text:
Flower Arrangement and Photography by Catherine King.
Flower Arrangement and Photograph by Catherine King.
[See the sidebar, "Democracy in America" at ASU, for background.]
by Jerome du Bois
More drama about the "Democracy in America" exhibition at ASU appears in the recent (Oct.15) Web Devil / State Press article by Joshua Spiegel, "Democracy Debacle." Read it and see Marilyn Zeitlin acting like the media image of Senator Kerry, her motives and actions changing over time, taking every position possible except copping to any mistake. Never mind what really happened. Read it and listen to the self-important justifications of artist Ryan McNamara, demanding clarity about why his piece, "Angry Americans," was cut from the show. Read it and notice the glaring absence of curator John Spiak, McNamara's champion for at least four years. Spiak is unavailable, still dodging comments, even though he originally solicited for and obtained the piece.
Read it for the minor fillips of unintentional humor, such as this from caricaturist Linda Eddy:
Eddy brushed off the idea that her work was brought in only to balance the show, saying, "My work is unparalleled in the field of digital art. That's what qualifies it for a show of this stature, not simply the 'politics.'"
Thus betraying herself as doubly deluded.
Marilyn Zeitlin shows more of her true colors:
McNamara said Zeitlin did not tell him about any of the correspondence. He said he found out his piece would be cut from Joe Watson, a writer for the Phoenix New Times, who wrote about the museum this summer.
What a pro. What a weasel. What a coward. But typical of her.
In this post, hopefully the last about this stupid exhibition, I'm going to seriously examine "Angry Americans," and ask the reader to do so as well. That is, I would like readers to pop it up and stare at it for at least a minute. I guarantee it won't be easy, but I'll try to make the payoff worth the pain.
And I'm going to settle the First Amendment issue once and for all, and easily -- by a simple timeline. In the words of someone familiar, "They can run, but they cannot hide" from the truth.
Angry Americans by Ryan McNamara, 2003.
McNamara explains this work:
"As a resident of lower Manhattan during Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath, I began to notice a national confusion between fear, anger and patriotism," he said. "These motivations and ideals began to pollute each other and resulted in some fairly unfortunate global consequences. 'Angry Americans' was a place where I attempted to frame and highlight this loaded, emotional knot."
Let the fisking begin.
"As a resident of lower Manhattan during Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath . . .
Great. Another one of those jerks, like artist Brad Kahlhamer ("it seemed so cinema") and writer Walter Kirn ("I'm so over 9/11") and cartoonist Art Speigelman ("Waaaaah!"), who were there -- but somehow not there -- not to feel it, anyway -- and now they're all bitching about having their so-called feelings manipulated by politicians, as if they had no mature, adult self-control.
. . . I began to notice a national confusion between fear, anger and patriotism . . .
First, Manhattan is not the nation in microcosm, so his conclusions must have come from the national media. And once again we see the alienation from emotion by failing to recognize that fear, anger, and patriotism often, and should, coexist, each one growing and shrinking, accommodating the other two, and many others, as reason guides the self. And the self contains and balances many emotions, such as sorrow. Remember sorrow, Mr. McNamara?
His confusions become clearer in the next sentence:
These motivations and ideals began to pollute each other and resulted in some fairly unfortunate global consequences.
In other words, President Bush went off half-cocked and the world is worse off for it. I assume Mr. McNamara uttered these words near the publication date of Spiegel's article, October 15, 2004 -- one week after Afghanistan voted ten million strong for the first time in 5000 years. Long after Uday, Qusay, and Saddam were brought into unfortunate consequences -- for them. Long after three-quarters of Al Qaeda's leadership is in chains or with their dicks in the dirt. Long after 25 million Iraqis were freed from horror.
And notice the metaphor -- pollute -- as if emotions were germs. Further evidence that we must keep everything separate. No; an integrated self manages the continually contending impulses.
"'Angry Americans' was a place where I attempted to frame and highlight this loaded, emotional knot."
Implying that we're stuck. And he's right, but only about himself and others on the Left like him. Many of the rest of us manage our pain -- about attacks by people like him on our decency, about 9/11, about every American soldier's death or injury in Iraq right now. McNamara and his type (e.g., Richard Serra) are stuck in a knot of resentment because their stale notions don't count for shit in the real world. Honestly, ask somebody if they know about Serra or McNamara's political work. Who? they would say.
McNamara shows his simplistic understanding of the exhibition, of the word "balance," and perhaps of the world, right here:
He added that if the curator wanted to balance the show, she should have found pieces that discourage voting since there is a piece by artist Julian Schnabel in the show that features the word "VOTE" prominently.
Spoken like an ASU graduate. By this illogic, had she included his own piece, she would have had to add one entitled and showing "Happy Americans."
To the work, then. Let us allow David Velasco, Mr. McNamara's partner (right on, stand by your man), to describe it. Velasco wrote an open letter of protest to Dean Mills of ASU's Herberger School of Fine Arts, posted at the National Coalition Against Censorship. It reads in part:
In the spirit of disclosure and transparency: I learned about this act of censorship from my partner Ryan McNamara, whose piece Angry Americans was among those set to be exhibited. I would like to use his piece as an example, as you already have. Angry Americans is a series of eight large photographic portraits of young children theatrically demonstrating their best attempts at anger. These color close-ups are installed side-by-side, forming a large rectangle of six by nine feet. Earlier this year this piece was requested for "Democracy in America," and was routed straight from a show in Belgium to be stored at Arizona State University until its installation. Several days ago one of the curators, John Spiak, informed Mr. McNamara that this piece was too controversial and would not appear in the show. Mr. Spiak, whose implication in these events leads me to question his credibility, will no doubt take some of the fall, though I and others will be watching to make sure he is not used as a scapegoat as this controversy unfolds.
Six by nine feet! Arrgghh! Where's my flamethrower? Now, the kid on the lower left, say what you will about child abuse, every time I see his face I want to slap him into next week. All the others, save one, I could live with as goofiness if the subject matter wasn't so serious. Only the boy in the upper row, third from left, looks genuinely angry, and therefore out of place. ("I may be sitting down on the outside, but I'm standing up on the inside.")
I now see this piece as the perfect emblem of the seething subtext of the history of this exhibition, which is unfocused, childish rage. We hate President Bush and that ought to be enough! He was wrong about Iraq and that ought to be enough! We don't want war and that ought to be enough! We don't need to give you reasons! Each frame in McNamara's piece reminds me of a cell in the multifaceted fly-eye of a demon in our culture -- the Left, mutated beyond recognition by ingesting its own poison, showing us its full-bleed bulging ugliness -- the cyclopian eye of a giant baby in perpetual tantrum that its priveleged world has been torn open by reality and truth.
Let's redo the piece, Mr. McNamara. You're still in New York City, right? Perfect. Go get eight more subjects, but adults this time, people of your persuasions -- cowardly gaywads like Ross Bleckner, Paul P., Christian Holstad, your partner David, Daniel Reich -- and this time, make them angry for real before you take your photographs. Since I'm doing the thinking for the both of us on this, let me supply some of the goading script:
"Think about what happened to Uday! Did you see that picture? Did he deserve that? Qusay? Did he ever harm you? And what about the way they treated Saddam, like an animal! Abu Ghraib, man! What about the Iraqis dignity?"
And so on. I'm sure you'll get more genuine shots that way. Actually, ditch the script: given the output of New York artists on political art, all you have to do is repeat, over and over, "Bush! Bush! Bush!" That's all your Pavlovian friends need to foam at the mouth and spit out some half-assed art. "Read My Apocalips"? "Richie Bush"? "The Hole Truth"? Oooh, you lefties, we President Bush supporters are getting the allover fidgets with these devastating blows. Please, lay off, yer killin us!
Am I exaggerating? Here, from today's (Oct. 22) NYT, page B37, Ken Johnson reviewing a show by 41 artists at Exit Art, called "The Presidency," first paragraph:
"The Presidency," a selection of works by 41 left-leaning artists, could make you decide that artists should keep their art and their politics separate. It looks like a student show and ranges from mildly amusing to irritatingly predictable. Almost nothing in it will make you think in any deep or unexpected way about its theme.
Who's surprised? Wankers. I'll tell you what makes me angry, Mr. McNamara. You won't act like a man, you don't respect yourself, and you have contempt for others. You would rather attack decency and dignity with silly satire than engage the emotional complex that you only dimly recognize, much less the concepts of "democracy" and "America," which recede even further beyond your limited horizon of understanding.
But your main dishonesty, Mr. McNamara, like your partner's, and that of many others, consists of ignoring the logic of the timeline and thus skewing the spin from the beginning.
In January, the Office of the President of ASU announced that Gammage Auditorium would be the site of the third Presidential Debate. At the same time, it was made known that there was an agreement of impartiality between ASU and James Baker and Vernon Jordan, brokers of the debates. ASU, as an entity, would remain neutral. It was a contract.
In February, John Spiak and Marilyn Zeitlin, knowing the above information, concocted an anti-Bush exhibition, in the face of the neutrality agreement. These are facts. Zeitlin came up with the title, but it was always ironic, and they both busily began commissioning explicitly anti-Bush artworks.
The rest of the timeline is well-known, from Watson's and Seigel's articles, and our own series. There was no First Amendment Issue, and thus any cries of "censorship" are not only disingenuous but illogical. Zeitlin and Spiak consciously tried to end-run the University and its president, and they didn't get away with it. Such is the arrogance of the art crew out there that they thought they could.
Do you bozos not get it yet? This exhibition should never have been. You try to foreground it, in space and time, and that's a lie. First there was the debate, and nothing else. This exhibition should never have been. And now the ASU Art Museum curators, and all the artists associated with the debacle, have to eat the consequences. Good.
Flower Arrangement and Photograph by Catherine King.
by Jerome du Bois
I found two letters on the Internet that reveal more about the psychology of two people featured in some recent posts on "The Burgeoning" -- ASU Associate Professor John Leaños, and Phoenix Public Arts Program Director Greg Esser. The letters -- from Leaños to Esser, and Esser's reply -- stem from an October First Friday drama: Leaños and twenty of his obedient, politically-brainwashed students wheat-pasted a bunch of antiwar posters which they made on buildings Esser owned. Esser objected and tore the posters down. I won't go into details -- if I can find the letters, you can -- but both missives support our previous judgments: that Greg Esser is a dissembling, dodging bureaucrat, who won't stand up for private citizens; and that John Leaños is a racist megalomaniac, with no regard for personal private property, and is dangerously consumed with a messianic vision of bringing America down and replacing it with some Mexi-Indigenous-ooga-booga social order, undoubtedly with obedient women bent over metates (and other things). He joins two other racist ASU professors we've identified so far, Beverly MacIver and Neil Lester, who also trash white people, "the dominant paradigm." Your tax dollars at work, Arizonans. Am I exaggerating? No, I quote pseudo-Zapata, writing to Esser:
[Update 10/22/04]: Since some readers are googling that jerk Leaños, they might be interested in what the Army Rangers -- Pat Tillmans's compadres -- think of the Professor.
I think you must be aware of the value of doing public art both with and without permission. You are probably aware that Indigenous and Chicana/o visions of public space differ most definitely from predominant paradigms. We believe that the southern border, for instance, is a temporary expression of a failing social order. The hegemony of Private Property may be seen in the same vein. Chicana/o and Indigenous peoples have occupied this territory for many generations and have been told over and over that our concerns, ways and aesthetics do not matter. Many Chicana/o residents of the Downtown and Garfield Districts view the downtown arts community as paving the way for gentrification, a whitewashing of diverse cultural expression in order to replace it with an aseptic, "sponsored" and paid for culture. It seems that your actions are in tune with this project.
Ooh, meet El Presidente/a/o! Tell you what, Jota, every Chicano I've met, and I've worked side by side with many, same work, same pay, would take exception to you getting your skinny hands on their private property. And if I see you or any of your robots around my place, be ready for blood in your eyes, pendejo.
And Esser, for his part, hides like the limp weenie he is, dodging the whole brown issue; but -- oh, you bitch! -- he does offer some nice inside dish about Mr. MayanAztecMestizoMofo:
. . . I would like to respond to your inaccurate implication that the City of Phoenix was in any way not open to dialogue or participation with the Department of Chicana/o Studies at ASU. As a city employee, I generally do not respond to individual artists requests for information about public art. This is typically a function of other staff in the Office of Arts and Culture. POAC staff were in fact in contact with you. You were recently selected as a finalist to develop a proposal for a public art project. You received an honorarium for that proposal in the amount of $500 from the City of Phoenix that you cashed on September 16, 2004.
Five hundred bucks for writing up a proposal? Haysoos Marimba, where do I sign up? Hell, we just wrote up a spoof proposal, two posts down. Gimme da ting! (Listen, Greg, while you've got the ledger open, where can we find the audit trails for all those $5000 mentor grants down the years, hmmm? It isn't on your website, or Phil Jones's. Why not? . . . Oh, never mind, we'll do our own research. Sorry to interrupt your asskissing.)
We, too, sent an open letter, and several emails, to Mr. Esser, about the hermetic, mute, antipublic presentation of his art gallery. But he hidin in a spidey hole from us. In his letter to JJL he takes pains to distinguish his public and private roles, and wants to avoid their "conflation." I can see why he wished to maintain this artificial, bureaucratic, cowardly distinction. Our points had to do with the man being a human being who was supposed to learn from his role as public art presenter to present his own art venue as if it presented art -- dig?
eyelounge sounds like a bar. eyelounge looks like a bar. It looks like a closed, condemned bar. Who puts plywood behind barred windows on someplace open for business, you dick? You waiting for a hurricane? The words "art" and "gallery" appear nowhere on the puke-green facades of your precious stucco walls. If we had to judge your public art credentials by the presentations of your own projects, we certainly would not have hired you.
Now we are wondering if you're behind the sculpture that was made from the melted-down guns. For those out of the loop, the damn thing looks like a steel Gumby raising its hands high and frantic in surrender. "Release From Fear," it's called, but it looks like "Take My Wallet." From melted guns. Was that you, Esser? It sure looks like your style.
A Greg Esser pose, practicing for when the banditos take over.
But you're both banditos, aren't you? pseudo-Zapata and The Denver Kid, misrepresenting your ethical and fiduciary responsbilities to the citizens of Phoenix and Arizona, cashing your tax-supported checks by fraud, and stealing the simple souls of the students and young artists in your charges.
[Update: When you're done looking at the beautiful images, scroll down for new postings.]
Flower Arrangement and Photograph by Catherine King.
by Jerome du Bois
This week's Phoenix New Times offers up a trio of pendejos stemming from the "Democracy in America" exhibition and the upcoming Presidential Debate -- a weasel editor, a vacillating, infantile executive editor, and a fascist, racist artist-professor. I refer, respectively, to Rick Barrs, Michael Lacey, and John Jota Leaños. The first man ignores our scoops and prescient analyses, far in advance of Joe Watson's stories, though Joe Watson became aware of our work; the second man whines, on the cover of his increasingly filthy and misogynistic rag, "How can anyone vote for either of these two clowns?"; and the third man stridently advocates censorship and practices political indoctrination on his students. And all three snidely look down their noses at ordinary, thinking, decision-making American citizens, any one of whom puts these wankers in the shade when it comes to being a stand-up person. (Other, minor players in this piece -- pendejitos -- include three of Leaños's students, and ASU President Crow, who is afraid of signs in students' dorm windows.)
Did someone mention clowns?
But this isn't funny. Part of it might seem silly -- for example, applying the concept of journalistic integrity to Rick Barrs and New Times. But we do. We must. It's an important part of 21st Century Soul to sincerely hold up high standards.
Barrs's story "Forty Whacks" (an irrelevant title, complete with humiliating, adolescent S/M cartoon) tells how Crow and other ASU administrators pressured Zeitlin to balance an obviously anti-Bush exhibition, and how she responded by claiming it was Joe Watson and New Times who created a climate of sensationalism, which marred the curatorial process. But Zeitlin gets ambushed by her own (and others') emails -- six months worth -- which the paper obtained under FOIA. She also damns herself repeatedly with her easily-disproved, pathetic letter to Svetlana Mintcheva and the National Coalition of Censorship.
Barrs knows so many more facts than we do, yet he writes this obvious falsehood:
At the outset, Zeitlin and the museum simply judged artworks on their merits, choosing what they thought was best. Guess what? Artists are mostly liberals, and political artists tend to lampoon whatever president's in power. To boot, there's a war going on that's unpopular among a throng of Americans. The result was an exhibition that would've been offensive to the Rush Limbaugh crowd. . . . Had it not been watered down.
Now, that first sentence is a lie, revealed in Watson's first story. In February, both Zeitlin and Spiak commissioned specifically anti-Bush pieces from at least eight artists, who delivered as promised. Later, in one of those famous emails, she writes to Mills, her Dean:
. . . we also know of several mediocre pieces that focus on Kerry that we can add . . .
So much for "merit" and "best." Barrs's main target, though, is ASU's President Michael Crow, a nervous nelly who apparently fears funding loss if students may put political signs in their dorm windows, and display them on That Fateful Day. And Barrs, for his own inflated part, thinks that having those signs makes any difference at all. Both these men are deluded. Senator Kerry and President Bush will just roll on by without a glance, if they even use University Avenue, past any number of placard-waving people.
Near the end of his piece, Barrs advances a "theory" for Crow being "so concerned about putting up such a nonpartisan pre-debate front":
Conservative Arizona legislators and Bush administration grant purveyors could get all exorcised [sic] over they'd perceive as a pro-John Kerry exhibition at the ASU Art Museum, and Crow's efforts to continue turning ASU into a premier research institution could be affected. Particularly if Bush were reelected.
Ahem. I wrote, on August 16:
One must be breathing real air, outside the hermetic academic fantasy world these people inhabit, to see the deluded hubris that dominates their minds. Ted Decker, Peter Held, Heather Sealy Lineberry, Jean Makin, John Spiak, and Marilyn Zeitlin must have actually believed that ASU President Michael Crow would eat crow: that he would, for one, put a multi-hundred-million dollar public institution, partially dependent on Federal funds, at risk, financially or by public embarrassment; or that, two, he would foul his own professional future permanently by pissing off the President of the United States -- whoever that man turned out to be.
And why would the University President do these things? Because over there on the far corner of the campus at the art museum (big cash cow) six pissants were scheming to promote their narrow hateful agenda through political cartoons while trashing the twin towers of Democracy and America and all who love them both. Riiiight. Read me that list of names again?
More importantly, Barrs ignores what his boss, Michael Lacey, admits:
When it became obvious that the current art was overwhelmingly anti-Bush, school administrators, who were contractually obligated by the debate guidelines to remain neutral on the candidates, turned the screws in favor of a more balanced collection. (Emphasis mine.)
Again, we covered this. In my late father's words, "There is no First Amendment issue." But for Barrs, it's just politics:
Also, although I fear it's just an excuse for certain high-handed tactics, ASU officials have cautioned that the Commission on Presidential Debates might pull the plug on the ASU location if it detected campus partisanship.
All the curators knew of the contract, but they went ahead anyway, floating away in the blithe bubble of insularity and illusory invulnerability in which they live.
POP! And Barrs maintains they sacrificed "integrity." They sacrificed nothing, and , of the art, nothing of substance. They have their puerile show, with Alfred Quiroz's cocaine-snorter and all 98 of Jon Haddock's little Senator puppets. I hope they're proud of themselves. And Barrs wouldn't recognize integrity.
Now, about Lacey: here's the founder of the whole New Times alt-weekly megillah -- fight the daily paper power, baby! -- refusing to take a stand, refusing to be a traditional editor, or even a man, an ordinary person, millions of whom will ignore him and his multiple insults -- "How can anybody vote for either of these two clowns?" -- and go right ahead, step up, and a make a mature, informed decision. Unlike him, they will be responsible citizens.
Oh, he huffs and puffs about wanting Osama's head, but . . . on November 2, according to his citywide, cover-story declaration, Executive Editor Michael Lacey -- "Make mine a double" -- will be curled up in a corner of his mansion in a fetal position, sucking on his Black Bush and whining about how unfair life is: he doesn't like any of the candidates. Awwwww. (Maybe he'll move to Ireland, finally. Oh, wait, he said, "Yo soy Mexicano" in that article, didn't he? Uh-huh. The only thing Mexican about Michael Lacey is his Monterrey tan and the tequila in his belly.) He has no shame at all:
These [the candidates] are not my countrymen.
When asked who I will vote for, I shake my head in disgust and reply, "Yo soy Mexicano."
Friends and colleagues expect me to vote for John Kerry. But they misjudge me. Kerry does not deserve to be President . . .
I do not feel that Kerry or Bush is competent to lead us through a religious war waged by terrorists.
And who are you, exactly, Mr. Lacey, that we should listen to you? A newpaperman who made his fortune off ads for massage parlors, gay hook-ups, and T & A bars, and who has no problem running a bondage photo in this week's issue (of a woman, of course, you asshole) in a free paper available to anyone of any age on the street. And I'm going to listen to you, my countryman? Go to hell -- but first, have another drink to convince yourself of your significance, you pitiful man. And thanks for encouraging people not to vote.
In the middle of Lacey's screed lies the insidious La Raza racist and bullying fascist John Jota Leaños:
A perfect storm of biased cultural critique, joined with a refusal to confront the moral implications of Hussein's genocide, festers in the halls of higher education at Arizona State, the university hosting the presidential debate.
Assistant professor John Jota Leaños coached his students at ASU into an overwhelming demonstration against the war in Iraq and against President Bush. As part of the first component of this class in Chicana and Chicano Studies, the teacher assigned a reading list about the war.
"We needed to inform ourselves about Iraq," explained a student.
Once they were thoroughly grounded in their reading, the students were required to make protest posters in the rich tradition of Mexican artists. The students chose overwhelmingly to voice their opposition to Bush and the war.
The artwork hung on building walls in downtown Phoenix as part of the First Friday celebration on October 1, less than two weeks before Kerry and Bush were to conclude the debates in Tempe.
I first learned of this activism from a student who occasionally baby-sits my kids. She claimed professor Leaños steered the class to manufacture anti-war, anti-Bush art, and she felt extremely uncomfortable having a political position forced down her throat.
The studious and demure [?!] Leaños (whose card reads, "artist, cultural worker, assistant professor") is contemptuous of the campus, and First Friday, too, because he does not see enough stridency in either setting.
Leaños explicitly advocates censorship when he thinks it is necessary:
Leaños felt New Times should not have exposed the administration's heavy-handed attempts to dictate the contents of an art exhibition. He argued that the story should have been suppressed and the controversy ignored until the show was finally mounted. He felt the story egged on administrators to push even harder for fair and balanced.
Your tax dollars support this man, who, not incidentally, believes white people are inferior to brown ones. This is not a non sequiter: this thirtysomething spoiled punk with the cushy academic job and swooning stupid students really thinks he knows better than you. Well, I see the little Mussolini for what he really is.
And I wonder about his students, Joaquin Lopez, 24, Violeta Tamayo, 25, and Moshe Novakoff, 24. Please note the ages of these adults well. After plowing through his propaganda and the required reading -- Ramsey Clark: "A major part of the demonization of Saddam Hussein has been based on the false portrayal of Iraqi government policy toward the Kurd" -- this is what they say:
As a result of his reading in this class, Joaquin Lopez said his eyes were opened.
"Before this class, I wasn't concerned about political views or the war in Iraq. If I don't think about it, maybe it's not there," said Lopez. "But I have discovered the power of art. How would I feel if someone came and bombed my neighborhood? The class made me think critically about war. Why are people dying? Why are we forcing our views? I feel like I'm really against the war."
Moshe Novakoff is outraged by what he has read for the class.
"Everyone in class realizes it's a complete degradation of morality," said Novakoff, who feels that their art represents a shot at having a voice.
Violeta Tamayo does not think of herself as an artist, but does feel well-informed. For her, the class was a revelation.
"This is unlike any other art class I've been exposed to. Art and politics, they should be synonymous," said Tamayo.
Novakoff: "It's daring . . . Because of the times. I know you can't speak your mind. The FBI will investigate you if you say something anti-Bush . . . Not having access to media outlets, not having a loud microphone to speak out . . . Most art comes out of desperate situations."
And finally, Tamayo: I don't know," she concluded. "If they liked Saddam, it's none of our business."
Leaños needs to brainwash people; he needs them for his stupid fever dream of power. But why do they become convinced, when other information is freely available at their fingertips? Because that's work. These three students are typical of the new empty ones, who have no depth and will latch onto anything that seems substantial.
Leaños himself is a political coward:
As an example of how he proposed to confront the evil of genocide, Professor Leaños suggested that if one left things alone, things would work out. As an example, he offered Spain's Franco, who, once his dictatorship was over, was replaced by enlightenment.
This man, I promise you, is typical of the Resentful Class who have been teaching our young men and women for the last couple of decades. Even if he is a mere college professor I consider him dangerous, since he hates people, freedom, and life itself. Rick Barrs is a dissembler, a Bush-basher, and a cynical opportunist, Michael Lacey is a big arrogant drunken crybaby, but this guy Leaños -- he's evil in the flesh.
Flower Arrangement and Photograph by Catherine King.
[Update: Since I'm getting some traffic on this, I'll open comments, at least for awhile. Thanks for your attention, readers.]
by Jerome du Bois
Jeff Falk's long-promised installation at the Stop'N'Look window on Grand Avenue is just about as viciously ignorant an attack on America -- and on its unique and honored status as protector of the sovereign individual -- as any of these local rat-bastard leftists could wish for. Two of his worst transgressions: awarding equal status to Abraham Lincoln and Che Guevara, and implying that we had it coming on 9/11. And in the middle of it, his signature image, stand-in, and avatar, as dead-tired as Keith Haring's glowing baby: the gold-painted cherub with useless blue wings, oddly impaled to a base, smack dab in the middle of the installation. Too many angels were created that day, and this bastard sacrifices every one for his resentful, pissant vision. Yes, Jeff, it's all about you, it always has been, and that's why your art is weak, vicious, and stupid.
Let's look at some pictures, readers, then I'll have more to say.
[Update: Val Prieto shares his short, pungent opinion. And so does my man Dean Esmay. Thank you, friends.]
[Update 10/08/04: Related Che items at attaboy.]
Here's Lincoln on the right side (I've printed the text under the photo):
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right [to dismember, or] overthrow it . . . (From the First Inaugural Address, 1861. Falk leaves out the bracketed section.)
Here's Che on the left:
The text reads: Let me say, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. 1961. (I'll get back to this horrible falsity, uttered by one of the Americas' worst murderers.)
A more panoramic view:
Finally, the planes, from the left --
-- and the right:
These photos were taken from the car; we didn't get out to read all the printing on those yellow and white sheets, or on that stand in front of the murderer. I doubt I'm overlooking some important subtlety, though.
Despite Falk's heavy-handed and semi-coherent Lincoln / Che comparison, there is a lesson behind the two statements, which hinges on the recognition of human dignity. Lincoln accepted human beings as they were; Che delusively thought he could create a New Man, partly by personally shooting a whole lot of the Present Men in the back of their heads with a .45 automatic, splattering their brains on his boots.
Oh, sorry . . . Lincoln's First Inaugural is a fascinating document where, in a cursory reading, the President seems to endorse slavery and sidestep any principled explanation. But, on closer reading, he is simply saying that he took an oath to keep the union (at present, with slavery) intact. He would not make their decision for them. In other words, he respected his citizens and he refused to take the reins from them. Read, please:
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. . . .
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it. . . .
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution which amendment, however, I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government, shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable. . . .
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend" it.
I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Che, whose soul was as shallow as his nickname ("Hey, you"), wanted to create those better angels. From an article by Humberto Fontova in Newsmax, February 23, 2004:
"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"
This from Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries," the very diaries just made into a heartwarming film by Robert Redford - again, the only film to get that whoopin' hollerin' standing ovation at last month's Sundance Film Festival. Seems that Redford omitted this inconvenient portion of Che's diaries from his touching film.
The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men.
(Hat tip: Val Prieto.) And this, from earlier in the article:
"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary," [Lewis] Carroll would have heard from the chief executioner, named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)!"
But wait. Check this out, from Val Prieto's Babalu Blog:
Robert Commie-pinko Redford's latest movie premiered yesterday in Cuba. "The Motorcycle Diaries," a portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara as a young romantic, opened in Santa Clara, where Che's remains are buried.
More adulation and masturbation over a murderer.
Here's the ultimate money quote:
"The presentation of the film pays homage to the life of a man who taught us a lot about tenderness," said Aleida Guevara March, Guevara's daughter.
Tenderness? WTF? I almost choked from laughing so hard.
Che was a puritan pig who hated humanity as it was. He was allergic to love and empathy. He and Castro delusively believed they could expunge something they called the profit motive from people's minds, hearts, souls. Frankensteins, both of them. Lincoln was wise; he knew that people evolve; you cannot create them.
And Jeff Falk is worse than a fool: he thinks we had it coming on 9/11.
Why the jet planes, Jeff? Why the fluttering papers and piles of grey dust and the black house? Is it Che = Osama and/or Saddam, Lincoln = Bush, beleaguered leader of a divided country? But you put revolution in Lincoln's mouth, and love in Che's. You twisted twit, squeezing our still-wounded hearts, then stabbing them. You mock everything Abraham Lincoln suffered for, everything that stands behind me, and elevate a bloodstained psychopathic mafiamechanic in a splatter suit for your saint. You shame yourself, Jeff Falk, but America endures you anyway. Let me say it in the short words you know best: Grow up. Your baby clown days are over. You. Must. Change. Your. Ways.
Flower Arrangement and Photograph by Catherine King, October 5, 2004.
ISCILLATION, 2003, colored pencil on Arches paper, 18 x 60 inches.
by Jerome du Bois
I stopped making art indefinitely at the end of last year. I've stacked my collages and drawings in corners in other rooms, not even hanging them on the walls. I've put away my tools, my wood, my special papers, my rubber stamp alphabet, my paints and colored pencils and my templates; my black idea book, filled with ideas and festooned with bits of folded papers peeking from its leaves, sits on the bookshelf. My fingers itch, but my heart's not in it right now.
ISCILLATION is the last piece I made before I downed tools. I haven't looked at it for nine months. But I took it out and I've been looking at it all week. We have, I should say, Catherine and I, and we saw a new interpretation of the piece which seemed glaringly obvious in retrospect, but it made us sick to see; it made us want to go back, to erase the knowledge, because it's horrible. I'm going to tell you about what we discovered.
I'm an idea man. I make art with words and graphic patterns, holding as many ideas forward as possible without overwhelming the viewer. The patterns hold the viewers' attention while I go to work on their hearts and minds with the words. This piece, like most others with most artists, had many influences and motivations, such as these:
I wanted to make a piece with the shortest English word I know: I, and what it means to me.
I thought about how one's perception of oneself risks blinding oneself to the truth: to see better, thin yourself out.
Also, I wanted to draw eyes. Eyes are holy to me because Light made them, and because Life and Nature used them as the greatest ladders to get us to where we are now -- and without knowing it; but now, we know.
I knew the background would be busy, but stabilized by both bilateral and quadrilateral symmetry. Bright colors would make the pattern pop.
I knew I wanted to bend the I, remembering my own saying, "Death bends your life's bow to make it useful."
I remembered hearing from someone when I was a kid, and I'm still working it out: "Accept yourself, forget yourself, and get into something bigger than yourself." And all the Jesus talk I was soaked in, too; some of that's in there.
Oscillation: the regular movement of an impulse from a maximum to a minimum about a central pole or origin.
And because I'm so influenced by Camille Paglia and Sexual Personae:
My personae are not strategies of irony or social adaptations but cinematic visualizations, products of an archaic process of picture-thought. The brain is the neurological repository of the human past, and personae are the hidden masks of our ancestors and heirs. Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift. I believe only some master principle of heredity, defyng liberal theories of environmentalism, can account for the profusion of human types, often manifested within a single family. The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.
Then there's Julian Jaynes's outrageous notion, embodied in the title of his singular book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (Everybody used to be a little schizoid, way back in the day.)
But most importantly, I rely on Daniel Dennett's evolutionary exposition of the Self as the sum, the I atop the pyramid of a jillion jostling semi-stupid Darwin machines, each with its own agenda, arrayed and stacked in coalitions, the sum worked out by such marvelous processes as pandemonium contention scheduling.
I am never alone; I am always with my selves and subselves; there is no isolation.
The little ovals? Those are the Darwin machines. The ones on strings hold the core together, while the dynamic ones dance, collide, and learn. So then I can say that the third eye -- in the center of the drawing -- gives birth to a big new idea, sending questions and claims shooting out into the world, through me; but to really see its truth I need to strain -- to even split myself -- to empty out and open up and try to embrace its significance.
Notice, though, as the energy expands, the I-form deforms in the opposite direction of the physics of expansion, as if consciously resisting it while still being carried outward and bent around oneself.
Notice that as the Self splits, it splits into two wholes, not halves. They reach out to embrace the new perception, the new lesson, and then bounce back to the center, wiser; until the next idea blooms forth, and the iscillation begins again.
So I made it, eighteen inches by five feet, grinding the colors into the Arches paper, saturating as much as I could, and keeping it neat. I made the left and right eyes separately -- big baby blues -- and embedded them in cutouts.
And we enjoyed it for awhile. Then the world turned ugly in ways I don't have to go into; what I call rebarbarization dominates our culture for now and the foreseeable future. I didn't want my work out there with that work. So we put it all away until this week. And we saw, with dismay, that ISCILLATION could fit right into the Rebarb.
That hot pink circle in the very center of the piece?
Imagine it's the button on a suicide bomber's belt . . . Deformation indeed, and the pretty fuschia ovals become bits of flesh, the other ovals BBs or bolts . . .
Or the central I is an I-beam in the World Trade Center and the hot pink circle is the nose of a 747 turning everything to exploding hell . . .
No. No. This isn't what I made! But as we talked, looking at the thing, we reached an obvious and ugly conclusion:
It's a freeze-frame of human annihilation.
Horrible. Now what, rename it KABOOM? I had created the piece in the intifada and the Iraqi War's aftermath, and not once did I, or Catherine, make the violent connection, though we keep the TV on (picture anyway) most of the time in our workspace. Of course, it still retains its earlier interpretation, and others, but now there's this new horrifying overlay that I have to confront every time I look at it. Will that wear down over time?
I made another piece before this one, in 2002, called The Oracle Board: Thirty-Six Triplets. I put that one away, too. At the center of that piece I transcribed four triplets I created in the three days, sitting before the TV, after the terror:
Never Write Bullshit.
Every Word Flesh.
Invest In Black.
Shoot Through Tears.
Maybe I need to get more of my work out again.
[Comments are open for this post, at least until the first ugly one. Then slammo again.]


text:
Sign up to leave a comment
Please sign up to flag this comic.
10 comments
Can I have a free sample?
July 11th
um... ill pass thank you.
August 27th
should i eat that for breakfast?
May 23rd
Free hog smacker?!
August 1st
I tried a box a minute ago and i have no care in this world.....lazy eye come back to me now!!!
June 21st
I guess I'm too late.. no more link to your poster. this series is too funny it really is one of my most very awesome favorite series.
April 10th
Oh boy! Free Hog Smacker! yum yum!!
Dec 31, '08
I found my perfect diet food for the new year! Thank you Dr. Percy!
Dec 29, '08
What about "now with added asbestos?" LOL! Killer stuff.
Dec 29, '08
I see they still have you on medication... lol :P where do you come up with this stuff?? LOL!!
Dec 29, '08

subset: commoncrawl


text:
my Nutrition
my Fitness
Other Goals
my SparkPoints
Web Search
Articles & Videos Home
Health & Wellness
Health A-Z
Cold & Flu
GERD (Heartburn)
Healthy Heart
High Blood Pressure
High Cholesterol
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Pain Management
Seasonal Allergies
Weight Loss
Healthy Family
Pregnancy & Postpartum
Instant Inspiration
Lifestyle Centers
Beauty & Style
Brides To-Be
Family Wellness
Healthy Home
Pet Health
Senior Health
The SparkPeople Blog
Community Home
Message Boards
Challenge Central
Secrets of Success
Member Blogs
Friend Feed
Advertisement --
Learn more
about ads on this site.
Snow Arrived
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Got myself up and over to Boyz Club this morning. It was nice seeing the guys. Its been over a week since I was there. Don B. was there. He said I was looking good and how much weight had I lost. 10 pounds!!!
Came home and made breakfast, built a fire (took three hours to get it really burning to where it was putting heat into the house), worked on the taxes (pat on the back), brought the recycling back into the house so it doesn�t get rained/snowed on, kept myself busy until it was time for the Pine Cone Performers board meeting. I volunteered to be the secretary-eek!
As we were having the board meeting, the rain/snow started falling. It changed quickly from rain to snow. Just as everyone was warming up the voices, someone said we need to cancel the rehearsal and get home! It was a good call. The director and at least one other person had to drive back to Sonora. The rest of us hustled out to our cars and started home. Since we mostly live in the same area, it was a long line of vehicles moving slowly on the road.
We were almost to the high school when the vehicles in front of me came to a full stop. I stopped a couple car lengths behind the car in front of me. I looked down for a moment, looked up in my mirror and saw a SUV coming at me. Before I could take my foot off the brake to move forward, it hit me � hard! I was surprised at how much my body was thrown forward and back.
We eventually got to a place where we could pull off the road. It was one of my fellow singers. She was very apologetic. She was in her lowest gear but when she went to brake, she just slid. I was the only one who got out of a car. Because of the snow build up on both vehicles, I really couldn�t see if there was any vehicular damage. Since I knew her, I just said I�d call her later and we could check out the machines when the snow was gone. I also told her I got a pretty good jolt. She ended up calling me as soon as she arrived home. We�ll have to let the insurance people deal with all this later.
our truck after about an hour and a half of snow falling
the trees were bare this morning
it stopped snowing and looks like over 8 inches
When I arrived at the house, I was pleased to see my fire had not competely gone out. I was able to revive it fairly easily and its been keeping me comfy all evening.
Watched �My Left Foot.� I�d seen it before but it was so long ago, I remembered nothing. Now I�d like to read his book. Note to self: Check that out at the library.
Dan called. He is at Julia�s this evening. I gave him the weather report for here. He�ll probably leave later in the day to allow the roads to clear before he rides his motorcycle back home. I hope they are clear for him.
Share This Post With Others
Report Inappropriate Blog
Member Comments About This Blog Post
Report Inappropriate Comment
My SparkPage
RORYLYONS - we had 6.5" of snow on our deck the next morning. It just all came quickly - much more quickly than anyone expected.
1218 days ago
Report Inappropriate Comment
My SparkPage
And another great reason for living in South Texas.
1221 days ago
Report Inappropriate Comment
My SparkPage
I love your snow pics. Glad to hear everyone was ok in the car situation. Thats why we have to drive slowly and leave enough distance on wet roads. Did you get more snow tonight as well...it is expected to be a low as 1500 feet.
1221 days ago
Add Your Comment to the Blog Post
Log in to post a comment
Disclaimer: Weight loss results will vary from person to person. No individual result should be seen as a typical result of following the SparkPeople program.
Advertisement --
Learn more
about ads on this site.
Get An Email Alert Each Time
NIKKILEEG Posts
See Today's Featured Member Blog Posts
More Blogs by NIKKILEEG
The final concert
- 12/16/2013
I'm back.
- 12/13/2013
Rim Fire
- 8/25/2013
Return from Paradise
- 8/15/2013
View All ›
close ×


text:
- 121 updates
ITV pay compensation to McAlpine
ITV and Phillip Schofield have agreed to pay £125,000 to Conservative peer Lord McAlpine to settle his libel claim, after an incident on the This Morning programme in November.
Live updates
McAlpine lawyers to deal with 'high-profile tweeters' next
Lord McAlpine's lawyer told ITV News that now libel settlements have been agreed with BBC and ITV they will move to deal with 20 "high-profile tweeters".
Though solicitor Andrew Reid decline to name those Twitter users, he did said they would asked to pay damages in the thousands.
Asked about why the ITV settlement was lower than the BBC's, he said it was a "sensible settlement" and they had accepted ITV's position that "the fire was well lit" by Newsnight and Philip Schofield's actions "really just added oil to the flames".
Mr Reid also confirmed he spoke to Scotland Yard about those Twitter users who "maliciously" retweeted the Conservative peer's name in relation to the claims, which he described as "a criminal offence".
Lord McAlpine has asked those who wrongly accused him to apologise formally and pay a "sensible and modest amount", which he plans to donate to the BBC's Children In Need appeal.
Mr Reid added, "I think the Government having seen this will need, possibly, to have a clear piece of legislation to make sure that Twitter can't be used to bully".
Lord McAlpine pleased at 'pragmatic settlement' with ITV
Commenting on the settlement reached with ITV and Phillip Schofield, Lord Mcalpine said: "I am pleased to have reached a pragmatic settlement".
ITV to pay Lord McAlpine £125,000 damages and legal costs
Report: McAlpine lawyers demanding more compensation from ITV than BBC
Lord McAlpine's spokesman told The Times (£) it was "quite clear" ITV will have to pay significantly more in libel damages than the BBC over false claims linking the Conservative peer to child abuse.
He accepted £185,000 plus costs from the BBC last week over a Newsnight report, but the spokesman told the newspaper that ITV will have to pay more after This Morning host Phillip Schofield handed the Prime Minister a list of alleged abusers live on air.
The peer reportedly restricted the demand for compensation from the BBC because he was conscious that licence-payers' money was involved, but the same does not apply to his action against ITV.
The spokesman said: "This was also done in broad daylight in a premeditated way in front of the Prime Minister.
"It was that programme that prompted Lord McAlpine to come out with his statement."
The Times reported that the broadcaster has been given until this afternoon to respond to a demand to pay damages.
McAlpine's lawyers set to target 'principle tweeters'
Lawyers for Lord McAlpine are expected to take a tougher line over "principle tweeters" who mentioned false child abuse allegations about the Conservative peer on the social networking site, The Sunday Times (£) reported.
QI regular Alan Davies, a reporter for TV station Al Jazeera, a Guardian journalist, the Managing Director of a public relations company and a former barrister are among thousands of Twitter users who alluded to the allegations, according to the newspaper.
Lord McAlpine's lawyers have found 1,000 "original" tweets and an additional 9,000 "retweets" - in which an original message is forwarded on by another Twitter users - and said the case could involve the largest number of defendants in British legal history.
Mr Davies declined to comment on the story, the newspaper added.
'Good settlement' with Lord McAlpine says BBC boss
The acting Director General of the BBC Tim Davie gave little away this morning about how the corporation's payout to Lord McAlpine was reached. But he told ITV News he believed it was a "good settlement".
- Charlotte Grant: ITV News Producer
BBC's Lord McAlpine payout is a 'good settlement'
Acting BBC Director General Tim Davie tells ITV News the £185,000 payout to Lord McAlpine is a "good settlement".
- ITV Report
Lord McAlpine to receive £185,000 BBC settlement
MP: Settlement is 'a very expensive lesson for the BBC'
Conservative MP Rob Wilson, who had written to Ofcom and to the BBC Trust over Newsnight's false reports, has told ITV News that the corporation's settlement with Lord McAlpine is an "expensive lesson" for the BBC and for the licence fee payer:
MP: 'Unfortunate' that licence fee payer has to pay out
The chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, the Conservative MP John Whittingdale, has told ITV News he "shares Lord McAlpine's view that it is unfortunate that the licence fee payer has to pay out."
Latest ITV News reports
Lord McAlpine to receive £185,000 BBC settlement
Lord McAlpine will receive a payment of £185,000 after a settlement was reached with the BBC over false claims made in a Newsnight report.
George Entwistle to receive £1.32m BBC pay-off
George Entwistle will receive a 12-month salary after stepping down from the BBC, he is also reported to be entitled to his full pension.


text:
So, how much do you really need to retire? Have you really ever thought about it? Are you willing to downsize and live off of only 40% of what you make now?
Wouldn't it be a lot better if you make more in retirement than you make with that job? How do you think you could go about it?
If you want to make $5,000 a month from an investment, that means you are going to have to get a return of $60,000 per year in interest. At today's measly % of return on investment, how much will you have to have in the bank? Well, if you deposit in ING Orange you can get around 2%, so let's see how much you will need to invest to get $5,000.00 per month returns.
So, here is the amount you will need invested to get $5,000.00 per month.
$3,000,000 X 2% = $60,000 / 12 = $5,000.00. Alright, that's how much is needed on deposit to net $5,000.00 per month with 2% return. Good, do you have that amount of money? How long will it take you to make that much and save it?
Do you get my point? You have to work a long time to make that kind of money and with the current amount of money you can make in a job, I doubt you will ever make that much even with compounding interest.
So, you have to make the money some other way. You have to work out a way to leverage your actions of money making to bring in compounded earnings, so you can put together an income that will keep you comfortable in your retirement years.
You need to build your own business. Not some ordinary business either. You see, an ordinary business will make you more money usually than a job, but you will still have to work quite a lot to keep it going. Even if you hire a bunch of employees. Because then, you will be taking care of the employees to keep the business going.
No! What is really needed is a business that you can build from the comfort of your own home, in your spare time, that grows over time and increases in value and income as that time passes. A business where you build a big network of like minded people that are also working to build a big network and so on. This is a real win win situation. You are helping other people build their own business and you are getting rewarded for doing this as each of them gets bigger and better with their business.
This way you have a vested interest in them growing because it is in your favor financially.
This is Network Marketing. Pure and simple. Marketing quality products to eager consumers and getting paid commissions for doing it through many of your business offspring. This is truly the business of the 21st century. Both Robert Kyosaki and Donald Trump speak highly of network marketing being the business model to get into.
This is exactly what I am doing. I am working with people to help them build their own business and reach their financial goals. We have a great line of products that address the vital necessities of life like the air you breath, the water you drink, the nutrients you eat and the vital life energy your body needs to stay healthy and stress free.
I would very much like to talk with you and see if this is something you would be interested in. This does take some good hard work in the beginning to get you trained and producing, but once that hard stuff is out of the way, it is really very easy to do.
So you can work hard at being broke most the time or put in a little hard work and live a great life of more money and more free time to enjoy it. The choice is yours to make.
Come Join Us
Click Here to


text:
"(about the sex scenes in The Dreamers (2003):) It must be very shocking for the American people, but what I don't understand is why they are so crazy about that. I don't understand why you can't see naked people on screen but we can see a baby being killed. It's quite strange. They're too puritan, too uptight."
Watch Eva Green Naked :
Click HERE
Click HERE


text:
Jan. 25, 2013
Game Notes in PDF
Northern Illinois Huskies (4-13, 2-3 MAC) at Eastern Michigan Eagles (9-10, 2-3 MAC)Date / Time: Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013 / 1 p.m. CT (2 p.m. ET) Site: EMU Convocation Center • Ypsilanti, Mich. Radio: WLBK 1360-AM, 98.9-FM in DeKalb, Ill. • Huskie All-AccessLive Video: EMUEagles.comLive Stats: EMUEagles.comTwitter Updates: @NIUscoresAll-time Series: Northern Illinois leads 50-31Last Meeting: March 5, 2012 • NIU 55-52WHAT'S TRENDING• Abdel Nader scored a season-best 23 points on 8-of-12 shooting, including 4-of-5 from three, to lead NIU to a road win at Central Michigan. It was Nader's fifth career 20-plus point game. • Daveon Balls set a new career-high with eight rebounds at Central Michigan; he also tied career highs in assists (4) and steals (2). • NIU shot 60 percent (12-of-20) from the field in the second half against Central Michigan, the second-best shooting half of the season. The Huskies shot 63.2 percent (12-of-19) in the second half of a win at Miami. • Darrell Bowie is averaging 8.2 points and 4.6 rebounds per game during conference play. Bowie ranks third in scoring among conference freshmen in league play and fourth in rebounding. Bowie entered league play averaging 4.2 points and 2.9 rebounds per game. • Northern Illinois is shooting 70.8 percent (114-of-161) as a team from the free-throw line in the last seven games. • The Huskies have gone to the free-throw line an average of 26.8 times per contest during conference play. • J.J. Cravatta is averaging 6.7 points and 3.3 rebounds in the last three contests. • Abdel Nader has scored in double figures in 8-of-10 games this season; Nader has scored in double figures in 25 games during his career. • 10 different players have started at least one game for the Huskies with Antone Christian becoming the 10th player to make a start, making his first start of the year at Miami (Jan. 9). • Keith and Kevin Gray have both played in 48-straight contests; neither has missed a game in their collegiate career. SUITS AND SNEAKERS WEEKEND• This weekend is the American Cancer Society and National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) designated Coaches vs. Cancer Suits and Sneakers Weekend. • Coaches around the country will be wearing sneakers with their suits to demonstrate their support of the American Cancer Society. • This is the 10th annual Suits and Sneakers weekend and is one of numerous NABC and American Cancer Society collaborative events; others also include the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic and many regional events throughout the country. ROAD WARRIORS• With its victory at Central Michigan, NIU has won three of its last four games on the road against Mid-American Conference foes. • The streak began in Ypsilanti in the first round of the MAC Tournament last season when the Huskies earned a 55-52 victory over the MAC West Division champion Eagles. • NIU's lone loss in the four-game stretch was at MAC preseason favorite Ohio on Jan. 16. • Prior to the last four games, NIU had lost its previous 10 games on the road against conference opponents. LIVING AT THE LINE• Northern Illinois has attempted 134 free throws during conference play, an average of 26.8 per contest, connecting of 92 of those opportunities (68.7 percent). • In contrast, the Huskies shot 179 free throws in non-conference action, an average of 14.9 trips per game, making 65.4 percent of those opportunities (117 total). • Darrell Bowie (29) leads NIU in free throw attempts in MAC contests. • Two Huskies have attempted 12-or-more free throws in conference and are shooting over 80 percent from the charity stripe: Aksel Bolin (83.3 percent) and Keith Gray (81.8 percent). A TALE OF TWO HALVES• The Huskies season thus far has been a tale of two halves with NIU finding greater success after halftime. • The Huskies are averaging eight more points per game in the second half that the first half while shooting over seven percent better from the field, seven percent better from three and six percent better from the free-throw line. • In the opening 20 minutes this season, NIU is averaging 24.6 points while shooting 33.7 percent from the field, 25.8 percent from three and 63.4 percent from the free-throw line. • The Huskies have 67 first half assists and 144 first half turnovers. • Abdel Nader is NIU's leading scorer in the first half of games this season, each averaging 4.6 points. • In the second half this year, NIU is averaging 32.6 points while shooting 40.9 percent from the field, 32.9 percent from three and 69.5 percent from the free-throw line. • NIU has 84 second half assists and 121 second half turnovers. • Abdel Nader is also NIU's leading second half scorer at 9.3 points. A LOOK AT THE 2012-13 SEASON• Freshmen have played 58.5 percent of the minutes this season for NIU; sophomores have added another 24.4 percent of the minutes. • The team leading at halftime has won all 16 games played by NIU this season. The one exception was at Miami (Jan. 9) when the Huskies and RedHawks were tied at the half, NIU won that contest. • Preseason All-MAC selection Abdel Nader played his first game of the season at UW Milwaukee (Dec. 7) after a season-opening suspension for violation of team rules.• Northern Illinois is outrebounding its opponents by an average of 0.8 boards per contest. • Northern Illinois returns its top-five scoring letterwinners and top-six rebounders from a season ago. • 10 of the 15 players making up the Huskie roster this season are underclassmen.• Of the five upperclassmen on NIU's roster, one will sit out this season following a transfer (Pete Rakocevic) and another had never played a Division I game until this season (Brandon Hayes). • NIU made its first appearance in the ESPN College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon, playing Valparaiso at 7 a.m. CT on Tuesday, Nov. 13. The Huskies were one of two MAC schools, along with Kent State, that will appear in the marathon. • The Huskies will play 10 teams that appeared in postseason play a season ago: Valpo (Horizon League regular season champs, NIT), Dayton (NIT), Milwaukee (CBI), Washington (Pac-12 regular season champs, NIT Final Four), UMass (NIT Final Four), Akron (MAC regular season champs, NIT), Bowling Green (CIT), Buffalo (CIT), Kent State (CIT) and Ohio (NCAA Sweet 16).THE EXPERIENCE TRACKER• Developed by StatSheet.com, "The Experience Tracker" looks at the experience per minute played by every team in the country. • Each team's number is generated by taking the sum of minutes each player plays, multiplied by their class (1-freshmen, 2-sophomores, 3-juniors, 4-seniors) divided by the total of team minutes.• Northern Illinois is currently the second-least experienced team in the country (1.60) behind Texas (1.43) • See page five for a complete chart of the nation's least experienced teams. IN THE MAC RANKINGS• Travon Baker is eighth in the MAC, tops among freshmen, with 1.6 steals per game. • Aksel Bolin is tied for seventh in the MAC in free throw shooting in conference play (83.3 percent) and ranks eighth in 3-point shooting in league games (50 percent). • Abdel Nader is tied for 12th in scoring in conference games at 12.8 points per contest. He is also tied for 13th in steals at 1.4 per contest. • Kevin Gray 14th in the conference pulling down 2.0 offensive rebounds per contest. • Keith Gray ranks 10th in the conference in free-throw percentage in league games at 81.8 percent.• NIU is second in defensive rebounding percentage (70.6 percent) and first in defensive rebounding percentage in conference play (72 percent). WHAT'S BACK FOR NIU• With its six-man returning nucleus from a season ago, the Huskies return more than 60 percent of their production for 2011-12 in most statistical categories. • The following are NIU's percentages returning from last season: minutes (60.7 percent), scoring (62.6), rebounds (63.1), assists (47.0), blocks (71.2) and steals (57.1).• By comparison, here are the numbers that returned at the beginning of last season from the 2010-11 campaign: minutes (33.8 percent), scoring (32.0), rebounds (31.8), assists (26.6), blocks (39.7) and steals (27.4).ABOUT EASTERN MICHIGAN• The Eagles enter Saturday's contest with a 9-10 overall record, 2-3 in conference play. • Derek Thompson is the only Eagle scoring in double figures averaging 11.5 points per contest. Glenn Bryant, an Arkansas transfer, (9.9 ppg) and Daylen Harrison, a Wyoming transfer, (9.7 ppg) are just below the 10-point mark. • All nine of Eastern Michigan's victories have come at home; the Eagles are 0-8 on the road. • Eastern Michigan leads the MAC in scoring defense, allowing just 61.2 points per game; the Eagles also have the best 3-point defense in the conference, allowing opponents to shoot only 31.3 percent from beyond the arc. ALL-TIME SERIES• Northern Illinois leads the all-time series with Eastern Michigan, 50-31. • The Huskies and Eagles met three times last season with Eastern Michigan winning the two regular season meetings before NIU knocked the Eagles out of the MAC Tournament. • NIU holds a 21-20 edge in Ypsilanti, earning a 55-52 victory at Eastern Michigan in the MAC Tournament First Round last season. • Eastern Michigan and Northern Illinois have split the last 10 meetings, 5-5. CENTRAL MICHIGAN RECAP• NIU earned its second road victory of the season with a 74-61 win at Central Michigan. • The Huskie win was its first at CMU since 2006, snapping a six-game losing streak in Mt. Pleasant. • Abdel Nader scored a season-high 23 points on 8-of-12 shooting, 4-of-5 from behind the 3-point arc. Last season, Nader scored 24 in NIU's visit to Central Michigan. • The Huskies shot 60 percent (12-of-20) from the field in the second half and 52.6 percent (10-of-19) from behind the arc for the game. • The 10 3-point field goals made by the Huskies is a season-high. • NIU's 74 points ties the best mark during the Mark Montgomery era, set at home against Central Michigan last season (Jan. 14, 2012).• The Huskies made 22-of-31 free throws, the most makes during Mark Montgomery's tenure. • Daveon Balls recorded a new career-high with eight rebounds. Balls also had seven points and tied career bests with four assists and two steals. • Northern Illinois trailed by as much as 10 at halftime but came back to lead by one, 32-31, at the break. The 10-point deficit was the largest NIU has overcome to win a game this season. WESTERN MICHIGAN RECAP• Western Michigan claimed a 71-34 victory over the Huskies in DeKalb. • Kevin Gray tied a career-high with 13 points, including 7-of-8 from the free-throw line, against the Broncos. • NIU grabbed 16 offensive rebounds against the Broncos. The Huskies have grabbed 15-or-more offensive boards seven times this season. • Western Michigan shot 54.3 percent from the field, including 50 percent from beyond the 3-point arc. • The Broncos outscored the Huskies in the pain, 22-4. • The Western Michigan bench scored 43 points to just 11 points for the Huskie reserves. BREAKING A 32-YEAR HEX• With its 72-61 victory at Miami on Jan. 9, Northern Illinois snapped a 13-game losing streak in Oxford, Ohio. NIU's last road victory against the RedHawks came on Feb. 21, 1981. • The Huskies entered the game at Miami with a 1-19 record all-time in Oxford. • The victory over Miami gave NIU a 1-0 start in conference play for the first time since 2009-10 when the Huskies won at Ball State in the league opener. • Having broken the losing streak at Miami, NIU's longest conference road losing streak is now six, at Buffalo. The last Huskie victory in Buffalo came on Feb. 6, 2003. ANOTHER STREAK BITES THE DUST• After snapping a 13-game losing streak at Miami (Ohio) in the conference opener, NIU snapped another road losing streak at Central Michigan. • NIU's victory in Mt. Pleasant on Jan. 23 was its first at Central Michigan since a 49-43 victory on Jan. 26, 2006. • The win snapped a six-game losing streak on the road against the Chippewas. COMMON THEMES IN VICTORY• Northern Illinois has scored at least 65 points in each of its victories this season. The Huskies have won just once under Mark Montgomery when scoring less than 60 points. • NIU has just one win under Montgomery when shooting a lower field goal percentage than its opponent. The Huskies are 4-2 this season when shooting a better percentage than the opposition. • The Huskies are 4-1 this season when they have more assists than the opponent.


text:
Diane von Furstenberg to Open New Locations in SoCal
Diane von Furstenberg has made plans to open two new locations in the Southern California area according to reports. The two locations are set to open at The Grove in L.A. and The Americana at Brand in Glendale. The shops will debut sometime in the Fall. DVF already has shops across the U.S., including a flagship station in New York City where the brand is based. The new SoCal locations will include DVF accessories, bags, shoes and ready-to-wear clothing.
Diesel Sample Sale
Diesel is currently holding a Sample Sale at its West Hollywood location, on sale are Spring denim and other Diesel merchandise. Today marks the last day of the three-day Sample Sale which will take place from 12p.m. to 5 p.m. SS14 Diesel Sample Sale, 662 North Robertson Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90069.
H&M Heading to DTLA in May
H&M is breaking ground on the shores of the West Coast with its newest location in DTLA. The grand opening of H&M at FIGat7th is scheduled for this May, however, no word yet on the exact date. Insiders are leaning towards the first week of May. Stay tuned.
Carven to Open Its First West Coast Location in Culver City
The word's out. French label Carven will be setting up its first West Coast location in Culver City. Presently Carven has a few locations across the U.S. including its main U.S. boutique in New York City. Bringing their au courant French style to the shores of California, the shop is scheduled to debut at Hayden Tract in late Spring 2015.
California Market Center Sample Sale
It's that time of the year again! The California Market Center Sample Sale is setting up shop this weekend at DTLA. Today, visit the multitude of showrooms for discounts and deals on men's, women's and kids apparel, home decor and more. On Saturday, April 25th the bargain hunt continues when CMC hosts its Saturday Sale where shoppers can score up to 85% off designer labels. CMC Sample Sale, Friday April 25th from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. 110 E. 9th Street Los Angeles, CA 90079. CMC Saturday Sale, April 26th from 10 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 110 E. 9th Street Los Angeles, CA 90079 (note: there is a $2 entry fee)


text:
Announcing new elements
of a growing commitment
On behalf of the MTSO community, I bring you Advent greetings. It is finals week here on campus, a time with its own kind of expectation and waiting. For many, it may well be characterized more by hope than joy. And yet the larger narrative and deeper meanings of this season are not lost on us in this place. New birth is always in the air here, and it is palpable in the calling and the commitments of those preparing to go forth and serve.
I want to take this opportunity to announce the next step in our strategic partnership with Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Together, our two seminaries have appointed Dr. Timothy Eberhart to a joint faculty appointment as Assistant Professor of Theology and Ecology. Dr. Eberhart earned his B.A. in Religion from St. Olaf College and an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. His Ph.D. focus was in theological ethics, and his dissertation was titled "Rooted and Grounded in Love: Joining God's Feast of Holy Communion in the Global Market Economy." He is an ordained elder in the Dakotas Conference of the United Methodist Church and has served on various boards and committees of the church as well as other community-based organizations.
Dr. Eberhart shares the following: "How we live as members of the creation reveals a great deal about who we believe God to be and what it means to lead a faithful existence. I'm eager to play a role in this collaborative effort to equip leaders with the wisdom of an ecological perspective and the practical knowledge of how to guide communities into the ways that lead to life."
This new appointment strengthens our work with Garrett, and it also augments already strong MTSO resources around theology and ecology. Our existing ecology specializations in the M.Div. and Master of Arts in Practical Theology degrees are attracting students, and this is an important next step. I encourage you to use this link to access a draft document that helps define the important sustainability and ecology/theology dimensions of our academic program. It also suggests the importance of bringing additional aspects of our campus life and community into alignment with this aspect of our academic mission.
In the most recent Story Magazine, I shared with you the creation of a Campus Steward position overseeing buildings and grounds, a position that has been very ably filled by Kyle Cunningham. Now I am very excited to announce the next phase of our work.
Following considerable study and deliberation, but also as a bit of a leap of faith, we are launching a sustainability and land-use initiative that will deepen our commitment to ecological wholeness and give MTSO a very distinctive role in the larger landscape of theological education. As you may know, issues of food production and justice are very much at the center of contemporary ecological and environmental movements. With that in mind, we are starting farm. Yes, a farm.
This morning we began the construction of two large "hoop houses," which are similar to greenhouses. In the spring we will till and plant several acres of an area of campus that has provided little more than grass to be mowed for several decades. Dunn Dining Hall is becoming a farm-to-table operation.
The food we harvest will serve those on campus and beyond. We are already building relationships with a number of organizations that will allow us to connect the organic and locally sourced food movement – often a fairly elite endeavor – with our many other ministry, service and social-justice commitments.
While this move reflects trends on college campuses in Ohio and beyond, it is to my knowledge the first such effort for a U.S. theological school.
We are constantly committed to advancing MTSO in ways that honor those who have shaped it while preparing today's students to serve and lead in the contexts they'll encounter. I firmly believe our growing focus on sustainability and ecological stewardship fits that commitment. As always, I welcome further discussion with you.
FEB. 10 and 11
Mark Kelly Tyler leads 2014 Schooler Institute on Preaching
Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler will lead the Schooler Institute on Preaching Feb. 10 and 11 on the MTSO campus. Tyler is senior pastor of the historic Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia and a fully affiliated faculty member at MTSO, where he teaches homiletics and African-American studies.
Thanks to the generosity of Schooler Family Foundation, the event is offered to the public without cost. MTSO is offering one CEU credit for a $25 administrative processing fee. Advance registration is required.
Tyler holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Dayton, a Master of Divinity degree from Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio, and a B.A. in religion from Clark Atlanta University. In 2008, he was appointed pastor of Mother Bethel, the first congregation founded by Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of the AME Church. Mother Bethel has been a spiritual, social and community force since the late 1700s.
Tyler, who began teaching at MTSO in 2007, recently was interviewed by host Henry Louis Gates Jr. for the PBS series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.
Burnam chronicles denominations' LGBT debates
For the last 40 years in the United States, controversy has raged over the inclusion in church communities persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). Writing on both sides of the issue has proliferated across many denominations. Yet absent from the discussion was a single document that analyzed the writings across denominations and from both sides of the argument. Paul Burnam, MTSO's Dickhaut Library director, identified the need and was determined to change the academic landscape in this important area of debate.
Sparked by his ongoing interest in the creation of welcoming and inviting congregations for LGBT persons, Burnam began reading material on both sides of the debate from mainline Protestant denominations. While on his search for primary sources, Burnam realized that there was no academic publication that compiled these denominations' reactions and arguments on the subject of homosexuality and the church. So he created one himself.
The results of his work were published recently in a bibliographic essay titled "Wrestling Long into the Night: Sources on the Mainline Protestant Denominations' Debate about Homosexuality" in the online journal Theological Librarianship.
In the article, Burnam focused on seven mainline Protestant denominations: the American Baptist Church, Church of Christ-Disciples of Christ, Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. By examining source material published by the leadership within these denominations on both sides of the debate, Burnam was able to outline official documentation on the subject as well as identify the work of prominent clergy and theological education leaders. He'd like to see his article serve not just as an interesting read but as a starting point for people who want to study the issue more deeply.
"I hope that people can use my article to find sources that will lead them to more sources," Burnam said. "It would be a great compliment to me if people interested in the topic could use it as a starting place for further investigation."
During his months of reading, Burnam was surprised to find that United Methodist sources produced more books on the subject than any other denomination he was studying. He theorized that this is a result of the structure and breadth of the denomination.
"The United Methodist Church represents people in many parts of the world. LGBTQ inclusion continues to be a struggle because some people in other parts of the world interpret the Bible more literally, while some United Methodists in the United States are ready to move the church forward on the issue."
As a librarian committed to the free flow of ideas and information, Burnam believed it was important that "Wrestling Long into the Night" be available through open-access online publishing: "It was a no-brainer where I wanted to submit my article. Open-access online publishing is not new but is gaining momentum."
Open access provides the free, immediate online availability of research articles, this at a time when subscriptions to many academic journals has skyrocketed. Open-access articles also have full reuse rights, allowing scholars to build upon each other's work without being deterred by copyright concerns. When these benefits are combined with thorough and rigorous peer review – as was the case with Burnam's Theological Librarianship piece – the result is both scholarly integrity and easy sharing of knowledge.
"I was able to get my work to a wide audience relatively quickly," Burnam said. "The article speaks to my feelings about how mainline churches address inclusion and gets those sources into the hands of other scholars who might want to look into the issue."
Discernment office introduces
new web-based services
MTSO's Office of Vocational Discernment and Community Engagement offers a variety of services, events and resources for students, alumni and employers at its new web gateway, www.mtso.edu/discern.
Through this gateway, students and alumni may register with CCN, a full-service vocational website, at no cost. CCN offers online job listings, e-portfolio building, resume posting and an opportunity to connect through MTSO's new Alumni Mentoring Network.
The vocational discernment page also includes a video introduction by Director Katherine Dickson, appointment scheduling and a full calendar of discernment events.
What it means to be a deacon
MTSO celebrated United Methodist Deacon Month and the vital role of decon ministry in a number of ways this fall. April Casperson, MTSO's director of enrollment management and scholarship development, preached at the campus chapel service Oct. 29, 2013, about her path to deacon ministry and the unique role of deacons alongside laity and elders in the United Methodist Church. The sermon has recently been featured on the umc.org home page. Read it here.
Lauren Dennis-Bucholz, a Master of Divinity student in the deacon candidacy process, compiled the reflections of 12 active and aspiring deacons into a banner, which has been displayed on campus. View the banner here.
Happy belated Deacon Month to all those who, as Casperson puts it, "connect the people of God, the church and the world with compassion and justice."
Faculty members provide
leadership at Oxford Institute
Five members of the MTSO faculty traveled to Oxford, England, in August for the 13th Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies. The MTSO delegation included Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Paul Numrich, Fulgence Nyengele, Robin Knowles Wallace and Lisa Withrow. Originally formed in 1958 to bring together Methodist scholars and ministers from Great Britain and America, the institute now hosts professional Wesleyan scholars, scholarly ministers and laity from around the world every five years.
"We're like a family but divided by oceans and borders. This began as a dream of how Methodists could get together and learn from each other," said Lancaster, MTSO professor in the Werner Chair of Theology and North American secretary for the 2013 institute.
"It's a unique week in which scholars interact with learned pastors and laypersons who are serving in churches. The institute pushes all three groups to think beyond what they normally think and to engage in ideas outside their daily disciplines," Lancaster said.
At the most recent Oxford Institute, Lancaster was instrumental in planning plenary sessions and organizing working groups that focused on this year's theme, Wesleyan Communities and the World beyond Christianity.
In order to attend as a full member of the Oxford Institute, applicants must submit a proposal for approval by the governing board of the institute. Proposals must be found to be relevant to the topic and contain sufficient scholarship that advances the ministry of the Methodist tradition in the global setting. Four members of the MTSO community were chosen to present at the August 2013 session.
Participating in the Practical Theology Group were Wallace, Nyengele, and Withrow. Wallace's paper was titled "Universal Redemption and 'Catholic Love'"; Nyengele presented "African Spirituality and the Wesleyan Spirit: Implications for Spiritual Formation in a Multicultural Church and Pluralistic World"; Withrow presented "Seeking Meaningful Discourse through Disruption of the Center/Margin Dichotomy." Numrich participated in the Ecumenical and Interreligious Group and presented his paper, "The United Methodist Church's Struggle with Evangelism in Its Approach to Other Faith Communities."
Photos of the working groups are available here.
The MTSO delegation was joined by Timothy Eberhart, newly appointed assistant professor of theological ethics and ecology in a joint position with MTSO and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Eberhart presented a paper titled "Sustaining the Planetary Household: Methodist Contributions to an Ecological Economy."
Eberhart will be filling Lancaster's role as North American secretary when the institute reconvenes in 2018. Lancaster, meanwhile, will serve as North American co-chair.
Although the next session is still over four years away, Lancaster already is busy securing funding.
"I'm spending a lot of time seeking grants to enable us to do our work. How money is distributed to fund participation by others around the world is a major focus for me," she said.
"What's really important at the institute is the relationships that get made," Lancaster said, "Meeting people from around the world has long-term benefits. People often stay in touch after the session and these relationships grow into fruitful scholarship and work in the church."
A report from MTSO's Bird Man
More than 36 years ago, Dick Tuttle began installing the bluebird nestboxes that dot the MTSO campus and nearby Perkins Observatory. He has lovingly tended, repaired and monitored these and other nestboxes throughout Delaware County ever since. Here he shares insights about the boxes, the birds and why those poles have all that grease on them.
In 1977, at the age of 32, I installed a trail of 21 bluebird nestboxes on properties occupied by MTSO, Perkins Observatory, Delaware Golf Club, and the "Big Ear" radio observatory. The trail's purpose was to provide nesting opportunities for struggling eastern bluebirds while creating research opportunities for students attending Ohio Wesleyan and Ohio State universities. The project was named the OWU Bluebird Trail. Today, 26 boxes stand on the MTSO campus, while six remain at OWU's Perkins Observatory.
The light green boxes are mounted 5 feet above the ground on steel pipes. Lengths of PVC drain pipe hang below most of these avian nurseries to keep pregnant red squirrels from claiming the boxes for their own nests, and to insure that hungry raccoons and black rat snakes cannot ascend to the boxes to devour nestlings.
All pipes have small zones of fresh automobile chassis grease to deter ants and further discourage raccoons. Four species of native birds use these nestboxes to safely raise their families while enhancing the lives of all that experience the MTSO campus.
The OWU trail is one of 11 nestbox projects totaling nearly 400 boxes that I maintain and monitor in Delaware County. My 2013 nesting season started on March 6 when I arrived on campus to clean boxes and add grease. By early May, nine pairs of bluebirds were raising families. Overall, bluebirds on the OWU trail in 2013 raised 85 young from 21 successful nests after 22 attempts with eggs.
Most of the nestboxes are paired to allow peaceful coexistence between bluebirds and tree swallows as they compete for nest sites. Since swallows are aerial feeders, they don't compete for food with bluebirds, which feed on insects from the ground. Swallows defend against other swallows within 15 yards of their boxes – inadvertently protecting their blue neighbors' boxes as well. Fifty-five young tree swallows were fledged from 12 nests this year.
Small Carolina chickadees like to glean insects from the campus's mature trees, and they attempted three nests, eventually raising 10 fledglings. Another small nester, the house wren, raised 11 offspring from two successful nests.
All native birds pay their rent by controlling insect populations. Bluebirds inspire onlookers with their brilliant blue feathers as they drop to the ground to snatch a crawling insect and immediately return to a nest. Chickadees are cute with their matching black crowns and chins, whereas wrens are feisty and sassy.
Perhaps the most valuable nestbox inhabitant is the aerial-feeding tree swallow. Studies have revealed that each adult swallow consumes up to 2,000 flying insects a day, and 99 percent of their prey is shorter than a centimeter. Deer flies and mosquitoes are on the tree swallows' menu, along with midges and leafhoppers. Inhabitants of the 12 successful swallow nests on and around the MTSO campus consumed more than 3.6 million insects in 2013.
As students and visitors become aware of the campus's nestboxes and the birds that use them, I hope they will not forget the experience. Once they leave MTSO and return to their communities, neighborhoods and congregations, they might recognize the potential for nestbox trails and seek volunteers to help enhance their world with nestboxes.
Since the first nestboxes were installed in 1977, those nestboxes along the OWU Bluebird Trail have added 1,864 bluebirds, 1,273 tree swallows, 210 Carolina chickadees, 688 house wrens and 33 tufted titmice – a total of 4,068 native birds – to our world. I hope your future includes our feathered neighbors. Help them if you can.
Doing all the good you can
By Stan Ling
Director of Development
A recent story in The Chronicle of Philanthropy focused on a movement that ethicist Peter Singer has dubbed "effective altruism." The movement received a major boost in March, when Singer introduced the concept to the public in a TED talk that has been viewed 600,000 times.
At the heart of the movement is a keen desire by participants to add significance to their own lives by using their financial resources to make the world a better place. Dr. Singer, a Princeton philosophy professor, advocates living simply so that others may simply live. Since 1972, he has given more than 30 percent of his salary to end malaria and to provide antibiotics to treat trachoma, the leading cause of infectious blindness worldwide.
Singer says, "It's asking that ancient question that Socrates walked around asking: 'How are we to live?'" One answer, he writes: "We ought to live so as to do the most good with our lives as we can."
Our mission here at MTSO is to prepare leaders for the church and world so that, together, we do the most good we can. Your investment in theological education prepares our new leaders to provide hope and encouragement, help those in difficulty to discover new pathways, and offer grace to those ready to receive it.
I suspect many of our alumni and friends have been effective altruists before the movement was named. Thank you.
If you're feeling moved to make effective altruism a bigger part of your life, I invite you to join the movement to provide a better future for humanity through your support of those who are preparing for ministry at MTSO. Here are a number of options for giving. We appreciate your consideration.


text:
Mos Def Tapped for Role in 'Dexter' TV Series
Mos gears up to play a role opposite Michael C. Hall in the forensic lab analyst/serial killer drama.
According to an exclusive report from Hollywood Reporter, Wu Tang's RZA isn't the only one that's set for a new appearance on television. Mos Def has been tapped to appear in multiple episodes of the upcoming sixth season of the Showtime series Dexter, the site reported this week.
"The actor and hip hop artist will play a hardened ex-con who claims to have found religion yet seems to continually find himself surrounded by violence," read the report from Hollywood Reporter. Without giving anything away, the site simply says that Dexter, the show's main character who both works for the Miami Metro Police Department and is also secretly a serial killer who targets criminals that have escaped punishment from the law, will, "reveal the truth of who he really is."
Mos Def's character — his name was not revealed — will make appearances across multiple episodes, but the exact number isn't clear at this point.
The sixth season of Dexter is set to begin production sometime in the spring of 2011.
Fresh Tracks
Get FamiliarJ. Kennedy
Meet Midwest-by-way-of-SD MC/producer, J. Kennedy, and check out the premiere of his brand new project, 'California Dreaming'.


text:
I remember being able to do quick find in a page when I simply type something, instead of pressing '/' and then type.
Is there any setting which enables this? I recently did a reset Firefox from about:support and I believe it used to work before that. I could be wrong though.


text:
Curriculum Resources
« Go Back
Lesson Plan - Latin American Geography
Based on the film Que tan lejos and created for the 2014 CLAS Summer Film Institute at WKU. Designed to teach about the colonial past in Latin America and how the legacy of colonialism lives on today.
Lee Durham Stone
Lesson Plans
Grade Levels
9–12, College


text:
UT Health Science Center offers free diabetes education classes starting Tuesday, March 11
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Have you been recently diagnosed with diabetes? Do you know how to best manage your diabetes to maintain long-term health?
Where can you get reliable and up-to-date information about the latest advances in diabetes care?
These and other questions will be answered during the upcoming Empower Diabetes class at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler.
A new Empower series of four diabetes education sessions begins Tuesday, March 11, in Hudnall Auditorium at UTHSCT, 11937 U.S. 271 in Tyler.
The goal of the Empower program is to teach you how to manage your diabetes. Each free session is offered from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. After the first class on March 11, classes take place Thursday, March 13; Tuesday, March 18; and Thursday, March 20.
Sessions cover topics including high and low blood sugar, meal planning, glucose monitoring, exercise and diabetes, medications and insulin administration, and foot care.
Instructors are David Shafer, MD, director of the Center for Diabetes Care; Gerry Brown, physician assistant; Celia Pechak, physical therapist; Donna Walker, RN; and Karla Wallace, MS, a registered and licensed dietitian.
Dr. Shafer, Brown, and Wallace are also certified diabetes educators.
Pre-registration is recommended, and the deadline to register for this series of classes is 5 p.m. Friday, March 7. For more information or to register, call (903) 877-7569.


text:
Traditional Djembe Drum
The African rhythm of peace.
The African rhythm of peace.
The story of one fair trade woodworking workshop
Artisans of Bombolulu Workshops are skilled in the craft of mixed-metal jewelry-making.
Artisans in Kenya show their resourcefulness by processing the invasive water hyacinth into marketable goods.
Silver, gold, bronze, and copper—combining different shades of metals creates a dazzling effect that sets spectators to swooning.