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The post From The Multiversity Cave: Conclusion appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
Lee Trepanier
This is the final post of a series that explored what prominent thinkers can teach us about today's public multiversity, the modern university with its many colleges, departments, and other administrative units that play multiple functions and roles in our society.
In this series of posts, we have reviewed what some prominent thinkers have taught us about today multiversity: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas presented us a new paradigm for higher education; the reform movements of Renaissance humanism and the Protestant and Catholic Reformations showed us how institutions can renew themselves; the problems of the adoption of the natural sciences of Bacon and Descartes as a model for the multiversity; the paths that Locke and Mill provided us to reorganize general education programs; and the role that experience played in the education of civic citizens, as advocated by Rousseau and Dewey. Just as we presently wrestle with the questions about the purpose and place of the multiversity, so did these thinkers. What then can we ultimately claim to have learn from them that is applicable today?
First, it is clear that the mission of today's multiversity is at best overly ambitious and ambiguous and at worst a reflection of management and marketing speak. By being all things to all people, the multiversity does nothing well. The multiversity – its students, faculty, and administrators – need to reflect upon what their specific institutional mission should be and then devote their resources to implementing it. The multiversity's mission obviously will be dependent upon the peculiar history of the institution, the availability of resources, and the public needs that are demanded within a particular community. But these conditions only set the parameters, not the limitations, of the multiversity's mission. Students, faculty, and administrators need to think not only what is probable but what can be possible.
Second, the multiversity needs to be open to both internal and external resources to revitalize its purpose and place in society while remaining true to its mission. This unfortunately is done today in the mind-numbing task called assessment: the creation of paperwork to justify one's position of employment. Part of the problem of assessment is that nobody knows what they are assessing, especially as most its theories, concepts, and practices come from the fields of business, which has a strictly utilitarian account of education, or education, which is not known in the United States for its effectiveness or efficiency. What we find in the Renaissance and Reformations are models that provide an account of assessment that is concerned with content as well as its execution, presenting us an alternative than the ones we currently find today.
Third, the dominance of the natural sciences as the model for the multiversity in learning, teaching, scholarship, service, and administrative rule is problematic because they require a standardization of expectations and practices that is not fitting for these human activities to be done well. Prudential judgement rather than thoughtless bureaucratic decisions should be the mode of thinking at the multiversity. Judgment should inform students, faculty, and administrators when standardized expectations and practices should be put in place and when they should not.
Fourth, the multiversity needs to organize knowledge so that students can see the relevance and connections among disciplines and faculty are encouraged to learn and collaborate with one another. The current organization of knowledge in the general education program is a disaster for students who have to form the connections among disciplines by themselves, an impossible task asked of them. The same also applies to scholarship, where faculty from different disciplines literally cannot communicate with one another. Finally, administrative units need to be assembled in such a way where they are not separate, isolated elements but part of a community of common consultation. Instead, the multiversity's administrative units are organized like American medicine with groups of specialists attending to specific illness but no physician making the connections and therefore comprehensive view of the patient.
Finally, the multiversity needs to articulate its purpose and place to society to society. The multiversity needs to demonstrate how it contributes to the public good and is not just a place that churns out employees for the marketplace. This is not to deny the importance of the economic dimension and impact that the multiversity has on society, but it must be more than an agent of economic change if it wants to distinguish itself from community colleges, vocational schools, or businesses. Civic engagement, democratic citizenship, and the cultivation of leaders also is required for societies to sustain themselves. The multiversity is uniquely suited for these tasks and consequently should explain to the public how they contribute to them.
Of course, there are more lessons that can be learned from the thinkers that we have reviewed as well as from those whom we have neglected. However, I hope that this series has prompted us to start to think about the purpose and place of the multiversity today in our communities. The series is meant neither to be definitive nor conclusive but rather to initiate and to encourage a conversation about higher education in America: its strengths, its limitations, and its future possibilities.
Lee Trepanier is a Professor of Political Science at Saginaw Valley State University. More information about him can be found at http://svsu.academia.edu/LeeTrepanier.
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The post Giving Thanks for Russell Kirk's Long Shadow appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate —but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. (East Coker, V)
Amid all the bomb throwing and doom projecting going on this political season, I appreciate the good folks at Ethika Politika calling for thanksgiving. We sojourn up a luminous path. And we should let our guides know their perseverance in prudence is casting light.
I teach history and political theory at a classical Christian school North of Detroit. School let out early today. After reading my friend Susannah Black's fond recollections of her professor, Hadley Arkes and my coreligionist Wesley Hill's celebration of his hedgehog of a teacher, Scott Hafemann, I determined to join their mellifluous chorus and start singing the praises of sage teachers. As I wandered from my apartment to the local coffee house, laptop in satchel, ready to write, I determined, a proud Michigander and Bohemian Tory at heart, I should give thanks for my staff wielding guide up the seven storey mountain: Russell Kirk, sage of Mecosta. Inside the Dessert Oasis, I scanned the blog requirements and felt my heart sink. Ethika Politika wants us to give thanks for people we know in a face to face, voice to voice, tipping back pints after class sort of way. Well, Dr. Kirk and I belong to the same community of souls, the same communion of saints, so despite the rules, I am going to sing his praises.
Gothic cathedrals, Spanish pilgrimages, and John Henry Newman's account of conversion persuaded Kirk to enter the waters of baptism. I entered by other means. My family commuted to The Fisherman's Net every Sunday when I was in grade school. Hippies, bikers, and suburban wanderers founded The Net back when the Jesus Movement was spreading like wildfire across Detroit. I remember dad insisting, as Casey Kasem counted down, "if a church is alive, it's worth the drive."
Pastor Alex, chief minister at The Net, had joined a Detroit gang, the Bagley Boys, as a teenager. Initially attracted to the gang on account of the members sharp looking zoot suits and reputation around the neighborhood, Alex questioned his path when the gang members started dealing drugs and stepping up the violence. Soon, after his Christian girlfriend left him and a policeman warned him that he was heading down a 'dark road' he committed to follow Christ if he led him out of this situation, wound up at a charismatic prayer meeting, and started, as he puts it, taking orders from a new general. The Holy Ghost also filled Tom Neme, a keyboard player touring with Bob Seger in Europe. After writing most of Noah for Bob Seger and The System, he abruptly left life on the road, moved home, and found Jesus. He began playing keys for The Net. God changed men in the basement of this old commercial building.
When I moved home after college to study literature at a local graduate school, my housemate (a boyhood friend who let me rent out his basement) invited me to come back to The Net. I expected the rock band and road to Damascus stories. But I was surprised to hear Pastor Alex quoting T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Scuffling around during fellowship hour, chatting with strangers who knew my parents and knew my story, I was inching toward the exit, drinking coffee, struggling to appear inconspicuous, when Pastor Alex approached. He shook my hand. He asked what brought me home. He insisted even poor college students need to eat. He would take me out to lunch.
Traffic humming behind us, Pastor Alex and I sat outside and ate Mediterranean at a strip mall walking distance from my condo. He asked me about my studies. I mentioned my favorite professor, Dr. Hoeppner, was teaching a course on 20th Century poetry. We had just read Eliot's The Wasteland. I asked how Eliot happened to make it into Sunday's sermon. Pastor Alex explained he came to love Eliot after reading Russell Kirk's The Sword of Imagination. A signed copy of the book, dedicated to Kirk's allies at The Net, still holds a prominent spot in the church office.
Piety Hill, ancestral home of the Kirk family, shines brightly in the minds of those who share Kirk's medieval imagination and love of the permanent things. Before his final pilgrimage to Mecosta, Pastor Alex made a trip to Detroit to track down a quality cigar for Dr. Kirk. Walking beyond the house to Dr. Kirk's library, a renovated toy factory, he was startled by Clinton Wallace, a homeless man adopted into the Kirk family. Wallace, noticing the cigar in Pastor Alex's hand shook his head, "Mrs. Kirk won't like that. She doesn't want Dr. Kirk smoking anymore."
Pastor Alex lifted the cigar and examined it, "oh, I had no idea," he explained. Then, undeterred, he knocked on the library door. Dr. Kirk invited him to come inside. Dr. Kirk asked Pastor Alex if he'd like to smoke. Pastor Alex explained he did not himself smoke but had purchased the cigar for Dr. Kirk before the gentleman outside informed him he gave up the practice. Dr. Kirk pocketed the cigar in his suit coat. He continued the conversation as if nothing had transpired. Pastor Alex told me he was relieved to see someone in my generation reading Kirk and taking up the torch. He paid our bill and asked me to speak at church.
Most English teachers in my department turned a blind eye to the divine in literature. Dr. Hoeppner woke up early and composed poetry while pacing around the Rochester suburbs. He did not oppose philosophical and theological engagement with poetry — he encouraged it. His class felt like stepping into an May afternoon after a long winter. He grew up attending daily Mass and singing in the boys choir. Catholic friends found the pre-Vatican II church oppressive. Dr. Hoeppner remembered the Latin services and Catholic schools fondly. Unlike professors who described Eliot as reactionary, bigoted, or second-rate, Dr. Hoeppner introduced him with the conviction he was due for a positive reevaluation. Sitting on a stool in front of the class, he laughed at the decision to mark "I grow old, I grow old, I will wear the bottom of my trousers rolled," on his dorm room wall as faintly ridiculous. He, like Eliot, had forgotten to act his age.
We chatted about the Church one day after class. I mentioned my frustrations with the popular caricature of the Bride of Christ as one of the chief facilitators of abuse and oppression, an institution of bigotry and patriarchy. Despite her flaws, she does the work of Jesus, serves the sick, orphaned, widowed, and imprisoned. Dr. Hoeppner agreed and pointed to the Roman Church's opposition to the Iraq war and monopoly capitalism as examples of the Church's prophetic role in society. As I read Kirk's Eliot and His Age and The Sword of Imagination, I gained confidence that the Church inspired beauty and charity. Academics, by and large, failed to see what Chesterton realized about our longings: "We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. We want a religion that is right where we are wrong. We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world."
This was my first year teaching economics. When the headmaster led me to my classroom and shuffled through the books on my shelves, I was overjoyed to notice Kirk's name among the authors. As I taught my students about political economy, everything from Aquinas and the middle ages to Marx and the industrial revolution, Kirk challenged us to consider the purpose of economics. We discussed his reflections on Wilhelm Ropke and what it takes to maintain a humane economy. I share Kirk's respect for Chesterton and introduced the students to distributism (the conviction that small is beautiful, and there should be a just distribution of political and economic power). One of my seniors approached me in the spring and asked if I would advise his thesis on the origins of socialism in America. We had developed a good rapport during a couple drives home from school. I lost most of my sight in college and caught rides with the Spanish teacher, the Kindergarten teacher, and, in a pinch, this particular student.
When the day arrived for my advisee to defend his thesis, he called me earlier than I anticipated, saying that he was outside my apartment, ready to drive us back to school for the evening presentations. I hustled up the hill to ensure the questions I had prepared for the presenters did not go unasked. I opened the door and downplayed my heavy breathing and absent mindedness. Kirk and I share the same opinion of cars, "mechanical Jacobins", friends of revolution, required, sad to say, for getting around suburban Detroit. Kirk's stubbornness went so far that he refused to drive. For me, driving isn't exactly an option. As we made our way to school, my student talked about his decision to run track and study journalism or political economy at Hillsdale in the fall. I recalled Kirk's time teaching at Hillsdale. Reflecting on the year, I was eager to continue trying. The sun was warm, the windows were open. I gave thanks.
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The post Ralph Nader to Host Hometown Book Festival appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
"This is the 50th anniversary year for my book, Unsafe at Any Speed, that led to improvements in the auto industry, and I thought a Festival in my home town would be a good way to celebrate the continual importance of books," said Nader. He will be speaking and signing books at 10:00AM Saturday, July 30, including his recent book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.
At the podium at 12:30 Saturday will be Patricia Klindienst, the dynamic author of The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans – the American Book Award story of what ethnic gardens have meant to newcomers to our land.
Nader will be joined at 2:00PM by the Pulitzer Prize winning American historian Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, who will sign his new book – Gateway to Freedom: Hidden History of the Underground Railroad – after discussing its gripping contents.
At 4:00PM, David Bollier – a world-leading scholar and advocate for the Commons – will highlight the immense property we own in common – old commons (as with the public lands and the public airwaves), and new commons (as with the product of modern technology, taxpayer-funded research and development, e.g., the Internet, intellectual property and a new awareness of how what is owned, but not controlled, by the people should benefit the people). He will present his book, Thinking Like a Commoner.
All books by Saturday's presenting authors will be sold at the Festival at regular prices by the Hickory Stick Bookshop, based in Washington Depot, Connecticut.
At noon on Sunday, July 31, is Historian and Western Connecticut State University and Housatonic Valley Regional High School teacher Peter Vermilyea, the engaging author of the popular Hidden History of Litchfield County, who will be just out with a new historical book intriguingly titled Wicked Litchfield County. He will talk about and autograph books.
More info here.
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The post Would Rabbit Angstrom Vote For Trump? appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
Rabbit took that nationalist faith throughout his different lovers, houses, and jobs. Whatever his line of work, from selling kitchen gadgets in the late Fifties to Toyotas in the late Eighties (including his son's entrance into the health and social services sector in the late Nineties), Rabbit loved and fiercely defended his country. In the midst of the cultural turmoil of the late Sixties he fears that strange "birds were taking over the garden. Rabbit knows it's his garden and that's why he's put a flag decal on the back window of the Falcon even though Janice says it's corny and fascist."
Rabbit's patriotism was accompanied by nostalgia, racism, sexism, and a general anti-cosmopolitanism to the extent that, were Updike around to give us another installment, it would probably involve at least one Trump rally.
Wouldn't Rabbit, after years of bemoaning the changing racial demographic and economic fortunes of his hometown (a thinly veiled Reading, PA), look to Trump to give meaning to his years of growing resentment? His once magical childhood city would still be crumbling around him, drugs and divorce had worn down his family, the country's loss of loyalty would likely still irk. Oh to be great again!
To ask whether or not Rabbit Angstrom would vote for Trump opens up a question not many journalists are asking. Not, Who are these Trump voters? Or, How did they get here? Not even, What are they afraid of and why? Updike's novels are more curious about what drives Rabbit's imperturbable sense of joy alongside his consistent dissatisfaction. His question is not a who, or how, or why, but a what: What does he love?
Rabbit's travails throughout the novels are grounded in his loves; whether he is running or hiding or returning, he acts according to his old high school basketball coach's advice: "Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide." That inner command propels him blindly forward as, in Updike's words, "his heart makes in darkness a motion of love." In his final drive south, as a heart attack approaches, "his heart becomes his companion. He listens to it, tries to decipher its messages."
And what does his heart tell him to love? Beautiful things. Good things. Rabbit tends to love them indiscriminately, though, in the hectic rush of impulse. Lacking discipline, he often he fails to love well, but sometimes he succeeds. The arc of a basketball floating toward the hoop was one of the things he loved responsibly enough to work at. The blossoming pear trees lining the street in his hometown and the dreamy songs on the radio brought him peace. Even as he and his wife aged, a glimpse of her thighs would still arouse him. Rabbit loved the sensations of living, the bizarre, unimpeachable particularity of American life. Sidewalks and pies and sunshine — they were worth savoring in themselves. For Rabbit, life in its fullest flourishing was what happened in the quotidian moments of middle-class striving.
Which is part of why Rabbit tended to agree with his father's politics, and voted Democratic. Earl Angstrom once praised Medicare and the moon landing in the same paean to the Democrats' beneficent protection: "They called LBJ every name in the book but believe me he did a lot of good for the little man. Wherever he went wrong, it was his big heart betrayed him. These pretty boys in the sky right now, Nixon'll hog the credit but it was the Democrats put 'em there, it's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson – the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man."
It's an old American story, that little man, whether it's Democrats or Republicans who happen to be looking out for him. But in Updike's rendering the little man is defined by the substantial splendor of the life he loves. His simmering resentment is no match for the overflowing joy of existence. Rabbit once memorably exulted that America was "the happiest fucking country the world has ever seen!" His country is a cherished occasion for loving the unrepeatable particularities of his own life. Whether or not he would have voted for Trump, Rabbit longed to love the good gift of living where he was, when he was, how he was. His political instincts stemmed from a fathomless ache of guilty gratitude.
(Image source)
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Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, attended a meeting of his local allotment association on Sunday despite the resignation of most of his shadow cabinet.
With the mounting threat of a leadership challenge and open calls for his resignation, Mr Corbyn attended the Annual General Meeting of the East Finchley Lot Association.
In an interview with the Sunday Mirror earlier this year, he said: "I enjoy growing things in my allotment and garden. This year the maize has done very well. It's been a great year for maize."
He also grows beans and pumpkins and uses fruit from the plot to make jam which he gives to friends and family.
Mr Corbyn pays about £65 a year for the rectangular plot at the allotment site where demand is high with more than 100 people on the waiting list.
A source close to Mr Corbyn confirmed he had attended the allotment association meeting.
Diane Abbott, the shadow health secretary, claimed that Mr Corbyn now has a "great shadow cabinet" and that it had been "rather bloated" before the mass resignation.
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The post A Space for Children in the Home appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
"If children do not have space to release a tremendous amount of energy when they need to, they will drive themselves and everybody else in the family up the wall." Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language
We need spaces that foster the various aspects of human life. This applies especially to children.
Some spaces–such as the family room or the kitchen–allow us to enact our unity as a family: our lives are so intertwined that we cannot be whole without one another. Here our children experience that they belong somewhere, because here they live one life with us.
But at the same time we each have our own lives. And the spaces of our home should reflect this too.
Our children need a space that empowers them, indeed invites them to use some of their prodigious energy and creativity in relative isolation from adults. Precisely because such activities do not have a place in the other spaces of our home, it is incumbent upon us to prepare a special space for them.
If at some times—and there are a few—children should be seen and not heard, then likewise there are times, and thus places, where their boisterous activity should proceed unencumbered, with no detriment to the activities or peace of others. This is a delicate balance. Given that we rightly expect at times our children to conform themselves to the standards and sensibilities of adult activities, we actually bolster this effort by also allowing the wholesome release of energy in a space fitted for their physical and psychic inclinations.
A world where fewer and fewer spaces are truly safe and friendly for children calls us to be more intentional in preparing the spaces of our home, guided by an understanding of children's true needs.
Alexander's further thoughts:
"Start by placing the small area which will belong entirely to children—the cluster of their beds. Place it in a separate position toward the back of the house, and in such a way that a continuous playspace can be made from this cluster to the street, almost like a wide swath inside the house, muddy, toys strewn along the way, touching those family room which children need—the bathroom and the kitchen most of all—passing the common area along one side (but leaving quiet sitting areas and the couple's realm entirely separate and inviolate), reaching out to the street, either through its own door or through the entrance room, and ending in an outdoor room, connected to the street, and sheltered, and large enough so that the children can play in it when it rains, yet still be indoors." Pp. 654-55
Cuddeback comment: This prescription from Alexander is perhaps impractical in a number of its details given the already existing structure of our house. What strikes me is the principle, which we might still apply in arranging or disposing already existing spaces. Children should be made comfortable in pursuing active play in congenial indoor space, always with an eye to being connected to the great outdoors. Among other things, such spaces can be conducive to active engagement with people and the world, as opposed to passive entertainment.
This is the fourth of a series taking a thoughtful tour through a house, room by room, based on the writings of Christopher Alexander.
Christopher Alexander (born 1936) was born in Austria and is currently an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of California, where he taught for almost forty years. He has been widely influential through his theories of architecture, and is especially known for his 1977 book A Pattern Language.
Image: Ludwig Knaus (1829-1910), Ein Kinderfest
Originally posted at Bacon from Acorns
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The post Agrarian Fireworks appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
Mine was not a public fireworks display sort of family, it's fair to say. In what would no doubt be considered a reversal of the rural stereotype, it was the women in my farm family who seemed most keen on driving the five miles or so into town to experience the noisy spectacle put on by our local fire department.
The men would hem and haw, dragging their feet at the prospect of going to town in the evening, which they almost never did, nor relished the prospect of. Going to town for anything other than a trip to the local Farm Service Agency, farm co-op, or implement dealership meant getting "cleaned up," and getting "cleaned up" was a chore. If you were a church-going family, your rural neighbors might have seen you with that slicked-back, just-from-the-shower look, but that's about it. Driving in for pyrotechnics meant letting the "townies" see you squeaky clean — an intimacy typically reserved for one's family. Seeing a farmer freshly showered was a bit like pulling a dripping wet cat from the bathtub; you hardly recognized him.
Neither did the pigs-in-the-chute jockeying for space on the shoulder of the highway appeal to the men in my family. In fact, their (our?) whole lifestyle was built around an assiduous avoidance of exactly that kind of cheek-by-jowl craning for a view. Farmers and ranchers are people of unobstructed views, of wide-open vistas, and, as a rule, their vision is more grounded than skyward.
Much like shell-shocked soldiers may shy away, post deployment, from big guns and big blasts, a Middle American farmer spends his life amid a cacophony of noises intimating danger, and thus develops a sensitive ear, even if, paradoxically, hours on and around machinery have rendered him hard of hearing. As ironic as it may seem, the farmer ultimately seeks a condition of silence, in part because his is an inherently noisy world. Everything he does, or once did, anyway, in those days before air-conditioned, sound-reducing cabs on combines and tractors, involved the noise, at least, of an internal combustion engine guzzling gas. To drive four or five miles into town, packing yourself in amidst the well-lubricated, well-liquored townies shouting for more and bigger, was antithetical, in its way, to the farmers of my youth. If they wanted that kind of eardrum-splitting, thrill-seeking mayhem they might just as well have loaded the family up for a Metallica stadium concert.
The Middle American farmer-rancher, of course, bears a complicated relationship to the bombs-bursting-in-air aspect of Independence Day. As a class, we have given more of our blood and treasure to America's many wars than any other single profession, for certain, and this despite a historically isolationist, even pacifist, bent. More than likely, the farmer knows someone killed or disfigured by a blast, explosion, or fire. On the farm, or at least on our farm, a gun was a thing to be used as a last resort — a specialized tool like any specialized tool to be used rarely and always with a particular purpose. Its use entailed no bragging, bombast or self-congratulation.
The patriot in me loves to join the chorus, but the rural agrarian in me, coupled with the fiscal conservative, cause me to stop and think. When the grand finale is done, and the last of the embers burn themselves out in the twilight sky stretched over the cornfield, I'm usually glad I went, if
only for the communion offered and for the shared celebration of our freedom. Then, on the way home, the lullaby of the gravel road inevitably returns me to that contemplative mood again, thinking of the oddities of our rituals—the ways in which we observe them, and expect others to do likewise, without at least wondering why we do them, what (and whose) interests they serve, and what alternatives there may be. The brain that looks for a better way to reach the same desirable end, the problem-solving brain, is, after all, the yeoman's way.
Each year, after the fire department passes the hat for donations to cover the ever-increasing cost of the show they put on for our benefit, I wonder what else in our shared rural and small-town experience would draw so many hundreds out in their cars after dark — certainly not community theater, or a tractor pull, or even the Friday night lights of high school football in my family's hometown of roughly 1000 souls. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the final climactic moment in the film Field of Dreams, our cars ease forward into the night, highbeams on again, locating the layered-up memories of better days buried beneath each Fourth of July the way others look for ghosts in cornfields. It turns out that not only if you build it, but if you blow it up, they will come.
(Image source)
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The post Who Are Public Monuments For? appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
The acceptance of these stories, however factually flawed, forms a sort of social contract. We tell ourselves and each other that perhaps our motivations were more noble than they really were at the time. We tell ourselves that what we did, we did because a greater good necessitated it. We tell each other that it'll all be okay in the end because we lived in pursuit of a noble cause. What action arises from these untruths is, we trust, better than what could have been were we to view ourselves with the coldly rational light of pure record.
In this sense, history is aspirational. As peoples, we want to be more than our ancestors were. We want to imagine that our motivations are superior to theirs, that our dreams and desires make for a better world than theirs did. In the end, we want to be able to say that we're better people. And it's for this reason that we play up perceived goods and disregard or explain away the wrongs. It's not because we don't know the truth; it's because locking our eyes on the truth is too painful an experience to bear without going mad. History-writing is a means to cope with the trauma of life without slipping into depression, without collapsing under the weight of the way we really are as human beings- selfish, greedy, self- and other-harming.
History, then, is not a science, but an art. And it is an art that can heal. One might say that history is the ultimate form of therapy because not only does it place a bandage over the wounds of the past, but it positively directs new growth. To say against all plain fact that we are superior to our forebears creates the possibility to truly surpassing them. In striving for nobility, we create the possibility of true nobility.
The erection of monuments is a form of history-writing. The figures we memorialise, the texts we select, are not chosen because they held real significance, though often they did. They are chosen because we wish to see ourselves bettered by their example. Monuments are not primarily about the event being commemorated; they're about the ones doing the commemorating. And what they say about the past is far less weighty than what they say about the future.
There has been much ink spilled recently over the remaining Confederate memorials standing on public land across the United States. The question has been asked — rightly — for whom does the government, which pays for the upkeep of these memorials, stand. The obvious answer is that it stands for everyone. But this is more complex than saying that is stands for white and black. To say that the government stands for all is to say that the government stands for a social narrative.
In saying that these monuments should be altered or removed, what is really being said is that confidence has been lost in the collective narrative of a people. No one would suggest that those who originally erected these monuments really believed that the cause of the South in the Civil War was wholly just, at least not for the reasons given in many an inscription. What those who built them were doing was writing a therapeutic history. They were dealing with the grief of loss, both personal and social. They were seeking to redeem the past, to place a bandage over the gaping wound of war and hundreds of thousands of sons lying dead on battlefields across the country. They were hoping for a better world in the full knowledge that it was selfishness and denial of the humanity of others that had led to such pointless slaughter.
It could be said that to preserve at public expense a narrative that is untrue is harmful. But is it harmful to preserve symbols of aspiration to a better world? Is there not something still to be learned from the way in which our fathers and mothers dealt with their grief, their anger, their confusion? When we walk past that soldier standing stalwart on a pillar, may we not see their hope?
Every day we tell each other lies. "How are you?" "I'm fine, thanks." This is a form of social contract, a narrative that says we care about our collective wellbeing. If one were to pry, one might find a great deal of pain, loss, excitement, joy, anger. But we know that to do so, to seek the bare fact at all cost, would to be to cause harm, to offend, to damage the complex fabric that is our everyday life. History is simply this same impulse writ large. Our memorials are one way in which we say to each other, "I'm fine, thanks." To insist on the cold, hard fact of the matter is to take away the only defense we have as human beings, the ability to tell a story about ourselves, a story that may be riddled with exaggerations and falsehoods, but a story that, hopefully, helps us to be better people.
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The post Gene, Everlasting (1932–2016) appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
So for several years our friendship grew by those ancient instruments, the telephone and the typewriter, and by the antecedents we had in common. We were both farm boys, and we'd had too many heretical questions for our respective religions — his Catholic, mine Baptist — to put up with either of us, and so we'd been set out in the contemporary wilderness. We were both writers, too, branded — yet again — by a lean toward people and sensibilities usually found to be somewhat out-of-favor.
Before long, Gene was not just the country rover; he'd become — his name — "the contrary farmer." And his wilderness turned out to be a small piece of ancestral farmland south of Toledo where he and his wife, Carol, began a life in sustainable farming. It was all entirely in keeping with his nature as recusant, and his joy at flouting most of the prescribed orthodoxies around him, both secular and ecclesiastical.
Lest you have begun to picture Gene as some grim, back-to-the-land Jeremiah, I assure you that nothing was farther from the truth. He was a man suffused with joy: with Carol and his family, his farm, his writing, and all manner of odd things, such as softball, which he played forever. "One keeps playing until he can't stand to be humiliated any longer," he wrote once. "But what are the limits of degradation?"
After Gene had been seriously ill for the first time, he even gained an affection for chickweed, a noxious plant that is normally the bane of gardeners everywhere. Gene, though, decided that he was dealing with a form of eternal life, or as he said, "another version of my bewilderment about life everlasting." When he learned that someone had made a salve out of chickweed that was good for rashes and abrasions, he mused that if he smeared enough on himself, he might live forever.
When I read the passage on chickweed, I heard Gene's good voice as I'd first heard it, inseparable from the telephone or the written page, and imbued with his sly humor and idiosyncratic way of seeing things. I believed his agricultural writing, of course (his longtime friend Wendell Berry said he was "the best agricultural writer we have") but it was his manner — and his humanity — that drew me to him. It was Gene writing to me that we should start an organization for People Who Once Milked Cows. "There are four kinds of people who have the motivation to keep on writing," he said. "Jews who feel persecuted, ex-Catholics who feel persecuted, Southerners who feel persecuted, and people who milk cows." And we both adopted the mantra of Gene's friend Michael Perry, another writer (and onetime milker), who said that writing was a lot like cleaning out a cow stall: "Keep shoveling and pretty soon you have a pile somebody might notice."
That reminded me of the first time I met Gene in person. By this time I was an editor at Ohio magazine, and another editor and I drove up from Columbus to his farm to discuss article ideas. He actually looked like The Country Rover, minus the beard but hearty and trim. He'd just come from helping one of his ewes who'd gotten her head stuck in a fence, merely one of the many odd problems that crop perpetually up to test the resilience of the small landholder.
A sheep is an intransigent creature, Gene explained, and would mule forward until she died, never thinking to back herself out. Gene solved the problem by holding a handful of fresh sheep manure under her nose, and the ewe promptly reversed herself and backed out of the fence.
"You'll forgive me for not shaking hands," I said, also backing up. And we laughed. When you were around Gene, you were always laughing. We also laughed at the picture of the other editor, a striking woman with an East Coast pedigree wearing expensive boots who walked across one of Gene's pastures as though it were a minefield. Even she found it amusing.
"How does one get safely from place to place out here?" she asked Gene.
"Oh, we look at these as little beacons that give us direction," Gene said.
In time, Gene even wrote an entire book about manure. I recalled him talking about a book on composting but I didn't take him seriously. Then one day Holy Shit — what other title? — arrived in the mail. It was a masterful little book of great clarity and greater wit, in which Gene provided mankind with a design for managing what he called "our most misunderstood natural resource."
I wrote him, asking forgiveness for underestimating his ability to find art in even the most suspect places. "Not only is your book a great piece of reportage," I said, "but it's a handsome little tome, and I'm sure the writing of it required great intestinal fortitude. Obviously we are embarrassed by our eliminations, and haven't the slightest idea where to put them. Your book will serve as our new GPS — Global Positioning of you-know-what."
The book, I told him, actually seemed warm to the touch, which meant, I supposed, that it was beginning to break down and compost itself, a wonderful solution to the old publishing problem of remaindered books. He immediately replied, and I could hear his laughter between the lines. "Everywhere I turn now I run into shit," he said. "You probably think I'm making this up but a South Korean professor interviewed some North Korean defectors and they said that the hottest commodity right now in North Korea — along with skinny jeans — is the shit shop. Yeah, public toilets where you can buy manure to take home for your garden…"
In early June, just after he died, I began re-reading his books and articles, and our correspondence. There was this note from 2005: "John, I am not making this up," he began. He often began letters and notes to me in this way, as if he'd discovered something so unusually delightful that he was afraid I might miss it. "There is an old Franciscan priest in Rome, age 98, who fell out of bed the other night and could not get to his phone to call for help. He has survived so far, but some fifty years or so ago, he told me I was going for hell for giving the finger to the whole Catholic Church in general and him in particular. Well, I have his email address, and I plan on emailing him with instructions on how not to fall out of bed and to let him know I am not yet in hell. Or perhaps I'll get myself another email address, such as email@example.com, and send him regards."
In 2007, he included me in an essay in his book, The Mother of All Arts, a chronicle of his friendships with creative types who had agrarian backgrounds. I wasn't sure I was, indeed, an agrarian writer, but I was pleased to be there, right beside Michael Perry, one of our favorite writers. Until I read Gene's overly generous essay there, I had forgotten that, early on, when Gene was working for Robert Rodale and his publications, he'd tried to get me into print there. What followed was a humorous exercise in editorial whimsy.
As Gene reported, Mr. Rodale didn't know what to make of the essay I wrote for Gene on crime in the countryside, and so he had it critiqued by a sociologist, an obviously sober man who was disappointed that I hadn't included any statistics on rural crime and certain I'd "demeaned the seriousness of the problem." (The essay finally went off to Richard Ketchum at Country Journal who immediately bought it, even bereft of statistics.) Gene, though the rejection was no fault of his, was contrite, and all he could offer me by way of solace was an anecdote about Mr. Rodale.
Rodale was a man of enthusiasms, Gene said, and while some of them were lasting (as were his contributions to the organic farm movement), others were of briefer duration. One summer, for instance, there was a pronouncement in his offices to the effect that tight jockey shorts were unhealthy, and he encouraged his employees to, in effect, loosen up. One day, as Gene recalled it, a very loose Mr. Rodale was working, standing up, one foot on his desk, when he accidentally slammed a desk drawer on his tender hanging parts. In a few days, a small notice appeared on the office bulletin board, rescinding any previous instructions about underwear.
This wasn't reported in Gene's essay, because he admired Mr. Rodale, and while it was a wonderful story, he'd save it for his friends in conversation, understanding full well that — like my editor picking her way across Gene's pasture — life was always one small gesture from unintended consequences.
I got a note from Gene when the book appeared: "I suppose your mail box and computer have been flooded with celebratory remarks now that I have made you famous. No? Well, The Mother of All Arts is out and the bells of favorable reviews are ringing throughout the land. No? Damn…"
When he wrote his first novel, Lords of Folly, I sent him a mock obituary. "Gene Logsdon, essayist, rural philosopher, and of late, novelist, yesterday baled himself into a New Holland Model 580 with its exclusive feeding system," it read. "The accident occurred while Mr. Logsdon stood atop the New Holland reading reviews of his new novel, The Lords of Folly. The grieving widow said she planned to leave Mr. Logsdon in the hay mow for the time being, as he looked good in twine."
Lords was a book of great spirit (pun intended), but Gene was just getting warmed up for what I think is his best book — Pope Mary and the Church of Almighty Good Food. It was a cross between P.G. Wodehouse and William Dean Howells, a kind of fable containing everything Gene believed about people, agriculture, and the church. It featured a sheep-herding priest and an iconoclastic woman farmer, and when Rome decided to close their church, the venerable old St. Philodendra, a cast of wonderful irregulars emerged from the parish closet, unleashing anarchy in all directions.
Behind the satire is an ultimate richness that goes to the heart of Gene's beliefs: the idea of converting empty ritual into a genuinely spiritual subsistence — the Host made literal, you might say. That notion arises so nicely that when the reader finally sees what Gene is up to, he/she is perfectly taken in, sitting expectantly at the Communion table as if it might have a platter of fried chicken on it.
"Well, it was just a matter of time until you got your two lifelong topics — religion and agriculture — under the same roof and thoroughly dealt with them," I wrote him.
"Oh, yes," he wrote back. "I was surely meant to be some kind of preacher myself."
My other favorite book of his is Gene Everlasting, his last one, a manual of devoutness in which it's revealed to the careful reader how truly religious this maverick — who'd studied years for the seminary — really was. Even amidst such gravity — the notion of his own passing — his customary humor never left him. "Dying is the best story we will ever cover," he said, "and the only sad part of it is that good writing requires experience in the subject, which is kind of hard to do."
It is filled with resonate imagery — Mr. Henderson prying parsnips from the winter ground with a crowbar, the Wool King being thrice baptized because the first two times he came up sputtering profanity, and old Mr. Harrison asleep in his garden chair, awakening to ask Gene, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could just die sitting here asleep in my garden?"
Death was closer to him then, for he wrote Gene Everlasting while in remission. His book was not about death, however; it was an affirmation of life. Almost everything Gene ever did contained that affirmation. Written two years ago, Gene Everlasting concluded with a paean to spring (and Carol's first rhubarb custard pie of the season). By then he had arrived at an almost Buddhist sense of life, understanding fully how we are all an integral part of existence, flowing from the food chain and back into it. "We are not god-like spirits, apart from the planet and destined for a kind of spiritual afterlife that in reality does not exist," he wrote. "We are an inseparable part of all life."
By the small connections Gene made between himself and every part of the varied life all around him, he had become — my term, for he would have disputed me — holy. He was kind, generous, cheerful, ribaldly humorous, and unceasingly productive. He was a sweet man. I didn't see him often, but he was often in my presence. I thought of him as an exemplar for the well-lived life, and when I read Henry James's quote about being "one of the people on whom nothing is lost," I thought first of Gene.
Wesley Jackson, president of The Land Institute, said that Gene was one of only three people he knew who was able to make a living out of writing exclusively what should be common sense. Verlyn Klinkenborg in The New York Times said he was "the best — and most plain-spoken — philosopher of rural living I know." And while Gene was not the first advocate for a personal, sustainable agriculture, he became its modern statesman. When he returned to his family's land back in the 1970s, that kind of agriculture was a curiosity. Today, in my county alone, we probably have a dozen thriving small-practice farmsteads.
It was surely providence that the publisher of Gene Everlasting was committed to ecological stewardship, using recycled paper and vegetable inks. Even as Gene was leaving us, Chelsea Green's production values were lending him a kind of eternal life, or what passed for it in publishing circles. Writing, after all, can be a kind of immortality, and in one of my last — unsuspecting! — letters to him, I teased him about my discovery of "the cloud," whereby my Orange Frazer publishing office was now storing its manuscripts on off-site servers by way of the internet.
"It sounds suspiciously like an electronic euphemism for heaven," I wrote. "I'm thinking that for a lapsed Catholic such as yourself, you can now send all of your writing to the cloud and you will live forever, in spite of your ecclesiastical errors."
The notion amused him. "Who would have thought that an old Luddite such as myself might be delivered by technology?" he said.
Gene, however, had been delivered long before. It was when he and Carol returned to the farmland owned by his maternal kin, the Ralls, who once had owned sixteen farms outside of Upper Sandusky, fourteen of them contiguous. The town was five miles away, Gene said, and as a boy he could walk to town and never leave Rall land except for one short span. There, on his own small piece of land, he found the sublimity he couldn't find in church. The rituals he and Carol observed didn't seem to be that different, either, requiring, as they did, a similar and difficult faith. He'd connected himself to similar verities, equally eternal, of which he reminded us in the wonderfully serene concluding passage to Gene Everlasting.
"The summer solstice came," he wrote, "the end of the great awakening. I still heard the sound of sheep baaing plaintively for me to turn them into a fresh pasture plot. I still heard me calling them as they came rushing, phantom-like, to the gate. In fact, I could still hear, as clearly as if it were yesterday, cousin Adrian calling his sheep over these same hills three-quarters of a century ago. As long as there was memory, sheep were immortal."
In the days since his death, reading his books, I keep returning to that final chapter, in which he rejoiced in the spring of his remission, uncertain whether he'd have another. I loved that last scene, hearing his good voice as I'd always heard it and recalling his vast constancy, as writer, farmer, family man, and friend. And I thought: What else is immortality?
The post Gene, Everlasting (1932–2016) appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
The post The Day the Improbable Happened appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>
During the campaign those of us who wanted to Leave were told we were racists, isolationists, and economic naïfs. If only we were smart enough to trust the so-called experts (who had warned what would happen to the UK economy if it didn't join the euro). I had already lost interest in answering these accusations and in a way, I had already moved on. Whatever way the vote went, I was happy that the arguments had been made, for both sides, and I was wearied by the long campaign. Frankly, I wasn't prepared for Leave to win, and perhaps neither were the official Leave campaign. Boris Johnson was said to have told someone going home on the Tube last night that he thought Leave had lost.
As I woke up to dozens of overnight texts and emails from the U.S., who had watched Sky call it for Out early in the morning UK time, I was anxious to get to find out reaction from the populace itself and set out for a coffee shop in Central London to get a sense of the mood. I watched two clearly very close friends who often get coffee together quickly decide, after a terse and quickly escalated exchange, that they were just going to discuss other things (the Remain lady was more upset and tried to find her solace in some sudoku). The Korean War veteran I managed to speak with for a few minutes shared with me an unpleasant conversation he had had with David Cameron earlier in the year at a British Legion event at which he told the PM what for. But I knew these views were just a small part of the bigger story, and a coffee shop would only give me a steady drip of opinion, whereas I was ready for the firehose of freewheeling interviews with politicians across from Westminster on College Green. I headed over with a friend I had met for coffee, a fellow Brexite(e)r, and went to look upon the media fracas.
It was really a great opportunity to engage with both the people who had made a compelling case during the referendum – I met people like Peter Bone, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mark Reckless, Daniel Hannan, and the like who had been calmly putting forth the Euroskeptic case for years. I spoke with curious Americans and Aussies and Kiwis who had come out, curious, to see what was going on — many of them not really acquainted with the arguments of either side of the debate.
I also talked with some of the more reasonable Remainers, who had come out to put their understandable "what happens now" questions to some of the MPs and MEPs in question. Most of them, including a Ph.D. Candidate at the LSE, were willing to admit that it wasn't so much that Britain was done for economically – they knew that there were no tariffs going up tomorrow or even 5 years from now on the most important goods and services in the UK economy, and readily admitted that this would be a huge rebirth of the fishing industry in the UK – they were more concerned about the optics of the event: did Britain look racist to the rest of the world? They certainly felt that way – and to be fair to them, there are ugly elements within the Leave camp who stand guilty of those charges. But from my experience, both with the British people, and in observing this referendum which I knew was coming once UKIP won the European elections in 2014, those small and ugly voices are simply not an engaged majority who will influence governance. Common sense will prevail, as will mutual self-interest. Perhaps that's the sunny and optimistic American in me, but that's because I was born and spent the first decade of my life in a country that left the UK and went on to thrive (Singapore) so it's very believable to me that the UK could leave the EU and go on to thrive too.
I stayed for a couple hours and many of the media were on "Boris standby" in the hopes that the boy-man with the messy hair would show up and say a few words. He would have been absolutely mobbed on this mixed zone in which no one was checking press credentials (I and some friends casually strolled in after watching proceedings for an hour) and where prank comedians were busy trying to embarrass politicians by asking why we couldn't "send all the plumbers home now." I picked a favorite noodle shop on the South Bank and took in the sunshine and enjoyed lunch where I still couldn't really believe it had happened.
Alex Salmond led a campaign for "Yes" in Scotland 2 years ago that was an optimistic and hope-filled one that I heartily supported. What many Remainers should know today is that there are many Leavers who are just as optimistic and hope-filled, not just because we don't see the EU as synonymous with Europe, but because there are so many options available to everyone, not just the UK, now that Fortress Europe has been breached. We aren't racist, we aren't hateful, and we know that the only way for the UK to move forward is for the new government to take account of the 48 percent of those who "respectfully disagreed" and create a roadmap for the UK that inspires everyone, both inside and outside it.
Picture taken this morning of an interview of MEP Daniel Hannan, who in helping to lead the Leave campaign, just voted himself out of a job in the European Parliament. You're looking a turkey who voted for Christmas. We could use a few more politicians like him.
The post The Day the Improbable Happened appeared first on Front Porch Republic.]]>


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Stars of David
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The first English-language trailer for Natalie Portman's directorial debut — A Tale of Love and Darkness — based on Israeli author Amos Oz's memoir, was released on Thursday. The movie, originally filmed in Hebrew, tells the story of Oz's childhood in Jerusalem at the end of the British Mandate and the early years of Israel's independence. Portman, who was born in Israel and speaks fluent Hebrew, plays the lead role of Fania, the author's mother. She struggles to raise her son as she deals with inner demons, a […]Read more →
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subset: commoncrawl


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Skittles N Bitz
Crazy comedy sketches featuring your favorite video game characters!
Alice is Dead
It appears Alice is dead, and you might be the one who killed her.
Ego City
A kid named Johnny has to stop the destruction of his city.
The volume levels of the AI voice are horribly high. In other words it sounds like my speakers are going to fry when the lady speaks. I had to turn off the sound effects. My speaker levels are fine, it's your game, fix it please.
Second, your income increased too slow to keep up with the repeated attacks by the computer. The layout seems simple but in reality it just wasn't that great and made it hard to control your units, build buildings, make upgrades, etc.
I think this game needs a lot more testing and the author's terse comments just demonstrates the lack of enthusiasm and integrity put into this barely average game.
Couldn't even get the game to work initially. Multiple into windows kept layering over one another. Could not get the introduction windows to stop popping up. Decent graphics, but WAY too buggy.
Seems very buggy to me. Switching between units, clicking to send units and navigating the minimap were all very erratic - sometimes they worked, others they just didn't - causing lots of frustrating confusion.
Very good base... units, combines personal / group control. Nice.
I had a lot of trouble/bugs trying to move unit subgroups individually. The destination point circle would only appear sporadically, meaning I'd be madly clicking to position snipers that ignored me, while the rest of my forces would get picked off.
Also, the enemy AI did not seem to upgrade it's manufacturing capacities.
It reduced the game from tactics to merely - build horde/release horde/flatten weak base - for me.
Very fun and exciting game. The graphics are good, and its something a little different, the fact that you don't just look at things birds eye view, you can also control a character. There is huge replay potential in this game, with achievements and the different fraction campaigns you can play.
Very good game, well made.


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Sellafield management to stay
An announcement on who will manage the Sellafield nuclear site from next year is expected to be made today.
An announcement on who will manage the Sellafield nuclear site from next year is expected to be made today.
The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Baroness Verma, has released a statement expressing the Government's support for Nuclear Management Partners' extension of its management contract at Sellafield.
"Sellafield remains the Government's top priority in our nuclear decommissioning programme.
"We support this decision to extend the contract which will build on skills and expertise at the site and the progress made so far."
Parents from Dalbeattie tell ITV Border they are dreading their children returning to school because of cuts to learning support services.
Corporal Josh Hoole died in Wales last week after a two-hour march with the Rifles Regiment, on what was the hottest day of the year.
Samantha Kinghorn and Simon Lawson have been added to the line-up to represent Paralympics GB for track and field in Rio.


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Rooney Mara Films 'The Bitter Pill' in NYC
Barbara DeFranco
| April 10, 2012 - 11:59 am
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My family and I (5A2C) stay for 3 nights in 2 rooms. Staffs were friendly and helpful. Room looks old but you will feel it clean. I would think it's time for the hotel to change its carpet or maybe some minor renovation.
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laserjet 4015 reset maintenanc
Re: laserjet 4015 reset maintenanc
Re: laserjet 4015 reset maintenanc
I found this online-
Some of the older firmware versions did not have the "New Maintenance Kit" option mentioned in the above procedure. In this case you can either update the printer's firmware to ad this feature or manually reset the maintenance count in the service menu as described below.
Enter the Service Menu -- Press the MENU button, and scroll through the list of menus until you see "SERVICE". Press OK.
Before you can enter the Service Menu, you will see a blank line on the screen where you are supposed to enter an access code:
On a LaserJet P4014, the access code is 05401408
On a LaserJet P4015, the access code is 05401508
On a LaserJet P4515, the access code is 05451508
Enter the code and press OK.
You will now be allowed into the Service Menu. Scroll through the list of options until you see, "Maintenance Count." Press OK.
Change the current maintenance count to "0" by pressing the number "0", and then pressing OK.
To confirm this, you can print an Information page.
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Police: Coin Machine Bandit behind bars
PHOENIX — The elusive Coin Machine Bandit, accused of stealing 27 coin dispensers, has been arrested by Phoenix police.
Bryan Simon, 31, is accused of entering Circle K stores across the city with the intention of stealing change dispensers.
"From July 2012 through November 2012, he did 12 of these robberies, and then took about a five- to six-month hiatus," said Phoenix Police Officer James Holmes.
Simon's alleged crime spree resumed in July of this year.
"He did another total of 15 of these coin thefts," Holmes added.
Simon was arrested July 30. He admitted to being involved and said he used the money to support his drug habit. Police estimate he stole about $17,000.
This arrest is part of an on-going crack down dubbed "Operation Beer Garden." Detectives from the Phoenix Police Business and Economic Stability Team are attempting to track down at least 60 suspects who routinely rob convenience stores.
Last week, they announced the capture of the Jordan Newman, who was termed by police as the "Candy Man." He is being accused of shoplifting nearly $3,000 worth of candy and selling it on the street to pay for a drug habit.
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Jeff Chiu, Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — The second in a series of storms slammed Northern California on Friday as heavy rain and strong winds knocked out power, tied up traffic and caused flooding along some stretches.
The weather also may be behind the death of a Pacific Gas & Electric worker in West Sacramento who was killed after his truck crashed into a traffic signal pole during the stormy weather.
Flights were delayed at the San Francisco airport, and in the city's affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood, traffic was blocked for hours after a large tree crashed down, smashing a car and obstructing a busy street.
A flash flood watch will remain in effect for most of the San Francisco Bay Area extending to the Santa Cruz Mountains throughout the weekend. A constant barrage of downpours could lead to standing water and overflowing drains, said Diana Henderson, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey.
The North Bay was seemingly hit the hardest as parts of Sonoma County received more than 7 inches of rain and areas in Napa County received nearly 6 inches, Henderson said.
"It's not a superstorm by any measure, but this is pretty significant," Henderson said. "We should see periods of moderate to heavy rains."
With rain expected all weekend long, Tony Negro of Penngrove, Calif., in Sonoma County, said he is worried about flooding.
"I'm on my way to get some sand bags," he said.
Thousands of people were without power in that area after an outage that also affected the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The suspension span of the bridge was briefly in the dark as traffic was backed up longer than usual because of rain and strong wind gusts.
Also, a mudslide shut down a stretch of Highway 84 east of Fremont, the California Highway Patrol reported. There was no estimate on when it would reopen.
In Sacramento, Interstate 5 south of downtown was blocked in both directions before 9 a.m. Friday after an empty big-rig jackknifed in the southbound lanes and struck the median divider, the CHP said.
"I would definitely say it's weather-related. The reports came in that he hit a water puddle and hydroplaned and couldn't correct," CHP Officer Mike Bradley said. "A lot of high-profile vehicles, especially the lighter ones, are getting windblown and having some problems maintaining their lane."
No one was injured in the crash on I-5, California's main north-south highway. But a second vehicle also was damaged and had to be towed, while workers contained and cleaned up diesel fuel spilled from the tractor-trailer.
In West Sacramento, police say wet conditions may have been a factor when a PG&E worker died after he lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a traffic pole shortly before 2 a.m. Friday.
PG&E workers at the scene tell KCRA-TV that the driver had been working overtime and was returning from Clarksburg in southern Sacramento County.
Henderson said rain in the region is expected to taper a bit Saturday, but return later that night into Sunday. The storms could also create the possibility of rock and mud slides in areas already saturated and have been affected by wild fires earlier this summer.
In Los Angeles, conditions were wet and gloomy as downtown skyscrapers disappeared in low-hanging clouds.
Elsewhere in the West, authorities in Northern Nevada have cancelled Christmas parades and tree lightings in Sparks and Truckee, which are located just across the border from California.
In nearby Reno, city spokeswoman Michele Anderson said public servants would be working overtime through the weekend to control what's expected to be the worst flooding there since 2005.
Also, a storm rushed through southern Oregon this week, lingering inland over the Rogue Valley and dropping record rainfall.
It largely spared coastal Curry County on Thursday and its southernmost city, Brookings, which are recovering from a storm earlier this month.
"We are still vigilant for landslides and road closures and trees down, but so far — knock on wood — we are still good to go," Curry County Sheriff John Bishop said Friday.
Forecasters said the region should expect more storm systems over the next few days.
Associated Press writers Haven Daley in San Francisco, Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., John Antczak in Los Angeles, Hannah Dreier in Las Vegas, Jeff Barnard in Grants Pass, Ore., and Tim Fought in Medford, Ore., also contributed to this report.
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Performing at Gates Hall - The Oldest, Continuous Community Theater Venue in America!
Thanks for Visiting The Gatesinger Company
Please see below for "What's Happening":
Next Onstage:
The Gatesinger Company is proud to announce that the Next Show On Stage is:
a play by Paul H. Johnson
See Box Office to Purchase Tickets!
Show Location: The Gatesinger Company, Ltd. performs at
Historic Gates Hall
*Works in Progress is produced by special arrangement with Eldridge Publishing Company.
YouTHeatre Audition Announcement
The Gatesinger Company, Ltd. is pleased to announce its fall YouTHeatre production, "Godspell". Auditions are scheduled for:
Auditions are open for Students age 12* – High School Senior's.
(*Note: must be 12 at time of Audition)
See Auditions Page for Details!
Annual Meeting
Thanks to all who joined us for the The Gatesinger Company, Ltd. ("Company") annual meeting held on Saturday June 5, 2016 at 1:00 pm.
The Meeting minutes can be viewed by clicking on the link below:
Thanks for your continued support and interest in the Gatesinger Company!
Posted: July 12, 2016
Our 2016-2017 Season Shows Onstage
Please click on the link below to view the current issue of "News from the Hall"
Thanks for Visiting the Gatesingers Website!


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SDCC: "Batman: The Killing Joke" Cast & Crew Debuts Film at Comic-Con International
Showing results 1-2 of 2
This week: the Declaration of Independents; what's new in superhero comics, and the dark, unexpected secret between two major rival series; and lots of notes, including "What If?" tales, "Wanted," the unproven RIAA, a new Comics Cover Challenge and more.
A near fight, "Anna Mercury" series 2, 300 cans of Red Bull, some career advice and Godzilla porn highlight Warren Ellis' entertaining - and sometimes disturbing - 3-hour talk at WizardWorld Chicago.
Archives: All | Comic Books | TV/Film | Video Games | Web Comics


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Home > Terms > English (EN) > business process outsourcing (BPO)
business process outsourcing (BPO)
The process of transferring a particular business task, operation or process to a service provider that is located in a country where labor and operational costs are lower; this is done to reduce overall costs and enable the company to concentrate on its core competencies.
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Billy Morgan
Sports; Snowboarding
British snowboarder Billy Morgan has landed the sport's first ever 1800 quadruple cork. The rider, who represented Great Britain at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, was in Livigno, Italy, when he achieved the manoeuvre. It involves flipping four times, while the body also spins five complete rotations on a sideways or downward-facing axis. The trick had ...
Marzieh Afkham
Broadcasting & receiving; News
Marzieh Afkham, who is the country's first foreign ministry spokeswoman, will head a mission in east Asia, the state news agency reported. It is not clear to which country she will be posted as her appointment has yet to be announced officially. Afkham will only be the second female ambassador Iran has had. Under the last shah's rule, Mehrangiz Dolatshahi, a ...
Weekly Packet
Language; Online services; Slang; Internet
Weekly Packet or "Paquete Semanal" as it is known in Cuba is a term used by Cubans to describe the information that is gathered from the internet outside of Cuba and saved onto hard drives to be transported into Cuba itself. Weekly Packets are then sold to Cuban's without internet access, allowing them to obtain information just days - and sometimes hours - after it ...
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
Banking; Investment banking
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is an international financial institution established to address the need in Asia for infrastructure development. According to the Asian Development Bank, Asia needs $800 billion each year for roads, ports, power plants or other infrastructure projects before 2020. Originally proposed by China in 2013, a signing ...
Online services; Internet
Spartan is the codename given to the new Microsoft Windows 10 browser that will replace Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer. The new browser will be built from the ground up and disregard any code from the IE platform. It has a new rendering engine that is built to be compatible with how the web is written today. The name Spartan is named after the ...
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Taking a boat at least 10 miles off the coast to go fishing. Deep sea fishing trips yield larger fish as a whole, ranging up to 300 pounds, and maybe...
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Foursquare © 2016 Lovingly made in NYC & SF
People tend to check in during these times:
M&S Simply Food
Convenience Store
Edinburgh Waverley Station (EDB)
"Try the COU Crayfish & Mango Shaker Salad! Lush"
Caffè Nero
Coffee Shop · £
"Great coffee but you may need to wait in the mornings before 8. Fab staff."
Platform 13
Edinburgh Waverley Railway Station (EDB) (Waverley Bridge)
Edinburgh Park Railway Station (EDP)
Train Station
Cultins Rd
"Quiet and peaceful place to take the dog for a walk early morning and in the evening too. Fair bit of wildlife too from the ducks and swans in the loch, frogs, rabbits and the odd mouse and fox!"
South Gyle Railway Station (SGL)
South Gyle
"Remember to smile as you watch out for bunnies behind the houses just before here (or just after, if you're coming from Edinburgh)."
Musselburgh Railway Station (MUB)
Station Rd
"Use the waiting room with the heater - trust me you'll need it"
Edinburgh Castle
"The most beautiful castle I've ever seen! Don't forget to go to whisky shop, and take some shots of this delicious, famous and unforgettable Scott drink."
Railway Stations in UK
Created by Hiro A H R176 items • 381 followers
Train Stations Visited
Created by Kent Rudd200 items • 172 followers
National Rail Stations
Created by Rick Abbey200 items • 45 followers
Haymarket Railway Station (HYM) Haymarket Tce
Slateford Railway Station (SLA) Slateford
Kingsknowe Railway Station (KGE) Kingsknowe
Make sure your information is up to date. Plus use our free tools to find new customers.
Download Foursquare for your smart phone and start exploring the world around you!


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Replacing oil in plastics production with organic waste
Alternative energy sources are gradually replacing fossil fuels, but can oil be replaced in the production of the plastics we all use in our daily lives? Innovative technologies are replacing oil with vegetable components to make plastics with fascinating properties.
Published: 26 July 2016
Mimicking nature for greener industrial products
Inspired by nature, researchers and industry have teamed up to find new environmentally-friendly processes converting agricultural waste biomass into novel ingredients for industrial and consumer products such as a bio-based glue, domestic cleaners and beauty products.
Published: 25 July 2016
Optimising multimodal logistic chains for a more sustainable transport system
The EU-funded TelliSys project has designed a new, environmentally-friendly, volume-optimised, intermodal transport system for the European transport sector. It is already available on the market.
Published: 22 July 2016
From peelings to pork - animal feed reimagined
An ambitious research project appears to have set out to prove the old adage that 'you are what you eat' by improving the health of animals. Scientists in Belgium are testing on piglets with an experimental feed made up from olive oil waste and a mixture of soya and cereals. It's not just a culinary caprice; they want to see if this menu boosts the animals health and productivity.
Published: 18 July 2016
Asteroseismology shakes up theory of stellar evolution
What is the lifespan of a sun-like star? Well, it may not be quite what we thought. The outcomes of EU-funded asteroseismology research conducted by Professor Conny Aerts and her team show that the cores of red giants don't spin nearly as fast as expected - and this, in turn, means that our understanding of the future of our sun was flawed.
Published: 13 July 2016
Accessible, digital natural history
From insect and plant specimens to slides of fossil samples and microscopic life forms, Europe has an unparalleled wealth of natural history resources. Maintained by museums and institutes, collections are now being made accessible both physically and digitally by an EU-funded project that is helping democratise research and preserve these treasure troves of taxonomic data.
Published: 12 July 2016
Charging electric vehicles on the move
Long journey? Electric car? Will you reach your destination before you run out of juice? Or will you have to recharge somewhere along the way? Range anxiety is one of the main bottlenecks slowing the advance of electromobility, but solutions are being found. On-road charging is a particularly promising approach, say EU-funded researchers.
Published: 1 July 2016
Fit for football: kicking unhealthy lifestyles into touch
A sedentary lifestyle can lead to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. That is why a European Union research project aims to promote sport among football fans, of whom they are more than 20 million in Europe.
Published: 30 June 2016
A stellar nursery for young astronomers
One spacecraft, five years or more, and over a billion stars - ESA's Gaia mission set out in 2013 to produce a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way. It will discover many new celestial objects in the process and provide astronomers with clues as to how our galaxy formed. An EU-funded training network involved 17 early stage researchers in this mission.
Published: 29 June 2016
Big HIV data opens new avenues to fight the disease
EU-funded project EuroCoord has advanced scientific understanding of HIV by bringing together patient data collected by over 100 institutions. The data are being mined for insight into better prevention and treatment strategies, including for vulnerable groups such as migrants and refugees.
Published: 24 June 2016


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Photoshop Lady
Your Favourite Photoshop Tutorials in One Place
Forming a Nice Abstract Lady Image Background
Under Abstract Effect, Photoshop Tutorial
Abstract effect can be applied widely for main object or background, as long as the abstract effect can match with your artwork's theme. Once you are familiar with the techniques, you can create your own artworks simply.
Making a Grungy Business Card
This tutorial will walk you through setting up a vertical grungy business card template, front to back and ready to print. To fix a muted design after converting to CMYK, increase the overall saturation and contrast.
No Pattern Jumper Effect
This tutorial will show you how to create a light effect similar to NoPattern's Jumper Poster. At the end it will show you how a technique like this can be used in a variety of different ways to make stunning images. There are many different ways to create this effect, this time, the Color Dodge and Burn Tools is used.
Create Convincing Watercolor Effects Using Photoshop
In this tutorial, it is going to show you how to create some awesome watercolor effects for images. It is always a good effect to emphasize the image. In this, you can use the same idea and change into the way you want.
Create Super Sci-Fi poster art in Photoshop
In this tutorial, it is going to let you learn the creation of science fiction art poster. Firstly, you need to find a photo with a standing human shadow. Then, start to change the sky into a Sci-Fi scene. This process is gonna contain a lot of blur function.
Turn A Photo Into A Collage Of Polaroids
In this Photoshop tutorial, it will let you learn how to take a single photograph and turn it into a collage of polaroids, with each polaroid containing a small section of the overall image. Your support goes towards keeping this site running and keeping new tutorials coming!
Design a Colorful Spectrum Effect
In this tutorial, it will display you how to design a colorful spectrum effect in Photoshop. It is always nice to design something like cartoon character with the colorful spectrum background. Using the photoshop brushes, you can design the spectrum in the way you want.
Smokin' Woman
In this tutorial, it is going to show how to create one smoking woman using a couple source pics, and just a few of the features associated with Phoenix. So follow along. With the magic of Phoenix, you've created the smoking woman of your dreams.
Incredibly Realistic Water Text in Cinema 4D and Photoshop
In this tutorial, it will show you how to create a water text effect. Even though it might look compex it's a very simple effect. We will use Illustrator for the text, then Cinema 4D to make it a 3D text and Photoshop to mix the 3D with some real photos to create a nice and realistic result.


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5 Comments
Realtime comments disabled
Sombrerohead 2282 days ago
ahaha Did you knock them all down?
toneplay 2288 days ago
WTF, Man? It's just luggage. Take a breath.
HarrySeeward 2288 days ago
If you click to rotate the picture, you'll get it.
chocolakai 2288 days ago
They looks stupid. Thats what about them.
playmobileiro 2288 days ago
(what about them?)