text:
After the fall
This article appeared in the October 2009 issue of Runner's World. It was posted online in May 2013 and espnW is presenting the article with RW's permission. Steve Friedman is one of the journalists interviewed in the Nine for IX film "Runner," which premieres Aug. 13 on ESPN (8 p.m. ET):
Last autumn, at a pretty clearing nestled 3,333 feet above sea level in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, 194 female collegiate distance runners gathered to run a 5000-meter cross-country race.
Many were tall and slim, rangy and loose-limbed in the way of college-aged distance runners. They came from North Carolina State and Clemson and Davidson and Miami and other colleges and universities, and it's a safe bet that no matter what burdens any of them quietly carried -- anxiety about grades, boyfriend troubles, or less specific but no less real woes -- none had ever faced the combination of worldwide shame and personal loss that had battered the middle-aged woman in their midst.
She was neither tall nor slim nor rangy. She was 42, brown as a walnut, slightly thick in the middle. When the race started, she jumped in front. The young runners knew this was an open race, that oddballs could run if they wanted. But what was the runner in front thinking? Maybe she wanted to feel the sensation of leading a race. Maybe she would quit after a few hundred yards, then limp back to her grandkids and tell them about the day she led some real runners. Maybe she used to lead races, back in her day.
Some of the coaches looked at each other. She had a nice stride -- there was power to it, and precision. She wasn't just a weekend jogger out for a laugh. The coaches could tell that, even if some of the young runners could not. She kept the lead even after a quarter mile. More coaches watched her, and for at least one of them, and maybe more, who beheld her curly hair, and her speed, and the way she had that little hitch in her style -- elbows slightly too high, a little too wide -- there was something familiar.
Her coach had told her to take it easy, that she didn't have to lead from the beginning. He had warned her against going out too fast. He had warned her that a gigantic hill sat in the middle of the course, and that if she went out too fast, the hill might swallow her. Now more coaches were looking at her, a curly haired, middle-aged woman, legs like pistons, elbows flying. What they saw didn't make sense. She was decimating their college athletes. She ran the first mile of the race in 5:18.
No slightly thick, middle-aged jogger could maintain that kind of pace. She was slowing down. And now the giant hill in the middle of the course was looming. And the young athletes were tracking the sun-cured, curly-haired rabbit down. They were clear-eyed, long-limbed, remorseless. They were on the big hill now, and they had caught up to her and they were going to pass her. Her coach couldn't help it. She had ignored his advice. Still, he couldn't help it. So Jeff Jacobs yelled. "Go, Zola!"
"Zola?" another coach asked, and stared at the runner. Other coaches stared, too. Zola? It was impossible.
Mention the name Zola Budd to the casual track fan and you'll likely get one (or all) of three responses: Barefoot. South African. Tripped Mary Decker. Those were the boldest brush strokes of her narrative, and they continue to be. But the legend of Zola Budd is, like all legends, simple and moving and incomplete. It is made of half-truths, exaggerations, and outright lies. She did run barefoot -- but so did everyone else where she grew up. She did refrain from speaking out against great and terrible injustice -- but so did a lot of other people older and wiser. She did suffer stunning setbacks and tragic losses, but much of her misfortune was worse than people knew, the losses more complicated and painful than most imagined.
A lot of people thought she had disappeared and stopped running for good. But here she was. "Go, Zola!" Jacobs yelled and another coach took up the cry, then another. Was it nostalgia, or a wish for their own faded youth, or a belated and overdue recognition of grit's enduring majesty? Here she was, doing what she had always done, even when no one was watching. Through all the fragile triumphs and shifting tribulations of Zola Budd's life -- some well-known, some known not at all -- only one thing remained immutable: running. Once she ran to connect with someone she loved. Then she ran to be alone. Running brought her international fame and then worldwide scorn and then it brought her something few might suspect.
"Go, Zola, go!" The young runners closed again. Certainly they could hear the yells. What the hell was a Zola? It didn't matter. They had time, and nature and physics, on their side. They had young legs. They had grit themselves. They would show this middle-aged mom what racing was all about. They reeled her in, and she pumped harder, faster and they reeled her in again. There was a long way to go.
Running had been fun for the curly-haired athlete once, a long time ago, and then it had saved her when she needed saving most, and then it had almost destroyed her before she was even an adult.
Why was she running now? What was she running from? Or toward?
"Go, Zola!" the coaches yelled. "Go, Zola, go."
Frank Budd and Hendrina Wilhelmina de Swardt, whom everyone called Tossie, had five children before Zola. Their third-born child, Frank Jr., died of a viral infection when he was just 11 months old. When Zola was born six years later, Tossie was in labor for three days and received 13 pints of blood.
"The nurses told me the kid's a stayer," Frank, always good for a quote, would tell reporters years later, before things got ugly.
When Zola was young, her father was busy working at the printing plant his father, an English immigrant, had founded -- and Tossie was sickly. The oldest of the Budd children, Jenny, became the toddler's de facto caretaker. Jenny was 11 when her baby sister was born and she read to her often. Their favorite was "Jock of the Bushveld." It's the true tale of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the runt of the litter who is saved from drowning by his owner and repays the favor by developing into a courageous and noble champion. When Zola started talking, according to family stories, Jenny was the first person she called "mom."
Zola was skinny and short and terrible at swimming and team sports, but Jenny liked running, so when Zola got old enough, she ran, too. They ran over the hills surrounding Bloemfontein, the South African city of 500,000 where they lived. The city sits at 4,500 feet and when they ran in the morning, the air was chilly and clear. They ran barefoot, because all children in rural South Africa ran barefoot. They ran for fun. And they ran for something Zola would lose and not find again until decades later.
Then she got fast. And once the world discovered Zola and reporters started calling her things like "a prodigy among prodigies" and a "barefoot, waiflike child champion," running was no longer about fun. Once the skinny, undersized adolescent became a champion, and then a symbol, and then a target of the world's righteous wrath -- at an age when other kids are entering college -- running would be about everything but fun. Things were so much simpler when Zola was just a little girl, running barefoot through the hills with the big sister she idolized.
Later, there would be tales that Zola developed her speed racing ostriches, that her greedy father pushed her until she broke. Like many of the stories that swirled around Budd, they were half-truths. There were ostriches on the family property, more a large menagerie than farm, but she never raced them. And perhaps her father did push her -- he saw how fast she was and got her a coach -- but no one pushed her as much as she pushed herself.
It was a happy childhood. In addition to the ostriches, there were cows and ducks and geese. There were snow-white chickens her father bred and sold, and a water-pumping windmill. There was a family Doberman named Dobie. There were mud fights in the summer and in the winter, bonfires when Zola and her brothers and sisters would build fires and stuff firecrackers in glass bottles, then light them and watch them explode in the air. But Frank and Tossie didn't get along, and the shadow of little Frank's death seemed to always hover over the family. There were photographs of the missing baby all over the house and every year during holidays and on little Frank's birthday, Tossie grew quieter, and sadder. It was a childhood filled with mysterious woe and delirious joy. It was a normal childhood.
Zola's coach got her running more and Jenny became a nurse and wasn't around as much. She worked the night shift and she would come home just as the family was having breakfast, and she would have a piece of cake or pie -- Jenny always had a sweet tooth -- and then she would go to sleep as Zola went off to school. When Zola needed to talk to someone, though, Jenny was always there.
Zola was fast, but not that fast. When she was 13, in a local 4-K race, running as hard as she could, she came in second. By the time she crossed the finish line, the winner was in her track suit, warming down. Zola didn't like losing. But she had the rest of her life. Besides, it's not as if she was going to run for a living. There was school. There were her friends. And there was Jenny. All part of a normal childhood, which ended in 1980.
Jenny, then 25, had been in the hospital for a few weeks, being treated for melanoma. Zola was not allowed to visit. She was only 14, and Tossie knew how her youngest felt about Jenny. So Zola stayed home while doctors treated Jenny. Zola knew Jenny was sick, but she didn't know how sick.
Cara Budd, then 18, came into Zola's room at 4 a. m. on September 9. (Coincidently, it was Tossie's birthday.) Cara woke her little sister and told her the news. Jenny was gone.
Zola didn't cry or scream. She had always been quiet, had always kept her grief, and her joy, to herself. The only person she had really shared her feelings with was Jenny.
After Jenny died, no one in the family talked about it. A family that had never talked about its losses didn't talk about this loss. Zola? Zola ran harder than she had run before. She would get up at 4:45 and run for 30 to 45 minutes. She attended school till 1:30, then went home and did her homework, then she would run some more from 5 till 7. Frank and Tossie and their children just tried to carry on. There were four kids now. Estelle, 23, the twins, Cara and Quintus, 18, and Zola. They had lost a baby and survived. And now they had lost Jenny. They would survive that, too. Zola? There was no one for Zola to talk to about Jenny's death, or her life, or how she was feeling. She ran harder.
That winter, she entered the same local 4-K she had lost the year before. This time she won.
She ran harder and still the pain of Jenny's loss stayed with her.
The next year, she won the South African junior championships at 800 meters, and the year after that, the South African national championships at 1500 and 3000 meters. She was still in high school and her normal childhood was just a blurry story, one that would be embellished and twisted and disfigured the more it receded into the past. A few years after Jenny's death, she ran 5000 meters in 15:01.83, faster than any woman had ever run it before and life would never be normal for Zola again. She didn't know it, though. She didn't know the terrible places running would take her.
When she set the mark in the 5000 meters, she says, "That's when I realized, 'Hey, I'm not too bad.'"
She wasn't the only one.
John Bryant was a runner, a writer, and the man in charge of the features department at London's Daily Mail. So when he pored over some race results "lurking in the small print of Runner's World" in 1983, his response was akin to that of a geologist eyeballing a ribbon of diamonds in a fetid swamp. Impossible, ridiculous, too good to be true, an invitation to a Fleet Street sportswriter's doomed-to-be- dashed dreams. Absurd -- but worth checking out.
"If the results were to be believed," Bryant would write 25 years later, "there was a teenage girl, running without shoes, at altitude, up against domestic opposition, who was threatening to break world records." (Budd's 5000-meter mark wasn't ratified because it had been set in a race in South Africa, then banned from international competition due to its apartheid policies.)
What Bryant didn't write: Budd was white. The racial angle, combined with the fact that Budd was South African, made the story irresistible. That the Olympics were coming up later that year and that South Africa was banned from participating, set in motion a chain of events that changed Budd forever.
Bryant dispatched a reporter to Bloemfontein. Other reporters were there, too. They found the shy schoolgirl, watched her glide over the hills, elbows a little high and a little wide, saw pictures of British middle-distance superstars Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett next to her pillow and above her bed, a huge poster of America's track sweetheart, Mary Decker (whose 5000-meter record Budd had bested by nearly seven seconds).
She was only 5-foot-2 and 92 pounds, but already she was larger than life. The reporters wrote about Budd's parrot, who could swear in Sotho, a regional dialect. They wrote about Budd's speed, about the impalas and springbok in the city's game park who stared at the teen as she ran in the dawn's chill. Reporters didn't dig into Jenny's death or Frank and Tossie's rocky relationship. They didn't examine the crucible of grief in which Budd's speed had annealed.
At least one journalist, though, worried about the young runner. Kenny Moore, then with Sports Illustrated, described Budd's failed 1984 attempt to break the world record in the 3000 meters, at a race near Cape Town. After the setback, he wrote, "As photographers paced and growled outside, Zola sat hunched in a corner of the stadium offices, like a frightened fawn. If a true perfectionist is measured by how crushing even his or her perceived failure can be, Zola Budd is an esteemed member of the club. One wishes for her always to have loving, soothing people around."
Bryant's newspaper offered the Budd family £100,000 (then about $142,000) in exchange for exclusive rights to Budd's life story. The paper also promised to fast-track the teenager so that she would receive a British passport. That would allow her to run in the Olympics. (Budd could qualify because of her grandfather's British birth. It also helped that her father's business wasn't doing so well, and, as Bryant later wrote, that one of Frank Budd's two great life ambitions was to retire with £1 million in the bank. The other was to have tea with the queen of England.)
There were demonstrations when she arrived in England. People booed her. People shouted insults. She was a white South African, a privileged white teenager from a racist nation, using a technicality to pursue nakedly personal ambition. Few knew about Jenny, how running had once been Zola's way of spending time with her sister, then had become Zola's way of mourning her. Few knew of her father's failing business. She had never told anyone that. She had never been good at explaining herself. And she wasn't any good at it now.
"She was such a shy and introverted person," says Cornelia Burki, a South African-born distance runner who had moved to Switzerland in 1973 and represented that country in the 1980, 1984, and 1988 Olympics. She had befriended Budd, 13 years her junior, at the race in South Africa where Budd set the world record at 5000 meters. She knew how Budd reacted to attention, how she shrank into herself. "All she wanted was to run, " Burki says, "and to run fast."
But the world wanted something else. At her first race in England, the Daily Mail held a press conference beforehand, and pumped in the sound track from Chariots of Fire. The BBC televised the 3000-meter event, which Budd won in 9:02.06. That single effort was fast enough to qualify her for the Olympic Games. A columnist for the Mail called Budd the "hottest property in world athletics." The Daily Mail's chief competitor did not have access to the hot property. That newspaper ran a banner headline on its front page: "Zola, Go Home!"
"To the world," a New York Times reporter wrote last year, "Budd was a remorseless symbol of South Africa's segregationist policies. To the Daily Mail, she was a circulation windfall."
And to the girl? "Until I got to London in 1984, I never knew Nelson Mandela existed," she told a reporter in 2002. "I was brought up ignorant of what was going on. All I knew was the white side expressed in South African newspapers -- that if we had no apartheid, our whole economy would collapse. Only much later did I realize I'd been lied to by the state."
She wasn't a racist, any more than any 18-year-old citizen of apartheid nation is a racist. She wasn't an opportunist, any more than any fiercely competitive champion is an opportunist. But was she a champion?
She captured the English national championships at 1,500 meters. In July, in London, she set a world record of 5:33.15 in the 2000 meters. It was an odd distance, rarely run. But it inspired a British journalist to articulate something a lot of other people were feeling.
"The message will now be flashed around the world," exclaimed a BBC reporter after the race. "Zola Budd is no myth."
No myth, perhaps. But what a story! "The legs of an antelope," one reporter wrote later, with the enthusiasm and penchant for empurpled prose Budd seemed to inspire among the ink-stained, "the face of an angel and the luck of a leper."
She was a barefoot teenager, an international villain, the poor little swift girl. The best part? She would be competing in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics against her idol, a former phenom herself, another runner who drove writers to breathless, pulpy heights.
Pig-tailed and weighing 89 pounds, Mary Teresa Decker, aka "Little Mary Decker," burst onto the international track scene when she was just 14, when she won a U. S.-Soviet race in Minsk, in 1973. Over the next decade, she'd set world records at every distance between 800 meters and 10,000 meters. She was pretty. She was white. And she was American. But she had never run in the Olympics. An injury had kept her from the 1976 Games. The U. S. boycott prevented her from running in 1980.
A made-to-order arch-rivalry. Mop-topped schoolgirl vs. America's sweetheart. One-time wunderkind's last chance at Olympic gold, and the only thing standing in her way was a skinny kid who had once slept beneath her poster. Another irresistible tale, and like all the fictions surrounding Zola Budd, it left out a lot.
For one thing, Budd was wary about Romania's Maricica Puica, the reigning world cross-country champion. For another, Budd had strained her hamstring training four days earlier, during a speed workout, and knew she wasn't at full strength. Finally, there was the ever-quotable, ever-ambitious Frank.
Zola was making lots of money now -- from the newspaper deal, from fees for showing up at races, from pending endorsement deals -- and Frank was taking a huge chunk and wanted more. Zola told her father to knock it off , to let her be. Frank loved England, loved the high life. He was also harboring a secret that would later provide more tabloid headlines. Tossie, who had been incapable of comforting her youngest daughter when Jenny died, was doing her best now -- she cared not a bit how fast Zola ran, nor whether she ran at all -- but she longed for the quiet of Bloemfontein. Frank and Tossie's relationship, never placid, grew more turbulent. And two weeks before the Olympics, Zola told her dad he couldn't come to Los Angeles to watch her run. She was sick of his money- grubbing, tired of his meddling, weary of the drama. So Frank stayed in England, stewing, and Zola and her mom flew to Los Angeles. And shortly after, Frank stopped talking to either his daughter or his wife.
The Olympic narrative was Decker vs. Budd. The reality was a lonely, miserable teenager who knew too much. "Emotionally," Budd says, "I was upset, away from home, missed my family, by myself, it wasn't the greatest time of my life, to be honest. I thought, Just get in this Olympics and get it over with."
In the highly awaited 3000-meter final, Decker set the pace, followed closely by Puica, Budd, and England's Wendy Sly. When the pace slowed slightly about 1600 meters into the race, Budd picked it up, running wide of Decker, then, as she passed her, cut back toward the inside and the lead. Decker bumped Budd's left foot with her right thigh, knocking her off balance. Budd kept running, and Decker stayed close, clipping Budd's calf with her right shoe. There was a contact a third time and Decker fell, ripping the number right off Budd's back. Budd kept running.
Boos rained down from the stands. Later, people would suggest Budd had pulled a dirty move, trying to cut off competitors, especially Decker. Others would say the maneuver showed the teenager's relative inexperience in world events.
It wasn't a dirty move. In fact, when a runner moves in front, it is incumbent on trailing racers to avoid contact. (Ironically, Budd says she made the move to get out of harm's way. "If you're running barefoot," she says, "it's best to be last or in front.")
The L. A. Coliseum echoed with more boos.
"I saw what happened," says Burki, who finished fifth in the race. "I saw Mary pushed Zola from the back. Zola overtook Mary and Mary didn't want to give that position in front. Mary ran into Zola from the back...As she fell down, she pushed Zola."
Budd pumped her elbows, kept running. She still didn't think she'd win -- she says that she suspected Puica would soon pass her. But the full impact of the situation didn't hit her until she'd completed another lap and saw Decker stretched out on the ground, wailing. Puica and Sly passed Budd, but she passed them back. Then, she says, she started hearing the jeers and boos. The runners passed Budd again. Then another runner passed her. Then another. And another. Budd finished seventh, looking miserable. "The main concern was if I win a medal," Budd says. "I'd have to stand on the winner's podium and I didn't want to do that."
In the tunnel, right after the event ended, Budd saw Decker sitting down and approached her. She was so sorry the way things had turned out. She apologized to her idol.
"Get out of here!" Decker spat. "I won't talk to you."
Burki saw that, too. "Mary was sitting there crying. Zola was walking in front of me, apologizing. Mary was screaming at her, I'll never forget that. Zola being such a shy person, her shoulders dropped. It could have happened in any race, and it wasn't Zola's fault, but the blame was on her. For any young girl to cope with that, that was very difficult."
Later, at a press conference, Decker blamed Budd.
Officials disqualified her from the race (and an hour later, after reviewing the videotape, rescinded the disqualification). She skipped the press conference, boarded the bus carrying British Olympic athletes. In one seat was a young woman, weeping.
Budd had always been polite. "Why are you crying?" she asked the woman.
"Because of what they did to you," the young athlete told the runner.
A quarter century later, Budd still recalls the moment. "That was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me."
Budd's coach picked her up and took her to meet her mother. Budd had taken down America's Sweetheart. She had sidestepped sanctions against her native country -- that amounted to cheating, said some. So many rich, false narratives about the young girl, and the only one who cared nothing about any of them was the person who cared most about her.
"It didn't matter to her that I didn't win a medal," Budd remembers. "She was just glad and happy that I was with her again, that we could be together." They stayed in her coach's suite at a local hotel. It was there that they received a telephone call from the manager of the British women's Olympic track team. She was calling to pass on the news that there had been threats that Budd was going to be shot. Two police cars were on their way. When they showed up, the officers had submachine guns.
"They picked me up at the hotel and drove me and Mom to the airport, right onto the tarmac, and watched as we got onto the plane. It was like a movie."
"I have wanted to write you for a long time," Decker wrote to Budd in December 1984. " ... I simply want to apologize to you for hurting your feelings at the Olympics...It was a very hard moment for me emotionally and I reacted in an emotional manner. The next time we meet I would like to shake your hand and let everything that has happened be put behind us. Who knows? Sometimes even the fiercest competitors become friends."
Publicly, though, Decker was not quite so soft. "I don't feel that I have any reason to apologize," Decker told a reporter in January 1985. "I was wronged, like anyone else in that situation."
When she was a child, and endured her greatest loss, Budd ran harder. She did the same thing now, in the wake of Olympic infamy. Budd won world cross-county championships in 1985 and 1986, set world records in the 5000 and indoor 3000. But her parents divorced in 1986, and then she had absolutely no contact with her father. He had another life now. She ran harder. But what had once, a long time ago, provided Budd a refuge from grief now provided her detractors an opportunity to attack.
Well-meaning people asked her to speak out against apartheid. Movement leaders demanded she speak out. Why didn't she renounce her country's racist policies? She was naive, that was indisputable. She was also stubborn.
"My attitude is that, as a sportswoman, I should have the right to pursue my chosen discipline in peace," she wrote in her autobiography, published in 1989. " ... Seb Coe does not get asked to denounce Soviet expansionism; and Carl Lewis is not required to express his view on the Contra arms scandal. But I was not afforded that courtesy and it became a matter of principle for me not to give those who were intent on discrediting me the satisfaction of hearing me say what they most wanted to hear."
But now, on her terms, she would speak her piece. She wrote in the same book: "The Bible says men are born equal before God. I can't reconcile segregation along racial lines with the words of the Bible. As a Christian, I find apartheid intolerable."
That was a nice sentiment, but for many, too little, too late. In April 1988, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) told the British Amateur Athletic Board (BAAB) that it should ban Budd from competition because she had appeared at -- but not competed in -- a road race in South Africa.
She had suffered insults and accusations for years. Why does a runner, plagued for miles and years by a creaky knee, or a pebble in her shoe, or an aching tendon, finally quit? Is it a new pain, or just too much of the same?
A doctor examined her in London and declared her "a pitiful sight, prone to bouts of crying and deep depressions ... [with] all the clinical signs of anxiety." She decided to fly back to South Africa, to Bloemfontein. She told the press back home, "I have been made to feel like a criminal. I have been continuously hounded, and I can't take it anymore."
Back in Bloemfontein, away from the angry eyes of the world, she met a man, Michael Pieterse, the son of a wealthy businessman and co-owner of a local liquor store. They married on April 15, 1989. Zola invited her estranged father to the wedding (she had reached out to him once before, but he had maintained his silence). She asked her brother, Quintus, to give her away at the ceremony. When Frank heard that, he told his son that if he accompanied Zola, Quintus would be written out of his father's will. Zola promptly disinvited her father to her wedding, which prompted him to tell a reporter, "I no longer have a daughter called Zola." (Pieterse's father walked Zola down the aisle.)
In his will, Frank Budd stated that neither Tossie nor Zola and her sisters should be allowed to attend his funeral, if he died before them.
Five months later, in September, Quintus discovered Frank Budd's bloody body at his house. He had been shot twice, by his own shotgun, and his pick-up truck and checkbook had been stolen. The next day, a 24-year-old man was arrested. He claimed that Budd had made a sexual advance, and that it had triggered the killing. (The killer was later convicted of theft and murder, but given only 12 years due to "extenuating circumstances.")
A murdered father who apparently had been leading a secret life. Worldwide enmity. She ran. In 1991, in her native country, she ran the second fastest time in the world over 3000 meters. With repeal of apartheid and South Africa's welcome back to the Olympics, Budd raced in the 3000 meters at the 1992 Games in Barcelona. She didn't qualify for the final. In 1993, she finished fourth at the World Cross-Country Championships.
And then, as far as the world was concerned, she disappeared. As far as the world was concerned, she stopped running.
All the teenagers were chasing her. She had grown up too fast, and now she was being chased by runners half her age.
The course wound over hills, at altitude. It must have seemed high to the girls who had been training at sea level. To a runner who remembered the chilly dawn of the African veld, it must have felt like home.
"Go Zola, go!"
Once reviled, once booed, the anti-heroine of all sorts of compelling and not-quite-complete stories kept going. No one was booing now. People were cheering, yelling her name. She kept going and the young runners fell behind and she won the race in 17:58. Afterward, the coaches from the teams surrounded her. They wanted to meet the legend.
"They had heard about her," Jacobs said. "But who had ever met the real Zola Budd?"
The legend comes to the door of her Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, house barefoot, of course, in shorts and a T-shirt that says "Does Not Play Well With Others" and a picture of Stewie, the cartoon baby from Family Guy. She turned 43 in May. She walks a little bit bowlegged. She has agreed to meet because she has always been agreeable, even when she didn't understand what she was agreeing to. She says she's working on that.
She is finishing her dissertation to obtain her Master's degree in counseling. She's also working as an assistant coach for Coastal Carolina University's women's track team, which allows her to travel with the team and compete in open events. The men's head track coach, Jeff Jacobs, coaches her. She says that people who have gone through pain can help others understand and endure pain. She says that long-distance runners are privy to a special relationship with pain and solitude and grace, and "I doubt that sprinters have that."
She ran her first marathon in London in 2003, but dropped at 23 miles, depleted. She ran a marathon in Bloemfontein in 2008, and logged 3:10. Last year, she entered the New York City Marathon and ran 2:59:51. She's planning on racing a half-marathon by year's end, and a marathon next year. In the meantime, she wants to compete on the master's circuit, "in as many local cross-country races and local 10-K and 5-K races as possible." But that's not the focus of her life. She had a baby girl in 1995 and twins, a boy and girl, in 1998 and she's just a mother, she says now, just a wife. Yes, she knows it's 25 years since she was blamed for destroying the dreams of America's Sweetheart. No, it wasn't her fault. Yes, she knows people are still curious about it. She is pleasant without being effusive, charming without being gushy.
Over three days in the early summer, she says that her accomplishments mean little, that her disappointments even less. She smiles. It's a shy smile, almost an apologetic one. She doesn't want to push her kids. She knows what it's like to be pushed. She treasures the moments of her childhood when no one was pushing her, before she had discovered her gifts, before the world had discovered them and adored them and twisted them to its own purposes.
No, she says, she never quit running, just competing. She can't imagine not running. The time she loved it best was before anyone -- even she -- knew how fast she was.
"I never strived to be the best in the world," she says, softly, still smiling, remembering those happy days. "I just ran every day, I just ran."
Her mother died four years ago and that was hard, and sad, but it was good, too, because all of Tossie's children and grandchildren got to see her, got to say goodbye, to show her that she was beloved. Budd got to tell her mom how much she had always loved her, how much her support had meant, how when the world cared so much about how fast Zola ran and what country's colors she wore and who she was competing against -- about all the stories... it meant so much to have a mother who didn't care at all, who ignored the stories, who just cared about who Zola was.
It was so unlike Frank's death in 1989. Tossie and Zola had to comply with his will, so they couldn't attend the funeral. Plus, there were the ugly stories in the papers. That was hard, too, and sad, and there was nothing good about it.
Fatherless, motherless, Budd has run through it all, elbows a little too high, a little too wide, and most of the world didn't know, or care, and that made the running something better, something closer to what she had when she was young. Running helped her deal with her father's death, as it had helped her deal with all the people calling her names and telling her she was things she was not. It helped when she discovered that her husband was having an affair four years ago. The story of Zola Budd was resurrected. New banner headlines, at least in South Africa. New sordid details -- the other woman had been a socialite and beauty pageant contestant, nicknamed Pinkie. Michael had bought a house for her. She had called and threatened Zola. Zola says that Pinkie poisoned and killed one of her dogs.
She filed for divorce, and she told a reporter, when Michael denied that he had done anything wrong, "Why do all husbands deny it? I have no idea. But I have more than enough evidence that he is having an affair. More than enough."
But she had been through worse, and when Michael got rid of Pinkie, Zola and her husband reconciled.
Not that she has forgotten. "Marriage is like cycling," she says. (She has recently taken up mountain biking.) "There are only two types of cyclists, those who have fallen or those who are going to fall. Same with marriage, those who have had problems and those who are going to have problems."
For someone whose mere name serves as shorthand for international drama, she could not seem more placid, more Zen. "Running and other stuff passes away," she says. "It's old news. The legacy you leave for your kids, that lasts."
She still holds British and South African records, at junior and senior levels. Her name is in the lyrics of a song once popular in her homeland. The reliable, long-distance jitneys in her hometown are called "Zola Budds" or just "Zolas."
She doesn't display any of her old medals. "They're in a box somewhere in South Africa, I think." She says the happiest moments of her life occurred when her children were born. Where do her running victories rank in her spectrum of life's happy moments? She barks a heavy laugh, as if that's the most ridiculous question she has ever entertained, in a lifetime of entertaining ridiculous questions. "They don't."
She wants her children to grow up doing whatever they want to do. Anything at all, as long as it makes them happy. "Well, artists are never happy, are they? But fulfilled, I want them to be fulfilled." How does she think she'll be remembered? She laughs again, but this time it's an easy, light sound. "I have no idea. I never thought about that."
She doesn't mention her victory in the cross-country race. She doesn't talk a lot about running. Yes, she thinks she was treated unfairly, but it was a strange time and her country was doing terrible things. No, she's not a racist, and no one who knows her would ever think she was. No, she never became friends with Mary Decker, but they did make peace.
"Both of us have moved on and running isn't so important in our lives," she says. "We're both a bit more wise."
Which isn't to say that running isn't important at all to the champion. She might be placid, she might be serene, but she did hire a college coach to train her. She does compete against women half her age. The family received a two-year visa to live in the United States last year. Zola wanted to expose the kids to another country's educational system. But she also wanted to try the master's running circuit here. They chose Myrtle Beach because they wanted to be on the East Coast, which makes it easier to fly to their homeland, and because Michael loves golf, and there are more public golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area than almost anywhere else in the world. Zola does not play golf. "It's dangerous if I play golf," she says. "It's better for everyone if I don't play."
She doesn't watch sports on television. She does not watch the Olympics. She has watched her Olympic duel with Mary Decker only once, the day after it happened.
She wants to give her children what she once had as a child, before the world discovered her, before there was a story. She says she understands adolescents who cut themselves, "because physical pain can be better pain." She remembers a time before she was aware of any emotional pain, when she was just "that young kid who plays barefoot on the farm."
She talks about that kid a lot, about life on the farm, about the time when no one knew about her speed, when no one cared. She is asked about Jenny.
She grows quiet for a moment. She remembers that her sister's favorite color was green. She remembers that Jenny had her own dog, a pinscher named Tossie (after her mother) who followed her everywhere, and she remembers Jenny's sweet tooth, and the way she would eat her pastry while the rest of the family sat down to breakfast, before she went upstairs, to sleep.
She remembers Jenny reading to her, and running beside her. She remembers the story of the little runt, Jock of the Bushveld, and how he grew up to be a brave, beloved champion. She remembers how when Jenny died, Zola attacked the hills and trails with a vengeance she never knew she possessed.
"Her death made everything in my life, even eating and drinking, seem of secondary importance...." Budd wrote in her autobiography. "Running was the easiest way to escape from the harsh reality of losing my sister because when I ran I didn't have to think about life or death.... There is no doubt that the loss of Jenny had a major effect on my running career. By escaping from her death I ran into world class ..."
"[The family] did not talk about her death a lot afterward," she wrote in a recent e-mail. "I started training a lot and that was it."
Jenny has been gone for 30 years, but at the moment it's as if she's in the next room, in front of one of her morning pastries, or in her bedroom, pulling her curtains closed, getting ready to sleep. Budd talks about her sister quietly, and matter-of-factly, and then she quietly and matter-of-factly weeps.
"If Jenny hadn't died," she says, "I probably would have become a nurse."
She talks about her father, too, and recounts the visit she made to his gravesite, where she made peace with him. She knows he suffered, too. She doesn't believe her father made any advances against his killer.
Asked about her father in 2002, she told a reporter, "Back then South African society didn't accept homosexuals. It took a terrible toll on him." Today she says, "If he had been around now, he could have been more open about who he was."
The intimate details that the world knows about Frank Budd are largely due to Zola's fame. She knows that. She knows that his actions are part of the Zola Budd story. What she also knows -- what the world doesn't know -- is he was a good dad, before all the money and fame and fighting. So much of what the world knows about Zola Budd is the simple story, the one with cartoon villains and epic struggles and bright, bold lines of right and wrong. But things were always more complicated than that. Frank Budd was greedy, and pushy, and that fit into a simple story, but he was other things, too.
The world doesn't know that Frank Budd watched a cow chase his little 10-year-old girl and the family dog, Dobie, and that he remarked on how fast she was, before anyone else had, and that the two of them laughed and laughed at how afraid of the cow she had been. The world doesn't know that he constructed a little duck pond for his youngest child, and that she would tell him stories about how she took (continued on page 108) care of the ducks, that she fed them just like he told her to, that father and daughter loved each other and were happy, once upon a time before the world discovered her gifts, before the gifts became so heavy. She sheds a tear for her dad, too.
Running was so much fun when she was just a child, then it became a release, and finally, a means to an end she never wanted -- money and political symbolism and international fame. It became so important. It became part of a larger narrative. And it wasn't her narrative.
And now, even though she still is intensely competitive, even though she sometimes runs too hard for her own good and is preparing for a return to competition that may bring with it a lot of scrutiny that she never welcomed nor enjoyed, it's OK, because she's got her balance about her now. She knows what's important. She knows what's hers.
She'll do her best in the upcoming marathons. She'll do well in the master's circuit, too. That's the plan. Truth be told, she plans to kick some serious American ass, not that she would ever say that. She might be shy, and sensitive, and misunderstood and have the face of an angel and all that. But she is still a champion.
But that's not why she's running. Not to win. That was never the main reason she ran. That was never the real story.
Most people don't think too much about why they run. They never have to, because running simply feels good and helps them. Zola Budd, though, has had to think about why she runs.
She runs not for medals or glory or to set anyone straight, either. Not to make anyone understand her. That never worked.
She runs for the thing that running once bestowed upon her, a long time ago, and that running almost snatched away. She is running to get it back.
"I run to be at peace," she says.


text: MARTINSBURG — Firefighters inspect a damaged Oldsmobile Bravada Thursday after an accident that sent one person to the hospital. The accident, the cause of which was being investigated, was reported at about 1:26 p.m. Thursday and occurred on Shellbark Lane off Dry Run Road near Martinsburg. Initial witness reports stated that the car had flipped over, a passenger was injured and the driver could not be located. Police at the scene said there was only one person in the car, a woman, and that there was no reason to believe a second person was in the vehicle.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
TAHOE CITY, Calif. - U.S. Forest Service fuels management crews will resume prescribed fire operations in the Bunker Road area near Tahoe City on Wednesday and Thursday, officials announced this week, with crews expecting to burn one acre per day, conditions permitting.
Residents and visitors can expect to see smoke from the fire. Smoke-sensitive residents should consider staying indoors and keeping doors, windows and outside vents closed. To directly receive prescribed fire updates, send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com.
Forest Service staff will post road signs around areas affected by prescribed fire, and update the local fire information line at 5300543-2600, No. 6. Other federal, state and local fire management agencies may also be conducting prescribed fire work during this period.
For more information, visit www.fs.usda.gov/ltbmu.


text:
It totally did. Like, I watched it happen!
He will always be a measure for my blog, as I started it all when he was just born and babyworn.
He wanted me to hold him a lot on Saturday so I put him in the mei tai (I'm wearing him in this photo, actually.). He is four and-a-half now, and I don't even remember the last time I wore him. Maybe over a year ago, or probably more. Later that night on our walk he said, "Can you just put me in the mei tai again? I can't walk, I hurt my pinky."
A couple links for you:
- A friend, woowoo mama shares a video she took part in [and I love it]: attachment parenting: a journey off the beaten path
- I have been inter-viewed! You can read about my guilty pleasures, my favorite places, and how I strengthen the bond with my children in small everyday ways: I Never Grew Up: Monday's Maven


text:
Full CoverageBreaking News
Newtown Families Push for Gun Control on Capitol HillUPDATED 6:14 PM CDT Jun 12, 2013
Gun control is back in the spotlight on Capitol Hill. Days before the six month anniversary of the Newtown shooting, family members are trying to keep their cause front and center. Nikole Killion reports from Washington.
CommentsThe views expressed are not those of this site, this station or its affiliated companies. By posting your comments you agree to accept our terms of use.blog comments powered by Disqus


text: This interview tells the story of one of the pillars of APWA and the public works profession. A civil engineer by profession, a military man by choice, and a proven administrative leader in several national organizations, Retired Rear Admiral Robert C. Esterbrooks has been, and continues to be, an inspiration to his colleagues, to his family and friends, and to the young people he mentors. He is a role model we can all admire: a man of integrity and high standards, successful in his chosen careers, modest about his accomplishments, and fun to be around.


text:
They fought a lot on American Idol. And that's exactly why Simon Cowell wanted Paula Abdul as a fellow judge on The X Factor.
"I do really like people who disagree with me," Cowell tells Redbook. "Probably my best friends in the world are the people I argue with the most, because they don't always say what you want to hear."
In fact, Abdul, 49, may be his perfect foil. "From the minute I met Paula, I was fascinated by her," says Cowell, 51. "She's a complex person, but – this is going to sounds very American – she's got a great heart."
Cowell, who's counting down to the premiere of The X Factor on Sept. 21, says the show is different from its competitors because it features people of all ages – from 12 to 80 – who have fascinating stories.
"One woman in her mid-40s had gotten out of a horribly abusive marriage. When she sang, she was amazing," he says. "We saw the 5,000 people in the audience all get on their feet. That's more powerful than a 17-year-old who comes in and says, 'I want to be a star.' "
Simon Cowell: I've Always Been Fascinated by Paula Abdul
Brewer-Whittle/Splash News Online


text:
Work with a Realtor®
The Many Advantages of Working with an Edina Realty REALTOR®
Today more than ever, it's important to understand the many advantages an experienced REALTOR® can provide. At Edina Realty, we have proven expertise, a solid reputation in the marketplace, and a full service approach to help ensure a successful home buying, selling and ownership experience for our clients.
Edina Realty Leads the Market
For the past decade, we have maintained our position as a market leader, conducting more real estate transactions within our markets than any of our competitors. Our REALTORS® offer marketing savvy, advanced technology solutions, networking skills, and a personalized approach to working with their clients.
Marketing Savvy
Advanced Technology Solutions
Networking Skills
A Personalized Approach


text:
Source: Impatient Optimists
quote: When you sit in a chair, do you first check to make sure it is sound? Unless you're neurotic (which is fine, mind you), you just sit down, strong in your faith that it will hold you.
quote: When you drive your car, you have faith that most of the people on the road around you know how to drive and are paying attention. If you didn't, you'd hardly be able to drive to work.
quote: Faith is real and you have it.
quote: Interestingly (or not), lack of faith in God is, by default, fanatic faith in oneself. Atheists have faith that their fundamental understanding of the universe is absolutely correct and that faith says that God can't exist.


text:
Bob Palmer - Tour of Microsoft Studios
- Posted: Feb 16, 2005 at 6:16PM
- 13 comments
Loading user information from Channel 9
Something went wrong getting user information from Channel 9
Loading user information from MSDN
Something went wrong getting user information from MSDN
Loading Visual Studio Achievements
Something went wrong getting the Visual Studio Achievements
Right click "Save as…"
Oops, something didn't work.
Manip wrote:Fun video. I love seeing how TV production is done... This is rarly shown because they tend to focus more on the actors or special effects. I find this stuff way more interesting.
How can Microsoft make this many shows? Excluding C9 and the MSDN thing I can't name a single other media show I've seen my Microsoft ever...
Seeing how even Scoble doesn't have security clearance into MS Studio you can only begin to imagine the Area 51 type security vault they keep the videos in.
Comments have been closed since this content was published more than 30 days ago, but if you'd like to continue the conversation, please create a new thread in our Forums, or Contact Us and let us know.


text:
Packaging for Apple iPhone 5S leaks, confirms fingerprint scanner
0. phoneArena 06 Sep 2013, 12:41 posted on
With the Apple iPhone 5S expected to be introduced next Tuesday, it really should be no surprise that a picture of the packaging for the next full-priced iPhone has been leaked; the Apple iPhone 5S is expected to look like the current Apple iPhone 5, but with some changes here and there. For example, a dual LED lozenge shaped flash will be on the new model...
This is a discussion for a news. To read the whole news, click here
1. LetsBeHonest (Posts: 1452; Member since: 04 Jun 2013)
It has been confirmed here on pa more than three time now.
Well looking forward for iPhone 5S with finger print scanner and good low light camera.
9. PunyPoop (Posts: 752; Member since: 18 Jan 2013)
I love to see what's on apple's table :)
14. bigstrudel (Posts: 518; Member since: 20 Aug 2012)
The ring around the button is new info. Just saying.
49. kozza3 (Posts: 698; Member since: 17 Oct 2012)
apparently a circle = fingerprint scanner
2. zuckerboy (banned) (Posts: 898; Member since: 22 Dec 2011)
no 4.5 inhes or above then i am not gonna buy
25. LetsBeHonest (Posts: 1452; Member since: 04 Jun 2013)
Well then you are not going to buy it or at lest wait till 2016 .
besides there is a rumour about Apple going to release a phablet. Its about 5 inch or so. A phablet for iusers and a big smartphone for others (since 5 inch is pretty small for todays phablet standard. Still it's just a rumour though)
29. LetsBeHonest (Posts: 1452; Member since: 04 Jun 2013)
Correction: Apple actually testing various iPhablet sizes up to 6-inches
30. zuckerboy (banned) (Posts: 898; Member since: 22 Dec 2011)
you r right
76. willard12 (Posts: 1686; Member since: 04 Jul 2012)
Cool. Bigger screen for more black space at the top and bottom.
3. eli577 (Posts: 84; Member since: 29 Jun 2010)
Always wondered what is the fingerprint scanner good for in a mobile phone.
5. Dr.Phil (Posts: 1163; Member since: 14 Feb 2011)
Better security and potentially faster than punching in some passwords depending on how fast the scanner reads the fingerprint.
6. jskates420 (Posts: 40; Member since: 29 Jun 2013)
Many things
21. Commentator (Posts: 3690; Member since: 16 Aug 2011)
User-settings (guest vs. admin), fast-switching between apps, submitting personal information to the NSA...
Limitless potential!
55. HawaiiWarrior87 (Posts: 2; Member since: 23 Apr 2013)
Security and other things. I had the LG Expo and it had a fingerprint scanner
59. buccob (Posts: 2566; Member since: 19 Jun 2012)
If the scanner is of good quality... it is the most convenient way to unlock your phone while keeping a high security method...
Face Unlock is good for some situations, but it is usually slower and you need good ambience light.
Pin is not bad but it is easier to crack, and also slow in comparisson
Pattern is now my preferred method after I gave up on my old Atrix 4G... but the fingerprint scanner will always be my favorite way to unlock my phone...
Also it makes more sense to have it on a phone than a computer, since we unlock hundreds of times a day the phone, while only a few times a day a computer...
78. ShenAlJoker (Posts: 113; Member since: 19 Jul 2013)
read the damn article dude!!!!!!
4. loebsall007 (Posts: 3; Member since: 06 Sep 2013)
The ring around the phone is most likely an LED ring that will either light up red or green, depending on whos's trying to access your phone. And to the ding dong above^^^ Have fun not buying it because the 4" Screen is here to stay at least for this time around
23. Commentator (Posts: 3690; Member since: 16 Aug 2011)
Brings me back to my days with my HTC Touch Diamond.
Beautiful device, even compared to modern phones, and that LED ring was a big reason why.
7. Nesco (Posts: 12; Member since: 09 Aug 2013)
historic event?? !!...we know you are an apple fanboy..but don't make it too obvious :D
70. Gigabinzle (Posts: 37; Member since: 30 Aug 2013)
ugh i wanna lay you down
8. darkkjedii (Posts: 21307; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)
I cannot wait to get mine. Hurry up 9-20-13 for 9-21-13
10. OldNorseBruin (Posts: 232; Member since: 12 Mar 2013)
Yaaaaay! Can't wait to sleep nights on the sidewalk in order to be the FIRST iChump to pay $900+ for a mid-range Jobs-legacy POS!
13. loebsall007 (Posts: 3; Member since: 06 Sep 2013)
You seem a little butt hurt....!!
22. darkkjedii (Posts: 21307; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)
79. rockblock123 (Posts: 20; Member since: 07 Sep 2013)
being a typical iphone fudgepacker
27. Commentator (Posts: 3690; Member since: 16 Aug 2011)
Ha! I get what he did!
You see guys, he added "i" in front of "Chump" to make "iChump." He's making fun of the fact that Apple products are similarly named!
That's pretty clever man, I wish I had thought of that!
...or should I say "iWish iHad iThought iOf iThat!"
Wow that felt great to say! I feel so much better making fun of people now that I can do it in a clever and sophisticated way!
56. darkkjedii (Posts: 21307; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)
LMAO way to slay that crap comment he left. It's older than time itself. +1
80. rockblock123 (Posts: 20; Member since: 07 Sep 2013)
whoa dude u and your iphone ass buddies on line early ..yeaaa
74. KillgoreTrout (Posts: 53; Member since: 04 Sep 2013)
Please act like an adult.
11. imkyle (Posts: 1073; Member since: 18 Nov 2010)
Didn't Motorola have this on their first Atrix device back in 2011?
24. darkkjedii (Posts: 21307; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)
Yeah but since no one bought the atrix, no one knew about it.
33. good2great (Posts: 1042; Member since: 22 Feb 2012)
darkk that's COLD man... just COLD!!! hahaha
39. darkkjedii (Posts: 21307; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)
+1 back atcha G2G
34. imnotascammer (Posts: 160; Member since: 22 Aug 2012)
I see, thats why Apple is gonna claim they innovate it? LOL. (,--)
62. InspectorGadget80 (unregistered)
you they always claim they innovate i used to have the Atrix 4G with the finger sensor. then apple says we innovated the finger sensor.
68. Quezdagreat (Posts: 428; Member since: 05 Apr 2012)
I don't remember hearing them say that or even announce anything. It must have been your imagination
53. taz89 (Posts: 2014; Member since: 03 May 2011)
Let's just hope people don't start to believe that apple were 1st with finger print scanner like many things people think apple were 1st in.. Cant wait to see how it's implemented apps wise ie can you use to log in to Twitter fb etc.. Soon we will be reading articles about stolen iPhones and thumbs lol
67. Sauce (unregistered)
Christopher Columbus wasn't the first to discover 'Murica but like Dark said... People knew about him so he got credit. Maybe other companies should do better in the marketing department.
64. Quezdagreat (Posts: 428; Member since: 05 Apr 2012)
I was thinking about buying a atrix back then. But then I thought about it having android on it. I never knew it had fingerprint scanning until people start crying and saying apple copyed them.
66. Sauce (unregistered)
Hahaha that was good. I lol'd xD
77. willard12 (Posts: 1686; Member since: 04 Jul 2012)
The atrix was released before android had 80% marketshare.
12. jskates420 (Posts: 40; Member since: 29 Jun 2013)
Why buy this if just in a couple of months more the galaxy s5 or something else will come out and then apple will make the iphone 6 just a way to make you spend more money on the same specs of hardware
69. downphoenix (Posts: 3165; Member since: 19 Jun 2010)
true, but why buy any phone when the next phone that is coming out that will kill it specs wise, etc.
15. mclifford81 (Posts: 74; Member since: 26 Jan 2010)
So we are all excited over a finger print scanner? Besides security how does this rock the mobile world? Innovation is at an all time low. How about a phone that works well, has a great battery, great call quality, and camera with some actual helpful features that are useful.
19. Santi_Santi (unregistered)
Moto X for you, my friend
20. Fallout09 (Posts: 421; Member since: 17 Oct 2011)
Not to mention the number of fingerprints NSA can now match against the personal data they have already collected. I think it is funny that people freak out about giving up their personal data are all excited about giving Apple their fingerprint to go along with their home address, phone number, email address, credit card info..... I'm sure Apple's servers will never get hacked nor will they allow any outside agency access their data bases. Apple always thinks the customer comes first
26. Ninetysix (Posts: 2381; Member since: 08 Oct 2012)
I got some bad news for you Fallout09. The NSA already have access to YOUR fingerprint. Google is also one of the biggest companies that collects/shares data.
35. Fallout09 (Posts: 421; Member since: 17 Oct 2011)
Where would the NSA be pulling my fingerprint data from? Never been arrested, my bank doesn't require fingerprint data, not required at my job? Please explain how they obtained this data?
37. Ninetysix (Posts: 2381; Member since: 08 Oct 2012)
Drivers license, passport, copied from your favorite coffee mug. If the government wants your fingerprint, they will obtain it.
46. Fallout09 (Posts: 421; Member since: 17 Oct 2011)
You're still missing the point of my original comment
47. Ninetysix (Posts: 2381; Member since: 08 Oct 2012)
I bet you your tone will be different when another Android manufacturer adds a fingerprint scanner to their mobile device.
60. Fallout09 (Posts: 421; Member since: 17 Oct 2011)
I would like to say I would raise the same concerns. I just find it humorous that Microsoft was crucified by making Kinect in an "always on" state with the new Xbox One but Apple gets a pass on fingerprint reader.
71. Gigabinzle (Posts: 37; Member since: 30 Aug 2013)
tell that smug mothrfuer
57. RoyalPayne (banned) (Posts: 458; Member since: 07 Aug 2013)
That is what an iPhone is. Use it, you'll like it.
16. Jklaz (Posts: 159; Member since: 01 Jul 2013)
Completely don't care either way just wondering.. Do finger print scanners always work? Or is it they don'tread properly all the time
75. KillgoreTrout (Posts: 53; Member since: 04 Sep 2013)
They do not always work. I trust Apple wouldn't release a product that only worked sometimes though. That is why I am exciited for the new Iphone. Not so I can buy one, but to see if Apple has created a scanner that could work close to 100% of the time.
17. bucky (Posts: 2574; Member since: 30 Sep 2009)
These leaks are taking the excitement out of all new phone releases nowadays :(
18. domz1988 (Posts: 10; Member since: 06 Sep 2013)
I would definitely buy the new iphone if the batery would be phenomenon like the upgrade they had with their macbook air...
I mean not the same runtime on the macbook but as for a phone the run time that could get you a full day no matter how heavy use it.
28. Mr.Mr.Upgrade (Posts: 474; Member since: 30 Aug 2011)
Motorola atrix already had finger print scanning....Apple failed to innovate
63. InspectorGadget80 (unregistered)
That was the best phone i have the Atrix 4G.


text:
Company Overview
Greenbone Networks delivers a vulnerability analysis solution for enterprise IT which includes reporting and security change management.
The essence of our solutions is transparency. We leverage the dynamic organizational processes of the Free Software approach on professional grounds, staying connected to the roots. We add a comprehensive quality assurance process for our customers and are particularly concerned with providing a verifiable product rather than a black box.
The company was founded in 2008 by leading experts in the field of network security and Free Software. Our goal is to engineer products and concepts able to cope with the present and future challenges of preventing successful attacks to your network. We especially focus on the precautionary measures because it is most risk/cost efficient to detect network vulnerability earlier than attackers do. Greenbone is a privately owned company located in Osnabrück, Germany.


text:
Editor responds to nonprofit hospital-research firm's letter on Parkland patient-care performance
Dallas Morning News managing editor George Rodrigue used his Ask The Editor column this week to respond to a letter from a top official with University HealthSystem Consortium highlighting Parkland Memorial Hospital's recent statistical performance in several selected areas of patient care.
UHC, which is supported financially by Parkland and other hospitals, collects and shares data among its members, who represent more than 90 percent of the nation's nonprofit academic medical centers. Parkland's leader, Dr. Ron Anderson, serves on the UHC board.
The official's letter, as George notes, has become entwined with public-relations efforts at Parkland and UT Southwestern Medical School, which supplies Parkland's faculty and its resident doctors-in-training.
As part of our ongoing investigation, we've sought various statistical information from both taxpayer-funded institutions, as well as UHC, about patient-care outcomes. But all have declined to release it.


text:
Thank you for visiting our past auction result archives. If you have an item identical (or similar) to this auction lot, please call, write or contact us to discuss. We will be able to help you.
Lot # 1084 (of 1525) < Previous Lot | Next Lot >
Paul Molitor Hall of Fame Postcard Original Artwork
Starting Bid - $300.00, Sold For - $696.00
Original painting of Paul Moliter by Dick Perez. Watercolor on board. Signed lower left. 15 x 20 inches. This artwork is currently on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Every year the official portraits by Dick Perez of the newly elected Hall of Famers are displayed for the entire year at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, until replaced by portraits of new inductees the following year. This painting will not be sent to the winning bidder until after the 2005 Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in July when the portraits of Moliter and Eckersley will be replaced by portraits of the 2005 inductees. The Hall of Fame portraits are the very same ones used in the Perez-Steele Hall of Fame art postcard series. This is an unpublished Perez-Steele Hall of Fame postcard original art. It has not yet been published as a postcard, as Moliter was elected to the Hall after Perez-Steele Galleries' last series update in 2001. Though Perez-Steele Galleries is no longer publishing, if the Hall of Fame postcard series is updated in the future, this is the image of Moliter which will be used. Reserve $300. Estimate $500+. SOLD FOR $696.00
(Click the smaller thumbnails to the left and right (if any) to cycle through each photo in the gallery of images for this lot.)


text:
CJIA duck curry competition
After more than three hours of teasing and friendly rivalry, the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), Timehri, Engineering and Maintenance Department (EMD) emerged victorious in the Airport's inaugural Duck Curry Competition on Friday, April 25, 2014, a release from the airport said today. This photo shows the winning team.
More in Photos
The comments section is intended to provide a forum for reasoned and reasonable debate on the newspaper's content and is an extension of the newspaper and what it has become well known for over its history: accuracy, balance and fairness. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments which contain attacks on other users, slander, coarse language and profanity, and gratuitous and incendiary references to race and ethnicity.
About these comments
Get the day's headlines from SN in your inbox every morning:
Most Read This Week
Buddy's Pool Hall, Night Club closed after business falls
Who is to blame for Dataram escape?
Gangaram man takes his own life
Cop charged with taking bribes
Citizens fleeing country due to crime, IAC says
Teen shot dead outside Rio nightclub
City to tear down 52 derelict buildings
Bus ends up in Homestretch trench
Absent Barry Dataram found guilty of drug trafficking


text:
20 yrs ago i was convicted of a Felony..10yrs ago i got it reduced to a misdemeanor..can i be licensed as a LVN
Get new comments by email
|Comments (12)
dollface in san leandro, California
87 months ago
Hello,in 1989 20 years ago i was convicted of receiving "over payments" while on welfare,it is considered "welfare Fraud"..I was young and didnt really know anything or how to fight the charge so i just plead no contest..I received a conviction of welfare fraud 1989 a felony..10 yrs later in 1999 i was hired for a job that i had to be "bondable" for,so i went back to court and got the conviction reduced to a misdemeanor and got my job back because I was then "bondable"..i want to go to LVN school but will this conviction from 20 years ago stop me from being licensed?? Please reply..I have no idea what to do or who can answer my questions..Can someone please give input,advice,opinion????
jojo in Fullerton, California
86 months ago
If you expunge it you don't have to reveal it unless you work for the government, if it is a private corp it won't show on your DOJ. If they look up your court file for that city it will show it was expunged which in all means you are not guilty. I almost guarantee that you don't have anything to worry about, it was 20 years ago, don't worry, go get your license, you will be fine. If you have been a good citizen for 20 years then they don't stress on 20 years ago. People make mistakes. I know. Don't ever lie to the board of nursing tell them the truth it will take a couple more weeks for your license but you will get it.
sarah in Douglassville, Pennsylvania
84 months ago
You should contact your states licencing board of nursing and ask them outright before paying any money for nursing classes. Many things are handled on a case by case basis.
aaron in Longview, Texas
79 months ago
I have a class b misd dwi and a class c misd paraphernalia charge /convictions
Is it possible for me to get licenssed as a lvn or even a rn later down the road ?
all of my charges are over 2 years old and since then I havnt been in trouble at all / I am a guy but my sister is a RN and makes good money and I would like to give it a shot / but I can not afford to pay for all the classes then be denied a license.
I have no felony convictions / I DONT EVEN HAVE A CLASS A MISD / ONLY A CLASS B AND A CLASS C
suka0420@*****.*** in Los Angeles, California
79 months ago
Yes, I agree with JOJO. I am a paralegal and going into the LVN program myself. I have had a few collegues with the same question in regards to misdemeanor and felony charges. IF you have a MISDEMEANOR of any sort-get it expunged. This is what you need to do. Go to your local court house (if the case was civil or criminal go to appropriate court) ask them for an expungement form (sometimes the court clerk will have it as well) it cost $2.50 for the packet. It will have four to five pages. It is really easy to do and you can do it on your own. Once you have completed it take it back to where you got the papers at the courthouse. They will tell you to have it served to four different places-the court, probation office, sheriff, and maybe the citing agency; they will tell you where it needs to be served if not ask them!!! While waiting for your court date, make sure all fines, probation period is over, and dues are paid. The court will ask you if your probation is complete. Now if you are still serving probation or have fines still due, you want to make a separate court date to ask the judge to reduce your probation period and if you can possibly pay your dues by doing community service. If you are low income or no income take proof that you cannot pay i.e., tax forms or ebt card or files. Once you've cleared the probation time and dues, the court date for your expungement should be no problem. Just explain to the judge you are going into the health profession and it is required by social service to have the files expunged. They already know the procedure. Dress nice and have all your court, school, and social service papers with you if they ask for anything you have it there. Judges like organized people.
suka0420@*****.*** in Los Angeles, California
79 months ago
Any misdemeanors you have need to be expunged. Even if its more than one place or more than one. Make sure you send this to social service and the LVN licensing agency. If your school is a public school they want all this done, so the program has no issues when you start. If you start the program, make sure you are taking care of this issue. As everything should be cleared before graduating. Please contact your LVN licensing agency to see which felony conviction can not be dismissed. MAKE SURE TO ASK THEM if it can be expunged in anyway because there are some that can be and they will not tell you unless you ask. To be sure, call two or three times on diff. days and make sure they're telling you the same thing. Please be advised the LVN Administrative Hearing Board will take into account the time that has elapsed since your conviction. They are very adamant on honesty, so disclose everything to them. They do consider what you have done to recover yourself and how responsible you are since your conviction. The Administrative Board does not fool around. They are extremely serious and tougher than the court room. Be professional, have all your documents in order, and be ready to tell them why you want a career in the health profession. They are no joke!!! Good luck!
tbaby in Los Angeles, California
78 months ago
Can anyone tell me what a 1203.4 penal code means, I was going through some of my paperwork and found this form from the public defenders office. I also have a certificate of rehabilitation but would like to know what this 1203.4 paperwork means.
Dean Brown in Los Angeles, California
70 months ago
tbaby in Los Angeles, California said: Can anyone tell me what a 1203.4 penal code means, I was going through some of my paperwork and found this form from the public defenders office. I also have a certificate of rehabilitation but would like to know what this 1203.4 paperwork means.
A 1203.4 is an expungement form that is filed in court when
kbvn27 in Menifee, California
65 months ago
dolface to answer you question, yes, you can be licensed as a nurse. The only thing you have to do is have certified court documents of your conviction and declare it on your application to take the boards.
kenishasj@*****.*** in Waukegan, Illinois
62 months ago
[so I can try and get my charge reduced to a misdemeanor after I have been convicted of that crime? My situation is kinda like yours. I lied on my financial aid forms and was convicted of state benefits fraud. that was 12 years ago and I am trying to get into the medical field but it is for billing and coding. Any help would be appreciated.
jackie in Los Angeles, California
54 months ago
I was getting ready to take my LVN boards this summer, but before that I was taking to prison for 1 day for a felony want to court and bought it down to a misdemeanor,will i still be able to test and get my license, please help?
Alex in Topeka, Kansas
17 months ago
I was convicted of involuntary manslaughter over twenty years ago, what can I do to get employment? and if I decided to go to college what should I pursue that want be held against me?
» Sign in or create an account to comment on this topic.


text:
Bridge work causes extended traffic delays
February 14, 2013
MARTINSBURG — While workday rush hour times are known for heavy traffic, a recent construction project has expanded traffic delays, causing concern among several local businesses....
Wtf? May 2014? Two words: Bailey Bridge. lol
0 Agrees | 0 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
You have got to be kidding!!!!
0 Agrees | 0 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
The Journal apparently doesn't want us to comment about JoAnn Overington dismissing the CRIMINAL who hit a man on the head with a crowbar due to lack of evidence - I guess the man cut on the head, eye swollen shut, and blood on the floor were insufficient? Someone needs to report on the truth in this.
5 Agrees | 0 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
Option 1? Reopen the unused CSX bridges over I-81 just like what was done to build QUAD Graphics to help with traffic. Option 2? Consider these bridge/road/ trafic issues before attracting new companies.
8 Agrees | 0 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
Showing 4 of 4 comments


text:
Created in this Craftsy class
Sewing Studio: Fashion Fitting, Home Decor & More taught by Diana Rupp
Get to know your machine and the basics of pinning, stitching, pressing and finishing as you make a pillow and a pencil skirt.
Other projects made as part of this class:
SewingEnvelope Pillow
SewingEnvelope cushions
Offer some kudos...
Join the conversation...
Ask a question...
Add your comment...
Awsome Sauce! My first completed project.
02/25/2014 Flag
02/25/2014 Flag


text:
COFRS Sub-Recipient Report: FY 2009-10 Distributions by Vendor
Note: You can use the alphabetical list below to limit the list of districts by first letter.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z All
Please click on your district name below to access the 2009/10 Sub-Recipient Report in PDF format.
- Park (Estes Park) R-3, Larimer
- Park County RE-2, Park
- Pawnee SD RE-12, Weld
- Peyton 23 JT, El Paso
- Pikes Peak BOCES,
- Plainview RE-2, Kiowa
- Plateau RE-5, Logan
- Plateau Valley 50, Mesa
- Platte Canyon 1, Park
- Platte Valley Re-3, Sedgwick
- Platte Valley RE-7, Weld
- Poudre R-1, Larimer
- Prairie RE-11, Weld
- Primero Reorganized RE-2, Las Animas
- Pritchett Re-3, Baca
- Pueblo City 60, Pueblo
- Pueblo County Rural 70, Pueblo
Note: These documents are made available in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Acrobat allows the user to view and print the documents exactly as they look in hard copy. First-time users of this format will have to perform a one-time only installation of the free Adobe Acrobat Reader Software before they will be able to read or print a document. This format is used extensively on the Web and on this site, in particular.
For additional information please contact Adam Williams at: email@example.com or 303.866.6843


text:
Windows Azure Overview
- Date: to
- Day 1
- Studio A
- Speakers: Scott Guthrie
- 15 comments
Loading user information from Channel 9
Something went wrong getting user information from Channel 9
Loading user information from MSDN
Something went wrong getting user information from MSDN
Loading Visual Studio Achievements
Something went wrong getting the Visual Studio Achievements
Right click "Save as…"
Scott Guthrie will kick off the Windows Azure Conf by presenting an overview of Windows Azure. Scott will demonstrate how to build a wide variety of applications ranging from web sites, mobile applications, and multi-tier cloud services. He will also highlight several of the new Windows Azure features and services including Windows Azure Mobile Services, Web Sites, Virtual Machines, and new developer tools and SDKs. Finally, he will answer several questions submitted through Twitter from developers around the world. Whether you're new to Windows Azure or already an expert, you won't want to miss Scott's live and interactive keynote.
Related Resources
Oops, something didn't work.
사요ㅇ중인 매일을 일방적으로 사용하지 못하게하는 이유가?이 컴퓨터는 2대의 콤퓨터가 연결된 가정용 네트워크를 채팅으로 오혜하고있다.
great stuff!.. very good intro to service bus.
Excellent presentation, definitelly reason to try it ASAP, thanks
Scott, your presentation very interesting. where to download PPT !
Please tell me what is Azure in short form
Whether it is CMS, or development tool or what?
@nirmalan: Windows Azure is Microsoft's CLOUD platform.
Where is the button to deploy a 1k man-days 'native' azure-app to a on-premise w2k12 infrastructure? Oh. There is none. Azure Appliances as announces somehow imploded. Make sure your investments pay back. Avoid azure.
scott said you can install sql to vm as you are an administrator (14:30 in video).
So what happens to my installations(SQL,or other softwares) on VM if i scale it to 2 or more instances?
thumbs up, microsoft. I can't wait to start making stuffs with these great features.
That is great stuff; I am especially looking forward to exploring the Service Bus Relay - neat feature!
@Hanky Next time make sure you have something to say, not just repeat what the penguin in the videos says.
Can we get the short video of the datacenter?
May i know after this whole conference what can i gain from it ?
Awesome one Scott..
A very good "big picture" overview - also for newbies.
Of course, some things have changed since that time (2012) - nevertheless, it's still worth to check it out.
Comments have been closed since this content was published more than 30 days ago, but if you'd like to continue the conversation, please create a new thread in our Forums, or Contact Us and let us know.


text:
About the Event:
American Wave is a revolutionary salon service created by myself and my senior texture specialists. We use modern ionic waving lotion and editorial hair setting techniques to create a variety of permanent textures for clients. On a combination of models and mannequins, this Single User Certification Class teaches –– through demonstration and hands-on work –– three American Wave techniques:
The Beach Wave: Learn to marry straight and wavy textures to create sexy, tousled beach waves.
Style Support: Learn to add volume and texture to hair that lacks life and vitality, creating perfect style support for blow-dries and hot-tools.
Expanded Curls: Learn to maximize natural texture to create buoyant, resilient curl patterns that are fabulous and full.
Please Note: We facilitate these certification classes in our New York Academy, and at the Goldwell Academies in Baltimore and Santa Monica. Noted on the right side of this page, the March 3rd, June 9th, and Sept 8th dates are taking place in Santa Monica. The April 28th date is taking place in Baltimore. All other dates are at ARROJO Academy, NYC.
To book ARROJO seminars at the ARROJO or Goldwell Academy, please call ARROJO Education direct on: 212 242 7786 ext 207 or email [email protected]


text:
Top Definition
A starkingdoms alliance, a pack of wolves
Fenris pwned TheChaotic and TRWfed.
Beküldő: daKIDDY 2005. április 1.
Trending Now
Can you define these popular missing words?
snot bubble
i sneezed and a large fenris appeared on my nostril
Beküldő: dave namegah 2009. augusztus 29.
A word used to describe a fool. Or someone who suicides or makes an attack that leads to the total rape of his planet. Or someone who creates a pathetic 1 sector alliance.
Especially in the game StarKingdoms.
Especially in the game StarKingdoms.
"Wow, that was a real Fenris attack you made there" or "Dude, your little Fenris alliance has a whoping ONE sector in it!!"
Beküldő: dA jOsh 2009. november 6.
Large gathering of tools, especially in Star Kingdoms.
yay, i'm #12345519 in Hall of Fame!
Beküldő: Cal 2004. május 21.


text:
Serves 2 |
Prep Time 2 hours |
Cook Time 0 minutes
2 tsp Eden Matcha Tea
1 cup cold water
1 cup Edensoy Vanillaor Edensoy Extra Vanilla
2 tsp organic maple syrup, or to taste
Place all ingredients in a blender and pulse several seconds to mix. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze about 2 hours. When frozen, remove and place the matcha cubes in a blender together. Pulse several seconds until smooth and thick, adding about 1/4 to 1/2 cup extra Edensoy to desired thickness. Pour into glasses and serve with a spoon. If desired, sprinkle a tad more matcha on top of the slush for garnish.
Beverages, Edensoy, Low Sodium, Macrobiotic, Tea, Vegan


text:
on May 21, 2013 - 1:18 PM
, updated May 22, 2013 at 1:16 AM
Polls are closed in 37 districts in Erie and Niagara counties, where voters across the region had their say on school budgets today.
The Buffalo News will provide live results on the School Zone blog.
Turnout was brisk in communities where voters were asked to exceed the tax cap.
A proposal to increase tax revenue by 9.8 percent galvanized residents in Clarence, where long lines in the high school gym stretched nearly to the door and a vocal campaign to defeat the budget included signs and mailers. High school students lined up on Main Street, homemade signs in hand, to urge approval of the budget.
"There's passion on both sides of the argument," Clarence Superintendent Geoffrey Hicks said.
Polls in most districts will close at 9 p.m.
The 5,500 voters who had cast ballots in Clarence by 6 p.m. had nearly doubled the school district's previous record high of 2,800 set in 2005, Clarence schools business administrator Rick Mancuso said.
There was a steady stream of residents voting at Lewiston-Porter School District this afternoon, with strong opinions both for and against the $40 million budget.
Clarence and Lewiston-Porter have proposed budgets that would exceed the state-imposed tax cap and will need 60 percent voter approval to pass.
"I think the state should pick up the slack," said Dick Marino, of Lewiston, one of a number of retirees who said they did not support the increase in Lewiston-Porter. "I don't support a budget like that."
All districts in Erie and Niagara counties except Lackawanna and Cheektowaga-Sloan have proposed budgets that would increase the amount of taxes collected, with the average tax levy increase at 3.3 percent. With rising retirement costs and other constraints, districts have been running out of options for ways to cut spending.
If a budget fails, a school district can submit the same proposal or a new proposal again to voters in June. If the second plan fails, the school must adopt a contingency budget that would not include a tax levy increase.
"My taxes are too high," said Kathleen Whitehead, who voted at Lockport's Charles Upson Elementary School. "I don't think a lot of the things they do in these schools are necessary. We got by with a lot less."
email: email@example.com News Staff Reporters Denise Jewell Gee, Joseph Popiolkowski, Nancy Fischer and Thomas Prohaska contributed to this report.


text:
Top Definition
An alcoholic beverage made by mixing vodka, gingerale, and candy canes. Named for the peppermint ingredient and after an equally feisty and delightful 90s cartoon character. Usually tastes like brushing your teeth.
After Thanksgiving, I start drinking PepperAnnes. They taste like Christmas.
dari ArchitectofDestruction Minggu, 04 Desember 2011
Trending Now
Can you define these popular missing words?


text:
The Upshur County Commission is looking to strengthen a policy which prohibits unauthorized passengers from riding in police cruisers.
The West Virginia Counties Risk Pool recently issued a memorandum which details the liabilities counties can face by allowing such riders in county-owned vehicles. The organization recommended banning unnecessary riders in police vehicles. Unofficial riders would include transporting family members to school or work, allowing persons not associated with law enforcement to ride in the vehicle and any person not acting in an official capacity.
The Counties Risk Pool statement indicated that injured riders could sue the vehicle's owner in the event of an accident, that riders face unnecessary risks should the officer respond to a crime scene or make a traffic stop and that officers are often the target of random acts of violence.
"The problem is that we know about it, and we're not doing anything about it," Commissioner Creed Pletcher said. "It's about time we put some teeth into that policy before somebody gets killed or we're in a lawsuit."
The Counties Risk Pool also recommended that in the event an unauthorized passenger is in the vehicle and an emergency arises, that the officer notify the dispatcher of being off-duty until the passenger is taken to a safe destination. At that point, the officer would return to duty.
"We should make it pretty straight-forward, so that it won't be an issue," Commissioner Donnie Tenney said. "If you don't adhere to the policy, we will park the cruisers."


text:
Quality Education in the Benedictine Tradition
September 19, 2012
The American alternative rock band Third Eye Blind will perform in concert in the Robert S. Carey Student Center at Saint Vincent College at 8 p.m. Saturday, September 22. Doors open at 7 p.m. The band's current members include Stephan Jenkins (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Brad Hargreaves (drums, percussion) and touring members Kryz Reid (lead guitar) and Jon Pancoast (bass guitar). The band, which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide, is best known for the singles Semi-Charmed Life, How's It Going To Be, Graduate, Jumper, Never Let You Go, Crystal Baller, Blinded and Deep Inside You. They won the Billboard Music Award in 1997 for modern rock track of the year for Semi-Charmed Life. Further information about the group is available at www.3eb.com Saint Vincent College and area high school students may purchase tickets for $20. Public tickets are $30 and are available at the Saint Vincent College Campus Life Office in the Carey Center or at www.ticketfly.com. Tickets will be sold at the door on the night of the performance. Opening acts include Gene the Werewolf and Bishop Clay. Further information is available from the Office of Campus Life, 724-805-2415.
Follow us on Twitter: @SVCPublicity Like us on Facebook: Saint Vincent College Public Relations


text:
|A Surprising Path for Proton Transfer Without Hydrogen Bonds
Hydrogen bonds are found everywhere in chemistry and biology and are critical in DNA and RNA. A hydrogen bond results from the attractive dipolar interaction of a chemical group containing a hydrogen atom with a group containing an electronegative atom, such as nitrogen, oxygen, or fluorine, in the same or a different molecule. Conventional wisdom has it that proton transfer from one molecule to another can only happen via hydrogen bonds. Recently, a team of Berkeley Lab and University of Southern California researchers, using the ALS, discovered to their surprise that in some cases, protons can find ways to transfer even when hydrogen bonds are blocked.
To understand how bases are bonded in staircase-like molecules such as DNA and RNA, the USC group made computer models of paired, ring-shaped uracil molecules and investigated what might happen to these dimers when they were ionized. Uracil is one of the four nucleobases of RNA. The group modeled the uracil dimer 1,3-dimethyluracil. The purpose was to block hydrogen bonding of the two identical monomers of the dimer by attaching a methyl group to each; methyl groups are poison to hydrogen bonds.
The uracils could still bond in the vertical direction by means of π bonds, which are perpendicular to the usual plane of bonding among the flat rings of uracil and other nucleobases. So called "π stacking" is important in the configuration of DNA and RNA, in protein folding, and in other chemical structures as well, and π stacking was what interested the USC researchers. They brought their theoretical calculations to Berkeley Lab for experimental testing at the ALS's Chemical Dynamics Beamline 9.0.2.
To examine how the molecules were bonded, the team first created a gaseous molecular beam of methylated uracil monomers and dimers, then ionized them with vacuum ultraviolet light from the ALS. The resulting species were analyzed in a mass spectrometer. What the collaboration expected to see was that if the monomers were bonded, they would be stacked on top of each other. Instead, they found that when ionized, some uracil dimers had fallen apart into monomers, some of which carried an extra proton, i.e., proton transfer had occurred.
To test the hypothesis that the source of the proton was the methyl group, the researchers invited colleagues from Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry to join the collaboration. They created methyl groups in which the hydrogen atoms were replaced by deuterium atoms. The molecular beam experiment was repeated with deuterium-containing uracil, and once again some of the methylated uracil dimers fell apart into monomers upon ionization, but this time they were deuterated. This proved that, indeed, the transferred protons came from the methyl groups.
Just as important, proton transfer was seen to follow a very different route from the usual hydrogen bond pathway, following instead one that involved significant rearrangements of the two uracil dimer fragments to allow protons from hydrogen atoms in the methyl group on one monomer to move closer to an oxygen atom in the other.
This result means there could be unsuspected pathways for proton transfer in RNA and DNA and other biological processes upon ionization, especially those that involve π-stacking, as well as in environmental chemistry and in purely chemical processes like catalysis. The next step is a series of experiments to directly map proton transfer rates and gain structural insight into the transfer mechanism, with the goal of visualizing these unexpected new pathways for proton transfer.
Research conducted by: A. Golan and S.R. Leone (Berkeley Lab and University of California, Berkeley); K.B. Bravaya and A.I. Krylov (University of Southern California); and R. Kudirka, O. Kostko, and M. Ahmed (Berkeley Lab).
Funding: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Defense Threat Reduction Agency; and the National Science Foundation. Operation of the ALS is supported by BES.
Publication about this research: A. Golan, K.B. Bravaya, R. Kudirka, O. Kostko, S.R. Leone, A.I. Krylov, and M. Ahmed, "Ionization of dimethyluracil dimers leads to facile proton transfer in the absence of H-bonds," Nature Chem. 4, 323 (2012).
ALS Science Highlight #252


text:
Rosetta Stone Promo Code & Coupons
Most popular now: Receive a Free Hands-On Interactive Demo and Explore Rosetta Stone.
Latest offer: Free Shipping on Entire Order.
Receive a Free Hands-On Interactive Demo and Explore Rosetta Stone
Free Shipping on Entire Order
How to use a Rosetta Stone coupon
New customers can often find promotional sign up offers on the Rosetta Stone homepage. Alternately, you can browse Coupons.com to search for promotional codes that can be applied to your subscription total at Rosetta Stone. Be sure to compare the promo codes as the selection may vary.
How to Use Rosetta Stone Coupons
Once you locate a promotional code you would like to use, just enter the code into the appropriate box on the checkout page. The discount should be reflected in your total immediately. If you are using a coupon from a deal site that requires you to click through a link to activate it, the deal and discount should be reflected in your total already once you have followed the link to the checkout page on the site.
About Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone is the leading language-learning software in the world and has helped millions of learners in more than 150 countries develop their language skills and become fluent in a second language.


text:
Optional Practical Training (OPT) is permission to work in a job related to your field of study. F-1 students are eligible for 12 months of optional practical training authorization. This authorization can be used for full-time summer work or part-time work (not more than 20 hours/week) during the academic year, or all or part of the time can be saved for full-time employment after graduation. Graduate students who have completed all course requirements may begin full-time OPT while completing their theses or dissertations.
In making a recommendation for optional practical training under SEVIS, the DSO will update the student's record in SEVIS as having been recommended for OPT. The DSO will then print the employment page of the student's SEVIS Form I-20, and sign and date the form to indicate that optional practical training has been recommended. The F-1 student files with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) for an Employment Authorization Document (must send Form I-765 with fee, and the SEVIS Form I-20 employment page indicating that OPT has been recommended by the DSO).
Plan ahead. Applications should be filed with the USCIS Service Center with jurisdiction over the address where the student currently resides (address on I-765). The approval process may take as long as 90 days, and you cannot begin working until you have received your work authorization. Additionally, travel during the process of your application can be difficult. If you plan to travel after graduation you should discuss this in advance with an international student advisor.
To be eligible for optional practical training, you must:
Note: If the student has not completed a full academic year, the student may only apply for pre-completion OPT up to 90 days before the end of the full academic year.
Click here to view the OPT application.


text:
on March 11, 2013 - 1:37 PM
ALBANY – With the Senate and Assembly poised to start passing their largely symbolic, one-house budget measures, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo today said the legislative plans are out of balance.
"I get the political impact of the one-house budgets,'' Cuomo said of the annual process that lets the houses pass measures that will not become law but appeal to various special interest groups that want to see funding or tax breaks in the budget.
"But the numbers have to add up, and I don't believe the numbers add up,'' Cuomo said of the Senate and Assembly plans that began emerging over the weekend.
The governor said he supports the Senate plan to give tax breaks to businesses and middle-class residents, the Assembly measure to give more money to cities and both houses' effort to restore $120 million in funding for programs for developmentally disabled people.
"Do I think any of the things they are suggesting are bad things? By and large, no,'' Cuomo said at the Capitol a few hours before he is set to meet behind closed doors with legislative leaders to continue negotiating a 2013 budget.
"My experience is they are much better at finding things to add than finding sources of revenue,'' he said of the Legislature's one-house budget bill exercise.
Cuomo also signaled he could be willing to wait until later in the session to take up the issue of whether and how to permit up to seven new casinos to operate in New York. He has an expansion plan in his budget proposal, but said the issue is complex. He believes all sides want a casino deal, but still have not settled on the terms, chief among them being where the casinos might be located.
"It is a complicated issue and, given the short time frame, it may very well be that casinos wait for June,'' he said of the end-of-session period when many major policy matters are decided.
The sides are rushing to get a budget adopted next week before the start of religious holidays and the April 1 start of the fiscal year.
Cuomo's plan calls for permitting the first three casinos to be located upstate, though he has not said where. He said the challenge is to decide how long those three casinos will have exclusive rights to operate before the state lets any casinos move into New York City, which presumably could sharply eat into the profits of upstate casinos, particularly those located closer to downstate, such as the Catskills.
There is also some movement on the minimum wage issue with the printing later this afternoon of a Senate budget resolution – worked out by Republicans and a group of five breakaway Democrats who run the house under a coalition – that signals eroding of opposition by GOP senators to raising the wage, which is now set at $7.25. Republicans had been calling it a job killer, but seem to be changing that claim in the new budget resolution.
"The Senate will consider modifications to the executive proposal to increase the minimum wage. Like wages for many workers, the minimum wage has not kept up with the pace of inflation,'' the resolution states. "The Senate will consider phasing in any minimum wage increase over three years beginning in 2013.''
The resolution does not state what the Senate might accept as a level for the increase, and Cuomo's plan is already different from that proposed by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. But it signals that all sides now agree some sort of wage hike should be approved.
"It's a sign of progress,'' Cuomo said of the Senate resolution.
email: firstname.lastname@example.com