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Growth Strategies and Sales Channels Outside of Amazon (And Whether You Should Use Them or Not)January 17, 2018 in Blog
We all know that Amazon is THE place to sell. I have steadily seen my Amazon sales go from around 25% in 2013 to all the way up to 90% today. However, there remain a lot of powerful sales channels outside of Amazon. Some of these channels, such as your own website, can be used simply to support your conversion rates on Amazon. Others, like Walmart, are simply a bet on future growth. And finally, there are a number of niche dependent sales channels like Etsy, Houzz and even eBay Motors, which can result in very strong sales if your product assortment matches those channels' target market.
In this article I give a summary of the most important sales channels outside of Amazon to help you diversify your sales and give some basic guidance on whether you should be using these sales channels or not.
A Quick Summary of Other Sales Channels and Whether You Need to Consider Them
The other sales channels we're going to cover in this article are as follows:
- Your own website, specifically your Shopify store
- Other Amazon marketplaces, including Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.jp
- Walmart/Jet.com
- eBay and eBay Motors
- Houzz
- Etsy
- Craigslist and Local
- Wholesale
The big question you need to ask yourself before you explore other sales channels is whether or not you even should explore other sales channels. The alternative is, of course, focusing strictly on Amazon. Mike and I had an interesting debate on the podcast last year about this very topic, Should You Go All in on Amazon or Not?
I previously ran a business that went from having Amazon account for 30% of our sales in 2013 to 67% in 2016. My current business will likely have Amazon account for over 90% of my sales for the foreseeable future. I cannot imagine many ecommerce niches where Amazon will not be at least 50% of their sales and, in most cases, over 70% of sales.
The problem with pursuing other sales channels is that they will extract a disproportionate amount of your time. Managing/growing Amazon sales and product development should almost always be your key tasks and you want to be certain that launching another sales channel that will only move the needle a small amount will not take much of your time away from these activities. If you've maximized your Amazon sales and product development or you have a staff member that can profitably manage these other sales channels then expansion makes sense. In all other cases, it should be carefully considered.
Your Own Website
Who should be selling here? Everyone, especially Amazon sellers.
Everyone needs to have their own website. Even if you're an Amazon-only seller you need a website for one reason: it establishes credibility for your brand and will help your conversion rate on Amazon. Most of us have probably heard that Amazon now surpasses Google as the place people begin their product searches on. However, even when consumers have found what they're looking for on Amazon, 70% of them will still look on other ecommerce sites before purchasing. So if somebody is on my Bryanto Garlic Press Amazon listing, there's a good chance they're going to go and search Google for Bryanto Garlic Press and you want your website to come up when they do this. Having a snazzy website will do one of two things: it will either re-affirm the customer's intent to buy your product on Amazon or they will buy directly on your website.
I have run websites on multiple platforms, including OS Commerce and Magento. There is no doubt, in my mind, that the best platform for the vast majority of sellers is Shopify (and they're Canadian so they have to be good!). You can setup a very professional looking ecommerce store for $40/month in a couple of hours. The alternative to opening a shopify store, if you really want to do things on the cheap, would be to setup a simple WordPress site which you could host for well under $5 a month.
Other Amazon Market Places (i.e. Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk)
Who should be selling here? Those looking for the biggest sales boost albeit for the most work.
The sales channels that arguably have the highest probability of earning the highest growth for your ecommerce company are other Amazon marketplaces, specifically Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. We have excellent guides on selling in Europe and selling in Canada which you should check out if you're serious about getting started here. Very roughly speaking, Amazon.ca can reasonably expect to give a 10% boost to your sales. Germany and the UK can both give similar growth numbers.
International Amazon marketplaces are very much unique sales channels. Organic rankings happen largely independently of one another, seller feedback is kept separate (which often means any policy violation suspensions happen independently), and ASIN metrics are kept separate for the most part (which again means any ASIN suspensions happen independently).
The downside with selling in international marketplaces, which is also why they're still lucrative, is that it's probably the most difficult growth channel of all those listed here. You can list an item on eBay or Houzz within a couple of hours but selling in Canada or Europe is going to take you days, if not weeks.
All of the Amazon marketplaces charge similar referral fees as Amazon.com (15% of sales on average). FBA fees vary widely, often significantly higher than Amazon.com which is something you want to take into consideration in your pricing.
Who should be selling here? Those selling general consumer goods looking for small single digit growth but looking to the future.
Walmart doesn't reveal what its ecommerce sales are but analysts estimate Walmart's ecommerce sales to be about 3% of their revenues, which would put their ecommerce revenues at a minimum of $15 billion. In comparison, this would be about double eBay's revenues but just 12% of Amazon's revenues. Walmart is not as reliant on third party sellers and so third party sellers may only make up a small percentage of this already relatively small number.
Anecdotally, I hear a lot of ecommerce sellers reporting that Walmart is becoming more and more significant, but I've yet to talk to a single seller who has Walmart making up more than 10% of their sales. The real reason to start selling on Walmart is betting on the future. Walmart's ecommerce sales continue to grow at nearly 40%. They also recently bought Jet.com and other high profile ecommerce sites and there's solid reason to believe their ecommerce sales will only continue to grow.
Walmart's referral fees vary even more than Amazon's depending on the category but average out to around 15%.
eBay and eBay Motors
Who should be selling here? Any with products that can be sold on eBay Motors, cheap commodity type electronics.
eBay? What is this, 1999?
You may be surprised to know that eBay still is a relevant sales channel for many niches. eBay is now only about 5% the size of Amazon (compared to nearly 10% five years ago). However, certain categories are strong on eBay, specifically eBay motors. I know a number of people running automotive based businesses (any vehicle parts, be it consumer vehicles, recreational vehicles, or industrial vehicles), myself now included in this list, and eBay Motors is still a very significant part of all of our businesses, albeit a very small fraction of Amazon.
For cheaper commodity type electronics, i.e. phone accessories, electrical components, etc. eBay is also very strong.
I also did a a longer article on why you need to be selling on eBay that has a lot of other useful information.
eBay charges a 10% referral fee plus PayPal fees (2-3%) plus your own fulfillment.
Who should be selling here? Anyone selling household products, especially decor.
Houzz has probably occupied a tab in your web browser at some point in your life, probably between a tab for Ikea and Pottery Barn. If you don't sell household items, specifically decor, Houzz will probably never be anything more than inspiration for your next kitchen reno. But if you do sell household decor, Houzz should rival Amazon for a percentage of your sales.
Houzz is a private company and their revenue numbers are private. However, they report 40 million active monthly users and almost anyone in the home decor niche reports huge sales from Houzz. As an example, a friend working at a San Francisco venture funded home decor startup (with 7 figure monthly revenue) reports Houzz is nearly 40% of their sales. Another friend selling borders and wallpaper reports similar sales.
If you're unfamiliar with Houzz, Houzz is a bit like a blend between Pinterest and Facebook. More or less, users post or browse photos of areas around the house (i.e. living rooms, kitchens, patios) for inspiration. Products in that photograph are tagged with the products presented in it or similar products are advertised.
Houzz typically takes a 20% commission on sales and sellers are responsible for shipping everything.
Who should be selling here? Anyone selling fashion products, handmade products, craft supplies.
To sell on Etsy you have to be selling handmade, vintage, or a craft supplies. This is going to eliminate the vast majority of private label sellers, however, Etsy is pretty liberal in their interpretation of "handmade". If you search for wooden watches on Etsy, you'll see that the vast majority have parts largely from China, if you don't believe me. This liberal interpretation opens the doors to a lot of sellers. Handmade leather belts from China? Pretty much any jewelry made in your pick of cheap Asian country? All of these would likely be permissible for sale on Etsy. If you sell any craft supplies, whether or not there is even a hint of handmade, those are allowed as well.
Overall, Etsy has been struggling to find a balance between being profitable and sticking to it's handmade roots. As one million dollar former Etsy seller described to me, "Etsy is doomed."
Of all the sales channels, Etsy takes one of the smallest referral percentages: $0.20 per listing and 3.5% of sales.
Craigslist and Local
Who should sell here? High margin or high priced items.
This gets slightly outside of the boundaries of ecommerce but there are still a ton of people making a killing off of selling their products locally through websites like Craigslist, Kijiji, and other similar local classified and auction sites.
The big advantage to selling on Craigslist is that there is no cost; the downside is there is a heavy time cost. Subsequently, selling items locally favors items with high dollar margins. If you're selling an item for $10, it doesn't matter if you're making 90% profit margin on it – you're still only making $9 profit; However, if you're selling an item for $250 that you have a cost of $100 on then the math starts to make more sense. Imagine the math on this hypothetical $250 item:
Amazon: $250 – $100 cost – $37.50 selling fee – ~$20 FBA Fee – ~$10 inbound FBA fee = $82.50 profit
Craigslist: $250 selling price – $100 cost = $150 profit
Your profit margin is nearly doubled.
For all of my brands, I've always sold thousands of dollars' worth of products a year through Craigslist, not necessarily deliberately but rather because stock would always end up at my home or office (trade show leftovers, samples, returns, etc). However, I know multiple people who are deliberate with their local sales strategy and make mid-high five figure incomes selling exclusively locally.
Plus, Craigslist is free to sell on.
Wholesale and B2B
Who should sell here? Those with a strong differentiated brand.
For my previous company I chased the unicorn of wholesale sales for years. For some reason, in my head I always felt like my business wasn't real if all of my sales came from ecommerce. I spent countless time pursuing this. I developed a wholesale section of our website, I developed product catalogs, and cold-called customers. At the end of the day, my company did no more than $10,000 in sales from B2B customers (out of nearly $2million).
The problem was that my company sold a largely undifferentiated product. For undifferentiated private label products, all of the major retailers work directly with factories in China or through large distributors. This left only small retail customers who would only purchase in very small quantities.
For those with a strongly differentiated product (this often means you have a patent) wholesale is a very credible path to pursue. It gives you an avenue to diversify away from ecommerce sales, which is always a good thing, and margins may be stronger. The downside is that managing wholesale B2B customers is almost like running an entirely separate business as it requires a whole different skill set.
Wholesale customers typically expect to receive a 50% discount off the retail price of an item.
That's a summary of the other sales channels you should consider for your ecommerce business outside of Amazon.
There's no doubt that for almost any ecommerce business, Amazon will be the bulk of the lemon for most people. Selling on other sales channels is, more or less, tantamount to trying to squeeze the lemon just a little bit harder for a few more sales. Those few more drops of revenue may or may not be worth the extra effort depending what stage your business is in.
Are you selling on any other sales channels outside of the ones I mentioned above? Do you have any questions about any of the sales channels I mentioned here? If so, comment below.
Dave Bryant has been importing from China for over 10 years and has started numerous product brands. He sold his multi-million dollar ecommerce business in 2016 and create another 7-figure business within 18 months. He's also a former Amazon warehouse employee of one week.


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As Presbyterians increasingly face legal and other issues around providing welcome and hospitality to immigrants, the Immigration Office of the Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has released a new resource for congregations titled, "Welcome and the Law."
General Assembly Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson, II, has issued a letter to the church, commending the new resource. "I extend to you the invitation to discern how you might be called to accompany your neighbors," he writes. "[This resource] will help begin to answer questions you have about the law and help guide your discernment. Please know that I am praying alongside you as you discern with your congregation or larger community about how God is guiding you to respond."
"Welcome and the Law" addresses legal statutes governing encouraging, inducing, or bringing undocumented immigrants into the United States; transporting and harboring undocumented immigrants within the U.S.; and providing employment or employment services to undocumented immigrants.
It also outlines undocumented immigrant and churches behavior protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The full text of Nelson's letter:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Loving our neighbors has always been a radical idea, and one we need constant reminder to realize. In their time of strife and living in fear, what is required of us when 11 million of our neighbors are at risk of deportation? In this time and place, how are we being called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God?[1] This letter is for you, the church, as you discern God's call.
Many of our neighbors who are at risk of deportation have been in the United States for years, sometimes being here longer than in their native country. Many are our classmates, are our children's classmates, are our co-workers, are our parishioners, are session members, are part of the very core of our communities. In these times, when their lives, family ties, and livelihoods are being threatened, we have an opportunity and responsibility to understand and respond to the fear and anxiety of our neighbors. Our neighbors traveled to a foreign land in search of protection, safety, and opportunity, and not in a selfish act, but one done to help their family and community. The Psalmist says in Psalm 23:6, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." The Lord has not forsaken them, but has offered us the opportunity to engage with and become aware of the larger family of God and extend God's goodness and mercy. It is a privilege that our sisters and brothers live among us, teaching us that the world is richer than we can ever perceive and that God's love is larger than we can ever imagine. We are reminded that in a community, we are required to care for one another. If one part suffers, then we all suffer, but when we lift each other up, we celebrate.[2]
As a fellow member of the Presbyterian church, I extend to you the invitation to discern how you might be called to accompany your neighbors. Many of you are already calling and wanting to know what the law says about your plan of action and what are your rights. The denomination has created a new resource; one that will help begin to answer questions you have about the law and help guide your discernment. Please know that I am praying alongside you as you discern with your congregation or larger community about how God is guiding you to respond. And as you think about how you may radically love your neighbor in their time of need, know the denominational offices will be holding you up. Share your stories of response and action so we can share with the larger body. Inform us of the hurting and the celebration. Together, we can inspire change. Along this journey, when we "learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, [and] plead for the widow,"[3] we become the beacons of God's light that burns brighter when we are all a part of God's work and witness.
In Christ,
The Reverend Dr. J. Hebert Nelson, II
Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
[1] Micah 6:8
[2] 1 Corinthians 12:26
[3] Isaiah 1:17
Please click here to download the "Welcome and the law" resource.

subset: commoncrawl


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Interesting post here by Ron Miller about a proposed movie called Pentizel, which never got beyond a synopsis and a bunch of concept art.
Reading about it, this paragraph struck me, and made me think the movie would've been wicked awesome:
The reporter does eventually catch up with Pentizel…only to discover she's a great deal more than he or anyone else has bargained for. And not the least of his discoveries is that Pentizel has been manipulating Omninet and her creators as much as they have her…
It's like discovering that Frankenstein's monster has a rather clever scheme of his own. And is also a hot naked babe. And… wait, this is also sounding like shlock.
Looked at from a slightly different angle, the project was a bunch of male geeks with one more sf dystopia, with the usual Nature Is Best atavism presented with more than the usual sexualization. (That really is a beautiful image up there, but the poor panther-girl is holding what must be a terribly uncomfortable pose. It's intended to suggest a cat's crouch, I guess, but a crouch is preparation for a leap. The girl could hardly jump from that pose, or do anything else– it's preparation for nothing.)
Just as there's only one real robot story, there's generally only one Sexy Female Assassin story. And not much more than one Evil Dystopian Corporation story.
I don't think anyone actually sets out to make a schlock movie. Everyone would really like to make something awesome. The thing is, there's always so much to do for a movie that people lose track of whether it's actually awesome or not. It's not that hard to get some great concept sketches, not even that hard to get great characters, great actors, and some great action sequences. All these involve technical skills, and you can pretty much buy whatever you can afford. Plus you have to keep everyone busy, so you have them work on the pictures and the sets and the action sequences and figure it'll all work out when you have a final script.
But you can't buy a killer plot. You should be able to– lots of people love to write, and you can get a new script in a month if you want one. But a really amazing script is a rare beast. Most blockbusters get by merely with having everything else really well done. (Blade Runner is the Robot Story with stunning set direction.) And if some things aren't so well done– well, with a mediocre script and other mediocre elements, you end up with shlock, without ever intending to.
Now, I'm not slagging this project in particular– maybe it'd be the exception. But really, don't we kind of know how the above paragraph would turn out?
- Reporter tracks catgirl down. There may be a fight. There will certainly be some making love.
- Catgirl shows reporter some even more gruesome things his employer is up to.
- They resolve to Fight the System.
- They fail. Optional: Catgirl is caught and tied up, has to be rescued.
- They have a daring new plan that requires a lot of climbing up scaffolding, sneaking through labs, clawing henchmen, blowing up enormous things, and finally doing some sort of spectacular violence on the final boss.
It's an OK plot, but again, whether the movie is Batman Begins or Aeon Flux depends mostly on how good the non-plot elements are.
Anyway, that's enough for now as I've got an awesome idea for a movie. Don't want to put in too many spoilers, but it's going to have fantastic cityscapes, beautiful and deadly girls, and horrific monsters. All in the same movie!


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Content is king, and D&A takes great care with the written word. Writing & editing are services that not all graphics businesses provide, and few have D&A's experience and knowledge when it comes to concise and clear writing, grammar, punctuation, and other complex and often neglected details of written communication.
Combined with his own educational background, Mark Deshon has learned the craft from working for ten years alongside an editor and then working for another 12 years independently editing a variety of documents and writing short articles to be published online.
Editorial examples
Writing examples
"Mind-boggling milestone reached," on Creek Road Runners blog, January 27, 2017
"Giving thanks in Newark—a definite hint of 'silver'," on BikeDE.org blog, November 24, 2015
"Integral infrastructure: Broadband project will help drive economic development," in Southern Delaware, University of Delaware, Spring 2010, p. 57 (PDF)
"Four education alumnae are White House guests," in UDaily, University of Delaware, Jan. 15, 2010
"Kyle Sonnenberg: MPA alum returns to Delaware as Newark City Manager," in Public Management, ICMA Press, December 2009, p. 24 (PDF)
Creative writing samples from Mark Deshon's personal blog:
• "A look back…35 years ago today"
• "I used to like to draw"
• "Litigiousness"


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Zwingli, Huldreich: Education of a Reformer
Zwingli received a thorough classical education in Basel, Bern, and Vienna, and was considerably influenced by the humanist precepts of Erasmus. His devotion to learning and his passion for individual freedom, developed through contact with the self-governing Swiss cantons, were important influences in his life. In 1506 he was ordained and appointed pastor of Glarus; he also served (1513, 1515) as chaplain to Swiss mercenaries in Italy. In 1516 he became people's vicar at Einsiedeln. While there Zwingli began to formulate the ideas that were to lead him to renounce the church of Rome.
Unlike Martin Luther , Zwingli experienced no acute religious crisis—he became a reformer through his studies. Later he was to adopt Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone, but Zwingli's independent study of Scriptures had already led him to question the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. When he became vicar at the Grossmünster of Zürich in 1518 he found the democratic institutions of the community amenable to his beliefs. In 1519 he successfully opposed the dispensing of indulgences in the city and soon was preaching against clerical celibacy, monasticism, and many other church practices.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Protestant Christianity: Biographies


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13 comments:
- AnonymousNovember 25, 2008 at 12:57 PM
I hope you feel better!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 25, 2008 at 12:58 PM
I hope you feel better soon, Chris!ReplyDelete
We are just getting over some sort of cold, cough, ick here again for the umpteenth time. Seems like everyone has been sick since school started. UGH!
Take care and rest up!
- AnonymousNovember 25, 2008 at 12:59 PM
Awww, hope you have some good light reading to keep you company and that you're feeling better soon.ReplyDelete
Get well soon!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 25, 2008 at 4:01 PM
Feel better soon!ReplyDelete
I am right there with you. I've been fighting on a wicked cold/sinus infection thing for what feels like weeks. It won't go away!ReplyDelete
Feel well soon!
- AnonymousNovember 25, 2008 at 4:17 PM
That's no fun! I hope you feel better soon - and that you're able to exjoy Thanksgiving.ReplyDelete
Oh dear - I hope you'll feel better soon!ReplyDelete
Get well soon!ReplyDelete
Diary of an Eccentric
Hey other Chris...that's just awful! I hope you get better soon! Read lots of good books and drink lots of good tea in the mean time ;)ReplyDelete
I hope you are feeling better. I just saw your post on the Classics Club site. Take care of yourself. I had pneumonia about 1 year ago, and it sucked!!ReplyDelete
Hope you feel better soon!ReplyDelete
Thanks for visiting! Please leave a comment. I've disabled Anonymous comments since I've had a barrage of Anon spam lately. Sorry about that.
Also, if you leave a legit comment but it contains a spammy link, it will not be published.


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Fort Lauderdale, Florida--Salon franchise haircolorxpress International Inc. has signed leases to open five salons throughout Florida. In addition, the company has executed franchise agreements for three of the five locations. --Thorp & Co.


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Archive for December 2008
[NON BLOG] Happy New Year!
I'd like to wish everyone reading this a happy and safe New Year's Eve and a prosperous 2009.
[LINK] "Charles Dickens: Father Christmas"
Over in today's National Post, Robert Fulford has an article ("Charles Dickens: Father Christmas") in which he talks at length about the role played by Charles Dickens in defining modern Christmas.
I was talking the other day with Philip Allingham of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., an expert on this subject since he wrote his PhD dissertation on dramatic versions of Dickens' Christmas books. He sees the great accomplishment of Dickens as a work of rediscovery. Celebration of Christmas having been a mainly rural practice for a long time, it lost its hold on the British public early in the 19th century as they moved into cities.
Separated from their specific regional cultures, they abandoned many of their ceremonies, including Christmas parties.
As I understand Allingham, Dickens, through his writings, invented a kind of national Christmas, based on tradition and the "Christmas spirit" his characters did or did not embody. A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, "fixed our image of the holiday season as one of wind, ice, and snow without" and "piping hot turkey and family cheer within." It was Dickens' idealized recollection of Christmas. England embraced his memories and from England they spread around the world. They formed into an institution that proved durable even among people who had lost their Christian faith and in countries (Japan a striking example) where Christians were a small minority.
Katherine Ashenburg, recently the author of The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, also wrote her PhD dissertation on Dickens and Christmas. As she sees it, the image of Christmas in Dickens steadily darkens over the years. At the beginning it provides him with a symbol of the communal life and a demonstration of the way people should be treated. But as he grows older, angrier and more pessimistic, his Christmas stories increasingly reflect his feelings about how badly the poor are treated by those with money and power. He reflected what Victorians called "the hungry Forties," when a drop in trade and bad harvests led to widespread misery.
All this found a way into the Christmas stories, along with surprising elements like alcoholism and adultery. There were many prickles on Dickens' holly, as an English critic, D.L. Murray, wrote. Dickens has often been accused of preaching a philosophy of sugar plums and draughts of punch, plastered with sentimentality. But he really believed, Murray says, "that salvation could be found only in realistic acceptance of life as a whole with an unembittered spirit."
[BRIEF NOTE] Europe's pioneering internationalization of GLBT rights
The fact that France, backed by the European Union and with broad support not passed without notice.
An unprecedented declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality won the support of 66 countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, but opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia and other "deplorable acts."
The United States refused to support the nonbinding measure, as did Russia, China, the Roman Catholic Church and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Holy See's observer mission issued a statement saying that the declaration "challenges existing human rights norms."
The declaration, sponsored by France with broad support in Europe and Latin America, condemned human rights violations based on homophobia, saying such measures run counter to the universal declaration of human rights.
"How can we tolerate the fact that people are stoned, hanged, decapitated and tortured only because of their sexual orientation?" said Rama Yade, the French state secretary for human rights, noting that homosexuality is banned in nearly 80 countries and subject to the death penalty in at least six.
France decided to use the format of a declaration because it did not have the support for an official resolution. Read out by Ambassador Jorge Argüello of Argentina, the declaration was the first on gay rights read in the 192-member General Assembly itself.
Although laws against homosexuality are concentrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, more than one speaker addressing a separate conference on the declaration noted that the laws stemmed as much from the British colonial past as from religion or tradition.
Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, speaking by video telephone, said that just like apartheid laws that criminalized sexual relations between different races, laws against homosexuality "are increasingly becoming recognized as anachronistic and as inconsistent both with international law and with traditional values of dignity, inclusion and respect for all."
It's not surprising that the Europeans have taken the lead in globalizing the GLBT rights dossier, since of all of the regions of the world it's Europe that was the first to regionalize these issues. Numerous progresses have been achieved by the now-defunct European Commission on Human Rights, a body of the Council of Europe since assimilated into the European Court of Human Rights.
The ECHR began to form on November 4, 1950 when the Council approved the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This document became the first international legal instrument to safeguard human rights.
The Convention contains articles that establish a right to life, a ban on torture, the outlawing of slavery, a right to liberty, minimum protections for those charged with a crime, a right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. Article 12 established the right to marry for men and women according to national laws.
These rights did not expressly include the freedom to be queer. However, several of the provisions, notably the right to privacy, have been interpreted in a manner that gives protection to gay men and lesbians.
To ensure the observance of the Convention, the member nations established the ECHR and a European Court of Human Rights on September 18, 1959. The ECHR received applications alleging violations of the Convention. Applications could come from nations, but most came from individuals unable to find satisfaction within their national legal systems.
The ECHR accepted cases only after all domestic remedies had been exhausted and within a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken. It charged no fees and did not require a plaintiff to hire an attorney.
The Commission either attempted to achieve a friendly settlement, issued an opinion on whether a breach of the Convention had taken place, or referred a case to the Court. Only the Court had the ability to reach judicial decisions.
The ECHR acted only when it received a petition. Throughout its history, it received relatively few requests for assistance. In the 1980s, queers became more aggressive about pursuing justice and the ECHR began to move.
In 1981, a gay man named Jeffrey Dudgeon asked the ECHR to decriminalize homosexual relationships in Northern Ireland. He charged that the Irish ban violated a person's right to privacy, contrary to the Convention. Dudgeon won. His victory forced the British government in Northern Ireland to legalize homosexuality in 1982.
The next successful gay rights ECHR case also involved the decriminalization of same-sex sodomy. In 1988, David Norris persuaded the ECHR to rule that the Republic of Ireland's prohibition of all homosexual acts was illegal.
Considering the strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, it is doubtful that homosexual relations would have become legal in that country without the intervention of the ECHR.
While it protected adult gays, the ECHR hesitated to allow minors the right to practice homosexuality. In 1983, British teenager Richard Desmond became the first person to take the United Kingdom to the ECHR over Britain's age of consent laws.
Unable to broker a compromise, the ECHR sent the Desmond case to the European Court of Human Rights. Desmond lost. The Court deferred to the right of each member state to fix its own minimum age for homosexual contact. It ruled that each nation was entitled to take into account the "moral interests and welfare of young people."
By 1997, the social climate in Europe had become friendlier to gays. Euan Sutherland, another British gay youth, attempted to use the ECHR to overturn the British age of consent.
Sutherland argued that the difference between the heterosexual and homosexual ages of consent affected his enjoyment of his human rights. He charged that Britain had violated the Convention with a discriminatory law that infringed upon his right to respect for a private life.
Sutherland won his case. The Commission became the first international body to recognize an adolescent male's homosexuality.
As the news report quoted above goes on to make clear, the regionalization of human rights norms goes both ways.
The opposing statement read in the General Assembly, supported by nearly 60 nations, rejected the idea that sexual orientation was a matter of genetic coding. The statement, led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said the effort threatened to undermine the international framework of human rights by trying to normalize pedophilia, among other acts.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference also failed in a last-minute attempt to alter a formal resolution that Sweden sponsored condemning summary executions. It sought to have the words "sexual orientation" deleted as one of the central reasons for such killings.
[BRIEF NOTE] What do Tatar military units mean?
I've long been interested in the self-governing Russian Republic of Tatarstan's slow consolidation as a non-sovereign nation-state, but this report from Windows on Eurasia suggests that something rather remarkable is now happening.
The Russian defense ministry and the Republic of Tatarstan have agreed on an experimental program to set up military units consisting only of draftees from Tatarstan, a measure Moscow officials say would help eliminate ethnic crime within the Russian army but a step some analysts suggest could lead to the fragmentation of that military force.
The joint decision to create "national Tatar units" on a trial basis in Orenburg and Samara oblasts was taken after human rights activists and families of draftees visited the Tots Garrison where an ethnic Tatar recently fled from his unit because of the mistreatment he received from soldiers of other ethnic groups (www.rbcdaily.ru/2008/12/22/focus/395812).
While the creation of such units could reduce the amount of "dedovshchina" as such mistreatment is commonly called, it creates "a very bad precedent," according to retired general Leonid Ivashov of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, because now other groups will want the same treatment, a trend that would undermine military cohesion and the chain of command.
That view is certain to be shared by many in the Russian political elite, but senior officials in the defense ministry appear likely to support the creation of such national units given the problems they have faced from the Soldiers' Mothers Committee and even appeals to the European Court of Human Rights.
In tsarist times, units complected on an ethnic basis were a commonplace, with the so-called "Savage Division" consisting of units made up of various Caucasian nationalities only the most famous because of the willingness of its commanders to defend the tsar and the tsarist system when almost no one else would.
But in the Soviet period, such units were permitted only during the complicated days of the Russian Civil War (1918-1922) and then again during World War II (1941-1945), when the regime was prepared to make compromises with the population in the name of saving the communist system.
Since 1991, many non-Russian groups, led by the Tatars, have called for the establishment of ethnically based units, not only to end the mistreatment many of their soldiers currently experience in the army but also to generate a sense of national pride and to prevent the army from becoming a "russianizing" experience.
Moscow has resisted such a step until now, and this "experiment" may prove stillborn, although having allowed the announce to be made and with the defense ministry having indicated that it supports the measure, the Russian government may well face resistance to any retreat on this line even as it is certain to face demands for such units from other ethnic groups.
Perhaps the first of these additional demands will come from Chechnya, where the republic's president Ramzan Kadyrov has already said that he favors the formation of Chechen units not only within the borders of his own republic but in the Russian army and fleet more generally.
The alarmism strikes me as potentially overwrought. Here in Canada, the Royal 22e Régiment was founded during the First World War and maintained thereafter as an explicitly Francophone military unit within an Anglophone Canadian Armed Forces, so far doing so without complicating Canadian political and military life in the slightest. Some Québec separatists have talked of making the `Van Doos`the nucleus of an independent Québec's military, but that talk`s the consequence of a preexisting movement. If I'm correct in thinking that there isn't a separatist movement of note in Tatarstan, then I would be inclined to bet that Russia has nothing to fear from Tatar military units. Chechnya, now, is a different story.
[LINK] "Dear Sweetheart"
For the past few weeks, The Globe and Mail has been publishing, blog-format, a series of letters sent by a Canadian Second World War to his wife.
It was the Second World War. A million young Canadians were marching off to risk their lives. One of them, David K. Hazzard, was separated from his beloved wife Audrey, but soon found a way to fight the loneliness – with his pen.
He wrote hundreds of letters, beginning each the same way – 'Dear Sweetheart.' They are a riveting account of what he went through.
How did he cope without Audrey and his two young daughters? How did they cope without him? In the weeks ahead, the series Dear Sweetheart will publish new letters daily. In the end, their story is our story.
We tell it as a homage to those who died, the 180,000 veterans who survive, their children, their grandchildren – and Canada's fighting families today.
The whole section, featuring letters from other people involved in the story of David and Audrey, is well worth reading.
[FORUM] What do you think about cloning Neanderthals?
The Neanderthals–classified either as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis or Homo neanderthalensis, depending on the classifier's view of their proximity to Homo sapiens sapiens–has entered the news recently, as the Neanderthal Genome Project' publication of the Neanderthal genome has hit. John Hawks provides an excellent overview
Keeping that in mind, the human-Neandertal difference is startlingly close to this human-human difference measurement. The Neandertal is only 10 percent more different from the draft human genome than these two human sequences are from each other.
It seems very likely that we will find pairs of living human populations where the average genetic divergence is older — maybe much older — than this human-Neandertal divergence. For instance, it seems almost certain that the great genetic variability among living African groups will exceed this human-Neandertal difference.
Some geneticists have noted that European and Asian populations seem to be a genetic "subset" of African populations, at least for many genetic loci. With these kinds of numbers, it looks like Neandertals may be a subset of living human diversity in the same sense. I've never much liked that formulation, because "subset" is never really an accurate description of the genetic relationships. But if the seat of living human diversity is Africa, adding Neandertals to the mix may not change that pattern at all.
As Green and colleagues note, most of the genetic divergence between humans and Neandertals, and between humans and other living humans, is actually much older than the divergence of these populations from each other.
The possibility that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens interbred can't be ruled out–genes may have flowed between the two populations, in one or both ways, before the Neanderthals' apparent extinction more than twenty thousand years ago.
If we end up developing a sample Neanderthal genome, the rather startling possibility arises of producing cloned Neanderthals. Why not, if the technology exists for people (jaded billionaires?) to produce clones of the woolly mammoth for their chic estates in Alaska and Finnish Lapland? There would be at least some passable scientific reasons for cloning Neanderthals–Stephen Strauss argued last year that cloned Neanderthals could demonstrate abilities that would confirm or deny our readings of their archeological record.
Being able to figure out whether Neanderthals were quasi-human by looking at strings of genes strikes me as likely as unreliable as trying to figure out their language, marriage, hunting, music, art and habits by looking at their fossilized bones.
Again, I repeat we have to see how the total biological machine works. And I don't see how one is going to do that without making one or two or five or some bigger number of Neanderthals. Then we let the clones loose and see what living Neanderthals do.
Yes, yes, I know this doesn't account for any putative Neanderthal culture.
If they passed on axe-making tips or told firepit tales of the valour of Ug-Luk the Magnificent, we aren't going to be able to exactly recreate that.
But we can nurse them to adulthood, try to teach them survival skills, a language and then let them do for themselves. We can bring them back from extinction limbo and let them make a life.
However imperfect this is, it undoubtedly would lift our understanding of the Neanderthals out of its present slough of ignorance.
Against this are the massive ethical issues identified last month by William Saletan in Slate. The terribly fragile constraints applied against human cloning and genetic engineering seem to be strictly limited to Homo sapiens sapiens, not to another human species.
As this uncomfortable reality of the past becomes a future prospect—transitional creatures between human and nonhuman—the "human dignity" framework starts to look a bit shaky. George Church, a leading geneticist, suggests (in Wade's paraphrase) that scientists could "modify not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee," bringing it "close enough to that of Neanderthals, [with] the embryo brought to term in a chimpanzee." No human clones or products involved. At least, no "modern" humans. This leaves the question of whether we're entitled to mess around in the lab with "another human species." But it's hard to see how the bishops and other religious critics of biotechnology can plunge into this area, having drawn a tight moral line around our species.
If we do this Church's way, I don't see how conservatives can object. They didn't object last year when scientists announced the cloning of rhesus macaque embryos. That, too, was the creation of nonhuman primate life. Follow the human lineage three branches beyond the primate order, and the rhesus macaques are still with us. Follow the human line two more branches, and the chimps are still with us. One more branch, and you're down to us and the Neanderthals. If it's OK to clone a macaque and a chimp, it's pretty hard to explain why, at that last fork in the road, you're forbidden to clone a Neanderthal.
Is the idea repugnant? Absolutely. But that's not because we'd be defacing humanity. It's because we'd be looking at it.
The idea of cloning Neanderthals appeals to me on a few levels. The audacity of the technological achievement impresses me and the possible benefits to science of having living Neanderthals might be worth considering, the project's major appeal to me consisting of the possibility of bringing another human species back from the void tens of thousands of years after our lot wiped them out. Equally, the idea appalls me: I very much doubt that the social and legal frameworks necessary to protect Neanderthals from a gratuitously powerful civilization exist, what with them being technically non-human and all. The possibility that, one day in the not too distant future, there might be a race of human beings deemed "soulless" or some such thing by at least some of the relevant authorities, terrifies me.
What do you think about the idea?


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All Issues > Volume 31, Issue 5
The Lord's favorite subject is the cross. However, we naturally don't understand His message of the cross (Mk 9:32). Moreover, we are afraid of the cross (Mk 9:32). Therefore, we don't want to understand Jesus regarding the cross. We will not even question Him about it (Mk 9:32) but merely talk about something else — like ourselves. However, Jesus will question us if we won't question Him. He'll ask us: "What were you discussing?" (Mk 9:33) We may fall silent because we are ashamed of ourselves and our preoccupation with ourselves (see Mk 9:34). This shame and guilt can be the beginning of our repentance, of the restoration of our communication with Jesus, and of our acceptance of the way of the cross.
I invite you to look at a crucifix or a picture of Jesus on the cross for at least one minute a day for nine days. God will give you the grace to speak of nothing but the cross (1 Cor 2:2) and boast of nothing but the cross (Gal 6:14). You will find joy (see Col 1:24) in carrying the crosses of being persecuted, giving forgiveness, doing penance, making sacrifices, fasting, serving, loving enemies, choosing poverty, making commitments, and loving your vocation. Fix your eyes on Christ crucified.


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Market Update
The numbers are in
Two months in a row we've seen double digit increases when compared to the previous year. Inventory also has been a big topic lately.
While inventory doesn't historically increase until April, we reversed four consecutive months of decreasing inventory when 2,044 homes were on the market in January.
Now here's something all this data doesn't quite say. Right now, I have multiple buyers waiting to buy and sellers waiting to sell. My next blog will encourage you not to wait, but rather to beat the rush.
But now, back to your monthly numbers!
While sales historically drop when the calendar rolls over and January hits, this year they went up, however so did the days on market. This is odd, however with only one month of higher-than anticipated days on market, it's too soon to suggest any sort of a trend. We'll keep you posted as future data points present themselves.
Up and Down Update
- Single family home sales increased 10% when compared to January 2013.
- Days on market! In January, homes were on the market for 70 days, compared to 59 in December and 53 last January.
- The 99 new home sales created a 27% increase from January 2013.
- Existing home sales, at 309, were up 6%.
- Total sales were up 29% over December's (reversing typical trends).
- Distressed sales, at 12%, were up 2% from last month, but down 13 % from last year (not to be mistaken for distressed inventory/listings).
- The median home price, at $208,190, was up 12% from January 2013.
- Inventory was up slightly, showing 4.2 months and 2,044 homes in January.
- Down payments were up. More buyers are puttin more than 20% down.
- Pending short sales, however pending REOs went up.
- Distressed inventory went down 1% between December and January, 2014.
- Sales to first time buyers decreased to 31% in 2013.
- Home building dipped in January according to the Department of Commerce. That makes sense. Brrr!
- The Fed's monthly bond purhcases, which push down longer-term interest rates, according to KTVB.
Thank you to the Ada County Association of Realtors for providing these wonderful numbers! Check back next month for more on my interpretation and vantage point.
Your Local Boise Real Estate Professional


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BCLC seeks real estate advisory for Kamloops head office02/05/2016
BCLC has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a real estate advisor in order to determine a long-term solution to improve our head office in Kamloops.
The current head office is over 50 years old and many of its mechanical, electrical and structural components are original to the building. These components are aging and will ultimately need to be replaced.
Given this, BCLC will be seeking the advice of a real estate advisory to help determine the most cost-effective solution for the long-term benefit of our employees and business.
The successful proponent will assist BCLC in a review and planning of our office space requirements in Kamloops. This will include completing a needs assessment and the development of a business case to ultimately determine the most efficient and cost effective solution that will service us in the long-term.
The head office houses our customer support call center, data centre, information technology and finance functions along with a significant portion of our security, human resources and executive team. BCLC also has a marketing and sales office in Vancouver, which it will continue to maintain.
More information about the RFP can be found on BC Bid here.
The RFP will close on May 19, 2016.
Posted in: information bulletin, news article, media release, bclc corporate


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Here are 6 country songs that speak about time marching on from the angle of reflection, love, recommendation, and guidance. After we're young, it can be arduous to take heed to mom and dad, but typically times, the tales and lessons they had been making an attempt to precise to us have been right. Origin Investments spotted a chance final yr to purchase a 125-unit house advanced, they jumped on it. The property's location, in Virginia-Highland, an affluent Atlanta neighborhood that is residence to natural outlets, cocktail bars, and an indie movie theater, was great. Yet Episcope and Scherer had an issue. They reckoned it would take about $19 million in fairness to purchase the constructing and an adjoining undeveloped lot, but they wished to speculate only $12 million. Their resolution was considerably novel: As an alternative of bringing in a partner, Origin introduced in dozens of them.
If you happen to do not want to live in a small multi-unit building, you might additionally hire out a basement or garage house. I have a good friend who rents his basement part-time utilizing AirBnB and pays his entire house's mortgage. Individuals resident in territories other than the UK should consult their skilled advisers as to whether or not they require any governmental or different consent or want to observe any formalities to enable them to spend money on SREIT.
Some rental revenue was payed but once more this month no payment made. I used to be as an alternative requested to alter the currency due to issue of paying in USD. One month they get it sorted out the next the bank not pays in USD, which for me is unconceivable as most operations worldwide are carried out in USD. No matter subject they might have it is up to them to fix it. On my contract it is clearly acknowledged that the cost can be accomplished in USD and on the 23rd of the month.
I'm in a pickle. I could also be required to purchase Life Insurance (courtroom ordered) to guard the Navy Retirement payments to my former spouse. The ultimate divorce decree required $one hundred thirty,000 Life Insurance (with the previous spouse as beneficiary). In 2001 and I purchased a 10-term policy which has now expired. I discontinued the coverage when it got here to 'Term' as a result of the premium was to increase from $a hundred and sixty/mo to $1160/mo – and subsequently I can be held in contempt and compelled to apply for extra protection now.
There are various ways for investors to put their cash in MLPs. A type of ways is through ETF, or Trade-Traded Fund, MLPs. Exchange-traded funds are marketable securities that monitor indexes, reminiscent of commodities, bonds, or index funds. In distinction to mutual funds, ETFs trade on the stock change. A well-liked form of investing is through a type of Change Traded Products referred to as an Trade Traded Fund (ETF). Exchange Traded Funds are shares that comply with a benchmark, which in this case is the spot value of the precious metals minus expenses related to metals storage and management fees.


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The women and men who run small independent presses, often on a frayed shoestring, know in their bones that poetry is necessary if underappreciated cultural work — that poetry, even when it's snubbed by the broader culture, has no expiration date. Here are reviews of several recent collections that demonstrate how poetry survives, even thrives, in the high-def seas of the mass media.
By Luljeta Lleshanaku
Translated by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi
93 pages; New Directions; $13.95.
Luljeta Lleshanaku grew up under house arrest in totalitarian Albania. Born in 1968, she wasn't allowed to go to college or publish her poetry until the early 1990s, after the Communist government fell. But her gentle poems are subtle and rarely polemical, as they dwell on her past.
Twilit melancholy suffuses her Albania, where "Soft rain falls like apostrophes in a conversation between two worlds," family trees are "struck down by a bolt of lightning," and most days echo with "a gray metallic loneliness." These details coalesce to paint the Albania of her internal exile and, in the end, we feel blessed that Ms. Lleshanaku has invited us to "the takeoffs and landings/on the runway of her soul."
By Lightsey Darst
82 pages; Coffee House Press; $16.
In her dark but beautiful first book, Lightsey Darst seems determined to save all of the restless and reckless girls of her youth. "Find the girl in time and she doesn't/wind up in the newspaper with her feet/photographed bare sticking out from under/a rhododendron bush," she writes in "[Methods. listen]."
This is a vital poetry of the Deep South — Ms. Darst grew up in Tallahassee, Fla. — ripe with bones, blood and bogs, Snow Whites, Gretels and debutantes all stirred into a harrowing stew of lust, dusk and summer. Girls here are innocent prey. Ms. Darst writes, "everyone sprayed White Rain hearts on walls/and lit them." It's clear that her heart is still on fire.
By Brian Turner
93 pages; Alice James Books. $16.95.
For Brian Turner the war in Iraq just won't stay put. He was an infantry team leader there for a year, in 2003-4, and he is no longer in the Army, but the war still stalks him. In "At Lowe's Home Improvement Center," nails tumbling to the floor remind him of firing pins from M-4s and M-16s. In "Perimeter Watch" he is back home, if not at ease, in America, but "Snipers traverse the skyline/from the neighbor's rooftop" and "Through Venetian blinds/I see the Iraqi prisoners in that dank cell at Firebase Eagle/staring back at me."
Mr. Turner's poems can be too prosy, but we need his bracing "bullet-borne language" as he tries to reconcile the chaos of Iraq with the demands of the poetic line.
By Polina Barskova
Editor and coordinating translator, Ilya Kaminsky
33 pages; Tupelo Press. $11.95.
Poetry is a constant conversation that resonates throughout the babel of millenniums, and one of small presses' crucial tasks is publishing translations of little-known foreign poets — poets like Polina Barskova, born in Leningrad in 1976. Her words flicker — strange, elegant — a Russian evanescence. Heat lightning pulses between her lines.
"I will be a handful of smoke/Over this, lost, Moscow," she writes in "Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova During the Fire of Moscow," and in "Moscow": "The emptied hills, the government buildings,/Whispers abrupt and evil."
And when she cries, "I will try to live on earth without you," the reader wonders whether she isn't pining for Russia, which she abandoned for America at the age of 20, rather than a lost love.
By Kostas Anagnopoulos; 79 pages;
Ugly Duckling Presse; $15.
Kostas Anagnopoulos's poetry spasms with the random spontaneity of our fractured age of texts, Tweets, micro-media-bites. It's either trying to tap into the vertiginous e-ether or trying to escape it. Maybe Mr. Anagnopoulos is not even sure himself, as he writes in the title poem, "Each word framed in time or scattered." His off-kilter poems spark and crackle as non sequiturs run amok, as in this irresistible image from "Interior": "No open house tonight, but the squirrels are still making their rounds with their fruit baskets."
Mr. Anagnopoulos is engaging — the hyperverbal guy who closes your neighborhood bar — and zips us from nano-moment to nano-moment. These poems aren't closed systems but seem to be seeking an iPad or a Droid to infiltrate. After all, he writes, "Logical places exist in illogical books."
By Benjamin Alire Sáenz
123 pages; Copper Canyon Press; $16.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz writes 18 practical (and often lyrical) meditations in this collection on life in the literal desert: "Always carry water. This, too, is serious business." But he's concerned too with another, figurative, desert: life in America. "Have you noticed that some people don't give/A damn and just keep on shopping?" he writes in "Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon."
A former Roman Catholic priest who worked with Mother Teresa, he seems to come by his populist anger naturally. It's clear that he prefers the desert of mesquite, cactus and arroyos to dry and unquestioned cultural pieties. Referring to "Hamlet," he writes, "Do you know how many literary critics love that play more than they love people?"
By Pattiann Rogers
Unnumbered; Brooding Heron Press; $100 (plus $6 postage).
Brooding Heron Press has been publishing poetry by heavyweights like Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov and Jane Hirshfield for nearly 30 years in editions as finely wrought as the poems themselves. Type is hand set, and these pages of thick Domestic Etching stock were fed through a treadle-operated 1920 C&P platen press.
The poems are good too. Pattiann Rogers is a razor-eyed nature poet, and each poem here feels like a prayer, whether she's unveiling the cryptic scriptures of sidewinders, or reveling in "nothing louder than one wilted thread of sunflower gold dropping to a lower leaf." When she asks, "What is it living in these lines?" we know that it's the poet herself. ("Summer's Company" can be ordered from: Brooding Heron Press & Bindery, 101 Bookmonger Road, Box 29, Waldron, Wash. 98297.)


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Wills and Trusts: Attorney Michael Parnas
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The main advantages of trusts is that they allow you to put conditions on how assets are distributed after your death, reduce gift and estate taxes, avoid the delay and cost of probate court and protect assets from lawsuits and creditors. From special needs trusts and generation-skipping trusts to irrevocable life insurance trusts and qualified terminable interest property trusts, attorney Michael Parnas assists clients in setting up the best trusts for their individual circumstances.
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If you're considering estate planning or are facing the probate process, turn to attorney Michael Parnas for legal guidance and assistance. He'll ensure that you've got all your ducks lined up in a row and that the probate process runs smoothly.


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There is a note that you can now register for RootsTech 2016, but I will be doing a post on that on my Genealogy's Star blog and so I will only mention it here.
Some of the new developments on the FamilySearch.org website would probably go entirely unnoticed if it were not for these announcements. Not that they aren't helpful or needed or whatever, but they are rather obscure. The first note is about the fact that they added a date to a printed family group record or a pedigree chart. That is always helpful, but since I don't print stuff off, I probably would not have noticed.
Feedback for Auto-Indexed Records
This particular addition to the FamilySearch.org website is a good step towards improving the accuracy of the searches. Essentially, FamilySearch has added the ability to tell through feedback, when a Record Hint is inaccurate. I didn't have any trouble finding a record hint and I also had no trouble finding one that was in error. Look for the tab to report the error at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, I couldn't give a screenshot example because FamilySearch.org is not working while I was writing this post.I could not see the suggested record hints, but I could tell that they were in error. For example, 1901 England and Wales Census when my ancestor was living in Utah. Further unfortunately, people keep adding this record and as a source without looking at the other sources of the information in the details that clearly show the ancestor living in Beaver, Beaver, Utah in 1901.
Memories: The People Page Now Has a Help Tray
FamilySearch is adding a Tips Icon at the bottom of many of the pages on the website. They have extended this feature to the Memories section. The People Page now has a help tray.
all you have to do, is click on the tips lightbulb.
Feedback for the Recently Improved 110-Year Rule Request Permission Form
This is another change you would only have seen if you used the 110 Year Rule Request Permission Form. Here is what they have to say:
In August, What's New on FamilySearch announced that the form to request permission to perform ordinances for people born in the last 110 years was improved. People had been confused by some of the questions on the old form and were having their request rejected because they weren't filling out the form correctly. Many areas have sent feedback that the new form is much easier to understand.FamilySearch also indicates that there will be making the ability to change relationships much easier in the future. It looks like this will be a very helpful addition. For details, please review the blog post. There are several other developments mentioned in the blog post. Some of these I have already mentioned in previous posts such as the ability to directly search Partner websites from a person's detail page.They also indicate that the Memories page will be redesigned.
Personalized Home Page
Research indicates that about 25% of the users have been introduced to the Personalized Home Page. I've had this for some time, but I must admit that I don't spend a lot of time looking at it since I am usually going to a section of the website directly. However, I certainly find it more appropriate and useful than the old design. Right now, if you have the Personalized Home Page, you can opt out.
Mobile Apps: Record Hinting and Manage Relationships
FamilySearch is announcing a major upgrade to the Mobile Apps. Here is their description:
If you are using a mobile app and there are record hints for people in your pedigree lists, you will see a blue icon (the same as the web icon) on the person's details header. Click the icon to see the list of record hints.
You will be able to see that an ancestor has a possible record to review. You can attach the record as a source. If you find new ancestors in the record, you can add them to the tree. In the future, we will provide a feature that will expand the list of persons with hints.
The ability to edit, delete, or remove spouse relationships or parent and child relationships using the mobile apps is coming.I always think that it is very risky to announce programming changes in advance since no timetable is specified. During the past year or so there have been multiple announcements about the implementation of a new indexing program for FamilySearch apparently they are still having problems implementing such a program.
Portions of FamilySearch.org Will Soon Be Available in 42 Languages
Here is the explanation of what this entails:
The following portions of FamilySearch.org will soon be available in 42 languages: the start page and booklet tool for the My Family: Stories that Bring Us Together booklet; log in; create and manage an account; and the Temple section.
Many Church members who want to participate in family history work don't speak one of the ten languages currently supported by FamilySearch.org. There isn't enough budget to translate the entire site, so we selected pages that would allow members to create an account and log in, enter their family into Family Tree, and reserve their family names to take to the temple.
If users have selected a preferred language, the sections that are available in 42 languages will display in the user's preferred language. If the user has not selected a preferred language, the system will detect the language of the browser and display the sections in the appropriate language.
To help users recognize those portions of the website that have not been translated into 42 languages, we left the header and footer for those sections in just the ten languages.There seems to be a major push towards internationalization of FamilySearch and of the websites. I am guessing that is significant amount of their resources are going into broadening the reach of the website. We will probably see development such as this occurring with more frequency in the future.
There are also references to increased access to the My Family booklet and the War of 1812 Campaign. More on these later.


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Udacity Partners with Translation Company Amara
While the reach of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) is already global the content has been limited to English speaking countries, however that might change. Udacity has partnered with crowd-sourced translation service Amara to provide subtitles for more than 5,500 of the company's education videos, reported Forbes.
While Amara isn't the first group or organization to translate some of Udacity's videos—at least 90% of the company's content has at least one translated subtitle , it is the largest. The current policy has left translation to interested parties—the Colombian Ministry of Information Technology recently announced a plan to translate one of Udacity's entrepreneurship classes into Spanish.
The Udacity partnership follows a similar move by MOOC leader Coursera who signed an agreement with Amara in August.
Follow Alex Wukman on Twitter @AlexWukmanCMN


text: Críticas 'Stephen Ellcock, you are pretty much the light of my life at the moment.' Sarah Perry | 'What you are doing is incredible and important.' John Lurie | 'Stephen, whoever you are ... I love every picture you've posted. Everyone should follow you.' Jerry Saltz Reseña del editor Stephen Ellcock has an international following who avidly await his daily Facebook and Instagram uploads and his carefully curated and sequenced albums of images. His selections of little known and public domain imagery are uplifting and entertaining, drawing thousands of shares and comments. Now, taking his title from the first ever encyclopedia in the English language All Good Things (Omne Bonum), Ellcock's new compendium of art and photography inspired by both the natural world and human endeavour will appeal both to his digital followers and our image-focused, solace-seeking times. All Good Things is structured to evoke the medieval tradition of exquisite, illuminated books - beginning with the universal and travelling through the realms of sky, sea, earth, science and humanity before ending amongst the angels and monsters that have so preoccupied artists over the centuries. Using found artwork from archives, libraries and little-known collections of art, illustration, photography and textiles, this is a glorious adventure; one that can be appreciated on many levels. Ver Descripción del producto


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Filed under: Air fresheners, air purifier, apartment odor, auto odors, bad smell in office fridge, basement odor, boat odors, book odor, Car odors, cigarette odor, closet odor, condo odor, cooking odor, cottage odor, cottage smells, dead mouse in wall, dead mouse odor, dead mouse smell, deodorizer, diaper pail odor, dog odor, dorm room odors, eco friendly, fish odor, footware odor, freezer odors, fridge and freezer odor, Fridge It, garlic odor, get rid of babies diaper pail odor, green cleaning, home has odor, innofresh odor absorbers, mouse smell in wall, musty closet odor, Natural odor absorber, Naturally activated charcoal odor absorbers, odor absorber, Odor Absorbers, Odor eliminators, office odor, pet odors, refrigerator odor, sneaker odors | Tags: Air fresheners, apartment odor, best odor removers, closet odor, closet stinks, condo odor, cottage odor, cottage smells, diaper pail odor, eco friendly, eco friendly houses, Five top ways to remove odors, Fridge It, green cleaning, house odor, house odors, Naturally Activated Charcoal Odor Absorber, Odor eliminators, sneaker odors
Finding ways to eliminating odors naturally for Eco friendly houses is a big topic these days. It does not matter if you are living in a house, cottage, apartment, condo or dorm, odor problems are a real part of your living. It also does not matter if you live in the city, a small town or in the country. You will experience some type of odor problem. It might be from your closest, a pet, cooking, baby diapers, fridge, freezer, sneakers or a dead mouse that died in your wall. When odors come, they must go. When it get noticeable those odors need to go fast.
You can spend a lot of money and time checking out different types of products such as sprays, plug ins, diffusers to eliminate or cover odors and keep your home smelling fresh. These types of solutions are temporarily by masking the odor with fragrance, rather than actually getting rid of the smell or odor. You need an odor absorber.
When you want to get rid of the odors in your home, check this out. Use a Fridge It Odor Absorber in each room and closet. Fragrance free and non toxic. Use will notice the difference immediately. If the odor persists then you must do cleaning at source of the odor, such as a spills or cleaning clothes. litter tray or closets will need to be done.
Check out the Innofresh web site for all sorts of odor absorbing advice and tips.
Filed under: Air fresheners, air purifier, auto odors, bad tasting ice, Car odors, cooking, deodorizer, Economy, fish odor, foot odors, freezer odors, Fridge It, garbage odors, gerbil odor, gym bag odors, home has odor, how to, Ice machine smells, innofresh odor absorbers, musty smell, My dresser has a smell, Naturally activated charcoal odor absorbers, Odor Absorbers, Odor eliminators, odors, pet odors, Purple Cube, refrigerator, refrigerator odor, refrigerator smells, smells, sneaker odors, Uncategorized, Visor Fresh | Tags: Air fresheners, auto air freshener, bad tasting ice, camping odor, Car odors, cleaning, closet odor, Economic troubles, family, freezer smells bad, Fridge It, Get rid of pet odors in the air, get rid smoke from camp fire in sleeping bags, gym bag smells, health, musty smell, Natural shoe odor absorber, Naturally Activated Charcoal Odor Absorber, odor control, refrigerator odor, remove boy smell from room, sneaker odors, Where can I get Fridge It that I bought at Wal-mart
Perhaps we all have gone home to spend less money, to watch the new fall line up or just try to cut back from the go go of the past 8 years. What I have noticed for the past few weeks is we are staying close to home, we are eating as a family at family meals, unheard of… at least at our house.
I have developed an urge to clean and sort and gain control back in my life. If I cannot control the economics around me than I can do something to control what is around me, which is clutter and odor.
With that urge to clean comes odors that I have not encounterd in a long time. I have cleaned closets with the need to get rid of the musty smell, kitchen cabinets to get rid of the smell of the wood that has always bothered me. The trash can, it needed a good washing and a change of odor absorber. I have cleaned out the refrigerator, and freezer and added a new charcoal odor absorber to neutralize the odors. I have cleaned the camping equipment and placed them away for the season with odor absorbers to help absorb the fire smell from our last camp out.
I sorted out the excesses of clothes that the kids have outgrown, that my waist line has out grown, or that I bought and never wore and now think it was a waste. I have aired out my closets, but more space to let the odors absorbers work in the closets.
I have washed my car and cleaned the inside, getting a new lilac scented air freshener for the car. My husband likes fragrance free, so he got an auto odor eliminator.
I have cleaned out the pet crabs cage and the crab still smells, so I am back to 4 pet odor absorbers that keep the critters world and mine smelling clean.
I have cleaned my summer shoes and sneakers and placed a charcoal foot odor absorber for each shoe, so it will be fresh smelling all winter and when I need them again.
I have teen age sons with "boy smell' issues, I guess they had not been around much, but now I have added a larger sized odor absorber in each of their rooms and bathroom. I cleaned out their gym bags and put new odor absorbers in each bag.
I guess if I cannot control the economic troubles these days, I can sure get rid of my clutter and odors, that I chose to ignore and now are front and center. In these times I can control odor in my home and with my odor absorbers keeping my house and fairly odor free… I am home…and home smells good.
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Summer turns to fall, then winter and putting away your summer clothes in your closet and the change over of your clothes each season is your annual ritual. Due to this process you start to notice things about your closet. How your closet smells and what kind of closet odor and odor removal you need gets more attention. Yes, it is a good idea to use a closet odor absorber year round and change it 3 times per year.
Closet odor can be easily eliminated with an activated charcoal odor absorber like Innofresh odor eliminators. Why do you have closet smells and odors and how do you need to get them under control? The other question is do you want to neutralize the odor so it is fragrance free, or you want to add a scent and use an air freshener to be more what you had in mind.
You contribute to closet odor by adding moth balls, clothes you have worn and hung, footwear, coats or by placing things on the top shelves in musty card board boxes. Add what you have on the floor in the closet like shoes, sneakers and add the odor from the shoes on the shoe rack or the shoes and purses just thrown into the bottom of the closet, all add to the odor problem. Add in tightly packed clothes on hangers that are not allowed to air out and then shut them in a small sealed room and you will have closet odor.
Thus you need to have a three zone approach. One to three absorbers for top shelf items, place one in each box or bag. The hanger area, you need to allow some air flow, so unjamming the clothes is a must and hang an odor absorber to prevent odor transfer. On the bottom of the closet get the foot odor absorbers for each shoe that can be placed into the shoes that are not worn, to absorber the odors. If you use the closet as most do as your catch all for sports equipment, ect, then be sure to place a larger activated charcoal refrigerator odor absorber like a Fridge It cube in on the floor, to grab odors. Figure one Fridge It charcoal odor absorber can help a 6′ x 6′ area, if there is good air flow. If not, you need more and segment them per zone in your closet for odor control and odor elimination. No one wants a smelly closest, so an naturally activated charcoal odor absorber will do the job nicely. So yes it is a good idea of use a closet odor absorber over a air-freshener. Air fresheners will not remove te odor, just add a scent to all your clothes.
Fridge It is a naturally activated charcoal odor absorber that absorbs refrigerator and freezer odors, It can keep your ice maker smelling great and ice tasting fresh. Fridge It is a purple cube that last up to 6 months. it is also great for under the sink, near trash containers, storage closets, garages, RV and Boats.
If you have more question you can get info from the web site at: www.innofresh.com the makers of Fridge It and Innofresh odor absorbers.
Filed under: Air fresheners, air purifier, auto odors, bad tasting ice, book has odor, cat odor, dead mouse smell, deodorizer, dog odor, dorm room odors, foot odors, Forclosed homes have a odor, Fridge It, home has odor, innofresh odor absorbers, mold smell, musty smell, Naturally activated charcoal odor absorbers, Odor Absorbers, Odor eliminators, odors, pet odors, Purple Cube, smells, smelly purse, sneaker odors, Uncategorized | Tags: Air fresheners, closet odor, closet stinks, Fridge It, How to remove odors, innofresh products, linen odor, linens smell, natural ways to remove smells from room, Naturally Activated Charcoal Odor Absorber, Odor Absorbers, Odor eliminator, odors, pet smells in closet, remove odors, something died in my closet
Closets are an eco system all in themselves. Odors, stinks and smells come in many levels and many kinds. There are the odors from clothes, books and boxes that are stacked on the shelves. There are the shoes on the floor all emitting odor. Add a laundry bag with smelly clothes ready to be washed or just dumped on the ground stacking up.
There is the smell of moth balls if you have or had a moth issue. The smells of old things, like your mothers favorite purse or mink stole or your stash of memories from high school that has the smell of metal taste in your month.
Add in the boxes and boxes of photos and keep sakes, and your ski or sports equipment all crammed into the back corner and the list goes on and on as to what will cause odor in your closets… you will have an odor problem.
There are also the linen closet smells, such as pillows that are past their throw out date. Smells from blankets that you keep avoiding washing. They can smell like grandma perfume or her bad breath. Yuck!
The smell of towels that might have been folded too soon after being washed and have a mildew smell.
There is the closet smell from the pet that has gone to the bathroom in the closet or the mouse who has died in the closet or in the wall. It all adds up to adding levels of stink, odor, terrible smells and bad whiffs.
The lucky thing is a closet is a small space that is able to be closed, so odor elimination is possible. That is getting rid of the odor by taking the smell out of the air, so it does not return and leaving no other smell in its place. It is the same process as cars that have an odor issues, that a naturally activated charcoal odor absorber does the work very well. I would suggest 4 cubes for regular size closet.
It takes the smell out of air and the smell attaches to the charcoal odor eliminator, with no muss, spill or smell. Plus your linens, clothes will smell so much fresher, as well as everything else in your closet.
Before using a odor absorber like Fridge It or Innofresh odor absorber and eliminator, be sure to clean the area or the clothes so you area starting with a good base line. If it the cat has pee in the closet, clean it up, don't leave it there. If not it may take way longer.
If the issue is mold or water damage, you need to get professional help, an odor absorber will not do you much good since the problem will keep growing which is not good.
To find Fridge It or Innofresh you can contact the manufacturer by email at firstname.lastname@example.com or check the web site www.fridgeit.com for more info.


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Listings in Spas
The award-winning Scandinave Spa Blue Mountain offers the renowned Scandinavian Baths experience. Situated in a natural forest, minutes from downtown Collingwood & Blue Mountain Resort and open all year from 9 am – 9 pm (Baths open at 10 am), guests enjoy the serenity of the environment. The Baths include Finnish and Infrared Saunas, Eucalyptus Steam Room, Thermal & Nordic Waterfalls, Hot Baths, Cold Plunges & relaxation areas. Also available are Registered Massage treatments, relaxing getaway packages & an on-site bistro serving healthy local fare. Access to the Baths start at $55 (weekly "Unwind Wednesdays" only $45), Massage Treatments start at $145 for 60 minutes (includes access to the Baths). Bathing suits mandatory, guests must be 19+ years old.
iwa Spa Blue Mountain Village
Experience iwa spa Blue Mountain, located right in the Blue Mountain Village. Try our ganban~yoku suites and studio. Pamper yourself in one of our private spa suites or de-stress in our beautifully appointed massage and reflexology room.
190 Jozo Weider Blvd,
Blue Mountains, Ontario, South Georgian Bay L9Y 0V2
The Spa Georgian Bay Hotel Collingwood
Our intimate spa setting is sure to help you leave your cares behind. If your personal goal is relaxation, beautification or wellness our highly trained staff can help.
10 Vacation Inn Drive
Collingwood, Ontario, South Georgian Bay L9Y 5G4
Thornbury Laser Clinic
Thornbury Laser Clinic offers non-surgical treatments such as IPL, laser hair removal, fractional resurfacing and microblading. These treatments can improve the skin without social downtime.
78 King St. East
Thornbury, Ontario, South Georgian Bay N0H 2P0
Betty Donaher Esthetics
Temporarily Closed. Betty has worked as an esthetician in Collingwood since 1994. Former owner of rituals medical & day spa. Enjoy YonKa Facials, Pedicures Microdermabrasion, Mircocurrents treatm
441 Oak Street
Collingwood, Ontario, South Georgian Bay L9Y 2Y8
Pamperme Day Spa (Laser & Esthetics)
At Pamperme we promise to do just that - Pamper You! We offer a wide range of services and treatments that aim to bring you the ultimate in indulgence and relaxation. We encourage you to treat yourself to one of our yummy spa treatments.
25 Hurontario Street
Collingwood, Ontario, South Georgian Bay
Cedar + Sage
The only wellness centre of its kind in the Georgian Bay area to provide registered massage therapy, hot yoga and restorative float therapy to encompass a multifaceted approach to health and wellness.
Collingwood, Ontario, South Georgian Bay L9Y4H7
The Best You
Our mission at The Best You is to empower our clients with clear and accurate information about self image enhancement. To help our clients attain their personal goals by providing comprehensive medical and surgical services at reasonable prices.
10 Keith Avenue
Suite 203
Collingwood, Ontario, South Georgian Bay L9Y 0W5
Living Shore Spa
We offer a beautiful mix of sensory experiences in the Collingwood and Blue Mountain region; fusing an enchanting natural backdrop with wellness and exquisite spa services. Come see us and socialize over drinks, manicures, or a couples massage
9 Harbour Street East
Collingwood, Ontario, South Georgian Bay L9Y 5B5


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Cannes Young Lion Competition released its campaign brief last Friday night, which led aspiring filmmakers the world over to rush to make a spot for Save The Children in just 48 hours. The ones who did are now tasked with getting their videos seen and voted on, so they can jet to the south of France and collect their Lion.
Let's take a look…
Chris Leising, a writer/photographer currently working as an editor at an ad agency in Boulder, CO said he spent "every fleeting moment, devising, writing, storyboarding, visualizing, calling and texting resources, directing, shooting, editing, exporting, compressing, converting and uploading until literally like 6:00:04 pm Sunday." His video is the second from the top (or bottom, as the case may be).
The other videos featured here are from Peru's Rodolfo Torres and Shachar Aylon, a freelancer in Israel, respectively.


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Cultural Values
Cultural values are several different things which significantly influence and co-create the identity of particular areas and demonstrate the creativity and adaptation of a human kind to natural conditions. It can be priceless old knowledge related to plant production, hunting, forestry, food preparation ... to forgotten but important old buildings, technical knowledge, craft products, etc… A bunch of cultural values with development potential discovered in the SY_CULTour pilot areas are presented bellow.
Advanced Search
Results for keyword: crafts
Telve di Sopra Ethnographic Museum dedicated to the Cultural and Historical Memory – Tarcisio Trentin Collection
The Telve di Sopra Ethnographic Museum dedicated to the Cultural and Historical Memory is a collection tools used in the farm work and items referring to past traditions, conceived for tourist guided visits and as a tool for ethnographic studies.


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Barton 1792 Distillery & Visitor Center
Open year round. Tours are on the hour: Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Last tour at 3 p.m. Gift Shop open 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Tour a fully operating distillery and see the inner workings of how our award winning Bourbon is made. Each tour begins and ends in the Barton 1792 Visitor Center where guests can purchase many unique gifts and souvenirs. Tours and tastings are complimentary. All ages are welcome.
- Website: http://www.1792bourbon.com
- Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
- Phone: (502) 331-4879
- Toll Free: (866) 239-4690
Address501 Cathedral Manor
Bardstown , KY 40004