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February 01, 20128:07 pm 3 Comments
You've already read everything on Bwog and you still have an entire problem set to finish. Don't worry, we've got an article from The Columbia Political Review to get your mind off those Finite State Machines, or whatever. Here's another addition to BwogSalon, our feature where we showcase fine works from other recent campus writings. If you'd like your publication to be considered for this feature, tell us!
Name of Publication: Columbia Political Review
Edition: December 2011, Volume XI, No. 2 (Read the full issue.)
Description: The Columbia Political Review is the magazine of the Columbia Political Union, a multi-partisan, undergraduate student organization seeking to enhance involvement in the political process and to foster political discourse.
Selected Article: A little bit about Matt Getz's article on the Chilean youth movement and an excerpt:
In the past seven months, a well-coordinated student protest movement has rocked Chile to its core. Sometimes whimsical, other times violent, these protests—the most sustained mobilization since the advent of democracy—have captured the hearts and minds of most Chilean citizens…
The movement, often called the Chilean Winter, has found an ideological home among the indignados: its attempt to recast national issues in the light of development and equality has won it many global allies. In Latin America, education protests have popped up in Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina. The UK, Italy, France, and Spain have also seen student mobilization.
May 02, 20103:30 pm 4 Comments
The winding path to "real hope for a stable, peaceful Somalia."
Government-spearheaded womens' leadership initiatives in theory vs. practice.
Elections, the EU, and the English economy in post-Blair Britain.
How the modern family fits into modern television.
Racy political fan fiction.
May 05, 20069:40 am 6 Comments
It's Morton Williams' free bagel and a coffee D-DAY! Coupons can be found on the back cover of the Columbia Political Review. And copies of the Columbia Political Review can be found… (Commenters? A little help?)
Tags: bagels, coffee, columbia political review, coupons, free food, morton williams, MoWi
© 2006-2015 Blue and White Publishing Inc.


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Smashing the Iron Rice Bowl
The Asian financial crisis has captured headlines and the attention of millions of investors. In Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea, the crisis' source lies in the cozy relationship between government offices, banks, and private enterprises. China's financial sector blurs the same lines as its floundering neighbors, but two decades of economic reform, rapid growth, accumulating hard currency reserves, and sound macroeconomic performance have led the Chinese leadership to believe they can avoid disaster through more reform. They aim to achieve a "socialist market economy," and its success rests on the reform of state enterprises. But Beijing's half-measures and Band-Aid solutions reveal its inability to resolve the contradictions that arise when socialism is merged with capitalism.
Symbols and slogans, always important in Chinese society, continue to provide a litany of the communist party's ideological objectives and accomplishments. Rice has been China's staple food for thousands of years, and the most important symbol of the party's economic policies has been an unbreakable iron rice bowl, which stood for the cradle-to-grave security offered all citizens. When Deng Xiaoping began in 1978 to transform China from a centrally planned economy to a more free-market economy, his supporters insisted that the iron rice bowl had to be smashed if China was to modernize.
China's dilemma is that it is afraid to smash the iron rice bowl because it fears that the social stability that has sustained its reform program would shatter with it. Nevertheless, state-owned enterprises are foundering as subsidies are withdrawn. The government
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subset: commoncrawl


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Firefox 22 on Windows 7 Pro 32 bits. It's not remembering my download handling settings when I check the "remember decision for this file type" (or something like that) checkmark box. I have disabled every extension, but the issue persists.
My goal is to have every .exe, .zip, .rar, etc that I click to be handled by DownThemAll, as if I had chosen "dTa OneClick" and then clicked "OK", but with two clicks less.
Is that even possible?


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Its really amazing how quickly things changed once Loy hit one year old status: out with the breastfeeding and bottles in with the goat's milk and sippy cups. Gone are the mushed up veggies and fruit we were making and now its grilled cheese and bacon (woohoo BACON!)
These changes underscore the changes I see in Loy everyday and reminds me of times before Loy was in the picture, when other parents would say to us they grow up so fast and we would think 'what are you talking about?'.
But they do. One minute you're taking care of everything then the next they're using their own fork or playing on their own or going off to college.
GIF of the Day: A Glitch at the Convention - [image: ted_cruz_glitch4] This GIF pretty much sums up the Republican National Convention. It was quite a mess. Technical glitches plagued the video displa...
1 day ago


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Sinopack Search values long-term relationships over short term gain, and we achieve this by placing quality at the heart of everything that we do.ETHOS
International search and selection consultants
servicing the global construction market.
At Sinopack Search we are committed to delivering intelligent, tailored resource solutions to the Construction, Design and Interiors sectors throughout the UK and the Gulf. We are experts at sourcing talent for the global construction industry and are extremely proud of the results we've achieved on behalf of candidates and clients alike.
Our team of recruitment experts operate within their own vertical markets, which gives them a deep understanding of their market, and an extensive talent pool that has enabled us to become a recruitment partner for businesses ranging from local consultants to international contractors.
Our extensive network and industry expertise encompasses:
Sinopack Search values long-term relationships over short term gain, and we achieve this by placing quality at the heart of everything that we do.ETHOS
At Sinopack Search we make it our business to understand the DNA of your business. It's our belief that for us to work with you successfully, we've got to know your business inside out.PROCESS
Sinopack Search has worked with Sabban Interiors since our inception in 2013 and have been a reliable and successful recruitment business partner for us throughout the Gulf region. They take time to understand our business and as a result represent candidates that will have a positive impact on delivery. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Sinopack Search to fit out businesses globally.
KPS and Sinopack Search have a successful partnership for many years and they're our go to Search Company for mid to senior roles across the Gulf. They have a simple, professional and informative approach and have introduced us to a number of senior candidates for design through to project delivery. They make the recruitment process simple by supplying an accurate shortlist of qualified, referenced candidates that match our expectations – They're a class apart from other Middle East headhunters.
Jonathan is one of the most supportive recruiters I have ever worked with. He is very enthusiastic with his work and will save no effort in providing his advice and feedback throughout the interview process. A good professional who had perfected his craft in the area of recruitment. He considers his client not only as a potential client but as a friend. I would certainly recommend him on his career advancement and consider him a valuable asset to his organization.
High understanding, active listening and full skills on headhunting on middle and top levels gives Jonathan a strong competitive advantage. As a career changer he is level headed, patient, and a strong communicator with excellent relationship building skills. I would very strongly recommend Jonathan as recruitment expert. He has in-depth knowledge of the market and has provided a first-class service in a friendly, honest and organized manner.


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Height: 26cm
Width: 30cm
Depth: 11.5cm
Take the runway trend for bold all over prints to your Summer wardrobe with this chic and stylish handbag from Peperone. Its various compartments help you keep your essentials organised and while its black flock print detail is an immediate attention grabber at any party.
Pink with black flock printed bag
Bow detail and brand patch in front
One zippered compartment and two compartments with magnetic button closures
Synthetic lining with zippered pocket and mobile slot in the central compartment
Zippered pocket at the back
Two short handles for carrying ease
Warranty: 6 Months against manufacturing defects
Synthetic leather
Wipe with clean dry cloth to remove dust


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The big winner in the Lions/Adult category of the annual Brian's Trike Race fundraiser (October 5, 2014) was the Cloverdale Lions Club. The event was held at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Nearly 40 teams competed and raised a near record amount for the school, all while having a great time!
For more information on the event, please see our Calendar Page
Lions Clubs International is the world's largest service club organization with more than 1.4 million members in approximately 46,000 clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas around the world.


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Virginia's Ihlendorf earns first victory
Published: Monday, October 16, 2006 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, October 16, 2006 at 10:40 p.m.
DUPONT STATE FOREST -- Claire Ihlendorf made her first entry into the Henderson County YMCA/Times-News DuPont State Forest Trail Marathon one she would never forget Sunday by being the first woman to tear the tape.
Ihlendorf, who hails from Blacksburg, Va., took the woman's title with a time of 3 hours, 27 minutes and 46 seconds. It was the first marathon she had ever won.
"When the course would come back near the start/finish line, I could hear the announcer say that I was out front. I couldn't believe it," Ihlendorf, 23, said. "I ran a lot of (cross country) races in high school, but I never finished first. I then race some other races, but this is the first time I've ever won. I'm so excited."
The favorite of the woman's race, veteran marathoner Nancy Hobbs of Colorado, pulled out of the event late due to a slight leg injury. That allowed Ihlendorf to take the lead for good. Prior to that the leader had been Laura Duncan, 24, who had stayed out front with Hobbs for the early going.
Duncan, who is also from Blacksburg, Va., finished in second spot with a time of 3:39:19, and Sarah Benson was third with a time of 3:39:55. Since none of the top five finishers had USATF cards, the next finisher, Ellen Miller, who ended up sixth and is a USATF member, was named the women's U.S. National Trail Marathon Champion. She finished the race in 3:45:14.
It came as a complete surprise to Miller, who lives in Vail, Colo.
"Let me get this straight, I'm sixth, but those others didn't have their cards?" she said. "And I'm the national champion? That's great."
Belinda Bernard was fourth, and Julie Bickel rounded out the top five.
Ihlendorf said the fall drive from Virginia to the mountains of Western North Carolina was one she wants to take every October.
"This was such a great event. The scenery was incredible, and I had a blast. I want to make this a tradition now," she said.
For the women's relay race, Runner Girls took the title with a time of 3:12:48, and the Statesboro Pacers came in second with a time of 3:50:06. Team Balance was the co-ed title holder, and Eat More Chicken took home the corporation relay championship.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.
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Overdraft Coverage Options: Overdraft Privilege and Overdraft Protection
Life happens! National Bank of Delaware County understands that unexpected overdrafts occur from time to time – Overdraft Coverage can help. To sign up for coverage, simply download the form and return to the nearest branch.
Overdraft Coverage Options
The choice is yours. Consider these ways to cover overdrafts:
Table One Placeholder(do not delete)
1. Contact us at (607) 865‐4126 or firstname.lastname@example.com, or come by a branch to sign up or apply for these services; 2. Subject to credit approval; 3. Annual Percentage Rate (subject to 12 C.F.R. § 1026.16(b)).
Overdraft Protection services apply to all types of transactions and allow you to link other sources, such as a line of credit, at NBDC Bank to your checking account to pay an overdraft transaction for a fee or finance charge. Please note overdraft lines of credit are subject to credit approval.
Overdraft Privilege allows you to overdraw your account for a fee in order to pay a transaction.
Table Two Placeholder(do not delete)
If You Would Like to Select Extended Coverage for Future Transactions
- call us at (607) 865-4126,
- complete the online consent form found at www.nbdcbank.com,
- visit any branch, or
- complete the enclosed form and mail it to us at 131-133 Delaware Street, Walton, NY 13856
- send us an e-mail at customerservice@nbdcbank
*If you choose Extended Coverage, all the transaction types listed in Standard Coverage are included, along with ATM withdrawals and everyday debit card transactions. Business accounts automatically have Extended Coverage.
You can discontinue the Overdraft Privilege in its entirety by contacting us at (607) 865‐4126 or sending us an e‐mail at firstname.lastname@example.com. If you already have Extended Overdraft Privilege coverage, it is not necessary to request it again.
What Else You Should Know
- We generally post items in the following order: 1) Electronic transactions and 2) checks from the lowest dollar amount to the highest; however, exceptions will occur. Holds on funds (described below) and the order in which transactions are posted may impact the total amount of overdraft or return fees assessed.
- A link to a line of credit is a less expensive option than an overdraft. The NBDC Bank offers the CHECK‐LOAN line of credit which provides coverage with fees of $4.00 per advance or a $5.00 annual fee if no advances are made in a 12 month period. This product charges interest at an annual percentage rate of 16.00%.
- Overdraft Protection Link to another deposit account you have at NBDC Bank ($5.00 transfer fee per transfer)
- A single larger overdraft will result in just one fee, as opposed to multiple smaller overdrafts.
- We will not charge an overdraft fee if an account is overdrawn by $10.00 or less. For consumer accounts, there is a limit of $210.00 per day we will charge. This exception does not apply to business accounts.
- Good account management is the best way to avoid overdrafts. Use our mobile banking, internet banking, and telephone banking services to keep track of your balance.
- If your account balance remains overdrawn for longer than ten business days, we will charge your account a daily overdraft fee of $4.00 for each of the consecutive business days the account remains overdrawn, beginning with day eleven.
- The $35.00 fee is the same fee as the fee that would be charged if a check was returned as unpaid. If multiple items would overdraw your account on the same day, each item would be assessed an Overdraft fee or a Return fee of $35.00. All fees and charges will be included as part of the Overdraft Privilege limit amount. Your account may become overdrawn in excess of the Overdraft Privilege limit amount as a result of a fee.
- Even if you have overdraft protection, Overdraft Privilege is still available as secondary coverage if the other protection source is exhausted.
- Although under payment system rules, NBDC Bank may be obligated to pay some unauthorized debit card transactions, NBDC Bank will not authorize debit card or ATM transactions unless there are available funds (including Overdraft Coverage Options) to cover the transactions and any fee(s).
- Giving us your consent to pay every day debit card and ATM overdrafts may result in you incurring overdraft fees for transactions that we would otherwise be required to pay without assessing an overdraft fee. However, this would allow us to authorize transactions up to the amount of your Overdraft Privilege limit and may also help you avoid overdrafts in excess of your available funds that could result in restriction of your debit card.
- NBDC Bank authorizes and pays transactions using the available balance in your account. The available balance is comprised of the ledger balance (collected funds) less any debit card holds, and does not include any deposited funds on hold. We may place a hold on deposited funds in accordance with our Deposit Account and Disclosure Agreement. If the funds in the available balance are not sufficient to cover a transaction, any available overdraft protection and/or the amount of the Overdraft Privilege limit, may be used to authorize and pay a transaction.
- NBDC Bank will place a hold on your account for any authorized debit card transaction until the transaction settles (usually within two business days) or as permitted by payment system rules. In some cases, the hold may exceed the amount of the transaction. When the hold ends the funds will be added to the available balance in your account. If your account is overdrawn after the held funds are added to the available balance and the transaction is posted to the available balance, an Overdraft Fee may be assessed.
- Except as described in this letter, NBDC Bank will not pay items if your account does not contain available funds (including the Overdraft Privilege limit) to cover the item(s) and the amount of any fee(s).
- We may restrict your debit card use if you incur overdrafts in excess of the available funds in your account, including any Overdraft Privilege limit.
- NBDC Bank will place a hold on your account for any authorized debit card transaction until the transaction settles (usually within two business days) or as permitted by payment system rules. In some cases, the hold may exceed the amount of the transaction.
- Overdraft Privilege limits of up to $500.00 are available for eligible Personal Checking accounts opened at least sixty (60) days in good standing.
- Overdraft Privilege limits of up to $1,000.00 are available for eligible Business Checking accounts opened at least sixty (60) days in good standing.
- Overdraft Privilege is not a line of credit; it is a discretionary overdraft service that can be withdrawn at any time without prior notice.
- Overdraft Privilege may be discontinued if you default on any loan or other obligation to us, your account becomes subject to any legal or administrative order or levy, or if you fail to maintain your account in good standing by not bringing your account to a positive balance within thirty‐five (35) days for a minimum of one business day.
- Depositor and each Authorized Signatory will continue to be liable, jointly and severally, for all overdraft and fee amounts, as described in the Deposit Account and Disclosure Agreement. The total (negative) balance, including all fees and charges, is due and payable upon demand.
It's simple to sign up. Simply click here to download the form and return it to the branch closest to you!
If you have any questions about Overdraft Protection or Overdraft Privilege, please call us at (607) 865-4126 or visit a branch.
|Overdraft line of credit1, 2
|$4 per advance + 16.00 % APR3
|Overdraft Privilege
|$35.00 overdraft fee per item. Daily fees may apply.
|Overdraft Protection Link
|$5.00 transfer fee per transfer.
|Transactions Covered with Overdraft Privilege
|Standard Coverage
(No action required)
|Extended Coverage
(Your consent required)*
|ACH - Auto Debits
|Recurring Debit Card Payments
|Online Bill Pay Items
|Internet Banking Transfers
|Telephone Banking
|Teller Window Transactions
|ATM Withdrawals
|Everyday Debit Card Purchases


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October 2008 Indie Next List
"This book is a stunning conclusion to the Inkheart trilogy, which will keep readers up reading way past midnight. With surprising plot twists, exciting new characters, and terrifying new villains, readers will be thrilled to reenter Funke's wonderful world."
— Jessica Palacios, Once Upon a Time, Montrose, CA
Caught between the covers of a cursed story…
Ever since the extraordinary events of Inkspell, when the enchanted book Inkheart drew Meggie and her father, Mo, into its chapters, life in the Inkworld has been more tragic than magical. Dustfinger is dead, having sacrificed his life for his apprentice's, and now, under the rule of the evil Adderhead, the fairy-tale land is in bloody chaos, its characters far beyond the control of Fenoglio, their author. Facing the threat of eternal winter, Mo inks a dangerous deal with Death itself. There yet remains a faint hope of changing the cursed story–if only he can fill its pages fast enough.
Inkdeath–the captivating final tale in the Inkheart trilogy.
About the Author
Cornelia Funke is the author of the bestselling novels "Dragon Rider," "The Thief Lord," "Inkheart," and "Inkspell, "all available on audio from Listening Library. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Allan Corduner starred as Sir Arthur Sullivan in Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy. Other films include Moonlight Mile, The Green Zone, and Yentl. He has extensive theater credits on Broadway and in London's West End.


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Plan for 2012
There are a handful of band interviews left to do:
Masa, Mario, Boris, Amy, Paris, John, Chris
These are the easy ones. Except for Chris, they all live in Seattle.... Read more
Gino sums it up nicely
August 6, 2011
We drive past Zagreb once again on our way from Zajecar, Serbia to Rijeka, Croatia. A VERY long drive after a very tough day. Though, as we... Read more
Sample interview segment
This is just a snippet of what is to come!
Gino talks about the generation that is growing up in the aftermath of the Yugoslavian dissolution wars and the hope... Read more
Update: Progress being made!
Hello all!
It's been a while since I posted anything, but the wait is hopefully worth it. I have taken on an editing intern to help me log and organize... Read more
Photo exhibit!
Hello one and all!
April 14th, as part of the Georgetown Art Attack, I will be showing a selection of my photos from the tour (which you all helped make... Read more
Tour Miscelany
A quick montage of some of my favorite moments from the tour with Kultur Shock.
The tour started in Italy. 3 shows in Umbertide, Rome and Modena. Then off to... Read more
New contributor perk!
Limited edition, never before printed "Balcchanalia" t-shirt!
Designed by Krk Nordenstrom (director of "More Shock Than Kultur) and Val Kiossovski (of Kultur Shock), but never released by the band. Only... Read more
The plan!
With this looking like it's going to happen, I've been developing my work routine for three weeks on the road with the band.
Van Time
There is going to be... Read more
Bosnian War Criminal Captured!
Ratko Mladic, a man responsible for massive crimes against humanity in the Bosnian war was captured today! Possibly the worst, genocidal maniac Europe has seen since Hitler!
Well, he is... Read more
Gino: more on the younger generation and Kultur Shock's legitimate love of folk music
Gino talk about how honored he feels to play for fans in the Balkans and about the very real and legitimate love each member of the band has for folk... Read more
Gino on the young generation of Balkan fans
Gino Yevdjevich of Kultur Shock talks about being the mouth piece for a new generation of Balkan citizens.
A big thanks to everyone who has pledged their support. We broke the 25% funded mark today! Please pass word of the project along so we can make this thing... Read more
No borders!
Post 9/11 USA has become more divisive, more contentious, more polarized than at any time in most of our lifetimes. Past and present members of Kultur Shock experienced similar (though... Read more
Kultur Shock: Chris Stromquist
Kultur Shock drummer, Chris Stromquist, talks about the hurdles and difficulties of songwriting with him being the only member of the band who lives outside of Seattle.
Val Kiossovski discusses being a Bulgarian immigrant in Germany
Val describes some of the better times during the year he spent in Germany immediately after defecting from Bulgaria in 1990.
Gino on his life as a pop star in Yugoslavia
Before the war in Yugoslvia and coming to the United States and starting Kultur Shock. Gino was the frontman of a pop band called "Gino Banana". In this clip, Gino... Read more
Kultur Shock: Horse Thief live at Exit Fest 2010
I've been joking for a while that this performance video of the band from Serbia in 2010 should be repackaged as an exercise video.
Kultur Shock faces many hurdles professionally and personally. Making money recording and selling albums in an age of digital downloads is a daunting task. Simply being able to pay for... Read more
Kultur Shock currently on tour
Just got a Facebook update from Chris Stromquist. He says he's going to have another 100GB of footage for me from the current tour! He's a new daddy of an... Read more
Guy Davis on recording the new album "Ministry of Kultur"
Guy Davis of Kultur Shock jokes around with More Shock Than Kultur director, Krk Nordenstrom about the recording of their current album, Ministry of Kultur"
Kultur Shock in the April 8 New York Times
"When I knew I could die within the next five minutes of every day, pop stardom didn't matter anymore," said Mr. Jevdjevic. "After the war, I wanted no borders, no... Read more
Work in progress
So this documentary has really been in the works for several years. Since 2002, I have amassed a very large collection of footage. The video attached is a sample of... Read more
Budget and grant proposals in the works
I've had the great fortune to get some help from a producer friend and the Frank Agency to get some help putting together my budget and project materials. The price... Read more


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Pokemon Scene
This is a panorama from four images I shot handheld in Bradenton last night. Because I'd been away in Alaska it's been a few weeks since I was here. So camera in one hand and dog leash in the other I proceeded down the riverwalk just before dusk. What I wasn't expecting was the number of people out milling around, there were hundreds, much more than usual. In two words, Pokemon Go.
It was an unusual sight, I've never seen anything like it. I felt like I was in some sci-fi flick were everyone was connect to a central brain and I was watching from the outside. But, as I observed, people were talking, walking from place to place, and generally having fun. I thought to myself that these people would otherwise be at home watching TV yet they are out on the riverwalk in the evening.
When I stopped to take this picture, several others noticed what I was doing and turned around to take similar photos. They couldn't have done that sitting at home. Maybe because of the game a bunch of folks got outside, mingled, and had a chance to see some things they don't normally see. If it takes a game to do that then hey, why not?
bradentoncloudscapefloridalandscapephotographymanateecountynightphotographypanoramariverwalkskySonyAlphasonyA7R2sonya7rIIunitedstateswaterRick Schwartz, from


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Search Availability For This Hotel
Arrival date:
By road: coming from the direction of Paseo de la Castellana, once in Cibeles Square take Calle Alcalá in the direction of O'Donnell, staying in the left lane in order to turn left onto Calle Velázquez. You will find the hotel on the first block, on the right hand side of the street. By train: The closest national train station is Atocha, approximately 2 kms away. The closest Cercanías station, Recoletos, is within 7 minutes walking distance by following Calle Villanueva until the end and continuing four blocks to the intersection of Calle Villanueva and Calle Velázquez.
Next big city (Toledo) 70km 80min (by car)
Tourist centre (Sol) 2km 5min (by public transport) 10min (by car)
Park (Retiro) 50mt
Shopping facilities (Fashion Boutiques) 50mt
Restaurants (Goizeko) 200mt
Disco / Club (Gabana) 10mt
Public transport (Metro) 25mt
Underground station (Retiro) 25mt
Bus station (Mendez Alvaro) 2km
Train station (Atocha) 1km 3min (by public transport) 5min (by car)
Palacio Real 2.5km 10min (by public transport) 10min (by car) 30min (by walk)
Opera Teatro 2.5km 10min (by public transport) 10min (by car) 30min (by walk)
Triangulo del Arte 500mt
Calle Gran Via 1km 5min (by public transport) 5min (by car)
Plaza Sol 2km 5min (by public transport) 10min (by car)
1 kms to city centre
12 kms to the nearest airport (barajas)
4 km to the nearest station (atocha)
10 km to the nearest fair site (juan carlos i)
Rates shown are per room per night.
Please check our Cancellation Policy.
We try to keep the hotel information up to date; but we can not be held responsible for the accuracy of the details and the availability of facilities at the time of your stay.


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In an earlier post, we discussed the first products ever offered by Corvette Central, the 1953-60 grille teeth. Although the original process has been enhanced with the addition of a state-of-the-art CNC machine and electronic controls for the die casting machine, the original dies from 1975 are still in use. Recently we had a chance to photograph the grille teeth manufacturing process from start to finish.
Month: March 2010
Spring Tune Up Guide
For Corvette owners that live in the northern climes, the season of Spring is a cause for much celebration. The days are not only longer but also warmer, the rain has washed the last remnants of salt off of the roads, and thousands of Corvettes awaken from their hibernation with a rumble. Why not make that last ritual as enjoyable as possible with a Spring tune up? Follow along as we go through the checklist.
C3 Production Numbers
This week we'll continue our look at Corvette production numbers through the generations with the 1968-1982 models. This 14-year time span was the longest for any Corvette generation to date. Corvette team designers did a commendable job freshening the car from it's early "chrome bumper" stage from 1968-1972 periodically until the final, lower production (in anticipation of the C4) 1982. Notable models during this generation include the competition-ready 1968-69 L88, the well-balanced 1970-72 LT-1, the last convertible model until the introduction of the C4 (1975), the base model 1976 Corvette with only 165 emissions-controlled horses, the Silver Anniversary (pictured) and Indianapolis Pace Cars of 1978 and the hatchback-glass equipped 1982 Collector Edition. (more…)
HVAC Odor Technical Service Bulletin
While we know it's not the most exciting topic to discuss, we are aware of this issue through several Q&A magazine sections and forum postings. The problem centers on a musty odor coming from the vents whenever the A/C is activated. The odor seems to diminish after a short time, but recurs after the car is shut off and restarted a while later.
More often than not, the culprit seems to be microbial growth on the evaporator core caused by condensation. In humid parts of the country, the condensation doesn't seem to evaporate on its own. A plugged HVAC drain may create the same condition on the evaporator core.
Fortunately for owners of 1993-present GM cars and trucks (including Corvettes), there is a Technical Service Bulletin (#99-01-39-004C) that remedies this condition. It is a complex job, so it is recommended that a certified GM technician performs the work. However, if you'd like to attempt the procedure on your own, we have the TSB below. (more…)
Corvette Racing's contributions to the ZR1 and Z06
From a front splitter designed for improved high-speed down force to a rear-mounted battery for better weight distribution, engineers have been racing to make you a better Corvette. Click on the pic above for an expanded informative graphic depicting the eighteen different ways Corvette Racing's engineering and development efforts trickle down to the ZR1 and Z06 Corvettes. Very cool. Although for what it's worth, the 1953-62 Corvettes were sporting exposed headlamps too…


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Much has been written about the ugly sausage-making of the just-ended farm bill process: the abandoned opportunity to truly reform the nation's farm subsidy system, the cynical refusal to deny subsidies to millionaire farmers, and the 4 percent of food stamp beneficiaries who ultimately took it on the chin. But now that President Obama has signed the thing into law, it's worth reviewing a number of real and meaningful wins that UCS and its allies and supporters achieved in this bill. And also noting that our work isn't done. Read more >
How a (Farm) Bill Became a Law
, Karen Stillerman, senior analyst, Food and Environment
February 10, 2014 5:06 PM EDT
Ensuring a Healthy Harvest
Karen Stillerman, senior analyst, Food and Environment
April 26, 2012 4:12 PM EDT
Today I'm thinking about insurance. The point of having it is to protect the things we value most—like our health and our homes. But in U.S. farm policy, that logic has been turned on its head, and many of the crops we should value most are actually ineligible for insurance. Read more >


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Source: Market Watch
quote: That does not give the FAA jurisdiction over all RC activity. And it sure as hell doesn't mean they can arbitrarily fine you tens of thousands of dollars because they "think" you were being unsafe. What happened to due process and innocent until guilty?
quote: Nice platitude, but it must be tempered with some reality. A little boy flying a kite could lead to you losing an eye, or wrecking your car. Accidents happen.You people think you can legislate and regulate away every single activity until zero risk to others is achieved, it's ridiculous. It's impossible.
quote: Yes I bet you just can't wait until all the evil RC pilots can only operate in their designated zones, after paying outrageous licenses and fees to our Federal overlords for the "privilege".


text:
March 20, 2014 · Print This Article
Guest post by Sonja Hornung
When the shit hit the fan about three weeks ago, this image came up in my Facebook feed, along with the caption 'Transfield is everywhere':
The lead-up to the 19th Biennale of Sydney has been riddled with controversy. Just three weeks before opening, the Biennale's only private sponsor, Transfield Holdings, has ended its forty-one year relationship with one of the country's longest-running international arts events. This happened after Transfield copped heavy criticism from artists, the public and international government agencies for its commercial involvement in Australia's system of mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
In 1975, Australian painter Ivan Durrant dumped a dead cow on the steps of the National Gallery. The media went wild and the public was outraged. Back then, at the end of the Vietnam War, this reaction threw the public's ability to overlook far worse horrors into stark relief. For Australia possesses a sort of covert public hangover derived from two-and-a-bit centuries of enjoying a wealth built on colonial exploitation and xenophobic border politics. At certain moments the silence is shattered and we are forced to address the elephant (or dead cow) in the room using more than the usual token gestures. The scandal surrounding Transfield's involvement in the Sydney Biennale presents us with one such instance.
Perhaps there is some information to be shared here for artists and curators elsewhere wondering about how to negotiate the murky territory of compromised funding sources.
Here are the 'knowns' of the situation:
The current Australian government 'outsources' asylum seekers to its former territory Nauru, an island in the South Pacific, and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island. These two island detention facilities are located on the edges of the Australian territorial imaginary, but they sit at the dark heart of the controversy over the sponsorship of the Sydney Biennale. Transfield Services has run the detention centre on Nauru since February 2013. At the end of January, it secured a governmental contract to take over 'garrison and welfare services' on Manus Island, previously run respectively by Transfield's rival service provider GS4 and the Salvation Army.
Australia has been detaining immigrants without papers since 1992. Today, both Australia's ruling coalition and its political opposition support a mandatory detention system where asylum seekers can be detained for an indefinite time period. Moreover, mid-last year, the previous Labor government designed a 'solution' in which confirmed refugees were to be resettled not in Australia, but in Papua New Guinea. This meant that when the Liberal-National coalition was elected late last year, the new Immigration Minister Scott Morrison could freeze all asylum seeker applications for Australian visas, even though the terms of the 'PNG Solution' have not yet been accepted by the PNG government.
The situation's 'unknowns' are best expressed by the asylum seekers of Manus Island themselves, who on the 17th of February issued the following questions to the detention centre management:
Is there a process? What is it?
How long are we going to be here?
When will we have our freedom?
Will transferees who have been deemed refugees in other countries be given priority in processing?
Why is there no PNG Partnership?
Some of the transferees have been interviewed some time ago, what is happening with our process? What is the hold-up?
Who is responsible for us here on Manus – PNG or Australia?
Why won't Immigration (department) allow media to come here and interview us?
Will the Australian Government take responsibility for our mental health problems?
The Playfair lawyer said there was a third country option, why can't we be sent to this other country?
Why are our human rights not respected?
The asylum seekers received only one answer to their questions: that they have definitively no chance of resettlement in Australia whatsoever.
On the night of the 17th of February, clashes on Manus Island took place between asylum seekers, security guards, PNG police, and island locals. No less than 62 asylum seekers were injured. Iranian Reza Berati was killed, allegedly by multiple blows to the head with a plank of wood, according to a leaked PNG police report which also details the use of rocks and weights as weapons, and points out that blood could be seen on the boots of detention centre security staff as they patrolled the centre on the following day.
The results of the autopsy of Reza Berati, the exact details of the situation, and likely the final investigations of the Manus Island incident remain unknown, as media access to detention centres is strictly controlled by the Australian and PNG governments.
And what of Transfield? As a result of its new contract to take over Manus Island, worth $AUD 1.2 billion, Transfield Service's previously shaky share prices shot up by 21%. Transfield Holdings, which holds a 12% majority stake in Transfield Services, reaped the rewards accordingly. Transfield Holdings is the sole private sponsor of the Sydney Biennale.
After a series of public meetings twenty-eight Biennale artists penned a carefully worded open letter to the Board of Directors of the Biennale of Sydney petitioning it 'to act in the interests of asylum seekers. As part of this we request the Biennale withdraw from the current sponsorship arrangements with Transfield and seek to develop new ones.' This letter, dated the 19th of February and widely circulated in the Australian press, was subsequently signed by 41 of the 94 participating Biennale artists.
The Board issued a response to what it reasoned were 'claims over which there is ambiguity', and 'assertions and allegations that are open to debate', stating that 'the only certainty is that without our Founding Partner, the Biennale will no longer exist.'
In light of this statement, the ensuing events have landed the Biennale of Sydney with a decent amount of egg on face. On the 24th of February, the first five artists withdrew their work from the Biennale, stating that 'We do not accept the platform that Transfield provides via the Biennale for critique. We see our participation in the Biennale as an active link in a chain of associations that leads to the abuse of human rights. For us, this is undeniable and indefensible'. On the 5th of March, an additional four artists withdrew their work.
What precipitated the final break between Transfield and the Biennale of Sydney was not a response from its staff members, nor was it a reaction from curator Juliana Engberg, who has remained more or less publicly silent on the topic. The break between the two entities originated from the very curious reaction of Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, Chair of the Biennale and Director of Transfield Holdings. On the 7th of March, Belgiorno-Nettis resigned as Chair of the Biennale Board taking with him Transfield's money: this, despite previous claims that the Biennale could not exist without Transfield's support.
Reading between the lines, it seems that Belgiorno-Nettis is both indignant and insulted. To put this in context, the Sydney Biennale and Transfield have been in tight collaboration since the event's inception – so much so, that in its early days it could just as well have been called the Transfield Biennale. Transfield's executive director was then Luca's father Franco Belgiorno-Nettis, a well-moneyed Australian Italian who established the first Biennale in 1973 guided by 'civic-minded boosterism, nostalgia and philanthropy', and inspired, apparently, by the mother of all Biennales in Venice. The exhibition, a conservative selection of mainly local artists presented in the brand-new foyer of the Sydney Opera House, was funded largely with Transfield money and staffed largely by Transfield workers.[1]
1973 also saw the establishment of Australia's current arts funding body, the Australia Council. When Transfield secured significant Council funding for its second Biennale, Transfield's involvement in philanthropy extended slowly to the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, and numerous other community and art-based ventures. Thus, when Transfield Holdings cut its ties with the Sydney Biennale, one of Australia's longest-standing private/public funding relationships came to an end, leading to fears that, under the current conservative political climate in Australia, other public-private funding relationships could be jeopardised. These fears have been confirmed by Australian Arts Minister George Brandis's less than constructive response to the situation: a letter urging the Australia Council to punish arts funding recipients who reject private funding on political principle.
But where does the rest of Transfield's money come from? Over the decades, the company has acquired significant contracts from the Australian Department of Defence worth over AUD 400 million, not to mention a series of businesses providing services to the oil, gas and coal sectors in Australia, India, the Gulf Region, Chile and North Dakota. Undisclosed proportions of Australians' retirement funds are invested in the company. Tony Shepherd, the former chairperson of Transfield Services, now heads Australia's new Commission of Audit, which is mandated with recommending spending cuts in the public sector. Transfield is, indeed, everywhere, but its omnipresence seemingly does not equal omnipotence. Instead, it has become a slave to the bottom line.
For Belgiorno-Nettis' decision to end Transfield Holding's relationship with the Biennale sits in direct contradiction with his own principles. Belgiorno-Nettis has heavily criticised the 'spectacle' of contemporary politics as a process caught between 'two candidates on different sides of an issue, each attacking the idiotic ideas of the adversary.' His own NewDemocracy Foundation agitates for forms of citizen involvement that draw on the model of juried collective decision-making as an alternative to bi-partisan representative democracy, a process not dissimilar to the community consultation artists undertook in the lead-up to their withdrawal from the Biennale. In a recent interview, however, when asked what he thought of Transfield Service's involvement in the mandatory detention industry, Belgiorno-Nettis proclaimed that Transfield Services are 'doing nothing wrong anyway, in our view', arguing that the company's role is simply part and parcel of a government policy voted in by the people of Australia. Putting aside the dubious ethics behind this statement, this position sits in total contradiction with Belgiorno-Nettis' own doubts of the efficacy of the democratic system.
Clear thinking is here undermined by complicity: in this case, a financial complicity. There are, however, other forms of complicity that are perhaps more universal. The complicity of being an Australian citizen who voted for the current government. The complicity of being an Australian citizen despite having voted differently. The complicity of enjoying the wealth of a country that has put a barbaric system of mandatory detention to use since 1992. The complicity, more generally, of being a person who uses a passport when there are people who cannot. The complicity of being human when other people are treated as if they are not.
The following is addressed to the many media commentators, politicians, and individuals who, over the last two week, have criticised the artists of the Sydney Biennale who took a stance against this unbearable complicity, attempting to steer the narrative away from the inhumane mandatory detention of asylum seekers. To those who would accuse these artists of 'sheer vicious ingratitude'. To those who would argue that the artists' actions will make no difference to government policy. To those who will say that artists who have a problem with governmental policies should also now reject all forms of public funding (should senior citizens or those on disability pensions then also reject government funding?). And especially to those who say there is no alternative to this muddle of policies designed to satisfy some cruel regime of border control we should have left behind in the nineteenth century:
1) Complicity is an unbearable part of being human. Its very unbearability makes us turn away. When someone faces their complicity in all its complexity, when someone faces their imbrication in a system of horror, when someone acts in a situation where action makes no sense, the rest of us have a responsibility to listen very carefully.
2) Where we are not complicit is where commercial bodies have the run of power. A policy of mandatory detention upheld by governmental institutions is subject to the democratic reckoning of voters and governmental transparency, ideals that – as Belgiorno-Nettis himself argues – are troubled enough as it is. A detention process executed by private contracters and subcontracters, on the other hand, acquires an unbridled trajectoy and opacity of its own, filching away from the right of the people to determine the conditions of their own political existence.
3) Artists exercise the right to unbridled and uncensored freedom of speech. Those who seek to draw a division between art and politics are also those who are afraid to listen.
It may well be that, when voting in the current conservative government, the Australian people indeed 'imagined what they desired', and, in a perverse reversal of Engberg's own slogan for the Sydney Biennale, they also got it. But now, pardon the bad joke, the proverbial dead cow is on the steps of the gallery. It's a indictment on the Australian political system that some people have to get hurt for other people to take action, and a twisted irony that, in the very moment when we realise that our day-to-day life is built on such horrors, our right to have a voice in shaping our political reality is being eroded at the edges by incremental processes of privatisation. In this context, the dissenting Biennale artists have confronted our complicity, acting in defiance of a situation where, if you ask Transfield, the Australian government (including its Arts minister), the Biennale Board, and the mainstream journalists, action makes no rational sense whatsoever.
It is worth noting that Durrant's cow-dumping occurred neither inside the gallery, nor on the steps of Parliament House. The carcass was left on the steps of the art institution, at that troublesome threshold between art and the street. In his case, as in the case of the nine artists who refuse to take part in the Sydney Biennale, the power of art lies in its withdrawal from the institution and its reappearance elsewhere, in a space where it might be confused for madness or activism, for an attempt at dialogue or a rash act of love, where it might disturb a public order we can no longer bear.
The Biennale of Sydney will open on the 21st of March.
The names of the artists who have withdrawn their work are: Libia Castro, Ólafur Ólafsson, Charlie Sofo, Gabrielle de Vietri, Ahmet Öğüt, Agnieszka Polska, Sara van der Heide, Nicoline van Harskamp and Nathan Gray
Sonja Hornung is a Melbourne-born artist and writer currently living in Berlin. She is undertaking her Masters in Spatial Strategies at Weissensee School of Art.
[1]Â Â Â Anthony Gardner & Charles Green, 'The Third Biennale of Sydney: White Elephant or Red Herring', Humanities Research, Vol. 19, No. 2, May 19 2013.
It's an Oklahoma Day, Part 2: Tulsa
March 11, 2014 · Print This Article
Over the coming months, the Bad at Sports blog is featuring quick glimpses of the art world as it exists in smaller cities across the country and around the world. Each glimpse is byway of some of the said city's local characters, which include but are not limited to artists, curators, creative writers, and critics. In part 2 of this Oklahoma Day, curator Lauren Ross takes a spin around culturally revived Tulsa, Oklahoma.Â
T-Town Transformation
Guest post by Lauren Ross
I moved to Tulsa in the summer of 2011. As a relative newcomer (and New York City native), I may not be privy to the long view of the art scene in "T-Town,†but the visual arts in Tulsa have gone through a transformative shift so recent that, even in my short time here, I have borne witness to the sea change.  I'm referring to the revitalization of the downtown neighborhood known as the Brady Arts District. With its assortment of arts organizations, creative industries, music and performance venues, and overall cool and energetic vibe, this small, long-neglected neighborhood has become Tulsa's artistic nerve center.
Brady had already been dubbed with the arts district moniker due to the presence of a pioneering few organizations, but critical mass was achieved in 2012-13, primarily due to the efforts of the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF). Established by the eponymous local philanthropist, GKFF's main target is combating issues of urban poverty, but it also has done wonders for the civic enhancement of Tulsa. Rather progressively, many of its efforts to improve the city have been focused specifically on developing arts and culture. Simply put, the foundation bought up a good deal of dead space in Brady, fixed it up, and turned it over to various arts organizations. Former empty warehouses now house museums, nonprofit spaces, and teaching facilities, and what was once a truck depot is now a public park and performance space.
Today this neighborhood features a vibrant mix of organizations. Neighborhood pioneers include the Brady Theater, the legendary music venue Cain's Ballroom, the alternative space Living Arts, Tulsa Glassblowing School, and the cooperative gallery Tulsa Artists' Coalition. More recent additions anchor Brady Street itself. The Henry Zarrow Center for Art and Education is a three-story building housing classrooms, art studios, galleries and event spaces, jointly administered by the University of Tulsa's School of Art and Gilcrease Museum.  108Contemporary (formerly Brady Craft Alliance) is a nonprofit space dedicated to contemporary craft that showcases local and national artists. The archives of Oklahoma son Woody Guthrie, recently relocated from New York, are housed at the Woody Guthrie Center, a museum and research center that also sponsors live music.  Philbrook Downtown, a satellite location for Philbrook Museum of Art, presents exhibitions and programming dominated by modern and contemporary art by Native American and non-Native artists, and houses the Adkins Study Center for Native American art. Adjacent to these institutions, the Arts and Humanities Council built the Hardesty Arts Center (better known by the acronym, AHHA), a brand new Cor-Ten steel clad, 42,000-square-foot building that features exhibition spaces, artist studios, classrooms, and more.
The Brady renaissance wasn't achieved by the presence of arts organizations alone. GKFF's revitalization of the neighborhood also included creating subsidized housing, street-scaping and tree planting. Perhaps most significantly, the foundation created Guthrie Green, a public park with a stage area that serves as a venue for everything from farmer's markets and food festivals to movies and concerts, all free of charge. GKFF's work was matched by a variety of efforts, funded by both public and private sources, which added such amenities as a baseball stadium, television station, and new hotel. Together, these catalysts had an almost immediate effect. Seemingly overnight, coffee shops, restaurants, bars and boutiques followed. An area that used to feel post-apocalyptically deserted on evenings and weekends is now buzzing and humming. And while the gentrification has spurred a small contingent to grumble over the area getting "too fancy,†the economic benefits to the city have been palpable, and continue to accrue.
I don't want to imply that Brady is the only area of Tulsa with rich offerings. Important players in Tulsa's art scene are scattered throughout the city: Philbrook Museum of Art and Gilcrease Museum, the two largest museums in town, serve as cultural anchors. Commercial galleries and artist-run spaces are peppered across various neighborhoods, from Brookside to Cherry Street.  Fab Lab provides cutting-edge design and fabrication technologies.  Additionally, other neighborhoods are on the tipping point of Brady-like transformations, notably the Pearl District and the East Village, the latter home to the Creative Room, a collective workspace for people working in creative industries.
These recent pushes for public and private redevelopment with an eye towards culture and the creative class are healthy and productive. But the city and state governments have far more work to do to make Tulsa a hospitable place for artists to live and work and nonprofits to thrive. A bill currently in the state's House of Representatives threatens to eliminate the autonomy of the Oklahoma Arts Council and jeopardize significant amounts of funding for the arts. Such eliminations could be devastating. If funding and community support can survive, Tulsa's ability to enrich artists and audiences will continue to grow.
I have a personal wish for the arts in Tulsa, one that admittedly may stem from my status as a relative newcomer: to see more interaction with what is happening beyond the city's borders. I believe local artists could benefit from increasing their awareness of what is being made, experienced, and discussed in other places. Organizations can serve those same artists by opening up dialogues and exchanges with their counterparts in neighboring cities and states. I see these efforts being done successfully by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Council (OVAC), one of the few organizations working hard to bridge gaps, for example, between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, two cities geographically close but psychically distant.  Tulsa is situated midway between Kansas City and Dallas, both centers of dynamic, cutting-edge arts scenes. Engagement with places like that would not only broaden our horizons, but promote the great things that are going on here to others, not to mention move us towards raising the city's profile on a national stage. Tulsa is closer than ever to being "discovered†as a hidden cultural jewel, and to showing the rest of the nation what many people here already know.
Lauren Ross is the Nancy E. Meinig Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa.
It's an Oklahoma Day, Part 1: Oklahoma City
March 11, 2014 · Print This Article
Over the coming months, the Bad at Sports blog is featuring quick glimpses of the art world as it exists in smaller cities across the country and around the world. Each glimpse is byway of some of the said city's local characters, which include but are not limited to artists, curators, creative writers, and critics. In part I of this Oklahoma Day, artist Romy Owens gives you a sense of the artist and arts culture in Oklahoma City and its namesake state at-large.Â
Guest post by Romy Owens
My great grandmother grew up in a sod house in the side of a hill. Why? Why is this relevant? Oklahoma is young. We're 108 years old. We are not so removed from the reality that community equaled survival. We're still a highly community-minded state. That is not to imply that you live in a non-community-minded state, or that we're super special. (We are.) Unless you're meeting Sally Kern, when you meet someone from Oklahoma, you'll probably like him/her… because lots of us are friendly, and smart, and funny, and attractive.
So, with that said, we are also a state steeped in terrible statistics and stereotypes. We love football, basketball, rodeo, beef, pork, incarcerated women, pregnant teenagers, and energy. We cling to religion. We have extreme weather events. We have a majority conservative political representation. (FTR: I am part of the minority.)
However, thankfully, Oklahoma City is not a cultural dustbowl. (Oooh, Cultural Dustbowl is totally the name of my next body of work.) We love art too.
In Oklahoma City, we have institutional arts organizations that receive significant support from foundations, corporations, and individuals. More often than not it seems like the focus is on dead people's art, but recently all of the major art institutions have started to embrace contemporary art and artists. (Hooray!) I'm sure the ballet, philharmonic, museums, and theaters would say they need more money to do bigger and better and serve more people, and sure, they could use more money, and probably deserve more money, but in the big picture of arts institutions serving the public, they are all doing great. Thanks for asking.
We also have many small arts organizations (dance and theater companies, non-profit art spaces, arts districts) that receive financial support from foundations, corporations, and individuals. All of these agencies are providing contemporary art programming, often using Oklahoma playwrights, choreographers, performers, and artists. These organizations need money. They might need better organization as well, but to do that they need financial support.
And then we have the individual artists, and there are a lot of us, working diligently, and with a few exceptions, most of the time for less than minimum wage. (I know this isn't just an Oklahoma problem.)
I am a visual artist in Oklahoma City, and if Malcolm Gladwell's assessment of what makes an expert an expert, I am an expert regarding the contemporary art scene of Oklahoma City.
In Oklahoma City, I am part of a small, tight-knit community of contemporary artists. Among us, maybe two dozen work as full time artists. There are easily another 200 who self-identify as artists and consistently create, but work 40 hours a week at another job (many art related). Add to that another 1000 people who make art for an occasional group exhibition, but not necessarily professionally, and that makes up the visual art community in Oklahoma City (and probably in other small cities like Omaha, Louisville, Columbus, Birmingham…).
Like every other state, Oklahoma has decorative interior designer artists, conceptual artists, performance artists, safe festival artists, established name-brand crank-it-out artists, street artists, craft artists, eager experimental emerging artists, and weary-but-still-eager experimental established artists. We represent all media and movements. If you broke it down proportionately, I'm sure we are identical to the artistic fabric of the art meccas, just on a smaller scale. And like all artists everywhere, we have a lot of dialogue about art: my art, your art, that art, current art, past art, artistic practices, ideas, residencies, grants, fellowships, studios, patrons, opportunities, money, money, money.
For visual artists in Oklahoma City to make ends meet with part time contract gigs, there are numerous afterschool and seasonal school break art teaching opportunities, some art preparatory opportunities, and a few art administrator opportunities.
We only have one paid yearlong residency program at a historic downtown hotel. And we have one unpaid one month-long residency program for printmakers at a downtown art gallery.
There is an art walk happening in a different art district three weeks out of each month. We have two art festivals that occur each spring. Nearly every weekend, there is something new to see or attend. Scoff if you want, that wasn't always the case here.
We have a public art program at the city level. We have a quarterly crowd-sourced grant for artists of all disciplines modeled after the Brooklyn FEAST. And we are about to see the renovation of a historic building west of downtown for a new 21st century Museum Hotel. This has all really developed in the past ten years. I am certain that we wouldn't be where we are now if it weren't for OVAC.
Oh yeah, we have OVAC. The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition is the only arts organization that benefits individual visual artists exclusively. Before OVAC, there was no institution in Oklahoma providing financial support to individual Oklahoma artists, except art buying patrons. As many artists know, when the successful continuation of an artist's career is solely determined through patronage, the contemporary art changes and the voice becomes… decorative. OVAC empowers us to take risks, stray from the safety of the known, and to change the conversation as we deem necessary.
So in a state where prior to 1988, the only way to make a living as an artist was to 1) make art that people will purchase, 2) be independently wealthy, or 3) leave the state, having an organization provide grants to make art, or provide exhibition opportunities with honorariums is a game changer. (OVAC does so much more than that, but money talks.)
The contemporary art scene has been significantly improved by OVAC's work. It's one of the few art organizations in the city that has a zero censorship clause. The ideas are richer, the discourse is stronger, and the networks are wider. Its mission is to support visual arts and artists and their power to enrich communities. Done. And more please.
So back to the charm of Oklahomans, as a tightly knit art community—we are highly supportive of one another. Of course, as individual artists, we are competing over limited opportunities within our small cities and throughout the state, and competitive opportunities out of state, but we all know, when one succeeds, we all succeed.
I feel fortunate to be aware of what many of my contemporaries are doing. I also feel fortunate that for our size we have so many creative and talented artists contributing to the conversation of what is art. I couldn't begin to list everyone whose work I admire, but here are a few:
Deep down in my heart, I know there are many Oklahomans who understand the significance of what my contemporaries and I contribute to the cultural landscape of the state, and who understand the value of visual arts past the formal museum setting or the decorator showcase home. But in accessing the contemporary art scene of Oklahoma City and knowing what is happening even just five hours north in Kansas City, we still have a long way to go.
We still don't have enough galleries that exhibit and sell art. (I know this is a problem even for artists of the largest cities.) We cling to the art auction-as-fundraiser model like it's going to leave us for another city. Affordable studios aren't easy to secure. And more paid residency programs or professional opportunities could transform careers, but establishing and funding them seems challenging at best.
In a recent article in the city's mainstream newspaper, I was featured in a story about the Affordable Care Act, and the backlash regarding my receiving subsidized insurance (for the first time in eleven years) was hateful, mostly centered on the fact that I "should get a real job.†Unfortunately, such phrases are proffered to artists regularly in Oklahoma and elsewhere. So, while we truly are a nurturing supportive community trying very earnestly to keep a diverse cultural experience viable, it's still a struggle for the individual artist in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma does have a lower cost of living though. Like super low. Like maybe you should move here and join our art community. Consider that an invitation.
With all this said, personally, I myself am a thriving Oklahoma artist at a pivotal point in my own career, and I know that I need to find opportunities outside of Oklahoma. Ultimately, the outward extending success of my studio practice and well as those of my peers will make for a better cultural landscape in Oklahoma. So, hit me up if you have any leads. And of course, hit my fellow Oklahoma artists up, too. They're all making great work in Oklahoma.
Romy Owens is an interdisciplinary contemporary artist living and working in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. www.romyowens.com
Guest Post: This essay is part of a series by David Carl
If I had created the City of my dream, the City that is not, never was and yet manifests itself with acuteness, smells and loud sounds, if I had created that City, I would not only have been moving in complete freedom and with an absolute sense of belonging but also, most importantly, I would have taken the audience into an alien but secretly familiar world. Â Â Â Â
–Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern
Barton Fink presents us with an opportunity to reconsider that most magical aspect of the cinema, mise-en-scène. Mise-en-scène is nothing less than the visual world created by the filmmakers to tell us everything about the movie that is not conveyed by the dialogue, the story, the plot, the characters, and the acting. It is the physical setting of the movie, the very stuff of its visual being.
This is of central importance in any film, but in Barton Fink it is of particular interest because the world of the movie is such an unusual one. In most films mise-en-scène is created in the service of calling a particular world into existence. Often it is some version of the world we are already familiar with (either in our experience, our memory, or our imagination): for example, such and such a city in America in such and such a year. It may be a period piece: A suburb in the 1970's, New York of the 1920's, the Chicago of prohibition, the American West in the 1860's, Europe during WWI, or Vietnam in 1969. Sometimes it is a fantasy world that has been created expressly for the movie: a science fiction landscape, perhaps on a spaceship or on another planet, or some fantasy version of our own world in the future. Mise-en-scène can be used to recreate the Wild West, the roaring 20's, World War II, an alien invasion, the Zombie Apocalypse, the town we grew up in, an all-too-familiar office building, a typical American high-school, an apartment complex, a jungle, a desert, or an urban wasteland. Mise-en-scene creates a world, whether it is the lush, visually brilliant Britain of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon or the rainy Los Angeles of Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.
Mise-en-scène tells us where we are. But the Coen brothers don't need mise-en-scène to tell us where we are as we enter the world of Barton Fink because they use a title to do it instead: "New York, 1941â€, even though everything about the setting would have conveyed the same information. But they're reserving mise-en-scène for something else; let's call it establishing a mood. What is this mood? What is "mood†in the movies? What else but how a movie makes us feel. Which, in the case of Barton Fink, is a very special kind of creepy; Poe would have called it an example of "the uncanny.â€
Lets review the first 10 minutes of Barton Fink: The movie begins with the credits appearing against a background of gold textured wallpaper (we see later that it is the wallpaper from Barton's room at the Hotel Earle). Wallpaper is important in the movie. It's a surface that hides another surface. The first cut takes us behind a surface, not of the wallpaper but of a stage. We're behind the scenes, listening to the over-acted, over-written, overblown lines of a "common man†in Barton's successful play:
"Dreamin' again,†a woman says.
"Not anymore Lil. I'm awake now. Awake for the first time in years.â€
The movie's main themes are presented in the first few seconds: surfaces and what they conceal, actors and what they portray (or pretend to be), the tension between dreaming and being awake. The first shot, after the credits, is of something being lowered. We are descending, from the very first image, going down, figuratively, accompanying our characters on their descent into Hell.
These first few seconds also illustrate Barton's illusions about his work as an artist. (Movies and the theatre are about creating illusions (not always illusions of reality), and Barton's illusions are largely "in his mind.â€) On stage and out of sight wildly improbable lines are delivered ("I see the choir and I know they're dressed in rags, but we're part of that choirâ€) by a character meant to represent a "common man†(although the voice sounds strikingly like John Turturro's) while backstage a "real†common man works the ropes and pulleys that allow the fantasy to unfold. On the very line "we're part of that choir†we get our first shot of a human figure in the movie, bent over and working, completely uninterested in, unengaged with, and detached from the lines being delivered ostensibly to give him, the "common man,†a dramatic voice in the world.
The shot of this man walking away behind Barton is of someone who couldn't care less about the lies and fantasies of dramatic representation. A second stagehand sits nearby smoking a cigarette (beneath an eerily red-lit "NO SMOKING†sign) and reading a newspaper, equally uninterested in Barton's paean to his fantasy version of "the common man.†This is all the visual evidence we need to see that the movie wants us to think of Barton's play (and thus of Barton himself) as a pompous ruse (albeit a sincere one). A sincere ruse; that is: excellent raw material for Hollywood.
In the restaurant after the performance Barton says, "I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut. His gut tells him what's good.†But throughout the movie Barton does nothing but kid himself about his own work. He's a bad writer who knows nothing about the people he wants to write about (ironically, since the implication is that he grew up with them in New York, and that his own background is working class). The Herald review of his paper says that his play is about people "whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their desire for something higherâ€; but this describes not the people Barton thinks he is writing about, but rather his own relationship to writing. A relationship that will unfold for the rest of the movie not in New York, but in Hollywood, a place that thrives on the tension between appearances and reality, aspiration and ambition, honesty and hypocrisy. A magical place of fantasy mixed with ruthless pragmatic business sense. (What darkness supports the light?) At their first meeting Lipnick tells Barton, "The writer is king here at Capitol pictures. You don't believe me: take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week. That's what we think of the writer.†And he's right: in Hollywood a writer, like anything else, is something you buy. Pay for it and it's yours.
But Hollywood is not simply a false mistress who erects a tempting exterior over a corrupt interior. Instead, She turns out to be the harsh mistress capable of telling Barton the hard truths he has tried to hide and conceal himself from. Ironically, Hollywood is the most honest character in the whole movie; the character so expert at disguise that She not only sees through everyone else's disguises, but forces them to face and acknowledge them as well. And virtually every character in Barton Fink is pretending to be someone or something he or she is not (Charlie is not "really†an insurance salesman, Lipnick is not a colonel in the U.S. army, Mayhew is not a great writer, Audrey is "not just Bill's secretaryâ€, and who, or what, the hell is "CHET!â€, anyway?), which leads us to wonder, what is it that Barton appears to be but isn't? A writer? An artist? Someone interested in "the common manâ€?
Hollywood is a wonderful paradox: no place is more devoted to creating magic, but no place is more merciless in reducing it to a commodity that can be bought and sold. Hollywood is also the land where appearances are what is real. Obscuring the dividing line between truth and fiction, fantasy and reality is the business of Hollywood. It's a place where dreams (or nightmares) come true. Which means that the person who is the most duplicitous is, paradoxically, the most honest. (Lipnick tells Barton, "If I had been totally honest, I wouldn't be within a mile of this pool unless I was cleaning it.â€) Where does that leave Barton? Is he a real writer trying to pander his talent to the Hollywood beast? Or is he a hack who has to come to Hollywood to discover the truth about himself? What is truth in the movie? In the movies? In Hollywood? For any of us ever? What more do we want from a work of art than an opportunity to confront such puzzles concerning truth and fiction?
From the moment we cut from the final scene in New York to the opening scene in Los Angeles we accompany Barton into a new world, a world that has never existed outside the imaginations of the filmmakers. This is where mise-en-scène comes in. Superficially it looks like Hollywood in the 1940's, but in fact the Coen brothers have created a vision of Hollywood all their own, where nothing is as it appears to be, reality and fantasy are hopelessly confused, and truth and fiction are so entwined as to be virtually indistinguishable. The Hotel Earle, with its pealing wallpaper that seems to reveal something like flesh underneath and that appears to ooze or bleed when Barton presses on it (penetrating this "skin†with the thumbtacks provided by "Chet!†seems to provoke the sexual noises Barton hears through the wall), is a literal embodiment of this vision of Hollywood.
Meta-portrayals of Hollywood as a city dedicated to ruthlessly profiting from creations of the human imagination are common. Hollywood, as we know from movies like Von Sternberg's The Last Command, Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd., Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential, Robert Altman's The Player, and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, is the place where fantasy and reality enter into the most bizarre of congresses. Nowhere else in American is the harsh reality of cutthroat business so seamlessly combined with the romantic luster of our dreams and fantasies. Hollywood is where people go to make their dreams come true, or, as in Barton's case, to encounter their nightmares.
Barton does not so much enter the Hotel Earle as magically materialize in its lobby as a result of a gradual but stunning fade that, at 7 minutes and 44 seconds, for a split instant creates the image of Barton standing before a surging body of water that has flooded the hotel floor. It appears as if he has split the rock and emerged out of it to stand, suitcase and typewriter in hand, on the shores of a new land. As the water recedes, Barton begins to move forward through the hotel lobby. This is one of the most beautiful shots in the film. Barton backlit from the doors behind him, moving through a strangely empty (despite the many chairs) lobby of dusky browns and pinks that have a flesh-like character. This impression of the hotel lobby as something living is emphasized by the plants that give it a jungle-like feel. At first Barton is merely a silhouette moving through this strange new landscape.
The next cut lets us know we're not to be confined to the point of view of characters in the movie. Now we are behind and above Barton, but too far above for this to be the pov of a human observer, and as the camera pulls back we rise even higher to take in the chandeliers. The light has changed and we can see the chairs and the plants more clearly. The colors stand out more brightly and Barton himself appears in more detail. The pattern of the carpet resembles the pattern of the gold wallpaper against which the credits appeared at the beginning of the movie.
A few more things to notice about the Hotel Earle:
—the symbolism throughout the film not so subtly suggests that the Hotel Earle is a kind of Hell ("Earle†and "Hell†are end rhymes).
—not just the fact that Chet emerges from below the floor (obvious symbolism), but the mottled color and texture of the trap door from which he emerges (carrying a shoe?)
—the overhead camera angle of the spinning hotel register Barton signs (a bird's, or God's, or Devil's eye view?)
—the stains on the walls on either side of the elevator (the camera pans down though the motion should be up, to floor 6)
—the impossibly long corridor Barton walks down to arrive at his room
—the hotel's slogan, "A day or a lifetime†(ominous overtones)
—the broken pencil tip (bad symbolism for a sexually lonely and creatively sterile writer)
—the long row of shoes outside the doors of what otherwise appear to be unoccupied rooms (in No Exit Sartre wrote, "Hell is other people,†but for Barton Hell may simply be himself and his solitude)
—the (according to Geisler, impossible) mosquito as bloodsucker; L.A. as the natural habitat of vampires (cf. Joss Whedon's brilliant Buffy and Angel series)
In this movie, everything means something, which is as bad as saying that nothing means anything.
These early scenes establish the Hotel Earle as more than just a setting in the movie. It becomes an actual character, living and breathing, sweating, groaning; it acts and interacts with the other characters in the film—the hotel, like John Goodman's character Charlie, is a living embodiment of Hollywood itself. (And Barton's room is the creepiest room in the movies since The Shining's Room 237 and Henry Spencer's room in Eraserhead (whose hairdo Barton's seems indebted to as well).)
At least this is one side of Hollywood—it would be pointless to try and identify which of the various settings (Lipnick's office, the restaurant where Barton eats with Geisler, poolside at Lipnick's home, the beach at the end of the film) is the "real†Hollywood, for that is precisely what Hollywood is in the movie: the absence of a single unchanging truth. Hollywood is all surface. Peel back the surface, as the Hotel Earle peels away is epidermal wallpaper, and what is beneath is not the truth, but just a sticky mess, waiting to be covered by an appearance which will stand in for the truth. And what is a movie that is surface all the way down "really†about, if not the very question of what it means for a movie to be "about†something in the first place?
Before ending I'd like to add a few thoughts about what Charlie and Lipnick have to do with all this, and with the question of "the life of the mind.†Charlie and Lipnick are doppelgangers, both for each other and for Hollywood. They do not "represent†or "symbolize†Hollywood; they embody it. They are large, dominating bodies. Bodies that embody, in different ways, what Barton calls "the life of the mind.â€
Think of Charlie and Lipnick as different aspects of the "entertainment†industry: Lipnick, in his Janus-like alternations between submission (licking Barton's shoe) and domination (firing and debasing Lou Breeze); Charlie in his peculiar relationship to make-believe and his own Janus-like embodiment of comedy and tragedy (the laughter-sobbing Barton hears through the wall (permeability of surfaces) representing both Thalia and Melpomene, the muses of comedy and tragedy respectively) and the friendly "guy next door†façade masking the "serial killer†interior). These ambiguities (submission/domination, laughter/sobbing, comedy/tragedy) find their way into the movie itself. Is Barton Fink a comedy, a horror movie, or a tragedy? Yes.
Lipnick tells Barton the only thing that matters is, "can you tell a story,†and Charlie repeatedly offers, "I could tell you stories,†but Barton can't put these two sides of Hollywood together. He's so caught up in the idea of his "work†that he can neither tell nor hear stories. He is both deaf and mute to the only thing Hollywood cares about: other people's stories. He's too busy trying to figure out his own.
Charlie says, when explaining his ear infection, "Can't trade my head in for a new one,†and Barton agrees, adding "I guess you're stuck with the one you got.†But later in the film the cotton in Charlie's ear reappears in Barton's (also symbolizing his deafness) and Charlie will literally give Barton a head, as if to suggest that, when it comes to the life of the mind, it's always possible to get a new one. And it seems to work, since it is after Charlie gives Barton Audrey's head that his writer's block disappears and he begins to write (just as Audrey helped Bill Mayhew with his own writer's block). The results, however, only reveal the kind of writer Barton "really†is.
Charlie tells Barton that he's in the business of selling peace of mind. In response, Barton speaks of what he calls "the life of the mind†("I got to tell you, the life of the mind, there's no roadmap for that territory.â€). At one point Lou tells Barton, "Right now, the contents of your head are the property of Capitol Pictures.†After seeing Audrey's body, Charlie tells Barton, "We gotta keep our heads.â€
"Look upon me, I'll show you the life of the mind,†Charlie shouts as he rampages down the hallway. But he's talking to Barton, or to us, not to the cops (one of whom is already dead). What is it Charlie wants to show us?
Is the movie an imaginary voyage (like Dante's) into a literary hell? What is the "life of the mind†if not the life we lead in our imaginations, the life fueled by the products of Hollywood, which feed our imaginations, though whether to nourish them or enervate them may depend on what it is we're digesting. The life of the mind is about death and violence and man's journey into the depths of Hell. Barton doesn't seem to realize (yet) that there's no "common man†who doesn't carry his own Hell around with him. No vision of Hell that isn't derived from the dark imagination of the poet that dwells in each of us.
Charlie calls Barton, whose aspiration is to turn the suffering of the common man into art, a "tourist with a typewriter,†but when Barton leaves the burning hotel he carries with him his script and the box, not the typewriter he arrived with.
The box has replaced the typewriter. What's in it (besides Audrey's head)?
Charlie: "It's just a lot of personal stuff, but I don't want to drag it with me, and I'd like to think it's in good hands. Funny huh, when everything that's important to a guy, everything he wants to keep from a lifetime, and he can fit it into a little box like that.â€
Barton: "It's more than I've got.â€
Charlie tells him it will help him finish his script, but overcoming his writer's block is not the same as being able to write well (since what he writes appears to be the worst kind of self-plagiarism: a repetition of something that was a cliché to begin with). After gaining from his encounter with the police a pretty good idea of what's in the box, he holds it up to his own head, as if trying it on for size. Earlier he told Charlie, "My job is to plumb the depths,†and he says to Mayhew, "writing comes from a great inner pain†(In response Bill speaks of wanting to rip his head off; a desire Charlie will help him accomplish later in the film); but by the end of the film Barton seems to have learned that even "great inner pain†isn't enough to make him a good writer. It just makes him a human being. Earlier he had asked Audrey, "What don't I understand?†Perhaps this is it?
At the end of the film Barton has been sentenced (damned?) by Lipnick, "You're under contract, you're gonna stay that way. Anything you write is gonna be the property of Capitol pictures and Capitol pictures is not going to produce anything you write. Not until you grow up a little.â€
Barton's writing has been reduced to "property.†So much for the life of the mind. Like Charlie, he has to get into the business of selling "peace of mindâ€â€"Lipnick tells him, "they [the audience] don't want to see a guy wrestling with his soul†(it's not that kind of "wresting movieâ€). (Akira Kurosawa wrote a wrestling movie before launching his career as a director, and his directorial debut was with a movie about a Judo fighter.) Where does that leave him, or us, at the end of the film? Are we finally damned, or only left with a more honest sense of the real challenges (obstacles, temptations, and hazards) that stand between us and the "life of the mindâ€?
When Barton meets the girl from the picture in his room he asks her, "Are you in pictures?†And she says, "Don't be silly.†But she is a picture. She asks him, "What's in the box?†and he says, "I don't know.†"Isn't it yours,†she asks, and again he says, "I don't know.†What doesn't he know? The movie ends as it began, the same music playing as the credits roll against the wallpaper from Barton's room at the Hotel Earle. Is Barton's "I don't know†a note of agnostic despair, or the first faint rays of dawning awareness?
David Carl is a member of the teaching faculty at St. John's College in Santa Fe and a co-founder of the St. John's College Film Institute. He is the Director of the College's Graduate Institute, a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Cultural Artifacts, teaches for Curious Oyster Seminars, and has written several books, including Heraclitus in Sacramento, Fragments, Forecasts and Predictions, Meditations on Initiating the Apocalypse, and Further Adventures in the Unsubconscious. He watches movies in his living room in Santa Fe, NM.
Spectral Explorations
February 26, 2014 · Print This Article
Guest Post by Lise McKean
The six works in White Light by Fatima Haider and Nazafarin Lofti at Andrew Rafacz in Chicago's West Loop embody an elegant sufficiency of form and resonate across time and space. From Lotfi's digital photographs to Haider's found object, a weathered wooden frame of a multicolored window from Lahore, Pakistan, White Light embraces all sorts of ways of looking and seeing, thinking and making.
Hanging tête-à -tête, pigmented inkjet prints by Haider and Lotfi are straight ahead when the visitor enters the gallery. Up close the undulating shapes set in ivory-colored marble look like outside-the-lines drawing in Haider's Squared. In fact, the shapes are made of oxidized lime filling in for the lapis lazuli, carnelian, jade, and other semiprecious stones that bygone looters gouged out of the marble of the Naulakha Pavilion at the monumental Lahore Fort.
With their homely generic shapes, the five bottles in Lotfi's Untitled Family Portrait play double bass to the aria of floral ornamentation in Haider's Squared. Yet as the viewer moves closer, it becomes apparent that meticulous coils of cotton kitchen twine cover each bottle. Standing near or far, these bottles recall Morandi's explorations with light, color, surface, and composition.
Lotfi's Limits builds up its surface with rhythmic brushwork in black and white to create patterns of tessellated arcs. In Gray Field, she uses acrylic paint and ink on canvas—again in black and white—combining horizontal lines with brushwork to produce a relaxed patchwork of Gutai-like tire tracks. Or maybe a group portrait of shredded wheat. Her other work, Encounter(inplace) is a triptych made from photographs she shot through a pin-pricked sheet of paper looking out to Lake Michigan from the limestone rocks of Chicago's plebeian monument, The Point. The paper acts like the marble lattice work of Mughal architecture, blocking light and view while giving way to the emergence of larger contours such as the horizon of water and sky.
Haider's Roshandan-3548E is an example of the brightly colored windows that were once commonplace across the Indian subcontinent. Her found object is also a salvage operation. The Lahore Fort is barely off the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger and the city's old buildings are steadily overhauled or replaced by new ones. The work's straightforward title belies its valence. The number 3548E refers to the house number for the building near the Lahore Fort that was home to the window, a number which may or may not help in finding the place. Roshandan is the word in Urdu and Hindi for this type of window (literally "that which has lightâ€). It's typically mounted high on the wall to let in light and to send away the summer's ferociously hot air.
With works that are deeper than their surfaces let on, Haider and Lotfi open the roshandan and release some of the hot air that circulates in contemporary art circles beset with the lingua franca of research and theory. More than simply a tête-à -tête, White Light is abundant evidence of Haider and Lotfi's deepening rapport with each other—and with each one's own drive to see and to make art.
White Light at Andrew Rafacz runs through March 29, 2014
Lise McKean is a social anthropologist and writer based in Chicago. In 2013 she curated StreamLines, an exhibition of contemporary art in Vaishali, India.


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About Riley MacLeod
How To Write Your First Letter To Someone In PrisonMay 4, 2012 | Riley MacLeod
(These are general suggestions for writing prisoners and are adapted from the guidelines at Black and Pink and the Prisoner Correspondence Project. Always refer to CeCe's support website for details on writing her specifically.)
When someone hears their name called by a prison guard during mail call it can be a powerful reminder that people on the outside care about them, and it sends a message to guards and other inmates that this person has support and isn't forgotten.
The CeCe McDonald case has brought a lot of national attention to the ways the prison industrial complex persecutes queer and trans people, especially low-income people, trans women, and queer and trans people of color. The folks at Support CeCe McDonald have done an incredible job of publicizing the case and rallying community support and awareness about the racist, classist, and queer/transphobic practices that have taken over two million people away from their communities and placed them behind bars. The Support CeCe McDonald site is always the best place to find current information about CeCe's status and what you can do to help.
If this case has inspired you to get involved in prison issues but you aren't sure where to start, becoming a pen pal to a person in prison, either CeCe or another individual, can be a great way to show someone they aren't alone. Mail call often happens in public spaces in prison; when someone hears their name called by a prison guard during mail call it can be a powerful reminder that people on the outside care about them, and it sends a message to guards and other inmates that this person has support and isn't forgotten. This can be a vital harm reduction strategy for people who are locked up, especially queer and trans people. Additionally, many people are incarcerated far from their communities or may not have a lot of support from the outside world; many queer and trans people may be in "protective custody" or solitary confinement and may not have a lot of daily contact with others or time out of their cell. A quick letter of support or a long-term correspondence can be a great way to keep their spirits up and let them know they aren't alone.
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Strange BedfellowsApril 26, 2012 | Riley MacLeod
About a year and a half ago I went through one of those break-ups of a long-term relationship that, in the professional opinion of my then-therapist, left me looking like I was expecting someone to hit me all the time. One of those break-ups where I ended up sobbing to the salesclerks in Macy's on Valentine's Day, the day after he dumped me at a fundraiser; one of those break-ups where the turn of a man's head in the choreography of cruising may as well have been the sound of someone cocking a gun; one of those break-ups where the thought of dating someone new seemed unimaginable. New York City's hordes of available but unknown men seemed designed solely to horrify me, so I hid behind my now-rusty lesbian separatist feminism, determined that cis-men were the enemy, and decided to take a break from dating them until I could look one in the eye without wanting to kick him in the groin and tell him what was wrong with him while he writhed on the ground in (what I imagined to be) well-deserved and politically-appropriate pain.


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July 28, 2016
No Game-Changer Here
Carol Platt Liebau
10/7/2008 10:48:52 PM - Carol Platt Liebau
The debate was a draw. It seems that both candidates are willing to play it safe -- surprising, at least, for McCain, given that he's behind. His answers were more solid, and better . . . but, for the most part, he allowed Barack to be his usual, glib self (although I'm not sure that Barack came off as likable as he has in the past). McCain was effective, but there were many missed opportunities and anyone hoping this debate would be a game-changer is bound to be disappointed.
1. It was surprising to me that Barack Obama had no real comeback to John McCain very effectively linking him to Fannie/Freddie debacle. Wow. Being the second largest recipient of Fannie/Freddie money "in history" is, I'll bet you, a fact that most of those watching the debate didn't know.
2. McCain's attack about "jello on the wall" and Obama's tax plans was, in my view, fairly effective. He had specifics about how he would cut taxes; Obama didn't. The mandates and fines for small business point that McCain made was also fairly effective. It struck a false note a little earlier when Barack started talking about
doubling the Peace Corps
and all that. Really, is that where we should be prioritizing at this point?
3. Talk about the audacity of hope -- Barack referenced his "first term" in discussing entitlement reform. Everyone should be that confident, no?
4. GREAT POINT. Barack promised a "middle tax class cut" when running for the Senate. Got to DC and did . . .
. Why would that change now? It would be nice to see that in an ad (hint, hint).
5. Senator McCain needs to call Barack Obama "Barack Obama." I know he's trying to sound indirect and therefore not harsh, but, please, find another way. "That one" isn't how to do it. All of a sudden, "my friend" doesn't sound so bad. That being said, it's hardly the big deal that, no doubt, the Obama campaign will try to make of it.
6. Thank you, Senator McCain, for noting that Barack Obama would
small businesses that don't cover their employees' health care. And for calling Obama on not telling how much the fines would be.
7. McCain's depth and understanding of foreign issues is obvious, if anyone stayed awake long enough to hear it. And his explicit invocation of America as a "force for good" is an implicit contrast to his opponent's "blame America first" mentality.
8. Barack seems willing to intervene to stop "cruelty" around the world where "we can." Except, I guess, when it's Iraq.
9. "You're a doing fine, job, Tom," Barack pats the moderator on the head. Geez. Reminds you of the "You're likable enough, Hillary," doesn't it?
10. McCain: "We can never allow a second Holocaust to take place." Barack's response to the question about Iranian nukes and Israel sounds shallow next to McCain. One guy is equivocal about protecting Israel; one isn't.


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Directory Services @ Oracle Open World 2014
By Etienne Remillon-Oracle on Sep 24, 2014
While you get ready to attend Oracle Open World in San Francisco next week, make sure you meet with the Directory Team.
Stop by our booth "Directory Services: Modernized, Highly Performant and Scalable" - Moscone South, Left - SLM-124
Our demo will showcase how easy it is to transition from Sun DSEE to OUD, the benefits of using OUD over DSEE, the added value gained through DB/Unix/Linux user account consolidation, and new Virtual directory capabilities.
Register to attend our Directory Session:
"Oracle Unified Directory, The Age of Mega Volume - Oracle's Next Generation Directory and Future Strategy".
This presentation discusses how customers have leveraged Oracle Unified Directory to capitalize on the increased opportunities during this identity explosion as well as Oracle's directory strategy to meet your needs now and into the future. Session ID: CON8043 Tuesday, Sep 30, 5:00 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West - 3018
Learn more about all other Identity Activities at Open World? Visit our page here.


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Congresswoman Nancy Boyda's campaign continues to dispute her Republican reelection opponent's characterization of a vote in favor of recessing the Congressional session.
Boyda's campaign spokesperson Thomas Seay said Thursday that State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins' comments that Boyda voted to send Congress on vacation is "inaccurate." Seay says Boyda is back in the 2nd District working, not taking a vacation. He listed several dozen events on Boyda's schedule during the break, including trips to Fort Leavenworth, Fort Riley and the Topeka Chamber of Commerce.
Jenkins said in an interview Wednesday that she was disappointed Boyda cast what Jenkins' understood was the deciding vote for Congress to recess instead of continuing to work on energy policy. Jenkins said she was frustrated the issue hadn't been addressed.
But Boyda's campaign says it is unfair to say she cast a "deciding vote" when the actual vote was 213-197 - not just a one-vote margin. Seay says it is more than the job of Congress to cast votes in Washington. He says they also must take time to return home to hear what's on the minds of constituents, and that's what the vote was about.