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Rabbit. A Less Used White Meat
Posted on Jan 3 2013 at 09:38:13 AM in Food & Drink
People in the US seem squeamish about the thought of eating rabbit. Most of the rest of the world sees nothing at all strange about rabbit as a regular food. Rabbit is less fatty than turkey or chicken and makes a fantastic stew or fricassee.
While living in Guatemala in the 1970s I had the opportunity to meet a couple from Europe. The wife was from southern Switzerland and the husband from northern Italy. We were invited to dinner at their house one evening and were served a lovely, rich rabbit stew over spaghetti noodles, with a bottle of Chianti wine. Having lived only in the US for my first 20 years of life, I had not been exposed to rabbit as food. I was becoming accustomed in Guatemala to eating all sorts of wonderful foods I had never seen or heard of previously. I had no qualms about trying rabbit.
Though that was over 40 years ago, that rabbit stew lives vividly in my memory as one of the best dishes I have eaten. I tried to find a recipe like it, but have had no success. I tried one time to make a rabbit stew and it was fine, but certainly not the wonderfully rich flavors of that stew the European couple served. Unfortunately I never got their recipe, but have dreamt of it ever since. It may be that because of time and distance, I have built up the flavor memory in my mind, but maybe not. I was so unsure of what to expect at the time, so I was extremely pleased to enjoy the dish so thoroughly.
I once ate hare in Chicago, which was also prepared deliciously, but that rabbit stew still tops my list of wishes to try one more time. Rabbit can be found in many groceries and specialty markets, and these are likely domesticated. Domesticated or farmed rabbits will be less gamey than if procured in the wild. Rabbit called for in recipes could be substituted with chicken, turkey and possibly even pork. Hare is gamier, a much heavier red meat requiring different recipes. They are generally known as jackrabbits, or in the north, there are snowshoe hare. Hunters are more likely to cook rabbit or hare than other folk in the US. Recipes that call for hare can usually substitute another red meat for the hare. Beef or venison, even wild boar, could be substituted in recipes calling for hare.
I would love to be given another opportunity to try cooking a rabbit stew. The only problem is finding a recipe. My one time trial was not a success, though the food was good. I am leery of trying again with another unexciting result. These days, with internet so prevalent, there are recipes everywhere. It is more possible today to find something that would approximate that wonderful rabbit stew recipe than even a few years ago. It could be that rabbit was once known as a poor man's food, and the Depression era likely made that idea stick. Rabbit has been looked down upon as a meat source for the poor. Then the advent of super groceries where all meat is clean and packaged has made people pretend that clean, packaged meat was never a live animal. All meat comes from a live animal. Rabbits are edible and delicious, with the added bonus of being a healthy meat. Variety is important in the diet, whether meat, vegetable or grain.
I intend to continue my search for that recipe for a southern Swiss or northern Italian rabbit stew, and hope to find it or one like it. I urge people to become more adventurous in their eating. We have become a society where any meat outside of beef, pork, chicken or turkey is considered exotic and we are fearful of trying anything new. Open your mind to new foods and flavors. There is so much diversity to be had.
About The Author
My name is Chris Rawstern and I have been on a cooking and baking journey for 42 years. Many people have asked what A Harmony of Flavors means. Have you ever had a meal where the visual presentation was stunning, the smells were incredible, the taste was so remarkable that you ate slowly savoring every bite, wishing the experience would never end? Then you have experienced what a truly harmonious meal can be like.
My passion is to teach people how to create a Harmony of Flavors with their cooking, and help pass along my love and joy of food, both simple and exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things. I would love to hear from you, to help me continue my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own.
Visit my Web site http://www.aharmonyofflavors.com my Blog at http://www.aharmonyofflavors.blogspot.com my Marketplace at http://www.a-harmony-of-flavors-marketplace.com or Facebook page A Harmony of Flavors. I share a recipe or tip each day to the fans that have liked my site. I hope to see you there soon.


text: Here's a fun quiz that will get you thinking about the importance of wood and biomass fuel in the world. Try it out, you will learn some interesting facts. I got 2 wrong, but will let you all take the quiz before telling which ones. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/energy/great-energy-challenge/wood-energy-quiz/ There are several informative articles in this series on the energy challenges civilization faces. Worth reading on a chilly night. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/energy/great-energy-challenge/

subset: commoncrawl


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Entrance of Hallwyl Castle, one of the most important moated castles in Switzerland, located near Lake Hallwyl in Aargau. The origins of the caslte go back to 1256, but has been renovated and changed several times since then. For more information on the castle, check out this wikipedia page.
When we were visiting, a wedding was just taking place at the castle which is why there are so many people around on the square.


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This workshop, hosted by Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland (SEAI), will be the first of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Efficiency Unit's (EEU) new programmes of work on innovative energy efficiency policies for mitigating fuel poverty, aiming to overcome the problem of return on investments in weatherization by the poor. The workshop will address three categories of non-energy co-benefits (NEBs) for low-income energy efficiency programmes: utility/rate-payer benefits; societal economic benefits; and participant household benefits. In addition, discussions on methodologies for collecting, quantifying and evaluating NEBs are planned.
dates: 27-28 January 2011 venue: Dublin Castle location: Dublin, Ireland contact: Grayson Heffner e-mail: email@example.com www: http://www.iea.org/work/workshopdetail.asp?WS_ID=494


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Life Coach vs Therapist: What's The difference?
Most people are unclear about the difference between therapy and life coaching, so in this post we look at a few of the big differences.
Life Coach vs Therapist: What's the difference?
Life Coaching is a steadily growing field and market, that is in higher demand everyday. At the same time, it's so interesting because most people have NO IDEA what being a life coach is all about. Many people have some idea what therapy is about, but still need more information on what life coaching is exactly; how it's different and what are it's benefits.
So, I put together this list. I hope it helps!
Life Coaching is mainly about:
- Developing a vision and purpose for one's life, business or both – get clear on where you are and where you want to be
- Dealing with the present and planning for the future – create a map and plan for the future
- Setting and reaching meaningful goals – set goals that excite you and elevate your performance
- Performing at higher levels – operate at higher levels with greater clarity and intent
- Creating solutions together (coach and client) – collaborate with your coach
- Held accountable by the coach – constant reflection and measurement of progress
- Developing a better communication, self talk and self esteem
- Sessions are held over the phone or on Skype
Therapy is mainly about:
- Dealing with past issues and trauma
- Learning how to let go of the past
- Focusing on achieving emotional balance and understanding
- Getting solutions from the therapist
- Sessions are held in person
- Deals with crisis
Both have the potential to add tremendous value to your life. I would argue that the biggest difference between the two is that Life Coaching deals with the present and focuses on moving forward with clarity, purpose and intention, while therapy deals with resolving the past.
How could life coaching benefit you? How could having a coach help you become more focused, productive, confident and aligned?
As always, share your thoughts on how this could fit into your life!


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Northeast News
October 31, 2013
Runners can expect favorable weather for this year's Nov. 3 Cliff Hanger in Historic Northeast. According to the Weather Channel, the high for Sunday will be 63 degrees and mostly cloudy.
Every year, hundreds of runners flock to the Cliff Drive Scenic Byway for the race which has been going strong for nearly 30 years.
Unlike previous years, this year's race will start and finish on the campus of the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences (KCUMB) which is the naming sponsor and host site this year. The start and finish will be located at Cliff Drive and Highland Avenue.
The 8K start will begin at 8 a.m. Sunday and at 9 a.m. for the 5K start. Both races will be timed and awarded separately. The 8K and 5K are part of The Kansas City Track Club Race Series., but only the 8K is a part of the MARA Grand Prix. For both races, awards will go to the top three male and female finishers and the top three in age groups 14 to 19, 75 to 79, and 80-plus. Special award categories will also be used for those under 14.
Runners can also form teams if they so choose and teams can be large or small. The three fastest times per team will be counted and categories are: male, female, co-ed and largest team.
Awards will be given during the post-race pancake breakfast at the KCUMB student cafeteria. Breakfast is free to runner participants and costs $5 for family and friends.
Parking will be available at KCUMB, 1750 E. Independence Ave., Kansas City, Mo. Participants may park in any parking lot, except those blocked off by race organizers.
To register for the race, visit https://register.bazumedia.com/reg/form?eventID=2891
For more information about the race, visit http://www.cliffhangerrun.com/
Cliff Hanger benefits local non-profits
Over the years, the race has focused on giving back to the Northeast and began as a fundraiser for the Assumption Church pre-school and the UMKC school for the handicapped. Organizations that have benefited from the run have included a preschool, food pantries and Gladstone Elementary School.
In 2008, Northeast Neighbor To Neighbor (http://nnncares.org/) became the beneficiary. Northeast Neighbor to Neighbor (NNN) provides financial and other support services to the medically underserved residents of the Historic Northeast neighborhoods. NNN provides this support by identifying and creating access to needed health care services, coordinating referrals and providing funding for the services, educating clients regarding their medical needs and available medical services, and assisting clients in navigating the healthcare system.


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General News of Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Source: Abdul Karim Naatogmah
The Abudu Royals in Yendi have accused the Yendi Municipal Chief Executive, Issah Zakaria of using his power to cause confusion in the area. Also, they have rejected the Municipal Security Committee's decision to ban them from celebrating this year's Damba festival.
The Abudus insist they will go ahead and celebrate the Damba festival which comes off tomorrow (Thursday).
According them, no amount of intimidation will stop them from exercising their right of celebrating any traditional festival.
The Assemblyman for Nayilifong electoral area, Ibrahim Zolge in an interview said, "There is political interference because some of the politicians like the Municipal Chief Executive who is the chief representative of central government in the municipality should have the chance to visit the Abudus and Andanis in Yendi."
He accused the Yendi MCE of taking sides. "In a situation where the a Chief Executive in Yendi will take sides by only visiting the Andanis without the Abudus, automatically majority of the people will attribute it to political interference."
Ibrahim Zolge advised the MCE saying, "He should try as much as possible as a leader to visit both sides, he should not take side and so he should pay equal attention to both sides of the chieftaincy divide."
The Yendi Municipal Chief Executive, Issah Zakariah has declined to comment. The Damba festival is celebrated by most of the tribal groups of Muslim origin in Northern Ghana.
Some of the major tribes in northern Ghana including Dagombas, Gonjas, Mamprusis, Nanumbas and the Walas celebrate the Damba festival. The event is to remember the birth and naming ceremony of the Holy Prophet of Islam, Prophet Mohammed.
Damba is a twin festival comprising, "Somo" Damba and "Naa" Damba. "Somo" Damba is celebrated to commemorate the birth of the prophet and Naa-Damba is held to mark his naming ceremony.


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Top 10 Things To Do This Weekend
This weekend there's a lot going on – Chinese New Year celebrations, Depeche Mode, the release of
Jeff Bridges' Oscar-nominated Crazy Heart and more. Here's our top ten events in London and beyond…
Festival: Chinese New Year CelebrationsCelebrate the Year of the Tiger in Chinatown with an opening ceremony in Trafalgar Square, as well lots of cultural and food stalls, performances of music, dance, dancing dragons, acrobats and, of course, a big-fireworks display to cap it off. http://www.londonchinatown.org
Comedy: Dave Gorman After years of performing multimedia concept shows such as Googlewhack and Are You Dave Gorman?, the comic returns to 'traditional' stand-up comedy â although he's sure to draw on his recent cycling-cum-comedy tour of the UK for inspiration. http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Gig: Depeche ModeStill going pretty strong on the evidence of their new album Sounds Of The Universe Dave Gahan, Andy Gore and Martin Fletcher will provide an evening of gothic electro-rock interspersed with some synth-pop classics from the past. http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Film: Crazy HeartJeff Bridges is an Oscar favourite as Bad Blake, a grizzled, alcoholic former country music star reduced to playing one-night stands in crummy bars â until he meets Maggie Gyllenhaal 's single-mum journalist Jean, who gives him a raison d'êtreâ¦
Exhibition: Paul NashThis exhibition of paintings, watercolours and photos shows how Nash took 'elementary objects' and 'put them in relationships of conflict or harmony, and found pathways, nests and thresholds between them and within them'. http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
Theatre: Private LivesKim Cattrall ditches her SATC maneater persona to star opposite Matthew 'Spooks' MacFadyen in Noël Coward's comedy in which a divorced couple find themselves honeymooning with their new spouses in the same hotel. The production finishes it run in Bath this weekend and is moving up to the West End. http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk
Event: An Evening With Louis Theroux Theroux has always been a canny interviewer with a knack for getting people to reveal themselves rather than prying information out of them. This event in Brighton promises to be an enlightening chat and review of his acclaimed body of work. http://www.brightondome.org
Film: Glasgow Film FestivalGetting bigger and better each year, this year's programme includes the UK premiere of The Greatest, a drama starring red-hot Brit actress Carey Mulligan (Oscar nominated for her role in An Education), Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon. http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk
Gig: The NoisettesCharismatic lead singer Shingai Shoniwa's voice was described by Rolling Stone as 'equal parts Iggy Pop and Billie Holiday' and the band hope this tour will confirm their reputation as one of the most exciting live acts in the UK. Look out Sheffield! http://www.o2academybristol.co.uk
Club: Chibuku@The MasqueRadio 1's Annie Mac and DJ Zinc are the big names on the flyer, but strong support comes from Mr Paul, and Subfocus and Friction in The Loft. Expect a lively diverse night of top-quality dance music. http://www.chibuku.com


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When you purchase a digital subscription to Cake Central Magazine, you will get an instant and automatic download of the most recent issue.
This was for a little boys birthday who loves Dr. Seuss. all around the cake are pictures from his stories: fox in socks, nixie knox, road sign, gold fish bowl. It was alot of fun to do. Everything is made from fondant and the details were done with edible markers.
Happy Birthday Topsy Turvy
Dr Seuss Birthday Cake
Dr. Seuss Birthday Cake ( Cat In The Hat)
this is fantastic!
(if this is a private computer)
Yes please, register now!


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More than 50 to lose jobs when Perrysburg company closes
Wed, 23 Jul 2014 16:01:04 GMT —
A Perrysburg company will close later this year, putting dozens of employees out of work.
Video Products Distributors (VPD IV Inc.) has sent the state of Ohio a notice that it will cease operations following a sale of its assets and will close sometime around the beginning of October.
The company said all of its 54 Ohio employees will be terminated by the close date.
READ: Unemployment drops to lowest level since September 2008
VPD, which is headquartered in California, distributes DVDs, Blu-rays, and games. It currently operates two facilities: at the Ampoint Industrial Complex, 668 1st Street in Perrysburg, and at 400 F Street.


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"I wish to speak a word for the art of poking around," begins philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore in a fine art book beautifully built around her essay by lone goose press. I wish to speak a word for the artistry of Poking Around, the limited edition letterpress collaboration by lone goose proprietor Sandy Tilcock and artist Margot Voorhies Thompson. Poking around is exactly what they did for 10 days at the PLAYA residency for writers, artists and scientists in Summer Lake, Oregon. PLAYA's high desert landscape is very much the fourth collaborator in the project. I arrived the same April night as Tilcock and Thompson and spotted them at sunrise combing the shore of the playa, an alkaline lake surrounded by desert, mountains and forests. What they found poking around often found its way into their pages in inventive ways. Thompson scooped up coarse dirt while hiking on the hillside the second day to study the complexities of colors underneath her feet and to add to her array of stains. Tule reeds, which Native Americans used for many things including weaving, doubled as something to draw and something to draw with. A bit of barbed wire for the final page marks the human hand on the landscape. Moore's essay is from her 1996 book Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water. While her focus is paying attention in the natural world, Moore acknowledges that the art of poking around "can be practiced in libraries and antique stores and peoples' psyches." At our first communal dinner that week at PLAYA, three book artists, two stream biologists, a sculptor, a photographer and several writers discussed how crucial poking around – inside and outside of our heads – is to all art and to science. We agreed our best work is seldom what we set out to do but what we discover. PLAYA's setting is steeped in surprise. During his 1843 mapping expedition, Captain John C. Frémont stood in several feet of snow on what he named Winter Ridge and looked down the snow-free playa he named Summer Lake. Because he had already seen the Great Salt Lake in Utah, Frémont correctly surmised there was a vast stretch of land in the West where water does not flow to an ocean that he called the Great Basin. One of my favorite pages of Poking Around is inspired by the cracks in the crust of the alkaline lake. Because PLAYA attracts residents who speak science as well as art, I now understand that the polygonal patterning is tensegrity, a structural term coined by Buckminster Fuller and an efficient way in nature or in building to control compression. In the video, Tilcock and Thompson explain the design evolution possible working together at PLAYA. They have collaborated several times before but never in the same space and time. Tilcock's workshop, with its 1940 Vandercook 219 proof press, is in Eugene. Thompson lives 120 miles away in Portland. Only a few steps separated their PLAYA studios,... Continue reading
Posted Oct 9, 2015 at The Best American Poetry
Michael Jordan with Coach Dean Smith The obituaries of legendary University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith have heralded his civil rights activism and team-above-self philosophy as much as his basketball legacy. President Barack Obama honored Smith with the Medal of Freedom in 2013 as a leader who transcended his sport. This week, I asked the motley crew at my middle-aged, co-ed basketball game, to pause in respect. I wore black socks and black headband to mourn, and a Carolina blue shirt to celebrate the life that shaped my values and ethics as much as any member of my biological family. For once in my life, I could stand at the three-point line and feel like Michael Jordan – who called Smith "more than a coach…a mentor, my teacher, my second father." I raised my index finger and pointed downcourt, the way Smith taught players to thank teammates for an assist. In my close extended family in the tobacco belt of North Carolina, Dean Smith was a deity. He echoed what they taught me about loyalty, humility and hard work. Coach –there was only one for my kin – connected me to my father who struggled with depression and alcoholism. None of that changed when I played for UNC rival Wake Forest in college. My junior year, in March, my father killed himself with a shotgun. For the rest of that season and many after, Coach Smith signaled from the sidelines all that my father wanted for me. At 56, I've not got a lot of game left, but I still have a lot of Dean, on and off the court. Or at least I hope so. Finding the Net I could count on my father, closed down, bed bound, for Carolina basketball. He would come out for supper, snacks, our Boys in Blue. Dean Smith delivered. Forty minutes of family, triumph, selfless defense, four corners of calm. I seldom saw the bourbon or pills. I watched perfect pass after perfect pass trounce the devils. And my father fade. I will find the open man. In Third Grade My Father Loves Me Best When I Watch hoops with him I can stay up late if I nap after school. The nap is my idea. I know why Coach Smith is the Dean of college basketball. Open the 1957 scrapbook When our Tarheels beat Wilt the Stilt for the National Championship, the year before I was born. Talk politics I know the Constitution is a do-over of some Articles Confederation. I can name the Supreme Court. Ask about Washington, D.C. The trip he shook hands with Sam Rayburn, the big boss of a House, but not the White one. Understand football How guards and tackles protect quarterbacks. That safeties must save the day. Laugh with him about playing God of the Grapevine in Glendale. His younger cousins were angels. Fetched grape juice, Ritz crackers. (poems from a work in progress, For Opening the Mouth of the Dead) Catherine Woodard helped... Continue reading
Posted Feb 11, 2015 at The Best American Poetry
Marie Ponsot held us in her spell, reading with radiant authority and a deep pleasure in the power and play of language at the University Club, NYC, where friends and family gathered Nov. 19 to celebrate her legacy as poet, teacher, and benefactor to The Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's College. It came as no surprise that Ponsot, class of 1940 and this year's recipient of the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (among her many other honors), asked the audience to hold applause when it broke out after she read a second poem. Quiet observation and imaginative attention to the power of poetic structures are key in Ponsot's poetry. One thinks of Ponsot's most recent book, Easy, and realizes that this ease is hard won, as she affirms in a PBS News Hour profile. Each of the twelve poems Ponsot chose for Tuesday's event reveals experience enfolded within experience, as in "Pre-text," in which the first, lunging steps of a "sudden baby" lead backwards in time erasing suddenness in an eloquent gesture. In "On a Library of Congress Photo of Eunice B. Winkless, 1904," a young woman's proud but precarious control over the "animal horse" results in her fall into "a pool like a tame star." In Ponsot's luminous yet uncompromising vision, we come up short but still win. "Did it again. Damn Fool!" the rider exclaims, and the poem ends with an observation on the authority of the imagination, the poet asking, "And when do I act on better evidence?" In "Hard Shell Clams," Ponsot commemorates the intimacy of a day shared with her father, yet remembers also "what I would not let us say." A series of glowing tributes to Marie Ponsot's legacy followed a convivial settling in. Dean Richard Greenwald of St. Joseph's introduced President S. Elizabeth Hill, who praised Ponsot's "generous embrace of life" and her poems that "blaze like the sun or glow like warming embers." Alice Quinn, who edited Ponsot's return to publishing with her 1981 Admit Impediment, remembered being careful not to damage "the copious beauty" and celebrated Ponsot's "thrilling relation to the poetic canon and poetic form." She described the eleven poems that appeared in a recent edition of Poetry as "marvels of intellectual curiosity and acuity that will also break your heart." To illustrate, she read Ponsot's "Roundstone Cove," which ends with the acute and comforting observation, "Fog hoods me. But the hood of fog is sun." Rosemary Deen, co-author of Beat Not the Poor Desk, described Ponsot's inspired teaching syllabus and expressed enduring admiration for the way this "mother, breadwinner, cooker of two French meals a day, and poet" managed to find "those twenty minutes before going to bed" to write. Finally, Jackson Taylor, Director of The Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's and first to hold the newly endowed Ponsot Chair in Poetry, introduced Marie Ponsot by quoting her advice to him: "You gotta get lucky. The way to get lucky is to be open to luck." Clearly, there is... Continue reading
Posted Dec 15, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
When I am lucky enough to travel, I always think about communities, about how each of us is defined by layers of communities. I grew up in Kenly, N.C., a town of 1,400 people in rural North Carolina, and have now lived more than half of my life in NYC where I've always known a writing community, first in journalism, now in poetry. The most innovative model I know for non-profits who want to make a difference in their community, literary and otherwise, is in Spartanburg, S.C. Meet Betsy Teter, executive director and editor of the Hub City Writers Project, the only independent press I know that also runs a non-profit book store. CW: How did Hub City Press get its start? BT: Basically three writers met each other when a new coffee shop opened in Spartanburg. We certainly had no idea that we ultimately would have seven employees, a press that has sold 100,000 books all over the country, and a non-profit independent bookshop on the town square. Our bookselling operations now help fund a successful summer writers conference, a poetry book prize, residencies, a mentor/critique program, a story-into-film film festival, college scholarships for local teens, donations of thousands of books to local schools, regular creative writing workshops and dozens of readings annually. All of this started with the idea for one book, an anthology of authors writing personal essays about the experience of living in Spartanburg. In the beginning, back in 1995, we focused on telling the story of Spartanburg, through personal essay, natural history, art, poetry, etc. Readers in town loved that writers cared about what happened here and also that we were interested in preserving through words what was special about our community. We reflect our community, and that's what makes us successful. We use the assets that are here, we give back, and we are helping to define what it means to live in Spartanburg, S.C. CW: Where does the name come from? BT: We modeled ourselves after the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, because we were writers working to build community. The name Hub City is a throwback to when Spartanburg was a railroad hub in the late 1800s. We are working to create a literary hub now. CW: How does Hub City work? BT: We like to say we are a "vertically integrated" literary arts organization—developing new writers from the ground up through workshops and conferences, sometimes publishing them, and then selling their books. Last year, a local writer who we first met at one of our summer writers' conferences brought us $50,000 from sales of her novel, which we published at Hub City Press and sell in the bookstore. That success is creating opportunities for a lot of other writers. We are a 501c3 non-profit and we have tremendous financial support from our home community, even now that our publishing focus is more regional and national. A healthy bank account feeds creativity and energy, so we just kept growing and expanding, pulling more... Continue reading
Posted Feb 23, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
The birth of a book is a blessed day. The day I interviewed Sudeep Sen in January at his apartment in New Delhi about editing The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry, his latest poetry book Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1978-2013 arrived in boxes from Gallerie Publishers. Shelves and shelves of poetry books share top billing with an eclectic collection of visual art, including Sen's photographs. He took the photo on the cover of the anthology. Behind his desk is a framed draft of a poem by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the prolific Indian writer and later-in-life visual artist. Birthday cruise for Derek Walcott, 83 Sen, 48, introduced me to his extremely charming mother in the ground floor apartment so I saw Fractals join the shrine on a dining room side table of her son's more than two dozen poetry books, translations and anthologies. Later in January, Sen was the contemporary poet honored to read at a Nobel Laureate conference in St. Lucia. Coincidentally, Tagore was awarded a literature Nobel exactly 100 years earlier. Derek Walcott, the 1992 literature winner, lead the Q&A after Sen's reading. "The biggest gig in my life thus far – certainly the most precious, moving and meaningful," Sen emailed me after. CW: All 85 poets in the anthology were born after India became a republic in 1950. How does that influence their relationship to English as a language? SS: There's a confidence in the language, an unabashedness. One or two generations ago English was a post-colonial language. It's no longer the case. For me, English is an Indian language. It is one of our 26 official languages. CW: So it's about owning the language not in reaction to a colonial history of oppression? SS: No, it's more than that. English just happens to be one of the tongues they are using very freely as an everyday thing. Take me for instance, I have three mother tongues: English, Bengali and Hindi, that's how I grew up. It's very unself-conscious. English is a language I learned from my parents and grandparents who are Indians. When I travel abroad, people say "oh you speak English very well" and I say "and so do you." The English language is interesting because there are so many different Englishes. There is Caribbean English, Australian English, American English, English English, Asian English, Indian English. CW: What did selecting the poets teach you about those Englishes? SS: That it is complex. Take David Dabydeen in the book, whose work is known as part of Caribbean literature. He's from Guyana and grew up in the UK, an Indian diaspora poet who writes just fabulous English poetry of the highest order. His ancestors were Indian laborers. He writes about cooking dhal and roti and curry. Some of his poems are very steeped in Western painting, including this fabulous love poem called "Turner" I excerpt in the book. The Indian diaspora is very complex too. The older diaspora is five or six generations... Continue reading
Posted Feb 22, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
Sen reads his poem "A Blank Letter" on BAP Friday.
The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry is a testament to the power of think global, write local. All 85 contemporary poets selected by the editor, Sudeep Sen, are Indians who write in English. They live in India and across the world, and write about everything under the sun in a variety of ...
Sen reads one of his poems in the post tomorrow. I will add it in print too. Good idea. 646 251-8500 www.catherinewoodard.com 907 Fifth Avenue NYC 10021
The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry is a testament to the power of think global, write local. All 85 contemporary poets selected by the editor, Sudeep Sen, are Indians who write in English. They live in India and across the world, and write about everything under the sun in a variety of ...
When I am lucky enough to travel, I always think about communities, about how each of us is defined by layers of communities. I grew up in Kenly, N.C., a town of 1,400 people in rural North Carolina, and have now lived more than half of my life in NYC... Continue reading
Posted Feb 21, 2013 at Catherine Woodard
The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry is a testament to the power of think global, write local. All 85 contemporary poets selected by the editor, Sudeep Sen, are Indians who write in English. They live in India and across the world, and write about everything under the sun in a variety of traditional forms and free verse. Sen, a poet with serious anthology credentials, took the bold step of selecting mostly new work; more than 90 percent of the poems are unpublished. So it's a terrific snapshot of the vibrancy of English poets in India and the diaspora. Other features also break the expected in refreshing ways. The poets are listed alphabetically by first name "so that there is a further sense of intimacy and a community-feel among fellow poets," Sen states in the well-written, six-page introduction. Many of the poets are new to me, so I can't lament greatest hits that might be missing. However, readers can get a good feel for each poet because generally there are at least four pages of poems and a few considerably more. (I can't argue that Sen should include himself; however, 15 pages seems excessive.) Many of the poets have had long careers: Amit Chaudhuri, Arundhathi Subramaniam, David Dabydeen, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Vijay Seshadri, Vikram Seth. Some only have one book or chapbook, such as Sridala Swami and Siddhartha Bose, whose playwright and performer credentials are far longer. What all the poets share is a confidence with English as one of India's 26 official languages. All included are born after 1950 when India became a republic and the world's largest democracy. At 541 pages, the anthology has heft and heart and lots of experimentation with formal forms as well as free verse. "You're likely to encounter a pantoum next to an acrostic poem, a triolet juxtaposed against a ghazal, lyric narratives, Sapphic fragments, Bhartrhari-style shataka, sonnet, rubai, prayer chants, rap, reggae, creole, haiku, tanka," the introduction promises and delivers. Sen also backs up his observation that "The subject matter is staggeringly large. There is introspection and gregariousness, politics and pedagogy, history, science, illness, fantasy, love, erotica, sex and death." He isn't shy about promoting Indian English poetry, that's for sure. "I would provocatively assert that the best English poetry written by Indians in the contemporary national and international literary arena is perhaps as good — or superior — to Indian fiction in English as a whole." A pointless, if provocative claim, I would argue. But I would second Sen's conclusion that "Indian poets are in full flight" and thank him for making it so easy to read so many. Tomorrow: a Q&A with Sudeep Sen. ******* I couldn't find an online source to purchase the anthology with shipping outside of India, including www.harpercollins.co.in. (Readers, please comment below if you know a source.) I also recommend Sen's selections at Prairie Schooner Feast Anthology of Poetry by Indian Women, available online. And a call for submissions. Editors Charles Fishman and Smita Sahay are seeking... Continue reading
Posted Feb 21, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
Walking Delhi with Himanshu Verma, an emerging arts curator, follows a trail where poets share top billing with rulers and religious leaders. Poets get prominent positions in India's history – literally – with their shrines and tombs near those of emperors and saints across Delhi. The place to be buried in Delhi from the 14th to 19th C was Nizamuddin, a village named after the exalted Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Not far away is a vast World Heritage site, the tomb of Humayun, the second of six powerful Muslim Mughals who controlled Northern India from 1527-1707. Eternity in the vicinity was a mark of status for nobles and warriors too. But who is buried closest to the white marble mausoleum of Nizamuddin who died in 1325, none other than his disciple and eminent Muslim poet Amir Khusrau, who died just six months later. If all you know about Hindu-Muslim relations in India is the wrenching partition in 1947 and subsequent political assassinations, the relationship between this saint and poet and the broader culture is a good place to get perspective on why India is simultaneously the Hindu capital of the world and the second largest Muslim nation. Most, not all, of the Islamic Mughals were tolerant of people of other faiths, including the indigenous Hindus. Khusrau was a cultural cross-pollinator, writing poetry primarily in Persian but also in Hindi. He drew on both languages for the first known printed dictionary. His poems take several forms, but Khusrau may be best known for expanding the development of ghazal. Khusrau mined ghazal for lyrics with his fusion of Persian and Indian musical traditions to create the Sufi devotional music, qawwali. Hindu and Muslim pilgrims, not to mention music lovers, still crowd the courtyard between the tombs of saint and poet for Friday afternoon qawwali. The path to the tombs twists through narrow alleys and bazaars, a bustling Muslim marketplace since the Middle Ages. One route goes past a still-preserved sandstone step well built by Nizamuddin to provide water and a scenic meeting place in the neighborhood. Then picture eight or nine singers and musicians, called a party, performing powerful poetic lyrics of love and longing. The intoxication with the beloved is understood to be the divine, but oh how well the metaphors work for the mere human as in a Khusrau excerpt below: O sweetheart, why do you not take me to your bosom? Long like curls in the night of separation, Short like life on the day of our union. Flash forward to Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869), a master of ghazal, who was alive during the unsuccessful Indian rebellion against the British in 1857. Traditionally ghazal is a short poem of divine anguished love, in couplets all using the same rhyme, with the poet's name in the last stanza. Ghalib expanded the focus to philosophy and the troubles and mysteries of life. For example, he compared his unhappy arranged marriage to a second imprisonment following the confinement of life itself. Reading... Continue reading
Posted Feb 20, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
BRINK The meaning of quiet – those corridors Knew it well. Softly girls. This building is old, Mother C lisped up stairs, her wimple Flaring like a halo. At table, tennis, we twirled spins like neat habits. A single smash could dismantle our world. Outside school, a man with a cleft lip spiced slices of raw mango. Red chilli burst into our mouth like explosions of sea water. The heat moved us to shower. We limp-toed into womanhood in spotless socks, a generation afraid of bringing things down. A backyard of bramble and weed was where we found noise. It wandered knock-kneed and had a tongue full of pins. Through this poem, I discovered Anindita Sengupta in a new anthology I will review here tomorrow. "Brink" caught my eye on a flight from Mumbai to New Delhi on New Year's Eve. I already intended to visit protests there on violence against women. So yes, I was ripe to land on this hinge line of "Brink:" "a generation afraid of bringing things down/ A backyard of bramble and weed was where/we found noise." I also admired the poem's focus on the "meaning of quiet" and the deft insertion of the meaning of unquiet through a table tennis scene: "A single smash could dismantle/ our world." Just outside the school in that poem, explosions are found, alliteratively and literally, in "spiced slices of raw mango." City of Water, Sengupta's first collection of poems, was published in 2010 and won the Muse India Young Writer award in 2012. She lives in Mumbai and is pictured with her nine-month-old daughter, Amaya. I love how quickly you can travel the world and the world of ideas on the Internet. I offer a few postcards from my travels after meeting "Brink" on paper. My first stop was Ultra Violet, a site for contemporary feminism in India that Sengupta founded and edits. I've been reading it regularly since my return to New York for its sophisticated coverage of civics and culture and have had a few email exchanges with Sengupta. Ultra Violet reflects her ear and eye as a journalist and poet. She is one of six international journalists recently awarded new media fellowships to report on topics of global health by the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Sengupta will focus on maternal and reproductive health as this link explains. A delightful discovery of my trip to India was the large number of journalists who write poetry or poets who support themselves as journalists. Print journalism, at least for now, remains a robust business in India. As a newspaper reporter for more than two decades before I made poems, I fantasize about more cross-fertilization between poetry and journalism in the United States. Both poets and journalists aspire to compressed truth. I'd love to see more experiments like NewsPoet where a poet spends the day in the newsroom at National Public Radio reflecting on the day's stories and composes a poem for the night's... Continue reading
Posted Feb 19, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
If the recent protests in India prove to be a tipping point for a safer place in society for women, language may need as much reform as police or judicial procedures. As the mother of two daughters in college, I chose to start 2013 at the New Delhi protests over the brutal gang rape and subsequent death of a female paramedical student. I was in India to meet my eldest daughter who'd been traveling with a classmate born in Nepal. As a poet and former journalist, I also dove into the language of the event, spending my nights surfing the extensive coverage in English on 24-hour news channels and reading the robust print media. Many of the words were worrisome. "Eve teasing" is a common media moniker in India for a broad spectrum of sexual harassment, essentially everything that falls short of rape. Verbal street harassment, flashing and molestation are all a lot more serious than the archaic euphemism suggests. In a 2012 poll, 78 percent of New Delhi women reported verbal or physical sexual harassment and 98 percent of young men admitted it's commonplace among their friends. I sensed a hunger for leadership in framing the debate. The presence at protests of so many young men as well as parents with their children was encouraging and mirrored hopes for change reported by media. I discounted fringe theories such as the regional minister who concluded, "stars are not in position." (One expects noise from the most conservative corners as I recalled the barbaric theories about rape from several U.S. Congressional candidates this fall.) Most discouraging, however, was the range of government and religious officials across the nation who blamed women for the violence, whether because of immodest dress or a decline of Hindu values. The son of the President of India, a member of Parliament, called female protesters "highly dented and painted" women who "have no connection with ground reality." A popular Delhi spiritual leader said the gang rape victim could have saved herself by praying at her attackers' feet. And far too many of the screaming heads on television were yelling for chemical castration even though experts pointed out that violent crimes against women are more often about power than sex. Even the propensity to label the 23-year-old a girl in headlines indicated how language contributes to the lack of respect and response from the streets, the police and the courts. Only one of more than 600 rapes reported in New Delhi in 2012 has produced a conviction. And few people dispute that rape is vastly underreported because of the widespread conviction that only people with political connections will get any semblance of justice from corrupt, underpaid, poorly trained and mostly male police departments and the overwhelmed and understaffed courts. Even so, there is no shortage of reporting about violent attacks each day. In two national newspapers, daily roundups of recent rapes across the nation are headlined "Criminals Everywhere" and "Meanwhile…" In early January those briefs included a dead... Continue reading
Posted Feb 18, 2013 at The Best American Poetry
Catherine Woodard worked to return Poetry in Motion to the NYC subways and is a board member of the Poetry Society of America. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review and other journals. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for... Continue reading
Posted Feb 15, 2013 at Catherine Woodard
Love these names. CW
Reading Catherine Woodard's post last week about NBA coach Phil Jackson reminded me that way back in the mid-1980s Jackson coached the Continental Basketball Association Albany (NY) Patroons. The Patroons' home arena was the 3,500-seat Washington Avenue Armory, a former New York National Guard c...
Likely Anthony and the Knicks still will need that poem next year. So let's stick with your vision of Steve Nash schooling the young Lin and Shumpert. CW
NBA coach Phil Jackson won 11 championships, six with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers. He also was a player for two titles with the Knicks in the 1970s. A Jackson literary tactic was to select books for his players on long road trips. In that spirit, I asked BAP readers t...
NBA coach Phil Jackson won 11 championships, six with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers. He also was a player for two titles with the Knicks in the 1970s. A Jackson literary tactic was to select books for his players on long road trips. In that spirit, I asked BAP readers to pair poems with NBA and WNBA players. Thanks for the entries. My winners of the Poet Poke. NBA CHAMPS Mary Karr, award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist, offers Losing Steps by Stephen Dunn for the San Antonio Spurs from her native Texas. Despite a 20-game winning streak in the playoffs, the Spurs were worn down by the younger Oklahoma City Thunder in the semifinals. "I'll testify for the Spurs with Losing Steps. You can say we all suffer a little slowdown with knee aches that thwart our best games. Speed is a gift from the gods, and as a Texan, I pray they get their legs back." Also from Karr, Loony Bin Basketball for Phil Jackson as a coming attraction. Her poem for Jackson will be appear in POETRY magazine in September 2012 . Todd Muller is founder of Ball In, a website which started as paper zine in the mid-90s dedicated to the idea that basketball is the best way to find meaning in this world. Todd, always a good pickup teammate, tossed me Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which I am assigning to Ron Artest, the Los Angeles Lakers forward who legally changed his name to Metta World Peace. Mr. World Peace was suspended for seven games right before the playoffs for a flagrant foul elbow to Thunder guard James Harden. Overall, he has been suspended 10 times in his 13 years. World Peace would be wise to study Shelley's sonnet about art and language long outlasting the other legacies of power. Overheard on National Public Radio just before the playoffs. "They are going to need World Peace going forward…Might be curtains for World Peace." Brett Fletcher Lauer is a poet and managing director of the Poetry Society of America. His knees are 33 years old, young by any standard but the NBA. He suggests as summer reading the The Magic of Numbers by Kenneth Koch for the two teams in the finals, Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat, and the many older players who've already cleaned out their lockers for the year. Lauer with memories of the basketball net in his family's driveway: "Playing against my three older brothers, age provided huge advantages such as their superior motor skill, height, and physical strength—like when they did that thing where they held me back by placing their hand on my head and my arms flailed around unsuccessfully trying to reach them, reach the ball, reach anything but air. But in the timeline of an NBA player, it doesn't seem to work that way I thought both teams might enjoy Kenneth Koch's mediation on the magic of numbers and youth." Mark Coatney of... Continue reading
Posted Jun 16, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
A presidential poll on the web asks: Could Obama beat you in basketball? Yes (46%,1,237 Votes) No (39%,1,048 Votes) Maybe (15%, 418 Votes) Baller-in-Chief.com is the name of the website collecting the votes and all things Obama and Basketball. Editor Claude Johnson also researches pre-NBA history of African Americans in basketball as president of Black Fives, Inc. Johnson launched the website in 2008 to promote the first president who plays more basketball than golf. "No matter how trivial, if it happens and it involves Obama and the word basketball, Baller-in-Chief is there." according to a review by the Things Insular Blog of the Martha's Vineyard Gazette. The nontrivial is there too including the terrific analysis of how basketball has shaped our 44th president: Audacity of Hoops by Alexander Wolff for Sports Illustrated in 2009. Obama's first basketball was a Christmas gift from his Kenyan father; all Obama remembers directly about his dad is from that 1971 visit. Basketball helped Obama sort out complicated issues of racial identity as an adolescent. Pickup hoops in college and law school influenced his notions of teamwork, on and off the court. Basketball was a way to connect with Chicago South Siders as a community organizer and to appeal to the basketball-mad swing states of Indiana and North Carolina. In North Carolina, the support of retired UNC Coach Dean Smith was almost as good as an endorsement from God. If hoops could decide the upcoming election, Obama could already start scheduling games after January for the White House basketball court. I'm pretty sure Mitt Romney can't make a behind-the-back pass. His closest reference to basketball is an awkward observation at a campaign event in Fort Worth, Texas. "I met a guy yesterday, 7 feet tall," the Republican candidate said. "I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport!" Sports, with an s, is what millions of Americans will play, coach and watch this weekend, including the NBA finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat. Likely most of the 600,000 viewers of the Obama Mixtape on YouTube also feel more comfortable with that final s. The Romneys hope to win at a sport championship this weekend. Ann Romney's dressage horse Rafaica appears headed to the London Olympics based on a strong showing last week at U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation headquarters in New Jersey. The competition concludes this weekend. In dressage, formally clad riders guide extremely expensive horses through a series of complex, dance-like maneuvers. Points are deducted if the riders speak. How you talk in basketball matters. Some syntax is monosyllable simple. Warn a teammate of a coming "pick." Yell "switch" if the pick was still too good. Other linguistics of basketball, however, require all the nuance of sophisticated cultural diplomacy. A little trash talk helps earn respect from teammates and opponents. Too much, and you might find your next shot residing just above your Adam's apple. And that player who just stuffed you may be your teammate in... Continue reading
Posted Jun 15, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
"Kill your darlings" is a common command in creative writing classes. William Faulkner (1897-1962) usually gets the credit; sometimes Mark Twain (1835-1919) is mentioned. Regardless who said it first, it's a savvy way to fine tune writing, particularly poetry. Darlings are those lines that tingle all the way from the brain to the fingers translating that brain. Reread a darling, and you smile again, and again. The basketball equivalent is a stunning scorer, someone whose sheer athleticism is an addictive thrill. But it's an altogether different decision to decide if the phrase or the scorer helps or harms the poem or the team. Which brings me to Carmelo Anthony, who joined the New York Knicks in February 2011. The Knicks aren't the only franchise held back by a darling but it's the team where I live. Melo is a gifted pure shooter; he averages almost 28 points as a Knick. But Melo is a clunker as a team player, a ball stopper who disrupts the flow of the offense, just as wording that calls too much attention to itself harms a poem. Which doesn't mean it's a bad poem. It may still be better than most, but it won't ever go to another level. I'll bet that Anthony never plays on a championship team. Superstars may win games. Teams win championships. Anthony has the worst playoff percentage of the last two decades and is the only marquee player listed in the worst ten. So I hope Melo was listening to the post-game analysis after the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Miami Heat in the first game of the best-of-seven-series Tuesday. Kevin Durant, the league's scoring champ for the last three years, led the Thunder with 36 points. LeBron James, Most Valuable Player three of the last four years, scored 30 for the Heat. The analysis credited the patient team play around Durant for the Thunder's come-from-behind victory. While Anthony was out with a groin pull, point guard Jeremy Lin emerged from the bench to orchestrate a taste of team play for the Knicks. My favorite moment of this season is Landry Fields spontaneously kissing the side of Lin's head, in the sheer joy of a team victory. Offensive flow not only disappeared when Melo returned; the diva squeezed out Coach Mike D'Antoni. Mike Woodson, the new coach, did a great job stepping in, but his system is based on more Melo. A basketball insider I adore quotes all kind of correct statistics on why Anthony is the most impressive Knick. Even so, she and I agree on our favorite Knick, center Tyson Chandler. Tyson anchors the team on defense and leads the NBA in shooting percentage. Chandler will never be a darling. I admit I'm regularly accused of reducing all of life to a basketball analogy. But there is a parallel in the collaboration of a small team of words in a poem and only five players at a time on a basketball court. Sure, component parts also have to... Continue reading
Posted Jun 14, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
Loss must linger on the minds of the 28 NBA teams not on the court last night when the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Miami Heat in the first game of the championship series. LeBron James of the Heat and Kevin Durant of the Thunder are in their 20s, certain to dazzle for years to come on their way to the Basketball Hall of Fame. But neither superstar is likely to usurp Michael Jordan as the greatest NBA player ever. So why did Quincy Troupe, poet and former professional basketball player, write a villanelle for the winning shot Jordan sank with six seconds left for his sixth NBA championship as a Chicago Bull in 1998? Doesn't a form often associated with loss seem a strange fit for the reigning champ of champs? Troupe offered two excellent explanations at a craft talk this spring at Poet's House where he compared the Jordan villanelle "Forty-One Seconds on a Sunday in June, in Salt Lake City, Utah" to a free verse poem for Magic Johnson, the improv king of NBA point guards. To Troupe, the villanelle's echoing lines matched Jordan, so often returning to the championship to terrorize his opponents. No one who guarded Jordan would need evidence of the link to loss found in these four villanelles by Dylan Thomas, Edward Arlington Robinson, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Bishop. Troupe also described Jordan as a mechanics player who over and over again literally soared above opponents with a 48-inch vertical leap. Players knew exactly what Jordan was going to do; they just couldn't stop him. The repetition of a villanelle is precisely that predictable. The resonant image of a Jordan dunk or jump shot is the hang time. The first line of the Troupe villanelle, by form repeated three more times: "rising up in time, michael jordan hangs like an icon, suspended in space." In contrast, Troupe's first basketball poem in 1985 heralded an improv player, Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers, an agile and innovative point guard, the epitome of surprise. Was Troupe an improv or mechanics basketball player? At 72, he still answers with his body as well as his words, as if he is trying to twist around an opponent. He wasn't a tall point guard so "you're going to learn improv or you are going to get stuffed." Troupe's segue from basketball to poetry? Jean Paul Sartre and a busted left knee. Seriously. Troupe joined the Army in the early 1960s and went from boot camp to basketball for Army and All-Army teams in France (nice work if you can get it) and a French pro team. Then he blew out his left knee. So Troupe tried writing "an awesomely bad novel" -- the sexual conquests of a pro athlete touring Europe. A French girlfriend said a family friend might have some advice. That writer, "a little French guy with glasses," turned out to be Sartre, who suggested Troupe learn control over language by reading poets. Practiced control,... Continue reading
Posted Jun 13, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
Basketball poems bugged Quincy Troupe for a long time, particularly his own. No poem he'd ever read – or written – captured the speed of basketball, until he wrote an ode to Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. in 1985. "They were all just too damn slow," said Troupe, a former pro basketball player and the first Poet Laureate of California. "Basketball is quick, quick, quick." After 20 drafts – the rewriting continued even after A Poem for Magic was published – Troupe finally (maybe) is finished with the poem. Troupe compared versions at a craft talk this spring at Poets House in New York City and read the final version from his 1996 book Avalanche. A Poem for Magic My eyes are full of basketball, open and closed, during the March to June stretch of NCAA and NBA finals. (Thanks goodness the WNBA then takes over for the summer.) But Troupe's reading is the first time my ears have ever been full of basketball. Not just sounds that conjure associations, squeaky sneakers or a bouncing ball. But an earful of the players (or poets) who master the mechanics and then elevate an art to a level where the rest of us mere mortals can only just admire, slack-jawed and inspired. Troupe's free verse frenzy of "herk & jerk" captures the rhythm and images of how Johnson "wiled your way to glory" as the point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. Tall, agile and a consummate team player, Johnson was one of the game's greatest passers as well a potent scorer: "head bobbing everwhichaway/ up & down, you see everything on the court." All game long, fans expected surprise from Magic. Highlights of Johnson's greatest passes capture for me the rare thrill as a poet of suddenly connecting two words in a transcendent way. Those moments are even more impressive to me than Johnson's five NBA championships and three MVP awards. Troupe, the author of nine volumes of poetry, literally opens up the spacing of the poem in the last version and adds more enjambments to mirror Magic's mastery of change of pace. A long indent sets off "a new-style fusion of shake-&-bake/ energy", with energy enjambed to the next line. Forty-three lines into "A Poem for Magic," a "we" suddenly appears for just three lines: "in victory, we suddenly sense your glorious uplift/ your urgent need to be champion/ & so we cheer with you, rejoice with you." And disappears, just as fast, in the next line, indented so far it almost slides off the page "for this quicksilver, quicksilver, / quicksilver moment of fame." But that quicksilver moment is just enough connection to keep us coming back, to play or appreciate the arts that elevate. ************ Return to BAP tomorrow to learn why Troupe decided Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan was a villanelle and what Jean Paul Sartre and a busted left knee has to do with it. Also email me at email@example.com if you're interested in channeling your inner... Continue reading
Posted Jun 12, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
Basketball poems bugged Quincy Troupe for a long time, particularly his own. No poem he'd ever read – or written – captured the speed of basketball, until he wrote an ode to Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. in 1985. "They were all just too damn slow," said Troupe, a former pro... Continue reading
Posted Jun 9, 2012 at Catherine Woodard
In the New York Botanical Garden in November, Marie Ponsot paused in front of a towering tree. She recalled as a little girl she delighted her mother with the observation that trees are just like big bunches of flowers. That power of pause, of reflection transformed with language, often with a jolt of joy (or pain), makes Marie Ponsot, 91, an inaugural NYC Literary Legend. She is a poet who sees and seizes the lyric moment in her work and in her life. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the 2012 Literary Honors Thursday. Joining Ponsot, were Walter Dean Myers for children's literature, Paul Auster for fiction, Roz Chast for humor, Robert Silvers for literary life and Robert Caro for nonfiction. "The clarity of cloud is in its edgelessness," asserts the poem Ponsot read at the Gracie Mansion ceremony. That poem, "This Bridge, Like Poetry, Is Vertigo," ends with these four lines: "Late at night when my outdoors is/indoors, I picture clouds again:/Come to mind, cloud./Come to cloud, mind." Mother to seven, mentor to many, Ponsot writes and teaches with a child's delight in exploration. But this child reads Latin, translates French and has published numerous poetry collections. The most recent are Easy (2009), Springing (2002) and The Bird Catcher (1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among many honors, Ponsot holds the Poetry Society of America's Frost Medal for lifetime achievement and was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010. Professor emerita of English at Queens College, CUNY, Ponsot also has taught in national and international graduate programs. With colleague Rosemary Deen, Ponsot wrote Beat Not the Poor Desk. This revolutionary text for effective writing teaching won the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association. Ponsot still teaches at the Unterberg Poetry Center of 92nd Street Y and at The New School. The city ceremony capped a week of Ponsot appreciation that began Monday at the KGB Bar in the East Village. She first read "TV, Evening News," a poem that begins with a "screenful of chaos" from the war in Afghanistan. "I don't know the languages," the speaker claims, "I safe screen-watch." But nevertheless Ponsot connects all of history and humanity in the third, six-line stanza: "Achilles is not there, or Joshua either…/My children are thank God not there/any more or less than you and I are not there." As a tank takes out a wall, Ponsot subverts a word of worship: "the house genuflects," and a woman howls in the dust before the camera cuts to the next shot. Ponsot is seriously Still Against War, her trademark yellow button and the title of two books of poetry by former students from several decades. Jamie Stern, poet, publisher and lawyer, gathered three dozen students at her Tribeca loft Tuesday to read from Still Against War II. And to take a challenge to describe beyond clichés Ponsot's bright smile and blue eyes, eyes simultaneously piercing and generous. "She smiles like she has a secret but... Continue reading
Posted Apr 27, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
The drinks at the 2nd Poetry & Cocktail Slam at Back Forty were designed to have a bite, to sneak up on partakers – like the seven paired poems, like any good poem. Drink in hand, Bob Holman of the Bowery Poetry Club read each poem in front of the NYC bar or restaurant alchemist who invented the cocktail. Poet and performer, Holman read with his own magic: softly, slowly for "Somewhere I Never Traveled" by E. E. Cummings or booming for "Crossing the Bar" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The benefit for the Academy of American Poets was hosted by Peter Hoffman at his East Village restaurant with tasty treats from his kitchen. This year's cocktail recipes and some of the poems will join the inaugural ones at www.poets.org/cocktails. Tom Macy from Clover Club in Carroll Gardens paired his berried and bubbly drink Clever Girl with the Emily Dickinson poem that begins "NATURE rarer uses yellow." Like many a Dickinson poem that lulls by surface sublime from the natural world, Macy floated a yellow pansy in the drink. All the better to heighten the punch. "Just like me," said Jessica Knevals ordering a Clever Girl, wearing yellow heels as bright as the flowers. "I'd be lying if I said you were the first person to say that," Macy replied. Bar banter fueled by alcohol is likely more interesting to the bar patrons than the bartender. But pack in poetry lovers on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon and a drink based on Dorothy Parker Gin from the New York Distilling Company prompts replies to Holman in full Parker poems. The longest Parker recitation was from Christopher Michel, also the only living poet on the menu at this year's slam. His Poem in which I am an asshole as a poorly behaved poet guest inspired a rye drink with the longest lines of the afternoon, A drink which can make you an asshole, mixed by Tom Richter of the Beagle. "Because it will sneak up on you," Richter said. Holman and Michel read the poem together while the Beagle owner covered his eyes. "They truly are mixologists," Holman praised those to mix, shake and pour the libations. "And they make more money than poets." Catherine Woodard has played coed, pickup basketball in New York City for three decades. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, RHINO and other journals. In 2011, Woodard was a featured poet at UnshodQuills.com, co-published Still Against War/Poems for Marie Ponsot and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She will be a 2012 fellow at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and is a board member of the Poetry Society of America. Woodard is a former president of Artists Space, one of the nation's oldest spaces for emerging visual artists. Woodard has a MFA in poetry from the New School University and MS in journalism from Columbia University. Continue reading
Posted Apr 23, 2012 at The Best American Poetry


text:
Ashford U. Cuts Recruiting Staff and Focuses More on Student Support
Ashford University, a for-profit college that enrolls about 90,000 students online, with another 1,000 at its Iowa campus, has announced that it is slashing its admissions staff and putting more employees to work in areas meant to ensure students' academic success.
In a news release on Monday, the company that owns Ashford, Bridgepoint Education Inc., said the institution was cutting about 450 admissions staff, out of more than 2,000, and reassigning 400 employees to work in student support and a new "department of student inquiry," which "will work with prospective students to ensure they are sufficiently prepared for the demands of a university education."
The company's statement said the changes were "an effort to address our nation's focus on student outcomes and success," and were "consistent with" the company's culture of continuous improvement.
Shari Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Bridgepoint, said the new student-inquiry staff would "work to determine a prospective student's readiness before they speak to our admissions-department personnel."
The new approach comes as Ashford is under scrutiny from two regional accrediting organizations that have raised concerns about the college's academic structure. Some of the announced changes relate directly to issues that accreditors have raised.
In July the Western Association of Schools and Colleges rejected Ashford's bid to be accredited by that organization, which approves colleges on the West Coast and in Hawaii. Among the problems the association found were too little spending on instruction, an inadequate number of full-time faculty and student-support staff members, a high turnover of students, and inconsistent quality and rigor in the curriculum.
The accreditor's report also voiced concerns about Ashford's independence from Bridgepoint and its financial viability.
Just a few days after the Western Association denied Ashford's application, the college's current accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, notified Bridgepoint that Ashford was under "special monitoring" status and would have to report on ways it intended to improve its academic operations.
Ashford has been accredited by the Higher Learning Commission since Bridgepoint acquired the campus, in 2005, through the purchase of the Franciscan University of the Prairies, a small Roman Catholic institution in eastern Iowa. But most of Ashford's operations take place at the company's headquarters, in San Diego, and most of its students study online.
Ashford applied to the Western Association because its location has potentially put it out of compliance with the Higher Learning Commission's "substantial presence" requirement, which says that a majority of a college's administrative and business operations must be located within the agency's 19-state region, along with at least one campus.
In addition to the July report on complying with the Higher Learning Commission's standards, Ashford faces a December deadline to come into compliance with the "substantial presence" requirement.
When asked if the reorganization was a response to accreditors, Ms. Rodriguez responded in an e-mail that the "reorganization was done with the intent of providing our current and future students with the best possible academic experience."


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It was short and sweet.
But with smiles all around and preceded by cheer-like clapping, Synovus Financial Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kessel Stelling rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday.
The big moment, a first for the Columbus-based regional bank, came at 4 p.m. with the CEO actually pushing a button that rings the bell, signifying trading is over for the day, then punctuating the close with the rap of a gavel.
Stelling was in New York City to address Wall Street brokerage analysts who follow his company's performance. He was joined by several Synovus executives and board members, with high-fives being given just after the bell's ringing concluded.
Synovus, parent company of Columbus Bank and Trust, celebrated its 125th anniversary in business just a couple of weeks ago. The firm is steadily rebounding from the financial crisis that hammered the banking and housing sectors starting in 2007.
In a recent interview, Stelling reflected on what ringing the closing bell means to his company, hoping it helps "bring closure" to the financial and human pain Synovus has suffered. It has downsized from 7,400 employees pre-recession to about 4,900 today.
"Three years ago, people didn't think we would be here, and now we're ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange," he said. "I think what that symbolizes for our company is very important."
Bells have been a tradition at the New York Stock Exchange since the 1870s, according to its website. It was in 1903 that brass bells replaced the original Chinese gong. And technology changed the bell cryer-style manual hand ringing to the simple push of a button.
For the record, Synovus shares gained 2 cents on the day, closing at $3.32, with the overall market rising modestly. The Dow Jones Industrials were up more than 71 points to 15,821, while the S&P 500 index rose more than 14 points to 1,782.


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Discussion in 'Henson People' started by Hubert, Sep 27, 2012.


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Well, Tommy boy finally made it official today at the tax day Tea Party in Madison, ending months of his on-again / off-again dance
"My family didn't want me to run," Thompson told the Journal Sentinel moments before he gave a speech to thousands at a tea party gathering on the steps of the State Capitol.
Thompson's daughter, Kelli, said after the speech that her father wanted to run badly.
"He'd do this more than anything else," she said. "The family can't do it anymore. It's too vicious. It's too hard."
Do I think Thompson could have beat Feingold? Yes, maybe. Do I think Thompson had a lot of baggage that he brought with him? Yes, maybe. Do I think Wall or Westlake or any of the other contenders will knock off Feingold? One can hope, but I'd have to venture a no on that one right now.
A lot of this will depend on the disposition of the country come November. Had the election been a month or two ago, before the health care vote, I think we would have had a better chance, but I fear we may lose some of our momentum before November. That's just a long time to stay fired up for the average person.
Then again, this administration is the gift that keeps on giving, so we can only guess what they'll attempt between now and then.
All in all, I think this takes Wisconsin off the table as a potential Senate takeaway, but it's nice to at least have some direction on the issue, because Tommy's been dipping his toes in for months, with no decision.
– Jon


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Katrina, along with destructive winds and catastrophic flooding, brought with her small tornadoes that hit here and there with no rhyme or reason. One such tornado touched down and destroyed the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Ama.
Despite the loss of their place of worship, the church family's faith in God's ability to help them rebuild is alive and intact. By the grace of God, we will rebuild, bigger and better than before, said Deacon Singleton, of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church.
All that is left is the slab, said Rev. Mollaire of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church. The deacons of the church and I were all evacuated to other areas when we got the news that our church had suffered considerable damage, said Deacon Pierre. The building was still standing after the storm but there was so much damage to the front section of the church, we decided it was in the church's best interest that it be torn down and rebuilt.
Luckily, Molliere said, "insurance covered much of the loss". The money is coming in, partly from a rebuild fund we have established and the congregation continues to tithe money to the church, maybe even a little more than usual because of our current situation. We have received a donation from the state convention by way of the National Baptist Convention. We expect more money in the future for there is a plan throughout the state as it relates to rebuilding New Orleans to provide additional funds for our district. Most of our people are cooperative and doing their share to help with monetary donations. We just can't wait to be back in our church home, said Mollaire.
The First Baptist Church in Paradis has opened their doors and hearts to the congregation of Mt. Zion, offering them a temporary place to worship. Mt. Zion holds Sunday morning services at 7:30 a.m. at the Baptist Church in Paradis.
With the help of Deacon Pierre, we are able to hold our Sunday school classes and Bible study lessons at the American Legion Hall in Ama on Wednesday nights. We are very grateful that people have stepped up to help us and prevent the possibility of our congregation breaking or losing members, said Mollaire.
Several members are displaced and in different areas, but with every one person we lose, there are two more to take their place. We have been very blessed. It was a very dark view at one time. But with time, it's getting brighter, Mollaire said.
We did lose our church, but everything God does, he does for a reason. Maybe that reason was so that we could build a new and bigger church to better serve the needs of our congregation," said Deacon Pierre.
"People ask, Why Mt. Zion? Why not Mt. Zion? A lot of the time, people get relaxed in their faith. They figure they've got it made. God gets our attention. He gets it through disasters sometimes. God is looking more at the people and their faithfulness. The church was destroyed but the church still survived. The church is the people," Deacon LeBeouf added.
The church family of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church has faith that the best is yet to come. We are down, but we are not out. We will be able to go home very soon," said Deacon Singleton.
In the article, Rev. Mollaire of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church was quoted as saying Luckily, Mollaire said, insurance covered much of the loss. This quote was in error. Rev. Mollaire does not attribute the insurance coverage of the church to luck. As a Christian, he does not believe in luck and considers the insurance coverage of his church a blessing. He also requested that the following Bible scriptures be included in the article.
Psalms 125-1, They that trust in the LORD shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever.
Romans 8-28, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. The St. Charles Herald Guide staff apologizes for any inconvenience.
|Susanne Hinkle
|Rev. D.B. Mollaire (center) with the Deacons of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church. Deacons pictured are Irvin Pierre-Chairman, Norman Singleton, Jr, Warren Lebeauf, Sr, Donald Friloux, Jason Markey, Edward Murray, Charles Williams, and Percy Wilson.


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The last time Utah's gymnastics team was ranked No. 1 in the NCAA, seniors Kristina Baskett and Nina Kim were still with their club teams in Washington and Texas.
But now they can add being on a top-ranked team to their resumes, as the Utes took over first this week with a 196.70 raw season average, ahead of No. 2 UCLA (196.48) and No. 3 Georgia and Arkansas (196.320).
It is the first time Utah has been ranked No. 1 since March 28, 2005. It spent eight weeks at the top that season, when the roster included Annabeth Eberle, Gritt Hofmann, Nicolle Ford and freshman Ashley Postell.
"Yup, that was really nice," said Kim about finding out Monday that Utah is No. 1 following its highest score of the season, 197.05, at Oregon State on Friday night.
"It is just rankings, and just during the season," Kim added. "Postseason is really what we're looking for.
"But to see the results on paper, and seeing our hard work in practices we've been building and getting better and better and stronger ever since the first meet so it was nice to see."
"That's pretty cool," agreed junior Annie DiLuzio, coming off her best meet of the season, which included an upgraded vault that scored a 9.925, which tied her career high and helped the Utes regain the No. 1 ranking on that event. DiLuzio also posted a 9.825 on beam and a 9.875 on floor.
"Right now isn't really what we're concerned with," DiLuzio said. "I think it's pretty cool to say we're ranked No. 1, but ultimately it comes down to nationals, and everybody knows that, so as long as we stay in the top little bunch, it feels good.
"We've been working really hard, and everybody is coming in here and giving it 100 percent, and we're seeing the outcomes of it. We're working hard in the gym, and it's paying off, which is nice."
Next Monday will be the final time this season that the rankings are determined by raw season average. On Feb. 16, the ranking criteria will be Regional Qualifying Score (RQS), an average of a team's six best scores, of which three must come from away meets.
MYSTERY SCORE: The Utes still don't know why Kim's beam score was lowered from an announced 9.775 to an after-meet 9.65 Friday at Oregon State. Jamie Deetscreek's score was also lowered, but she apparently had noticed the judges' scores didn't add up correctly, so that wasn't a problem.
Kim's lowered score was a career first for him, said Greg Marsden, in his 34th year as the Utes' coach, but he isn't inclined to investigate further.
"It just would have been interesting to know why," he said. "I guess I could call up and see if the Oregon coaches could track it down for me, but I don't know."
Marsden learned of the changes after the meet was well over, after he had signed the scoresheet, without perusing each score.
"If we'd known we probably would have inquired and tried to figure out where they were taking deductions, and if a mistake had been made somewhere in the start value," he said, but now it's simply water under the bridge.
CRACKING THE LINEUP: Sophomore Kyndal Robarts did well in her first beam of the season, opening Utah's lineup with a 9.875. "Getting Kyndal back in the lineup was good, and she was unbelievable leading us off," said Marsden.
"It was an awesome routine to see," added Kim. "Glad to have her back in the lineup."
But Robarts and junior Daria Bijak haven't been able to crack the vault roster. Robarts missed the early season after a torn labrum in her right shoulder, and the team is going easy on Bijak, who competed for Germany in the 2008 Olympics.
"The people that are in there are doing such a good job they have to demonstrate they can replace somebody and do better than (those people are) doing," said Marsden. "Right now everybody who's in the lineup is doing a nice job. "
Also out of work has been sophomore Jacq Johnson, who is ready again after a sore knee in the preseason but hasn't been able to make any of the lineup. She may get a chance to perform Monday at Utah State, Marsden said.
Utah hosts BYU, Southern Utah and Texas Woman's University in the Huntsman Center Friday at 7 for Daddy-Daughter night. Free admittance coupons are available at UtahUtes.com (click the Daddy-Daughterpromotion button).
RIZZO UPDATE: Junior Beth Rizzo is likely about halfway through her rehab for torn ankle ligaments. Marsden said trainer Tom Iriye expect Rizzo's injury to take a full six weeks to heal, and it's about halfway to that now. Rizzo hasn't done any gymnastics yet, though Marsden said they're thinking of letting her do a few things on the trampoline this week.


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- Treatments
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45 year old female, breast reduction
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This is a 45-year-old female who presents for breast reduction surgery. She is 5 feet 5 inches, 220 pounds, with size GGG breasts. She underwent an inverted T free nipple breast reduction due to the extreme size of her breasts. She is seen four months after surgery with early healing, but note the nice size and shape of her breasts. She went from GGG to a D cup.


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Latisse - San Diego, CA
Latisse did exactly what it claimed it would do. Lashes grew thicker & darker and filled in completely where they were missing within 2 weeks. Amazing! Perfect for an active person who wants great eyelashes without the fuss. My own hair and lashes are very blond. My new lashes are dark. READ MORE
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Joe Barwell <jbar(at)es(dot)co(dot)nz> writes: > acorn$ sysctl -a | grep shm > kern.sysv.shmmax: 4194304 > kern.sysv.shmmin: 1 > kern.sysv.shmmni: 32 > kern.sysv.shmseg: 8 > kern.sysv.shmall: 1024 OK, so you should be able to do 4MB without problems. > acorn$ sudo ipcs -a > Password: > sudo: ipcs: command not found >> Also, which OSX release is this again? > 10.3.9 on a g4. Ugh. I don't recall exactly when Apple got around to including ipcs, but I guess it wasn't in 10.3.9. Your problem is that you're flying blind because you cannot tell what's going on in shared memory. What I suspect is that there's an unused shared memory segment sitting there (perhaps left over from a failed initdb) and eating a sufficiently large fraction of SHMALL that there's no room for another. If correct, then rebooting should make it go away and let you initdb. Since you haven't got ipcrm either, there's basically no other way to get rid of an unwanted shmem segment :-( You should think about upgrading to 10.4.x btw --- for Postgres admin purposes, having ipcs and ipcrm available is alone worth the price of admission. And it does seem they've improved the OS's performance in various ways too. regards, tom lane
Next: From: Joe Barwell Date: 2007-06-22 01:38:22 Subject: Re: initdb problem Previous: From: Joe Barwell Date: 2007-06-22 00:16:02 Subject: Re: initdb problem


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KFCM (98.3 FM) is a broadcast Radio station from Cherokee Village, Arkansas, playing hits of 60's, 70's and 80's with plenty of the beatles, elvis ... See more
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Dan Cooper signs for Tsingtao WK Racing
10:10am Friday 7th March 2014
By Ashley Loveridge
10:10am Friday 7th March 2014
By Ashley Loveridge
STROUD–based Dan Cooper will race for Tsingtao WK Racing at the 2014 Isle of Man TT Races and in the British Supersport Championship.
The 26-year-old, former Cirencester Kingshill School student is joining the team after a successful period with Centurion Racing. He has a long-standing relationship with the Hampshire Motorcycles based team having ridden for them in 2011 in the British Supersport Championship.
Cooper said: "I am now able to relax a bit after getting the deal all sorted, and want to thank Dave and his team for the opportunity to ride in 2014. Their bikes will be competitive and we will also look to do as many Supersport rounds as I can to ensure that I'm ready for the roads.
"This is a real opportunity for me to move forward knowing that after a great relationship with Centurion I am in that family orientated team again with guys I know.
"Taking my mechanic Alan will also help the team as well as myself has he has so much experience. I can't wait to get testing and meet the rest of the BSB squad."
Cooper will be competing in all classes at the TT Races including the bikesocial.co.uk Lightweight TT Race for the first time on board the WK650i, which had its debut with the team in 2013 with Dave Johnson. He will be onboard MSS performance built Kawasaki machinery for the other classes, which the team will also be using for their BSB campaign.
His TT career has included a highest placed 10th in last year's Monster Energy Supersport Race 1, his highest place at the TT since his debut in 2010, but he also achieved a podium place in the inaugural Classic TT in 2013 in the Okells Brewery 350cc Race.
Dave Tyson, team manager, Tsingtao WK Racing said: "We are really please to have completed Dan's signing.
"It's been on the cards since Motorcycle Live in November and to finally sit down and agree a deal has been great.
"I am sure all the bikes will be competitive this year and we are looking to form a relationship with Dan similar to the one he had at Centurion and work with him over the next few years.
" I think consistency of team and rider at road events has proven to be key over the years and I am sure it won't be long before Dan is on the podium at the TT."
Cooper kick-starts the season at Brands Hatch next month.
© Copyright 2001-2017 Newsquest Media Group


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This property has been removed by the agent. It may be let or temporarily removed from the market
Property Description
Letting information:
|Reduced on Rightmove:
|22 August 2012 (1855 days ago)
Key features
- Wine storage
- Games room
- Gym room
- Views of Countryside
- parking for multiple cars
- 4/5 garages
- Alarmed
- Gated
Full description
Spacious 4 bedroom detached unique property with separate 1 bedroom annexe. 4 garages and space for additional cars. Gated and alarmed. Basement with Gym and wine room. Lower floor with cinema/games room, exceptionally spacious living room. Secure gun/study room. Wet room ensuite and large master bedroom with panoramic views of countryside.
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Mad Dogs
"Mad Dogs is a British black comedy and psychological thriller television series created by Cris Cole that began airing on Sky1 on 10 February 2011. It is produced by Left Bank Pictures, and co-produced by Palma Pictures. The series stars John Simm, Marc Warren, Max Beesley, and Philip Glenister as four long-time and middle-aged friends getting together in a villa in Majorca to celebrate the early retirement of their friend Alvo (Ben Chaplin). However, after Alvo is murdered, the group find themselves caught up in the world of crime and police corruption." From Wikipedia
I've been watching this since series one and I can't wait to find out what happens next in series 3. Not only does it star two of my favorite actors but it also is extremely well written, shot and told. I personally think this is the best programme on TV at the moment and I highly recommend this to anyone.
This topic is dedicated to this amazing piece of television, tell us your thoughts!


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One of the curiosities in our current national discourse is this argument over the desirability or otherwise of having a saving and investment scheme as a nation giving the realities of our national circumstance. A nation with so much money, habitually engaging in wastefulness and is somehow ambivalent about saving for the future or against the rainy day, must be a study in self-destruct tendencies.
The sovereign wealth fund (SWF) initiative which Nigeria embarked upon early last year is designed to help the country achieve a turn-around in fiscal attitude and help address our needless tendency to profligacy by setting aside some critical fund for the future.
With the enabling legislation in place NSIA, 2011, Nigeria should truly be seen to have taken the right step forward just waiting for the fund to become fully operational. Never mind the governors' current challenge of the legality of the fund and by extension its necessity however much they deny the latter which is the subject matter of this discourse.
Basically, SWF are funds of investable foreign currency owned by sovereign entities usually managed separately official exchange reserve of the country. The practice and management of SWF have captured ample scholarly attention and a growing body of literature from the perspectives of legal, policy, finance, management to politics, all of which now exist on the subject matter.
Authors like Balin B,Backer LC, Monk A, Bortolotti et al, Van der Ploeg et al, Gelpern A, to name a few scholars who have done notable works in this regards. SWF have a huge potential for public wealth creation once well managed. They are similar but different from state owned enterprises (SOE) which are more obvious as part of traditional state ventures.
It used to be the case that governments kept excess foreign reserves as a measure to control unanticipated or anticipated financial crisis, for example, the sub-prime crisis that hit the US in 2008/2009 but now other financial structures have come into being like the SWF.
And so when there is a windfall in national resource earning, a government would have some options open to it; (a) use the fund to manage domestic and external debt, (b) channel the surplus into short term public spending and consumption for example in health, education, agriculture, etc or (c) accumulate public and private capital by transforming the exhaustible resource asset into interest earning foreign assets through setting up an SWF to enable long term financial stability and better fiscal responsibility.
With that conceptual background, one can understand why a sovereign wealth fund is imperative in our national circumstance with the best choice being for us to pursue option (c) above. Now, this writer was privileged to serve in the legal team, along with several Nigerian legal, financial and foreign experts that articulated the broad framework of the fund.
There was the need to find additional use for the Excess Crude Account to limit predatory recourse to the account and create a fund that will be a regenerative and functional part of the fiscal architecture of Nigeria's financial system.
Such a fund that can help to recondition our public finance mechanism from that of debtor nation steeped in debt management, debt servicing to wealth creation, asset management and a serious voice in the global financial system.
Having an SWF will further help Nigeria become a key player in the emerging platform on the global level where fund owners are earning ample returns from diverse investment portfolios. It will help Nigeria's credit rating and facilitate foreign direct investments in all the sectors as a direct consequence.
Yes, several issues had to be taken into consideration from the standpoint of our nation as a federal state for example with a maze of contending interests to a global environment in which the fund and its investment direction must wade through geo-political and governance challenges.
This is so because countries like the United States of America remain suspicious of foreign governments acting as state capitalists taking over firms and corporations through the existence of huge funds like pension funds as in Norway or sovereign wealth fund as in China and Venezuela.
Other fears elsewhere include the possibility that such investments may carry with them disguised political purposes. In terms of axis shift, scholars are already beholding the spectre of London, New York, Rome yielding some grounds as global financial centres to Doha, Dubai and Shanghai.
To be sure, these and other legal issues naturally weighed on the minds of the legal team, which it deliberated, evaluated and proceeded satisfied to be pragmatic and progressive in order to produce the legal and governance framework of the fund. There were comparative perspectives to see how the SWF practiced by other nations fitted into their laws.