text: INTRODUCTION: ABJECTION AND DISPLAY In elite society, it is theatre that presents itself first.1 Today, theatre is everywhere and everyone believes himself to be on stage for effect; this is the source of the corruption of both moral taste and taste in the arts.2 Madame Necker appears to have led a charmed existence. Her meteoric social ascension from impoverished orphan to esteemed socialite and philanthropist is the stuff of fairy tales. Suzanne had it all: beauty, brains, virtue and the coveted prize, a wealthy and politically powerful husband. It seemed almost too good Copyright to be true. Her precipitous flight from Paris during the early days of the French Revolution, followed by her tragic, premature death and spectacular burial, recall the final years of another otherwise charmed life – that of Diana, Princess of Wales – and would appear to be the only fitting end for a woman doomed to a life lived in the public gaze, a gaze she alternately courted and despised. Such indeed is the narrative outlined by her numerous biographers. The bare bones of Madame Necker's life story, as we know them, are relatively straightforward. Suzanne Curchod was born in the Swiss village of Crassier, near the French border, on 2 June 1737. Hers was a family of modest means and moral rectitude: her father was a Calvinist minister and her mother a Huguenot exile who had fled France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. From her father, Mademoiselle Curchod received a remarkable education, learning languages (including Latin and Greek), physics and mathematics, as well as the requisite feminine arts of music and painting. As one early twentieth-century commentator observed: She had been educated like a man destined to the career of science and letters, and was well acquainted with ancient and modern languages; nor was her knowledge superficial. Not withstanding almost masculine gifts and a powerful but well-directed will, she was essentially feminine.3 From her mother, meanwhile, she is said to have inherited her beauty. Once launched in Lausanne, she enjoyed success as a member of numerous social cir- –1– 2 The Life of Madame Necker cles. Here, in 1757, she met Edward Gibbon, with whom she formed her first – ultimately failed – romantic attachment. Tragedy struck soon thereafter. The deaths of her parents, in 1760 and 1763, forced her to rely wholly on her own resources. She took on paid work as a gov- erness and later, at the encouragement of close friends, accepted a position as the personal companion of a young Parisian widow, Madame de Vermenoux.4 Within a year of her arrival in Paris, Mademoiselle Curchod fell in love again, this time with a wealthy Genevan banker, Jacques Necker.5 The union produced only one child, Anne-Louise-Germaine. Madame Necker dedicated herself wholly to her daughter's moral and intellectual development, noting in a later letter to her husband that she had almost never left her daughter's side during the first thirteen years of her life.6 Germaine Necker, later Madame de Staël, flourished in her mother's salon and later developed into a woman of formidable intellect and considerable charisma. Even as Madame Necker supported her husband's political achievements and encouraged her daughter's moral and intellectual growth, she, too, took a prominent role within the French elite. She established her Friday salon soon after her marriage, cultivating an environment that provided an opportunity Copyright for her to engage in her literary desires, while at the same time developing it as an effective vehicle for her husband's political goals and ambitions.7 During this time she also began to build friendships with other influential elite women, among them the leading Parisian salon women, Madame Geoffrin, Madame du Deffand and the Marquise de La Ferté-Imbault. In later years, she became publicly active on the political front, directing an experimental charity hospital and publishing a treatise against premature burial.8 She died in May 1794 at the age of fifty-seven. A treatise against divorce appeared later the same year.9 Five volumes of edited personal writings apparently never destined for the public eye – the Mélanges and Nouveaux mélanges – were published posthumously by her husband in 1798 and 1801.10 But Madame Necker's story is far more complex than such a simple retelling might imply. Decades of profound psychic and somatic suffering recounted in pages of intimate letters to close friends and family suggest a profound disso- nance between the public façade and lived experience; in other words, between the displayed or performed life and that intimately lived. A closer analysis, how- ever, reveals a twinning of public and private lives rather than a contradiction between the two. In this book, I argue that this linkage between public and pri- vate played itself out on Necker's body, which functioned both as a stage for her public performance of self and, at the same time, as a site of deep psychic and somatic suffering. Madame Necker's body not only displayed her elite identity, but also manifested spiritual loss and psychic suffering, functioning as a sym- bolic reminder of human weakness and frailty. The relationships between the Introduction 3 culturally constructed body and the lived and experienced body are fundamen- tal to my reading of Madame Necker's life. Madame Necker's biography has largely been shaped by members of her fam- ily, from her husband, Jacques Necker, who meditated on his late wife's moral virtue in 1798, through to her late nineteenth-century descendant, Paul-Gabriel d'Haussonville, who, in 1882, published the two-volume work still recognized as the definitive biography of his illustrious ancestor.11 Most subsequent biographi- cal retellings have followed the path carefully laid by these two members of the Necker family.12 But while Necker's biography might have been largely moulded by what Philippe Lejeune has identified as a nineteenth-century desire to recuper- ate virtuous ancestors,13 there are nevertheless jarring dissonances. Madame de Staël, for example, in a tribute to her father's moral goodness, referred to her moth- er's profound physical suffering, a theme later taken up by Staël's son, Auguste.14 Madame Necker's niece (by marriage), Albertine-Adrienne Necker de Saussure, exploring another facet of Madame Necker's character, hinted at her aunt's mater- nal rigidity.15 More recent studies of Necker's activities delve further into the discordant aspects of her life. Dena Goodman and Valérie Hannin, among oth- ers, have probed the troubled relationship between gender, writing, ambition and Copyright publicity as they emerged in Madame Necker's writings, and Necker and Staël biographers have closely examined Necker's maternal narrative.16 Others, among them Alexandre Aimes and Berthe Vadier, have taken an indirect route, focusing on Madame Necker's various charitable activities in an attempt to understand her life and motivations.17 Léonard Burnand, finally, has examined her public image as it was propagated in libellous pamphlets of the period.18 The unpublished writings of Madame Necker, among them the extensive correspondence she shared with friends and colleagues in Switzerland, suggest that there remains at least one more story to be told. These letters, the majority of which are contained in two manuscript collections in Lausanne and Geneva, present a woman of profound religious faith whose internal moral turmoil functioned as the impetus for a life of physical suffering.19 Even as these letters play into the principles of display so integral to eighteenth-century sociability and sensibility, they also attest to Madame Necker's deep ambivalence towards French moral values and social conventions, reveal the centrality of her cultural and religious heritage to her life and gesture towards an embodied sense of self that revelled in the deep sensibility and sensuality of corporeal suffering. While embodiment has been examined in relation to Madame Necker's treatise on pre- mature burial,20 to date nobody has examined the relationships between gender, piety and illness as they manifested themselves in her life and on her body. At its heart, this book is about performance. Taking its cues from the elite eighteenth-century French culture of display and the myriad etiquette treatises that governed elite sociability during this period; the emergence of sensibility as 4 The Life of Madame Necker an aesthetic and philosophical movement that transformed social, cultural and political understandings of mind/body relations and Madame Necker's veritable obsession with the intricacies of elite sociability – from her detailed analyses of French etiquette to the overt sensibility and sometimes maudlin sentimentality of her evocations of her body and its sufferings – this book seeks to understand the nature of autobiographical identity as it is mapped onto the body and per- formed and displayed on a social stage. More specifically, I examine the nature of Madame Necker's contradictory presentation of self and speculate on the possibility of corporeal autobiography, suggesting that identity can be read not only through autobiographical texts (both published and unpublished), but also through embodied experiences. At issue is the relationship between identity – the subjective experience of the self – and display – the public staging of that same self – and how this encounter might be mapped onto, and read through, the body. For Madame Necker, this relationship manifested itself most obviously in the form of the interminable psychic and physical sufferings that character- ized much of her adult life and that she chose to share in intimate letters to close friends and family. But it also emerged in other forms. Madame Necker's public and political interventions, for example, demonstrated her commitment to the Copyright disenfranchised peoples of France. The sick, the poor, the imprisoned, the dying; each of these groups benefited from her close, thoughtful and careful interest to the extent that her own elite suffering body might be seen to have embodied the sufferings of these marginalized others. The commentaries of her contemporar- ies, which emphasize her social awkwardness and stiff posture, offer yet another window into Madame Necker's corporeal performances. In this book, I explore the life and writings of Suzanne Curchod Necker from the perspective of what I have termed corporeal autobiography. In it, I posit the body as a stage upon which identity can be displayed and argue for an understanding of Madame Necker's body – as revealed in the correspondence, private writings, published works and public activities (and as assessed by her contemporaries) – as an agentive entity that has the capacity to take an active role in the construction and presentation of the autobiographical self. I operate from the premise that the body has stories to tell and that its speech – marked in tears, shivers, sufferings, languishing and other states – can offer important insights into the nature of the autobiographical self. I suggest that the workings of the body function as a stage, even as they speak in a language that is opaque, contingent and difficult to discern. Madame Necker's body's meanings emerged only through her engagement with them; that is to say that her body's stories became meaningful only through the care and attention she showed them. For Madame Necker, the suffering body, as she wrote it into her correspondence and lived it through her political endeav- ours, was the canvas that displayed her emotional states. This body confirmed Introduction 5 her allegiance to her homeland even as its sufferings evoked her deep psychic malaise. From Madame Necker's perspective, the fluxes and flows of her body revealed her self-conscious awareness of herself. In the process, bodily frailty was not only part and parcel of Madame Necker's lived experience, but also a stage upon and through which she could present and perform her identity. This book is mainly concerned with identifying corporeal contradictions; that is, in understanding how Madame Necker's different bodily selves played in and through one another. More specifically, it is interested in identifying manifestations of corporeal dissonance as loci for the performance and pres- entation of self. By corporeal dissonance, I gesture towards the ways in which Madame Necker's performances of her body both conformed to and troubled conventions of her time. Looking at the performance of illness and suffering in particular, I draw on eighteenth-century understandings of sensibility, sug- gesting that physical debilitation can function as a barometer for an individual's psychic perceptions. I further suggest that in Madame Necker's case, suffering – and the detailing of suffering in narrative form – can be consciously deployed as a strategy for managing social, religious and cultural exile. My work identifies a number of interlocking themes in Madame Necker's life: Copyright sociability, religion, illness and motherhood, all of which revealed themselves in a range of embodied practices; that is, through the writing and performance of the body's psychic and somatic suffering. At a meta-level, Madame Necker's embodied identity can be divided into five distinct and yet overlapping entities: the elite body, the Calvinist body, the maternal body, the sick body and, finally, the divine body. Each of these embodied identities reveals a different aspect of Madame Necker's subjective experience of self; at the same time, each acts on and through the others. Thus it becomes important to consider the broader pic- ture that emerges when these five 'bodies' are put into play with one another. I suggest that the contradictions between the social body (as represented by the irreligious worldliness of the French elite) and the Calvinist body (understood through Madame Necker's moral stance) played themselves out in the maternal body, which functioned not only as the site for the realization of true virtue and happiness in a Rousseauist sense, but also, from a Calvinist perspective, as a locus of human weakness. I argue that the relationships between elite, Calvinist and maternal bodies converged in the sick body, an entity marked by psychic and somatic suffering that was finally memorialized – in the form of the embalmed cadaver – as the divine body. Ultimately, I assert that the externally visible cor- poreal sufferings of Madame Necker's sick body might be conceived as highly theatrical instances of narcissistic display, evidence of an understanding of the symbolic power of the corporeal as a prime site for the performance of abjection and the longing for absolution. These ideas – theatricality, display, abjection, longing and absolution – are present throughout Necker's published oeuvre as 6 The Life of Madame Necker well as in her unpublished epistolary output. These concepts are also key to my analysis of Madame Necker's life and serve to anchor the chapters that follow. The raw material for this project is extensive. Madame Necker's previously mentioned published oeuvre – her posthumously published private writings together with her work in hospital reform and treatises on premature burial and against divorce – has provided a rich foundation for this research. Her corre- spondence with various members of the European intelligentsia, among them Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, Thomas and Buffon, is also readily available.21 In addition to this, some 250 unpublished letters remain in archival collections in Lausanne and Geneva. Finally, there is much contemporaneous contextual material. As a well-known member of the Parisian elite, Madame Necker is men- tioned in many of the personal memoirs dating from the period, appears in such periodical literature as Grimm's Correspondance littéraire and Bachaumont's Mémoires secrets and was the subject of a series of libellous pamphlets.22 This material provides ample evidence to sustain the biographical telling propagated by the Necker/Haussonville cohort: Madame Necker was, without a doubt, a central figure of the French Enlightenment and her public concern for the welfare of the poor and indigent in her society can be seen as a testa- Copyright ment to what they perceive as her innate and irrefutable feminine virtue. It also reveals something more: a woman consumed by mental and physical torment and suffering. References to Madame Necker's continual sufferings are scattered throughout her correspondence. Over 60 per cent of her letters to Etienette Clavel de Brenles and almost half of the letters to Henriette Réverdil make direct mention of her illnesses, as do more than 40 per cent of her extant letters to Antoine Léonard Thomas.23 Madame Necker also represented her torments indirectly: numerous letters are penned by a secretary. While she may well have called on secretarial services in order to handle more efficiently the extensive correspondence required of her social position and political status, she offered another explanation, suggesting in letters to friends that her physical weakness and frail health sometimes made it impossible for her to write letters herself. As she remarked in a letter to her close friend Madame de Brenles: 'Please excuse me, Madam, for employing the services of a secretary. An inconvenience, less dangerous but more unwelcome than the previous one, does not allow me to hold a pen.'24 This approach is also evident in her formal correspondence. Four letters dating from the early 1790s and obviously written by a secretary still include Madame Necker's frail, thready and unstable signature, thus providing further evidence of her physical distress even in the absence of direct textual references.25 Physical and psychic suffering are directly mentioned by Madame Necker, her family or her friends in at least one letter per year, almost without interruption, between 1764, the year of her arrival in Paris, and 1794, the year of her death.26 The inclusion of letters written by secretaries further expands this Introduction 7 total.27 Thus, Necker's sufferings were ever-present in her life, even as her close friend Antoine Léonard Thomas was to exclaim in a 1785 letter: If I did not know, Madame, all of the activity of your mind, even in the midst of all of your weakness and suffering, your letter of 11 February would almost have made me doubt that you were sick at all! Health and life vibrate through each line.28 It is worth nothing that illness was a common trope in the correspondence of sensibility, a philosophical, literary and cultural movement that venerated the passional nature of the body and celebrated physical manifestations of emotional transport. Writers of the time – notably Voltaire – frequently resorted to recita- tions of their various ailments.29 Madame Necker's case, however, is somewhat different. Not only are her words confirmed and reinforced by the concern of close friends, the observations of her family members – particularly her daughter, Germaine de Staël – and the recollections of her contemporaries, but they are further highlighted by her decision to become actively involved in French hospi- tal reform and her accompanying interest in the sanctity of the dying body.30 The prevalence of illness in her correspondence, combined with the testimony of her family, friends and contemporaries and her public work with the suffering poor of Copyright her community, suggests – even demands – further examination. Women, Autobiography and Epistolarity My reading of Madame Necker's corporeal autobiography emerges largely through a close analysis of her correspondence and private writings, considered in conjunction with her salon and philanthropic activities. All of these activi- ties might be seen as elements of what Jeanne Perreault and Marlene Kadar have referred to as 'traces of autobiographical self-representation'.31 The primary insights, however, come from her correspondence. As many scholars have noted, epistolarity emerged as a prime vehicle for women's self-presentation during the eighteenth century. Motivated in part by the rise of the novel, which placed the concerns of the domestic directly in the public sphere and the emergence of autobiography – as exemplified by the posthumous publication, in 1778, of Jean- Jacques Rousseau's immensely influential Confessions – the eighteenth-century art of epistolarity was also powerfully shaped by the posthumous publication of the letters of Madame de Sévigné in 1725. This correspondence, spanning almost fifty years of Sévigné's life, was lauded for its 'informal style, the wit, the maxims, the instruction in the ways of polite society, the models for polite letter writing and the moral values of the actions described'.32 It also proved highly influen- tial, such that from about 1750 on, subsequent letter writers directly referenced Sévigné in their own correspondence, building on and extending her approach as they shaped their own epistolary relationships.33 But the publication of Sévi- 8 The Life of Madame Necker gné's letters performed another function: it contributed to the emerging image of women as (letter) writers. Madame Necker emphasized Sévigné's influence on women's public reputations, noting that: 'it has been endlessly repeated, since Madame de Sévigné, that women write better than men and that they are more sensitive than men; just as one has believed, since the time of Locke and Newton, that the English are a philosophical people'.34 The association between women and epistolarity cannot be overstated. According to Dena Goodman, letter writing became an indispensable tool designed to inculcate into young women the conventions of normative feminin- ity.35 It was also, however, a vital conduit for the presentation of self. Women had few authorized avenues for self-expression during this period. While a select number rose to prominence as novelists and others would later claim posthu- mous fame as memorialists, most women of the elite had no recognized literary outlets for their thoughts and ideas. Through the art of epistolarity, women were able, quite literally, to write themselves into existence. As a result, letter writing enabled what Béatrice Didier has referred to as 'a vast staging of the self '.36 In the words of Marie-Claire Grassi, the intimate letter gave women the opportunity to express the most personal aspects of their being: 'through her confidences, Copyright woman spoke of the difficulty of being a woman in the eighteenth century'.37 Dena Goodman would concur with this assessment, observing that: Writing helps individuals who are socially embedded to reflect on themselves, their relationships, their society, their world, and to make choices based on their own standards or values, even as they may acknowledge the limits placed on both their autonomy and their choices … For women in the eighteenth century, such choices were always constrained, and autonomy was always an achievement, always a mat- ter of degree, and always relational. Writing letters and engaging in correspondence helped women to achieve moments and degrees of autonomy within the context of human relationships – from family and friendship to social and gender systems, sys- tems that were becoming modern as they were themselves.38 Scholars have observed that correspondence, even the most intimate exchange, is as much about display as it is about intimacy. As a dialogic genre, letters were conversations in writing and, as such, enabled the development and mainte- nance of relationships between absent correspondents, presenting their writers with numerous opportunities to craft selves and identities to be shared with colleagues and intimates. Each letter, then, might be considered a conscious iteration of the self in and through the gaze of the other. During the eighteenth century, letters were both public – meant to be shared among a broader audience of colleagues and associates – and intimate, designed for personal and introspective reading. Others still took the form of formal mis- sives between official bodies. Madame Necker's extant correspondence spans all of these forms. From the formal letters she exchanged with regard to her various Introduction 9 philanthropic activities to public letters shared with Enlightenment luminaries, among them David Garrick, Denis Diderot and Voltaire, and the intimate epis- tles she shared with close friends in France and Switzerland, her letters provide unique insights into the ways in which she chose to fashion her private and public selves in the context of elite eighteenth-century social practices and behaviours. Necker's public letters reveal a woman obsessed with the requirements of elite sociability, determined to present herself as a woman of charity and sensi- bility and fully committed to the needs of her contemporaries. Sometimes stiff in tone, these letters belie her deep desire to conform to the narrow tenets of elite social practice, demonstrating an awkwardness that appears to confirm the criti- cal opinions of her Parisian salon colleagues, who found her salon demeanour formal and, sometimes, intimidating. But in her intimate letters she let down her guard, presenting a very different persona to her readers. Here she touched on topics closest to her heart: faith and family predominate in letters to Henriette Réverdil, while childlike enthusiasm, delight, innocence and wonder character- ize her correspondence with Etienette Clavel de Brenles. There is, however, one constant in all of these letters: throughout her correspondence, Madame Necker takes great pains to present herself as a woman of sensibility. Revelling in the Copyright emotional power of the workings of her body, she shows a propensity for deep and sometimes maudlin introspection. Indeed, Madame Necker's letters illustrate her thorough engagement with the culture and language of sensibility. Popularly conceived during this period as a tendency to emotional excess and instability, sensibility manifested itself in the physical display of sentimentality. Tears, weeping, swooning and suffering were requisite elements for its successful performance. They were also regular features of both published literature and private correspondence of the period. But while sensibility was, in the words of Anne C. Vila, conceived as a 'crea- tive force' fundamental to all human activities,39 it was also, as Madame Necker herself suggested, construed as a hallmark of feminine weakness.40 Women were understood to be particularly prone to over-sentimentality, a dangerous condition that could profoundly and inalterably threaten both their moral and physical constitutions, a concept I discuss in greater detail in Chapter 4. Like many of her contemporaries, Madame Necker was keenly aware of the power of sentimental autobiography. As a close friend of Paul Moultou, the Swiss pastor entrusted with Rousseau's manuscripts after his death, she was one of a very few people to read the Confessions in manuscript form prior to their publication. And while it has been stressed that her own private writings were never meant to be published, it seems likely that she did consider this possibility. As English Showalter Jr has observed, 'after 1725 every literate French man or woman writing a private letter would have been aware of the possibility of publi- cation, intended or not'.41 Indeed, Necker's self-conscious approach, particularly 10 The Life of Madame Necker evident in her elegiac correspondence with Antoine Léonard Thomas, appears to suggest some sort of awareness of posterity, or at least of the importance of memory and memorialization. It is equally clear that Madame Necker was influenced by Madame de Sévi- gné. A lengthy unfinished homage to Sévigné, published in the final volume of her Mélanges, cites not only the previously mentioned strengths of wit, grace, charm and moral instruction – Sévigné's demonstrated skill in the elite art of pleasing – but also stresses her tact, elegance, purity and, more importantly, a seemingly innate depth of sensibility: I respect Madame de Sévigné too much to compare her work with the large num- ber of gallant letters that our century has produced and which, under the pretext of painting the true sentiments of the heart, instead demonstrate its corruption; as it is possible to mimic everything but sensibility; this is the only law that nature has never ceded to art.42 Given all of this, a critical engagement with epistolary theory and practice must be considered crucial to any analysis of Madame Necker's life story. Autobiography and the Body Copyright Madame Necker's correspondence, steeped in the sensibility of her era, is deeply embodied. By this I mean to suggest that her body is written directly into the text. Necker wrote her body's stories, placing great value on corporeal experiences as a way of displaying her mastery of the art of sensibility, while simultaneously calling attention to the suffering body that was ever present not only in but also around her texts. The body and its moods figure prominently in her letters; her tears, illnesses and sufferings part and parcel of a self-presentation that was intensely corporeal in nature. To a certain extent, this is to be expected, given the prominence of the cult of sensibility during her lifetime. But such a superficial reading makes it all too easy to dismiss her letters as the overly sentimental ram- blings of a woman of sensibility. I suggest that Necker's sentimental letters, when read in conjunction with her published works and public acts, which further emphasize the body and its failings, offer another perspective. In this book, I argue that embodied epistolarity must be seen as an integral part of a larger project of corporeal display: a staging of what might be termed a 'fleshy' autobiography, a self crafted by and through a body that physically manifests the sufferings and anguishes of a tormented psyche. The work of Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and G. Thomas Couser has been influential in this regard. Hawkins's pathography and Couser's autopathography – 'autobiographical nar- rative of illness or disability'43 – allow for the integration of body and mind in the form of a collaborative life writing that acknowledges the workings of the suffering body as intrinsic to constructions of self and identity. This is of par- Introduction 11 ticular importance in the case of extended illness, such as that experienced by Madame Necker. While dis/ability scholars such as Susan Wendell rightly point to the limitations of this framework, which can problematically elide the dis/ abled or dysfunctional body with a similarly 'dis/abled' self, this model does con- tribute to a growing discussion that considers illness and suffering as productive sites of identity formation.44 In other words, as the editors of a recent collec- tion entitled Unfitting Stories: Narrative Approaches to Disease, Disability and Trauma point out, suffering is not 'necessarily always bad'.45 In Madame Necker's writings, consciousness and corporeality are not antithetical to one another; nor do they slide into one another. Rather, the relationship between the two is sym- biotic: psyche and soma work in, through and against one another in constantly mobile ways. What this entails is close attention to the language of the body, listening not only to the body's narratives – in the form of clearly discernible physical symptoms – but also to how these stories are then interpreted and lived by sentient, social beings. Staging the Self: Theorizing the Performative Body Copyright Such corporeal stories were performed in the context of the salon, the performa- tive playground of the French elite. As I discuss in the first chapter, the mirror functioned as the ideal metaphor for the staging of self during the eighteenth century. In etiquette treatises of the period, mirrors were both intimate and reflective; in other words, they revealed the inner self even as they reflected the gaze of their audience. Etiquette treatises and conduct books suggest that both letter and body might be conceived as mirrors that enabled elite individuals to craft selves in the face of, in relation to and also through, their audience. By con- forming to the accepted models of elite sociability, the elite body mirrored the seemingly innate beauty, balance and 'rightness' of polite society as a whole, offer- ing a pleasing, reflective surface that confirmed the cohesion and authority of the aristocratic class. The letter, meanwhile, expanded the sphere of elite sociability, extending it across geographic space to include relationships with absent friends and colleagues. Indeed, just as the aristocratic body mediated between performer and observer, at once revealing its inner workings and reflecting the expectations of its audience, so too did letters facilitate a dialogic relationship between sender and receiver, thus functioning as stages for the presentation of a relational self. Offering a reflective surface that both revealed and produced identity, the mir- ror acknowledged the contradictions inherent in the staging of self; namely, that identity could not be crafted in isolation. The self, defined by and through its borders, was always a product of the gaze of its others. Such was the principle that governed the practice of elite sociability during the eighteenth century, requiring its adherents to sublimate the self in the service of the larger whole. 12 The Life of Madame Necker At a theoretical level, I am deeply indebted to frameworks put forward by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous.46 All three of these thinkers operate from the perspective of radical sexual difference, an approach which, I believe, most closely aligns itself with the cultural models proposed within the eighteenth century itself. As scholars such as Thomas Laqueur, Londa Schiebin- ger and Lieselotte Steinbrügge, among others, have pointed out, the eighteenth century was a crucial period in the development of modern understandings of sexual difference.47 Laqueur and Schiebinger, working in the history of medi- cine and the history of science and influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, argue for the emergence of a two-sex model of human relationships during this period. Steinbrügge, operating through a Marxist lens, demonstrates the ways in which scientific rationalism colluded with cultural assumptions in order to create a 'naturalized' female other who was wholly dependent on – and subservi- ent to – the whims of a capricious biology: 'woman is not an homme manqué. Instead, her membership in the female sex shapes her entire physical and psychic constitution, which differs in every respect from man's.'48 Eighteenth-century thinkers identified women with domestic concerns of home and family, attrib- uting to them such characteristics as humility, piety, grace and charm. Women Copyright were also perceived as volatile, capricious entities whose unstable tendencies, left unchecked, could pose a threat to social stability.49 The theoretical model propagated by Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous offers clear possibilities for resistance to – and subversion of – the premises of hier- archicalized sexual difference promoted and practised during the eighteenth century. Just as illness and suffering might be considered from a productive rather than limiting perspective, Kristevan abjection, Irigarayan mimesis and Cixousian laughter all rely on the claiming of corporeal alterity as a site of possi- bility and transformation. Each of these theorists posits the female body, and in particular the reproductive female body, as the site of such alterity, a positioning that has enabled a recognition of the inherent value of an otherwise marginal- ized and stigmatized body. This transformative potential of alterity is critical to understanding Madame Necker's life story. As a woman marked by her gender, class, religion, nation and suffering, Madame Necker experienced stigma on numerous levels. Not only was she physically incapacitated as a result of her extended illnesses, but she was also branded by her inability to conform to elite Parisian social convention, stigma- tized for her Protestant faith and set apart as a result of her nationality. There is no doubt that the experience of stigma limited her life. At the same time, her letters also contain clear evidence of what Hélène Cixous asserts as the revolu- tionary power of stigmata. As Cixous observes: Stigma stings, pierces, makes holes, separates with pinched marks and in the same move- ment distinguishes – re-marks – inscribes, writes. Stigma wounds and spurs, stimulates. Introduction 13 Stigma hallmarks, for the best and for the worst: stigmata on the body are as noble as they are ignominious, depending on whether it is Christ or the outcast who is marked.50 It is, ultimately, the disruptive and volatile agency of alterity that informs this work. The research of a group of Swiss medical historians, who argue strongly and convincingly for the authority of both patient and ailing body, has also been particularly influential in this regard.51 The stigmatized body is located in a culture of display; its stigmatized state emerges from the fraught encounter between spectacle and gaze. Such a body must be considered, as Judith Butler has argued, a performative entity, whose actions both mimic and resist the contours of cultural and social convention.52 It is precisely the possibility of mimetic parody or citation that makes the work of Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous possible; it is, equally, Butler's postulation of a tense but symbiotic relationship between pre-formance and per-formance, that is, between acquiescence and resistance to established cultural scripts, that ena- bles us to understand the nature of performativity and the performative body. Following theoretical understandings put forward by Irigaray, Cixous and, in particular, Kristeva, the performative enables the taking on of a masquerade and Copyright the claiming of alterity – or stigma – as a space from which to speak. Kristeva's understanding of abjection serves as an organizing premise for this book. The abject, which Kristeva has defined as the point of splitting, might be best understood as the moment of suspension between life and death, an instant associated with intense loss and, at the same time, overwhelming desire. For Kristeva, the abject is a point of horror, an encounter with the sublime which reveals not only its profound potential, but also the abyss of nothingness that is its mirror. The abject dissolves previously immutable boundaries: between self and other, desire and horror, life and death, even as it relies on the presumed stability of those same binaries. As Kristeva writes: 'I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which "I" claim to establish myself'.53 Located at the interstices, abjection is described in profoundly visceral terms. Kristeva's evocation of the corpse, a material artefact of death, as a marker of the abject, offers one example of this: The corpse … is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject. It is some- thing rejected from which one does not part … The corpse remains, even in death. It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not represent borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.54 This understanding of the space between life and death as both a site of ambigu- ity and a source of infinite potential is highly appealing in the case of Madame Necker, a woman who struggled with moral quandaries, who desperately wanted 14 The Life of Madame Necker to fit into French society even as she was repelled by it, who sought redemption but felt that she was unworthy of it and who ensured her body's preservation well after death. In this book, I suggest that Madame Necker's stigmatized body served as a site of critical abjection, a space in which Madame Necker performed her alterity and confronted her personal demons, but also a mirror through which Parisian elite society was forced to confront its own limitations. The performance of abjection requires both a stage and an audience. During the French eighteenth century, that stage was, indisputably, the salon. A gather- ing place for intellectual debate and theatre for the display of elite sociability, the eighteenth-century salon was the institution par excellence of elite sociability and identity formation. Led by a woman of means and peopled by members of the aristocracy, intelligentsia and cultured and connected foreigners, it was an intensely performative space governed by a detailed code of behaviours and practices that sought to define the parameters of the elite body. The salon itself was embedded in a broader culture of display, a social environment in which every action was measured, every behaviour observed and assessed. Analysing the nature of salon practices is, however, a daunting task, particularly when one considers the inherent transience and intangibility of salon conversation and the Copyright cultural and historical specificity and nuance of elite social behaviours. Conceptual frameworks provided by scholars in the interdisciplinary area of performance studies offer useful entry points into this world. Marvin Carlson, drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, has observed that 'The recognition that our lives are structured according to repeated and socially sanctioned modes of behaviour raises the possibility that all human activity could potentially be con- sidered as "performance"'.55 Erin Striff concurs, noting that culture is 'unthinkable without performance'.56 Drawing my inspiration from these comments, I argue that all autobiographical acts – in Madame Necker's case her writing, salon activ- ities and political engagements – were negotiated on a public stage in full view of an audience. In this sense, performance might be most fruitfully understood, on a broad level, as a collaborative venture between audience and performer, as read through the lens of culture. As Carlson observes, performance 'is always performance for someone, some audience that recognises and validates it as performance even when, as is occasionally the case, that audience is the self '.57 Such an argument suggests a need to reconsider the traditionally hierarchical relationship between performance and audience, spectacle and gaze. Specifically, this perspective gestures towards a more fluid encounter, in which authority is constantly shifting and power relationships are never certain, but instead, always in process and always being negotiated. But this argument also suggests something more. The relationship between Butlerian performativity and Kristevan abjection, as read through the lens of performance, enables a significant repositioning of the elite social mirror. Introduction 15 Madame Necker's contradictory behaviours fundamentally troubled social con- ventions. By actively resisting the lure of the elite mirror even as she acquiesced to its seductions, Madame Necker transformed reflection into specularity, thus destabilizing the internal coherence of ideals of sociability. The specular abjec- tion of Madame Necker's Calvinist, maternal body completely reshaped the salon stage. In complicating the elite mirror, Suzanne Necker was able to claim the specularity of her sick body and, from there, to reflect what she perceived as the moral sickness of French society as a whole. Appropriating the salon for the performance of excess within the contours of the mimetic masquerade allowed her both to perform the roles laid out for her and, at the same time, to resist and refuse them. Thus Madame Necker rendered both her own body and the elite social body abject, forcing a confrontation of critical self-reflection. These are the insights developed and analysed in the chapters that follow. In Chapter 1, I argue for an understanding of the salon as an inherently per- formative space. I define elite propriety in terms of language, dress, tone of voice and physical presence. I also introduce the idea of stigma by examining Mad- ame Necker's contradictory relationship with Parisian aristocratic behaviours. On the one hand, Parisian social practices were seductive, introducing her to Copyright a world of individuals whose interests and beliefs fuelled her personal literary ambitions and desires. On the other hand, however, she perceived these behav- iours as inherently dangerous and actively cultivated her outsider status as a way of maintaining her distinctly different cultural and religious identity. Central to this discussion is an examination of the mirror and its role in revealing and reflecting elite identity. Chapter 2 examines Madame Necker's cultural and religious alterity more closely. Situating Madame Necker's religious background and beliefs in the con- text of a broader history of Calvinism – and particularly Genevan Calvinism – this chapter introduces the idea of religious abjection. I am particularly inter- ested here in the abject position of the body in Calvinist thought. The site of the believer's performance of her faith, the body was also the symbol of the believ- er's original sin; in other words, an indefinable purgatory where redemption remained eternally uncertain. In this chapter, I also develop concepts central to the work as a whole: display, exile, longing and communion. Each of these con- cepts emanates from Madame Necker's lived experience of Calvinism; namely, the inherently troubled nature of the divided Calvinist body. In Chapter 3, I consider Madame Necker's practical application of her religious beliefs, looking closely at her uncomfortable self-positioning as both daughter and mother. Examining the ways in which Calvinist exile manifested itself in the form of the abject maternal body, I suggest that Madame Necker's fil- ial longing, a futile quest for virtue inextricably linked both with the death of her mother and with her own religious desire, and conceived within the parameters 16 The Life of Madame Necker of Calvinist moral failure, lies at the heart of her subsequent salon-based mater- nal practice. I argue that the salon, consciously claimed as a stage for the double performance of maternal duty and religious devotion, enabled a corporeal enact- ment of her intense psychic and moral struggles. The letters Necker exchanged with Madame Réverdil, a close family friend and maternal surrogate, are central to making this argument. In Chapter 4, I examine the nature and purpose of Madame Necker's various nervous illnesses and argue that these illnesses constituted a corporeal manifes- tation of her psychic malaise. In other words, I contend that Madame Necker's extended and largely indefinable physical illnesses were the result of extreme moral alienation and isolation. In this sense, her nervous ailments can be seen as evidence of her experience of exile: both the externally imposed exile of physi- cal dislocation brought about by the deaths of her parents and her self-imposed moral exile, the result of her perceived failure to fulfil her filial duty towards the memory of her mother. In addition to looking at her own illnesses, I also con- sider her public initiatives in support of hospital reform, situating my analyses in a broader context that looks not only at the development of public health, but also at the medical theory of vitalism, emergent interests in the concept of Copyright hygiene and the culture of sensibility. Finally, Chapter 5 considers the ritualistic nature of Madame Necker's dying, death and burial. Considering her treatise on premature burial through the lens of her decision to be embalmed and in the context of her perception of her Cal- vinist duties, I assert that the conservation of her frail human machine (through the process of embalming) might be seen as symbolic of humanity's innate moral weakness and spiritual failure. In the process, Madame Necker's body, marked by suffering and physical incapacity, is transformed into the mark, or stigma, of human moral failure and the embodiment of Calvinist culpability.


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For those of you tracking Windows Vista (the next version of the Windows operating system, formerly codenamed "Longhorn"). Paul Thurrott, Windows uberenthusiast, has posted a thorough review of the first beta release.
contact me: email@example.com[Read More]
Jazz platform development
Paul Thurrott reviews Windows Vista beta 1 |
IT Conversations
Note - if you're already aware of the IT Conversations web site and its podcasts, there's no reason to read the rest of this entry.
I've been into this service for a while, as have lots of other people (like James Snell) but have neglected to blog about it. Since I bought my iPod, I've been listening to tons of podcasts from a website called IT Conversations. IT Conversations is a website / service that gathers and helps produce podcasts (downloadable audio content) about various IT topics, ranging from business-oriented topics to highly technical discussions. So why should you listen to IT Conversations? Well, quite simply, it will make you a lot smarter and better informed. I once read in Steve McConnell's After the Gold Rush book, that the average software developer reads on average less than one book a year. Though I'm guessing that readers of this blog read more books than this, it is admittedly hard to find time out of our busy jobs and busy lives to sit down and concentrate on a book for an hour or more at a time. Enter podcasting. With podcasting, you can download interesting content on to a portable music player (like an iPod) and listen when you're engaged in mechanical activities like driving to work, cleaning the house, or exercising. I've probably listened to 60 hours worth of interesting IT Conversations content since I got my iPod in June. I even cleaned my house on Sunday (a rarity) because I had a backlog of shows that I wanted to listen to! So here's all that you have to do.
Note that IT Conversations is just one of hundreds of services that provide free podcasts for download. I talk about it because it's where I download 95% of the content in which I'm interested (probably 4% from Audible.com and 1% from misc. other sources). PS - Almost neglected to mention. IT Conversations is managed by a technologist named Doug Kaye. I first heard of Doug because of his well-received book, Loosely Coupled: The Missing Pieces of Web Services. He describes his motivations behind IT Conversations in this entry from his blog. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
Integrated developerWorks search in RSA/RAD
I mentioned several weeks ago that I was beginning to do some programming again ... for fun. Lo and behold, some of my job responsibilities got reswizzled and now I'm going to be doing development again for my day job!
The net is that I'll be working on a future Software Group technology, but unfortunately, since this is IBM, I'm not allowed to talk about its details until it's officially announced. But anyhow, I've been spending a significant amount of time inside of Rational Software Architect, and I've been noticing lots of neat new capabilities in the IDE and also in WebSphere Application Server that didn't exist the last time I programmed (circa 2002 when WAS 4 was king). Something that REALLY struck my fancy tonight is the ability to search developerWorks content within RSA. I assume that this capability also exists within the other Atlantic desktop tools (which I discussed here). To search developerWorks within RSA: 1) Choose the "Search" menu and the "Search" sub-menu (or just press Ctrl-H). 2) Navigate to the "dW Search" tab. You'll see the dialog below. 3) A "Classic Search" view shows up at the bottom of RSA with a list of results (see my search below for "Bobby Woolf"). 4) Double-clicking a link in the results list will open the corresponding developerWorks web page in your default web browser. (here's the same list inside of developerWorks) To the developerWorks and Rational folks - good job of integrating the tools with the developer knowledge portal. Keep it coming. PS - Based on anecdotal evidence, this blog is read by two basic groups of people:
For the latter audience, if you don't know what developerWorks is, it's the web site you're currently reading. IBM developerWorks is IBM's web site that provides technical articles, tutorials, and other technical content to people developing software using IBM technologies. contact me: email@example.com[Read More] |
Star Wars Episode III on DVD November 1st |
Three books on IBM's three greatest leaders
I enjoyed this Fast Company article by Jim Collins where he reviewed books about three leaders who have been key to IBM's evolution as a company:
I've read the Gerstner book twice and most of the Watson Jr. book; will have to check out the Watson Sr. book as time permits. contact me: email@example.com[Read More] |
Windows Vista and product naming
A few days ago, Microsoft announced that their next-generation operating system, codenamed Longhorn, would be officially called "Microsoft Windows Vista". There's naturally been a cacophony of cheers and jeers around the web, so I'll add my voice to the fray as well.
I think it's a brilliant name. It connotes simplicity and properly positions the PC as a gateway to access greater, more interesting things on the web. It's interesting when you compare this simple name to IBM software products. More or less all of our software products are named based on either what job role they support (e.g. "Rational Software Architect") or based on their primary function (e.g. "WebSphere Application Server", "Tivoli Storage Manager"). It's interesting to note that several years ago, Lotus products *did* have non-utilitarian names, and they ended up confusing customers, so they migrated them all to standard function-based names. So which is better, a catchy metaphorical name like "Vista" or the descriptive utilitarian names that IBM uses? I think the answer is that each style is appropriate for the different natures of the products. IBM products are targeted at a particular role or a particular function - it's important for customers to be able to quickly determine the purpose of each of our many, many software titles. Windows, on the other hand, is used in a bewildering variety of contexts, so you can't base it on a role without getting hopelessly generic (e.g. "Microsoft Personal Computer / Corporate Workstation User) and likewise you can't base it on its functions without becoming hopelessly convoluted (e.g. "Microsoft Operating System, Associated Dinky Applications, and Bundled Major Applications To Thwart Emerging Competitors but We Didn't Just Say That Out Loud, Did We?). So net, I think Windows Vista is a fine name for a product that I will probably end up owning, hopefully on a future Lenovo Tablet PC. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
On this day, 25 years ago ...
Ahoy polloi!
I'd like to ask each of you to take a moment from your busy day and reflect on the fact that 25 years ago today, Caddyshack opened in theaters across the United States of America. Golfing, country clubs, and Baby Ruth candy bars would never be the same ... contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
Buell Duncan's blog
It turns out that Buell Duncan, who is IBM Software Group's general manager of independent software vendor (ISV) and developer relations, has a developerWorks blog.
Update: Buell's blog *is* on the dW blog main page, under "More blogs" at the bottom. So if you are a developer using IBM software products, or work for a company that builds complementary products on top of IBM platform products (e.g. WebSphere Application Server), you may want to keep up with Buell's blog, and send him suggestions for improvements via his blog's comments. Buell's also in charge of the IBM Academic Initiative, which is where we support universities and other educational institutions with our expertise and products. Speaking of which, I'm really curious to know if any students read my blog. If you're a student, whatever your level or topic of study, please drop me an email at the address below. I'd like to ask you some questions about your thoughts on technical / corporate blogging. I was delighted to get a comment on one of my RSA/UML blog entries from Michelle Crane, who is a graduate student studying formal methods and UML at Queen's University in Canada. The funny thing was that after looking at Michelle's home page, I realized that she probably knows way more about UML than I do :-) Such is life in the blogosphere; expertness is relative. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
IBM Global Services reshuffle
As reported by CNET and others, IBM has reorganized Global Services, the group in which I work. These things are horrendously difficult to explain, and CNET does a pretty good job, so I'll just leave it at that.
One of these days I need to start blogging about life in Global Services. Because it's so massive - 170,000 people, $45 billion (with a 'b') a year in revenue - people view it as this amorphous mass of consultants. It actually can be understood, you just have to examine it from several different angles:
Ok, perhaps it is confusing :-) More later. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
Oh, and a book review - "Extreme Programming Explained, 2nd Ed."
I wrote this book review so long ago that I forgot about it. I've reviewed Extreme Programming Explained, 2nd. Ed. by Kent Beck.
This was a really interesting book for me to read; in IGS and Rational, we tend to place value in intermediate work products that come before code (e.g. requirements & design specs) whereas Extreme Programming tends to view non-code work products as low-value. But I approached this book with an open mind and learned a great deal and even found a few things to admire from this methodology. More in the review. As always, please feel free to post comments, questions, and criticisms to my blog. I'd especially like to hear from experienced XP users about their thoughts on what I've written. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
Article: Ground rules for managing business process integration projects
I've written an article for this month's issue of the Rational Edge. It's titled "Ground rules for managing business process integration projects". The full issue contents are here.
The reason I wrote this article is that I've worked on several really large business process integration projects over the past couple of years (ibm.com Direct, IBM-PC division separation) yet most of the writing on software engineering I find is geared to either single-app development, or at best, point-to-point integration of apps. What I want to read about is the pragmatic unification of the business process engineering and software engineering disciplines. This article tries to scratch the surface of this massive topic. Comments, questions, and criticism are all welcome, whether you think it's genius or whether you think it's hogwash (or likely, somewhere in between). Please leave your comments here, so that others can see them (the ones submitted via the article form go into some ibm.com void). PS - I see that Simon Johnston also has an article on "Modeling service-oriented solutions" which may interest people. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0, compared
As someone late to the blogging game (October 2004, thank you very much), I didn't know the difference between RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 until Sam Ruby started to explain it in an email to the IBM developerWorks bloggers a few weeks ago.
Just saw that Tim Bray of Sun has published a well-written and thorough comparison. This one's getting bookmarked! contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
Insight reciprocity policy
Those of you who read this blog and also have blogs of your own may have noticed that I've recently been posting a lot more comments on your blog than normal. I've adopted a new personal policy I think of as "insight reciprocity", or, in non-fancy terms, if you consistently enlighten me with your knowledge and insights, I will set aside time out of my day to try to contribute something back to your blog.
It was Stephen O'Grady's "The Buck Starts Here" that brought me to this policy. In that post he stated his personal philosophy of using some of his disposable income to pay for services that he found interesting or novel, even though he could just as easily make it through life without said paid-service. I agree with this philosophy and want to extend it to the intellectual capital generated in the blogosphere. When you find a blog that provides insights consistently, invest some time in contributing your own expertise and insights back to that blog by posting comments. This isn't some sorta karma-based kumbaya nonsense - it's purely selfish; if you engage someone who enlightens you in a coversation, you're likely to receive more enlightenment than if you had remained quiet, not just from the blogger but also from the other smart people that a smart blogger attracts. I know, I know, this is "value of blogging 101" but as you know, I'm a tad slow ;-) BUT ANYWAY... if by some chance one of my posts sheds light on some aspect of your work or life, please be kind and offer some of your own insights back. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
My blog has relocated to redmonk.com
Ok, not really, but it seems that way over the last two days.
Stephen O'Grady (of the RedMonk analyst firm) wrote a blog entry on simplicity in programming models and mentioned applications, and I've ended up spending all of my blog time writing comments in reply and discussion. Ryan Tomayko and Stephen have added thoughtful comments as well. Feel free to join the fracas, but only if you agree with my point of view ;-) PS - Simplification of software (both from a developer's and user's perspective) is one of the topics I spend the most time thinking about these days, so I will likely start to post about it here in the near future. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |
Rational Unified Process on Firefox
I'm a big fan of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) as a means to guide software development projects and organizations.
As you may know, the RUP is marketed by Rational as a tailorable process product and is packaged as a web application. You browse the process through a tree on the left-nav and view the content in the main frame (here's a screenshot if you've never seen the RUP product before). I recently switched to the Firefox web browser and ran into a problem because Firefox is not a supported web browser for RUP versions 6.13 and earlier. Today I reported this problem to the RUP product manager and he forwarded to RUP product engineering, who were able to point me to a technote that provides a patch that allows you to successfully run the RUP product within Firefox. Thanks to Erik O'Neill (RUP product management) and Alfredo Bencomo (RUP product engineering) for their help on resolving this problem. PS - New IBM blogger Ashok Reddy recently blogged about the history and evolution of the RUP, which I found very interesting. contact me: firstname.lastname@example.com[Read More] |

subset: commoncrawl


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Friday deal: 1/2 off Aquafadas VideoPier HD
If you're looking for a handy way to organize your AVCHD and MPEG-2 clips from your digital video camera, you've got about five hours to get a bargain. MacZOT is offering VideoPier HD today for US$39, versus the usual price of $79. The clip manager supports codecs and clip types that aren't natively handled by the QuickTime-based apps we know and love, allowing you to save time and disk space by only transcoding what you need when working in iMovie '08.
Check it out, and while you're at it take a look at PulpMotion, BannerZest and the rest of the Aquafadas product line -- all are charming apps with a different spin on media management.
Source: http://maczot.com/
Software Updates
more updates- Apple Remote Desktop updated with Yosemite support
- OS X Yosemite 10.10.2, iOS 8.1.3 updates now available
- Sports Illustrated 120 SPORTS channel comes to Apple TV
- Logic Pro X update brings AirDrop support, new effects, tools, and more
- Parallels Access 2.5 released, adds file manager, computer-to-computer remote access
- The Google Translate iOS app is about to get a lot smarter


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First-ever WHS Band Bash is Monday
WORTHINGTON -- From a fifth-grade twist on an iconic Sinatra tune to the "Fanfare & Flourishes" that will honor this year's graduates, those looking to sample the District 518 band program need look no farther than the first-ever Band Bash.
The event is slated to begin at 7 p.m. Monday in the Worthington High School gymnasium; the concert is free and open to the public.
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This activity is a short engineering design challenge to be completed by individual students or small teams. A real-world problem is presented, designing buildings for hurricane-prone areas, but in a simulated way that works in a classroom, after... (View More) school club, or informal education setting. Students are given simple materials and design requirements, and must plan and build a tower as tall as possible that will hold up a tennis ball while resisting the force of wind from a fan. After the towers are built, the group comes together to test them. If there is time after testing, which can be observational or framed as a contest between teams, students can redesign their towers to improve their performance, or simply discuss what worked well and what didn't in their designs. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $1 - $5 per group of students
The 9-session NASA Family Science Night program invites middle school children and their families to discover the wide variety of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics being performed at NASA and in everyday life. Family Science Night... (View More) programs explore various themes on the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Universe through fun, hands-on activities, including at-home experiments. Information about Family Science Night implementation and support resources, including the facilitator's guide, are available by registering on the Family Science Night Facilitators website (see Related & Supplemental Resources for link). (View Less)


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More reviews by AntiqueGlitter
This was actually the first tinted moisturizer I've ever tried. The only other one I've tried is the Laura Mercier Oil-Free Tinted Moisturizer, so I don't have much to compare to.
But, either way, this is a great product.
Its coverage is great--to be honest, it came to me as a shock. It has light-to-medium coverage, almost medium coverage, which is way more coverage than I expected. Apparently, according to the other reviews, this TM has too much coverage to be a TM, lol, but I would rather say that its coverage is a "pleasant surprise".
That said, it wears well over my primer. It doesn't contol oil that well (I have combination skin), but then again, it's a moisturizer, hence it's not really supposed to. But that's okay because that's nothing a light layer of translucent powder can't fix.
Its lasting power really isn't that great--I'd say 5 hours, maybe, with primer and a little powder--but I didn't expect it to either.
Shade 04 matches me pretty well. I'm NC35 in MAC btw.
It retails for $27, which is really cheap compared to all the $40-$60 price tags I'm used to paying for foundations.
Would I repurchase? No.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
I had a big sample of this that I used for about two weeks and then I purchased it. I actually preferred the bottle of the sample to the full sized bottle. I do love this tinted moisturizer though. It doesn't break me out, provides coverage and is pretty cheap!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
This isn't my HG, but it's pretty good and I will likely re-purchase unless I come across my HG in the meantime. I don't really consider it a true tinted moisturizer, more a light foundation. I can't imagine applying it the way I would a moisturizer - I just apply it as I do any other foundation. But as a light foundation it's quite nice. Gives me a quite natural finish, although not as dewy as I'd like personally - I still put a liquid illuminator on my cheekbones, cupid's bow, etc after the foundation to get a dewy look. As someone with dry skin, I usually wear this without a powder over top and it looks good. However, if you are wearing it over sunscreen, a powder is definitely needed or it will oxidize and start sliding off your face. Love the packaging - very neat and easy to use, with the only con being that I can't really tell how much is left in the bottle since it's opaque.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
I bought this because I tried it on in the store and it looked amazing on my skin. The shade 03 matched my skin perfectly and I was very happy. But I had to return it, because when I used it at home I saw that the color was too pink for me (I have a bit of redness in my skin I want to cover) and it was more a product to even out than cover and look natural at the same time. The consistency is creamy and blendable but still quite runny and is easy to put on nicely. This made me oily all over (I have dry skin) after about 5 hours of wear, even with a setting powder on top. It covers too little for me and the color is too pink to work, but if you have amazing skin that only needs a bit of evening out and a more pink color is right for you then this will be great.
I'm quite pleased with this foundation. It's not my HG but I think I'm gonna repurchase since it worked out well for me.
- did not brake me out at all!
- good coverage for a tinted moisturizer
- a little orange on the skin, not disturbingly cause I use only a small amount of this at a time
- propably doesn't really work on dry skin cause it highlights all the dry areas
- doesn't give a matt finish, needs powder
I use this daily and I'm quite happy to repurchase and continue using it.
- Natural, glowy finish. This is the main reason I'm happy to repurchase.
- Light to medium coverage
- Packaging is simple and hygienic
- No breakouts or irritation
- Not especially moisturising. I do use a moisturiser underneath, otherwise it highlights my flakes. It can be streaky over my dry areas.
- Price could be more competitive
How I use it: I use a moisturiser underneath (one with a mattifying property) to control my oily T-zone. Next, I use Natio Skin Brightening Balm, which helps make application smoother and gives me a subtle glow. Then finally, the tinted moisturiser.
Update: I agree with the other reviewers. I'm Asian with yellow undertones. This is too pink for me. I have mixed it with moisturiser to try and minimise the pinkness. For now, I'm satisfied. However, I will not repurchase.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
Price: 26.00
Coverage: Light. Very good for a TM though! Better than my CG Aqua Smoothers.
Longevity: Last about 8 hours on my dry skin.
Texture: Liquidy, very blendable
Packaging: Plastic bottle with a skinny nozzle. Shiny twist off cap.
Appearance: On my skin, it looks natural, evening out overall skintone and my redness. Does diminish appearance of dark circles, but I still need concealer for under the eyes and blemishes as well. It appears dry on my forehead though, which I'm taking a lippy off for.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
I like this product but I really don't feel like it's a 'tinted moisturizer'. Its foundation - with a light/med coverage. I still use moisturizer underneath. It has SPF15 which is nice. If you want a true tinted moisturizer use Dermalogica sheer tint moisture - that one is very sheer, and really moisturizes. If you want a light foundation go with this.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
This is my favourite product from Clinique and also from all foundations and tinted moisturizers I have ever tried. I am pale and seek for products with sheer coverage only to even out my skin, I also prefer a natural finish, not too glowing and not too matte. This tinted moisturizer is just right in all the aspects the shade 01 is a great match for my skin (NW15-NW20, Clinique Superbalanced Alabaster, Nars TM Finland), it evens out it a bit (for some concealing I rather use corrector when needed then to use a heavy base all over), it has spf 15. It also stays on the whole day, doesnt crease and feels great just like second skin, like I had nothing on at all.
I use it after the 3-steps from Clinique (skin type 2), where needed I put a bit of concealer and sometimes I just powder my t-zone with a transparent fixing powder and I am done with my face for the whole day!


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Universal® Rubber Bands
General purpose rubber bands for home or office use.
Universal® Rubber Bands
Additional Documents
Weights & Dimensions
Box Size: 1 Lb | Elasticity: 620-720 Psi |
Gauge: Varies | Approximate Count: Varies |
Pre-Consumer Recycled Content Percent: 0 % | Size: 54 |
Total Recycled Content Percent: 0 % | Compliance, Standards: Meets Federal Guideline Specifications |
Elongation: 625% | Global Product Type: Rubber Bands |
Material(s): 80% Rubber | Post-Consumer Recycled Content Percent: 0 % |
Breaking Strength: 12 Lbs., Based On Example Of 1/8 In-Wide Bands | Color(s): Beige |
Country of Manufacture: Thailand |
About the Manufacturer
UNIVERSAL PRODUCTS offers an array of products that we are pleased to offer to you!Universal® Rubber Bands
Still have questions about this product? We're here to help
NOTE: This product is subject to a minimum order quantity of 2
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Rubber Bands is also sometimes listed under the following manufacturer numbers: UNV00154


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The American was voted the winner in a contest run by the National Army Museum to identify the country's most outstanding military opponent. He was one of a shortlist of five leaders who topped a public poll and on Saturday was selected as the ultimate winner by an audience of around 70 guests at a special event at the museum, in Chelsea, west London. In second place was Michael Collins, the Irish leader, ahead of Napoleon Bonaparte, Erwin Rommel and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. At the event, each contender had their case made by a historian giving a 40 minute presentation. The audience, who had paid to attend the day, then voted in a secret ballot after all five presentations had been made. Dr Stephen Brumwell, who had championed Washington, said: "As British officers conceded, he was a worthy opponent."
Tag Archives | Freedom
A Quest For De-Baptism In France
Reports Eleanor Beardsley for NPR:
… Read the restIn France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He's taken the church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.
Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier's parents and his brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended mass here as a boy.
LeBouvier says this rural area is still conservative and very Catholic, but nothing like it used to be. Back then, he says, you couldn't even get credit at the bakery if you didn't go to mass every Sunday.
LeBouvier grew up in that world and says his mother once hoped he'd become a priest. But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers.
State, Consciousness, Liberty and Religion: Graham Hancock Interview with Sonia Doubell (Video)
Virginia Senate Passed NDAA Nullification Bill
One of those rare, rare moments when you see federalism actually work. Joe Wolverton writes in the New American:
On January 16, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall (left) introduced HB 1160, a bill designed to "prevent any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency or the armed forces of the United States in the investigation, prosecution, or detainment of a United States citizen in violation of the Constitution of Virginia."
After being passed on Valentine's Day by an overwhelming majority (96–4) in the House, the bill was sent to the Senate for deliberation by that chamber. In a telephone conversation with this reporter, Delegate Marshall broke the latest news of the procedural progress of his very important legislation …
… Marshall's bill is the first measure in the nation that is based on the Liberty Preservation Act. This model legislation (a copy of which is available from the Tenth Amendment Center) is designed to block the enforcement of the provisions of the NDAA authorizing the apprehension and indefinite detention of citizens of the United States …
… Most of what is contained in the over-500-page NDAA is in fact "inimical to liberty." For example, under the provisions of Section 1021 of the NDAA, the President is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States …
Read More: New American
Christians Have No Right to Wear Cross at Work, Says UK Government
David Barrett reports in the Telegraph:
… Read the restIn a highly significant move, ministers will fight a case at the European Court of Human Rights in which two British women will seek to establish their right to display the cross.
It is the first time that the Government has been forced to state whether it backs the right of Christians to wear the symbol at work.
A document seen by The Sunday Telegraph discloses that ministers will argue that because it is not a "requirement" of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so.
The Government's position received an angry response last night from prominent figures including Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. He accused ministers and the courts of "dictating" to Christians and said it was another example of Christianity becoming sidelined in official life.
Ten Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free
Jonathan Turley suggests some self-reflection for Americans, writing in the Washington Post:
… Read the restEvery year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec.
Hitchens Vs. God (Video)
The Conspiracy Against Freedom
Sex, Sake and Zen
[Site editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the new Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.]
Most Westerners who become fascinated with Zen Buddhism are intrigued with its reputation as an anti-authoritarian, freedom-loving, individualistic tradition. Books by excellent writers like Alan Watts popularized an image of Zen as a very relaxed, go-with-the-flow type of religion. But even a brief visit to a typical Zen temple is enough to make us painfully aware of the difference between hype and reality. Life in real Zen temples, in fact, is often so structured, regimented and heavily regulated as to quickly dispel the romanticism created by much of the literature about it. Far from being a hippie rendition of Buddhism, Zen discipleship can be demanding and severe.
But sometimes even misguided stereotypes are born from seeds of truth. Enter 15th century Japanese monk Ikkyu Sojun, who was truly as free, wild and allergic to authorities as advertised.… Read the rest


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VIEWS: 16 PAGES: 7 CATEGORY: Farm Service Agency POSTED ON: 9/3/2008
AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICES (ARS) PERFORMANCE MEASURES GOALS AND TARGETS December 4, 2007 0 Annual Operating Costs Goals and Targets The ARS goals and targets in support of the annual operating costs performance measure are listed below. The definition of annual operating costs (for property other than leased) consists of the following: 1) Recurring maintenance and repair costs; 2) Utilities (includes plant operation and purchase of energy); 3) Cleaning and/or janitorial costs (includes pest control, refuse collection and disposal to include recycling operations); and 4) Roads/grounds expenses (includes grounds maintenance, landscaping and snow and ice removal from roads, piers and airfields). 1.1.1 Goals for ARS Assets ARS will work to achieve a level of annual operating cost that provides the necessary operations and services to achieve and maintain the Agency's real property portfolio at a condition index of no less than 90 percent and ensure annual leased asset costs do not exceed the area industry standard cost at the time the lease is signed. 1.1.2 Target for Owned Buildings In FY 2007, ARS began tracking the cost per square foot of annual operating costs in owned buildings. To date operation and maintenance costs can not be pulled from Corporate Property Automated Information System (CPAIS); operation costs can only be viewed one asset at a time. The next version of CPAIS, scheduled for release in the 1st Quarter, FY 2008, will have increased capability to analyze performance measure data. ARS will be able to analyze FY 2007 operating costs at that time. Below are the Department's targets for annual operating costs per square foot. Target Cost/SF $5.65 $5.75 $5.85 Target Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Cost Per Square Foot (SF) for Annual Operating Costs in Owned Buildings USDA-wide Though we do not have access to our FY 2007 operating costs at this time, we know that ARS can not meet the Departments target listed above because of the higher energy requirements for many of our larger laboratories and animal research facilities. Many of these facilities require energy consumption 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 1 Deferred Maintenance (DM) Strategy An analysis of funding needs and current funding levels for ARS shows that it is unlikely that ARS will be able to reduce the aggregate amount of DM within the Agency for three reasons. First, the amount of maintenance and repair funding ARS receives is only 35% of the amount recommended by the Federal Facilities Council (FFC) and our contractor, Whitestone Research. This significant funding shortfall indicates that DM will continue to increase even if all available funding is focused solely on DM with no funds going to capital improvement work. Until maintenance and repair funding reaches the industry standard levels recommended by the FFC, required maintenance will not be funded, as needed, and DM will increase as additional maintenance is deferred. Second, ARS has accumulated a significant backlog of DM due to historic underfunding of maintenance and repair work. Reducing this backlog while simultaneously providing preventive maintenance and meeting immediate repair needs is not feasible at current funding levels. Third, ARS' asset portfolio is aged and maintenance and repair needs are likely to increase in future fiscal years as system components (HVAC, roofing, electrical, etc.) reach and exceed their useful life and must be replaced. However, ARS will work to limit the growth of the Agency's DM backlog in excess of the inflation rate published as the commercial standard for facilities as shown below. Target Growth Not To Exceed 3% + Infl. = 10-11% 3% + Infl. = TBD 3% + Infl. = TBD Target Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Limit Annual Growth Rate of Department's DM Costs USDA-wide ARS contracts facility assessments and the estimating of DM. In FY 2006 and FY 2007 this task was completed by Whitestone Research. ARS did not meet the FY 2007 Not to Exceed target of 11 percent. ARS' growth was 30 percent. The 30 percent growth was not just a result of low funding for maintenance and repair needs plus inflation, but a result of more accurate DM cost information with the completion of additional facility assessments. In FY 2007, onsite facility assessments were completed for an additional 10 percent of ARS facilities. The model for the remaining assets was improved and continues to be made more accurate. ARS has developed a DM plan that addresses the six action items below. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Prioritize Assets for Maintenance Funding Set Targets for Condition Indices Specify Frequency of Condition Surveys Develop Disposal Plans Develop Standard Budget Exhibits Provide Criteria/Guidance for Allocating Available Funding Between Capital Improvement, Maintenance and Repair, and Disposal Activities These elements are tools/activities that ARS will pursue to fully characterize individual assets and the asset portfolio. 2 1.1.3 Target for Leases ARS examines its leasing actions each year and does not have leases that exceed the accepted published industry average for the respective market area. ARS met the Department's FY 2007 target for leases. Percentage of Leasing Actions Meeting Target 80% 85% 90% Target Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Percentage of Leases Meeting the Criteria USDA-wide Disposal and Rightsizing Goals and Targets ARS has two performance measure goals and targets in support of this rightsizing effort and they are to improve the average utilization of the ARS portfolio and to reduce the number of unneeded assets. 1.1.4 Utilization Utilization is defined as the state of having been made use of, i.e., the rate of utilization. Utilization for each of the five Building Predominant Use categories, in accordance with the Federal Real Property Council (FRPC) data dictionary dated August 4th, is defined as follows: Offices - ratio of occupancy to current design capacity Hospitals – ratio of occupancy to current design capacity Warehouses – ratio of gross square feet occupied to current design capacity Laboratories – ratio of active units to current design capacity Housing – percent of individual units that are occupied. Note that ARS does not have hospitals. 3 1.1.5 Utilization Goal The goal of utilization is to continue to improve the average utilization of the ARS portfolio. The Department's target is to reduce the number of under-utilized and not-utilized assets in the inventory by percentages, based on the previous year's General Services Administration (GSA) Performance Assessment Tool, as shown below. Reduction Target 1% 1% 1% Target Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Percentage Reduction in Under/Not Utilized Assets USDA-wide Category Laboratory 2006 (%) Warehouse Office 2006 (%) 121 (75) 16 (10) 24 (15) 2007 (%) 113 (76) 15 (10) 21 (14) - Housing 2006 (%) 2007 (%) - 2007 2006 2007 (%) 338 (74) 45 (10) 37 (8) 39 (8) 459 (%) 754 (84) 85 (9) 16 (2) 46 (5) 901 (%) 736 (86) 70 (8) 20 (2) 34 (4) 860 Over-Utilized 373 (78) Utilized 30 (6) 37 (45) 46 (55) - 43 (52) 39 (48) - Under-Utilized 19 (4) Not Utilized 59 (12) Total 481 161 149 83 82 ARS number of Buildings in Each Category Overall ARS has reduced the number of real property assets in its portfolio, which ARS considers a step toward downsizing and reducing under and not utilized assets. All ARS utilization numbers were updated in FY 2007 as a part of the 5-Year Real Property Physical Inventory. 4 1.1.6 Disposal Plan The Agency's Disposal Plan is to reduce the number of unneeded assets in an effort to right-size the real property portfolio. The Department's target is to dispose of unneeded assets by the number and value listed below. Target 342/$73,500,000 402/$162,000,000 491/$162,000,000 Target Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Number and Value of Unneeded Assets Disposed of USDA-wide Disposing of unneeded assets Department-wide will eliminate DM as shown below. Amount $25,713,000 $33,684,000 $22,839,000 Fiscal Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Amount of DM Eliminated USDA-wide Disposed Assets FY 2007 43 Plant Replacement Value $12,090,587 Deferred Maintenance Eliminated $1,106,237 ARS FY 2007 Actual Disposal Data ARS exceeded its FY 2007 Disposal Plan target of 32 assets by removing 43 assets with a combined Plant Replacement Value (PRV) of $12,090,587 and $1,106,237 in DM. This is due in part to ARS Headquarters setting aside $200,000 to assist in the disposal of unneeded assets. ARS' Disposal Plan has identified disposal targets of 42 assets in FY 2008 ($11,974,827 PRV, $964,617 DM) and 80 assets in FY 2009 ($28,713,651 PRV, $2,611,662 DM). ARS will continue to utilize the General Services Administration (GSA) Performance Assessment (PA) Tool and CPAIS to identify assets with poor Performance Measures. When ARS Headquarters funds are available, FD submits a request to the Areas for disposal candidates. The Areas' list of proposed disposal actions are reviewed by FD to identify assets on ARS' Disposal Plan or the PA Tool list and then evaluates candidates using the Performance Measures in CPAIS. As of November 2007, there are 158 ARS buildings identified as Excess in CPAIS. Many of these buildings are located within existing ARS installations and cannot be declared excess to USDA or GSA. ARS is working to dispose of the 158 buildings by declaring excess to GSA when possible, or demolition as funds become available. 5 Condition Index Goals and Targets The condition index (CI) is a general measure of the constructed asset's condition at a specific point in time. CI is calculated as the ratio of Repair Needs to PRV. The formula is: CI = (1 $repair needs/$PRV) x 100. Repair need is the amount of funding necessary to ensure that a constructed asset is restored to a condition substantially equivalent to the originally intended and designed capacity, efficiency or capability. PRV (or functional replacement value) is the cost of replacing an existing asset at today's standards. ARS is working to maintain its overall CI of its real property portfolio at 89 percent which meets USDA's target. ARS will also work to bring the buildings identified as mission critical to an average CI of ≥ 95 percent (based on the PA tool model) by FY 2009. Average CI Target USDA 92 94 95 Target Year FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 Average CI of Mission Critical Buildings USDA-wide FY 2007 Results Asset Priority/Mission Dependency USDA CI FY 2007 Target ARS CI FY 2007 Reported Averages Mission Critical Mission Dependent, not Critical Not Mission Dependent 92% 88% 88% ARS FY 2007 Results for CI 91 % 88 % 93 %* *Note: Many Not Mission Dependent Assets are Residences. ARS will evaluate the assets that do not meet the Department's targets. A review of the Mission Dependency code will be made to determine if the asset is still required. ARS will target Mission Critical assets with low condition indexes for funding. 6


text: Hey yall Im just getting back into models have done a few Id really like to start building to a whole new level. I want to start building some pro stock,gassers and maybe some 70s style funny cars. My only problem is im not sure what should be replaced from box stock. My 1st build was thinking of doing the prostreet 57 chevy or the reissued Chi town hustler any suggestions where to start. I been looking in the drag racing thread and saw some amazing work from Tyrone and a few others I would love to build on that level. I do not have a lathe or no expensive tools like that but I do have the drive to try new stuff let me know where yall would start to build show quality models without getting overwhelmed !


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Fair housing: Liability for Your Association?
By Nan Roytberg
Could your association end up in court for publishing property listings in its MLS or on its Web site that inadvertently violate the Fair Housing Act? The answer
is yes. Here's one cautionary tale, along with some words of wisdom.
Advance Workforce Housing Initiatives
Like many counties across America, Loudoun County, Virginia, is known for its thriving business environment and exceptional quality of life. Yet it faces a housing challenge that could dramatically change the future—and face—of this area.
Over the past several years, Loudoun County's high-priced real estate market has rapidly exceeded the budgets of the county's workforce—teachers, law enforcement officers, and retail workers. The average home price climbed from $280,696 in 2000 to $514,787 by the end of 2006.
FHFA Releases Details on Strategic Plan Implementation
On March 9, 2012, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA, the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the GSEs) released details on the implementation of the new FHFA strategic plan through the use of a "2012 Conservatorship Scorecard".
Freddie Mac Reinforces Deficiency Release Policy
On February 15, 2012, Freddie Mac released an update to its servicing guide, reinforcing the requirement that servicers must waive all rights to seek deficiencies for short sale and deed-in-lieu of foreclosure transactions on Freddie Mac Mortgages.
FHFA Inspector General Reports on Mortgage Servicing Supervision
On March 7, 2012, the Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General (FHFA-OIG) released a report on FHFA's supervision of Freddie Mac.
Fannie Mae Announces Pending Changes for Lender Place Insurance
On March 6, 2012, Fannie Mae announced that it will soon implement policy changes to its Lender-Placed Insurance (LPI) requirements.


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Encouraging Reading
Now that your daughter no longer "needs" you to read Goodnight Moon, do you still have a place in her reading life? Absolutely.
"I think it is important for an older child to spend some time reading aloud to a parent and for a parent to continue to read aloud to the child," says Bausch. "As children move up in the grades the texts they are reading become more demanding and sophisticated. Oftentimes there is a dialect to be negotiated, 'voices' to be heard, and punctuation to be understood . . . . Practicing fluency by reading aloud, hearing as well as saying the words, encourages the internalization of language."
Parents are also vital in other ways: providing magazines, newspapers, and other reading material in the home; asking children about what they are reading in school in order to generate excitement and literary conversations; looking out for spur-of-the-moment reading opportunities such as road signs, food labels, and menus; and taking children to the library on a regular basis. But perhaps the greatest way a parent can influence a child's attitude towards reading is by being a role model.
"A child, whether younger or older, will see that reading is important to a parent or caregiver if he sees them reading," says Bausch. "If you love to read and are curious about your world, your child will be too!"
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More than 50 different models of head and jamb door protection are available to protect against smoke, fire, sound, and air infiltration.
Fixed and adjustable systems are available. Options include brush, sponge, closed cell, neoprene, magnet inserts, and intumescent, as well as aluminum, bronze, anodized, steel, and custom housings.
Spot Coolers commercial portable heating & cooling. Nationwide Emergency service 24/7. Your source for portable air conditioning rentals and sales.
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The FARO Focus3D X 330 Laser Scanner is the perfect tool for 3D documentation of as-built conditions for architectural, construction, and engineering applications and projects. http://www.faro.com/focus
Red Hawk: A comprehensive range of contemporary fire and security solutions. One that's just right for your business. That's the power of experience. www.redhawkus.com