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Waddell Reliant Series Case
The Reliant Series combines the strength and durability of aluminum with the engaging look of wood. Anodized aluminum framing secures the sliding tempered glass doors, while a built-in lock helps secure contents inside. The base of the case is hand crafted with durable furniture grade vinyl laminate, ensuring that this case will stand up to the test of time.
Waddell Reliant Series Case
Weights & Dimensions
Product Type: Trophy display case | Style: Floor standing |
Frame Material: Metal | Display Material: Glass |
Wheels Included: No | Doors Included: Yes
Shelving Included: Yes
| Country of Manufacture: United States |
About the Manufacturer
The difference between a Waddell case and others is in the details. At Ghent Manufacturing, they never cut corners on product quality. A typical Waddell Display Case features such premium items as tempered glass exteriors, built-in door locks, steel shelving hardware, adjustable shelves, built-in floor levelers, and ISTA-approved packaging. Compare for yourself and you soon discover why people refuse to showcase their proudest accomplishments in anything less.Waddell offers you hundreds of models in a variety of hardwood and metal finishes, and designs which appeal to both traditional and contemporary tastes. Whether you select a free standing or wall-mounted case, you can confidently invest in a Waddell Display Case as a permanent showcase for prized trophies and treasured symbols of success.
Back in 1889 when Waddell made its debut; people traveled by horse and buggy, bread cost pennies a loaf, and furniture was built with an artisan's pride. Much has changed over the years, yet the tradition for quality craftsmanship lives on at Ghent Manufacturing. For over 110 years, a Waddell Display Case has represented the best!
Using only the finest materials, Ghent Manufacturing craftsmen combine today's technology with yesterday's personal commitment to construct display and trophy cases with the look and quality of fine furniture. Schools, businesses, libraries, museums, and institutions choose Waddell cases to promote enduring pride and enthusiasm for their vaulted accomplishments. When you select the strength, durability, beauty and tradition of Waddell, your legends will live on.
Waddell Reliant Series Case
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Customer Reviews
5 star | 1 | |
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1 star | 0 |
Great discription Helen from Juliette, GA– Verified Buyer This case was wide enough to display all out plaques and awards. It is sturdy and brackets fit snugly so you're sure the glass will hold what you're displaying. |
Reliant Series Case is also sometimes listed under the following manufacturer numbers: 2076MB-BZ-LV, 2076MB-BZ-WV, 2076MB-GD-LV, 2076MB-GD-WV, 2076MB-SN-LV, 2076MB-SN-WV, 2076PB-BZ-LV, 2076PB-BZ-WV, 2076PB-GD-LV, 2076PB-GD-WV, 2076PB-SN-LV, 2076PB-SN-WV, 2076WB-BZ-LV, 2076WB-BZ-WV, 2076WB-GD-LV, 2076WB-GD-WV, 2076WB-SN-LV, 2076WB-SN-WV


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Instant analysis: Georgia 51, Tennessee 44
September, 29, 2012
Chris Low | ESPN.com
ATHENS, GA. -- In a wild shootout that featured more than 1,000 yards of total offense, No. 5 Georgia hung on to defeat Tennessee 51-44 on Saturday at Sanford Stadium.
It was over when: Georgia's Jordan Jenkins stripped Tennessee quarterback Tyler Bray of the ball, and John Jenkins recovered for the Bulldogs at their own 32 with 1:22 to play. Georgia had to punt the ball back to Tennessee, but Bray was intercepted by a diving Sanders Commings with seven seconds remaining.
Game ball goes to: Georgia freshman running back Keith Marshall rushed for 164 yards on 10 carries and had touchdown runs of 75 and 72 yards.
Stat of the game: Georgia has scored 40 or more points in all five of its games this season.
Stat of the game II: Bray turned the ball over on each of Tennessee's last three offensive possessions -- two interceptions and a fumble.
Unsung hero: Commings had two interceptions for the Bulldogs, both coming in the fourth quarter.
What it means: Georgia (5-0, 3-0) hangs on to stay unbeaten heading into next week's big Eastern Division showdown with South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. Tennessee (3-2, 0-2) gets a week off before traveling to Mississippi State on Oct. 13 in a game that will swing the Vols' season one way or the other.
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subset: commoncrawl


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CANINE (The Complete Article Nine) is a unique set of learning materials designed to assist both law students and lawyers to be effective Article 9 practitioners. It consists of a comprehensive collection of text and interactive problems modeled after a conventional casebook or treatise.
Download the text and problems: DOWNLOAD.
Download a printable PDF of the book chapters (excludes the problems): PDF.
The text is designed to be used with a commercially available set of commercial law statutes. The online version has the same content as found in the hardcopy, but in addition it provides hyperlinks that allow users to pull up statutory and secondary references and a keyword search capability.
The interactive problem sets found at the end of each chapter are likely to be the most valuable section for students, and may be done as stand-alone exercises. In the online version they provide the immediate feedback that is so important for effective learning. The tailoring of feedback to fit a user's level of expertise and understanding allows a user to proceed at his or her own pace and to reexamine questions and feedback as the user may wish.
Lesson Completion Time
Access to CALI Lessons is restricted to people affiliated with CALI member organizations and those who have purchased individual memberships. You may register or login to run CALI Lessons.


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On an Argentine Torrontes and how critics come up with those numbers
I drank a very nice wine from Argentina last night, Michel Torino 2013 Don David Finca La Primavera #3 ($23), made from the Torrontes grape. It was quite delicious, offering layers of lime, quince and tangerine, with wonderfully brisk acidity, and while there was a honeyed richness, the finish was absolutely dry.
After 25 years of tasting mostly California wines, I now have the time to branch out. When I tasted that Don David (not blind!), my first thought was to compare it to what I know best: California. Had you given it to me without telling me what it was, I might have guessed Pinot Gris—or Sauvignon Blanc—possibly Chenin Blanc–but not quite. It had oakiness, but in a balanced, low-key way. Gorgeous acidity, too, mouthwatering and clean. There was minerality, but also something vegetal, not in a bad way, but in a wonderful way. I know this sounds weird, but it reminded me of lightly salted cream of broccoli soup. What's not to like about that?
I liked it so much I looked to see if it had been reviewed in Wine Enthusiast, and there it was. The review was by my former colleague, Mike Schachner, who covers South America and Spain. He gave it 89 points and wrote: "This single-vineyard Salta Torrontés is virtually as good as it gets for the variety. Pure lychee, lime and mineral aromas precede a crisp, focused palate. Flavors of steely citrus are chiseled, while the finish is long and juicy. Drink prior to fall 2014."
(Note: Salta is a region in Argentina. I have no idea if the name if related to salt, but there was definitely a saline character to the Don David that added to its savory character.)
I always admired Michael's palate, and I thought, Wow, he really nailed it. I, personally, might have mentioned the honey, since the impression of sweetness is, it seems to me, a vital one to convey to readers. But that's just me. And I also totally supported Michael's judgment that the wine is best enjoyed soon. Its delicate structure, and rich fruit will fall apart sooner rather than later.
I mention all this because I'm fascinated by the concept of consumers having so many multiple sources of wine reviews. In addition to all the major wine magazines and newsletters, we have, at last count, 1.3 gazillion bloggers who review wine, not to mention the people who write all those shelf talkers at supermarkets and wine stores. If I put myself into the shoes of the wine consumer trying to figure out what to buy, I feel total sympathy if they feel dazed and confused.
I wondered about Michael's 89 points. For those of us who work (or used to work) the 100-point system, the biggest decision in our everyday job is whether to give a wine 89 points or 90 points. That is the dividing line between life and death. I don't work in sales, but I've been told for many years that 90 points is the cut-off for many buyers. If you're trying to sell a 90-point wine from a major publication, it's not that hard. If it's below 90 points, well, good luck.
Had I formally reviewed the Don David, blind (as I'm sure Michael did), I think I would have given it an initial rating of 89 points too. Let me try to explain my rationale. The message of an 89-point rating is "This is a really good wine. If you drink it under the right circumstances, it can be a fantastic wine. However, objectively, and tasted by itself under laboratory circumstances, it fails—by a hair—to rise to the standards of what I consider a wine worthy of scoring in the nineties."
I don't know the details of how Michael considers, or reconsiders, his scores, or how long he takes for each review. But once I had given that Don David an initial 89 points, I suspect I would have raised it to 90 points, maybe an hour or so later, because I liked it so much. I would have put it in the fridge and then, unable to stop thinking about it, I would have tried it again, and given it the extra magic point simply because it had fired up my imagination.
Is that fair—I mean, to give a wine a second chance or reconsideration? Maybe not. But it happens with all critics, whether they admit it or not. I point all this out simply to illuminate the somewhat capricious nature of critical reviews. A score is serious business, and should be considered so by readers. But it should also be taken into context for what it is: fungible. Today's 88 can be tomorrow's 92, tomorrow's 100 can be yesterday's 92. It all depends. But it's also important to understand that critics have been known to "adjust" their scores to keep them consistent with past ones, and if you don't believe that, there's a bridge in San Francisco I'd like to sell you.
Post-Haas School thoughts
We did my annual tasting and seminar last week at the U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business's Wine Club, "we" being myself and Randy Ullum, K-J's head winemaker.
I've long been a fan of Randy. I included him in my 2008 book, "New Classic Winemakers of California," which I organized by the decade when the winemaker began his or her career. Randy was part of the 1980s section that also included (for good measure), Bob Levy, Heidi Peterson Barrett, and the brains behind Shafer, Doug Shafer and Elias Fernandez.
What a decade that was. I'll write more about it soon, but for now, I just want to say how the boutique winery movement of the 1960s and 1970s might have fizzled out, were it not for the energy the Eighties gave it. Like a shot in the arm, you might say, with the brilliance of Napa Valley now being—if not joined, then at least other regions were permitted to co-star in the play.
What I admired then about Randy, and still do, was his ability to craft small-lot wines alongside something like Vintner's Reserve. And not just any small lots, but really great wine. Randy's also a humorous, affable guy, and it was obvious the future MBAs at Haas liked him. The laughed a lot more at his jokes than they did at mine!
The cool thing about hanging out with the Millennials /Gen Yers who comprise the Haas Wine Club is that they offer a window into tomorrow's smart wine consumers. They're also tomorrow's well-to-do wine drinkers; an MBA from Haas School ain't chopped liver! So it's interesting to know what they're thinking.
Most wine tastings and seminars are given for an older crowd: for example, the folks who pay big bucks to go to something like the World of Pinot Noir. They are more or less settled into their ways. They'll go to a Burgundy seminar because they like and collect Burgundy. Their minds are made up, you could say; older drinkers are not as open as younger ones to new wines, or from places they may be unfamiliar with. This is why there's no event in California called World of Pinotage or World of Trebbiano or World of Croatia.
But Millennials are wide open when it comes to preferences. That's why they're such a huge target for wine marketers, who believe that, if they can catch a fan at a young age, they've got a customer for life.
Randy tasted the group, which numbered about 60, through five various tiers of Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay, from Vintner's Reserve up to small production, vineyard-designated bottlings. The students were eager to learn, asking lots of good questions. I know, from having done this class for the last 7 or 8 years, that among them, you'll find varying degrees of wine knowledge. Some are absolute neophytes, while others have done a lot of tasting and reading. When you're doing a seminar like that, you have to try and make everyone happy. In the case of the Haas School Wine Club, it's never hard. They're a very un-snobby bunch, but at the same time they're there to learn. I would rather speak to people like that, who have few if any preconceptions about what's good or bad, important or unimportant, and just want to soak up every bit of knowledge they can.
I never rehearse for such classes. What's the point? I like to keep things impromptu, on the theory that what's real is better than a canned speech. And besides, those kids' questions keep it real. I don't have any problem thinking on my feet, which is probably partly because I'm from The Bronx (if you're not on your feet in The Bronx, you're on your back), but also because I have a lot of thoughts in my head all the time about wine—or about the particular wine topics I'm interested in—so it's easy for me to expound on them. Just don't let me go on too long!
I covered the first part of the two-hour class; these Haas students always are interested in things pertaining to being a wine critic. Then Randy took over, and he was smart enough to realize that the class would be interested in some of the business-related aspects of the K-J company. So he intertwined talk about that, even while he presented a thorough tasting and explanation of the various terroirs from which the Chardonnays came.
My favorite among the five Chards (with all due respect to the others) was the 2012 Camelot Highlands, from Santa Maria Valley. I've given that wine 90-plus scores over nine vintages, a pretty good track record for a Chardonnay. My readers know I'm a Chardonnay guy anyway, but that Camelot, which is from the so-called Tepusquet Bench of the valley, a hop and skip away from Bien Nacido (Cambria is inbetween), is one I could drink all the time.
As for my new gig, well, so many of you want to know how it's going that I'll report here from time to time. In short, it's great. I'm settling into the new routine, which continues to evolve in the scope of my responsibilities. One of the best parts is that K-J encourages me to bring Gus along with me (for the most part—obviously there are limitations), whereas at my last job, Gus could sometimes be an issue. As I've said before, a challenge of my former profession was to get people to see me as me, not their image of me. I never liked that part of the job—being defined by my job. I respected people for seeing me that way, but I always tried to show them the real me. I think all well-known wine critics feel the same way. The job description comes with humility. Or at least, it had better.
The internationalization of style is no friend of blind tasting
The embarrassment of mistaking a California Pinot Noir for Merlot, or a Merlot for a Zinfandel or Petite Sirah, or a Malbec for Cabernet Sauvignon, can be acute, for someone known as a wine critic. Surely a person of that stature should be able to tell the difference between major varieties!
Well, not necessarily. When I was reviewing 15 wines a day, blind, I would sometimes include different varietals in the lineup and try to figure them out. My success rate was good but not great, although I will say that I had a far easier time discerning the wine's inherent quality, regardless of what grapes constituted it.
Why do we think we ought to be able to identify varieties blind? Who put that idea into our heads? In my case it came from reading the books of the great, primarily British wine writers of the last 100 years. They made such a fuss of the differences between, say, Saint-Estephe and Margaux, or Musigny and Nuits-Saint-Georges, not to mention the Rhône Valley which was a bit of a mystery to them, that one such as I, who had aspirations of my own, felt compelled to develop that unerring palate of detailed perspicacity.
It helped to fuel this ambition to taste with vintners who crafted different wines from neighboring vineyards, or even from blocks within the same vineyard. They would tell me of the huge differences between the wines—differences which I found, often as not, to be less than huge. Counter-balancing this was the occasional blind tasting in which vintners could not identify even their own wines! But overall, by the late 1980s I had the thought firmly lodged in my mind that a writer ought to be able to distinguish between different varieties, and, at a higher order of magnitude, between different terroirs of the same variety.
At the same time, for going on thirty years now writers of greater stature than I were expressing the opinion that, in California at least, everything was starting to taste like everything else. This was especially true of red wines. Gerald Asher was one such. In the Preface to his 1986 "On Wine," a compilation of articles he'd written for Gourmet magazine, Gerald noted that the "universal sophistication" of winemaking technique—"stainless steel, cultured yeasts, temperature-controlled fermentation and clarification by centrifuge" [he might have included picking the grapes riper]—had "imposed the dominant grapy fragrance that brings out similarities in modern wines rather than the bold differences we knew." He sounds here wistful for a gauzy past (in his case, it would have been the late 1940s and 1950s) when distinctions between appellations were clear and distinct, a situation that apparently had passed by the mid-1980s, when "We find red Graves…that taste like tannic Beaujolais." !!! As anecdotal proof of this phenomenon of sameness, Gerald cites a Spanish winemaker who told him that "Liebfraumilch was his criterion in making and judging his white Valdepeñas," an eyebrow-raiser Gerald said was "the inevitable result of marketing wine instead of selling it."
(Gerald himself wrote self-mockingly about mistaking a Petrus '64 for a Rutherford Cab, admitting that he should have—but didn't—wonder who could possibly have been making Napa Cabernet in that style at that time! But then, logic is seldom able to penetrate the fortress-walls of preconception.)
Whether it's due to marketing, or something else, there can be no doubt that wines from anywhere and everywhere resemble each other more than they used to. Thus the writer/critic may be excused for failing to correctly nail all the contestants in a blind tasting! He can always attribute this to the internationalization of style.
I therefore years ago stopped playing the guessing game in blind tasting, arguing with myself that it was a parlor trick. Far more important than identifying varietal tastes and flavors, for me at any rate, is assessing a wine's balance. This is why I never criticized a wine for being varietally "incorrect." Who cares if a Merlot is not particularly Merlot-like as long as it's luscious? I've drank and enjoyed Pinot Noirs that were dark and fruity as Grenache. I've sipped Sauvignon Blancs that were oaky and creamy and fruity in the finish that might have been Chardonnay. I've had Cabernets as peppery as Syrah, and Petite Sirahs that were as smooth as Cabernet. If the wines were balanced, they were good, and I said so in my reviews, always wondering why this atypicity bothered some critics so much.
Which raises, of course, the question, What then is the difference between a 95 point wine and an 88 point one? Writers have tried for centuries to describe what lifts one wine above another to which it might bear a close resemblance. In fact the Writer's Full Employment Act is predicated on this very challenge. It has to do with a quality of mouthfeel; the only way to explain it is through analogy. It's the difference in the fabric of a fine Italian suit and one you buy at Sears. The difference between a weed and a bonsai. It's the difference between Beethoven played by the San Francisco Symphony as against a high school student orchestra. It's an experiential quality, intellectual in its most basic form, and it requires experience on the part of the taster to learn to recognize it. (This sounds snobby but isn't really.)
Is it difficult to reconcile the twin facts of an internationalization of style with degrees of quality? I don't think so. Styles come and go, but fundamental quality always remains, whether it was the wines of ancient Greece and Rome, the Bordeaux of the 19th century or the wines of modern California. As Jamie Goode writes in his current blog, "Balance is important in wine, and it's a style call," which makes it, in his words, "quite personal." Of course, it was easier in past decades and centuries, when all the important tastemakers agreed on what was "balanced" and what wasn't; there were just a handful of them (mostly in the English wine trade), and no one would have thought to challenge them. Today, of course, we have a proliferation of wine writers, so ambitious, which makes things more confusing than ever. If someone says something, someone else ridicules it, and the debate goes viral. This is hardly the way to arrive at reasonable conclusions. The anchor of authority regrettably is getting lost, in favor of the flotsam of the masses. Whether this is a good or bad development has yet to be determined.
Wednesday wraparound: the perils of prejudice, and the limits of social media
1961 was, as all Bordeaux lovers know, one of those "vintages of the century" when nearly all the chateaux produced rich, ageworthy wines. However, one chateau, La Lagune, a Third Growth of the Médoc that has had a stellar reputation, apparently didn't fare so well among critics. Eddie Penning-Rowsell, in The Wines of Bordeaux, wrote that the winery "probably over-sugared the [1961] wine, as it has struck me as excessively sweet." Michael Broadbent, in The Great Vintage Wine Book, chose not to review it in depth at all, and merely listed it, along with several dozen others, as not tasted recently. Oz Clarke, in his New Encyclopedia of French Wines, wrote that "the experts say that 1961 wasn't a success at La Lagune," although he himself, tasting it decades later, liked it enough to buy 8-1/2 cases.
Then there was Harry Waugh who, in his 1970 diary, Pick of the Bunch, referred to his visit to Chateau Bouscaut, in the Graves, where the proprietor opened a 1962 La Lagune. "With my recollection of the, shall I say, 'curious' 1961 vintage of that Chateau, I was reluctant to try it," Harry wrote, delicately; he must have reviewed it in one of his diaries I do not own, but it cannot have been a good review. Most likely, if we are to believe Penning-Rowsell, if the wine indeed had been over-chaptalised, Harry, who liked his Bordeaux classically dry, would not have cared for it.
Harry did, however, drink that '62 La Lagune and found it "both charming and delicious…". He concluded: I "had to eat my words…The prejudices one can form are really frightening!"
It is those "prejudices" I wish to write about today. Harry had formed a prejudice against La Lagune that rose up in his mind as soon as he saw the bottle of 1962. Fortunately, Harry was a fair enough taster that he was able to overcome that prejudice and appreciate the beauty of the '62. But can we say that of all professional tasters? Indeed, "frightening" is not too strong a word to describe the attitudes of some of them, whose condemnation of certain wines, based on their presuppositions, is all the more pernicious due to their influence.
* * *
Good friend Adam Japko, from Digital Sherpa, sent me this link to an article on CEOs using social media "to drive business results." Adam is, of course, very high on social media and a passionate explicator of it. The article profiles 5 CEOs who use social media a lot; it goes on to explain in each case how that use "helps drive business results."
I suspect Adam sent me the link because he (like some others who know me) thinks I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to social media and ROI. Notice I said "ROI" rather than "driving business results," because I think the two are vastly different. We all understand what ROI means because it's about money and can be measured. Unfortunately the article doesn't define the meaning of "driving business results," so we really have no way of knowing if, say, Doug Conant's 24,000 Twitter followers are having any impact on Avon's bottom line: are his tweets selling more cosmetics, jewelry, watches? Maybe yes, maybe no; it's hard for me, at any rate, to make that leap. The article suggests, logically, that Conant's commitment to social media "is passed on to executives and all [Avon] employees" by dint of his leadership position, but again, just how that translates into increased sales isn't entirely clear. If we actually knew what "driving business results" meant, we might, however, be able to come to a definitive conclusion!
As I've said before, I too encourage all professionals to use social media, as often as feels comfortable. It can't hurt; it can only help. I myself use it all the time. And my new employer, Jackson Family Wines, is a firm believer in social media; in fact, part of my job is to write for their blogs. I suppose they feel that, given the success I've made of steveheimoff.com, I know a thing or two! (And so do they. Remember "A Really Goode Job"? That made social media history.)
If, as Fortune Magazine reports, "70% of Fortune 500 CEOs aren't using social media," that's pretty shocking to me: they should be. But you have to ask yourself why they're not; after all, these are not stupid men and women. It may be that these CEOs have determined that all the commotion about social media is overblown. On the other hand, they may actually be missing the bus—so overwhelmed by their own sense of genius that they think social media is a ridiculous hobby for only the "little people" who have too much time on their hands. Or—a third possibility—maybe they feel they can just hire employees to do the social media thing, and they don't have to do it themselves.
It would be nice to have a time machine and see how all this shakes out by, say, 2025. In all my life, I've never seen a societal trend whose future, with all its consequences, is as hard to predict, as that of social media. Sometimes when I fantasize about it, all I can think of is humans getting hard-wired with computer chips in our brains, connected all the time to the Matrix.
Tasting mountain wines in San Francisco
Some blind tastings confirm what you know. Others do just the opposite, bringing a wrecking ball to your presuppositions. The best blind tastings are a little of both.
That was the case at yesterday's "Altitude Matters" tasting, in San Francisco's Financial District, where Stonestreet winemaker Graham Weerts and Gillian Handelman, Jackson Family Farms' Director of Wine Education, presided over a blind tasting of six wines–four reds, two whites–about which we knew nothing, except that they could have come from anywhere in the world, but from elevations of at least 1,000 feet–and, presumably, that at least one of them was a Stonestreet wine, although not even that was assured.
The objective, Graham explained, was not necessarily to identify what variety or varieties the grapes were, or even where they came from, as this: To discern if we could "tie together" some themes common to the wines, which then might provide a better context for understanding all high altitude wines.
High altitude grapegrowing is itself marked by certain conditions, based on the nature of the terrain. Soils tend to be depleted; water is scarce; the roots of the vines find easy proximity to minerals in the soil, but, on the other hand, the grapes' exposure to sunlight, and particularly ultraviolet light, is greatened. In the case of Stonestreet, whose vineyards are on Alexander Mountain above the Alexander Valley, the grapes often are above the fogs that swathe the valley and lower elevations, making daytime temperatures warmer, especially in the mornings. But due to the famous effects of temperature inversion, nighttime lows are higher than on the valley floor, making for more consistent overall conditions. Because the grapes struggle, they develop thick skins, hence bigger (often much bigger) tannins than valley floor grapes, but they also, oddly, develop higher acidity. These are all major factors in determining the flavors, textures and longevity of mountain wines; yet, as Graham took pains to state, "We're not saying mountain wines are better, just different."
Here are the six wines and some comments about them:
Picher Achleiten 2012 Gruner Veltliner. I didn't know it was Gruner but neither did anyone else, to judge by the comments (the attendees, numbering about 50, seemed mostly to be somms). I liked the wine's dryness, grace and power, its amazing minerality and acidity, as well as a touch of green pyrazine.
Finca Dofi 2011 Priorat. This was a massive wine, rich in iron and black currants, with grippy tannins and big acidity. I didn't even try to guess what it was, but just marveled at its power.
Telle Nere 2011 Etna Rosso. Made from variations of the Nerello grape, this might have been a Northern Rhône Syrah, for all the grilled meat and black pepper notes. But, nope, it's from Sicily.
Stonestreet 2010 Rockfall Cabernet Sauvignon. I knew it was a distinguished, young wine, probably Cabernet. But with all that graphite and conifer going on, I missed its California origins.
Chave 2008 Hermitage. This was the tightest, most reserved wine of the tasting. I could barely get anything out of it for the first 30 minutes it sat in the glass. Then crushed blackberries and black licorice emerged. One or two of the somms got this right.
Stonestreet 2011 Upper Barn Chardonnay. I knew this instantly: that bright acidity, the pellucid mouthfeel, as pure as mountain stream water, the lemon verbena, peach and honey flavors that finish so dry. Surely it was a Stonestreet Chardonnay from a recent vintage.
But wait. This shows how psychology factors in. We already knew that Wine D was a Stonestreet. Would Graham have included two Stonestreets in a six-wine tasting? Thus I began to doubt myself. When Gillian asked for comments, I raised my hand and said I thought it was a Stonestreet Chardonnay, but, given Wine D, I was prepared for it to be something else.
Well, of course, Graham did include two Stonestreet wines, so it was gratifying to have gotten at least one of the lineup correct. It needs also to be said that I was impressed by how much the somms knew of such a wide range of world wines. I, by contrast, probably was more familiar with the world's wines before I became a specialist in California wine. There's only so much time in the day, and my emphasis, bordering on obsession, on tasting California wine leaves me few days in the year to taste much else. Afterwards, I was with my wonderful colleague at Wine Enthusiast, Virginie Boone, and I told her how much I admired the somms' knowledge.
"Yes," Virginie replied, "but they probably wouldn't recognize a Lodi Zinfandel." Touché.
What linked all six mountain wines?
-Not entirely fruit-driven, but herbs and minerals
-Great structure, including acidity (none of the wines was adjusted)
Lessons relearned from the recent ZAP tasting in San Francisco
At the ZAP "Flights! Forums of Flavors" last Friday, I was again reminded of how much "set and setting" impact one's experience of wine.
It was a pretty straightforward tasting: Wines poured for us at the table, a panel of winemakers upfront. One of the flights was from Monte Rosso Vineyard: the wines were from Charter Oak, Amapola Creek (what a pleasure to see Richard Arrowood again!), Rock Wall, Louis M. Martini and Robert Biale.
Now, Monte Rosso despite its fabulous reputation has always been a problematic vineyard for me. It is famous (infamous? notorious?) for the high alcohol of its wines (which is why that particular flight was the final of the three-flight tasting. It's a good idea to hold the biggest wines for last). Curiously–and I'm not sure why–Monte Rosso reds also are high in acidity. (Maybe someone can explain that.) I've certainly given some high scores over the years to Monte Rosso wines–my highest ever was Sbragia's 2006 Cabernet, which I gave 95 points. The official alcohol on that wine was 14.9%. It was a dark, big, rich, smoky wine, with years and years of life, which is why I gave it a Cellar Selection designation in my Wine Enthusiast review.
The highest score I ever gave to a Monte Rosso Zinfandel was Rosenblum's 2004, which I gave 93 points. (My readers probably know that when Kent Rosenblum sold his winery to Diageo, he created Rock Wall.) I've also given high scores to several of Louis M. Martini's Monte Rosso Zins and Cabs, as well as Arrowood's (which Richard Arrowood owned before starting Amapola).
On the other hand, at times the alcohol of Monte Rosso has overwhelmed me. The best score I could muster for Muscardini's 2010 Zin, which had 15.5% of alcohol, was 85 points–a "good" score but not a great one. It was just too hot and prickly. The worst score I ever gave a Monte Rosso Zin was Brazin's 2007, an otherwise great vintage. Its alcohol officially was 15%, and, as I wrote, it was "Too ripe, with pruny, raisiny flavors that are Porty and hot in high-alcohol, glyceriney heaviness."
That's Monte Rosso for you. Balancing the vineyard's tendency to be excessively high in brix (especially in Zinfandel), with associated overripeness, is part of the winemaker's challenge. He or she can water the wine down, not an ideal solution, but sometimes necessary and effective. He or she also can be severely selective in sorting out overripe (or underripe) berries (Zinfandel in particular can have unevenly ripened grapes on the same bunch), but that is labor intensive and expensive and not everyone is very diligent at it.
The best Monte Rosso wines, it seems to me, are produced by the best winemakers. That may sound obvious, but winemakers, like all of us, vary in their abilities. For the "Flights!" tasting, ZAP chose some of the best winemakers in California. (Joel Peterson, of Ravenswood, moderated all three flights, but I don't know if he personally selected the wines. At any rate, he did a great job.) This is a shorthand way of saying that I found all the wines terrific. (I missed the first flight. The second one was Zinfandels from the Bedrock Vineyard, which is partly owned by Joel).
As much as I explored the intricacies of the wines I also explored the intricacies of my thoughts. You can't separate the taster's basic state of consciousness from his experience of the wine, which is what I referred to in the "set and setting" reference in my opening sentence. "Set and setting," people of a certain generation (mine) will recall, was how Dr. Timothy Leary described the twin factors that influenced a person's experience of taking LSD. The "set" was the sum total of the person's inner life (expectations, fears, understanding, hopes, traumas, etc.). The "setting" was the external environment. Obviously, if a person dropped acid in the midst of absolute chaos (crazed clown killers, policemen, screaming babies, earthquake, you get the idea), the person would in all likelihood not have a pleasant trip.
My preferred "set and setting" for reviewing wine is this: I like to be warm and relaxed. I like to be healthy: it's not good to review wine if you have the flu. Externally, I like to be in the comfort and safety of my home, practicing my usual routines. Under these circumstances, my "set and setting" are tuned to maximum performance. This also encourages consistency of routine, which is important in judging wines.
Obviously, both my "set" and my "setting" were drastically different at the "Flights!" tasting. My setting was not home, but a ballroom in the Four Seasons Hotel, packed with people. I wouldn't say I was unrelaxed, but I certainly didn't experience the utter relaxation and familiarity of being at home (with Gus at my feet if not in my lap). Then too, being in a public sphere, and having a certain visibility in this industry, is a personal feeling my fellow critics can appreciate. Thus, both my set and setting were discombobulated–not so much that I couldn't deal with the wines, but enough so that I was clearly thrown off routine.
The simple fact (it occurred to me during the Monte Rosso flight) was that I was finding the wines better than I thought I would have, had I tasted them at home. That's what I meant by saying that I was exploring the intricacies of my thoughts. I remember at one point during that flight thinking, "Can they all be this good?", because I suspected that at home I would have found some of them too high in alcohol. This of course raises the question of what does "too high in alcohol" mean? As several of the winemakers observed, in response to Joel Peterson asking them if they thought "alcohol destroys terroir," the answer is, It depends. If the wine is balanced in all its parts, then alcohol, even well into the 15s or even 16s, is perfectly acceptable (unless you're just an anti-alcohol fascist). Richard Arrowood put it best: "If you didn't know the alcohol levels [of the Monte Rosso Zins], you'd never guess." And, as Shauna Rosenblum pointed out, in the case of Monte Rosso "alcohol is essential to terroir."
The idea of reviewing a wine is to get as close as you can to knowing "what the wine really is." But there's a Heisenbergian uncertainty about it, not necessarily because the wine isn't "what it really is," but because of the vagaries of human perception, which are so susceptible to derangement by the influences of "set and setting." This is why as controlled an environment for tasting as can possibly be arranged is the only suitable way of doing it, and also why the critic has to understand his limitations, as well as trust in his abilities.


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Amid Greek debt crisis, Iceland still recovering from its own collapse
While Greece battles its debt crisis, Iceland – where major banks collapsed in the wake of the global financial meltdown – is gearing up for a referendum on whether its taxpayers will shoulder the burden of paying back billions of dollars of debt.
Reykjavik, Iceland
Looking on as Greeks took to the streets in recent days in protest at an economic crisis often blamed on powerful individuals and forces beyond the control of ordinary citizens, many Icelanders must have felt a sense of déjà-vu.
A little more than a year has passed since Iceland became the 2008 global financial meltdown's worst casualty when all three of its major banks collapsed and the government was toppled.
While the spotlight this week fell on Athens, where the rulers of debt-stricken Greece are braced for a public backlash against severe spending cuts and hundreds of finance and customs ministry workers took the streets on Wednesday to protest budget cuts, those behind Iceland's own citizen uprising against their country's banking and political elites insist that anger is still bubbling away here.
"We are not asking for people to be executed but we want them to face the consequences for what they did," says Hordur Torfason, a folk singer and key instigator of the "saucepan revolution" – so called because of the kitchen implements participants took along to bang outside Iceland's parliament.
Sipping coffee in a bustling cafe yards from where he led the protests, Torfason indicates that the next spark for a resurgence in popular anger may be just weeks away.
In what could be a perfect political storm, an eagerly-awaited official report into Iceland's "riches to rags" economic crisis will be published days before a referendum planned for March 6 on a hugely unpopular deal to pay billions of dollars to Britain and the Netherlands arising from the collapse of an Icelandic online bank.
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TweakTown News
Refine News by Category:RAM Posts - Page 11
Intel demonstrates 512MB Hybrid Memory Cube DRAM operating at 1Tb/s
Earlier today in Taipei we attended the Intel Innovation & Research Forum 2011 where bigwigs from Intel Labs were in town to showcase what they have in store for the future of computing. Besides announcing further cooperation with research institutes in Taiwan, they also had some super techy and nerdy demonstrates on display in the showcase area of the event.
One demonstration that quickly caught our attention was the Hybrid Memory Cube display which was showcasing potential future memory technology in the mainstream running at a stunning 1Tb/s or 128GB/s.
Not only is the memory able to operate super-fast at around 12 times faster than DDR3-1333 (10.66GB/s) and DDR4-2667 (21.34GB/s) at around 6 times faster, it also uses less power per bit. DDR3-1333 uses 53.98 pj/bit and Intel's HMC Gen1 512MB Cube uses just 7.78 pj/bit.
It gets super technical really quick, but what you can take away from this is that Intel and its partners such as Micron are working really hard on future processor and memory technology to feed the requirements of future extremely intensive applications in the years ahead.
Continue reading 'Intel demonstrates 512MB Hybrid Memory Cube DRAM operating at 1Tb/s' (full post)
AMD-branded memory is now available for Entertainment, Performance and Enthusiast Desktop computers
AMD have just announced the first retail availability of AMD-branded memory in North America, as they've partnered with Patriot Memory LLC and VisionTek Products, LLC. AMD Memory branded products will help customers with their DRAM selection when buying a new system.
It is all part of AMD's development of personal computer platforms, they've used the AMD OverDrive performance optimization tool to test and optimize DRAM in conjunction with the company's APUs, CPUs, GPUs and chipset platforms. Paul Jones, CEO of Patriot Memory says:
Patriot Memory will bring over two decades of experience and expertise into this ecosystem. Our proven ability to deliver the best technology at the most competitive prices will help pave the way to success for this memory line.
Deal of the Day: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory - $79.99 Shipped Free
Our Deal of the Day today is the Newegg - CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory - $79.99 Shipped Free!.
Offer: This is ridiculous. Get 16GB of matched CORSAIR Vengeance 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for just $79.99 shipped free! Use coupon code: EMCJJJC22 for the discount. Expires 11/22/2011.
Kingston launch HyperX Genesis memory kits, gives X79 some memory lovin'
Kingston have announced a new range of memory, the HyperX Genesis. HyperX Genesis comes in 8, 16 and 32GB kits and is designed for the quad-channel supporting Intel Sandy Bridge-E motherboards. Kingston's 2400MHz and 2133MHz will soon be available in 8 and 16GB kits.
Other HyperX Genesis kits for X79-based systems include 1866Mhz and 1600Mhz in kits of four and eight, with capacities ranging from 8 to 32GB. All Kingston HyperX kits have Intel XMP certification and are compatible with the latest and greatest X79 boards from ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI and ASRock.
Corsair announce full line of quad-channel DDR3 kits
The past 24 hours have been quite good for PC enthusiasts and end users alike, Intel's launch of their LGA2011 socket and accompanying X79 chipset launched quite spectacularly. Now we have a slew of companies releasing their X79-powered gear, with it starting today with Corsair.
Corsair have announced a full line of quad-channel DRAM kits for the LGA2011 socket motherboards, with both Dominator and Vengeance. Dominator is rigorously tested for extreme-performance PCs, with every kit tightly screened as well as including Corsair's DHX+ heatsink patented technology. All Dominator quad-channel kits support Intel's latest XMP 1.3 profiles for easy performance tuning. They are available in 4 sets, 2 of 32GB and 2 in 16GB. The first 32GB kit is at 1866MHz, the second at 1600MHz. The 16GB ramps it up a bit with one kit at 2133MHz and the other at 1866MHz.
Next up Corsair have the Vengeance kits, which are great looking and great for overclocking, all at a great price. Vengeance is designed with overclockers in mind and is built specifically for performance potential. Sporting aluminum heat spreaders that dissipate heat, it also provides an aggressive look that looks awesome in gaming rigs. XMP 1.3 support is here too, and the Vengeance kits come in a much wider range of sizes and speeds.
Continue reading 'Corsair announce full line of quad-channel DDR3 kits' (full post)
G.Skill gears up for X79 with new Quad Channel DDR3 RipjawsZ kits
Right in line with the big launch that is Intel's next generation top tier performance platform comprising LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 CPUs and its accompanying Quad Channel supporting X79 chipset, G.Skill has announced their latest RipjawsZ series modules in Quad-Channel form to suit.
The new kits come in three flavours. There's a monstrous 64GB kit on offer comprising 8x8GB modules which are rated for a speed of 2133MHz @ 1.5V. Timings are quite relaxed on this kit at CL11-11-11-30.
Next is a 32GB kit comprising 4x8GB modules and rated for 2400MHz with 1.65v. This kit runs timings of CL10-12-12-31.
If it's all out speed you're after, G.Skill is also offering a new RipjawsZ series kit giving 16GB memory in total (4x4GB), with the major highlight being its 2500MHz rated speed at 1.65v. Timings for this kit come in at CL10-11-11-31.
Continue reading 'G.Skill gears up for X79 with new Quad Channel DDR3 RipjawsZ kits' (full post)
Deal of the Day: 64GB Corsair Flash Voyager Gtr CMFVYA64GBGT2 USB2.0 Flash Drive for $49.99 after Rebate
Our Deal of the Day today is the NCIX US - 64GB Corsair Flash Voyager Gtr CMFVYA64GBGT2 USB2.0 Flash Drive for $49.99 after Rebate!.
Offer: Great price for one of for this huge (and fast) 64GB flash drive with 10 year warranty at just $49.99 after $30 mail in rebate (expiring 11/30/11). This special price promotion ends 11/16/11 though.
Exceleram readies up a 32GB quad channel memory kit for X79
With Sandy Bridge-E just around the corner now, memory companies are beginning to gear up with supporting quad-channel memory kits for Intel's next gen top tier LGA-2011 platform, with Corsair being first out the gate to expose such a kit when they announced their upcoming Dominator Series quad-channel 32GB kit early last month.
Now german memory maker Exceleram has come forward announcing their plans to release a 32GB quad-channel kit to market in the near future for the aforementioned platform. Falling into their Grand DDR3-Series line, the kit comprises 4x8GB modules and sports red heat spreaders.
Continue reading 'Exceleram readies up a 32GB quad channel memory kit for X79' (full post)
Patriot Memory launches Mac Series SSD and Notebook SODIMMs
Patriot Memory have today announced their new Mac Series XT SSDs and SODIMM lines. Both are optimized for the latest and popular Mac-based products, with the new offerings from Patriot geared toward power users who demand the latest storage and memory technology to increase productivity and performance.
The Patriot Memory Mac Series XT SSDs sport the SandForce SF-2281 SSD processor and synchronous NAND which is quite popular in SSD technology and very, very fast. It's capable of delivering speeds of up to 520MB/sec read and 500MB/sec write, while also offering extended battery life and system responsiveness to MacBook owners. Patriot also ensure the best performance and stability available by testing all Mac Series SSDs at the Apple Developer Compatibility labs for both quality and reliability.
Continue reading 'Patriot Memory launches Mac Series SSD and Notebook SODIMMs' (full post)
G.Skill RipjawsZ ready to tear it up on X79
While still a few weeks away, we're able to give you a little peak at a kit that's going to see the light of day later in the month when X79 launches. The new RipjawsZ series from G.Skill are designed for the new Intel platform and look absolutely fantastic following that Black / Blue design we've seen from the company before.
Consisting of four 4GB modules, the up and coming kit brings with it a total of 16GB of DDR3 RAM running at PC3-17000 or 2133MHz DDR. Taking a closer look at the modules we get a better idea what's going on with the timings. As you can see we've got a 9-11-9-28 setup that requires a grand total of 1.65v.
Continue reading 'G.Skill RipjawsZ ready to tear it up on X79' (full post)


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Banks' pay practices in spotlight
PUBLISHED: 13 Oct 2011 00:03:54 | UPDATED: 13 Oct 2011 05:21:34PUBLISHED: 13 Oct 2011 PRINT EDITION: 13 Oct 2011Banks are under regulatory pressure to disclose more details about their remuneration practices, including pay for material risk takers such as traders and institutional bankers.
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People | Charles Littrell |
Topics | Employment & Industrial Relations, Financial Services Industry /Banking & Finance |


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The power of BlackBerry
on your computer and tablet
No wires, no saving to a cloud, no transferring between devices. It's just there.
Styles for legacy pages
H4 un-bold
Styles for legacy pages
H4 un-bold
No wires, no saving to a cloud, no transferring between devices. It's just there.
BB 10 custom link
Promo Styles
"BlackBerry also offers a best-in-class customer service experience and product training support, which makes deploying BlackBerry 10 a great value proposition overall."Bob Carter Chief Information Officer, Samuel, Son & Co., Limited
With a highly mobile workforce, Samuel needed an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution that would enable seamless mobility within the organization, optimize employee productivity, while allowing IT to control and manage its fleet of devices remotely.
After a review of other vendors' solutions, Samuel selected BlackBerry 10 smartphones and the BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES10) as their core end-to-end business mobility solution. With this deployment, Samuel continues its long-standing partnership with BlackBerry, by deploying BES10 and issuing a fleet of BlackBerry Q10, Z10 and Z30 devices across the organization.
United States


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It's been a little quiet on the blog recently because … We got married! On an unseasonably cool day in North-Carolina-August, in the midst of the most torrential downpour, we finally, finally got married. Encompassed by the love of all our … Continue reading
Category Archives: north carolina
One Foot Out
I'm just in this disgustingly liminal space right now. Like when my boots pinch my ankle and i want to change them more than anything in the world but i'm waist-deep wading in snow. So snow boots are what i have to wear, too bad for blisters.
February always feels choppy to me, like the lack of three extra days makes every week compressed. And somehow, the sun setting at 5 and the snow that never ends is making every day stretch to the last crumb on the plate of a dinner i didn't want to eat.
God, there are too many metaphors here. I'm taking a Short Story writing class, which i am gaga for, but it's also seriously making me doubt every word i write. Is that too cliché? I ponder, pummeling into the keys. Poppins, whose now almost nine months old and still kitten-sized, has a new hobby: prying off keyboard keys. My "o" is affixed at a 45 degree angle for life, now. So i'm really pummeling the pondering keys here.
I'm ready for Lent. This Ordinary Time, endless February days in a month that shrank in the wash, is so last season.
I've got one foot squarely in Durham now, acceptance letter to grad school gratefully in hand. Really, i've got my fingers wrapped so metaphorically tight around it they're Devil blue. But cupcake M&Cs at Mount Holyoke tell me i should feel sad it's my last semester. I should have been all mopey when the 100 days to graduation banner went up in the campus center. Instead all i could do was whittle them down to the double-digits. Three weeks on a campus and then J is here. I'm done with the liminal, the liminal of long-distance, the liminal of last semesters, the liminal of bloody February and its bloody habit of cramped days that go on for 28 hours a piece.
Lent, though mopey in its dearth of Allelulias, has purpose. There's the counting and the fasting and the focus. Advent is all in the waiting, the anticipation. I like Advent for the hopeful expectation, i dive into Lent for purpose in the slog. Especially in New England. Spring is kind of a rare commodity here – every April i've been through in MA has gone from gritty, grey snow to mud and sun-bathing in the span of about a week.
But for now, i'll just keep griping about the blisters on both feet. And trying to remind myself i'm lucky to have shoes and really, i should just eat my damn cupcake and get over myself.
Snow Daze.
We would pile in the living room, my mom tucked in a blanket her mother had probably crocheted. Dad would make cocoa on the gas stove using his camping gear for effect. Even when we lost power it was still warm – gas stove and fireplace keeping us cozy. All the kids on the cul-de-sac, our one pair of wool socks each drying on the tiles around the mantle, would pile in for Dad's cocoa and mom's blankets. The first ice storm kept us home for a week after we moved to North Carolina.
Talk about a shock for kids fresh from Southern California.
I always felt sad at the end of a snow day. Sure, it was part grief of the impending return to school and the end of those days more magical than Saturdays because they were gifts given at 7:30 in the morning. But it was more than that.
It was how the neighbors, people whose names i hadn't learned in four years of a shared zip code, all clustered at the top of the hill to watch us sled. It was the ache in my cheeks from the cold. Snow days weren't just days away from school, it was like the whole world stopped to be together and outside while blanketed in quiet white.
I'm not exactly a fan of snow now. I drive my New England friends up the wall with my whining, my endless sweeping of the sand out of my room and wishing it was spring already. But i've not forgotten how delicious those days were, with my purple snow pants and the sleds my Dad kept stocked in the garage, just in case.
Yesterday, Jonathan and i were driving back from the Harris Teeter. An inch had spread on the asphalt in the half hour we'd been packing the cart with Merlot and cookie dough. Barely two miles home and it took us almost 45 minutes, pushing the CRV ahead of us until she had enough traction to crest the hill. People were abandoning their cars to push other people along, i caught an old man as he tumbled down the hill in boat shoes.
Certainly not the spinning hillside with glee i'd had when six and new to Carolina. But a snow day nonetheless. Neighbors clustering and capping it all off piled chin-deep in blankets, in our fire-place-free living room.
And somehow, the magic of a day off when it's not Saturday doesn't dissipate, even at 21.
Smoky-Eyed Wonder: Rethinking Advent, Days 16 – 25.
The last stretch of highway we took wound its way through backwoods Virginia.
I'm always getting lost in rural Virginia. There was the time in 2011 when we detoured to Williamsburg and i got stuck on a one-laner behind a purple elephant playground strapped to a pick-up truck. That venture was followed promptly by the GPS dropping us off at a military base and me burping out profanities at the – kid you not – black cat scampering in front of the bumper.
This time is was because my directions had misprinted; we'd missed a crucial turn and had to improvise. So there we were, rounding mountain roads where Christmas-lit homes were few and gas stations even fewer.
It was late, really late, when two piping kittens finally saw us through our glass-paneled door. I wanted nothing more than to collapse into clean sheets and deep dreams.
So i did, for a night.
It's been a whirlwind since, seven Christmas celebrations between then and now. Truly, they have been all that is merry and bright and deliciously tacky when it comes to snowcapped wishes. No snow, which is always my wish, and plenty of buttery goods and belly laughs.
Yet as we were wheedling our way through the navy dark, Jonathan remarked that it just didn't feel like Christmas yet. Sure, the Bublé CD was on repeat, and sure we'd been filling up shopping carts with snowpeople goodies since before Thanksgiving.
His little sister later would say without Santa Claus, the magic was basically gone. Christmas wasn't as fun, she said.
I was inclined to agree. I'd uncovered the red suit myth early in second grade; "It just seems so overdone," i'd sighed to my mother. Her eyes were up to her eyebrows. We were in CVS. "Like, there are too many Santa Claus things for sale for him to be real." Gesture to the Christmas aisle that had been on display since Halloween. It didn't take two minutes after my mother's confirmation of my suspicion that i informed my younger brother. He had not whiffed too much consumerism to ruin his fantasies.
I love Christmas, but the commercialization is fundamentally empty. The Hallmark-a-fied pressure to have a stupendously sumptuous supper – or at least a plastic family to laugh over a tanked turkey – is enormously impossible to live up to. And these standards used to make me feel so sad when a family fight erupted or when the boys and i had to shuffle between houses on Christmas morning. This wasn't what it was supposed to be like, i thought. We're supposed to all have tacky Christmas jumpers on and crack up at family stories shared over eggnog and mashed potatoes, we're meant to unwrap the utterly unexpected but totally perfect present.
For the first time, my mother's church sponsored a Christmas Eve service outside. It was her idea, to gather around fire pits and dole out hand-warmers to the sounds of lessons and carols. Like the first Christmas, she'd said.
My toes were numb by Isaiah, and when the peace went round i mostly waved to people from my newfound spot by the fire. Smoke watered my eyes.
And yet, as cold and imperfect as it was, it was Christmas. Not in the heartwarming, what-a-spectacular-night sort of way. The bite of the cold was real, the smoke unpleasant, but the candles in the dark and the camaraderie all who gathered experienced in staving off the wind was just as real.
I think it's easy, when reading the Christmas story, to only see the wise people bringing gifts or the miraculousness of the humility of Jesus as a baby. We don't read about Mary's labor pains, her lack of pain killers or discomfort at giving birth over hay and goat manure. My mother preached about fear, the fear of the shepherds as parallel to the fear of Herod until each made their own choices. Yet Nativity sets focus on demure porcelain faces, not raggedy or wild-eyed wonder.
I wonder if it's this fear, this acceptance of the wildness and imperfection of Christmas, that makes it easier for us to want the Hallmark version. To hope for a happy holiday instead of a frostbitten service singing about a silent night, waiting for a sign we won't fully understand.
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The Big League.
The run stretched from the fold of my knee to my ankle. I toppled out of the car, engine still purring, legs wobbling at their unaccustomed new altitude.
"Just stay in the car!" i craned my neck back at Jonathan, his fingers still thrumming on the wheel. He'd probably put NPR back on without me there. I'd been too nervous to listen to the latest exposé on Joy Division, or whatever.
The lady behind the Rite Aid counter gave me a perplexed once-over, my shimmery pink swath of a dress and elegantly messy bun a vision of out-of-place.
"Y'all carry tights?" i was practically yelping, in need of an inhaler but afraid to elevate my heart rate any more.
"Back row, near cosmetics."
Heels clacking and eyes as wide as my eyeliner would let them, i flailed my way to the rear of the store. My salvation: rows on rows of Leggs silky-sheer. Five dollars later, i was doubled over in the dingy back bathroom struggling to pull a mess of nylon over my prickly legs. Hopping from foot to foot, i plucked off the ring my Grandmother had given me for my high school graduation, gingerly placing it on top of the toilet paper dispenser. As beautiful as the blue stone was, the beast was the reason for this four-inch-heels sprint through the drug store.
And there i was: legs in nylon knots, trying not to collapse into a hypoglycymic meltdown Rite Aid toilet stall, twenty minutes before the moment i'd been dreaming of since second-grade carreer day.
It was the night of the Talking Taboo book launch.
My book, the real book – not the Advanced Reader's Copy – was tucked next to my vintage leopard-print coat in the car. I'd outlined in pencil the excerpts i would read, rehearsing with a hairbrush-as-microphone like i was still sixteen and auditioning for American Idol. I'd spent the afternoon slathering myself with hollywood mascara, not caring that i'd be overdressed because you only get one first book launch and this was the dress i felt the strongest in. Pink, effeminate, swishy, and tender. Not a congruent image to the ball-busting feminist ricocheting off the Rite Aid toilet stall walls, but just as much me as the foulmouthed bra-burner found on page 170.
I wound a stretch of scratchy toilet paper around my hand, dabbing at the smears in my foundation. Surrounded by flourescent lights and graying tiles, i stared myself square in my mirror-face. You can, you will, you have. I plucked up my Grandmother's ring and smoothed down the faux-silk of my skirt.
Jonathan had turned NPR back on by the time i wobbled my way into the passenger seat. Graciously, he turned the volume off and gave me his best honey-you-can smile. With one hand on the wheel and one hand wrapped tightly around mine, he drove the final two miles to the Reality Center downtown.
"You got this, babe." He'd donned a sport coat and khakis for me, never letting me be the only one overdressed again. In his pocket was a pen, one i'd use later to sign my first book.
"Do i have lipstick on my teeth?" i blurted. He shook his head. "And you've got my inhaler?" He tucked the red plastic next to the pen. "Okay, okay, let's just take a second." I envisioned myself on my yoga mat, drinking in oxygen as muscles popped with tension-release. Whispered a prayer of thanks, a prayer for confidence, a prayer of humility.
Half-wobbling, half-strutting, we made our way inside.
current jam: 'rise to me' the decemberists.
best thing: signing mary's book!!
You're Invited!
My phone has been pinging with the most precious selfies a lady could ask for: friends with grins as big as Texas holding up their copies of Talking Taboo!
Little by little, this book is making its way out to all those who pre-ordered their copies. (And if you haven't received yours yet, no worries! It's coming, i promise!)
People aren't just snapping sassy selfies; i've been to one fantastic event already – the Homegrown Preaching Festival in Durham, NC, sponsored by (my favorite non-profit) the Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South. We had a phenomenal conversation about shame, preaching tough texts, and writing in our multitude of authenticities.
The best part for me, though, was that my mom finally got to read my essay.
I say "finally," like some centrifugal force was withholding information from her. Really, it was knee-knocking me. But an hour or so before the event, i figure the caving needed to happen and she best know what she was getting into. Spoiler: my mother is the direct inspiration for my essay, as she is my inspiration in my every day. Talk about one helluva boss lady.
Needless to say, my knee-knocking was a moot point. There were tears. Sloppy, mommy-and-me tears.
So it's going to be hard to top event #1. But i have a pretty solid feeling that the next two big events i'm participating in are going to be hefty competition.
And you're invited to both events!
The first is the official book launch party on Saturday, November 2nd from 5 – 7 PM at the Reality Center in Durham, NC. It's free, open to the public, and there's going to be cocktails AND readings from some of the contributors. And, of course, there will be books available for purchase. Seriously, what more incentive do you need?
The second is still in the works, but folks in the Pioneer Valley, MA, should mark their calendars for December 3rd for what promises to be an excellent conversation and reading at All Saint's Episcopal Church in South Hadley. Details to follow!
These aren't the only events connected to the launch of the book – be sure to keep tabs on the event page of the official website for more readings and conversations!
I hope, for those of y'all in the NC area, to see you at the official launch party!
best thing: cabin trip tonight!
current jam: 'marry you' by jason derulo. typical.
How Do We Speak Against Shame?
This Friday, i'll be sitting in my best blazer on a panel with some of the best womyn i know, talking about shame at Homegrown: North Carolina Women's Preaching Festival 2013.
Talking Taboo is on the launchpad, y'all, on a catapult ride to a Mary Daly-esque outerplanet. (Or maybe that's just my personal NASA-themed fantasy…) The books have shipped, and orders are coming in at local independent bookstores across the country so you can get your hands wrapped around our 40 essays dismantling taboos and reconstructing faith.
And somehow, as deliriously excited as i am to be in print, i'm also still kind of crapping my pants. My essay is, after all, entitled "Sex, Shame, and Scarred Knees." It doesn't take too much imagination to realize it is acutely personal and confrontational in one swath of five pages.
But that's the whole point, for me, in talking about taboos: going for the gut, the personal jugular. I get so frustrated with academic hoopla that over-objectifies ideas and only wants to talk about problems as if they exist in this neutral universe. Like system problems exist outside of our own experiences.
It's partly a feminism thing; i can only tell my story, and my story is a gradient of privileged (white, cisgendered, American citizen, middle class…) as is the stories of every thinker from Max Weber to Alice Walker. It's also partly a theological thing; sitting in a stuffy room all day talking Christology is a necessary part of the learning curve, but it's only relevant when we can embody what we discuss. Feminist/womanist theological ethics – my particular field – is a brilliant, needed, complicated, and an evolving facet to the study and practice of religion. But i still believe feminist theological ethics (or any conversation, really) matters most when we can implement what we talk about in the academy in to real life.
And real life can be some tough shit.
Tough, personal, painful shit. Like feeling isolated, marginalized, ridiculed for pushing back on heteronormative and sexist sexual ethics. Or thinking my body was too fat and too hairy and too imperfect to be lovable, even by its inhabitant.
It was not easy to write about my shame in any place other than my well-hidden cavern of angst and Kahlil Gibran quotes: my journal. My first twelve drafts or so were so externally-focused it felt more like a gender studies essay than a personal confrontation with taboo.
But i knew, i knew i was not the only person in the world who had struggled with the church's perfectionistic teachings on human sexuality. And it was the thought of writing to younger me that made me be bold. If one – just one – pre-teen girl could crack open my story and heave a sigh of "it's-not-just-me," than my exposure would be worth it.
So on Friday, i'll be talking about just that: how do we speak out against the shame that has silenced us?* I'm the first to say i'm no expert. Hell, my therapist would gladly tell you (were she not bound by HIPAA) i'm in a daily uphill slog against self-shaming. There's no five-step plan that frees us for life from shame. It's a systemic thing, shaming womyn for our sexuality (and you know, a million other things people of every gender are shamed for).
But the thing about systems is this: we're all participants in the system, which means we all have the potential to disrupt the system's power over us in our own narratives.
buy the book here!
best thing: flights home in less than 24 hours.
current jam: 'eavesdrop' the civil wars.
resources on shame, courage, and radical self-love: dr. brené brown's TED talk & website, audre lorde's article "uses of the erotic," wehappytrans* website.
*not a rhetorical question! how do you speak against shame? what barriers prevent you from speaking against shame?
The Relief of "I-Thought-It-Was-Just-Me"
There have been a slew of reasons why this blog – WanderingWrites – has remained vacant until now. But certainly one of the most life-giving reasons for my hiatus has been this group of energetic, electrifying, and eager young woman. It's been a delight and a privilege working this summer at the Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South and working behind-the-scenes with the (almost ready to publish!) Talking Taboo anthology. Here's more about Courageous Conversations, reposted from the Talking Taboo website!
Liberty and Justice for All.
I think the way we tell stories can betray something fundamental about our character. Scholars of nationalism like Sumathi Ramaswamy and Benedict Anderson both argue that the mediums in which we express our national identity – words, songs, maps, monuments, images – convey the fundamental ideas clung to by nationalists.
And in between the sizzling sounds of hot dogs on the grill and the anticipation of pyrotechnics tonight, today is a day wherein America's national myth is most salient. When i go to the Durham Bulls ballgame tonight, all will be asked to rise and pledge their allegiance to a flag embodying "liberty and justice for all." We'll sing an anthem metaphorically tied to this day in 1776, but with poetry actually written during the War of 1812. And, assuredly, someone today will praise the "Founding Fathers" for all that they sacrificed to give us our freedom.
But a suckerpunch of a question begs to be asked.
Because while tonight i'm going to, undoubtedly, relish in the Great American Pastime of eating and watching men chase a ball around a field, i don't have to worry about my income going to waste on yet another hot dog. 17,000 North Carolinians are now without any kind of unemployment insurance. At my church's food pantry on Tuesday night, a woman whose Medicaid has been slashed asked for money to cover her rent. The medical expenses were too high without her government's provision.
Because while tonight i can chit-chat about wedding plans, many of the people whom i love most in this world cannot share in the same legal and religious benefits my male partner and i will with a marriage recognized under the law. A section of DOMA may have been overturned, but Amendment 1 still stands as a barrier denying same-gender couples the rights married hetero couples enjoy.
Because while i have the luxury of a flexible job and means of transport to vote on election day, the push in the NC Legislature to cut early voting, same-day registration, and mandate a Voter ID be shown at the polls will mean thousands of people will be unable to vote. It is an overt suppression of the people's voice guised under the name of the "Restore Confidence in Government Act." (Which has a seriously ominous tone to it).
And yet, this government was founded on the principles of liberty and justice for all. So the question begging to be asked is: exactly who makes this "all" category for liberty and justice? Who gets to feast at this table of red, white, and blue democratic delights?
Something is rotten in the state of North Carolina.
There are many spheres of action and storytelling in which the people can move to confront these injustices; i've written about my experiences with the Moral Monday movement and i stand by the work that the NAACP is doing. Coalitions of people engaging in civil disobedience is a frank and profound confrontation. Yet this is by no means the first time people have marched, peacefully, to confront injustices. The suffragette movement, the Civil Rights movement, LGBTQIA Pride marches, Slut Walks – to name a few – have all used visibility and loud but peaceful protesting to convey their calls for equality.
Yet none of those people are plastered on the banners outside today. Our Founding Mothers don't have their very own 1776 musical starring the guy who played Mr. Feeney (Abigail Adams ever excepted, of course). Instead, white, socially affluent, cisgendered men who owned property signed a piece of paper that called for a revolution. A revolution that, while politically revolutionary in the scope of nationalist history, did not fundamentally change the power structures at be in the colonies.* These same men were privileged under King George and would continue to enjoy such privileges after the war.
So, in the spirit of Liberty and Justice for All, i wanted to amplify the stories of other Freedom Fighting Founding Parents today. These are the people from whom i claim my nationalist history, people who made profound sacrifices and waged their own kind of war against injustice and oppression. They aren't perfect, but no one is. What matters to me is how we carry forward the good work they did. This is by no means a complete list – and i invite you, in the comments, to add your own. Who are the people who inspire you to pursue liberty and justice for all?
Fannie Lou Hamer: Instrumental in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 in conjunction with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Fannie Lou Hamer remains one of the most powerful leaders of the American Civil Rights movement. Her speech to the Democratic National Congress was seen as so threatening to the powers at be, then-president Johnson held a press conference at the same time to divert the attention of the media. This attempted erasure of her and the cause for which she stood did not deter her from running for Congress the next year.
Sojourner Truth: Her most famous speech rings with earnest and gut-wrenching truth even today – "Ain't I a Woman?" Sojourner, an escaped formerly enslaved person, advocated tirelessly for women's rights despite her exclusion from much of the movement because of her race.
Audre Lorde: Author of two of my most favorite essays of all time, "Uses of the Erotic" and "The Master's Tools with Never Dismantle the Master's House," Audre Lorde was a modern-day prophet. Her words on the importance of deconstructing race and gender in tandem still hold true today. She described herself as "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" and lifted high the beauty of differences and diversity.
Eilzabeth Cady Stanton: Spearhead of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and fierce fighter for the 19th Amendment, Stanton also worked in conjunction with the abolitionist movement. She, along with a committee of other women, published the The Woman's Bible which posed theological challenges to the idea that women must be subservient to men.
Dolores Huerta & Cesar Chavez: Co-founders of the National Farmworkers Association (now the UFW), these two activists propelled the intersectionality of labor rights, women's rights, immigrant rights, and civil rights to the forefront of justice conversations. My favorite Chavez quote is: "We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community… Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own."
Coretta Scott King: Though her husband is heralded as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Coretta is not to be underestimated. Her work in civil rights began at Antioch College long before meeting Dr. King – who told her, on their first date, he wanted to wed her. She fundraised for the SCLC, marched with Dr. King, and was in their home when it was bombed during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In the wake of his assassination, she carried the cause forward in founding the Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
Frederick Douglass: Most renowned for the first of his three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, A Slave, Written by Himself, Douglass was a fervent advocate for abolition and women's rights to vote. He took numerous speaking tours and was a prolific writer over the course of his life, working with Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War to eradicate the enslavement of African-American people. [Update: Douglass also wrote a seriously good speech entitled 'What to the Slave is the 4th of July' which is a must-read!]
Mary Daly: My favorite image of Mary Daly is her most iconic portrait: her wielding a battle-axe. A professor of theology at Boston College, a Jesuit institution, Daly was a self-proclaimed "radical lesbian feminist" who advocated for profound change in the Catholic and Christian church as a whole. Her book Beyond God the Father is a foundational text for anyone seeking to study contemporary philosophy, feminist ethics, or theology.
Who would you add to this list?
current jam: 'we shall overcome'
best thing: strawberries. also, this incredible video.
*for a further explanation for why the american revolution wasn't much of a revolution, here is an excellent and informative john green crash course video for you!
Watching Mom Get Arrested: Reflections from Moral Monday.
I was ankle-deep in mud, my clammy hands in knots as i looked for her brown-haired head. The crowd was making itself a Red Sea, an aisle split down the middle of rainbow flags and Have Mercy placards. "It's not that bad," the lady next to me was saying. "The handcuffs hurt, but the officers are all real polite. What's her name?"
"Hannah." I replied, still trying to get tippy-toed height to catch her eye. "Her name's Hannah. She's in the white stole."
My mom, freshly-turned 50 and a lifelong goody-two-shoes, was about to get arrested.
There was a man at the podium bringing down the house with prayers for healing and reprimands for the NC Legislature's racist policies. Rev. Barber, president of the NC NAACP stood directly in front of us, fingers tapping on his waiting microphone and looking solemn. Focused. His disgust at the NC Legislature calling the 1965 Voting Rights Act a "headache" rang in my ears.
In February of 1965, in Marion, Alabama, one of the most profound but least known civil rights marches took place. James Orange, a member of the SCLC, had been arrested for organizing a voter-registration drive. 400 people had gathered in the Zion Methodist Church in Marion to walk, peacefully, in protest of the arrest. A police blockade met their walk, wherein 50 state troopers descended wielding clubs on the unarmed crowd.
Jimmie Lee Jackson, a US Army veteran, was among the crowd. He took refuge in a café, where he was beaten and shot twice by state troopers. He was trying to protect his mother. He died from his injuries 8 days later.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was the first martyr killed in the fight for the Voting Rights Act.
And Governor McCrory has called this act "a headache." In the same week that the US Supreme Court has, in the words of Justice Ruth Ginsburg, thrown out the umbrella in the midst of a rainstorm, the very reason the Voting Rights Act came to pass is under fire. The North Carolina Legislature is threatening to pass a Voter ID law under the so-called "Restore Confidence in Government Act." The same act that would restrict/eliminate early voting – a tool used predominantly by students and racial minorities.
And the Legislature does so in the same breath that denies 17,000 unemployed NC citizens their unemployment benefits, what Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman calls a "war on the unemployed." And refuses to expand Medicaid. Riding on the heels of last year's viciously minded Amendment 1, which mandated the only legal union recognized by the state was a marriage between a man and a woman – denying rights to victims of domestic violence in unwed partnerships, same-gender couples, and anyone not wed in the eyes of the State.
And this is only the beginning of our grievances with these elected officials.
Last Monday, Jonathan and i sang our voices hoarse in front of the North Carolina Legislative Building. We'd gone to the growing Moral Monday movement with our friend Aaron, each bearing a sign condemning cuts to public school funds and demands for racial equality under the law. These gatherings are headed by the NAACP but comprise of every body of people from labor unions to Planned Parenthood volunteers to more clergy of all faiths than you could shake a Eucharistic loaf at.
Last Tuesday, my mother worked at her church's food pantry – as she does almost every Tuesday. She goes, as the pastor, to pray with the people who gather for the food they need to feed their families. In her own words,
"[…] nothing in my life compares to what I hear in prayer time every Tuesday night. Last week, when I asked for prayer requests someone told me she was peeing in a can in her house because she couldn't afford to have her septic tank cleaned out. The toilet was all stopped up, she said. Her prayer was that through God's mercy SOMEONE would help her and her family out. […] And the week before I prayed with a Latina woman whose son was being deported. Her tears dripped on my hand as I offered up a begging prayer for safety and mercy. What else was I to do?? I just didn't know. I was so angry at our immigration laws and our sense of nationhood that supports them. I confess I was having a hard time loving the Pharisee in that moment…..but I prayed anyway and that prayer changed me."
So yesterday, as i stood ankle-deep in mud, my mother clamped her hands in prayer and began to walk through that Red Sea. She began to walk for the women she prayed with on Tuesday, for her LGBTQ friends and family, for the unemployed and the suffering. I caught sight of her before she saw me.
In my head, i was still rubbing her arm at the legal briefing, singing and chanting not one step back! In my head, she was my Southern-lady mother who grew up on a farm in the rural south, a woman whose refusal to stand for oppression was born out of an acute understanding of what it means to be oppressed.
And then my eyes were full of her, full of her scared but determined face. Around me everyone yelled their thanks, their praise, their you-are-a-hero shouts.
We met each other's gaze, each of us weeping with pride and humility and worry, and then she was gone.
Walking the gauntlet, she'd tell us later in front of the Wake County Detention Center. Walking into a building where they sang "Amazing Grace" and quietly were escorted, cuffed, out. Walking into a building where she would crack jokes with the police officers. She wrote later her heralding as a hero juxtaposed sharply with feeling like "an insignificant sacrifice."
My mother had a lot of privilege in getting arrested. Her job is not at stake, she didn't have to post bail or even worry that her time in the Detention Center would linger longer than the night. She, praise Mother Mary, did not face the same fate as Jimmie Lee Jackson. The police officers that arrested her did not beat her with clubs.
We are white, cisgendered, middle-class American citizens. And we know that this gives us undeserved privilege often at the expense of people of color, trans* people, people without such job security or citizenship. We pray for a day when radical equality exists among all humanity.
We are not protesting as a means for speaking for people who cannot speak for themselves – marginalized people have their own voices that must be listened to. Not at all. We protest with uniquely our own voices, voices that are allies and amplifiers and advocates and women who won't stand for such sexism, racism, homophobia, and greed. We protest next to signs that read: Non-theists have morals too! We protest knowing that the arrest of over 650 people now 9 weeks into these gatherings are not going to turn the tide overnight. We protest knowing our own humanness, our own frailty. But we protest, and we protest loudly.
She wrote: "I didn't go to this protest because I dislike republicans. I don't. It wasn't because I love democrats. They, too, are politicians. Who I love and who I vote for every time is this God-human Jesus. I LOVE the politics of Jesus. I am smitten with his curious ability to love the leper AND the Pharisee. I want to be like that!! People like that can never keep their mouths shut!"
And i, i am grateful i have a mother who won't keep quiet. Who practices what she preaches – literally. Who on her unsteady feet walked into a building where she knew she would face arrest. Who practices meek boldness, fierce conviction, and humble love.
That, truly, is the greatest privilege of them all.
For more on Marion, Selma, and a theological approach to the Civil Rights Movement, i highly recommend Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice From the Civil Rights Movement to Today by Charles Marsh to provide a comprehensive overview. For more on civil disobedience, nonviolence, and the history of theologically-led political action, i recommend A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. edited by James M. Washington.
Here's the Huffington Post coverage of last night, as well our interview with WCHL.


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Survey of Large- and Medium-Hub Airports on Existing and Planned Bus and Rail Connections, an E-supplement to GAO-05-727
GAO-05-738SP: Published: Jul 26, 2005. Publicly Released: Jul 26, 2005.
Additional Materials:
- Full Report:
(202) 512-6570
Office of Public Affairs
(202) 512-4800
This document presents the results of GAO's survey of airport directors. The purpose of the survey was to determine the extent to which intermodal services and facilities have been developed at major U.S. airports. We developed the Web-based questionnaire and administered the survey to 72 airports from the 2003 Federal Aviation Administration's Air Carrier Activity Information System database. These airports accounted for approximately 90 percent of the enplanements for calendar year 2003, and consist of all 33 large hub, all 35 medium hub, and the 4 small hub airports that are located in the same metropolitan area as a large or medium hub airport. We asked airport officials about the local and nationwide bus and rail systems that are accessible to their airports by regular, fixed-route shuttle service, an automated people mover and/or walking. We also asked the airports if their capital improvement plan included proposals to enhance the airport's connections to local and nationwide transportation systems. We received responses from all 72 airports, resulting in a 100 percent response rate. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is available in our report, "Intermodal Transportation: Potential Strategies Would Redefine Federal Role in Developing Airport Intermodal Capabilities." GAO-05-727 We conducted our work from July 2004 through July 2005 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Feb 27, 2015
Transportation Safety:
Results of Collection of Information on State Permitting Practices for Oversize Vehicles (GAO-15-235SP, February 2015), an E-supplement to GAO-15-236 [Reissued on February 27, 2015]GAO-15-235SP: Published: Feb 26, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2015.
Feb 26, 2015
Transportation Safety:
Federal Highway Administration Should Conduct Research to Determine Best Practices in Permitting Oversize VehiclesGAO-15-236: Published: Feb 26, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2015. -
Federal Aviation Administration:
Improved Tracking of Results Needed to Provide Confidence in Benefits of Streamlining ActivitiesGAO-15-247: Published: Jan 27, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2015.
Feb 24, 2015
Drug-Impaired Driving:
Additional Support Needed for Public Awareness InitiativesGAO-15-293: Published: Feb 24, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 24, 2015.
Jan 21, 2015
Aviation Safety:
Issues Related to Domestic Certification and Foreign Approval of U.S. Aviation ProductsGAO-15-327T: Published: Jan 21, 2015. Publicly Released: Jan 21, 2015.
Jan 16, 2015
Surface Transportation:
DOT Is Progressing toward a Performance-Based Approach, but States and Grantees Report Potential Implementation ChallengesGAO-15-217: Published: Jan 16, 2015. Publicly Released: Jan 16, 2015.
Jan 12, 2015
Commercial Aviation:
Raising Passenger Facility Charges Would Increase Airport Funding, but Other Effects Less CertainGAO-15-107: Published: Dec 11, 2014. Publicly Released: Jan 12, 2015.
Jan 9, 2015
Transportation Disadvantaged Populations:
Nonemergency Medical Transportation Not Well Coordinated, and Additional Federal Leadership NeededGAO-15-110: Published: Dec 10, 2014. Publicly Released: Jan 9, 2015.
Dec 19, 2014
Airport Privatization:
Limited Interest despite FAA's Pilot ProgramGAO-15-42: Published: Nov 19, 2014. Publicly Released: Dec 19, 2014.
Dec 10, 2014
Public Transit:
Federal and Transit Agencies Taking Steps to Build Transit Systems' Resilience but Face ChallengesGAO-15-159: Published: Dec 10, 2014. Publicly Released: Dec 10, 2014.
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The Corner House Hotel is perfect for exploring the wonderful city of Amsterdam. Round the corner from Dam Square and with a Tram stop right on the doorstep, the Corner House hotel offers all you possibly need for a wonderful stay. Further to this the hotel is walking distance from Amsterdam Centraal train station. The rooms were clean and bright, with all mod cons, and although this hotel is under refurbishment, it certainly did not feel that way as there was no disturbance of any kind. Stair - Anonymous
Very friendly staff, location was perfect, located right off the Dam behind the royal palace. Very clean. You get your room key and a key to the front door so you don't have to worry if someone is at the desk....you can let yourself in, anytime! - Robert
Rauhallinen hotelli ja hyvä palvelu. - Janne
The hotel is exactly what is written in the ad. But you'll be surprised positively. It is an old building (like most part of houses there) with a big stair to enter. The owner is a very nice person and helped me with my baggage when I arrived. He also gave a lots of hints about the city and the touristic spots. Honestly, I was afraid of shared bathroom and shower, but they are individual e there aren't many rooms per floor, so every time I needed both were empty and I could use it. By the way, - Anonymous
mukava henkilökunta - Anonymous
The location of the hotel was really close to all the hotspots within Amsterdam! The breakfast was simple but it was great for the money and it filled you up and got you going for the rest of the day. The toilets and shower were clean the majority of the time minus a few when it had just been used! And the beds were very comfy. If it got too hot the air con could be used too which was very good. In my opinion for the money it was a great place to stay when visiting Amsterdam! - Anonymous
24 hr bar location central to everything - Anonymous
Paikan sijainti, ei ollut minkään näköisiä ongelmia henkilökunnan kanssa. - Joonas
The breakfasts were great, loads of hot water for showers - Robert
Great position right next to red light district, however on a quiet side street so no disturbing noise. Room on 3rd floor looked like it had been newly renovated and was impeccably decorated and clean. - Lara
The hotel is very conveniently located (near the train station, the canal boat locations and the highly walkable set of city canals). The staff was incredibly friendly and helpful (I was having back spasms and they really took care of me.) Our room was remarkably quiet -- the Damrak was full of noisy soccer fans, but our window opened onto a well between buildings and we heard almost none of it. - Anonymous
sijainti - Anonymous


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A mosaic of city roof top gardens? Vacant lots that create jobs? A backyard garden for folks without backyards? It's all part of the small-scale urban farm model many in Asheville are striving for — where every tiny space is being utilized.
Tag: urban farming
Showing 1-2 of 2 results
Asheville City Council: more agriculture, a festival search, and downtown crime
At tonight's meeting, Asheville City Council approved new rules allowing urban farming and produce sales throughout the city. Council also approved starting the search for a summer event to replace Bele Chere. On a less optimistic note, the public and city officials discussed increasing issues of crime, policing and homelessness in Asheville's core.


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So question, getting ready to ramp a couple new batches using this juice. I Did a blueberry pomegranate with it that turned out fantastic. Here is my question though, it's not a concentrate but a "pure" juice as in no to very little water added A 32 oz bottle of blueberry is supposed to be the equivalent of 3 pounds fresh blueberries, so say i made a 5 gallon batch would i need 5 gallons of the juice or do the pound equivalent and just use 4-5 containers of the juice? I am just worried that the wine may come out to" full" if that makes sense?
I have used their juices before, I would suggest you also see if you can get a jar or two of their concentrate to boost the flavor a little bit. We use thier black cherry concentrate when we make ports, why wait for the cherry flavor to develop when you can just add it Also a little ELDME will boost the body. WVMJ
So when your using it say your making x gallons do you use x amount of juice? ELDME? will have to check for some of the concentrated stuff to :-)
I always use their juices full strength. Their label implies it took three pounds of fruit to get that volume. ELDME- extra light DME?
Motto: quel che sara sara
Like Sara, full strenght but plus some concentrate, maybe plus something to add more body like banananas or a cup or two of dried Extra LIght Dried Malt Extract, beer has lots of body and a little ELDME realy makes a difference. WVMJ
Makes sense! Thank youSara. Learning more everyday... Now to soak it in...
When ever I use a Jack Keller recipe that calls for water, I substitute it with white grape juice. The last Elderberry wine I made, I used purple grape juice as a base, and it was wonderful.
whenever I make my blueberry wine for every gallon of wine I use one whole lemon for acidity. I find it comes a lot better then if I don't add the lemon
You cant always be young but you can always be immature


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Social Work in India Info Session
Event: |
Social Work in India Info Session Learn more about this summer term program that will expose students to social, health and economic practices in the context of a developing country. Through field trips and lectures, you will be exposed to social health and mental health agencies within India, as well as to sites of historical and cultural importance. |
Date and time: | November 14, 2013 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM |
Location: | Area on Campus: 115 Stillman Hall |
Contact: | Jenny Bickley |
Phone Number: | 6142926101 |
Event category: | International Affairs |
Event Type: | Workshop |


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All the culture that money can buy in art-obsessed Dallas
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