job understood by his critics...certainly not unanimouslyComments about him being dishonorable when he is complying with the rules are quite strange. This is a story about his landlord being a Tory peer, not expenses.But on the subject of expenses, these have to be incurred to be paid and are only paid when justified; he's clearly done nothing wrong-so why the negative publicity?
by David Blackford
21st November 2012, at 14:42:42
I would remind Andrew Turner that he has just 3 years to redeem his reputation. Any alleged greed does not sit well with the electorate
by margaret lowley
21st November 2012, at 13:26:56
21st November 2012, at 13:23:18
i agree with roger goodwins comments , time for a vote of NO CONFIDENCE FOR ANDREW TURNER the public needHONOROURABLE members, NOT DIS HONOURABLE . MEMBERS
by Richard Taylor
21st November 2012, at 12:29:01
Well said Lee. Hundreds of people commute, what's so 'peculiar'? Lets face it - he's just been rumbled..............
21st November 2012, at 11:28:06
Everyone complained when MP's claimed mortgage expenses and demanded that they either stay in hotels or rented accommodation. He moved to rented accommodation and now we are complaining that his landlord is a posho....sorry but I wouldn't have thought that any central London landlord is a nobody! What needs to be established is whether Mr Turner entered into some sort of 'old boys network' type of deal or did he go through a legitimate estate agent. If it was the latter then he would have had no knowledge of who the owner of his flat would be and this entire story would be a matter of coincidence. I don't like the expenses system, it's not normal and seem quite peculiar; however it is an open, accountable system for a very peculiar job. Do we, or shareholders, put other high powered executives through as much scrutiny-no we don't.Nothing that he has done is illegal, nothing seems to have been hidden and none of the allegations against him seem to be that important...sour grap
by Roger Godwin
21st November 2012, at 10:55:47
Again will be the excuses! Once yes, given a second chance, twice NO!!! Caught at it in the trough, Snort Snort!! Money Money!! Rip off the system and people I represent! TIME FOR A VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN OUR HONOURABLE MEMBER OF PARLIMENT!!!! Most of us are pulling together in the recession, and have words like "Fiscal prudence", "Hard Times" "Cut Back"Well this obviously only applies to the "HOI POLLOI" not our MP's, this situation is Disgraceful bordering on contempt for the people whose these MPs are suposed to serve.400 years ago he would have lost his head for this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
21st November 2012, at 09:17:31
You really couldn't make this up. 'No intention to mislead', yeah right!
by Terry Dalley
21st November 2012, at 06:32:10
Why pick on him they are all at it, its the whole system of I will cover your back if you cover mine which is rife in the government and not one of them has the slightest bit of guilt or embarrassment about what they get up to and no one to hold them to account .
Any views or opinions presented in the comments above are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the Isle of Wight County Press.
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text:
Call it one giant leap for a football team and one very happy loss of $70,000 for Harkness Furniture.
The South Tacoma furniture dealer has placed a bet with customers. If they bought something - anything - between Thursday and two hours before the Super Bowl kickoff on Sunday, and if a Seahawk returned an opening kickoff for a touchdown, well, the furniture would be free.
Spend $1,000 on a living room ensemble, and get $1,000 back after the game.
Seahawk Percy Harvin did return the opening kickoff of the second half, running 87 yards for the score.
Harkness was insured against the loss, said manager John Opland on Monday.
Early on, he had a hunch this might happen.
"With their kicker hurt, and Harvin back, this is a possibility," Opland recalls telling some customers.
And it happened.
"As I was watching, it was almost surreal," he said.
Durk Farnes, Harkness marketing director, spent part of Monday communicating with some of the 70 lucky customers who will get their money back. He's been answering calls, texts and emails.
Customers are asking if it's a real deal, if they'll truly get a refund.
"Yes, it looks like that to me," he tells them. "Sweet."
He recalls Sunday's game, as he watched Harvin score.
His wife, Trena, asked him at the time, "Did they just do what you wanted them to do?"
"They sure did," he answered.
"People are just thrilled about it," said Opland. "So are we. We were rooting for it."
Meanwhile, at Gallery Furniture in Houston, owner Jim McIngvale lost some $7 million on a promotion that full offered a refund to any customer who spent over $6,000 by Saturday night – if the Seahawks won.
And of course, they won.
At Northwest Embroidery in Milton, owner Jim Mickelson said Monday, "By 12 o'clock, literally, we needed a parking lot attendant."
Championship T-shirts were ready by noon and Mickelson's crew had a difficult time keeping up with demand.
"As soon as we got a pile, they're sold," he said. "You can't imagine what the Seahawks have done for the local economy."
Mike Ewing, chief marketing officer at Massachusetts-based Oyo Sportstoys, can imagine just that.
His company produces and distributes a variety of collectibles and sports-related gift items.
"We've seen, in the last 48 hours, an increase in demand," he said Monday. "We've seen demand double."
He's talking about Seahawks products.
"For the last month, the Seahawks have been our largest-selling team," he said.
Not Denver, not the Yankees, not the New Jersey Devils.
"We always see an increase in demand for top teams, and for Super Bowl teams it's usually a nice increase," he said. "I would say Seattle is unique. The demand was high, and has doubled. The demand was already very high. You have such an engaged fan base."
He does expect demand to diminish once the 12th Man and Woman have satisfied their immediate demands for merchandise.
"But I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle wasn't our top-selling team through a successful season next year," he said.


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The Crossroads of the Aether
94 members101 Comments 3 Likes
23 members40 Comments 8 Likes
26 members11 Comments 4 Likes
29 members38 Comments 1 Like
215 members48 Comments 41 Likes
Happy Birthday.
Thanks so much. I am ready to dive bomb right in-in a good way, of course. :)
Just point me in the right direction, and group, and I'm ready.
Thank you for the warm welcome. I have joined the 42nd and look forward to the next meeting.
thank you for the welcome! i hope to see more of everyone in the coming year.
Thank you for the welcome, and I shall certainly set time aside for a visit to the SCARS page.
Thank you! And I have joined SCARS on facebook so naturally I will be joining it here!! Thanks for directing me to it
thank you very much. I will visit the 2 sites that you listed. :-)
Thank you for the warm welcome!!
Salutations! I am looking forward to meeting everyone.
© 2014 Created by Hephzibah Marsh.