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John Tortorella:
"We turned one over. I mean, we give them two free ones. Mac turns one over and we lose our coverage on a back-door play."
On the GWG:
"Hank's ready to tie it up. It's just a fluky goal."
On Lundqvist stretching with cramps:
"He's fine. He's fine."
On whether there should have been communication between Gaborik and Lundqvist:
"I just, yeah, I guess so. It's just a nothing play that turns into something. Obviously something pretty big."
On Lundqvist's 49 saves, including the Ovechkin breakaway:
"Yeah, he played very well. He played very well."
Did he sense that the Rangers tightened up after the first Capitals goal:
"Yeah, we did. We did. And, to McDonagh's credit, after that, I thought he stood in there and played really well after it. It's something that a young kid may struggle with. But I thought he played really well. Then they surged on us and we watched a little bit. It's a play we've talked about the whole series, as far as they whipping pucks to the weak side. Michael (Sauer) leaves the front of the net and Dubi just isn't ready for the play. On the third goal we do a really good job killing the penalty of and they get a shot through, and I think it hits Johansson in the chest."
What was needed at that point? One big shift, two big shifts?
"I think we had plays, we could make some plays. We stopped making plays as it went on, when they're there. And we did. We struggled a bit. We looked nervous and I thought we gathered ourselves but it's one of those situations where, you know, we felt better after we got through it and got to the overtime. I think we gathered ourselves. But we still had chances to make plays and we didn't make enough when they were there. And we get beat by a goal that, it's really a nothing play. Hank's ready to tie it up and Gabby pokes checks it."
"We'll be fine. We'll be fine."
On the 0-7 power play:
"Yeah, it's a struggle. We killed their power plays off, too. If we can wash them out until our power play gets going, we've got to continue trying to kill their power plays off. It's been a struggle. We've tried a lot of different people. It just hasn't worked. So our penalty killing has to be that much better and stay with it until we find a way to score a power-play goal."
"Losing an overtime game in the playoffs hurts all the time. But our team will bounce back. We can't look at the hill. We've just got to look at the next game here. We've been right with them. And we've got to find a way to win one hockey game and we'll see where it goes from there."
"When they get the second goal we know it's going to be a grind. They did. For a few minutes there they surged on us and we didn't control ourselves. The tough part, I just think we give them two free ones. You can't give that team two free goals. We did and it cost us."


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
CHILDREN from schools across Bromsgrove and Redditch have been taking part in a new citizen's challenge event that has been launched.
The first Young Citizen's Challenge for the towns was organised by West Mercia Police and Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service, and took place at the Ryland Centre, in New Road, throughout last week.
Around 700 year six students from schools had the opportunity to take part in a series of scenarios designed to raise awareness of various aspects of personal safety.
The seven scenarios covered water, fire, electrical, road and internet safety, plus anti-social behaviour, first aid and stranger awareness.
The events featured representatives from Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service, West Mercia Police, the Safer Roads Partnership, Severn Area Rescue Association, Safer Bromsgrove, Safer Redditch, the Red Cross and Western Power Distribution.
Caroline Webster, Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service's North District Community Safety Advisor, said: "The aim is to empower the young people to make positive choices to maintain their personal and community safety.
"It is very much experiential learning as each scenario is interactive and based around student participation."


text:
Kiva.org - Loans that change lives
Kiva is the most fantastic program out there - KIva lets you lend money to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world - empowering them to left themselves out of poverty. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.


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Cameron Diaz offends Peruvians
Cameron Diaz visited Peru's Machu Picchu last Friday and offended everybody there by carrying around a green bag with a red star and the phrase "Serve the People" in Chinese. Turns out the phrase is a slogan used by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, and Peru has a history of communist insurgencies, including the Maoist Shining Path insurgency of the 1980s and early 1990s that left nearly 70,000 dead. A Peruvian human rights activist tells the AP:
"It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims. I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology did so much damage."
On Sunday, Cameron apologized for her idiocy, emailing a statement to the AP:
"I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it. I'm sorry for any people's pain and suffering and it was certainly never my intention to reopen what I now know is a painful wound in this country's history."
That's what happens when you're Cameron Diaz and stupid. I heard last month she wanted to visit Alabama wearing her new ghost costume, but at the last minute canceled and went to an Indian reservation wearing her cowboy outfit instead.


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Brig. Gen. Davis D Graves, Commander, KIA /WW II /MTO
1944 — Africa
Brig. Gen. Davis Graves was the Commander of the US AAC Fighter Wing. He was an "OBSERVER" in the Co-Pilot seat with 310thBG,381stBS, Flight Leader Lt Edgar Dorman, they took a direct hit (by FLAK) over the Target of Porto Santo Stefano, Iyalt on 8 Feb. 1944. There were no survivors.
Davis Dunbar Graves was just Promoted to Brigadier General
18 DAYS (22 January 1944) before he was Listed as Missing In Action.
He was born 30 Aug 1903 in NY state......
Davis D. Graves ID: O-017466 ... Entered the Service From: California
Rank: Brigadier General - U.S. Army Air Forces, Headquarters Squadron, 63rd Fighter Wing
Died: Tuesday, February 08, 1944
Memorialized at: Florence American Cemetery, Via Cassia, Italy
Awards: Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart


text:
Agoramania Soap Box
Happy Independence Day!
The Fourth of July Fun Facts 2012
courtesy of http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb12-ff12.html
On this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress, setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. As always, this most American of holidays will be marked by parades, fireworks and backyard barbecues across the country.
2.5 million
In July 1776, the estimated number of people living in the newly independent nation.
Source: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970<http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/HistoricalStatisticsoftheUnitedStates1789-1945.pdf>
313.9 million
The nation's estimated population on this July Fourth.
Source: Population clock <http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html>
Patriotic-Sounding Place Names
Thirty-one places have "liberty" in their names. The most populous one as of April 1, 2010, was Liberty, Mo. (29,149). Iowa, with four, has more of these places than any other state: Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty and West Liberty.
Thirty-five places have "eagle" in their names. The most populous one is Eagle Pass, Texas, with a population of 26,248.
Eleven places have "independence" in their names. The most populous one is Independence, Mo., with a population of 116,830.
Nine places have "freedom" in their names. The most populous one is New Freedom, Pa., with a population of 4,464.
One place has "patriot" in its name. Patriot, Ind., has a population of 209.
Five places have "America" in their names. The most populous is American Fork, Utah, with a population of 26,263.
Source: American FactFinder <http://www.census.gov>
Fourth of July Cookouts
Almost 1 in 3
The chance that the hot dogs and pork sausages consumed on the Fourth of July originated in Iowa. The Hawkeye State was home to 19.7 million hogs and pigs on March 1, 2012. This estimate represents almost one-third of the nation's estimated total. North Carolina (8.6 million) and Minnesota (7.6 million) were also homes to large numbers of pigs.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, <http://usda01.library.cornell.edu/usda/current/HogsPigs/HogsPigs-03-30-2012.pdf>
7.2 billion pounds
Total production of cattle and calves in Texas in 2011. Chances are good that the beef hot dogs, steaks and burgers on your backyard grill came from the Lone Star State, which accounted for about one-sixth of the nation's total production. And if the beef did not come from Texas, it very well may have come from Nebraska (4.6 billion pounds) or Kansas (4.0 billion pounds).
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service <http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/MeatAnimPr/MeatAnimPr-04-26-2012.pdf>
Number of states in which the value of broiler chicken production was estimated at $1 billion or greater between December 2010 and November 2011. There is a good chance that one of these states — Georgia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi or Texas — is the source of your barbecued chicken.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/PoulProdVa/PoulProdVa-04-26-2012.pdf>
Please Pass the Potato
Potato salad and potato chips are popular food items at Fourth of July barbecues. Approximately half of the nation's spuds were produced in Idaho or Washington state in 2011.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service <http://usda01.library.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProdSu/CropProdSu-01-12-2012.pdf>
Posted at 08:40AM Jul 04, 2012 by Perry (firstname.lastname@example.com) in U.S.A. Traditions | Comments[0]


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Minutes 10-14-09
James Kennedy Public Library
Board of Trustees
Minutes of the October 14, 2009, Meeting
The regular monthly meeting of the Board of Trustees of the James Kennedy Public Library was held on Wednesday, October 14, 2009, in the Hoffman Community Room. Present: Dan Boice, Sally Brant, Joyce Bries, Barb Heitzman, Becky Schwendinger, Karen Knepper and Library Director Shirley Vonderhaar. Dorothy Digmann was absent.
1. The meeting was called to order at 6:45 pm by Board President Dan Boice.
2. Agenda: Dan requested that Agenda Item 8, Facility and Furnishings Committee Report, be moved to the end of the meeting when Becky and Molly (City Council Representative) might be in attendance. Angela MOVED "Approval of the Agenda with the requested change," which motion was seconded and CARRIED. Ayes: Boice, Brant, Bries, Heitzman, English, Ingles, Knepper. Nays: None. Not present: Schwendinger, Digmann.
3. Agenda Consent Calendar:
• Minutes of the September 16, 2009 Regular Meeting
• Correspondence & Communications: Dan had received a note from Dorothy Digmann resigning from the Board effective immediately. Karen MOVED "That the Board accept the resignation with regret" which motion was seconded and CARRIED. Ayes: Boice, Brant, Bries, Heitzman, English, Ingles, Knepper. Nays: None. Not present: Schwendinger, Digmann. Shirley was directed to pass this information on to the city so that Mayor could proceed with appointing someone to fill the vacated term.
• September Librarian's Report: Shirley noted the significant decrease in circulation and there was some discussion regarding potential reasons for the change. Angela also noted an error in the number for the library visits previous year to date. Shirley indicated that the correct number was likely the first 5 digits (23,179) but she would verify and correct for the files.
• Bills:
September Claims Report
General Library Claims for October
September / October Credit Card Claims
• Budget Reports: Angela noted that the formula for the Maintenance line item must be off. She and Shirley will review and correct.
September City Report
September Library Report:
• Trust Account Reports:
September Bank Statement
September Balance Report
Trust Account Expenditure Report
August Donations to the Library Trust Account
From: Brenda Ingles
Gift: $100.00
Restrictions: Adopt-a-book for specific titles
From: Lifeline Screening
Gift: $50.00
Restrictions: Donation for meeting room use
From: Proceeds from High Strung event
Gift: $599.50
Restrictions: For High Strung event expenses
From: Wine glass sales
Gift: $80.00
Restrictions: DVD collection
From: Proceeds from High Strung event / TACKL
Donation: $88.50
Restrictions: TACKL sponsored activities
The board expressed their thanks for all the donations.
• Program Reports
September Report on Programs & Attendance
October Calendar of events: Shirley noted that the TACKL group had suggested that the library sponsor a scary movie marathon for teens on October 30th. She wondered if the Board felt it would be necessary to require parental permission slips for this after hours events as it was for teens 13 and older only. Consensus of the board was that permission slips would not be needed.
Schedule for upcoming programs
• Grants: Nothing to report.
• Friends of the Library: Shirley reported that the Friends sold 323 tickets to the Taste of the Midwest and estimated profits at $1,700.00. They are planning the January Used Book Sale for January 15 – 18 and will be starting their membership drive in early January. They agreed to fund "Just Voices", the musical group that will be performing as part of the Senior Advisory Groups Old Fashioned Christmas program. The next Friends meeting will be Monday, December 7 at 10:00 am.
Karen MOVED "Approval of the Agenda Consent items," which motion was seconded and CARRIED. Ayes: Boice, Brant, Bries, Heitzman, English, Ingles, Knepper. Nays: None. Not present: Schwendinger, Digmann.
4. Approval of NEILSA E-rate Consortium: Joyce MOVED "That the Library continue to participate in the NEILSA E-Rate Consortium, and that the Board authorize Shirley to sign the contract," which motion was seconded and CARRIED. Ayes: Boice, Brant, Bries, Heitzman, English, Ingles, Knepper. Nays: None. Not present: Schwendinger, Digmann.
5. 2009 Iowa Public Library General Information Survey: Dan noted that the survey had been changed somewhat from previous years.
6. JKPL Annual Report: Shirley commented that the report was in progress and that she would like to have the Marketing committee work with her to determine what information could / should be removed to reduce the size. The report should be ready for dissemination at the next meeting.
7. Personnel Committee Report: No Report
8. Policy Committee: Distributed bylaws for review. They will be on the November agenda for approval.
9. Strategic Planning: Dan distributed a preliminary list of goals and objectives that were developed based upon the planning meetings held with Board and Staff. He asked that committees review these goals and email him with comments and suggestions.
10. Marketing Committee: No report.
Becky Schwendinger arrived at 7:10 pm.
11. Meetings and Training:
Upcoming: The State Library will be holding a meeting via the ICN on Open Meetings. It is scheduled for November 10 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm. Shirley will check to see if we can have Beckman as a site. ILA is next week. Shirley, Dan and Betty Anne will be attending. Kim was registered but has withdrawn due to health concerns.
Recently Attended: Angela and Shirley attended the Dubuque County Public Library Agency meeting. There is some concern that, when Asbury and Peosta officially become part of the Dubuque County Library, there will be limited benefits to staying part of the agency. The Agency will look at changing the formula to reflect circulation only, as a way to mitigate the impact of this change.
12. Facility & Furnishings Committee Report: Angela reported on the meeting with Mike Tucker (Gardner Architecture), Ron Baumler (IIW), Mick Michel, Betty Anne Scherrman, and Shirley Vonderhaar regarding the ongoing problem with leaks in the library roof. Mick had asked Ron to be involved on behalf of the city as a third party who is knowledgeable in construction. Ron is a structural engineer and an architect. Ron and Mike examined the plans, the interior leaks, and went onto the roof. Ron took numerous pictures and took the plans and spec book with him to study. The expectation is that he will report back regarding what the problem is (or most likely is) and a recommendation on how to proceed. He thought a week to 10 days would be a reasonable time frame so we should expect to hear back from him soon. Dan appointed Angela to attend any future meetings with Ron Baumler, etc. and represent the Library as we work to address this issue.
13. Oral Presentations: Dan reported that it is time for the annual evaluation of the Library Director. In order to make this easier on everyone, he appointed a subcommittee to collect the evaluations submitted by all the Board members and meet with Shirley to discuss the results. This committee is composed of Becky Schwendinger, Karen Knepper, and Dan Boice. The evaluation forms were distributed and board members were asked get them back to him by 5:00 pm on Friday, October 23.
13. Angela's motion to adjourn was seconded and CARRIED at 7:55 p.m.
Brenda Ingles, Secretary


text:
Chicago Bulls fans may have been disappointed with the outcome of the game, but at least they got an exclusive performance from Kanye. Ye did a impromptu performance of "All Day" yesterday during the Bulls game.
Watch inside:
I am an Alien, I think...
Nuk ba an khat an ren
Hip-Hop, R&B, & Throwbacks, Philly, WPHI
The Voice Of The People
Faith, fitness, dream grabbing and love, lots of love.
As Cuties of Colombia we're lifting our great Nation.
Daily Content Since 2013
movies,films,free movies,external movie links,great movies,free films,the best movies online!
Music, Film and Life
Attempt to solve commonly known problems…
Come view the world from my loft
Daily, on... and on,....
Killing time just got a lot funnier !
If you wear your heart on your sleeve, join the club.
This site is about providing young women with models to look up to. I photograph beautiful young ladies who agree with the same mindset that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Please enjoy! -Rebecca Moore (Editor and Web page creator of Odd Maude girls)
Personal, design, inspiration, interests.
The Church of Christ
We only discuss music when on Cloud 9


text:
Word on the street is that some beta chapters on new Flex Gumbo stuff is posted on the Flex Gumbo page on the opensource.adobe.com site:
- Gumbo View States
- Using Effects
- New Gumbo Effects
- ASDoc with Support for MXML files
- Gumbo Application Container
And, as always, the latest beta Flex Gumbo Language Reference can be found at livedocs.adobe.com/flex/gumbo/langref/.
So put on your technical reviewer hats on and go read some chapters! Also, to keep up with all the latest and greatest from the Flex Documentation team, check out their blog at blogs.adobe.com/flexdoc/.


text:
Remove stems from shiitake, discard stems, reserve soaking water and slice the caps thin. Place the water, shiitake soaking water, kombu and shiitake in a soup pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the flame to medium-low and simmer 5 minutes. Remove kombu and set aside to use in another dish. Add the grated daikon and sea salt. Cover and simmer for another 10 minutes. Garnish with nori and scallions before serving.
Per serving - 30 calories, 0 gram fat (8% calories from fat), 1 gram protein, 6 gram carbohydrate, 4 gram fiber, 0 milligram cholesterol, 297 milligram sodium


text:
Otley Lions are celebrating a successful 2013.
The group, which raised more than £6,000 with Santa sleigh rides and grottos over Christmas, donated funds to a number of local, national and global causes.
Local activity saw them helping to buy special wheelchairs for two disabled children; equipment for Beehive, a group for young people with learning difficulties; food collection bins for Otley Food Bank and heating for the Beamsley project.
They also supported Weston Lane Junior Football Club, helped a local family stranded in Spain, had a bench installed outside All Saints Parish Church in memory of late Lion Des Ellis, and financed a brass band concert for pensioners and a family magic evening.
Other organisations backed by the Lions in 2013 included the local group for premature baby charity Bliss and respiratory problem support group Breathe Easy, and they bought book token prizes for local students and provided holidays for people with disabilities.
National projects and causes that were supported included the Special Olympics, Support Dogs, FairShare, the Lions' Disabled Sports Day and research into motor neurone disease, diabetes and liver disease. Otley Lions' publicity officer Patrick McCauley said: "We would like to thank Stephen Smith's garden centre and Waitrose for their support and co-operation in December, our old friend Santa Claus for his indefatigable efforts, and, above all, the citizens of Otley for their great generosity.
"We promise all the people who have supported us that we will try our very best to put the money to good use.
"We thank all the people and organisations that have helped us raise money, including the patrons of our pot shy at Otley Show; supporters of our participation in the Waitrose and Asda 'community pots'; patrons of our Easter Egg tombola; the Original Factory Shop for making us their Charity of the Year and customers of our bookshop on Mercury Row."
Internationally, the Lions backed German exchange holidays for disabled people and helped finance visits to Yorkshire for socially disadvantaged youngsters from Lille in France.
Their work also included providing children's books for Sri Lanka; supporting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's One Shot – One Life measles eradication campaign; helping disaster relief work in the Philippines and backing St Mary's High School, Menston's Bambisanami partnership project in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.
Services to the community in 2013 included helping host two visiting Chelsea Pensioners; marshalling the car parking at a point-to-point race day; running a Name the Lion competition for children and chauffering two residents who needed help.
For more information about the group, visit otleylions.org.uk.


text:
Two days after the Japanese tsunami, after the waves had left their destruction, as rescue workers searched the ruins, news came of an almost surreal survival: Miles out at sea, a man was found, alone, riding on nothing but the roof of his house. Michael Paterniti tells his astonishing tale
Later, lost far at sea, when you're trying to forget all you've left behind, the memory will bubble up unbidden: a village that once lay by the ocean.
Here are the neatly packed homes with gray-tiled roofs over which the mountains rise in rounded beneficence, towering over lush rice fields that feed a nation. Here are the boats that fish the sea, in all of its blue serenity, and the grass in all of its green. There is such peace in this picture of abundance: lumber from the mountain, rice from the field, fish from the deep ocean. People want for nothing here.
This village woven together by contentment is yours, Hiromitsu, and it is here, in the memory of it whole, that you know yourself best, the fourth-generation son of rice farmers. Here among a hundred wooden houses is the concrete one your family built. The house is made with metal pilings, which by your calculations will stand any high tide or errant wave. On your verdant plot a mile from the sea, a garden bursts with peonies, outbuildings sag, a koi pond teems. Here you live with your wife, Yuko, to whom you daily profess your love, and your parents, whom you still honor with the obedience of a child. In the barn are the pigeons you adore, for there's no more beautiful sight in the world than a flock mystically circling deep in the sky, then suddenly one breaking for home, wings aflutter, straining, as if to say, I'm here.
In this cage lie the chuckling pigeons, and in this barn of theirs, your happiness. Against the wall are full bags of rice seed—and from outside you can hear your wife's voice calling your name. Hiromitsu. Night falls—and in the bedroom you lie beside her. You will remember this later when trying to keep yourself alive: falling asleep one last time by the body of your wife in your house, beneath its roof of white tin, in the shadow of the sea.
Rise now, Hiromitsu, man of men, and accept your fate, this day in mid-March, a hint of sulfur in the salt air. Five thirty A.M. and frigid, the first priority is, of course, the pigeons in the barn. Fresh water, their corn-wheat-and-barley mix bought from the shop. The wire cage holds all thirty, iridescent heads bobbing as they hungrily peck. Out in that barn that holds your happiness, you often speak to them (How did you sleep?), call them by name, promise them their daily exercise (We'll fly this afternoon). When you were a child, they called you the Father of Pigeons as an insult, as if you would have no heir but these pea-brained winged things.
Adrift, alone, with little hope of rescue, Hiromitsu Shinkawa began scribbling messages with a marker he'd fished from the sea. In the order he wrote them, here are the words he thought would be his last.
On March 11, I was with my wife, Yuko. My name is Hiromitsu.
I just want to report that I am still alive on the twelfth and was with my wife, Yuko, yesterday. She was born January 12 of Showa 26.
I am sorry for being unfilial.
I'm in a lot of trouble. Sorry for dying before you. Please forgive me.
You hurry inside. Yuko this morning sleeps late, and so you eat alone at the little table: warm miso, green tea, rice, and barilla boiled in soy sauce. When your wife appears, she moves in fuzzy, nearly wordless proximity to you, beginning her household duties. Your 27-year-old daughter has recently made you grandparents, and now your wife has a new purpose, goes to Tokyo as often as she can to be with the little boy, to diaper and feed him. Though she is 60 years old like you, Hiromitsu, she has become young again with all this mothering, her hair bobbed the same earlobe length as when your daughter was a baby in her arms. She packs a lunch—one of her famous rice balls, made by frying the rice in a pan, mixing in pickled plum and salmon—while you put on a second pair of pants, the lined purple ones, to fight off the chill. You pull on your sneakers, slip into a purple fleece worn over your red-and-gray wool flannel, then the heavy green jacket. At 7:30 A.M. you say good-bye in a rather un-Japanese way, confessing again your love for her.
Down the driveway—past the koi pond and garden with the now bare apricot tree and dormant peonies, past the greenhouse in which the rice seedlings grow—you turn up the road, past your tightly packed neighbors, past the nearby shrine, an ancient wooden building, then along Route 6, the sea to your right, all the way to your job in the lumberyard, your small white compact zipping between the lines—and twenty minutes later you're through the gates.
After hellos, you take your place in the first shed, running tree trunks through the table saw to make rough boards, the fanged blade in ceaseless rotation, throwing sawdust and the good, clean scent of cedar. Not an hour into the shift and your callused hands are chapped red. But even this is familiar, an unspoken lesson taught decades before by your father in the rice fields: Work without complaint. Apply one's mind to the task at hand until everything else has been obliterated.
By noon, the sky has opened a little; a thin sun shines; clouds skim. And yet the cold gathers around you in the shaded shed, running the blade with stiff fingers. One o'clock, two o'clock. You watch the hours. Three is break time, in the wood-paneled room with the warm wood stove. Hot tea, rice crackers, and candy suckers. Two fifteen, two thirty.
At two forty-six, something rumbles from deep in the earth, a sickening sort of grinding, and then everything lurches wildly, whips back, lurches more wildly still. The cut boards stacked along the wall clatter down, and your first move is to flee the shed, to dive twenty feet free onto open ground and clutch it, as if riding the back of a whale. Time elongates. Three minutes becomes a lifetime.
When the jolting ends, stupefaction is followed by dismay—and then a bleary accounting. Already phones are useless. The boss, Mr. Mori, urges you to rush home to check on your wife and parents, but fearing a tsunami, fearing a drive down into the lowlands by the sea, and trusting the strength of your concrete house to protect your wife and parents, you at first refuse. There are ancient stone markers on this coast, etched warnings from the ancestors, aggrieved survivors of past tsunamis—1896, 1933—beseeching those who live by the water to build on the inland side of their hubris or suffer the consequences.
The road is unbroken at first, until the third mile, where a depression has swallowed a rectangle of asphalt. There are downed lines and fallen trees—and yet the rice fields, fallow and unfazed, look exactly as they did this morning. The closer you come to home, the more alarming the damage grows: houses crumpled, windows shattered, sinkholes gaping.
Down near the shore, you pass a car heading inland, an old couple who appear to be your parents, whom you spy but do not exactly register in the fog of urgency, as you accelerate past the wooden shrine, through the dense neighborhood of houses, and turn finally into your drive. Immediately you observe that the storehouse wall has come down, and so have the tiles from the roof. Beams are cracked. The fertilizer barrel lies on its side. The walkway to the barn, however, has been meticulously swept.
Bounding up the stairs, you throw the door open to find the drawers have slid from the bureaus and the floor is snowed over with documents, receipts, and invoices. Your daughter in a mosaicked picture frame, your favorite heirloom, lies among shattered pieces. The Buddhist altar has been upended, the statue evicted. Everything once on the table litters the floor, including a bottle of wine. Out of all this mess, out of all the meaningful fragments in disarray, you can only think to bend down and pick up that meaningless bottle, replace it gingerly on the table. Your wife—where is she? Now your parents return, your father with that grim expression that belies his fear, beseeching you to follow them to your uncle's house on higher ground, just as Yuko's car glides down the driveway. She's been working out, of all things, at the gym. Her face is rosy. She says she only felt the quake as a tremor, had no idea of the damage until she got this far. She carries her worry well hidden. In the back of her car are the four 12-pound bags of rice seedlings that need to be moved to the barn, and though you know the risks of dallying, rice is your history, your patrimony. You send your parents on their way with a promise that you will follow close behind. And some bifurcation of mind allows you to see a neighborhood—your neighborhood—damaged but still standing, on a quiet, mendable afternoon like any other.
So, let it be just another afternoon. Yuko begins moving the bags from the car to the barn while you, Hiromitsu, take three cans of energy drink from the refrigerator and a box of caramels, go upstairs to assess the damage, then step out on the second-floor terrace. You don't look out to sea, not once; you stand staring at the mountain, Kunimi, in the distance. And now you can hear her downstairs, inside again, and now comes the creak of the bathroom door. Comes the sound of running water. Comes this vision of the mountain, placid, immovable—and then, to your right, to the north, within twenty feet, drifts the whole house of your neighbor. The house is moving past as if borne by ghosts. When you turn left, to the south and the garden, everything is as it's always been, dry and in place. When you turn back the other way, you can see only this coursing field of ocean.
And that's when you know you've been caught out, that you've squandered what time you had, that you must trust this house of concrete you've built to stand up to the sea. Your wife joins you on the second-floor terrace, reporting that she, too, saw the neighbor's house wash away. "We should run," she says, but you say, "It's too late." And then: "We'll be fine." Her arms circle your waist and lock there, while you stand stock-straight, gazing at the mountain, without daring to look back at the sea. These will be your last words to her—We'll be fine. And you've already departed your body when everything seems to break beneath your feet and a roaring force crashes over you.
This force is greater than the force of memory, or regret, or fear. It's the force of an impersonal death, delivered by thousands of pounds of freezing water that slam you into a dark underworld, the one in which you now find yourself hooded, beaten, pinned deeper. The sensation is one of having been lowered into a spinning, womblike grave. If you could see anything in the grip of this monster, fifteen feet down, you'd see your neighbors tumbling by, as if part of the same circus. You'd see huge pieces of house—chimneys and doors, stairs and walls—crashing into each other, fusing, becoming part of one solid, deadly wave. You'd see shards of glass and splintered swords of wood. Or a car moving like a submarine. You'd see your thirty pigeons revolving in their cage. Or your wife within an arm's reach, then vacuumed away like a small fish. You frantically flail. Is this up or down? Something is burning inside now, not desperation but blood depleted of oxygen. What you illogically desire more than anything is to open your mouth wide and gulp. You scissor your legs. In some eternity, the water turns from black to gray, and gray to dirty green, as you reach up over your head one last time and whip your arms down, shooting for the light.
What you see when you explode into the air is a world swarming with burbling black water where one hundred homes once stood, pushing you inland on an oily swell. The mountains keep racing nearer. You're submerged up to your neck and carried with the current, flying by treetops. It takes a moment to locate yourself here, to confirm that for the moment you're still living in this thin line between water and sky. In the frigid flow is half a roof, which just so happens to be yours. Frogging forward, you close the gap, try to lift yourself aboard, but your heavy clothes drag you down. You try a second time. And a third, arms wobbling until you fall back, exhausted. On the fourth attempt, you propel enough of your body out of the water to beach on the roof, then wriggle the rest of yourself to momentary safety. This is when you're overcome by two feelings: relief (I'm alive!) and disbelief (Where has the whole world gone?). The wave now surfs you deeper inland, over the homes of Mr. Yoshimura and Mr. Takahashi, Mr. Banba and Mr. Yamamoto (though the water is impenetrably black, you know this village by heart), and just when your forward progress slows (over the roof of the old-age home and the place where the hospital once stood) and is about to reverse direction, you think to jump, understanding that this may be your best opportunity to survive before the wave rushes back or another one speeds forward. The arm of a crane lies just ahead, at the water's edge, and yet you hesitate a second too long. The reversal of water begins as a sucking sound that gains intensity, amplifying, and then you're flying, faster and faster, backward over the village on a carpet of black water, to a line of froth where land and ocean formerly met, the mountains receding in a shot, and with them, everything you once thought immovable and holy. Where are you being taken? And what awaits you there?
So it is that you slide out into this nothingness. Tendrils of smoke rise from the country at your back; fires dot the coast. The slim chances of survival and the utter, certain loss of everything you call home makes you delirious, almost slaphappy. Hard to imagine that at 2:46 P.M. you were at the lumberyard, cutting boards, looking forward to your midafternoon break, and now at the hour when you'd normally be flying your pigeons, you're instead being pulled out into some watery oblivion under a low ceiling of gray cloud, a disconcerting smell of diesel on the air. Your body thrums with such adrenaline you feel nothing now. No thirst or pain, no fatigue or cold, though you've just been thrown in the ocean in March and are now exposed to near zero temperatures.
Your first thoughts turn to Yuko, how you're certain she's alive and certain she's dead, too, how your mind continues to hold these opposing ideas with the same fervor. On the one hand, in some myth, you'd like to believe she's become a mermaid. Or she was gently lifted and placed onshore, where she awaits your return like a seafarer's wife. On the other, doomed from the start, she was struck by a concrete pillar and went tumbling with the others. Or the watery hand held her down until she was motionless. And even as you play these scenarios, you're also imagining your parents, and how you're going to explain this to them, explain how, in the end, you happened to live while she disappeared, all because you didn't heed the tsunami warning—and their warning, too!
This line of thinking may kill you. It's vital to empty your mind of memory and remorse—the birds, the house, her—the might-have-beens (...fingers loosening, then raking your body as she was swept away), because you're an amnesiac speck who survives by the grace of some force you suspect may be circling to crush you. Be ready.
All your clothes—the two pairs of pants, the shirt and purple top, the green down jacket, even the watch on your wrist—all of it is intact, on your body, if drenched. The tsunami has taken over 20,000 lives, but from you, only your left shoe. And those caramels you stuffed in your pocket. The three cans of energy drink, mercifully, are still there.
At sunset, sky in scratches of purple light, a gnawing in your gut tells you it's dinner, so you crack open the first can, drink, then, head tilted back, try to lick out the last drop. The roof is perhaps twelve feet by six, of corrugated metal nailed to wood beams, your raft at sea. Last night, you and Yuko slept beneath it, and now you perch atop it on the sea, above the goblin sharks and whatever else lurks below. Saltwater laps up the sides, and any sudden movement immediately sets it seesawing. Sit still, in the middle—and as time passes, let the contrite sea bring gifts from the dead. This makes you giddy, the gifts. First it brings a red marker. Then the torn pages of a comic book, a manga, its hero, Captain Tsubasa, kicking a soccer ball with superhuman force. It brings some sort of red container that used to hold paint. It brings a tatami mat woven together with string, a broken radio, and a white hard hat. All of which you fish out of the murk. The hat (To whom did it belong?) immediately goes on your head, the marker in your hand. You imagine the dead offering you these things from underneath the sea. Hunched over the ripped comic, you test the marker on the damp page and write the following words in the margin: _On March 11, I was with my wife, Yuko. My name is Hiromitsu. _Then you tear the paper, fold it, place it in the red canister, seal it, and with the string from the mat, bandolier it to your body. Resume your pose.
Nighttime is a dark tunnel, starless and strange, the sound of water nibbling at the edges, and in the distance the beating rotor blades of helicopters. You're being dragged, deeper to nowhere. You try your voice, just to keep yourself company. You sing to forget, pass time, stanch the fear. You sing to remind yourself that this is indeed you, in the wreckage of a debris field. It's an old song, your voice an imperfect husky tenor. On a raft drifting farther out to sea, you sing about high school.
Red evening sun is casting its shadow....
Our voices bounce in the shadow of an
elm tree.
Ah, we are third-year high school students.
_Even if we get separated _
We will be classmates forever.
Now the temperature drops—and as it does, your senses return. You sit, holding yourself in a tight ball, hands pulling knees to chest. The key is not to sleep. You remember this from a famous Japanese adventurer you once saw on television. _Do not sleep. Also: Do not think of Yuko tumbling beneath. Do not think of pigeons. _What's surprising is how strong your mind is, how well you forget, how childlike your wonder remains. You've maintained your optimism—an odd word given what's befallen you, but that's what it is, an openness to being bemused or astonished. You've tapped into some hidden spring of endurance. You're open to little miracles now, so let one come.
The blue light appears from the depths, glimmering up through the inky water. In your ball on the roof, you find yourself surrounded, inexplicably bathed by luminescence. You squint but can't identify the source. Might these be the spirits of the dead, meant to convey a message of hope or allegiance rather than surrender? That's how you take it, at least. And if a picture could be made of this moment, then the world would see you—the man named Hiromitsu—seated in serene meditation, staring in awe at the blue light that comes from the abyss, then laughing out loud.
At sunrise, the scene resolves itself: the black water, the blue sky, a thin band of land on the far horizon. Soon you will see an explosion, in the vicinity of the nuclear-power plant, a loud blast and then a rust-colored cloud rising ominously, in atomic layers. Do not look back. You notice a fishing rod floating alongside you, one you glimpsed the night before, and realize that you're traveling in a slow-moving whirlpool of sorts, the same relics recurring, new ones entering the gyre and orbiting the roof as it gets sucked out farther and farther.
Yesterday seems long ago, and today, you tell yourself, must be the day of your rescue—you're willing it so. The helicopters come close, circling for survivors, and the dozen times you hear one, you climb to your feet, scream and wave. There are boats in the distance, cutters and smaller lifeboats trolling, and for those, you holler even louder, though time after time they turn back before reaching your debris field, your little ring of ocean. Is it that they don't believe anyone could be this far out?
In between, you fish more objects, including a futon and blankets, which you lay out in the sun to dry. You write in the margin of the comic book. I just want to report that I am still alive on the twelfth and was with my wife, Yuko, yesterday. She was born January 12 of Showa 26. You fold the page, place it in your empty can, and ripping more string from the mat, tighten it across your chest, adding one more testimonial to your body.
So the hours linger, the sun beats, rust-colored smoke rises, and now you can feel your thirst clawing. Drink the second energy drink in slow, intermittent sips. When it's gone, you're gripped by an animal urge that nearly upends the disciplined regimen you've set for yourself. You fight the need to drink that third energy drink, hand fluttering for the holster—no, save it for tomorrow, if luck brings you that far. This is when you think to drink your pee. You collect it in your hands three times and drink—warm but not terrible.
There's another problem, too: The wood of the roof has become waterlogged, weak and rotten. And from time to time a low rumble comes up from the deep, aftershocks. At first the sound is startling but then you only worry about the waves. Has a swell begun to rise? What approaches from the east? You now have waking dreams, hallucinations: You're convinced you see a body coming near, and start screaming—Help me! But then it's a tree trunk. In another you see a huge wave hurtling toward the roof and imagine turning into a tree to save yourself. But just as you think to stand and hang your arms like branches, you stop yourself for fear the roof will tip.
One other thing: You're not uninjured after all. A nerve at the top of your palm has been cut—how you're not sure—but now it radiates sharp pain. And your eyes have begun to swell shut. You opened them underwater, now some infection blurs your sight. Still you sit, knees drawn up, white hard hat in place for safety. Safety is important, you know that. You work in a lumberyard. You live in a village by the sea with your parents and wife, Yuko. You will be rescued soon, by concentrating on the sounds, engines and rotors and waves. On a scrap of wood, you write with the red marker—SOS—and if any machine approaches, even remotely, you stand and yell and wave at it. Please.
You muster the energy to sing again, same school song, second verse in your now hoarse tenor (Help me!):
_We had a day in tears. _
We had a day in jealousy.
We will fondly remember those days.
Ah, we are third-year high school students.
Once you take her hand at folk dancing,
Her black hair smells sweet.
A fat statuette of Daikoku, a god of fortune, bobs by, the round belly and happy demeanor, the rice barrels at his feet that signify plenty, plucked from someone's home and delivered here to you, a very good omen. His name translates as the "god of great darkness," and yet, as he wields a mallet, his broad smile conveys contentment. You think to bring him aboard, but you no longer trust the roof, nor your ability to balance on it. So you allow a small acknowledgment of the moment: one more laugh in diminishing light, the last of your good cheer.
Exhaustion, in its full flower, strikes on the second night as the ocean air drops to freezing. You can't keep from shaking, even wrapped in blankets. You crave sleep, a desire to be curled in bed. And in your mind, remembering stories from youth, you imagine yourself as the hero who survives the great calamity only to face, in a moment of cosmic irony, a different death. Dehydration, hypothermia, bodily dysfunction.
The second night is interminable. The stench of oil thickens as you shrivel. The water seems to rise. The grinding reverberates from the center of the earth. The roof is disintegrating beneath your feet. If there's a force trying to crush you, you realize now that it's neglect. Where nature brought the full bore of her attention on you, cleaving you from all that was precious, it has abandoned you here, in these black, oily fields. No singing now. At some point, the blue light returns—billowing pods, otherworldly ocean mushrooms, phosphorescent jellyfish, it turns out—but if someone could see you in that supernatural glow, they'd see a thin, hunched man, mouth in that grim line of your father's. You're too tired to be amused or feel optimism. The light can't feed or save you. Maybe it's not a sign after all. The tunnel narrows. You write another note, to your parents this time. I am sorry for being unfilial, it says.
Let it go, Hiromitsu, man of men. You had your reasons for staying—and you stayed. Two days before, there'd been another tsunami warning that came to naught. Some had rushed to high ground, and then...nothing. In a land of tremors and quakes, of errant waves and a history of coastal destruction, the people had grumbled a little. Too many false warnings—and with so much to get done. And when you came home and found the contents of your life strewn on the floor, willy-nilly, all the desire to flee left you. You decided to abdicate to nature—or stand up to it—because somewhere inside, you had a flash of invincibility; that is, you thought, If my life is worthy and my house is well made, it will be strong enough to stand up to the wave—and the moon and stars (none of which care for you, Hiromitsu, nor soothe or feed or augur). You realize now that once you arrived home, once shown the precious thing about to be taken away forever, once you saw the garden and barn, the koi pond and the pigeons, and Yuko arrived with the rice seed, you knew you wouldn't be able to leave—that you would be doomed by obligation and memory and sentimental attachment—which is how you've ended up here now, on the roof of your house, nine miles out to sea.
Let morning come. Let it come and with it all the helicopters and boats gathered around in some holy convocation, to rescue you from the rising sea and the goblin sharks, for you are pure, Hiromitsu. Or let morning come and suck you down in the last black hole, for you are not. After focusing so intently on survival, it almost doesn't matter now. You can't keep from shaking in the cold, and there may be advantages to slipping quietly under the cover of ocean (for one, to join your wife, whom you know to be both alive and dead, a mermaid and a body tumbling). But then you're imagining your parents again, both sitting around a low table, wordless, tea untouched. How could you ever explain to them that, after failing to heed the tsunami warning, after standing up to the wave in your concrete house and being smashed by your hubris in the form of tons of rushing water, after somersaulting and surfacing and clambering to safety, after being dragged out to the sea and neglected there as you can see in the far distance your ruined country in little fires on the coast, after mustering your optimism and hope and fighting so hard to live (three times you collected and drank your own pee), you came to the third day and swaddled in last testaments roped to your body, with visions of those who bore you in mind, how could you explain to them—your mother and, most especially, your father—that you finally just gave up?
On that last morning, when the light leaks up from the water and bleaches the sky, you fumble for the third energy drink, tip it to cracked lips, and slurp greedily. You're too weak to stand now, body swollen, hands frozen, your voice hoarse from yelling. You sit on your roof, on the futon, cross-legged, unmoving like a statue, wearing a white hard hat. You hold up your scrawled message, too—sos!—so blurred by the water you can't even read it, but still, you're not of logical mind. Perhaps someone else can.
At first you listen for the whirring sound of helicopter rotors or the gurgle of a boat engine. Even the faintest murmur sparks an attempt to rise, shout, wave. But as the hours pass, you descend into yourself, shutting the cupboards one by one. The rice, the pigeons, the lumberyard, Yuko, your parents, your daughter: It wasn't such a bad life, but for the ending. The debris field has become so thick it looks like land, and the oil keeps spreading. You're too tired to think or care. Head bowed, you focus only on what's right before you, the fringe where the rotted roof is being licked by salt water. Soon, you know, the dark flank of sea will transform into rolling hills of water, and another wave will come for you. Now black water bubbles up through the planks and scraps of corrugated tin. A last note to your parents: I'm in a lot of trouble. Sorry for dying before you. Please forgive me.
Just before you lie down on the futon and wait for death, there comes a disturbance on the horizon again, the faraway shape of a boat, the whir of a propeller at the edge of your mind. The sound brings you shakily to your feet, where you shout and wave...until you watch the boat turn away, diminishing on the horizon.
A terrible lonesomeness fills this void now. It would be good to sleep, though that surely spells the end. In your beleaguered twilight, you either see or dream that the receding boat has changed course and is circling back. But who can trust these visions anymore? Before your eyes, it seems to grow into a gray lifeboat with one, two, three...three times that, nine rescue workers in green bodysuits and gray life vests. When the boat doesn't turn away, when you can feel a searchlight on your skin, you let loose your last primal yawp, "Help me!"
Out of the oblivion, a clear voice responds, "We're here," and the boat drifts alongside your roof-home, and the voice asks, "Which side is safest?" And you say, "The side toward land, please," as you strip the plastic container full of notes from your body and place it on the altar of your futon. Then one of the bundled figures steps out of the lifeboat onto the tippy roof and comes toward you with arms outstretched. The figure leads you across, five paces, and only when you lean forward into their boat and splay your body over its hard gunwale, like a glorious falling tree, do you know it's real.Immediately you're wrapped in blankets by the incredulous men. They want to know who you are, hand you yet another can of energy drink. Speechless, you take a long slurp, then burst into uncontrollable tears. Who are you? Your memory opens suddenly to a fire truck on the road before your house just before the wave, the loudspeaker announcement over and over again, "Please evacuate." And you remember directing your wife to move the rice seed into the barn while you went up to the terrace to stand lookout. Even a quarter mile to higher ground and she would otherwise be safe.
You're tested for radiation, transferred to a naval destroyer, and given porridge and umeboshi, pickled plum. You're placed in a hot bath, and the crew members are shocked by the amount of mud that comes off your body, even as you continue to shiver with such violence that they must remove your body from the warm water. Then you're on a helicopter, airlifted over the ravaged coastline—the ground below silt-blackened as if burnt, the pornographic wreckage of houses and buildings, colorful entrails of bedsheets and curtains, people below digging with their bare hands for children, parents, spouses, mothers washing dead babies with spit—to a hospital outside the radiation zone. Meanwhile, the images of your rescue have been televised across the world, the man on his roof, dragged nine miles out to sea, found on the third day, a day almost devoid of survivors but you.
If you were an angel, Hiromitsu, or thought yourself chosen, now would be the moment to deliver your message to the world. Now would be your moment to make an example or speak uplifting words. To transubstantiate into a symbol. Of hope. Perseverance. Strength. For the news reports call you a miracle.
But you're more humble than that—and broken—fearful as well, for now you must tell your parents, your daughter, everyone, exactly what happened. You would rather make yourself invisible—almost rather have drowned—than reveal your disobedience, your stubborn selfishness, for that's what you think of it as: the sins of a child. You lie in your hospital bed with IVs, doctors who come and go. You're dehydrated and whittled down, face unrecognizable at first, bruised and cut but nonetheless in good recovery. You're out of the hospital that evening, and when you first see your father at your uncle's house, you're surprised by how spry he seems. In the days before the tsunami, he'd been struggling with his health, and slid downhill when you went missing, unable to sleep or eat. He wouldn't listen to the radio or watch the news. But your mother says that when friends arrived to say that you had floated onto the television screen that third day, he seemed to regenerate. In what is for him a great show of emotion, he says, "I'm glad you're alive. Many people made mistakes. You need to keep living." That's it—no encouragement or criticism, no questions, as if he doesn't want to know.
Of course, you tell your mother everything, because underneath, she's stronger than he—and then, shortly after, you go to Tokyo and you meet your daughter at the Kawasaki train station, standing anonymously among the hordes. You haven't seen your daughter cry since she was a teenager. And after a quick hug, describing how it was you who suggested that Yuko carry the rice seed to the barn while you went and stood on the terrace staring at the mountain, as your daughter reads between the lines (You could have saved yourselves), her expression even now is unchanging. She tells you she's glad that you're alive, and you believe her. When you've finished, she seems to absorb the truth—that her mother is gone, but that you've returned—and says, "Well, then, you must feel better, for you're talking a lot." Whatever else she thinks she holds inside and turns to go home, swallowed by the crowd.Once released from the hospital, you don't return to your razed house, to your neighborhood between the sea and the mountain, but relocate to a suburb of Tokyo, to a subsidized apartment big enough for you and your parents, in which you dream of the place you just left.
These are strange days, in this anonymous eight-story beige structure where, at first, you know nobody—and where the world carries on without memory, the bustle of salarymen in the stations and streets, traffic rushing somewhere. You say nothing about who you are to the neighbors but spend your time trying to keep busy, all in order to forget, too. Unbidden, you begin a daily sweeping of the walkways at the complex. You and your broom, hoping to make yourselves useful. You also try to spend time with your grandson, who is now a short commute away, but of course, mothering doesn't come as naturally to you as it did to Yuko. And so between your parents, who sit all day watching television in sad nostalgia for everything lost, and your daughter, whose life is busy and now motherless, your displacement is complete.
You're not a poet, in fact you've never read, let alone written, much of anything in your life—Yuko read feverishly, as if she were running out of time—and yet ever since you scribbled that first note on the roof at sea, words have become a conduit. They make the pain smaller, you say. Now you write poems and little fables, reflections and admonitions. All the scraps go in a black bag belted to your waist, the vault of your collected emotions and memories. You write one poem, "A Song of Five Lines," that goes as follows:
How many days later
Will you appear in my dream
My beloved
This is how you speak to her, through the scraps in the bag, but also aloud sometimes. Before eating, you might murmur, "Thank you," as if she's prepared the food on your plate. You might do the same on a beautiful day, as if she's created it. And before bed each night, you tell her you love her. You say this to her presence or spirit, but you forgo mementos, little altars, or pictures on the wall. You can't bear the idea of seeing her again, as you knew her in all those endless days before the wave.
Here's how you think about it: Together you constructed many things throughout your life. Then her body disappeared, but the constructions still remain. Human beings die: That's natural. But to accept her death is to lose all hope. And yet you know now in retrospect that there were so many small good-byes, prophecies, and encouragements. There was a dream you had in the months before the tsunami: You were alone and couldn't find your wife—everywhere you looked, she wasn't there—and you woke up instantly, thinking, I need to find an accountant, because she did all the accounting. There was a trip Yuko made to see your grandson, one that lasted more than a week. She returned home and told you that since you'd survived ten days without her, cooking and cleaning, you were now ready for anything. And then, of course, she habitually ribbed you. If it came down to it, she'd ask, if the world came to an end and you could take only one thing with you, would it be the pigeons or me?
"The pigeons," you would say, just to see that look on her face, that flash of mock anger, admiration, and uncertainty.
Three months later, in June, you go back, traveling on the bullet train two hours north under hazy sun to the city of Fukushima, continuing to the coast by car. Your parents have recently returned to the village, moved into temporary housing there, one-room modules in clusters off a main road, each with a television, a refrigerator, some rudimentary furniture, a latrine. The clothes are hung on hangers off nails in the wall. After driving through the mountains, through fluctuating radiation levels, a landscape steeped in cesium that will persist for decades, your first stop is the lumberyard where Mr. Mori, the boss, removes his white hard hat and greets you with bows that you return in double. "How is everything?" he asks after the formalities, placing a hand at the center of your back as he leads you out into the yard, and you respond by saying, "She's still missing," and he shakes his head what a shame.
Mr. Komuro, Mr. Tomita, and all the other workers: They're astounded and pleased to see you, so pleased that they keep asking, "When are you coming back?" You smile, for this is something you want more than anything—to come back—but have no answer. Or do, but don't say: I'm trying to fill the space left behind by my wife. But they intuit some part of this. Two here have lost their homes; a colleague at a nearby yard died; Mr. Hamauchi, in the office, has lost his father, his body identified by DNA. Most all of the men operated the heavy machinery—the backhoes and forklifts—used to try to dig out the tar-filled bodies buried by the sea. Yours isn't the only survivor story they tell in the yard. They tell of people swept off in cars, who lived, of families carried inland who clung to trees, and when the wave sucked back out to sea, it cleaved the wife, the husband, the child. "We had a regular life until we felt how great the power of nature could be," says Mr. Mori. "I went to the hills and watched the waves coming. I could see people running, like it was a movie."
"I was too scared to look at the ocean," you say in return. "I looked at the mountain."
And then you head toward the sea, to where the house once stood. The landscape appears bulldozed, miles of decimation, houses lopped from the earth as if they were rice stalks, chunks of concrete set at unsettling angles. Your neighbors have lost six of seven in their family; another family of four has disappeared. Babies and grandparents alike, gone. Three hundred yards from the ancient wood shrine is your driveway. Now down you go, past the imaginary garden of corn and onion, potato, garlic, and taro. The imaginary peonies are in full bloom, the invisible apricot tree bears small fruit, the imaginary koi pond teems. Here was the greenhouse where the rice seeds were planted; the warehouse that kept the machines, the combine, tractor, and rice-drying apparatus; the barn that kept your thirty pigeons. Perhaps, in the end, you did love them best, for they seemed unlovable to everyone else.
Your folly, the concrete house, is a pile of rubble. (Here is the kitchen and here is the bathtub; here is the bedroom with the roof above.) The foundation remains, a last footprint, but there's nothing else: no garden or outbuildings. Not even her ghost lingers. By the ruined koi pond, in a desolation of cinder block and metal rod, is a note intended for Yuko, left by one of her best friends, set beneath a rock near a guttering candle.
"I've come here for you," it reads. "How long are you going to play hide-and-seek? That's enough. Come out!... Yuko, can you hear me?"
Before heading back to Tokyo, you visit your uncle, who has kept something for you. He reaches into the closet, wrestles with a heavy bag, and there on the floor at your feet are the clothes they found you in, nine miles out to sea.
Here is the flannel shirt and here are the pants. Here's the purple fleece—and the green down jacket. Here's the comic-book page scribbled with your note (I'm in a lot of trouble...) and the container in which you placed that note. And so you take them with you, the magical clothes that you wore on the last day of your former life.
You sleep that night in the makeshift home of your parents, on the floor beside them, listening to them breathe. You rise early so your father can cut your hair, the cold silver blade against your head while you sit under his hand, wordless, with gratitude. You ride the bullet train south, disembark at Kawasaki station to walk to your new home, the empty apartment, where you will sweep the sidewalks. You are here now, adrift. The crowd—the salarymen and the schoolkids,f everyone on their busy way—swells. It rises around you and bears you aloft and out into the light, where birds, too lovely and painful to gaze upon, swarm the sky.
_ Michael Paterniti is a_ GQ correspondent.


text: My iPhone is up for sale in ebay, the auction ends tomorrow. Do you guys think I should cancel the auction and wait for the jailbreak to come out so I can jailbreak and sell for more. If the jailbreak is going to come out in the next couple of days, I would hate to miss out on the extra profit from jail breaking. I'm not sure how fast they will get the jailbreak out though.


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A CITY leader is calling on David Cameron's government to fund a new River Severn crossing.
Councillor Adrian Gregson, leader of Worcester City Council, has formally written to the prime minister urging him to pay for a new crossing after the recent floods, which hit businesses and the public hard.
Cllr Gregson said the fallout from the latest floods were yet another example of why a new crossing was needed in the city and came as high winds battered the county across the weekend – including bringing down a tree which smashed boats used by rowers from the University of Worcester, on the riverside, at Pitchcroft.
The club has now launched an appeal to raise £50,000 to replace the equipment.
"We should seriously investigate the potential for a new, second bridge within Worcester and I would like to call on the Government to fund this project," Cllr Gregson said.
More help is on the way for devastated flood victims in Worcestershire as pleas were being made to finally make the county "flood friendly".
They include:
- A major petition launched in Worcester asking the Government to secure money from a £400 million EU pot for weather-related disasters
- Worcester-based Mary Dhonau, chief executive of the Know Your Flood Risk Campaign, called for extra trees to be planted and more permeable paving to be laid in the county to soak in water
- Flooded households in the Malvern Hills district were offered £250 to help deal with the aftermath
At a Downing Street press conference during the crisis, Mr Cameron said: "Money is no object in this relief effort.
"Whatever money is needed, we will spend it."
And the letter from Worcester City Council, which has now been sent to Mr Cameron, who made a visit to Upton upon Severn during the latest round of flooding, saying "if money really is no object", then the council wants cash for a new river crossing.
It also highlights the city's "high proportion of independent traders" who found things very difficult when Worcester Bridge was closed.
In Malvern, around 50 homes were damaged by flooding and the district council says a £250 grant is now available for each property.
If all the homes apply it will cost taxpayers around £12,500, but the council says it wanted to show some solidarity with the gesture.
Councillor David Hughes, leader at Malvern Hills District Council, said: "We hope this small grant might help residents towards getting back on their feet and rebuilding their lives after the terrible flooding in recent weeks."
The grants are on top of the Government-backed awards worth up to £5,000.
Mrs Dhonau said the cash was welcome, but that much more needs to be done.
"David Cameron says lessons have been learnt, but I've lost count of the number of times politicians have said that," she said.
"There is so much more we could do - we could plant more trees, use permeable paving, make areas like Worcestershire really 'flood friendly'.
"That's what needs to happen, because these floods will come around again."
Worcester City Council has now sent Mr Cameron a letter saying "if money really is no object" it wants cash for a new river crossing.
The letter, from leader Councillor Adrian Gregson, said the city "has a high proportion of independent traders" that found things very difficult when Worcester Bridge was closed.
Elsewhere, a petition has been launched asking the Government to tap into the EU's solidarity fund to get extra money for flood victims.
The fund is worth £400 million this year and is available to countries suffering any weather-related problems looking for help restoring roads, properties and general clean-up operations.
Around 100 people signed it on Saturday at Worcester Bridge, after Worcestershire MEP Phil Bennion spent an hour there.
The money can only be released if a government of an EU country puts in a bid within 10 weeks of any damage being caused.
Mr Bennion said: "Most of the structural damage was on the south west coast but the clean-up cost in Worcester alone is substantial."
The Government has already announced a £130 million package to help homes, businesses and farmers recover from the floods.
It includes 100 per cent business rate relief for three months for flooded firms, and home owner repair grants worth up to £5,000.
To apply for the £250 Malvern grant email Gordon Morris at email@example.com or ring 01684 862151.
To sign Mr Bennion's petition visit philbennion.org.


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Los Angeles, CA
The Skinscape submission by SCI-Arc graduate students Jaegeun Lim (M.Arch 2 '14), Woongyeun Park (M.Arch 2 '14), Haejun Jung (ESTm '13) and Karam Kim (M.Arch 1 '15) received an Honorable Mention in the 2013 Skyscraper competition organized by eVolo magazine.
Skinscape: Morphing Contiguous Skysrapers
Their project was inspired from the idea that the natural environment modifies architecture as time passes by, and in some instances, nature even reclaims it. Similar to the Banyan trees covering the 12th century Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia—which today's experts have decided not to remove due to their effect on the building's structural system—this proposal explores the possibility of creating a building tissue between skyscrapers. This tissue would not only add to the buildings but also modify them to allow for new programs.
The idea is that buildings need to evolve with time because their initial design intentions and programs morph with time. Vacant spaces become active and a new hybrid emerges from the integration of two distinct buildings.
Established in 2006, eVolo's skyscraper competition puts together each year an international panel of renowned architects, engineers and designers to jury entries from participants from around the world, including professional architects and designers, as well as students and artists. Jurors this year included Vincent Callebaut of Vincent Callebaut Architectures, Giacomo Costa of The Chronicles of Time, SCI-Arc alumnus Julien De Smedt of JDS, SCI-Arc graduate programs chair Hernan Diaz Alonso of Xefirotarch, Matthias Hollwich of HWKN, Ed Keller of aUm Studio, Mark Kushner of HWKN, Francois Roche of R&Sie(n), Roland Snooks of Kokkugia, SCI-Arc design faculty Tom Wiscombe of Tom Wiscombe Design, and several competition winners from previous editions.
Check out the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper full list of winners HERE.
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ACT Symposium 2013
ACT Symposium 2013
- August 7-10, 2013
- Louisville, KY, USA
Top Reproduction Studies of 2012-'13
Two veterinarians describe recent equine reproduction studies they found interesting and influential.
Photo by Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse
Parasite Control Recommendations for Mares and Foals
Times are changing when it comes to parasite control. Learn how to control parasites in broodmares and foals.
Photo by Photos.com
Stallion Semen Tests: Which to Use and What Do They Mean?
Learn what different semen evaluations can tell veterinarians about a stallion's fertility.
Photo by Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse
Sort By:Priority Popularity Date
View:List View Thumbnail View
Top Reproduction Studies of 2012-'13
September 24, 2013
Two veterinarians describe recent equine reproduction studies they found interesting and influential.... Read More
Parasite Control Recommendations for Mares and Foals
September 15, 2013
Times are changing when it comes to parasite control. Learn how to control parasites in broodmares and foals.... Read More
Stallion Semen Tests: Which to Use and What Do They Mean?
September 12, 2013
Learn what different semen evaluations can tell veterinarians about a stallion's fertility.... Read More
Do Equine Metabolic Diseases Affect Reproduction?
September 08, 2013
Some veterinarians now believe that metabolic diseases likely have a negative impact on equine reproduction. ... Read More
Could Intrauterine Marbles Cause Pyometra in Mares?
September 05, 2013
Previously veterinarians had not noted significant complications with this method of estrus suppression.... Read More
Mycotoxin Zearalenone's Effects on Mare Fertility
August 28, 2013
Researchers are working to better understand this potentially toxic substance that can lurk in feed.... Read More
Horse Pain and its Impact on Reproduction
August 24, 2013
Learn how equine pain might influence reproduction ability, along with how to detect subtle signs of pain.... Read More
Oviduct Issues in Mares
August 21, 2013
While oviduct-related fertility issues are rare in horses, breeders should be aware of what can go wrong.... Read More
Accessory Sex Glands in Geldings: Establishing the Norm
August 18, 2013
Geldings can still develop problems in the reproductive tract, particularly in the accessory sex glands.... Read More
Prostaglandins for Controlling Mares' Estrous Cycles
August 17, 2013
Learn how administering prostaglandins can help breeders improve their mares' chances of becoming pregnant.... Read More
Equine Placentitis Update
August 16, 2013
Placentitis is the most common cause of late-term abortion and remains challenging to diagnose and treat.... Read More
ACT 2013: Reasons to Evaluate Stallion Fertility
August 13, 2013
Dr. Dickson Varner lists the reasons veterinarians might assess stallions for infertility. ... Read More
Top Foal-Related Studies of 2012-'13
August 13, 2013
Dr. Chris Sanchez reviews recent top research papers published focusing on foal health.... Read More
ACT 2013: How Pain Impacts Equine Reproduction
August 10, 2013
University of Florida's Dr. Chris Sanchez describes how pain might affect conception rates in horses.... Read More
ACT 2013: Parasite Control in Foals
August 07, 2013
Dr. Wendy Vaala describes proper internal parasite control and deworming for youngsters. ... Read More
Check Under Fly Masks (and Other Stuff I Learned at ACT)
August 22, 2013
From handling fear in horses to equine pain, I learned a lot I didn't expect to at the ACT Meeting.... Read More
ACT 2013: Components of a Stallion Breeding Exam
August 11, 2013
Dr. Dickson Varner describes what he's looking for during a stallion breeding soundness exam.... Read More
Grandin on Keeping Horses Calm During Handling
August 26, 2013
Dr. Temple Grandin gave the keynote at the 2013 American College of Theriogenology Symposia and Conference.... Read More
2013 Theriogenology Conference Kicks Off
August 07, 2013
The Society for Theriogenology's Conference starts Aug. 7 and continues through Aug. 10 in Louisville, Ky.... Read More


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Other Essays in the Series:
It Gets Better
Teen Suicides
When There is No Peace
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
It is fall. Harvest season. Each year I feel the inward draw – strange in the urban haste of this life – toward a sense of campfire, of story-telling, of timeless and planet-wide pilgrimage. Of peoples ancient (and not yet) each desperate in their Now for survival in the face of cold, despair, death. Each hungry for the stores of community which make for life, resilience, and continued journey.
Peoples who have wrought violence in so many ways that they did not know. We have put many forms of violence behind us. And we, in the present, are living yet in the struggles to unmask and transform our own violence. We are a people "not yet." Embedded in our daily lives, sometimes visible and sometimes not, we bear its causes and costs: disconnection, wounds unhealed, humiliation and despair, and the false promises of scapegoating and aggression.
"Forgive us, for we know not what we do."
It is October. Coming Out Season. LGBTQ history season. Each year we who have made safe passage in the coming out journey mark such pilgrimage with gatherings, teachings, and public ritual to name our story – ancient and not yet – for the sake of a better present. Each year we dare to act in the conviction that being out, being public, being known, and being remembered is a good. A personal and a public good. Those who make safe passage know that "it gets better."
Tragically for us all, such visibility – in and of itself – was too painful to bear for them. For Asher. Seth. Billy. Justin. Tyler. And countless others. Through the taunts, beatings, or video humiliation they endured, they bore in their bodies the judgments of this world and judged themselves not worthy of survival. Overcome with our Sin and Death, they judged this life – our collective life – a wilderness not worthy of their passage. The stores of community so necessary for safe passage – belonging, resilience, and hope – were held beyond their reach. I pray that these precious and beautiful youth know now the unspeakable riches of grace and mercy in everlasting arms.
Asher, Seth, Billy, Justin, Tyler: "Forgive us, for we know not what we do."
What is this thing (forgiveness) that I dare name when so few days have passed since their deaths? Why lift such a word at all when the homophobic face of aggression – power of Sin and Death – yet holds sway on bullies, too many of their mentors and the very leaders who court our vote? How can we contemplate forgiveness when so much justice is yet undone and peace so incomplete?
Forgiveness. It is the world-changing force unleashed when truth, deep understanding and compassion embrace. It is the gritty hard work of naming the impact and source of harm, of mapping accountabilities, of yearning for redemptive release for all victims and violators. It is the gift that emerges – never a transaction – when the passing of time and the nurture of soil produces a harvest mysteriously beyond the capacity of sheer will. It is in honor of – not a betrayal of – these young lives to contemplate its promise.
For a decade, I have found Marjorie Suchocki's definition of forgiveness to provide landscape, landmarks and sustenance for the forgiveness journey. It has deeply shaped my own life and been found worthy by the parishioners, coaching clients and students I serve. "Forgiveness is willing the well-being of victim(s) and violator(s) in the fullest possible knowledge of the nature of the violation. As such, forgiveness holds the possibility of breaking the chain of violence." (She writes this in The Fall to Violence: original sin in relational theology).
What might breaking the chain of violence look like in the wake of these tragic suicides? Immediate hope and inspiration is traveling the internet as mentors and elders reach out with the basics of hope: "It gets better." We must join our voices to this message and use our churches, projectors and keypads to forward Word like this widely. We must sacrificially and generously offer our time and our stories as the Word-made-flesh. It will make safe passage more likely for many.
As we advance the fullest possible knowledge of the ongoing terror of such bullying, we must boldly continue to describe its scope and its causes. Those equipped with information about domestic, school and workplace violence must not falter in the cause of describing it nor in their endeavors to creatively use television, social media, and all kinds of coalition partnerships to put faces on these overwhelming numbers. We must find ways to focus and sustain this sudden national attention for long-lasting change.
The Welcoming and Affirming Churches Movement must work with secular partners to confess and dismantle religiously-sanctioned homophobia. People of faith who condemn homosexuality as such by using ancient motifs of danger, defilement or delusion are complicit in each of these deaths. We must persuasively unveil this connection between rhetoric and sanction of violence over and over again.
This truth-telling is a constituent component of forgiveness. These and other commitments to understanding what's going on are part of advancing forgiveness.
But there's more, Suchocki says. The willing of well-being for all the victims… We release the dead to their peace. We walk with the mourning with compassion and a companionship that empowers them to their own work of redemption and transformation. Grieving mothers Judy Shepard and Mary Lou Wallner are shining examples of the resurrection testimony against Sin and Death. All of us who are entrusted to the work of shaping conscience must work unceasingly to empower people with language AND skills to face and challenge discrimination, to deescalate violence, to examine our own complicity, and to walk in solidarity for change.
Without fully taking into account these needs, we will fail to break the chain of violence. Any and all dimensions of grief support, discernment and equipping for systemic change are part of advancing forgiveness.
But there's more, Suchocki says. The willing of well-being for all the violators. Most of those who bullied these young people will remain nameless to those outside their immediate contexts. The same is true of all those who now must work through the truths of their distraction or complicity. Countless are the anti-gay religious voices which create the climate conducive to rationalizing homophobic violence. Yet, surely we can (if we dare) commit ourselves to grappling with this essential dimension of forgiveness? It is, after all, this third thread which is so necessary to breaking the chain of violence.
What might willing --and working for -- such well-being look like? When we apply appropriate consequences for violent behavior, with skills for supporting contemplation and rehabilitation, we will such well-being. When we recognize the violence endemic in our culture, and work to make plain the impact of music and movies which glorify aggression, we will such well-being. When we unveil the emotional and spiritual consequences of domestic neglect and violence, and seek to support families with intervention and new resources, we will such well-being. When we challenge the wars waged on our basic capacities for empathy through the misuse of technologies ranging from the Internet to drone warfare, we come closer to willing well-being.
When we work for boundaries, safety, emotional intelligence, empathy and alternatives to violence, we are advancing forgiveness.
What time is it? Time to honor those who have gone before us. Time to deeply listen and respond to the truths societal violence and alienation we are ready to know and face. Re-membering time. Kairos time. May Ancient Grace make us resilient, may ancient lies be defeated with Love's redemption. May the Wisdom that has allowed us to turn collectively from paths of Sin and Death revisit and renew us.
The time is Now. Overwhelming forces of hopelessness and enmity are in the air. May we wait and work for the Not Yet by engaging this Now with the ways that make for true peace. May we break the chain of violence. May we be made new.
Walking the bridge of forgiveness, we know what to do.
Rev. Jacki Belile, CEC is a certified empowerment coach and American Baptist minister. She is the founder and spiritual director of Living Well Ministries, an independent ministry offering coaching, retreats, and classes to people of faith committed to living well. Her clients and students focus on such wellness themes as forgiveness, LGBT faith and sexuality, sustainable leadership/activism and faith transitions. The first out member of the LGBT community approved for ordination in her denomination, Jacki endeavors to serve as a bridge-builder not only for inclusion, but for transformation of all embedded in injustice. She completed an M.Div. from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1996.


text:
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D.
Full-Time Institute Faculty
B.A. Psychology, Spelman College, 1982
M.A. Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1985
Ph.D. Clinical Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1989
Dr. Thompson is a clinician with experience working with adults, groups, and adolescent status offenders, with special emphasis in family psychotherapy.
She received her predoctoral training at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York. She completed post-doctoral training in infant assessment at Easter Seals KIDS Program in San Rafael and in family therapy at the Center for Family Counseling in Oakland.
Dr. Thompson also completed an intensive training in Narrative Therapy with Michael White at the Dulwich Center in Adelaide, Australia and studied Social Justice Therapy at the Family Centre in Lower Hut, New Zealand. Her theoretical orientation combines developmental, systems, social justice therapy, and narrative therapy perspectives.
Dr. Thompson's teaching experience began as a Teaching Assistant at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught general psychology and minority mental health. She continued there as a Teaching Associate for the Berkeley Teacher Training Program and then as a Visiting Professor teaching culture, ethnicity and mental health. She is a tenured full-time faculty member at The Wright, supervises students at the Center for Family Counseling in East Oakland, and maintains a limited private practice.


text:
Red wine, lipstick, ketchup - some of your favourite things can cause difficult stains. But now you can say goodbye to even the most difficult marks with our comprehensive stain removal guide. Just choose the fabric and the stain type you need to treat. After you have select what caused the stain you see the result below. It's that simple!
Choose Fabric
Select Stain Type
Choose Stain
Rayon generally should be dry cleaned. Always follow garment label instructions when pretreating and laundering your clothes. For colored garments, test an inside seam for colorfastness.
If the garment is washable, place stain face down on paper towels and blot with nail polish remover. Replace paper towels regularly. Repeat until stain disappears. Then wash with corresponding Persil powder. If dry clean only, take it to the dry cleaner for stain removal. Note: Some nail polishes may be impossible to remove.


text:
Soundwave festival is suffering a thumping headache - and naturally it's due to drummers.
Following the news that Blink 182's Travis Barker has cancelled his trip due to a fear of flying, three more drummers have disrupted the festival just days before it kicks off in Brisbane.
Charlie Benante of Anthrax will miss the tour after his band mate Scott Ian confirmed via Twitter that the drummer is dealing with personal issues and is staying in the US.
"Charlie is dealing with personal issues right now and can't leave the country. He's really bummed about not being able to head down there," Ian tweeted.
Benante, who missed several dates last year after being arrested following a domestic dispute with his wife, will be replaced by Jon Dette on the tour.
Meanwhile, death metal band Six Feet Under have pulled out completely after drummer Kevin Talley was injured in a dirtbike accident. The group confirmed that Talley, who joined in 2011, will not be able to recover in time.
Earlier in the week, drummer-for-hire Josh Freese (Weezer, Paramore) also announced he will miss the tour due to other commitments.
Freese, who quit A Perfect Circle last year, is the current drummer for The Vandals and will be replaced by Alkaline Trio's Derek Grant.
"Drummers are seriously ruining my week...," tweeted Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah.
Soundwave tours Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth from February 23 to March 4.


text:
Freshman Stewart leads Gators into Super Regional
Published: Friday, May 24, 2013 at 7:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, May 24, 2013 at 8:49 p.m.
She has a smile plastered perpetually on her face, but it hasn't always been fun for Kelsey Stewart.
Gainesville Super Regional
At Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium
Double elimination
UAB (40-17) vs. Florida (55-7), 1 p.m., ESPNU/104.9-FM
Florida vs. UAB, noon, ESPN/104.9-FM
x-If necessary, 3 p.m., ESPN/104.9-FM
The Florida freshman ran into the wall that athletes in all sports run into at some point in their lives. Stewart slammed into it in the summer.
After another great season with Maize High in Wichita, Kan., it was right to her Wichita Mustangs travel team. It was a grind she knew all too well, except that now it really was a grind.
"I stopped having fun," she said. "I saw it as something I had to do instead of something I wanted to do. I liked hitting with my dad, but the rest, it just wasn't fun anymore.
"I wanted to get here real bad."
Stewart couldn't wait to get to Gainesville and play with new teammates and for a new coach. But even then, her first days as a Gator didn't rekindle the spirit.
The workouts were brutal. The distance home was far.
"You could see it when her parents left," Florida coach Tim Walton said. "I've seen it before. It's the heat, it's the change in time zone, it's the culture. Mom's not there to cook meals when you're hungry.
"They're freshmen for a reason. You have to get them to be comfortable."
It took two weeks. And just like that. Stewart had new friends and a new outlook.
Actually, her old one had returned.
"After two weeks, I told myself that this is where I want to be and this is what I want to do," she said. "This is the most fun I've ever had in my life."
Stewart shook off the homesickness and the heat and the environment to get herself prepared to be Florida's leadoff hitter and regular second baseman. And the freshman has produced.
Heading into today's Super Regional against Alabama-Birmingham, Stewart leads Florida in a number of offensive categories.
She is hitting .392, by far the best on the team, has scored 59 runs and has 85 hits (both team highs) and also leads the team in triples and stolen bases.
At second base, she has made the spectacular look routine.
And the funny thing is, what Stewart has done as a true freshman is hardly a surprise to Walton. He expected it.
"We knew before the season that if she was not the player we thought she was we wouldn't be as good as we wanted to be," Walton said.
Last summer seems like a long time ago. The smile owns her face again.
"Kelsey had been playing on a great high school team and had been playing on a high-level travel team since the seventh grade," Walton said. "I wouldn't call it burnout, but sometimes you forget about kids when they're playing on really, really good travel teams that it's almost like work."
Stewart is like all of her teammates who can't wait to get back on the field today at 1 p.m. after being off since last Sunday when the Gators took the Gainesville Regional with a 2-0 win over South Florida.
"It's just staying mentally tough," Stewart said. "Seven days is a long time, but we're not really worried. Just come out and do what we do best."
If they do, the Gators will make a return trip to Oklahoma City for the Women's College World Series. The Gators went to four straight before missing last year.
In their way is an Alabama-Birmingham team that surprised the softball world by winning the Louisville Regional and beating two ranked teams in the process.
UAB, which has never faced Florida, is in its 14th year of softball and this team refers to itself as Team 14. It's the first Super Regional for the Blazers, and they have won 40 games (40-17) for the first time in school history.
Contact Pat Dooley at 352-374-5053 or at firstname.lastname@example.com. And follow at Twitter.com/Pat_Dooley.
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.


text:
You exercise your body to stay physically in shape, so why shouldn't you exercise your brain to stay mentally fit? With these daily exercises you will learn how to flex your mind, improve your creativity and boost your memory. As with any exercise, repetition is necessary for you to see improvement, so pick your favorite exercises from our daily suggestions and repeat them as desired. Try to do some mentalrobics every single day!
Try to remember some times in the past when you were totally relaxed. Maybe it was a recent vacation or a nice sunny weekend. What do these situations all have in common that might contribute to you being in a calm state? While you may have your own unique requirements, there are four common conditions that most people find contribute to calmness.
Physical Comfort
Pay attention to how your body feels and try to make it as comfortable as possible. Is your clothing comfortable? Is the temperature ok? Is your chair comfortable? Try to make changes to your environment to make yourself as comfortable as possible.
Fresh Air
Getting fresh air is a very important condition for calmness. This is one reason why the mountains or the beach are more relaxing than the city. Try opening a window to get a little fresh air.
People always try to find a quiet place to relax. As you go through your day, you are bombarded with noises. Traffic, people talking, babies crying, electronic equipment, radios and televisions all contribute to the noise pollution that can cause unnecessary stress. Eliminating noise from your daily life can help make you a calmer person. One way to do this is with noise canceling headphones or earplugs.
Caffeine, nicotine, sugar and other drugs all act as stimulants on the human body. You will never be able to fully relax if you are charged up with sugar and caffeine. Try switching to water, herbal tea or a diet caffeine-free soda.
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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
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