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The past couple of months have been very busy for Wondrous Wave!
On August 27th 2017 Wondrous Wave had a booth at Enchanted Expo offering tarot and vending jewelry and crystals. I had a lovely and FULL day of clients and readings. Every Enchanted Expo has been a very positive experience for Wondrous Wave so far. The free lectures are always a great benefit to the community and there's real healing and knowledge there.
I sold some of my gently used Tarot and Oracle decks. As a professional reader I tend to go through many decks trying to find what works for me and what resonates with me. Every reader and intuitive feels differently about imagery and concepts presented in these decks. I made little pamphlets to go with the decks on information of how to cleanse and bless the decks for their highest good so that way they would have that information ready. It's important to cleanse and bless a deck for your highest good before attempting to work with the deck. This positive action will ensure your success and connection with the divination system.
I was so happy to see some return clients who frequent the Enchanted Expo each year. I love catching up with people after a few months and keeping in touch. It gives me great joy to be able to offer these divinatory services and facilitate healing.
On September 9th 2017 Wave was reading Tarot and Oracle at the FIreborn Alchemy booth at Twin Cities Pagan Pride Day.
I also volunteered an hour or so at the Reiki Rebel's tent for free/donation based community healing with Nsasi Vence Guerra. It was amazing to be able to offer free community healing to those who wanted sessions. Reiki is for the highest good of the individual and promotes healing on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. I talked with Nsasi after the event and she counted about 50 people that day that received healing. I'm so proud to be a part of the healing that took place in that little blue tent that breezy day. For more information about Reiki Rebels in the Twin Cities, look for Reiki Rebels on Facebook to engage in community healing.
Also during the Twin Cities Pagan Pride Day Wave took part in the Santa Muerte Celebration. This is a picture of the Santa Muerte Shrine, there's a large black robed Santa Muerte, small white Santa Muerte statues, images of La Santissima Muerte and my Muerte, La Dama Rosada or The Pink Lady. There were Aztec Dancers and prayers. It was a beautiful celebration of The Skinny Lady. I have been working with Muerte heavily this past year but I have been called to working with her for the past 5 years.
A picture of me cheezin with my Muerte. She's The Pink Lady, a Spirit of love, healing, beauty, fabulousness, psychic ability through channeling divine love. I've gotten to know her a little bit but this takes time, working with her takes much heart and effort but she accepts ALL and loves ALL. Something beautiful about the practice of Muerte is her acceptance of us all, it resonates with me deeply. I've been sending a lot of prayers and love to Mexico, the home of La Santissima Muerte after the two earthquakes and hurricane damage.
I plan on doing a more in depth post about Santa Muerte practices and her origin, that will be coming soon.
After all of these wonderful events, I had to spend some time by myself and do some healing. As any reader, healer and intuitive it takes time to heal yourself and love yourself to recuperate. Even though Reiki is channeling universal energy and does not have any negative affect on the channeler but tarot and oracle readings and psychic readings can be draining for a psychic. The third eye is like a muscle that when used can become tired and sore. For psychics, this muscle is a bit stronger than others but it still needs to rest. It's important to be able to know when it is important to rest for yourself and for the highest good of your clients.
I had a wonderful self care weekend this past weekend, I had a limpia and a massage and a relaxing three day weekend.
More to come soon!
Also make sure to check out Wondrous Wave's first podcast: Wave's Witching Hour
Love and Blessings if you accept them,


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The time has come to record the brief but deeply missed relationship I shared with an old, stray, tabby-striped cat whom I dubbed, simply, Tom.
Perhaps, those decades past, it might have been in the spring of the year when he first made his notable appearance in the vicinity of my home. I don't actually recall, but, for some reason, he slinks and suns himself, eats and battles and serenades through my thoughts these days.
All the male cats who have won my respect for bravery and gentleness have been of that variety-yellow and tabby-striped-Tom and Boots, my old, much beloved companion who now waits, if he waits at all for me, on the other side of this life.
At the time when I first noticed Tom, I supported a house full of cats, but I somehow found the money for one more can of cat food for Rudy, the neighbour's cat, each night, per an agreement I had made with her regarding a baby rat she had spared, seemingly, at my request. The making of that agreement could make another story by itself, and this item I will devote to remembering Tom.
Going out to give Rudy her food, I was somewhat appalled to hear a regular snarling, growling and hissing to my rear, over my shoulder. I glimpsed "Tom" in the background; all those sounds of menace were of his utterance. Not exactly calmly as I tried to seem, I continued to dish out the cat food until all was in the dish, turning to stand not facing the dish, I went slowly back to my front door and into the safety of my house.
I was aware that, should Tom have been of a disposition to attack me, as all his vocalization implied, I would have been severely clawed or bitten. Although Tom was a house-cat in size, if such a cat has become feral, his attacks could be severe to wildly elemental. A human always fares poorly, in the naked state, against a feral animal.
There was never a true offering of that. Truthfully, I did not know whether ignoring Tom was exactly the thing to do, so I kept up a monologue of address to him.
This strange cat stayed on my mind, and he made certain that he did, as when I fed the other cats in the house, he could be seen appearing atop a ledge outside a window. Perhaps, to him, he was only gazing at some other cats who were being fed inside the house and who were being treated in a friendly manner by a human being. I am sure, however that this latter was not entirely lost upon him.
Tom continued to roam the area, appearing nearby when I fed Rudy outdoors, appearing at my window many times, fighting another neighbor's tomcat whenever he could. Besting that longhaired, white and yellow cat, he would leave telltale tufts of long, yellow hair in my narrow front porch and scattering, blowing across my yard. The two of them were also to be seen napping as though they were the best of old friends.
Rudy and Tom had noisy confrontations before me, but they were of a different sort, and Rudy often backed easily down, because Rudy was, in true, an old, neutered, female cat, who had forgotten that distantly past fact, also living out life as a warrior in demeanor, the mark of a cat who made her way outdoors, although acknowledging a certain condescending link with humans and seemed to have formed what seemed to be a firm and deep affection for me. At least, there was respective communication between us.
She had apparently extended utter respect as an equal to Tom, extending him free board at the feeding bowl and sharing her can of food with him until such time as I should, possibly, give him his own. But, it might not have been so at first, before I made the latter observation.
One day, I decided that it would not be amiss to encourage his continued presence, and, seeing his eagerly intent observation of my activities feeding the cats inside, I retrieved an old, disfavored bag of dry food from the pantry, I offered some of the contents in a bowl, outside. He approached the bowl but was, seemingly, not eager for this fare.
He rubbed against my legs with what I took as a gesture of thanks, at which I stooped, extending my hand to stroke his yellow fur; however, I was neglectful of keeping my attentions focused on his reactions.
Tom accepted to be stroked for a moment but suddenly fixed his teeth in my hand. It was not a savage attack, although it was piercing, and I think his teeth, perhaps, met at the points through the flesh of my palm. Surprised, I suddenly, sharply shouted, "Hey!" at the treatment I had received, and, as suddenly, he had somehow painlessly released his bite and had disappeared to reappear at the center of the yard, away from me, looking, not fearfully, but apprehensively back at me.
Momentarily, I strode back to the house, vowing not to try any further reward of such ingratitude; however, I soon cooled to realizing the poorness of my offering to Tom. Breathing a prayer that the bite could remain uninfected, I fetched him a can of food to assuage his hunger and allay any ill feelings that our interchange might have engendered. The gift was cautiously but gratefully accepted. When I peered out the back window, he was happily eating.
Tom kept his distance for a while, though he was an almost constant visitor and dinner guest. There were, of course, times, when he was absent, busy at the business of being a tomcat. I found myself unaccountably concerned about his well being as though he had been a pet here. I was always glad when he made his, more-often-than-not battle-scarred reappearance at table.
Twice, that I know of, he had encounters with Boots, my venerable house-tom, neither of which was in the least physically injurious to either of them. To speak the best of both, this was due to wisdom, mutual respect and, in Tom's case, a strange attentiveness to me, also, acceptance of me as friend and authority? At least, on my property.
After having given Boots egress at the front door, per his request, standing there for an interval to check the weather and what I could see of the surrounds to detect whether there might have been another, aggressive cat there on the prowl. Tom was and extemporaneously struck Boots or Boots rolled under Tom in order to gain what advantage his, by then, arthritic body could gain against the sudden onslaught, prepared to rake with his back claws the underbelly of his surprising attacker? A habit of his combat technique.
Acting in the fastest and best manner that I could imagine, I stepped out the door, no further, and shouted, "Hey!"
They actually froze in time, it seemed and remained motionless, both Tom and Boots, as I swiftly seized the moment to grasp Boots under the forelegs, withdrawing him in a whisk from under Tom. When Boots had been removed from under him, Tom came to life, instantly sauntering away from the house as though nothing at all had occurred.
Boots resumed a perch inside after only perfunctorily appearing to desire to go about his afternoon rounds outside. And, I was left to marvel at the ease and fortune with which the situation had proceeded, my having received actual unexpected cooperation from two feline males at the onset of battle.
Attentiveness to the fact that I might have got bitten despite my peaceful intentions required that I pay attention to the momentary attitudes of the two and, further, that I had to act with the swiftness of determination to accomplish my feat and withdraw my vulnerable hands from the predicament.
This may have accounted for the fortune I enjoyed in the action and the success of my gesture, but I suspect that it was more. Boots adored and trusted me and was aware of my presence. As for Tom, I had begun to suspect a prior history of his having been very domestic at one time earlier in his mysterious life. Their next encounter further convinced me of this possibility.
One afternoon, Tom appeared at the front door while I was there and seemed to want to come into the house. I considered this an honor, a gesture of trust and goodwill, so Tom was a difficult party to refuse, although I feared the consequences should Boots make an appearance in the living room. I, however, thought him to be napping in the back bedroom.
As I held the door open for Tom - all the time saying to him that I did not think he would want to stay indoors for long - he poked his head into the doorway, then stepped on in, past the threshold. He paused just inside the door, looking penetratingly deep into the living room.
In these moments, Boots stepped sleepily into the living room from the hall, blinking in the sudden light provided as he tried to ascertain the cause of the opening of the door. He found his domain invaded by the strange tomcat. After expressing a moment of silence in his distaste for the situation as I had developed, he commenced howling, argumentative calls for respect for territory. Tom froze and began to answer in kind as honor among cats demands.
I was guilty of nothing but having felt compelled to extend hospitality; yet, I had found myself at having done so at the expense of inadvertently transgressed against the proprieties I owed to Boots in our shared domain. Guiltily, however, I stood a moment, Instantly my correct course of action seemed to be to step between the line of sight of the two veterans. I sensed the same amount of reluctance to fight from either source.
Boots was a valorous and accomplished tomcat, though he was by then, as I have said, old and somewhat arthritic? As I usually tried not to let myself notice for most occasions. For Tom it seemed that entering my house was more a whim of curiosity than a play to extend his territory inside.
Arthritic or not, Boots was still a formidable tomcat and a winner of many combats, some worthy of stories of their own.
Suddenly, I realized that Tom simply needed a cover for his back, so that he could be assured a dignified, safe and unobstructed exit. I had but to reach slowly behind him, pushing open the screen door, providing him a ready and guarded exit in order to relieve my household of the prospect of confrontation and an end to the mounting tensions.
This was soon and gratefully accomplished. Tom made no further attempts to foray inside my house, because he was truly an outdoor cat, now, a cat of the neighbourhood, owning no master, answering to none. He had, however, displayed to me that he was, to a degree, familiar with the hearth for home and had been a cat of both worlds.
More of his history I never learned. He had no way of telling me more, had he cared to do so, I knew, too, that he had developed a respect for me and for Boots, the old man of the household. His demeanor throughout the aforesaid exchange spoke for him that he was a gentlemanly tom.
Still, he hung around the outer grounds surrounding my house in particular, and the neighbourhood in general, continuing to befriend Rudy and his beloved enemy from down the street? And me, of course? Being missed by me when he did not show up for feeding? Until one, fateful day when I found his crushed body athwart my path on my way to the closest, local convenience store.
I had no idea what had happened to him, by what means he had met his death. Recognizing his breathless body, "Oh, Tom!" involuntarily escaped my lips. Stunned by me sudden discovery, I continued my short trek to the store to make whatever inconsequential and forgotten purchase had taken my out of the house that afternoon.
Also, involuntarily, I made a perfunctory, respectful observation when I passed the form on my way back home, recognizing his colour and size, that I would retrieve a bed cover from the house and return to pick up his body in order to do the respectful thing, that is, to bury him. I sadly concluded that I was the closest thing to a human family that had, up until the present, existed for him and had given him support in this overly human world.
Keeping my resolve, I found an old bed sheet and proceeded back along my habitual footsteps until I knelt beside his broken form. I could now plainly observe the large, sunken area across his ribcage which bespoke vehicular trauma, and as I loaded him carefully on the folded bed sheet in order to bear his body homeward. I noted, also, the blood that escaped his slack mouth, open in the rigors of death.
All along my way home, I was continually aware that bearing his weight was like bearing the form and substance of a small, human child. He had been so muscular in life that his body was quite solid and heavy with density? Of weight and of he density of the life that he must led all the time when I was not aware of him. I wondered whether someone somewhere had mourned him when he had no longer appeared at another house, in his younger days.
Had he been the victim of abandonment by choice or by the chance of his tomcat's wanderlust coming upon him at the inopportune time when his erstwhile human companion had been forced some vicissitude to vacate his residential dwelling where they both had lived? Such idle musings fell from my mind like the essentially idle tears which trickled from my eyes as I bore him on his last course. Tom had seemed familiar with human habitation when he entered my house that one occasion.
Tom appeared a happy cat, on the whole, having had many feline and human acquaintances among us all, here in the neighbourhood with its curious varieties of both species. He had had a hard life, as well, as I had witnessed, seeing him embrace the harshness of the winter months and the gentler months of spring and summer with their attendant worries of fleas and sultry heat amid the relative plenty of love and life.
The story could well have ended there or with the simple burial I had for Tom's body in my backyard, with the help of a friend, who asked me incidentally, whether I had any words to say over the open hole with Tom lying composed within. That sunny day, beclouded only by my sorrow and bereavement, I had no words to say. Seemingly, I had said all I could say when I found his body, crying, "Oh Tom!"
Certainly, as you here now know, I have had many, subsequent thoughts of Tom. I always will, so how can the story end and the last words be spoken, ever?
I have seen him since, in the neighborhood, as any could see him, walking here today. There is never an end you know, and Tom had offspring, you, as well as I, could imagine, noting that he was a fully functional Tom? His behaviour bespoke, as well as the intactness of his perfect, healthy, feline anatomy. He has come again, nor will he ever leave, and more that my memory befriends me now.

subset: commoncrawl


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Sacred Games, by Vikram Chandra (Faber, £7.99)
Of the many deaths that litter this teeming epic, the opening defenestration from the fifth floor of a Mumbai apartment block of Fluffy - "who screamed in her little lap-dog voice ... like a little white kettle losing steam" - is among the least significant. But it is as expertly realised as the far more important setpiece suicide of the book's anti-hero, the super-gangster Ganesh Gaitonde. In its 900-odd pages, Sacred Games encompasses police procedural, political thriller, social portrait of modern Mumbai and flashbacks to India's post-colonial religious and ethnic upheavals. The hero, Inspector Sartaj Singh, a middle-aged, middle-ranking and middling-honest copper, is pulled into a world of Bollywood starlets, spies and nuclear secrets, but the mundane stuff of domestics, knifings and low-level corruption are also his lot. Amazingly, Chandra keeps a firm grip on all these elements, and while the rise and fall of Gaitonde is the book's glamorous heart, it is the everyday detail - the death of a dog, a family outing or Sartaj's bleak home life - that make this huge novel worth immersing yourself in for several enjoyable weeks.
Isobel Montgomery
No! I Don't Want to Join a Bookclub, Virginia Ironside (Penguin, £6.99)
The diary of Marie - Bridget Jones as oldie and aware of the comparison - might be just the tonic for anyone who is frightened of turning 60, but won't seem quite so heart-warming to anyone much younger. Then again, the idea of not forcing yourself to be polite at dinner parties, pushing New Year's Eve forward so that you can be in bed before the rest of the world has opened the champagne, and revelling in a free bus pass and the joy of no sex have an appeal whatever your age. Virginia Ironside, agony aunt to Marie's generation, gives her heroine a touch of osteoarthritis, a dying friend, a friendly widower and the first grandchild to adjust to. The book is about to be translated into Spanish, German and more, and Marie's fear of book clubs will apparently become a fear of aqua clubs and senior portions. But she is also allowed a breezily self-deprecating tone and the unashamed admission that "sometimes I just open my mouth and toads jump out". However, her observations never really coalesce into a novel, and the ultimate result is too many warmly sentimental tears and not nearly enough toads.
Ancestor Stones, by Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury, £7.99)
Abie, a Londoner with a Scottish husband and west African roots, has been putting off going home for years when a letter arrives offering her ownership of her family's coffee plantation. When she gets there, Abie discovers that the real wealth in the village of Rofathane comes not in the form of cash crops, but in the form of her aunts, "a treasure trove of memories, of lives lived and lessons learned, of terrors faced and pleasures tasted". Although Forna's conceit is hackneyed, her episodic first novel - half short story collection, half family epic - is rewarding. By following four daughters of a polygamous patriarch from childhood in rural Africa through the dying days of colonialism, independence and civil war, she provides a wonderfully intimate and ground-level portrait of momentous times. One woman uses witchcraft to avenge her mother, another pulls a knife on her husband, a third influences elections, and a fourth ends up in a dank England, where people live on top of each other but hardly speak. It is full of brilliant images, of myths that nourish and mislead, of the terrible weight of patriarchy and the awful immediacy of war.
James Smart
Creatures of the Earth, by John McGahern (Faber, £9.99)
John McGahern completed this revised edition of his short stories shortly before his death last year. The two new pieces, "Love of the World" and "Creatures of the Earth", hinge on bereavement and are suffused by darkness. Their plots are simple - a widow loses her cat, an apparently perfect marriage falls apart - but both are dramatic, sad and gripping. This mix of the everyday and the resonant is common to many of the fine tales in this collection, which trains its eye on small details and lets larger themes speak for themselves: a teacher, bored of rumours and tired of his charges, finds solace in drink; the recovery of an earring gives a couple a few weeks' grace; a new watch is destroyed by a father who cannot reach out to his son. McGahern's dialogue is superbly naturalistic, full of pauses, misunderstandings and moments of sudden, almost inadvertent eloquence. Caught between an old Ireland of pastoral beauty and stultifying tradition and a new nation of rootless freedom, McGahern wrote with fierce, unsentimental verve, producing subtle, perfectly weighted stories worth reading again and again.
Doctor Whom, or E.T. Shoots and Leaves, by ARRR Robert's (Gollancz, £6.99)
Robert's (sic) has previously tackled Tolkien, The Matrix, Star Wars and The Da Vinci Code. Now he turns to "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication". It's quite simple really ... the universe is constructed around rigidly applied laws. Time, for instance, is one thing after another, the difference between a hot cup of coffee and a cold cup of coffee; that's what chronology is all about. And what could be more fundamental than a well-constructed sentence, correctly punctuated, a sentence with, damn it, good grammar. So, when it comes down to it, albeit with many a digression along the way, the universe is constructed on the laws of grammar and all those grocers apostrophe's and split infinitives undermine the very fabric of existence. That's where Dr Whom and his trusty assistants, Linn Trout and Prose Tailor, come in, to do battle with various grammatically challenged aliens intent on mayhem and poor sentence construction. Pieced together like a fine watch this is not, which is precisely the point of its clever construction, an intelligence often lost in the build-up to a well-judged conclusion.
Keith Brooke


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Hacked off down by the riverside
A series of incidents with children getting horribly blistered by playing with Giant Hogweed seems to have spurred a spate of native hogweed hacking along some parts of the River Tweed.
This is, by the way, occurring without the landowners' permission.
Native hogweed grows to about 1.5 metres, often less, has dull, green, rough, hairy leaves and a hairy ridged stem. The flowerheads are about a hand's width across.
It is flowering now. It provides nectar for a number of insects, but can cause burns or irritation on sensitive skins.
Giant Hogweed is a seriously giant plant. It can grow up to 5 metres tall with huge umbrella-like flowerheads. The main stem is about wrist thickness, smooth and with purple blotches. The leaves are lighter green, very large (over a metre long), more or less hairless and look slightly shiny. See www.nonnativespecies.org for ID sheet.
In other words, the native one is modest and rather dull. The non-native Giant Hogweed, when flowering, is enormous and a great nuisance.
Giant Hogweed is invasive and very competitive with native species. There has been a largely-successful programme of eradication in the Tweed catchment.
However, plants do still appear, so if Giant Hogweed is found, please report an accurate location to Tweed Forum (www.tweedforum.org.uk; phone 01896 849723).
And if you are concerned about any hogweed, please try to contact the landowner first rather than take your own action.
Sarah Eno
Not very progressive
So "Scotland's voice is being heard at Westminster" (Southern editorial, July 16) – and what a whingeing, embarrassing and scrounging voice it is.
The national socialist MPs who claim to speak for Scotland spend most of their time running Scotland down, saying how bad things are here, how wicked Chancellor George Osborne is and how good the SNP is. "Progressive" is the new word the party's propaganda department requires them to parrot.
The fact that Mr Osborne has turned Britain from an economic disaster to the fastest-growing economy in Europe eludes them. Anyone can spend taxpayers' money – not everyone can balance the books. If the SNP ran our economy, Edinburgh would soon really become the new Athens of the North.
And the fact that SNP policies are the opposite of progressive speaks for itself. State spying on parents through the named-person scheme, top-down policing out of democratic control, a target culture in every aspect of public life, centralisation of public decision-making, an energy policy which subsidises big landowners and foreign developers, opposition to the fight against ISIL – these are examples of the nationalists' "progressive" policies.
The Borders is a "forgotten land", claims new MP Calum Kerr. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? He could never say most Borderers are happy with their lot and want to keep things the way they are, including being part of Britain, which Mr Kerr wants to break up.
Mind you, Mr Kerr and his associates are not so opposed to Britain that they refuse to bank the more than £100,000 per annum salary and expenses each receives from the British state. A nice little earner, wouldn't you say?
William Loneskie
Keep SNP's hands off BBC
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has revived her attempt to bring the BBC under Holyrood control.
Were she successful, an even greater focus on Scottish issues to the exclusion of other parts of the UK would be the result. Inevitably, political coverage would concentrate on Holyrood where the SNP holds power rather than Westminster, where it clearly does not.
As we all know, Ms Sturgeon's driving ambition is to separate Scotland from the rest of the UK. A BBC that is parochial and inward looking would assist her objective.
Of even greater concern to those of us who support free speech is whether the SNP's media savvy hierarchy would be able to resist hands-on meddling in news coverage.
It is imperative Westminster stands firm against Ms Sturgeon's latest demands and ensures that we in Scotland continue to benefit from broad and diverse BBC programming, devoid of state editorial control.
Martin Redfern
Creating a shambles
I read your report of MP Calum Kerr's maiden speech in the House of Commons with great interest.
While he is perfectly entitled to try and score points by pointing out the flaws in the UK "convergence" debacle, he seems to have conveniently forgotten that the biggest issue facing Scottish farmers is the current "greening" farce.
This time last year Richard Lochhead, Scottish Cabinet secretary for rural affairs, food and the environment, gave a speech at the Border Union Show. Instead of explaining the new European agricultural "greening" policy to the audience (it had been out for weeks in England), he chose instead to hand out copies of the referendum White Paper and talk about the benefits of independence to agriculture.
Looking back, it was obvious that the Scottish Government's mind was clearly focused elsewhere for most of last summer, as its interpretation of the European policy wasn't released until October.
In short, it was published so late that it explained how we should have sown the crops that were already in the ground. It was so badly drafted that despite many revisions the Scottish Government still can't answer questions on it.
The online registration system where farmers register every detail of activity on their land is unfit for purpose – that's if it was working at all. Those at the Scottish Government office in Galashiels have done their very best to help, but they have been treated just as badly by their masters in Edinburgh.
On the eve of this year's "Border Union", I would like to ask that if anyone encounters a politician at the show (of any denomination), could they please point out to them that it's not just UK ministers who are capable of being "comatose in the corner". Apparently, their Scottish counterparts are more than capable of creating a shambles all on their own.
J. J. Prentice
Swinton Quarter
Benefits of membership
The record results from Scottish Development International, which show an increase in both projects and jobs created or safeguarded in Scotland through inward investment, highlights the considerable benefits of our continued membership of the European Union.
This also reinforces the findings of the Ernst & Young Attractiveness Survey, published earlier this year, which named Scotland as the most attractive place in the UK to invest outside London.
More than 2,000 companies already call Scotland home and many of these are coming here, in part, to access the considerable advantages being part of the EU Single Market – the largest in the world and amounting to more than 500 million people – brings.
With nearly half of Scotland's international exports to the EU and with over 300,000 jobs dependent on such exports, it would be folly for us to remove ourselves from the EU and the many clear advantages membership brings.
Derek Hammersley
(chair, The European Movement in Scotland)
Refugees need compassion
Carola Godman Irvine ("Pressures are arising from overcrowding", Southern, July 16) demonstrates an unfortunate lack of knowledge about or understanding of the current immigration problem that we in the UK and the whole of Europe are facing.
Thousands of people are fleeing Syria, Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere because of the total collapse of civil society in their home countries.
They are not fleeing because they want a holiday, they are leaving their homes because to stay means risking torture or death. Not because they have done anything wrong, they may just live in the "wrong" area or worship the "wrong God". They are making long and arduous journeys few of us could envisage.
Of course there may be some opportunists among the refugees, but that does not detract from the fact that most are genuine refugees who need our compassion and help.
Ms Irvine should perhaps remind herself of Britain's involvement in the history of the Middle East over the last 100-plus years, culminating in the Iraq war. For that alone, if nothing else, we have a responsibility to help.
Norman Latimer
Bonchester Bridge
jim clark
Rallying round at Kelso
We thought it would be a good idea for some of the Jim Clark Rally organising team to come along and meet the public at this year's Border Union Show in Kelso on July 24 and 25.
They will be on the Border Eccose CC stand to answer any questions the public may have, and willing to advise anyone interested in getting involved in any type of motorsport – from karting , rallying to F1.
Alan Johnstone
(media manager,
Jim Clark Rally)
New members wanted
The British Element Trieste Force Association was formed in 2004 for those ex-servicemen who served in the Free Territory of Trieste from 1945 to 1954.
Although our average age is now 85, we are still hoping to recruit new members.
There are opportunities to meet old colleagues through the quarterly magazine and association website.
Trips to Trieste have been arranged and area meetings are held in various parts of the country. AGMs are also held at different locations – the next being near Lichfield in March 2016. A visit to the National Memorial Arboretum is planned to coincide with the eighth anniversary of reforming the association in its present form.
If you are interested in knowing more about the association, please get in touch with me by telephone on 01665 589289, by email firstname.lastname@example.com or write to me at Suilven, Ellingham, Chathill, Northumberland NE67 5HA.
David Griggs
Much bluster and hot air
The Tory general election manifesto promised to end wind farm subsidies by April 2017.
UK energy secretary Amber Rudd announced on June 18 that subsidies would stop in April 2016 – a year earlier than promised.
During First Minister's Questions, Nicola Sturgeon called this decision "wrong-headed, perverse and downright outrageous".
Energy minister Fergus Ewing warned the UK Government "this decision may well be the subject of a judicial review".
So much bluster and hot air from them both since on June 21 Mr Ewing revealed that the Scottish Government would not take legal action on this issue.
With ministers like them no wonder Scotland's energy security is in a hazardous situation.
Clark Cross
Springfield Road
If every child from birth to the age of 18 is to have a named person to oversee their upbringing, how many are going to be needed?
How many children will be allocated to each one?
In their early years children will not be aware of such people, so will named persons be permitted to enter homes to establish that they are being, in their view, brought up as the state requires?
It occurs to me that the biggest question of all is who will vet these named people to ensure they are fit to hold such positions.
William W. Scott
St Baldred's Road
North Berwick
Charity needs your clothes
We are urging Borderers to clear their closets of unwanted clothes and donate them to help treat sick and injured pets.
PDSA's charity shop at 64 Channel Street, Galashiels, is on the hunt for ladies', men's and children's clothing to sell in store to raise money for pets in need.
Charity shops are famous for their quality and bargain clothing, and as a result we sell hundreds of items every week. We rely on our supporters to help us replenish our stocks so we can continue to raise much-needed funds for sick and injured pets.
So if you are guilty of hoarding clothes that you hardly ever wear, why not make some space in your closet for some new threads and help PDSA in the process?
For more information about the Galashiels PDSA shop, please contact me on 01896 759881. For more information about PDSA, please visit www.pdsa.org.uk
Linzi Liddle
PDSA Galashiels
Coffee afternoon
The committee would like to thank everyone who supported them at their coffee afternoon at the end of June.
We raised the wonderful sum of just over £2,000 which will be used to provide some of the extra activities, regular outings and musical entertainments which are so important to the residents.
Trish Millar
The Friends of Queen's House
Grateful steward
I would like to thank the following people and organisations for making my job as chief foot steward of Kelso Civic Week much easier:
Lloyds Landrover Kelso for the use of its vehicle, Lloyds Tractors Kelso for the use of its quad bike, the two lads for parking cars at The Haugh, Yetholm, and Stevie, Jamie and Derek for their help, and all others who assisted me.
Jock Darling


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5. Be over prepared.
Jen was hesitant to leave Lark at home when she had to go back to work. To ease her anxiety, the overprotective mother left approximately 1,000 sticky notes all over the house to make sure everything was kept in order, as we saw on "Burn Vasectomy Milkshake Pong" (Episode 10, Season 1). You can never be too prepared, right?


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When people ask me if investors are making money in cleantech, I tell them yes, but I don't mention which type of investors or the sector.
Most of the analyses of cleantech exits do not differentiate for venture-backed companies. So we conducted our own study.
In the last ten years, Cleantech.org's Cleantech Venture-Backed M&A Exit Study shows a grand total of 27 venture-backed cleantech deals greater than $50 million.
All in all, very tough returns. A number of eight- to ten-figure fortunes made, just largely not by the investors spending the nine- and ten-figure investments.
We had data on both exit values and venture capital invested for 19 firms and revenue estimates for eight. We found a 2.78X Median Exit Value Multiple on venture capital invested. Those exit numbers include the founders' and management's shares, so average returns to investors would be somewhat lower. We found a 2.2X Median Exit Value Multiple on Revenues.
There was $13 billion in total M&A exit value.
Not bad, until you realize that's over a span of ten years where cleantech has seen tens of billions in investment, and we used a pretty broad definition of "venture-backed." To get there, we included Toshiba's Landys+Gyr, Total's SunPower, EDP's Horizon, and ABB's Ventyx deals. Those are the top deals by value, and they represent 60 percent of the $13 billion. None were backed by investors you would normally think of as cleantech venture capital powerhouses (Bayard Capital, Cypress Semiconductor, Zilkha and Goldman Sachs, Vista Energy). Three of them included prior acquisitions themselves.
Excluding those and looking at only the transactions where we had both valuation and exit data, we found an even weaker $3.8 billion on $1.8 billion in venture capital, amounting to a 2.1X multiple.
Most surprising, if you looked at the list of investors in these nifty 27 exits, you'd have heard of very few of them. This is truly not your father's venture capital sector.
The exits have a surprisingly low-tech flavor, and were carried by renewable energy project developers, ESCOs, and smart grid and solar balance-of-system manufacturers.
If we had limited this to Silicon Valley venture investors in high-tech deals, well, you'd have wondered if M&A were a four letter word.
Interesting, isn't it?
Contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you have deal data you'd like to see included.
Neal is a founding partner of Jane Capital Partners LLC, a cleantech merchant bank whose clients have included the technology arms of multinational energy companies. He has served as a director of several technology companies and is chief blogger for Cleantech Blog. He is currently the Chairman of Jane Capital's recently acquired Greenhome.com operating company, the original ecommerce ecostore, and serves on the board of American Electric Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AETI). He is a cofounder of venture-backed smart grid company Smart Wire Grid, Inc., where he served as founding CFO and director, and venture-backed carbon IT startup Carbonflow, a Jane Capital spin-out in SaaS workflow for the carbon markets, where he served as founding CEO and raised the first two rounds of finance.
This article appeared originally on Neal's Cleantech Blog.


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Having three children so close in age, I sometimes hear things that I wish I didn't.
On the way home from the dentist...
"Mommy, these new toothbrushes work really well. It is really cleaning up this penny I found on the ground."
"Look Mommy, my new toothbrush can clean the bottom of my shoes."
"Mommy, can I use this floss stuff to clean the cleats on my soccer shoes?"
Around the house...
"Mommy, Conor is cleaning the sink with the ice pack you gave him when he hurt his leg. He is even using soap and everything!!!"
"Mommy, you don't want to know how Conor is wetting his head to spike up his hair." Me, "I am sure I don't" Laughs and giggles come from the bathroom. "Mommy eeewwwwww, Conor is sticking his head in the toilet to wet his hair!! Look how spiky it is!!!"
"Mommy, Michael is wearing your bra as a backpack"


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Good morning viewers of the collective,
Of all the months in the year, October was one of them for the Chess Hammer. The life has returned to the site and new projects have kicked off as old ones come to a close. Check out the dribblings from contributors in Archives. You won't be disappointed, but mainly confused.
Three mediocre heroes made the Archive of Mediocre Superheroes and a big shout out goes to Sean, who has been slaving away and drawing the heroes. This month saw The Incredible Man, who is never believed; Catman, who can survive large falls; and Broken Thermostat Man, who has the ability to make a room uncomfortably warm.
In a dark corner of the blogosphere mumbling to himself is Rusty. This month he talked about Twitter, Steve Jobs (like everybody else), weird holidays and earthquakes over at Swinging like a rusty gate.
Don't make eye contact with him.
Stay tuned folks, and have a cup of insaniTEA on us,
The Chess Hammer


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Enjoy the future of gambling using the casino sites:
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Online casino games have been around since smart phones have invented. You can download your favorite game or you can just use your phone's browser because some casino games cannot download. You can choose from the many mobile casino games, like lucks casino, and you can literally enjoy wherever you are. As long as you have an internet connection, nothing is going to stop you. Aside from that, there are so many advantaged if you choose to play online instead of playing at a real casino and so check out fruity pocket.
Choose your type game!
One of the best advantages of playing online is that you get to try out different kinds of casino games that you do not usually see or find at a casino. More chances of winning and you get to experience all kinds of fun stuff. If you ever get bored with playing with one type of game that you have been playing for so many weeks, do not worry because you can change it repeatedly.
No more dealing with people
Casinos can be toxic and loud places especially because you have surrounded by different kinds of people, drinking and smoking around you while being obnoxious. This may result in you being disturbed while playing which can be irritating if you are already in your element. If you want to avoid this from happening, play online. You can still have fun even if you stay in your house while lounging on your couch. Nothing beats the comfort of your home anyway and you get to have unlimited potty breaks.
You have the option if you want to spend your money or not
Most online casino games will not force you to hand over your bank details, which means you, can have fun even if you do not bet. This is one of the reasons why people want to stop gambling would choose to play online. It gives them that reason not to spend their salary in one sitting.
Overall, online casinos are a great way to give you some form of entertainment and amusement when you are bored out of your mind. You do not have to empty your wallets too. Try now and see the difference.


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Craig family credits growth to Horizon's Specialized Services
'Little Points of Light'
Horizons' 2010 Little Points of Light fundraising campaign is currently underway. The organization seeks donations for its Early Intervention and Family Support Programs. Contributions can be made to www.horizonsnwc.org or P.O. Box 1483, Craig 81626.
'Little Points of Light'
Horizons' 2010 Little Points of Light fundraising campaign is currently underway. The organization seeks donations for its Early Intervention and Family Support Programs. Contributions can be made to http://www.horizonsnwc.org or P.O. Box 1483, Craig 81626.
Conner Herring kneeled on the living room carpet of his family's Craig home.
With his right hand, Conner, 2, drummed a perfect beat on the wooden surface of a coffee table.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Conner's parents and 4-year-old sister sat on the couch behind him.
"He was pretty much deaf," recalled Conner's mother, Caitlin Herring. "It was apparent very early on. I mean, if you turned on music, after he could finally crawl, he'd go to the music and lay his ear on the floor.
"And, that was to feel some kind of beat or vibration."
Conner's hearing difficulty was just one of many health issues the toddler has endured in his young life, Caitlin said.
And, those issues caused other challenges.
"He was delayed in his development," Caitlin said. "At 11 months, he was at a 4-month level."
Luckily, the family receives help from Horizons Specialized Services' Early Intervention program, Caitlin said.
"The good thing about Horizons is they help facilitate your inner therapist," Caitlin said.
Horizons Specialized Services works in partnership with families and communities to expand opportunities for individuals with, or at risk of, developmental disabilities, according to the agency's mission statement.
A difficult beginning
Conner was born May 21, 2008.
From the moment he entered the world, Caitlin said she knew something was wrong.
"When he was born, I remember telling Jon, 'Why isn't he crying?'" she said. "It seemed like forever before he took his first breath."
Conner was born with a heart murmur.
Jon Herring, Conner's father, said his newborn son was immediately transferred.
"They flew him to Denver that morning," Jon said. "Then, I went up that same day, and then (Caitlin) came up the day after."
Caitlin said the immediate separation was difficult.
"We were apart for a whole day," Caitlin said. "When I got (to Denver) it was another six days before I got to hold him."
Conner underwent heart surgery two weeks after birth, and he continued to receive treatments throughout his first year for complications.
"He was in and out of the hospital for the first nine months of his life," Caitlin said. "He has reactive airway disease. He's had pneumonia a few times."
Connor's hearing problems were addressed with the insertion of tubes in his eardrums to drain inner ear fluid, Caitlin said.
Caitlin also said the heart murmur has been addressed.
"It's an ongoing issue as far as making sure it doesn't get worse," Caitlin said. "His cardiologist has said that (Conner) has made very good progress to where he doesn't think he will ever need heart surgery."
"It will always be there, but it's not as bad," Jon said of the heart murmur. "He's better now. He's a lot better than he was."
Working toward success
Although Conner's health is better, the medical interventions he'd received took a toll, Caitlin said.
"Between being born with a heart murmur and having surgery, and being in the hospital, and having IVs and always lying down, there really wasn't any way to interact with him and help him progress," she said.
A doctor referred the Herrings to Horizons' Early Intervention program, Caitlin said.
When Conner was 11 months old, Caitlin said Horizons physical therapist Jodi Glaisher began seeing Conner.
"Before she came, he couldn't sit up on his own," Cailtin said. "His head still wobbled when you'd hold him."
Caitlin said Glaisher used exercises to build Conner's strength.
"She worked with him little by little until his muscle tone got to where he could hold up his own weight," Caitlin said. "She pretty much helped him get to where he is now, physically.
"He can walk, run, jump. Anything you see him do is because she helped us be able to help him get to that point."
Next, Conner was visited by Horizons speech therapist Mona Entwistle.
"Mona started coming twice a week," Caitlin said. "She made it clear that repetition was important, that helping him say, 'ah' a million times over would be helpful. And then we'd go to the next sound, like, 'bah,' or 'cah,' or 'dah.'"
Caitlin said the improvement has been drastic.
"Just to give you an idea, he started with just 'Dada,'" she said. "That was last October (2009). Now he's at 179 words."
Caitlin said Horizons is tapering its interventions as Conner's development improves.
"The frequency of his physical therapy is going down. (Glaisher) is more focused on his fine-motor skills than gross-motor," Caitlin said. "And, his speech therapy has also gone down. (Entwistle) meets with him once every two weeks now, instead of every week."
Cailtin said Horizons' help has been "incredible."
"They're there without judgment, and they're there to help you get your child to where they can live the rest of their life," she said. "Everybody wants their child to succeed. Whatever disability or challenges your child has, (Horizons) can see past those disabilities and challenges and see what kind of person they can be.
"They can help kids live a semi- to normal life."
Steamboat Springs bans disposable plastic bags
The Steamboat Springs City Council voted, 4-3, to ban disposable plastic bags at Steamboat's largest grocery stores.


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Product / FINDBOX
Findbox as a solution
Search and find with ease with optical recognition and flashing digital price tags.
Sectors: Consumer electronics / Cosmetics / Do it yourself / Drugstore / Food / Gardening / Industrial / Digital signage
Progressively customers are accustomed to the easy shopping offered by e-commerce pure players. But in physical stores, they can lose their way while hunting for the right ink cartridge, special light bulb or suitable charging cable – and, in the worst case, buy nothing at all. That is what the Findbox is for. It makes searching for products wonderfully easy. And purchasing too, by the way.
Optical recognition
Instead of time-consuming searching among the shelves, customers can find the product they want easily and quickly with the Findbox. The user-friendly display and attractive design draws customers in just on its own. The quickest way to the desired product: Simply put the used product or its packaging into the Findbox. It automatically recognizes the product using a state-of-the-art optical recognition technology – in just 3 seconds!
Flashing digital price tags
Searched and found: As soon as Findbox recognizes the right product, the LED on the digital tag at the corresponding product position on the shelf lights up. One glance and your customers have the product they're looking for in hand – without any hunting, hesitation or wasted time.
- LightGuide LED Flash
- Smart camera scanning
- Multi-channel function with "Send me home"
- Easy upkeep on the shelves
- Large operating range
- Fast updates (less than 1 second)
- Intelligent Roaming
- Fast & easy installation
- Find the right product in seconds
- Easy finding with flashing digital tags
- Suitable suggestions
- Easy manual search
- Findbox to go (Mobile search-and-find for home)
- Easy upkeep on the shelves
- Smart shelves
- Pricing automation
- Efficiency in price displays and changes
- Enhance the customer experience and improve store efficiency
Our other products
Discover our products


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Smarty's Hairstylist has been established for more than 20 years. Located in the heart of Toowoomba city, our staff are very professional and are highly qualified. Each service is catered to every individuals needs and we strive to make every experience a memorable one. At Smarty's we pride ourselves on being forward thinking, offer the latest trends and the best products whilst still providing an approachable friendly atmosphere with personalized consultative service at an affordable price. We use all the best range of professional products on the market such as Schwarzkopf, GHD, TIGI haircare and many more!
You imagine …………we create.


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My friends and family have (mostly) learned to leave me undisturbed when I'm working from home. It took a while, but if you were greeted with snarls and profanity whenever you spoke to me during working hours, you'd learn to leave me alone, too.
So, today, I was surprised when a friend called with an immediate request.
"Come outside right now," she commanded.
"I'm still in my pajamas," I said (it was 1:45 p.m.).
"That might be appropriate, considering what I want to give you," she said,* before hanging up.
I snarled, uttered a few profane words, and then headed downstairs to the front door. She was parked at our curb, so I didn't bother putting on shoes.
I leaned into her car window. "You could have put on pants," she said.
"I thought you said my pajamas were fine? I wore a T-shirt to bed last night."
Whatever," she replied. She reached into a shopping bag and pulled out a medium-sized envelope.
"I saw this at the grocery store and thought of you." She handed it to me.
"Cock-flavored soup mix?" I shouted in surprise.
"Shhh," she said. "Do you want people to hear you yelling that word when you're not wearing pants?"
If my T-shirt had been a little longer, I would have leaned further into the car and given her a congratulatory hug. She's now in the lead in our contest to embarrass each other with gifts of dirty-sounding food.
I'm in second (read: last) place. A while back, I left this in her mailbox:
Then again, maybe I'm the winner, because I can still get my mail without being afraid that I'll run into the mailman. My friend still, after more than a year, has to check her mailbox after sunset (even later in the winter).
* In hindsight, I see that my friend is a lot more risqué than I had realized.


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A quick tutorial for you on this Friday morning.
Here is how I dye rice for our sensory play.
What You Need:
- rice
- rubbing alcohol
- food coloring
- Ziploc bag
- cookie sheet
1. Dump rice into Ziploc bag.
2. Squeeze a few drops of food coloring onto the rice. The more you add, the darker the color.
3. Pour in a teaspoon or so (eyeball it!) of rubbing alcohol over the rice.
4. Seal the bag and shake the rice until the color seems blended.
5. Pour rice onto a flat surface and allow to air dry
I dye pasta the same way!
XOXO Sarah


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Pay Per Download: Known as PPD. Pay Per Download = the publisher of a file gets paid for every survey a user completes in order to download the file.What does RestCash pay ?
The average rate is around $1,000 for 1000 downloads. You can earn on average anywhere between 30 cents up to 15 dollars for each user who gains access to your content depending on what country the user is coming from and the offer selected. Most leads pay from around 1 dollar for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Other countries vary between 25 - 60 cents usually.What is your schedule for payment ?
You are able to request a payout at anytime once you reach the 10 dollar limit. Earnings will be reviewed by our fraud department at the end of each month. Payments will be sent Net 15 (15 days after each month).What are RestCash payment methods ?
Payments will be made via Paypal, Payza, Wire Transfer, Skrills or Western Union.What types of files are allowed ?
All file types are accepted for upload. Pornography and copyright files are NOT allowed.


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Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips' was found near the Chiapas area of Mexico and was introduced by Richard Turner of the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco, California. This is a unique bi-color salvia that has red tips and white lips. In the hotter months of summer it may have all red and all white flowers on the same plant due to warmer night temperatures, but when the night temperature drops in the fall the flowers will return to their bi-color state. This Salvia has a similar look to Salvia greggii except it has a finer texture and smaller leaf. Hot Lips Sage seems not to have some of the leaf spot and defoliation problems that you can get with the greggii's during high humidity situations, great for use in borders and beds. Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips' can reach 30″ tall and spread up to 6′ at maturity.Hardiness Zone: 7, 8, 9
Plant Use: Flowering Perennial
Exposure: Full Sun
Water Requirements: Low


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PARLIAMENTARY boundary changes which would remove a large swathe of Bearsden from the East Dunbartonshire Westminster seat could be scuppered - thanks to a revolt by LibDem MPs.
Liberals are furious that their Conservative coalition government partners blocked plans to reform the House of Lords - and have promised revenge by voting down proposed changes to boundaries.
The changes, drawn up by the Boundary Commission, would reduce the number of MPs nationally from 650 to 600 - and locally, would mean the East Dunbartonshire seat being re-drawn so that Bearsden North is lumped into a new West Dunbartonshire and Bearsden seat, while a part of Kilsyth is added to East Dunbartonshire.
This could spell trouble for sitting LibDem MP Jo Swinson as Kilsyth is solid Labour, making her seat ultra-marginal.
However, earlier this week at the LibDem conference in Brighton, party members backed leader Nick Clegg's instructions to his MPs to vote against boundary changes as pay-back for a Tory revolt which saw making the second chamber mainly elected - part of the coaltion agreement - consigned to the dustbin.
If the boundary reforms go ahead, it is projected that around 15 LibDem seats, including Ms Swinson's, could be at risk.
Ms Swinson said: "Despite the hundreds of responses sent in against the proposed changes the Boundary Commission has decided to stick to their initial wrongheaded proposal for our area.
"I remain disappointed that the commission thinks Bearsden should be cut up with a section of it lumped in with West Dunbartonshire.
"However, given that proposed boundary changes will not now command a majority in the House of Commons, the East Dunbartonshire constituency will remain in its current form for the 2015 election."
Speaking at the party conference, Ms Swinson's husband, Duncan Hames, a fellow LibDem MP and a parliamentary aide to Mr Clegg, said the Tories "had it coming".
He said: "Conservative backbenchers were determined to use every parliamentary tactic they could to scupper the (Lords reform) Bill and the Labour frontbench were determined to let them.
"Tory MPs seemed to think they could break the coalition agreement with impunity. It should have come as no surprise to Tory rebels that we would pull the plug on the boundary review." Let's face it, they had it coming."
Meanwhile, both Ms Swinson and Mr Hames have been touted as future leaders of their party.
In an interview descussing his own potential elevation to the leadership, party president Tim Farron said: "It may well be that we skip a generation to Duncan Hames, perhaps, or maybe his wife, Jo Swinson."


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The immortal class : bike messengers and the cult of human power
- Travis Hugh Culley.
- New York : Villard Books, c2001.
- 1st ed.
- Book
Where to find it
Travis Hugh Culley came to Chicago to work and live as an artist. He knew he'd have to struggle, but he found that his struggle meant more than hard work and a taste for poverty. In becoming a bike messenger, he found a sense of community and fulfillment and a brotherhood of like-minded individualists. He rode like a postmodern cowboy across the city's landscape; he passed like a shadow through its soaring office towers; he soared like a falcon through the roaring chaos of the multilayered streets of Chicago. He became an invisible man in society, yet at the same time its most intimate observer. In one of the most dangerous jobs on dry land, he found freedom. In The Immortal Class, Culley takes us in-side the heart and soul of an urban icon the bicycle messenger. In describing his own history and those of his peers, he evokes a classic American maverick, deeply woven into the fabric of society from the pits of squalor to the highest reaches of power and privilege yet always resolutely, exuberantly outside. And he celebrates a culture that eschews the motorized vehicle: the cult of human power. The Immortal Class, Culley's vivid evocation of a bicycle messenger's experience and philosophy, sheds a compelling light on the way human beings relate to one another and to the cities we inhabit. Travis Hugh Culley's voice is at once earthy and soaringly poetic a Gen-X Tom Joad at hyperspeed. The Immortal Class is a unique personal and political narrative of a cyclist's life on the street.
- Acknowledgments p. ix
- Introduction p. xvii
- Chapter 1 Daybreak p. 3
- Chapter 2 Freedom in the American City p. 27
- Chapter 3 Torso: an Xer's Path to Politics p. 51
- Chapter 4 The Run of the Bull p. 81
- Chapter 5 The Exposure Principle p. 111
- Chapter 6 The Physics of Floating p. 143
- Chapter 7 Is/Chicago p. 173
- Chapter 8 Between the Cliff and the Bank p. 203
- Chapter 9 Alley Cat: of Sickness and Success p. 229
- Chapter 10 Ambush p. 251
- Chapter 11 Requiem for the Working Man p. 279
- Chapter 12 The Remains of Public Space p. 305
- Photo Credits p. 327
Sample chapter
Chapter 1 Chapter one Daybreak 6:48 a.m. there is no distinction between man and machine when I mount a bike like this one. Trusting all of my weight to the right pedal of a simple pulley system, I overcome the resistance of two thin tires bound by an aluminum frame and a steel chain. A small disk at the axle of the back wheel, slowly giving way to the force of my weight, holds the pressure taut against the chain. As I lean forward, the weight of my body pulls the cog around the rear axle, turning it one inch. The wheels, held tight by a matrix of metal spokes fixed to a hub, are pulled around a set of ball bearings by the torqued cog. Eighteen inches of rubber wheel crawls forward. My weight shifts from pedal to pedal, reversing the side-to-side tilt of the frame. Like a plucked guitar string, the sideways sway of the cycle is narrowed. Lateral motion is exchanged for speed. Ten yards. One block. One mile. This specific process repeats itself endlessly. The press and pull of my legs draw the chain around a disk attached to a set of crank arms and pedals. All the parts work as a single organism, absorbing the asphalt and the cold wind while adding power to the spin of the wheels to build momentum. My torso, held up by arms gripped to handlebars and toes clipped into pedals, yanks the seat side to side. The bicycle and I shoot forward, going south into the Loop as the Great Lake rolls eastbound and another day begins in Chicago. As I bolt headlong down from the Michigan Avenue Bridge to Madison Street, each dark Bauhaus shape blurs into the cold stone facade of its Gothic neighbor. I keep on, coasting in the pedals, taking a wide right turn westbound on a vacant three-lane street through the center of downtown. This first delivery of the day shakes off my morning lag, pumping warmth through my veins, bringing the first bit of sweat to my brow. The air is clean; my head is clear. I look for a left turn onto Wells. This morning, before the computers are booted up, the banks unlocked, and the stock market scrolls clicked on, I am running delivery routes under the city's yellow streetlights. The elevator banks are empty and the traffic lights, at what will soon be congested intersections, hold and change for no one. Most deliveries I make at this hour are to locked offices, where packages are slid beneath dim glass doors. I move as quickly and efficiently as I can, preserving my energy. A day of messengering is like a hard drug: you never know how rough it will be until you've slept it off. Out here, while I'm coasting unobstructed through the shadows of morning, the world seems at perfect peace. The whole city is still and relaxed. Even buildings get their beauty sleep. Coming out of the spinning doors of the Morton Salt Building, I keep a swift rhythm skipping down the cold steps, heading to the Grinch, my yellow Cannondale road bike, locked to the bridge railing overlooking the riverbank. While the sky changes with dawn, a steady stream of people crowd the revolving doors over my left shoulder. Their eyes are half open, their manner calm; they smile softly like babies still tucked into bed. I enjoy this quiet time when the city's rhythm is slow. I can empathize with the early-morning modesty, and I share the reflective awe that I see in the pious postures of people walking. This respect will fall away when the colors in the sky turn blue and the city awakes. These same quiet faces will struggle for a spare minute, a phone number, a positive response from a supervisor or a client. Sincere people doing honest work will be driven into shouting matches, compelled to insult each other, tempted to quit right on the spot. I'm with them every step of the way. I have seen the red faces and the feelings of distrust as shoulders brush in crowded yet silent elevators. I have seen the masklike smiles they wear through stressful meetings about bottom lines. And yet I know none of these wandering souls. I talk to very few of them; they are somehow another species. Their machinery, and their mythology, move in one direction only. They stand packed into tight spaces, they look up to the brass trim of elevators, and they rise like they are spirits ascending to a gilded afterlife. Is it a floor number they are after? A title that will follow their name? A certain number of digits in their salary? Perhaps they just want a little safety? I don't know. But they are on a path and they will kill to stay on that path. Every day I see them, good people yelling at each other, running past each other, and stepping over each other. I see them at their worst: in the public space, on the street, where no one is looking and no one cares. I don't have time to be caught up in the sorrow of this. As my eyes have grown tired of fanning over as many as a million people in a single day, my heart has grown weary of caring for them. My relationship to these people of the city is reduced to suffering the silence of elevators with them, or walking through the ritual pickup and drop-off of packages with them, or muscling through traffic where "please" and "thank you" are lost to the aggravating assault of car horns and uncalled-for profanities. I have found that these good people, so engrossed by their own private struggles, are often incapable of conversation or a courteous word. They are concentrating, holding up the weight of their self-made worlds, trying to find higher ground. While these masses groan over the decisions they have made and the responsibilities they have undertaken, I float above. I am free of their ideas of good and bad, rich and poor, right and wrong. As an uncommon laborer I may not amount to much in their eyes, but I am free of their judgment. I am sometimes seen as a social misfit, a freeloader, a junkie, but I am also envied for the color, the vigor, the picture of America I can find while they push their way through the weekday treadmill routine. I love my work and the people I work with. I admire the arrogant history of these old buildings, the monuments to the free market, and the avenues they are built upon. They tell epic stories of the city's forefathers, hinting at codes of conduct that apply to some and not all. Street names give credit to the elite like deep-rooted propaganda. Chicago remains a contentious city where big politics are played out on local levels, where lawmakers learn their craft from kingpins, where virtue and suffering are the poor man's plight. From its long history I still hear shouts of civil outrage that echo down these quiet streets, reflecting moments in history like the riots of '68, the burden of Black Friday, and the shock that came after the great fire of 1871. There is always some heated debate going on in the public squares. Protesters walk the streets and chant in the courtyards of government buildings. Wanderers wear signs bearing political slogans. They are not asking for money or running for office; they simply believe in something, and they let you know it. I like being inside the arena, somewhere near the fight. I achieve this every morning with a radio, a set of wheels, and a team of dependable couriers out to make a living. We wake the city along with freight trucks and the quiet tide of pedestrians pouring out of suburban trains. We read about the latest atrocity on the cover of the Tribune as the papers are cut from their bundles and loaded into curbside metal boxes. We ride familiar paths around the city's feet and palms, seeing the abuses of the night before on her scarred back. We call out her landmarks, as we need to, keying in over the airwaves the pet names we've christened. "Thirty-nine to base." "Number Thirty-nine go." "I'm out of the Lockbox, with a bag full o' rags." "Start rolling the Peat and call me on the Foote, Thirty-nine." "Yeah, boss." "And where is my Punk?" "Thirty-three to base?" "Hey, Punk, drop the coffee and call me out of the Litter Box. The Katz got an Oil Can with your name on it." "But I am not drinking coffee-it's a mochaccino." "You're on route to the Kat, you rat, and Punk, make it snappy." The banter is one of the joys of the job. Each courier company develops its own special brand of street language. That talk is shared between us during the day, after work, at home, making even the unseasoned courier feel accepted-part of a larger group. Though we may treat each other harshly, there is usually a great deal of respect among us. Transcending age, sex, color, and all of that divisive sociopolitical bullshit, the courier industry is supported by a very like-minded people. Many of us are artists and musicians, usually in our twenties. Most of us have been broke long enough to be masters of survival and have dreamt big enough to avoid the constraints of a salaried existence. I came to this city to succeed in the theater. I survive as a courier. Cadence for cash and Money for miles-these are the mantras of many a struggling genius. We work for materials and we herald our poverty for the liberties it grants us. Every week or so on the street I meet another ambitious biker who has a bag full of handbills for their next big show or their next exhibition or their next club gig. Beyond these surface similarities, there is a deep and unspoken bond between couriers. When one is down, others carry the weight. When one is hurt, others are there to help. Some days the work can be so intense that bikers dehydrate, panic, end up confused or lost, or get messages scrambled on the radio. We have to look out for one another. Bikers get hurt, and when we do, we are often our only family. Today, we talk about the gender of pigeons on the two-way radios, we watch the world roll slowly before us, and we wait for pickups to be dispatched over the airwaves. 8:43 a.m. in my rookie days, when I was still amazed and daunted by this rectangular horizon, the job felt like some kind of sadistic punishment. I was clumsy, accident-prone, inefficient. The city was huge and complicated. I had to wonder if I could last out here more than a week or two. But I continued. I continued because I had to, pushing through every day with ghoulish resignation. In no time a few lessons about the city surfaced as tricks or shortcuts. With them, I could more easily navigate and plan my maneuvers. But these lessons grew deeper as time went on, more profound. Eventually they took the shape of philosophical insights that helped me position myself mentally for the work. It is true: how you see things determines how you live among them. The first major lesson came after only one week on the job. I was exhausted from the miles I was putting on the bike. Mentally, I was fatigued by the effort of being awake at every instant, organizing the excessive stimuli, learning the streets, the daily shuttles, and, of course, the talk. Then one morning, I was called in to base to pick up some packages that were left undelivered from the night before. I pulled into the Service First alleyway, which was clogged with illegally parked cars belonging to drivers who handled oversized orders and suburban runs. The office was a converted garden apartment with a propped-open back door leading into a kitchen without cabinets or a sink. Only some tables and chairs, littered with loose receipts, were scattered across the floor. An old refrigerator stood in the corner, loose water bottles and half-empty beer cans rimming its top. The messengers' smudge marks and bike parts had long ago scraped out the domestic feel of the apartment. Bedrooms were made into private offices, closets were used for file management, and the white walls were tinted light brown from the support staff's afternoon sessions of stressed-out chain-smoking. When I arrived, the dispatchers talked to me through a Plexiglas window cut into the drywall of the cramped radio room. Chris Coster, a.k.a. Zero, handed me a few large envelopes. I'd sat down to organize them in my bag when Pat, Number Thirty-four, lurched through the back door, bike in hand. Pat had dreadlocks like short twigs pointing in every direction. He was muscular and tight, with tattoos tarred beneath his glistening black skin. His personality was part voodoo priest, part Wicker Park punk. "Man, fuck this," he spat. Sweating and panicked, he rummaged through his plastic bin for a T-shirt that didn't smell too bad and a new helmet. In broken sentences he proceeded to vent through the sliding window that he had just gotten into some shit with a cabbie. Apparently, Pat was in the left lane trying to make a right turn when a taxicab accelerated, blocking his way. Pat sped up and signaled that he'd be cutting in front to make the turn onto Grand Avenue. Just when he felt safe to proceed, the driver sped up again, nearly swiping Pat off his bike. Pat swerved away and regained his balance. By this time the cab had driven ahead. Pat sprinted forward. (I know how he rides. The man has the dexterity of a mountain lion.) He pulled his U-lock out of his bag, came up from behind the taxi on the driver's side, and smashed in the window only inches from the cabbie's head. The driver hit the brakes and Pat was gone. Now, with a different colored helmet and shirt, he was ready to vanish into the early-morning streets again, free from any possible retaliation. I was stunned into silence. I saw no point in relating to another human being with violence. How did it help Pat to smash in the window of even the most obnoxious driver? How would it alter that driver's behavior, even if he was wrong or rude or pushy? Beyond this, I was astounded that he would share this news with Chris and Dave Goldberg. These were the people who had hired him. Maybe it's okay, I thought. Jesus, maybe it's normal! "Are you okay?" Zero asked Pat, sharply looking for information, caring nothing for his feelings. "I'm good-just a little shaken," Pat came back easily. "No shit!" Goldberg came to the window, asking if he thought the cabbie had seen the company name. "Nah, he was a little distracted, I think." "Yeah, boyyyy!" Chris erupted in laughter. "Take a few, Pat. Cool down." "Nah, man. I'm ready now. I'll call ya out of the Can in ten." "10-4. You go girl," Chris called out as the back door closed. Excerpted from The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Hugh Culley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Other details
- Published
- New York : Villard Books, c2001.
- Description
- xxii, 324 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.
- OCLC Number
- 44860799
- Other Identifiers


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Despite the crazy Indian Summer weather we've been having here in the Jerz, I'm in the mood for fall food. To me that means soups, stews, slow cookers, and potatoes. This week I'm fitting all of those in, heat wave or not. First up was an attempt to clear out some of the random ingredients tucked away in the fridge before we take off for the weekend. Occasionally I come up with something I totally love when I have no plans. This is totally one of those times. I can see this dish becoming a staple. It was so delicious! It becomes a really quick meal if you have some things done in advance (like extra sausage cooked from a pasta dish the night before, and the tomatoes and garlic roasted while you do laundry in the afternoon:)).
Seafood and Sausage Stew with Roasted Tomatoes
1 lb. bay scallops
1 lb. large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 lb. spicy Italian sausage
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium red pepper, diced
1 medium green pepper, diced
1 head of garlic
6 medium tomatoes
3 cups of chicken stock
1 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
olive oil
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the top off of the head of garlic, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and wrap in foil. Place in the center of a baking dish. Slice tomatoes into quarters and arrange around the garlic. Drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour or until tomatoes are soft and begin to brown. Cool slightly. Unwrap the garlic and squeeze into a bowl, reserving half for another use. Using a blender or food processor, puree tomatoes with half of the roasted garlic. Set aside.
In a large saute pan, heat a little oil over medium high heat. Add sausage and cook until browned, crumbling with a spoon. Add onions and peppers and saute until tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add tomato puree and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add red pepper flakes, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for 10 - 15 minutes. Add shrimp and cook for 2-3 minutes before adding scallops. (If you are using small shrimp, you can add both shrimp and scallops at the same time). Cook until scallops are opaque and shrimp are pink and cooked through, about 3 more minutes. Serve in large bowls over a hunk of crusty bread for sopping!
And by the way... Congratulations, Danielle, for winning my 5th Blogiversary Giveaway!


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Travellers who said they intended to leave Mablethorpe on Sunday are this morning (August 17) beginning to leave the area.
Traveller vehicles arrived in the town on August 3, which saw over 45 vehicles take over the Seacroft Road car park in the town centre.
Since then, more vehicles have come which has brought the numbers up to nearly 100.
After two weeks of staying in the area, East Lindsey District Council will be at Boston County Court this morning (Monday) to get the possession order in place so the travellers can be moved on.
This order will only apply for the Seacroft Road car park as separate court proceedings have to go through for the second car park, the High Street car park next to the Station Sports Centre, which was taken over by vehicles on Thursday (August 13).
When The Leader spoke to the travellers last week, they commented that they were 'here for a summer holiday and would be leaving on Sunday', (August 16).
Travellers have been seen leaving the Seacroft Road car park today (Monday), but vehicles still remain on site in the High Street car park.
Keep up to date with The Leader on updates with this story.
What are your thoughts on the travellers in the area? Have you had any problems?
Email your views to firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Finding Wind Farms Quicker, Cheaper
Tuesday, July 21, 2015 @ 10:07 AM gHale
Through the use of artificial intelligence it may soon be possible to find the suitable location for a wind farm in as little as 3 months, compared to the usual 8 to 12 months.
The move is possible through a new statistical technique that yields better wind-speed predictions than existing techniques do — even when it uses only three months' worth of data. That could save power companies time and money, particularly in the evaluation of sites for offshore wind farms, where maintaining measurement stations is particularly costly.
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"We talked with people in the wind industry, and we found that they were using a very, very simplistic mechanism to estimate the wind resource at a site," said Kalyan Veeramachaneni, a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and first author of a paper on the subject. In particular, Veeramachaneni said, standard practice in the industry is to assume wind-speed data follows a Gaussian distribution, the bell curve familiar from basic statistics.
"The data here is non-Gaussian; we all know that," Veeramachaneni said. "You can fit a bell curve to it, but that's not an accurate representation of the data."
Typically, a wind energy consultant will find correlations between wind speed measurements at a proposed site and those made, during the same period, at a nearby weather station where records stretch back for decades. On the basis of those correlations, the consultant will adjust the weather station's historical data to provide an approximation of wind speeds at the new site.
The correlation model is a joint distribution which means it represents the probability not only of a particular measurement at one site, but of that measurement's coincidence with a particular measurement at the other. Wind-industry consultants usually characterize that joint distribution as a Gaussian distribution, Veeramachaneni said.
Outside the Box
The first novelty of the model Veeramachaneni developed with his colleagues — Una-May O'Reilly, a principal research scientist at CSAIL, and Alfredo Cuesta-Infante of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid — is it can factor in data from more than one weather station. In some of their analyses, the researchers used data from 15 or more other sites.
But its main advantage is it's not restricted to Gaussian probability distributions. Moreover, it can use different types of distributions to characterize data from different sites, and it can combine them in different ways. It can even use nonparametric distributions, in which the data end up described not by a mathematical function, but by a collection of samples, much the way a digital music file consists of discrete samples of a continuous sound wave.
Another aspect of the model is it can find nonlinear correlations between data sets. Standard regression analysis, of the type commonly used in the wind industry, identifies the straight line that best approximates a scattering of data points, according to some distance measure. But often, a curved line would offer a better approximation. The researchers' model allows for that possibility.
Point Taken
The researchers first applied their technique to data collected from an anemometer on top of the MIT Museum, which was looking to install a wind turbine on its roof. Once they had evidence of their model's accuracy, they applied it to data provided to them by a major consultant in the wind industry.
With only three months of the company's historical data for a particular wind farm site, Veeramachaneni and his colleagues were able to predict wind speeds over the next two years three times as accurately as existing models could with eight months of data.
Since then, the researchers have improved their model by evaluating alternative ways of calculating joint distributions. According to additional analysis of the data from the Museum of Science, their revised approach could double the accuracy of their predictions.
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The 22-year-old appeared happy in the black-and-white selfie, which shows him cosying up to Cheryl, who pouts while wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.
"#cannes," he captioned the photo, which attracted over 220,000 likes within the first hour of being posted to Instagram.
Cheryl is attending Cannes in her role as a L'Oreal Paris ambassador, and it is believed Liam may join his girlfriend on the red carpet at one of the film festival's premieres. However they could face a potentially awkward meeting with Cheryl's ex-husband Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini, who is also attending the annual film festival.
Just a few weeks ago, Cheryl denied allegations that she had an affair with Liam prior to filing for divorce from her ex-husband, definitively labelling the accusations as "false".


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Self-Realization Fellowship Glendale Temple observes the following occasions each year with a commemorative service preceded by a period of meditation. It is customary to bring a flower symbolizing devotion, and a monetary offering as a tribute to the SRF line of gurus and their teachings.
The service usually starts at 6:30 PM with meditation, followed by the commemorative service at 8:00 PM. (Saturday and Sunday meditations begin at 5:00 PM.)
Jan 5 - Birthday of Paramahansa Yogananda (1893)
Mar 7 - Mahasamadhi of Paramahansa Yogananda (1952)
Mar 9 - Mahasamadhi of Sri Yukteswar (1936)
May 10 - Birthday of Sri Yukteswar (1855)
Jul 25 - Mahavatar Babaji Commemoration Day
Aug 17 - Janmashtami (birth of Bhagavan Krishna)
Sep 26 - Mahasamadhi of Lahiri Mahasaya (1895)
Sep 30 - Birthday of Lahiri Mahasaya (1828)
Self-Realization Fellowship Glendale Temple also observes the following occasions:
Mar/Apr - Easter Sunday Service
December 24 - Christmas Eve Service
3rd Saturday in December - All-Day Christmas Meditation
December 31 - New Year's Eve Meditation
(Please note that Commemorative and Special Services dates may be subject to change on a yearly basis, check our home page for updated information)


text: Enclume Premier and Décor products are hand wrought by skilled craftsmen on traditional French metal- forming equipment at our factory in Port Hadlock, WA. We inspect for quality after every step of the manufacturing process. Each piece is then hand wrapped ensuring that you receive our product in pristine condition. You can't find a better cookware rack at any price!


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Redemption Bible Church is a new church in Bonney Lake, Washington.
We believe that God has placed us in this community to share the good news that Jesus Christ redeems us from our brokenness, and gives us new life together.
As a Bible church, we are committed to the message of God's Word. We desire to live in a way that shows the life-transforming power of the Bible working in and through us.
Each Sunday, we meet at Donald Eismann Elementary in the new community of Tehaleh. For more information about our service times, or to find out more about Redemption, the links below will help you get started.


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Sibo is walking along the path from the Arabic school, her tablet tucked under her arm. Her skirt drags on the ground, keeping her slow and clumsy, but then she spots us sitting outside so she starts to run. She crashes through the corrugate gate, whips off her veil and jumps up onto the bantaba. The only teeth left at the moment are on the sides, and she knows this makes her look like a monster, so she grins and growls and grabs her sister who screams and smacks her. Sibo's hair is clumped and unbraided and she's feeling the urge to dance in a way that makes her head move side to side, opposite her eyes, which look at everything and nothing while she keeps a beat by smacking her tongue. Then she drops herself heavily onto my lap, pawing at my book with a surprising sense of entitlement, gets bored with it and looks to me for more inspiration, which I'm stunned I could possibly provide. I just laugh a little. "You came?" I ask.
"I'm back," she says.
Bampha the crazy boy is heading to Soma. He's got a rope tied around his waist that bunches up his oversized, grimy t-shirt, and this weird little bottle hanging around his neck. He looks like he might be auditioning for a part in Robinhood, Prince of Lower River Region. We see this boy everywhere. We don't know where he lives, but everyone talks to him and everyone knows him. He has a charm that people revere, even as they make fun of him for being unwell. The last time I saw Bampha, someone had asked him to prove that he knew how to count. I found him walking alone on the road; he was up to 85. Today I'm with my host mother, she asks him why he's going to Soma, he says to visit someone. She's pleased because he says it like it's official business. Far behind us is the truly crazy guy, the one who sleeps in an abandoned colonial building in a pile of glass and guano. Even he is the harmless kind of madman, but his zombie walk is disconcerting and people keep away except the occasional person who will light his cigarette for him. Two pretty girls are in the road, and they want to talk to Bampha, so he stops to flirt as we continue. I hear their little chatter but then Bampha shoots past us. "What's wrong?" my mother asks him.
"A crazy man is coming!"
The girls are breathless from laughter, and even Bampha seems to get the joke, because he smiles the next time he looks back at the lumbering man behind us. But he keeps on running and I think I see him shrug as if to say, "Well, this is my role here. I don't want to disappoint," as he charges along towards Soma.


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Add some sparkle to your iPhone 4 with these super cute glitter iPhone 4 cases featuring a shiny pink bow with center rhinestone details. What we particularly like about these cases is the glitter is smooth and on the back only with a clear trim around the sides which makes it shiny cute and still comfortable to hold and use.
Love it or return it in 30 Day. No questions asked!
We try our best to ensure you are getting what you want
Watch our video reviews to get the best overview of the product
Review our descriptions and check the images
and if you don't love it, returning your unused product is easy.


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Luxury Dog Clothing For Different Occasions at Dog Boutiques
The concept of the pampered pet is hardly new. The Roman Emperor Caligula kept his horse Incitatus in a marble stable, giving it purple robes and its own slaves, while Lord Byron's dog Boatswain was even made the subject of one of Byron's poems. However, as the American pet care industry has grown to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue in recent decades, wealthy pet owners (especially those who own dogs) have begun to search for more and more lavish ways to cosset their pooches not just giving them dog's Vitamins and select which is good to eat enough. It was in such an environment that a new genre of a pet store, dog boutiques, was born.
Dog boutiques, within the pet care industry, can be described as any store catering specifically to opulent or expensive dog merchandise and services. Most offer a wide array of typical dog products, jazzed up to suit a choosier consumer base: organic or hand-baked dog treats, designer collars, and clothing (including tuxedos, ballroom gowns, and evening wear), jewelry and beds. Some boutiques might also feature specialty grooming, anesthesia-free teeth cleaning, or dog boarding services, all at a premium price.
While most dog boutique center in a community may be expensive, a select few offer services in the range of only the most exclusive clientele. Pendants and tags, crafted from diamond and white gold, can run into the tens-of-thousands of dollars. Other in-house amenities can also command high prices: an hour-long massage at New York City dog boutique Ritzy Canine Carriage House costs $60, while a night in the Presidential Suite at the same establishment will run an owner $175. Some boutiques, such as Far Fetched Acres of New York, will even pick lucky pooches up and transport them to a country ranch for the duration of their boarding time.
Considering the high prices charged by many such businesses, and the money spent annually on products have often been argued to be extraneous, the rising popularity of dog boutiques has come under criticism by some who claim such stores to be unnecessary and excessive luxuries. In contrast, proponents claim that dogs are no less deserving of pampering as humans are and that owners have every right to indulge their pets if they are financially capable, with dog boutiques providing a primary means. Regardless of the opposing arguments, however, there is no trend in the pet industry that suggests that owners are growing any less willing to treat their dogs to exclusive goods and services, indicating that dog boutiques, at least for the time being, are here to stay.
Dog boutique center in a community, the help of expensive dog collars and leashes owners can give a distinct look to their loving dogs. Nowadays, some exclusive boutiques present a great collection of expensive dog collars studded with diamond or other precious stones providing a royal look to doggies wearing them. People also have the option to buy leather collars and leashes made of exclusive leather (crocodile leather, snake leather or ostrich leather).
In summary, online dog boutiques provide a comprehensive solution to all essential, luxury and fashion needs of doggies. By offering various designer dog fashion stuff at one place they are making life easier for dog owners.


text:
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We stand behind our work and are open to pay-for-performance agreements. Contact us to find out more.


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The 36-year-old woman was arrested on Monday on suspicion of concealing a birth after members of the public said she had been at the end of her pregnancy at that time.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Dunne said: "She is somebody who we believe may have given birth and at this stage we can't locate that baby, so we needed to ask her about her baby."
She was taken to a south London police station and subsequently detained for a period of four weeks under the Mental Health Act.
DNA tests are currently being carried out to see if the woman is any relation to the child whose remains were found.
Police were called to the area around Doctor Johnson Avenue on the Common on September 10 following reports that human remains had been found by a member of the public.
It is understood the body parts were discovered in a bin by private contractor who was collecting rubbish in the area.
A post-mortem examination revealed that the remains appeared to be those of a newborn baby that had been born in the previous two weeks.
No cause of death could be identified however and police were also unable to say whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
Tooting Bec Common, which is located in an area popular with young families, was cordoned off while forensic officers conducted a large search of the area.
Police sniffer dogs were also deployed around the perimeter of the depot, which is surrounded by hedges.
At the time of the discovery a spokesman for Wandsworth Council, which operates the park, said: "We know that there has been a discovery in Tooting Bec and that the police believe that they are the remains of a baby.
"One of the contractors who works for our parks maintenance service Fountain, which is responsible for keeping the common spic and span, discovered what they thought were human remains this morning.
"They called the police at 8am immediately after they made the discovery, and that is what the police are investigating now."
"We are doing all we can to support the police in their investigation and to help out in any way we possibly can."


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Ann Hartley took this photo of Colne with Pendle Hill in the background in early October.
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George Manyathela was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 1963, and trained at Mzilikazi Craft Centre. In 1986 after finishing his training, he began mass-producing pottery items. From there he moved to Harare, where he worked at Simba Pottery and latter at Terracotta Pots. He came to South ... read moreView all pieces by George Manyathela
Fiko was born in Estcourt in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands and in 2000, and at the age of 17, completed her education at the Sisatina School in Loskop where her mother lives. Two years later one of Ardmore's painters, Mbusi Mfuphi, organised for her to meet Fée ... read moreView all pieces by Fiko Mfuphi