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text:
Written, directed by and starring comedian Mike Birbiglia, "Sleepwalk With Me" opened this summer to critical acclaim and a hefty chunk of change at the box office.
The autobiographical film is based off Birbiglia's own experiences as a stand-up comic, his initial struggle committing to a relationship, and the serious but often-comical hurdles that accompany his sleepwalking disorder.
Birbiglia, who has been featured in a number of Comedy Central specials and NPR's "This American Life," has also recently starred in the films "Cedar Rapids," "Your Sister's Sister" and on HBO's "Girls."
His new one-man show, "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend," opened off-Broadway in 2011 and is on a worldwide tour after winning numerous awards in New York. Before he brings "Boyfriend" to the Ikeda Theater at Mesa Arts Center on Friday, Sept. 21, Birbiglia took some time to chat with The East Valley Tribune about the show, his most awkward stand-up experience and his third-grade aspirations.
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your show, "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend," and how the material may differ or be similar to what audiences see in your new film, "Sleepwalk With Me"?
A: What's funny is that, tonally, it's very similar to "Sleepwalk With Me", that it combines a dramatic story with a lot of jokes, but the result of it is entirely different, in that it's about how I got married as opposed to didn't get married. In some ways, it's kind of a sequel to "Sleepwalk With Me" in the sense that my character's in denial about his relationship, where as "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend" is about how I'm excited to get married despite not believing in the idea of marriage. So in that way, it's like, tonally very similar but a completely different story.
I'm adapting it for my next screenplay, actually; I'm working on the screenplay now so it's kind of a sneak preview for people. It's on an international tour right now, like we've gone to Australia, London, Canada and, you know, like 70 cities in America, it was off-Broadway for 4 months, it won awards in New York, it won off-Broadway awards for "Best One-Man Show Off-Broadway," so it's been on a trip, it's been on a 3-year trip, basically.
People should know two things: one, that it's a great date show, with your husband or wife, or boyfriend or girlfriend. It's kind of like a romantic comedy, in a way, like a one-man romantic comedy, which kind of sounds like it has dirty implications, perhaps. You can kind of bring all ages, too, like not toddlers, and not 9-year-olds, and not babies – although I have had babies in the audience before, I think you actually can bring a baby – but definitely like, teenagers, college kids, adults and even grandparents. I normally don't really curse in the show, but yeah. It's a show I'm really proud of, I love doing it.
Q: How would you describe your overall experience getting "Sleepwalk" to the screen, and are you surprised by the film's overwhelming success?
A: I have to say the past 12 months have just been, entirely unexpected and strange and surreal, but in like the, you know, in the best possible way. I shot this movie last summer, we edited it all fall, got it into Sundance, we won an award at Sundance, got a distributor with IFC and now we're in theaters. We were going to be in 34 theaters, and then Ira Glass, who co-wrote "This American Life" and produced the film, he and I decided to make this campaign, to get it into more theaters, so we used a Twitter campaign, which is #BringSleepwalk. Now we're in over 210 theaters, which is crazy.
We're just really glad that people are liking it. One thing that was cool was that in the first weekend, we opened in New York and I did 35 live Q&A's in New York City, and we ended up having the highest per-screen average for a first-time American filmmaker in history, but… we were on one screen, so the per-screen (average) is kind of a ridiculous concept because you're only dividing by one.
Q: As a comedian who's had his share of good and bad shows, what would you say is the most painfully awkward or embarrassing experience you've had doing stand-up?
A: I was asked to perform at a charity golf tournament and then I had to perform comedy after an 11-year-old boy who survived leukemia gave a speech... I was just so awkward and horrible because people were literally crying, and myself included, we were all crying and then I had to go up and tell jokes and I just completely bombed. I felt bad for bombing but I also felt bad, I felt I was just ruining the whole event, basically.
Q: What bits of pop culture – such as movies, music or TV – have you been obsessing over lately?
A: I'm a big podcast listener, so I'll listen to Marc Maron's podcast, "WTF". He's another one of my favorite comedians, Marc Maron, his podcast I listen to obsessively. You know, I listen to "This American Life" pretty obsessively.
I've just been seeing a ton of movies. I'm hosting the Gotham Awards, which is the independent film awards in New York, so I'm trying to phone up on pretty much every independent movie right now. There's this film called "Hello I Must Be Going" that just came out, there's a movie called "Beasts of the Southern Wild" that came out, it's great. Yeah, just kind of catching up on all that stuff, but you know, there's a lot of great movies. "Celeste and Jesse Forever" — that's a great movie that's out right now.
Q: At the end of "Sleepwalk With Me" we see your character in a sleeping bag wearing mittens as to avoid any more sleepwalking incidents (such as jumping out a two-story window). Do you sleep like that to this day?
A: I sleep in a sleeping bag but I do not wear the mittens because they're uncomfortable, and I'll have dreams about things that are hot, like doing hot activities. Like I'll be in a sauna or taking a shower, things like that. But yeah, I do, I sleep in a sleeping bag and my wife calls it my "pod." When we're getting ready for bed, she'll be like, "Get in your pod!"
If you go
What: Mike Birbiglia's My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21
Where: Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St.
Cost: $25-$35
Information: (480) 644-6500 or www.mesaartscenter.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Public SpeakingPaper Rating: Word Count: 868 Approx Pages: 3
Fear of public speaking consistently tops every list of human fears. A face to face speech puts heavy demands on speakers and listeners. The combination of voice, body and personality as well as on-the spot chemistry makes speech a form of communication with compelling vitality. Regardless of the effort and attention given to creating a substantial and worthwhile message without an effective presentation the speech unlikely creates the desire effect. Improving certain aspects in presentations will allow enough experience and confidence to have the ability to successfully speak publicly.
First of all, select a mode of delivery appropriate to the topic, audience, and occasion. Decide early if the speech will be presented informally, given from notes, written out and read or memorized word for word. Settle on the mode used, but have awareness that no speech contains exactly one mode. Even in an off the cuff speech, for example, write out the introduction and conclusion and partially memorize them, this allow to gain confident while speaking. Always memorize the structure of the speech before memorizing the speech word for word. The speaker must stay familiar enough with the manuscript to look and sound as though speaking extemporaneous


text:
Divorced women in Yemen
Awatef is a divorced woman living in Aden city. Awatef's name refers to feelings and emotions in Arabic. However , her life presented the sad side of these feelings symbolized with pain , misery ,submission and disempowerment .She is now in late forties , uneducated , unknown and even unemployed , but bright –headed.
She was married when she was twenty years and her marriage lasted for less than three years. She was divorced when she was pregnant with her second daughter . Thus, she returned to her father's home with her two daughters . Now, her daughters are over late twenties , while she remains the same daughter in her father's house receiving an insignificant amount of money (20 $)as an alimony every month. Therefore, her daughters did not finish their education and were off to work in a young age.
There are many "Awatefs" in Yemen as if we can find a divorced woman in each avenue and yet rarely do they speak about their stories of struggle. The stories are spanned about alimony and how it does not fit the life needs for the divorced woman and her predicate, her kids.
One of the few times that I could not write and I feel my mind was blocked was when I decided to write about alimony of divorced women in Yemen. May be it is because this issue has been turned from being a phenomenon to be a habitual fact. Or may be because I see it everyday that I could not write about as it is very obvious. Then , I had a second thought and decided to spot the light on this to share it with women from all over the globe.
The struggle in the Yemeni traditions towards women is that they can not reveal about their suffering as it is considered as breaching the confidentiality of the holy bond of marriage even if they are divorced. They choose to shut the door of any discussions that create any debate or another conflict with the divorcee and again choose to be silent. Alimony in Yemen is a debatable varied issue in courts as it does not have any standard measures. The judge , court and surrounding circumstances of the husband control the amount of alimony. On the other hand , women are forced to receive the little payment to ditch their kids' expenses month after month silently.
In Aden city , there are almost two divorced women in each avenue. Moreover, they stay in their parents houses or if they are lucky enough, they stay in rented houses to rise their kids up by their own. When divorced women are educated , they can work and support themselves. However, it is not the case for every educated women as rising kids is not an easy task for single household mothers. Thus, they tend to work really hard to depend on themselves for living through working for long hours. On the other hand, women ,who can resist the alimony norm , fight aggressively in courts to reclaim their kids rights to get an increased amount of alimony , especially when former husbands can afford for it.
The series continue as divorced women become isolated from the community. They tend to matter only for their own issues as the community does not accept or tolerate with divorced women and tend to sentence them with abandon. On the other hand, men , after divorce, can remarry and start new life. However, divorced women are stigmatized and accused of the fault of divorce. Consequently, rarely do men approach divorced women and propose for marriage and if so , the groom's family will hardly accept the bride or threaten to abandon the man if he insists to get married.
There is a proverb in Arabic saying that the worst woman's opponent enemy is another woman" and therefore, women can be the worst in terms of bothering divorced women. They tend to spread gossiping and blaming divorced women. Moreover, they ask their daughters not to mingle with divorced women ,even if they are at the same age as they claim that divorced women can be source of spreading bad habits and loosening family linkages and threaten the security of other families houses.
The stigma of divorced women does not stay till this level , but goes beyond to affect the kids as well. As family structure in Yemen is very rigid, when proposing for marriage ,both families have to inquire about the other one. Thus , if the bride's mother was divorced, the groom's family might have a second thought on this holy bond as they feel hesitant about their reputation and their daughter in law. Thus , divorced women take the burden on their shoulders and become the reason of their kids' misery in the narrow- eyed community.
Upon these dilemmas that divorced women are drown in, few has been done towards this vulnerable category of women. However, what is needed is an escort-like initiative that accompanies divorced women to empower them. Thus , this can be done through feminist, legal , mental health , social and human rights NGOs, but first they should assist themselves.
Divorced women are in need to realize their situation and work towards a solution that is women based solution that fits their needs. Thus, they ought to establish a network for divorced women. This can be achieved through traditional visitation in the community among women to outreach the divorced ones. Then , when they all meet , they can start an informal support group so that each one of them can speak up about her challenges and weaknesses. In this way, they will have a chance to share experiences and relief the burden. Further, they can assist each other reciprocally through discussing their issues and bringing up solutions.
A second step would be that they can come up with a list of connections of people they know that they can be of great support. This list will help them refresh their resources and never stay frozen. Therefore, this list can encompass women out of the network who could potentially be approached for advocating for divorced women rights ,rise up their issues in courts and advise them with consultations.
As divorced women are stigmatized , this network will bring them a strength that they need to empower themselves. For example , each one of them can teach others a skill that is needed in the marker as cooking , sewing , making and selling pickles and even opening small businesses. Thus, these factors will empower them and make them financially independent and empowered.
After internal and financial empowerment of divorce women , they will need to share their stories with the public in order to break up the stigma. Therefore, those women should approach women associations or even media agencies to speak about their challenges and successes as well as to extend the network with new members in need of empowerment. In this way, they will be able to identify and use their connections to advocate for their issues. Further, this will break the stereotypes of submissive divorced women . Moreover , it will turn them from that image to role modals which eventually will make the community proud of hosting such members.
Do you think it is impossible to empower divorced women through informal support groups? Absolutely not as they are taking place in a spontaneous way. They fill in gaps and bridge them to reach the sphere of security in the community after being a hostile member. And here Awatef has done this alone. She did approached her divorced neighbors , encouraged them to speak and share what they feel. In the morning , she goes to a divorced neighbor to chat with her about what she cooks and ingredients she needs. Then , she asks her how she is doing ,assures her that she is not alone and taps on her back by giving her tips on how to make pickles to be sold. On afternoon, she goes to another one and have a cup of tea with her chatting about kids and school and non-ending expenses. Then , she draws an idea of sewing machine to sew clothes and sell them to shops. It is only the start , but more is hoped towards a friendly community embracing all women including divorced ones as well.
This article is part of a writing assignment for Voices of Our Future, which is providing rigorous web 2.0 and new media training for 30 emerging women leaders. We are speaking out for social change from some of the most unheard regions of the world.
great story
Dear Sahar,
it is good to know that divorced women in Yemen are finally getting together to do something about the sorry situation they are in. thank you for this report from an area that i know very little about.
Subhadra Khaperde
God help divorcees
Talk about the status of divorced women in the Arab world is emotional talk ... whatever I talked about the reality of absolutes, there are aspects of Aiarafha Yblg range and only the woman herself ... not only in economic terms there are social and psychological aspects are difficult to explain ... and for some reason can go wrong most of the women women find themselves without a husband was away for her children are her children were away from their father and Taatvkvk family ... all her friends Sinzern her as an enemy that lurks on the stability of their families either abducting her husband or envy the level of Astaqrarhn ... At the same time exposed to the lure of work colleagues and men of the neighborhood ... and no matter how disciplined in their behavior are common around the rumors and reputation Thelok tongues ...
Very informative piece
Dear Sahar,
Hello in Yemen,how are you over there.Its good to hear the story from there.Really cultures do differ. However the whole set up of divorced women in yemen is so heart taking since they are stigmatized.
Upon these dilemmas that divorced women are drown in, few has been done towards this vulnerable category of women. Oh sorry! Divorced women around here also experience almost the same treatment.
This is good Sahar keep your voice up dear.
All the best
"success will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time " And when confronted conquer with love
women and our woes
Always, women end up being stigmatized for issues that involve the male and female gender. Divorce, being single, abortion, you name it. if men were held equally responsible, the world would be a less unfriendly and loveless place for quite a number of women
The protagonist of your life
The protagonist of your life story proved a lot of courage in fighting
against the "unwritten laws" from society regarding the divorced women's status.
It is very simple but very necessary the way up found by this wonderful woman
in order to help other "victims" of divorce stigma. I am sure that if
all the divorced women from the protagonists's comunity will unite,
there will be a great start for a change in a better life for everyone.
Mary L Bennett
This article is wonderful. The courage of the women who take the route of divorce was so real as I read about them. Divorce takes courage in the best of circumstances and these are very difficult circumstances to imagine. The solutions that were proposed we excellent and practical. Individual and community. I very much appreciate knowing more about this situation and what might be done about it. Excellent work.
Module 2
Dear Sahar,
You portray strongly the victimhood of the divorced woman in Yemen. I especially like the way that you start your article with a description of Awatef, go on to describe the larger issues around divorced women, then circle back to Awatef to end your article. This is an effective technique. You are also effective in using Awatef to illustrate your idea of building networks among the divorced. It makes your solution easy to understand.
You also wrote effectively of your struggle in deciding to write about this topic. I am glad that you did for the divorced women in Yemen truly seem marginalized in their own country.
Your sister in the US,
Jan Askin
Unheard voices
Thank you Sahar for bringing the unheard voices of divorced women in Yemen to us! This is a topic which I can guarantee, I Have never heard of before. Although we know that the plight of many divorced women around the world is difficult, it is wonderful to get an insider's opinion on the subject.
Are there any sort of organized groups, other than Awatef, who are working on this issue? Is it something you feel passionate enough to start? And I would love to know a bit about your experience with this--do you know many divorced women in your neighborhood, or have you had a friend who has been directly affected by this?
Great job, keep up the good work!
Kind regards,
"In every human heart there are a few passions that last a lifetime. They're with us from the moment we're born, and nothing can dilute their intensity." Rob Brezny


text:
This small aquaponics system, designed as a therapeutic indoor display has been developed by N.I. Teijin Shoji, grows fresh lettuce and fish. The aquaponics system consists of a fish tank and a vegetable planter, which are connected by pipes. As in other aquaponics systems, the plants are fertilized by the fish effluent in a symbiotic, closed-loop system. The compact design, where the water, ornamental fish, and vegetables can all be seen together, was created by a.a.c., an aquarium production company. This version will be priced at 300,000 yen ($3,800). N.I. Teijin also plans to offer custom-made versions.
The article above was submitted to us by an Inhabitat reader. Want to see your story on Inhabitat? Send us a tip by following this link. Remember to follow our instructions carefully to boost your chances of being chosen for publishing!
5 Comments
Ishwar Lal June 30, 2014 at 7:22 am
Yes, it is very useful and today we need this system to control and to reduce the environmental pollution.
Also I want to contact this company for training and for further business opportunities.
JeffH August 31, 2012 at 12:28 pm
bthinker, so the phrase "symbiotic, closed-loop system" isn't really accurate then…
Diamonde August 31, 2012 at 9:22 am
Interesting concept. Where do we buy this from?
bthinker August 2, 2012 at 12:22 am
JeffH, yes, those aren't the types of fish that can live on lettuce alone, very few can. All which can are much larger fish capable of low protien diets. For example Tilapia, Grass carp, and Catfish.
jeffh August 1, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Interesting article. You mention that it's a closed loop system but do the fish need to be fed regular fish food?
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DefenseAlert - 12/04/2014
The Defense Department is slated to spend $16 billion on fuel in fiscal year 2014 to support military operations, training and exercises, after having spent $14.8 billion in FY-13, according to DOD's latest operational energy report.
Inside the Air Force - 11/28/2014
The Air Force no longer has an office dedicated to flight-testing alternative fuels for fleet certification, but the Air Force Research Laboratory continues to examine and test alternative fuel blends in partnership with industry and international allies.
Inside the Air Force - 11/28/2014
An Air Force Research Laboratory technology that transforms synthetic gas into liquid fuel could be a solution to a larger Defense Department effort to improve waste-to-energy systems throughout the department.
Inside the Air Force - 11/14/2014
After closing its alternative fuels certification office in 2013, the Air Force remains interested in the future of biofuels and their implication for the service -- but until these more efficient fuels are cost-competitive, that interest will remain on the sideline, according to the service's top energy official.
DefenseAlert - 10/29/2014
The civilian chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration hopes a congressionally mandated panel charged with assessing nuclear enterprise management gaps at NNSA will see recent improvement efforts as evidence of progress.
Inside the Air Force - 09/12/2014
The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center is working with other government space agencies to establish a plan to better leverage the benefits of solar electric propulsion in U.S. space systems and hopes to have a plan in place next year.
DefenseAlert - 08/04/2014
The Navy has awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding division a $49.6 million contract to begin planning work associated with defueling the aircraft carrier George Washington, a move HII hopes is the first step toward an award of the full refueling contract.
Inside the Pentagon - 07/10/2014
The Defense Department has either overestimated or underestimated its fuel costs in the past five years leading to large transfers of money from other accounts into a working capital fund designed to absorb fluctuations in fuel costs, according to a Government Accountability Office report released July 8.
Inside the Air Force - 05/23/2014
EAST HARTFORD, CT -- A Navy program to boost the fuel efficiency of the Joint Strike Fighter engine is the nearest opportunity for Pratt & Whitney to transition new fighter engine technology into a product for the military, a company executive said this week.
Inside the Pentagon - 05/15/2014
Leading members of House and Senate subcommittees are urging the energy secretary to free up about $35 million in fiscal year 2014 funds to provide maintenance to a Naval prototype reactor plant in upstate New York and avoid its shutdown in the second quarter of FY-15.
Inside the Navy - 05/12/2014
The Navy portion of the House Armed Services Committee's fiscal year 2015 defense authorization bill, passed last week, fully funds the FY-15 costs associated with the refueling and complex overhaul of the George Washington carrier (CVN-73) in order to ensure the Navy keeps 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in its fleet.
Inside the Navy - 05/05/2014
The House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee mark of the fiscal year 2015 defense authorization bill, released last week, would close a $150 million funding shortfall for naval nuclear reactor programs affecting the lead ship of the Ohio-class replacement submarine program.
Inside the Navy - 05/05/2014
Researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory have developed a technology to harvest carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater, paving the way forward for a liquid hydrocarbon fuel that could be used to fuel military jets within a decade.
Inside the Pentagon - 04/24/2014
In its first comprehensive energy policy statement in more than two decades, the Pentagon has released a directive laying out the department's policy goals and assigning responsibilities to senior defense leaders for energy planning, use and management.
Inside the Army - 04/21/2014
The Army last week said it would use an existing contract and private sector financing to build an 18-megawatt solar facility at Ft. Huachuca, AZ, according to a service spokesman.
DefenseAlert - 04/10/2014
A funding shortfall affecting the Navy's nuclear reactor program could push back by six months the construction schedule for the lead ship of the Ohio-class replacement submarine program, according to top Navy officials.
Inside the Air Force - 04/04/2014
The Air Force's top official for installations, environment and logistics has emphasized the service's commitment to improving the energy efficiency of its aircraft and military installations even as budget realities force service leaders to make deep cuts to force structure and modernization programs.
DefenseAlert - 03/27/2014
The Defense Science Board has been asked to suggest how to improve the way the military provides energy to remote bases.
Inside the Navy - 02/24/2014
The prime systems integrator for the Navy's Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyers is involved in building power modules for the electromagnetic railgun, a company official told Inside the Navy, adding that he believes the ships have the potential to support installation of the weapon.
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The Navy's strategic system programs office recently completed a high consequence management study associated with the service's nuclear enterprise and will implement the analysis and lessons learned into a mandatory training for employees.
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The Army last week announced plans to award a contract for up to 28 megawatts of electricity from a renewable energy biomass facility to be built using private-sector financing at Ft. Drum, NY, according to a service spokesman.
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As the Navy investigates allegations of cheating by senior enlisted sailors training on naval nuclear reactors at a nuclear propulsion training facility in Charleston, SC, with about 30 watch supervisors losing access to the site, there has been no operational impact at this point, according to a Navy official.
DefenseAlert - 02/04/2014
The Navy is investigating allegations of cheating by senior enlisted sailors training on naval nuclear reactors at a nuclear propulsion training facility in Charleston, SC, senior service officials said today.
Inside the Navy - 02/03/2014
The Navy is looking to find efficiencies in its energy use as it continues to develop directed-energy weapons and ships that will consequently be consuming more energy, a Navy official said last week.
Inside the Navy - 02/03/2014
The Navy last month awarded two contracts for the design, fabrication and delivery of the Medium Hybrid Expeditionary Energy System, a new energy-efficient power platform that will provide electricity to Marines in remote locations, according to a recent Federal Business Opportunities notice.
Inside the Air Force - 01/17/2014
The nonprofit group Business Executives for National Security is working with a relatively small agency within the Pentagon, the Defense Logistics Agency's fuel acquisition unit, to try and bring improved accounting standards to the Defense Department, according to BENS CEO Norton Schwartz -- the former chief of staff of the Air Force.
Inside the Air Force - 12/20/2013
The Air Force's top energy official said this week that decisions about how aircraft are used in an operational context can potentially have a greater impact on the service's energy consumption than small, incremental design improvements to individual weapon systems.
Inside the Navy - 11/25/2013
The continuing budget uncertainty in Congress will negatively impact the Navy's energy goals down the road, Byron Paez, the deputy director/chief of staff in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, said last week.
Inside the Air Force - 11/22/2013
Air Force energy efficiency projects sidelined under sequestration in fiscal year 2013 will be among the service's priorities this fiscal year -- however, the service's top energy official told reporters this week that his office can't develop an accurate priority list without knowing how much funding to expect.
Inside the Pentagon - 11/21/2013
The Pentagon's shift toward the Asia-Pacific region could be compounded by energy supply challenges, the department writes in its most recent annual operational energy report.
Inside the Army - 11/11/2013
A top Army energy official said last week that service efforts to cut reliance on fuel and water in theater will be hampered by upcoming budget constraints caused by sequestration.
Inside the Air Force - 11/08/2013
Air Mobility Command is working toward providing the Air Force's fuel efficiency office with updated and accurate aircraft equipment information in response to an audit which shows that the office encountered various issues while trying to generate and track fuel savings in fiscal year 2012.
Inside the Air Force - 11/08/2013
Only two Air Force aircraft -- the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft and the U-2 spy plane -- are not authorized to use, with no restrictions, what is to become the service's new standard jet fuel, Jet A.
Inside the Air Force - 11/01/2013
The Air Force is in the process of changing its primary domestic jet fuel source from Jet Propellant-8 to Jet A, a less expensive commercial blend.
Inside the Army - 09/30/2013
The Army last week awarded the fourth and final series of contracts that could direct as much as $7 billion of private financing into building renewable energy installations on a variety of military bases in the United States.
Inside the Army - 09/16/2013
Despite the ongoing push for reduced spending across the Defense Department, the Pentagon will continue to fund new technologies and innovations to curb military fuel consumption, according to DOD's top operational energy official.
Inside the Pentagon - 09/12/2013
The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said a key defense acquisition reform law passed four years ago that focused on weapon system requirements, costs and schedules has helped the Defense Department stabilize and improve acquisition, pointing to anecdotal "satisfaction."
Inside the Army - 09/02/2013
The Army last week awarded a series of contracts to companies which will use private financing to build solar energy installations on a variety of Army bases in the United States.
Inside the Navy - 08/26/2013
The Wasp-class amphibious assault ships are the only class still using non-nuclear steam propulsion plants -- less efficient and more costly than gas turbines, diesel engines or electric power systems -- but a slew of small initiatives should collectively help the ship class carry out the second half of its service life in a more fuel-efficient manner, according to a recent Navy report.
Inside the Air Force - 08/16/2013
Air Mobility Command is preparing to pitch to Air Force leadership a proposal for an advanced technology demonstration of a concept that could save the service as much as $10 million each year by changing the way it flies its most-used cargo aircraft.
Inside the Army - 07/22/2013
The Army's Rapid Equipping Force is touting the development of a new device that will quickly increase the fuel efficiency of the some of the service's biggest gas guzzlers, though the product is unlikely to reach Afghanistan before American forces exit the country, according to Army officials.
Inside the Army - 07/22/2013
The Army's Rapid Equipping Force will deploy more than $30 million in hybrid alternative and renewable energy systems at sites in Africa and Afghanistan by November, according to a REF adviser.
Inside the Army - 07/22/2013
The Army recently announced that it is developing a battery that can be integrated into soldier body armor, thus improving battlefield agility.
Inside the Army - 07/01/2013
The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Army and Marine Corps to brief Congress on efforts to improve the fuel efficiency and safety of armored vehicles, according the panel's report on its fiscal year 2014 defense authorization bill.
Inside the Navy - 06/24/2013
The Marine Corps has opted to equip its humvee fleet with less costly on-board vehicle power inverters than a more costly on-board vehicle power kit, according to a service spokesman.
Inside the Air Force - 06/14/2013
The House Appropriations Committee wants to increase the Air Force's fuel budget by $284 million as part of a larger effort to address a "habitual underfunding" of fuel costs across the Defense Department.
Inside the Navy - 05/27/2013
The recently released plan on future Navy energy technologies has been signed off on by resource sponsors on the chief of naval operations' staff and will be used to inform budgets for years to come, improving the likelihood that the sea service will find room in tight budgets for the science and technology at the backbone of future ships and weapons systems, an official told Inside the Navy last week.
Inside the Navy - 05/27/2013
The Marine Corps will continue hosting Experimental Forward Operating Bases to identify technologies that reduce dependency on energy and water in the battlefield even as the service draws down its presence in Afghanistan and budgets remain uncertain, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy said last week.
Inside the Navy - 05/20/2013
The Navy and its industry partners should start working now to develop the energy technologies that will be needed decades into the future to support advanced radars and energy weapons, particularly with the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and Littoral Combat Ship replacement programs looming at the back end of the service's 30-year shipbuilding plan, according to a new roadmap released last week by Naval Sea Systems Command.
Inside the Army - 05/13/2013
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working with the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force, has awarded a first-of-its-kind contract in a move that could direct as much as $7 billion of private financing into supporting renewable energy at Defense Department installations, according to an Army announcement.
- DOD's FY-13 Operational Energy Annual Report To Congress
- FY-15 Defense Authorization Conference Bill And Explanatory Statement
- Summary Of The FY-15 Defense Authorization Conference Bill
- DOD's Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap
- Air Force Solar Electric Propulsion Industry Day Presentations
- Defense Activities Excerpt From FY-15 Energy And Water Spending Report
- GAO Report On DOD Bulk Fuel Pricing
- Senate Committee's Summary Of The FY-15 Defense Policy Bill
- Senate Hearing On Energy Security And Research
- Statement Of Administration Policy On House Panel's FY-15 Defense Authorization Bill
- Lawmakers' Letter To DOE On Naval Reactor Funding Cuts
- GAO Report On Clear AFS Power Plant
- DOD's Energy Policy Directive
- DSB Terms Of Reference For Study On Providing Energy To Remote Bases
- DOD Memo On FY-14 OECIF Program Proposals
- PACOM Energy Strategy
- Navy Briefing On Nuclear Qualification Exam Cheating
- DOD IG Report On DLA Management Of CONUS Mission-Critical Batteries
- DOD's FY-12 Operational Energy Annual Report
- DOD-NRDC Renewable Energy Siting Primer


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Cannonball, large gun found at Fort Monroe
By SOF Editor on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 11:20am
Printer Friendly VersionSend to a FriendFORT MONROE, Va. – A team of environmental and unexploded ordnance experts here unearthed an 11-foot-long cannon and a 10-inch cannonball on Oct. 21. The find was part of a four-month munitions probe in preparation for the installation's closure in September 2011. Buried vertically, with the uppermost edge about two inches below ground level, the cannon is believed to be a four-and-a-half-inch ordnance rifle, pattern 1861 (produced until 1865), according to Paul Morando, director of the Casemate Museum on post. If this is so, it would be one of only 57 known to exist. Seven feet of the gun were found intact and the breech, or back end, is missing. Experts surmise that it may have been blown off in an explosion or otherwise broken prior to burial. The cannonball was discovered in the same vicinity and buried about four feet down. It weighs about 100 pounds and is 10 inches in diameter. Morando said it is the type that would have been shot from one of the Rodman Guns that once dotted the shores of the installation when it played a key role in coastal defense. During the removal of the artifacts, officers from the 233rd Military Police Detachment cordoned off the area, and the surrounding homes and office buildings were evacuated as a safety precaution. It took about two hours to unearth the items. Experts from the nearby Naval Base Norfolk Explosives, Ordnance and Disposal (EOD) unit were present for the excavation. The buried objects were placed on a trailer and transported to a secure area on post for overnight storage. The following day, they were taken off post for further examination. The cannon and three cannonballs (two excavated earlier) were "rendered safe" by the EOD team and returned to Fort Monroe on Oct. 23 for possible future display. "What an exciting discovery," said Rob Reali, the Base Realignment and Closure Environmental Coordinator for the Fort Monroe Directorate of Public Works. "We're at the back end of our investigative field work and we've dug up a lot of scrap metal. It was fantastic to find something with such historical context for a change. It really excited the entire field crew, and it has drawn quite a crowd from public works over the past few days." The Base Realignment and Closure Munitions Investigation began earlier this year. The first step was identifying buried "anomalies" through magnetic imaging. That process revealed about 2,500 metallic objects that merited investigation, according to Reali. The majority of the finds were items like railroad spikes, horseshoes, rebar and plumbing fixtures. "We have found only four munitions of concern," Reali said. "They include two other cannonballs (four- and 10-inch diameters) and a Civil War-era Parrot round that's roughly three inches in diameter and eight inches long. They too were turned over to the Norfolk EOD team and transported off post." The completed munitions investigation moves the installation one step closer to its goal of safely turning over the property to the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority a little more than 23 months from now.


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On Marrying Up
Let's be realistic about the finances it takes to raise a family. Read More »
Staying At Home
Stay at home moms are front and center this election season. Read More »
GP On "Working Moms"
GOOP's "Day in the Life" of three wealthy working moms. Read More »
I am going to smack the next idiot who tells me that raising her children full time — by which she really means going to Jivamukti classes and pedicure appointments while the nanny babysits — is her feminist choice.
This is how writer Elizabeth Wurtzel begins a piece on TheAtlantic.com entitled titled "1 Percent Wives Are Helping To Kill Feminism And Make The War On Women Possible."
You know, subtle.
And it goes downhill from there. Keep reading »


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The Royal Hotel (3*) is a non-smoking hotel, located centrally just a few minutes walk from the Munich central station (Hauptbahnhof). There you will find all means of public transport, suburban trains, underground, busses and street cars to explore all the sight of the Munich area. The major highlights of the city, like the pedestrian area, town hall at Marienplatz with its famous carillon "Glockenspiel", the Frauenkirche, the world-renowned Hofbräuhaus and the Oktoberfest are all within easy walking distance. After shopping and sightseeing you may relax from the turmoil of the city in the relaxed and familiar atmosphere of the hotel. In the recently renovated rooms with their individual layouts, warm colours and comfortable furnishings you will feel right at home. All the rooms are non smoking rooms.
Hotel facilities: smoke free hotel, a multilingual premium-Tv-program, wireless Internet access via WiFi / WLAN and an Internet-terminal in the lobby are available free of charge.
The rooms are comfortable and elegantly furnished. For guests subject to allergies they may supply rooms without carpet. Room amenities: shower / WC, desk, direct dial telephone, noise insulating windows, room safe, satellite-TV, free Premiere Movies & Sports, free WiFi / WLAN Internet, hair, blower,hand towel, bath towel, shampoo.
Guests of the hotel enjoy a buffet breakfast each morning.
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Flexible design important for materials scientistsChristof Scherrer, IMPE, Winterthur, Switzerland, says: "We decided to buy the Leica DCM system due to its ability to operate as an optical microscope with brightfield, darkfield and confocal, as well as three interferometric modes. Flexibility is the most important factor for a diversified institute working in materials science such as ours." The Leica DCM8 also offers documentationIn addition to the different technologies for observation and analysis, the Leica DCM8 is an ideal instrument for accurate color documentation of samples. A wide choice of high-quality Leica objectives together with four LED light sources – blue (460 nm), green (530 nm), red (630 nm), and white (centered 550 nm) – and an integrated CCD camera deliver true-to-life color images. The camera has a large field of view – and if this is not enough, the XY topography-stitching mode can be chosen to obtain a seamless, precise model of a larger area. The intuitive software enables users to simplify complicated 3D and 2D analyses and can be configured to their needs.
Company website
SelectScience is the fastest way to impartial, expert opinion about the best laboratory equipment and latest techniques.© SelectScience 2014. Supporting the Anaphylaxis Campaign


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Department of Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunications Engineering Technology
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What services does my advisor provide?
A: Advisors answer questions regarding course scheduling, curriculum changes, tutoring services, academic difficulty, change of programs, RIT clubs/organizations, adds/drops, withdrawals etc..
Each program is also assigned a Program Chair. The Program Chairs are able to answer questions regarding co-op, career decisions and course content.
Electrical Engineering Technology
|Prof. Michael Eastman [PDF]
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|Prof. Michael Eastman [PDF]
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|Prof. William Johnson [PDF]
If you are unsure about who you need to speak to, please contact our main office at (585) 475-2179.
Q: Do I have to make an appointment to see my advisor ?
A: It is best to make an appointment when you want to meet with yor advisor or Program Chair. You can stop in or contact the main office at (585) 475-2179 to make appointments.
Q: What if I'm not available during my advisor's office hours ?
A: We try to schedule advising hours throughout the week to accommodate all students. However, if you have a conflict, you may contact your advisor directly via phone or email to make arrangements
Q: How often should I meet with my advisor ?
A: We encourage students to meet with their advisor at least once a semester (before registration). Any time you have a question or concern, please speak to your advisor. No question is too small!
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A: Withdrawing from a class is possible up until the end of the 13th week of the semester. (You should speak with your advisor, before any action is taken.) Withdrawal forms can be picked up in the department office. You need to get the instructor's signature, and return the form to the department for approval.
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A: Yes. Courses may be repeated by undergraduate students to improve a grade in accordance with Institute policy. A "Request for Repeat Grade" form can be picked up in the department office. Complete the form and return it to the department for processing.
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First Day By Myself
- 2Mar 19, '13 by nursebride2012Hi all! I finished 13 weeks of orientation last Friday ( my unit educator is awesome ) I am on a busy ortho/ general surgery floor and have learned sooooo much during my orientation. I was lucky to have amazing preceptorship and supportive coworkers. Today was my first day by myself without a preceptor.... and while I was and still am nervous ( I am so honored that I get to care for our patients), I also know that the training I received and my education has prepared me well and I look forward to learning much more and hopefully branching into the ICU in the years to come . Good luck to rest of my fellow new grads who are just starting orientations, in the middle of orientation or finishing.
- 0Mar 20, '13 by citylights89Congrats! I hope I feel as good as you when I finish my OR internship.
- 0Mar 20, '13 by blackvans1234Oh man!
What degree do you have?
What state are you practicing in?
Did you have an ''in'' with management?
- 0Mar 21, '13 by proud nurse, BSN, RNI'm happy for you. I hope to feel the same way in a few weeks when I make it off orientation.
Keep up the good work!
- 0Mar 21, '13 by bwilliams1018Congrats!!


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September 19, 2012
Keith Ridgway Interview
Regular readers of this blog will not need to be reminded that I think Keith Ridgway's latest novel, Hawthorn & Child, is one of the best books of the year, perhaps of many years – that, in workplace appraisal terms, it stands head and shoulders above its peers. Having spent far too much time on Twitter urging people to read it, I've been pleasantly surprised that almost all the responses I've seen have agreed with me. As I think this is not the first great book Ridgway has written, I jumped at the opportunity to ask him about his work.
How did the novel find its form? When and how did it become clear to you that this set of stories was a book predominantly about Hawthorn and Child? And when that realisation came, did the writing then get easier, or harder? Did it feel like you were heading for a destination, or still feeling your way?
I wanted to write a book of fragments. Many small fragments that would be impossible to put together – like a shattered novel in a bag. I didn't even think of it as a novel, just a book. There were working titles like 78 Pieces Of Shit, and 54 Demonstrable Fictions. At some point it became 38 Marching Songs. Then just Marching Songs. Eventually it became Hawthorn & Child. In all that reduction there was a failure to do what I'd wanted to do. Fragments kept on fitting together, cohering in a really annoying way, wanting to become stories. So I went from 78 to 8. That's all loss. But the tension between what I wanted and what I was doing became interesting in itself. H&C is, without being, I hope, too maudlin about it, a book about the failure to write a much better, much more interesting book. At some point I fixed on these two detectives – who came to me originally just as comic ghosts, turning up repeatedly and ineffectively to haunt the scene of some catastrophe or other – and I recognised myself – the writer – in their feeble interventions. And then I realised that I was writing a police novel. Which was a shock. But at least then I could play with that. And the writing became a little easier I suppose, though of course it never really does, you just shift the difficulty slightly. As for a destination – no, I never had one. That much at least I never lost. Or found. Or what have you.
You've spoken before about resistance to telling our days and lives as stories, and of our addiction to narrative. Yet most of the stories in Hawthorn & Child have strong narrative drive, so they satisfy this addiction up to a point. Are you lulling the reader into a false sense of security? Do you want them to want to know if Hawthorn is going to be OK?
I don't know what I want. I suppose I want them to feel something of what I feel – that stories are subjective creations, personal things. That there isn't really anything like a shared story – or a shared experience – in reality, and that novels for the most part lie about this. The writer of a novel is assumed, and assumes herself, to be an authority on the world of her novel. And I dispute that. Certainty is the enemy of understanding. And I want what I write to be attempts at understanding. So I am filled with uncertainty about everything that seems to happen in anything I write. It's very difficult to get that on to the page without either inducing a sort of crisis of perception for myself, or worse, boring the reader. So I'm not lulling, there's no 'false'. I don't know what's going on. I want to know if Hawthorn is going to be OK. But I have no idea whether he will be or not. Or whether I really care. I'm not sure I like him very much. He's sort of pathetic. But the important thing for me, as the writer of this, is that he feels like he might be a real character, in the sense that he embodies emotions and attitudes and failures and neuroses that we are familiar with. And he's a creep. A self-pitying creep. Which is what most of us I think fear that we are.
Hawthorn & Child begins and ends with chapters that foreground the relationship between the two detectives (I've heard a couple of people compare them to Bill James' police procedurals). I could have read a whole book just of the dialogue between Hawthorn and Child. Do you read crime fiction? Do you 'prepare' characters by writing more about them and then cutting away? How well do you feel you know them, and the other characters in the book?
I do read crime fiction. Usually in binges. I enjoy crime fiction a great deal. Or two thirds of it. By which I mean the first two thirds of each book. The last third of a crime book usually pisses me off. I love the exposition, getting everything set up and into position, and then the cranking out of the mechanics that are going to get the thing to dance. But in the last third it seems to always end up in a sort of badly choreographed dogfight and the pacing goes haywire and there's so much chasing after loose ends that it ceases to have anything to do with our experienced world and becomes more a sort of fantasy of resolution, a kind of neurotic tidying of life's mess, like sport.
I don't 'prepare' characters, but I do write much more than you'll read. I cut a lot. But this happens when I'm just trying to write. I don't really do preparation in the sense I think you mean. I might make some notes – but just very general things. Child wears glasses. Hawthorn's brother is a taxi driver. That sort of thing. As for how well I know them – I don't really know them at all. Or, no better than someone who's read the book a few times perhaps. I'm not holding back information – other than locations maybe. I know where Cath goes to school. I know where the shooting in '1934' happens. I know roughly where Mishazzo's office is. But anyone reading the book can imagine those things for themselves. I have ideas about some of the characters that aren't in the book. But so will any reader. I don't know anything.
Your first two publications, Horses and The Long Falling, are more traditional narratives than the later novels. Since then the structures have become bolder and there's a greater presence of the uncanny. What do you attribute this to? Were you shaking off influences or Irish traditions with your early work?
This is an example of story telling isn't it? I've no real idea what I was doing in those books. I'd only be guessing. But Horses is very much a bit of traditional Irish rural gothic with the stock characters and the silly plot, and I think it's a piss-take. I remember writing it, and I remember that I wrote it very quickly, and that I really enjoyed it. And I've never written anything as quickly since, nor enjoyed writing anything as much since. I haven't looked at it in ages though and don't feel responsible for it.
The Long Falling is different. It was written before Horses, and it seems terribly earnest to me now, but I have a sort of love for it. I was a different person when I wrote it – young and quite unworldly – and it seems to me at this distance that it was a brave novel for me to write. I like that it was my first book and yet I made these choices : it is largely told from the perspective of a middle aged woman; the character closest to myself – young, gay – turns out to be a bastard; it has lots of gay sex; it speaks very directly about the X Case, and it's angry about that; and it foreshadows, to some extent, the suspension of kindness that came with the boom years. I wanted to write a book about all of that. And I wrote it in the way I found that I could – conventionally, without much thought about narrative or structure. But again, it was written by someone else, and I admire him – naive little creature – but I can't really see the connection to me.
The way my writing has changed over the years comes down I think to dissatisfaction with what I've done before. I felt after The Long Falling that it wasn't true. Which is a dumb thing to say about fiction. But I felt that it was faked. Forced. Contrived. The next novel I wrote – The Parts – was an attempt at not-faking. It is almost entirely fake. It's a terrible book. And it so shocked me that I had written it that I completely stopped what I was doing and tried to start again. And Animals feels to me now like my proper first novel. I began to use what Bolaño talks about – memory and ethics. I stopped trying to write novels and just wrote, and wrote out of myself, relying on my own experience and perception, and shaping something that I feel is true.
Hawthorn & Child is a composite novel in stories; Animals began as a short story. Do you find the short form more satisfying than a long single narrative? What effect, if any, did publication in The New Yorker – the holy grail to many practitioners – have on you as a writer of stories?
As I said above – I try to just write. And what I'm writing tries to find its own length. I don't find any form satisfying – or no more or less satisfying than any other. And I think the distinctions between various forms – the short story, the novella, the novel – are being blurred, particularly with the emergence of digital media, and I think that's a really interesting thing for writers, and is something we should welcome and enjoy. I write things sometimes that are too short for publication. Or which, if I put them aside to collect, wouldn't reach a reader in years. And so I put them on my website. And I love that. That I can wake up in the morning and write something I like but which is finished almost as soon as it's started, and I put it on the website and by afternoon it has its readers. It's the most satisfying form of publishing in a way. And no money changes hands. There was a piece that was originally in H&C called The Spectacular, which was too long for The New Yorker or The Paris Review or places like that, but not long enough to put out in book form on its own. And I persuaded Granta to put it out as a digital only thing. For 99p. Like a single that precedes an album. And that seemed to work very well. So different ways of doing things are opening up, and I think, I hope, that will change the way writers write.
The New Yorker pay well, and I got to work with a really wonderful editor there called Cressida Leyshon. So that was great. But I don't really get that Holy Grail thing. Cressida's editing on that one section of H&C I think had a ripple effect on the rest of it. Nothing structural, just at sentence level, word level. I went through the whole book again having borrowed her eye as it were, and just tightened everything up a notch. As to what effect that's had since – you learn from a good editor. You can hold on to their perspective to some extent and return to it.
A sense of place is strong in your work, either named (Dublin in The Parts, London in H&C) or unnamed (in Animals). Is setting important to you? You wrote about London when living there for ten years; now you're back in Ireland. Where will your fiction go next?
I react to what I'm surrounded by. Maybe I don't have a very good imagination. But I think of both Animals and H&C as London novels, though yes, it's not named in Animals. I'm back in Dublin now. So that will bubble up, I have no doubt. Though before I moved back here I had planned a novel set largely in Ireland anyway – though not much in Dublin. And that's still the plan. But my writing is for the most part about filtering my own experiences and perceptions through whatever set of assumptions I'm currently making about human beings and the state of the world, so it's what's to hand that I use.
I've been reading Witold Gombrowicz's Bacacay after reading your praise for him. You said "he's the only writer I know of who has come close to putting a stop to literature." Can you elaborate? And explain too why you've "gone off Beckett"?
I'm not sure I can elaborate. Literature is all failure. And is therefore without limit. He is so good that he comes close to success. On his terms of course, and for readers to whom those terms make sense, seem right, ring true. Maybe I mean that he came close to putting a stop to my literature. I read Cosmos first, after I'd written Animals. And I just thought – Oh. So that's what I was trying to do. It is unnerving to read books that feel better than my best possible hopes for my own books. He seems to have been in my head. And he seems to have looted all the good stuff. And he seems to have written it all down – before I was even born – with the sort of direct, honest, fiendishly wicked, clarified insanity and utterly cold conviction of an Old Testament prophet. And he's hilarious. And he was sexy, and intricately intelligent and well read and cunning. And he led an interesting life. I hate him really.
I don't remember saying that I'd gone off Beckett, though it sounds like the stupid sort of thing I would say. Someone who goes off Beckett goes off. I love Beckett. Though it does annoy me a little when people (I think I mean reviewers) latch on to that and talk about my writing in the light of it. And it's invariably people who have an idea of Beckett that is superficial and inaccurate. The Beckett stereotype. I'm not that interested in the plays. It's the fiction that I love, though it's been a few years since I've read any of it. But it's the warmth and the funnies and the subversion that I love. And I love the man, if that's not creepy. He was a wonderful person, by all accounts. That's really rare in writers. There is a tiny snippet of film on YouTube of him talking. And you get the south Dublin accent that some people in my family have, and it's very clear, and you get a real sense of kindness from him, and honesty, integrity, even in just a few seconds, talking about a play somewhere. And I find it genuinely, peculiarly, moving.
Can you recommend an overlooked book or author to readers of this blog?
Witold Gombrowicz.
July 5, 2012
Keith Ridgway: Hawthorn & Child
Before I begin writing about this book, I have an interest to declare. I have been thanked by the author in the acknowledgements. I presume (I don't like to ask) that this is because of my previous championing of his work on this blog. I am therefore at risk of seeming either ungrateful for the nod (I'm not), or as though I have a vested interest in the book's success. I don't. Well, I do: I think it's the best new book I've read this year, and so I want it to do well in order that Ridgway has the means and time to write another.
He dreamed he was sleeping, and Child was driving.
Hawthorn & Child was originally subtitled, on its publisher's website, 'A Set of Misunderstandings'. The misunderstandings might begin in trying to define it. It's a series of stories which is really a novel, about two London police detectives and the people they encounter. It begins with an unsolvable mystery, when a young man is shot from a passing car on a quiet north London street. The brief information provided by the victim as he lies on the hospital table ("They poked and peered at the body. They tubed the body and they hooked it up. They shifted and bound the body") becomes the bedrock of a police investigation, a grand structure spun around no more than air. This is a book which is all about the details: the ones we don't know, the ones we invent to replace them, and the exquisite ones Ridgway provides us with along the way. Details, like this brief phone exchange between Hawthorn and his brother, which speaks of years in a couple of lines:
—How's the thing?
—What thing?
—The crying.
Hawthorn made a face and looked out of the window.
—It's fine.
The imprecision of language is everywhere. Here, Hawthorn's brother wants to ask but can't bring himself to be specific. Elsewhere, when investigating the shooting, Hawthorn and Child take a witness's response to a question ("Not really") as an opening, when really it's just a loose end. They are desperate to make things fit. "We usually don't decide anything about things that don't fit. They just don't fit. So we leave them out." In this, they are like all of us, even when we are reading this book and trying to join together the pieces of the narrative. (Ridgway: "We want to tell ourselves and our days and our lives as stories, and these things are not stories.")
In some of the sections, the title characters are central. Child finds himself in a hostage negotiation with a young man who seems to be in a religious cult of one, and whose sense of identity is mangled. Hawthorn, straining for human contact, finds it – sort of – in a clever sequence which cuts between a riot and an orgy, and where it's not always possible to see which is which.
There are certain things Hawthorn wants to do. There are things he doesn't want to do. The line between these things tickles him, like a bead of sweat down his back.
In other places, Hawthorn and Child are merely in the background, seen at a distance, or referred to. Ridgway gets around having to clunkingly name them by giving Hawthorn distinctive features that can be described by others: he cries a lot ("How's the thing?") and there's something, perhaps related, wrong with his face. "His face was crooked." "Like he was peeking through a keyhole." "He looks somehow off kilter." The risk here is that you get something like David Mitchell's scar identifier that joined the characters in Cloud Atlas, which looked tricksy and needless. Cloud Atlas, in fact, is not a bad starting point for comparison with Hawthorn & Child. With his book, Mitchell wanted to go further than Calvino had in If on a winter's night a traveller, by finishing all the stories he began. He did it, and the cumulative nimbleness was impressive; but I felt there was something missing in the heart region, and I wonder now whether the resolution of the stories contributed to it. Resolving a story can involve the author in so much contortion and knot-tying that the ugliness of the ending spoils the beauty that went before. Ridgway has been, I think, braver than Mitchell. The stories here are unresolved — "holding the reader down and anti-climaxing all over their face," I heard it put — but they are not incomplete. There is nothing missing, no sense that the stories peter out. The narrative pull within each one is strong, and they all leave you wanting more. What more could we ask for?
He's completely sane. Except for this thing. It's like all his weirdness is contained in this. In you or me weirdness is spread out over everything. Half an inch of weirdness. Over everything. With him, it's just this one thing that's weird. Two foot deep.
Underlying all this, or stretching over it, is the story of Hawthorn and Child themselves. This is not a buddy cop story. They are on the trail of a gangster, Mishazzo. They work together, with contrasting approaches. Hawthorn is unsubtle, Child more solicitous: he gets on with people more easily; is happier, too. In their work, Child works things out, separates the possible from the fanciful. Hawthorn doesn't want to exclude the fanciful. He is searching for meaning, for something to put in the gaps. He thinks about things and people that might explain other things and other people to him. He "thought about men, various men, whom he moved about his mind experimentally like furniture." These enquiries are futile, though that is their purpose. A narrator of one of the stories says, "Knowing things completes them. Kills them. They fade away, decided and over and forgotten. Not knowing sustains us." That narrator, from the story 'How We Ran the Night', is thoroughly unpleasant, and somehow frightening. ("I think of Trainer hanging in his attic. It must be worth knowing, what makes a man do that.") There is a fair amount of shiver-inducing nastiness in Hawthorn & Child, including as many ugly deaths as you might expect in a book about policemen. Yet there is tenderness all the way through, not least in the grudging pity I felt for Hawthorn. His tragedy in a minor key makes him one of the strongest fictional creations I've encountered in some time.
He dreamed that he slept in a house that moved, and that was not his, and that was not now.
Hawthorn & Child exhaustively answers the question: What do you want from a book? There are likeable characters too: in 'Goo Book', a story of the thoughts that lie too deep to say in Mishazzo's driver's love affair (first published in The New Yorker); and in 'Rothko Eggs' (first published in Zoetrope All-Story). There are plots and stories, page-turning and teasing. There is innovation — it is structurally bold, and eye-opening in subject matter (a premiership referee who sees ghosts would fit that bill). It kicks the reader out of their comfort zone. It has lines that zing and lines that hum, as in the voice-driven 'Marching Songs', which as a sustained piece of fictional prose, could hardly be bettered. (Could it? Read it yourself.)
I believe, though I cannot prove, that my illness is due directly to the perverted Catholicism and megalomania of Mr Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, whom I met once, whose hand I physically shook (at which point he assaulted me), and who, if you should mention my name to him, will tell you that he met me, or that he did not meet me, or that he cannot recall. Because he has all the answers.
This is a book which I read twice before reviewing it, to unpick the connections but also because I selfishly wanted the pleasure again. And now as I thumb the pages to write this, and get nervous with excitement at seeing the best bits again, this time both fresh and familiar, I wonder if I can resist a third go. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps, as Martin Amis described himself in relation to Bellow, I am Keith Ridgway's perfect reader and nobody else will get the same thrill I have from this book. But let me tell you something.
I know that something has gone wrong. I know that the fault is visible. You can discern it in everything I say to you. In most of what I say to you. In how I say it. I know this. I am cracked like ice. I know this. But listen. Listen to me. This is important. Beneath the fault there is solid ground. Beneath the ice. Under all the cracks. Under all the cracks there is something that is not broken.
October 21, 2010
Keith Ridgway: The Long Falling
When I rule the world, the list of authors everyone must read (yes, you'd better start taking notes) will include Keith Ridgway. I've read three of his five books; I am rationing them. But you don't need to buy them from £0.01 on Amazon Marketplace to see how well he writes. His blog posts show it: try him on old Nazis, on honey cake, on rent boys and Metropole, on The Kindly Ones, on Alone in Berlin (covering the last much better than I did). Yet at the time of writing, all his books have Amazon sales ranks – that handily specious guide to success – pushing the one million mark. It's a world gone wrong.
The Long Falling (1998) was Ridgway's first novel – after the novella Horses – and won two literary prizes in France, which shows that they have better taste than we do. If Horses was John McGahern with – forgive me – attitude, then The Long Falling, with its depiction among other things of contemporary gay Ireland, must be Colm Tóibín: the Director's Cut. In fact, the gay interest and the political currents are secondary to a strong portrayal of a woman in crisis, worthy of my old friend Brian Moore. (And that is the last time I will liken him to another writer; Ridgway is gifted enough to be a point of comparison himself.)
Grace Quinn has lost both her sons. Sean died as an infant when a moment's inattention allowed him to crawl into a ditch and drown; her other son, Martin, left home in the Cavan town of Cootehill after telling his parents who he really is, and getting the expected response from his father ('I mean that I'm gay.' 'Queer?' 'Gay.' 'There's no such word. Not that way. It's queer.' Then: 'Your mother killed the wrong fucking one, that's for sure'). Martin goes to Dublin. Grace is left alone, with a violent husband (what is it about the Irish? Great writers and bastards for dads. Is there some link?) and little sympathy from the locals.
Everybody knew her husband, and everybody knew her. Neither of them was liked. She, initially, because she had come from England, he because of his manner. Now he was not liked because of what had happened, and she because she was his wife.
"What had happened" is that Grace's husband knocked down a girl with his car and killed her. "Grace could not afford to fix the front of the car. She drove it as it was, reminding everybody. People did not like her for that." Two deaths, one estrangement, domestic violence ("He would punch, and he would throw me. He could pick me up and throw me"): enough tragedy, right? Wrong: this is literary Ireland. Room for a little more. So Grace hits her crisis, runs into it with her eyes open, and moves to Dublin to stay with Martin.
Imagine falling from a great height. Without panic. Imagine taking in the view on the way down, as your body tumbles gently in the air, the only sound being the sound of your progress. Your progress. Imagine that it is progress to fall from a great height. A thing worth doing. Though it is not a thing for doing. You do nothing, you simply allow it to happen. Imagine relaxing into the sudden ground. Imagine the stop.
We don't have to imagine it, as Ridgway has done that for us, and gives us Grace's long falling, her time of "trying not to break open", in perfect detail, told from different points of view. One reviewer calls it "the Irish Crime and Punishment."
She is thrown into the life of the city, where the Celtic tiger (remember that?) is just beginning to drag 1990s Ireland into the modern world. Her son takes her to a gay bar (while he visits a bath house alone: "They were all ages, walking to and fro, naked but for their towels, some carrying keys, some cigarette boxes, all with the same look. Just eyes. They looked like men given some terrible task. They wanted it over with"). But Ireland has been backward too long to crawl forward without a fight. There are beggars and drunks all over the place. Everyone in Martin's liberal, secular circle is getting agitated about the 'X case', where the Irish Attorney General obtained an injunction to stop a 14-year-old rape victim from travelling abroad to get an abortion. The case provides a political backdrop for modern Ireland's birthing pains.
Meanwhile, Martin is fretting about his lover, Henry, and what he might be up to in Paris, even as he struggles to come to terms with his identity in a country still emerging from under the dead hand of religion. "The circumstances of his life had flowed from the way he wished to make love. From that clumsy declaration. I am what I want. I am this."
The plot in The Long Falling slows down at times and takes tricky turns elsewhere, but by the end the feeling is of an inevitability playing out. It seems like a story you don't so much read as watch. (Aptly enough, it's being made into a film. Well: a French film.) The brilliant details and sharp dialogue don't disguise the tragedy at the heart of the book. The past is not dead: it is not even past. We discover that Grace's falling began long ago, when she met her future husband, and in the grand tradition ignored her parents' advice ("Don't go to Ireland. Do not go to Ireland"). Late in the book, Martin is interviewed by a policeman, who tells him, "You're going to have to start from the beginning, Mr Quinn, if you don't mind. I'm not sure I follow you." "From where?" says Martin.
"The beginning."
"Where's that?"
March 13, 2010
Keith Ridgway: Horses
Keith Ridgway's Animals has stuck with me, in the three years since I read it, so firmly and so fondly that it's a wonder I didn't saddle it with the meaningless privilege of being one of my books of the year 2007. It's a wonder too that it took me so long to revisit him, and that I did so only after finding a copy of his first book Horses in a secondhand shop while on holiday last summer.
I say 'his first book', which is both true and misleading. In fact Horses was published in 1997 as part of a Faber anthology of new authors (in their First Fiction: Introductions series). After Ridgway established a medium-sized name for himself with bigger, standalone works (two novels The Long Falling and The Parts, and a story collection Standard Time), Horses was reissued in a slim solo edition – 80 pages long – in 2003.
Animals was a more or less indescribable thing – perm three from unreliable narrator, psychological horror, Kafkaesque, black comedy, existential, absurdist – and having now read Ridgway's earliest and latest published fiction, I can see just how far he's come. But Horses remains a good book, and indeed with potentially wider appeal than Animals. It's clearly the work of a young writer: how else to explain this perfectly polished, showpiece opening?
In the broad spaces of the streets near the square, Mathew stood and watched for the secrets which the rain reveals. In the air around the mountains he could see the clouds begin to form, to gather themselves like skirts held in, to muster and breathe deep and peer down the slopes to the place where people live, and plot a route. He saw them set off then with a tiny roll, and saw them pick up speed and press a silence out in front of them, and pick up speed again and canter quietly, billowing, and roll on into a gallop like a charge of black and ghostly horses, their hooves turning in the air, churning up a grey dust against the sun.
It's prose with rhythm, timing, drive, perfect pitch and a few clever touches: the nod to the title, and the beginning of a subtle sleight of hand on the reader as to who, or what, Mathew is. As the first paragraph of a first publication, not half bad.
But it's silly to damn such beauty as being indicative of immaturity: Ridgway can really write, that's all. If struggling to find fault, one would do better to latch onto Julian Gough's criticism of his Irish contemporaries, for "copying the very great John McGahern, in the 21st century." Sure enough, Horses has McGahern qualities: the rural setting, the close-knit community, the febrile relationships, the broodings – resentment, regret, revenge – at the heart of many motivations.
Even then, Horses stands on its own four feet, not least because the violence and bloodletting which seeps through it would never have suited McGahern's low-key style, or at least would not be put on the page so splashily. Here, things happen not only in the past but in the present too. Mathew Doyle ("unsuited for the world") is believed to be responsible for a series of arson attacks on local buildings, including one which killed the horses so beloved of Dr Brooks' daughter Helen:
Her hair fell over her eyes in wet ropes and she felt a pain in her heart, or where she thought her heart might be, or where it had been, for it was gone now, dead, smoke against the sky, with Poppy and Gepetto and Mountain Star.
As well as Mathew and Helen and her father, the remaining cast does not extend much beyond Garda Sweeney and Father Devoy (yes, yes, I told you), and the short, explosive nature of the story, with a lot of conversation and a little action too, makes it read at times like a play on the page. Alongside the reasoning adult minds of the doctor, the priest and the policeman, the heart of the story pits two unworldly souls against one another: Helen, who is distracted with grief ("[she] wondered whether you could be struck by lightning and swallow the power that had hit you and make it yours, so that your life would be electric bright and burning to the touch"), and Mathew, an innocent ("Terror sorry for the horses. Terror sorry").
The tight, claustrophobic drama of Horses portends terrible things to come before its end – and great things to come from its author after that.
April 4, 2007
Keith Ridgway: Animals
If the cover of a book is important, what of the author's name? Keith Ridgway is saddled not only with a name which is not quite chiming with authority (and destined to be misspelled in search engines), but a cover design which aims for plain starkness and ends up boring. With Animals, he is taking his revenge on society.
To avoid demanding of you what Ridgway does of his readers, I will say straight away that Animals is one of those books, often touted but rarely with accuracy, that rewards patience. This is a novel which it is sometimes tempting to give up on, but which you will be very glad you didn't.
It takes us into the life of an unnamed illustrator, a man of – shall we say – sensitive temperament and somewhat obsessive-compulsive tendencies. He is troubled by "the business of being in the world and how to negotiate it." As a consequence, the story is muddled and disordered, and he keeps jumping ahead too far and then pulling us back with an explanation. The events themselves, involving a dead mouse, a collapsing swimming pool, a see-saw stacked with spiders, and a haunted building, are both banal and freakish. And the narrator is plausible until he flurries into accounts like this:
As the towel came away from my lower cheeks I noticed first a small black mark on my left cheek, adjacent to the nostril. As I instinctively leaned in toward the mirror to better see what this might be, the towel, held by my hands, continued downwards, revealing above my mouth a stuttering continuation of this black mark into larger blobs and beads and scatterings, like an ink blot on my skin. As I peered, seeing that the trail continued onto my lips, and indeed between them, and as my eyes and my involuntary tongue confirmed that these blackish reddish bluish things were not marks or traces but actually material of some description – debris – and as my independent, quick-moving tongue trapped one part of this detritus against the test surface of a tooth to discover a hard stringy grittiness, so my hands took the towel away from my neck and my eyes looked down, to confirm almost instantly what I had begun to suspect: that what littered my skin and had fallen or crawled into my mouth was the sundered parts of a large black spider, whose bulky twitching carcass was smeared across the white towel I held in my hands like the entrails of roadkill dragged across the snow.
- which neatly highlights the issue of whether all the terrible and confusing things the narrator sees are real, or
nothing more than the physical manifestation of my own fear of the real world – by which I mean the natural world, by which I mean those parts of the world that are not created and controlled by us. By mankind.
This is central to the book, which is peopled with characters alongside the narrator who make their own reality: such as David, the friend whose self-contained fantasy fiction world earns the narrator's contempt: "You're wasting your time. You have a wonderful talent for writing and you're wasting it. You're like a beetle fallen on its back. You could spend the entire rest of your life describing the clouds;" or Rachel, an artist who subverts normal understandings of reality by faking missing persons notices. And along the way the book raises issues about the purpose of art, and the uses of terrorism.
All of this makes Animals one of the most interesting, and singular, books I've read in ages. Even in a tradition of paranoid, delusional fiction, it is a truly novel novel, and satisfyingly disturbing. Ridgway is an admirer of Beckett, and it's not hard to see his influence here (though Animals is rather more readable than that suggests, and the occasional longueurs are not too offputting). It's also lightly peppered with black wit.
Another obvious comparison is Kafka, not least for the inclusion of a character, gender undeclared, named only K. But where Kafka's protagonists are trapped in an impossible system by a faceless bureaucracy, Ridgway's narrator finds threat and confusion in the ordinary world, the one the rest of us seem to manage in just fine. Or as he would put it, "None of this is true."


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Match report
Access live.premierleague.com for details on the match as it happened and post-mortem on the fantastic Carlsberg Live Match Centre
For match photos, scroll to PHOTOSTREAM above left; for stats click on the stats tab. Manager reaction below; press conferences above.
Glenn Murray scored a late equaliser as Crystal Palace snatched a 1-1 draw at Swansea City on Sunday.
Swansea were totally dominant in the first half, and deservedly took the lead through Jonathan de Guzman in the 25th minute.
Palace's Tom Ince – a January transfer target for the hosts – had questioned Swansea's ability to deal with the Londoners' attacking threat in the build-up to the match, but it was his half-time replacement Murray who sparked an upturn in the visitors' performance.
And the former Brighton & Hove Albion striker netted the leveller from the spot in the 82nd-minute after being brought down by Chico Flores, who was subsequently given his marching orders.
The result lifts Palace three points clear of the relegation zone, while Swansea slipped a place to 15th.
Swansea returned to a more familiar starting XI than the one that featured in their UEFA Europa League exit in Napoli on Thursday, and dominated possession in the opening stages as Palace struggled to get out of their own half.
Despite having almost exclusive possession of the ball, Garry Monk's side were not creating any meaningful goalscoring opportunities, with two De Guzman free-kicks both floating harmlessly out for goal kicks.
And it was Palace who eventually had the first attempt on target in the 20th minute, as Marouane Chamakh nodded a limp header into the arms of a grateful Michel Vorm.
Pablo Hernandez drilled wide of the right-hand post at the other end shortly after, but was subsequently replaced by Jose Canas after being forced off with an injury.
A wonderful passing move then led to the opener in the 25th minute. Ashley Williams, holding a high defensive line as Palace sat deep, played the ball forward to Wilfried Bony, whose flick into the path of Nathan Dyer allowed the winger to tee up De Guzman to slot beyond Palace goalkeeper Julian Speroni.
Palace's attacking threat was dealt a blow five minutes later when Chamakh's game was ended by an apparent hamstring injury, and Speroni had to be on high alert 10 minutes before the break to deny Bony from close range.
The visitors looked livelier after Murray's introduction for the second half, conceding nowhere near the amount of possession they had in the opening 45 minutes, but still struggled to really test Vorm in the Swansea goal.
But the game turned on its head 10 minutes from time, as Flores brought down Murray after Vorm had rushed off his line. The players came together, Dean awarded the penalty and Murray duly hammered home his first Barclays Premier League goal.
Swansea manager Garry Monk: "In terms of what we've been through, I couldn't have asked for any more from them.
"If you can't win a game the next best thing is not to lose it and if we had lost that game it would have been an injustice, but we didn't which is great from my perspective."
Crystal Palace manager Tony Pulis: "In the second half we played a little bit more on the front foot, we turned their midfield players around and made them defend a bit more and I think the longer the game went on in the second half, the more dominant we became.
"It's a great result. We're delighted to pick up a point at Swansea."
Manager: Garry Monk
Crystal Palace
Manager: Tony Pulis
|Next fixtures
|29 Mar 2014
|v Norwich (H)
|03 May 2014
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|19 Apr 2014
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|13 Apr 2014
|v Chelsea (H)
|05 Apr 2014
|v Hull (A)
|11 May 2014
|v Sunderland (A)
|Next fixtures
|22 Mar 2014
|v Newcastle (A)
|27 Apr 2014
|v Man City (H)
|19 Apr 2014
|v West Ham (A)
|05 May 2014
|v Liverpool (H)
|16 Apr 2014
|v Everton (A)
|05 Apr 2014
|v Cardiff (A)


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Kristen Stewart was on hand to premiere her new film 'On the Road' on Thursday (December 13) at the SVA Theater in New York City.
The actress was joined by her co-stars Kirsten Dunst, Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley who posed for photos on their way to the screening.
Stewart wore a powder blue Erdem ensemble with a sheer dress over it and neon Christian Louboutin pumps.
This is a very unconventional look for Kristen, what do you all think? Sound off in comments below!
Photo Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images


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|Find the best surf spots
Trip: Fiji - Kadavu
Friday February 2 2007 06:49:09 AM
Date: from Dec 17, 2006 to Jan 2, 2007
Surf trip description:
massively impressed... really gd reef break. no hassles of crowds, the locals were brilliant and super friendly.... fed me heaps and had tons of kava... will be heading back.. the surf nicely arched up and was a gd 6-7ft on the face...
if your over at kadavu head straight to alberts place. you wont be disappointed.
Modified: Friday February 2 2007 06:49:09 AM
Hits: 782


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Scenic Sea Walk in Port Alice
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This lovely country farmhouse has lots of charm with original Arts and Crafts details such as built-ins and beautiful woodwork. There are spacious rooms with lots of light and good ceiling height. A comfortable living room is great for relaxing or entertaining, as is the spacious dining room. The kitchen has a gas cooking stove. Three bedrooms offer plenty of room for family and friends. Laundry area with washer and dryer. Outside you can watch nature from the porch and there's 3.5 acres of nice lawn. Located on a quiet country road.
House is rented July 10th - August 11th
House is rented August 17th - August 31st
Rates: $1800 a month, includes utilities$350 weekend, 2 nights


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Small brown mushrooms to add to a flora & fauna based piece of artwork--tuck into a corsage, add to a card or wire onto to a special gift.
Beautiful for an Autumn or Winter wedding or special event.
Wire stems for easy attaching---or easily removed if desired.
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or smaller than they actually are due to magnification to show detail & color.


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Library Home > About the Library > Library Maps & Virtual Tour
The stacks (bookshelves) on the third floor house the books in the Library's collection that can be checked out. These books are arranged by Library of Congress call numbers.
Back to Library Maps & Virtual Tour : First Floor • Second Floor • Third Floor