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[81, 82] Reality is abstract and non-representational. Since, however, we must still use language to communicate, Padmasambhava introduces the same idea as Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, eleven centuries later, when he says, "the map is not the territory." The map is the dpe (pé), the model, and the don (dön) is the actuality. Guenther says that the dpe is the medium, and the don, the content. [83]Guenther claims of Padmasambhava that "the presentation of us as spiritual and luminous beings and the subtle distinction between the whole's ontological and functional intentionality is unique in the history of human thinking." If true, this statement alone would make Padmasambhava one of the most important human beings in history. This distinction further relates to Padmasambhava's rejection of the absoluteness of rational thinking.
Padmasambhava's description of the relationship between the paradigm and reality's spiritual teaching (gdams-ngag) insists that we immerse ourselves in amrita. You will remember from last time that Sanskrit amrita, Pali amata (Tib. dutsi), the ecstatic drink of the rishis that is usually translated as "deathlessness" or "immortality" in the Pali Canon (it is also a divine draft that guarantees the immortality of the gods). The account is put into the mouth of "He who is utterly free from conceptual limitations," representing the Absolute Lama. He begins to explain what amrita means by referring to the symbol of the sea. All diseases are expelled, including birth and death, from him who immerses himself in the sea of amrita and drinks it (referring as I mentioned last time to the myth of the churning of the soma). The immersion in the sea of immortality's elixir is the experience that Padmasambhava calls the leap (thod rgal), a.k.a. the Vision of Light, referring to the experience of transcendence.
Guenther notes that Padmasambhava repeatedly emphasizes that he has actually had this experience. Guenther describes this experience as an "intrapsychic evolutionary process" with "three intertwining phases."
[84]Padmasambhava identifies amrita with the attainment of the spyi-ti (chi ti) experience, as well as the realization of reality, called suchness (chos-nyid), the transcendence of phenomenality (chos-can), and complete and perfect awakening. The realization of suchness means that the phenomenal is actually realized and experienced as a mirage. [85] The reality that recognizes its own illusoriness is the primordial mystery. Guenther compares Padmasambhava's idea of ontological meaningfulness to the "pre-reflective nonthematic structuring of experience" (C.O. Schrag). This is mainly concerned with functionality, process, and value, which Guenther compares to the Gnostic "pure nothing" of Basilides, Padmasambhava's negation (med [mé]; cf. Zen mu, the original non-being from which being is produced), and David Bohm's "implicate order," i.e., the probabilistic wave-function before particularity has been precipitated by the act of observation. In contrast, "representational thinking's constructs" (chos-can) corresponds to Schrag's "reflective-thematic movement," which is concerned with the process of impersonal objectification.
When we project our subjectivity (chos-can) into the world, it appears as a "malfunction," which is experienced as an "errancy," a deviation, limitation, or restriction.
[86] What is meant by "the sea of immortality's elixir," characterized by the complete transcendence of the rational faculty? Padmasambhava answers by identifying three poisons, a.k.a. traps or enemies, which (he says), must be killed by tearing out their hearts – the bloodthirstiness of the language is typical of Tantric symbolic or "twilight" language, and must be understood very carefully if one is not to be misled. Correlative to the three poisons are the three manifestations of reality, a.k.a. fortresses. The three manifestations of reality become safe by "killing" the three poisons, then one can rest in the empty dimensionality of being that is like the sky or space. Padmasambhava explains that this statement is a spiritual teaching (Guenther's "binding enunciation," gdams-ngag), in which the three traps are the three times – past, present, and future; the three enemies are awareness (Guenther's excitability/excitation, rig), thinking (yid), and attachment (sems).
The fortress consists of reality's intrinsic luminous self-manifestation (rang-snang), self-appearance (rang-bzhin), and self-liberation (rang grol), characterized by [87] autonomy, purity, and transcendence. This is the citadel of the three fore-structures of our humanity. By "killing" the three poisons and tearing out the duality of subject and object, which is the passion of the false ego, one goes to sleep in the dimensionality of reality's suchness, in which nothing arises. Padmasambhava calls us to experience the dissipation of the phenomenal (chos-can), which is itself liberation (grol-lugs). The closest one can come in language to describe this experience is that everything just "falls away."
Padmasambhava says that this liberation illuminates the diversity of phenomena with its possibilities or probabilities consisting of extension, illumination, and liberation. Extension is experienced as a profound energy, focused entirely in the present, autonomous, creative, and trans-rational. Illumination is the autonomous and persistent self-presentation of reality. [88] Self-liberation manifests in its own natural state (rang-sa) when it is neither suppressed/repressed nor sought after. Its own-being dissolves into itself when no effort is made to divide it or eliminate one or another aspect of it. Illumination is devoid of activity, agitation, or thinking, and all subjective attachments, resulting from grasping/craving, dissolve into the primordial purity (Guenther's "symbolic pregnance," ka-dag or ka-nas dag). An inner psychic process evolves into the primordial illumination of the whole, which then goes astray because of labelling, resulting in objectification.
The threefold illumination and becoming of the misinterpreted phenomenal world is due to a fundamental agitation or irritability in one's real being, which dissipates and dissolves into the energy of the whole because of non-differentiation. By letting it all go, in perfect indifference and non-attachment, the world loses its grip on us. By abandoning the subject-object duality, one cuts off the thinking ego's reification of what is only a name or a label. [89] Thus, the energy of the thinking faculty dissipates into its own-being, which is its inherent tendency towards an illumination that is intrinsically still and undisturbed. One should not entertain any thought or preconception as to one's real being. Once the habitual veils and blindfolds have been torn away, the self-existent spontaneously dissipates or dissolves into the energy of reality.
These three aspects are experienced as a unity. It is the dynamic suchness of one's real being, without the anterior instability, which leads to illumination.
The philosopher David Michael Levin nicely describes this grasping to which the Buddha, Padmasambhava and Guenther refer: "Normal perception … is inveterately grasping, as the very word itself should remind us. It is an anxiety driven, restless intentionality: a grasping of light and a grasping in the light. But such perception cannot see the whole of things, because wholeness, unlike totality, is not something that can be grasped."
The sea of immortality's elixir is the true dwelling of the whole and of us. Padmasambhava says, "by means of the destruction of thinking one is immersed in the elixir of immortality that is the universal suchness. When the phenomenal dissolves into its proper dwelling one is immersed in the elixir of immortality that is the universal dimension of meaningfulness. When one's real being dissolves into its proper dwelling, one is immersed in the universal energy." [90] The immersion in the sea of immortality's elixir, experienced as the dissipation of the constructions of representational thinking, progressively loosen their grip on the experiencer. This is the spiritual teaching of the whole.
Two aspects of this process are thus implied. First, the teacher is wholeness itself, whereas the hearer (sravaka) to whom the spiritual teaching is addressed is that self-same wholeness! It is the self-revelation of the whole as whole to the part that is still part of the whole, and thus itself. Thus, it is a true teaching. This spiritual teaching is thus a prototype of the actual experience of non-duality, in which the part and the whole are one, since there is still a trace of duality present.
The "fullness" of the elixir of the sea of immortality is indicated by but not identical with the spiritual teaching. Padmasambhava asks, "How does the oral transmission characterized by the dissipation of ignorance and the expansion of illumination that is the immersion in the sea of immortality's elixir manifest the perfection of reality?" The spiritual teaching of the whole has become an oral transmission, a silent awakening, in which the dissipation of the darkness of ignorance and the expansion of illumination manifest the invisible dynamics of reality that is its dynamism. [91] Padmasambhava says that the elixir of immortality that is autonomous and creative is the means of an awakening to the perfect heart-essence of realty. The elixir of immortality is the cause of an awakening to the profundity of our own reality in which the suchness of reality manifests as an expanse.
The elixir of immortality, identified with the energy and creativity of reality, effects an awakening that manifests the unmanifest as a prototype of our physicality infused with real meaning and value. One's mind/spirit has been a process of darkness dissipating and light expanding since time before time. It is an awakening that makes one's understanding of one's reality manifest dynamically. The Tibetan word would ordinarily be rendered as "attained the totally realized state" or, simply, perfection. Guenther's rendering appears to be etymological, based on klong (long), "spiral inward, turning place, whirlpool" + gyur (gyur), "to become, change, transform, arise."
[92] Padmasambhava presents the experiencer's drama as an allegory consisting of two movements, first describing the place and then the process.
The Place
The place is a temple, citadel, or celestial mansion. Guenther notes that this is "a symbol through which the anthropo-cosmic whole experiences itself in its [affectivity] and, in the narrower sense of the word, a symbol for the experiencer's body as lived," recalling Jung's identification of the symbol of the house with the psyche. The temple to which Padmasambhava refers is not a physical temple. Rather, it is a symbol of the energy of the whole of reality itself as pure intensity or, as Jung says, "the sensuously perceptible expression of an inner experience," i.e., an archetype. The temple is a gestalt of the absolute lucidity of meaning, qualified as sheer luminosity. The temple is, moreover, the residence of a divine/human couple, representing the binary principle of complementary duality that is the means by which the inner tension of the whole becomes self-creative. [93]
To be self-creative also implies being in search of itself, represented by Padmasambhava as a quest for a precious jewel. Padmasambhava says that the luminously radiant temple is precious, the crown jewel of the gods. It is the dwelling of the god "He whose mirror-like nature displays the sun and the moon," and [94] the goddess, "The beautiful one shining in a thousand lights," who are as it were husband and wife. [95] Together these two principles generate the whole universe in its illumination, which being interpreted are samsara and nirvana, which Padmasambhava typifies as "the greatest wonder." Guenther notes the similarity of this description to the upper plane of the threefold cosmos, but he also notes the emphasis on the human element. Guenther characterizes the god and the goddess as a myriarch (a commander of ten thousand men) and his consort or Shakti, "the sovereign mistress of the phenomenal world," but with an additional aura of sacredness, through which it is possible to establish a personal relationship with them.
The universe is their offspring and human beings are their children. Moreover, the god becomes the Little Man or Anthropos who is omniscient or, in Guenther's jargon, "all-excitation," and the real Lord of illusions, and [96] the beautiful goddess of light. Because of their non-dual union as archetypal Father and Mother, an autonomous Son is born from the archetypal Mother (matter) as an autonomous, omniscient, brilliant light. The Son resolves to discover the limits of space, but he cannot find a circumference or a centre. He cuts off all preconceptions concerning the nature of phenomenality and its dualistic interpretation as samsara and nirvana and returns to his home.
This is the whole's primary revelatory utterance: Drench yourself in the vital perfection of the energy of reality itself, which inheres non-reductively in the infinite whole. [97] Thus, the Son, Little Man, or Anthropos, finding nowhere to go, returns home, where he conceals his precious jewel. In a passage strongly suggestive of Laozi in the Tao Te Ching, without desire, he is completely satisfied. Without action, everything to be done is done. Thus, one's existential values become a reality and he understands his own immortality; expectations and apprehensions vanish. The mystery of reality is thus summarized in an allegorical formula described as the Unique Sphere, literally "the Only One," i.e., the supreme non-dual goal of self-unification.
[98] The Little Man or Anthropos protects his precious jewel or treasure from a terrible enemy, which is none other than his own ego. The ego's power and how to deal with it is dramatized in a dialogue between the quintessential feminine spiritual principle in the mode of the precious jewel and in the mode of karma or action. [99] Padmasambhava asks, "How is this enemy's vein of life cut?" The female force responds that the enemy is the five poisons, consisting of ignorance, irritability, desire, envy, and jealousy. There are 84,000 such enemies, i.e., all the various emotions. Their root is the I. Their leader is ignorance, irritation, and passion. The vein of life is cut in the causeless dimension.
Padmsambhava asks whether the cutting of the vein of life is to be understood literally, like some early followers of the Buddha who committed collective suicide [100]. The female force responds that it is not to be understood literally, but as referring to the annihilation of the notion of an I, echoing the Buddha's doctrine of anatta, "non-self-identity." Padmasambhava asks, "How is this vein of life cut?" The female force responds that it is cut by the self-caused and self-extinguished (rang-drol), assisted by infinity and the army of the uncaused, primordially pure dimension of reality. Taking the sword of transcendent insight (shes-rab), he abolishes the three traps, corresponding to the worlds of desire, form, and formlessness, in the wilderness between light and dark, in the great hall of a castle (psyche), including the searching, determining, and creating functions of the ego. Here the autonomous and luminous enemy of the I cuts the throat of the enemy with the sword of wisdom, [101] tearing out their heart with the indestructible hook of skilful means (thabs).
Thus, ignorance and egoity are destroyed, drowned in the dimension where birth and death are not, and abiding in the perfect brilliance that is reality's primordial purity. The hero or adept who spontaneously presences the truth, enjoyment, and emanation bodies, representing our spiritual identity and spiritual participation in the world, cuts the vein of life of the enemies' leader, consisting of ignorance, irritability, and desire, and kills all the other enemies, i.e., the emotions, becoming one with the autonomy, primordial purity, and "dynamic nothingness" of reality, in the dimension where there is neither intentionality nor thinking. All phenomenality, limiting and restricting the superconscious ecstatic intensity, dissolves in the immense profundity of reality's suchness (chos-nyid). He becomes the perfect nameless in which all limitations and restrictions have been annihilated.
Guenther emphasizes two terms in Padmasambhava's description: "castle" (mkhar) and "nameless" (ming-med). The nameless goes to the very heart of the problem of the human spiritual evolution. [102] By definition, the human being is "enworlded" in a human world. This problem is important for Padmasambhava since, like the Buddha, he starts with the experiencer rather than the experienced, whether an axiomatic ontology, cosmology, or theology. Human consciousness, questioning, and the formulation of answers to those questions, i.e., the act of naming, are especially significant. Padmasambhava says, "Naming is the basis of errancy," tied to the fragmented and fragmentizing activity of human thinking. Thus, rational-representational thinking sets up an obstacle that must be transcended.
Padmasambhava says, "Since the play of the proliferation of logical constructions concerning what something is supposed to be, of reality's unoriginated activity [103] in the unborn that is reality's suchness, for which in its pre-beginning there was no name, is, when fragmented by rational-representative thinking, the reason for one's errancy, this obstacle must be transcended." We are, thus, compelled to ask, "What is this absolute nothingness?" Padmasambhava responds that this nothingness is itself a symbol or sign (brda'), thus elevating the totality of the world to the level of the imaginal and the symbolic. Theoretical physicist Basarab Nicolescu says,
The symbol is a marvellous living organism which helps us read the world. It never has an ultimate or exclusive meaning. Its precision consists just in this fact, that it is capable of embracing an unlimited number of aspects of reality. We are thus obliged to accept the relativity of our way of looking at it: this relativity can be present only if the symbol is conceived of as in movement and if we ourselves experience it. Symbolism entails a decreasing entropy of language, a growing order, an augmentation of information and comprehension, as it crosses different levels of reality.
The Process
In Padmasambava's account, the journey into the unknown starts with a citadel, palatial mansion, temple, or castle. We have already alluded to Jung's identification of this archetype with the psyche. Guenther describes the castle as a private world consisting of multiple storeys in which each higher storey incorporates all the lower storeys, marking the interplay [104] between stability and flexibility and their intertwining which marks the completion phase, referring of course to the generation and completion phases or stages of Tibetan yoga. Stability is a state of mental concentration, whereas flexibility expresses itself in ritual acts, in which the generative or, in Guenther's terminology, the transformative phase (bskyed-rim) provides the specific pattern or structure and the completion phase (rdzogs-rim) provides the significance. The castle is a model of the experiencer's world as lived by him, carrying the imprint of his physical, social, and ego-logical/spiritual consciousness. The castle's Lord (bdag-po) and Lady (bdag-mo) double on the social-physical level as father (pha) and mother (ma). [105] On the imaginal-spiritual level, they double as archetypal Father (yab) and the archetypal Mother (yum), which symbolize the spirituality of the anthropic whole. Guenther describes spirituality as a self-projection, a dynamic self-manifestation that displays the binary principle of complementarity, in the archetypal images of a Father and a Mother as well as in their human representatives. Father-Mother need a third element in order to be a father and a mother. This is the child (bu), the Son, the Anthropos, or the Little Man of Light (khye'u-chung) or, in Jung's terminology, the Puer Aeternus ("eternal child").
Padmasambhava says that the storeys of the castle recapitulate the three levels of the generation stage, the completion stage, and the completeness stage, culminating in "invariant concentration" or meditation. "Completeness stage" is Guenther's translation of rdzogs-chen (dzok chen), the Great Completion, the apex of Tibetan yogic attainment. Here the Lord and the Lady, the Archetypal Father and the Archetypal Mother, both called "supremely excellent goodness," have an only child, called Precious Light, who is predisposed to illumination. However, although they own the castle, they do not possess the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel. The parents send their son to buy this precious jewel. After an arduous journey, he comes to a crossroad (so-mtshams), a boundary or threshold between light and dark, in a concealed and fertile valley, wherein lies a self-luminous precious jewel or gem. This precious gem is the most valuable thing a person can have. Padmasambhava says that this precious gem is the highest nature of mind or Buddha nature, which Guenther renders, somewhat confusingly, as "thinking's thinking" (sems-nyid) or pure reflexive sentience, the sentience of sentience itself. There the sun and the moon dispel darkness; a sword severs and thus ends one's errancy.
Despite Padmasambhava's earnest exhortation to "get possession of this inexhaustible treasure," finding this jewel is not easy. [108, 109] The Little Man of Light is exhorted by his parents to buy the Precious Jewel from a blind old woman. He is to send three mediators, who are the three modes of transcendental insight: understanding ultimate reality as ultimate reality, understanding consensual reality as consensual reality, and understanding that which unites them. The transaction is to be concluded with the aid of rational reflection on the oral transmission (lung-rigs), and paid for by renouncing the eight rational and emotional aspects of the ego, including dogmatism, egocentricity, selfishness, intentionality, desire, subjectivity, [110] longing, and ignorance. The Jewel, purchased with the knowledge of what has led to one's enworldedness, confers the realization of non-duality, especially the non-duality of samsara and nirvana, spiritual awakening and "unregenerate opinionatedness," and the ignorance of the common and educated people compared with the primordial wisdom (gnosis) of an authentic seer. Buying the Jewel means that the Self has been realized as an ongoing unfolding process that is completely non-dual and does not turn non-duality into a merely logical construction. Padmasambhava says, "Once you have completed your transaction, return home. Inside your home is the fundamental nature of existence (Chos-nyid dbyings). [111] Drink the warm drink of profound spiritual advice. Eat the delicious nectar of the profound appraisal of your wholeness. Don the robe of supreme bliss. Prepare the bed of changelessness. Curl up in the hidden nook of this changelessness, suchness. Fall deeply asleep in the perfect supreme bliss. Do not participate in the activities of the common and uneducated people who seek out distractions. Renounce all worldly responsibilities. Stay with your natural being. This is what is meant by going to sleep in the fundamental nature of reality." [112] Guenther finds echoes of this in the poem of the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, in the Gnostic Acts of Thomas, in which a prince is sent to Egypt by his father to recover a hidden treasure in the form of a pearl of great price.
The Experience
The immediacy of human experience is the symbolic mode of the whole that was already active before there was any naming, and therefore must be primordial. This "original" scenario is our pre-conceptual and pre-ontological mental state in the field of reality of the intimately felt presence which Padmasambhava describes as a temple. As real beings, we feel this mental state (or "mood") both intimately and with varying degrees of intensity. Padmasambhava says, "In a temple that is brilliant yet empty a mad craftsman gazes about and since it is entirely empty, he cannot see aught. Instantly he loses his ability to think. He loses his memory and his mind. He does not know how to see or speak. This description symbolizes what was before any naming."
[114] Guenther paraphrases/interprets this quotation, which I have paraphrased/interpreted as follows: "Divine self-realization, established in its own place, in its open void is utterly coterminous with the clear light." The Tibetan word stong (tong), lit. "void, emptiness, vacuity," Guenther translates as "openness/nothingness," which he identifies with the quantum concept of the zero-point energy of the void.
The anthropo-cosmic experience of the "original" scenario of human spiritual evolution is already represented in human terms. The luminous void is already destabilized by a figure that approximates to the Gnostic notion of a "demiurge," i.e., an artificer of the world who, in Gnosticism, is regarded as the originator of evil. [115] Thus Padmasambhava describes the cosmic craftsman, the originator of samsara, as crazy, similarly to the way the Pali Canon portrays the Brahma god.
Objectifying thinking integrates memory (dran-pa), cognition (blo), and awareness (rig-pa). These three modes of thinking constitute the ego-logical perspective per se, which cannot understand pre-personal or primordial thinking, but sees it (if it sees anything at all!) as its own incapacitation and undoing. In the radiant intensity of the whole, the ego personality must go mad! Thus, it projects its own insanity into what it sees as sanity. Instead of human spiritual evolution, modern man posits obsessive consumption, sensual satisfaction, perpetual growth, monetary success, "progress," and fake scientism as its signposts, with the results that we see.
This entire analysis forces one to realize that reality, the whole, is not perfectly symmetrical. The inherent nature of nothingness is dynamic or kinetic at its core. Otherwise, our individual self-existence would not experience the illusion of samsara, and there would literally be nothing, unconsciousness, non-entity. Illusory as it is, the potential to create that very illusoriness indicates what Padmasambhava describes as an "insanity" that is already inherent in God's own house (lha khang), the anthropic universe and its experiencers. No matter how hard we try, we cannot get rid of this essential asymmetry at the very core of creation, Blake's worm in the apple core. Deus est demon inversus – God and the devil stare at each other in the mirror. Of course, the Buddha did not posit a supreme deity but the problem remains, albeit on a far more abstract, subtle. metaphysical plane. The only possible solution is trans-dual emptiness.
The primordial scenario is represented by Padmasambhava as a temple that is a radiant void. [116] This trans-dual radiance includes duality and non-duality. Language cannot penetrate this paradox, but we can represent the processes arising out of this tension as successive creative phases of a primary intensity beginning with the ecstatic awareness that is the essence of consciousness itself. [117] Similarly, white light is divided into the primary colours and energy manifests in an infinite range of vibrations, from greater to lesser intensity. This is of course the basis of Buddhist vertical cosmology.
The temple that is the psyche is described as made of light or vibrations of energy in the five colours of the rainbow. These are the five primary forms of awareness[1] of the divine person that is the Anthropos, symbolized as a person in the form of a rainbow body (body of light) riding a horse or stallion. On one level the horse is the vital energy, the rider the self, but the true self is beyond duality and therefore beyond the duality of the horse and the rider.
[118] The transition from probability to possibility is the next phase of the process in which the infinity of wholeness enters into the finite infinity of a human being. A finite being is absorbed in their impressions. An infinite being is awake. Padmasambhava says, "The evolving anthropo-cosmic system's perturbation motility is a fast stallion ridden by a human being who is the intensification of the system's cognitive capacity, ego, and overall disposition to egocentricity. Arriving at a temple that is the system's functionality, the whole's light, and looking about, the human being saw two divine figures, one seated and immobile, and the other restless and agitated. This symbolizes the mysterious wilderness dividing the commonality into territories." Similarly, in the Pali Canon territories appeared because of the progressive degeneration of the original luminous beings who were the first human beings.
Padmasambhava says, [119] "The stallion is the evolving human's breath and the cosmic plane's fog. Riding on the stallion is a monkey person [Charles Darwin?], which symbolizes the impermanence of the whole. They arrive at the mysterious wilderness whence two paths lead, one leading up and one leading down, leading to two temples. The upward path leads to a temple that shines with a brilliant light, door wide open. The lower temple is pitch black, door also open. The upper temple is the monkey man's disposition and dimensionality of illumination. In the lower temple an egotist lives, rushing from place to place. This symbolically represents the gates through which the Primordial Awareness dawns upon the experiencer or through which he may go astray into the realm of errancy."
The moral is clear. The experiencer may enter the gate of light and return to his proper abode, or he may enter the gate of darkness and become involved in mistaken identifications from which it becomes extremely difficult to free oneself. Yet the upward and downward paths are both aspects of the same reality, which is the temple of our lived humanity.
[120] However, allowing ourselves to be swept away by the force of this fall moves us towards the dark pole. Padmasambhava says, "The human being riding the stallion is subject to the experiencer's quick-witted ego-logical mind, fragmented and excitable. He arrives at three traps, where he meets a blind woman holding a cup containing three poisons. She says to him, 'What's wrong with you, not looking at my emblematic world of darkness?' The temple of darkness is taken to be something existent, true, and permanent, but it is only conventionally real, banal, miserable, dual, material, ignorant, shrouded/befogged, opinionated, samsaric, poisonous, and [122] loathsome. Thus, one takes a cairn, a rope, and a mirage to be a person, a snake, and water respectively. This represents how a person goes astray and the whole illuminates its errancy by way of symbols."
Yet darkness has its own light, and its perturbation is inherent in the whole's illumination, represented as a mad demiurge or a monkey. To call this a flaw, as it clearly is, is also paradoxical, because error itself inheres in the whole's illumination. Passing through the gate of gnosis, however, reveals quite a different picture. Padmasambhava says, "The Precious Jewel has been won. Sun and moon have arisen and displaced obscurity and darkness. Poison has been neutralized. Base metal has been turned to gold, recalling the symbology of alchemy. Food has been turned into the elixir of immortality. You sleep in the black hole of supreme bliss. You enjoy an inexhaustible treasure. You have abolished the abyss of the six sorts of beings. There is neither spiritual wakefulness nor samsara. Even the notions of attachment and aversion are irrelevant. The duality of cognition and cognizing, apprehensible and apprehending, negation and affirmation, separation and elimination, ceases to exist. Bias and impartiality expressed as notions of enemy and friend, craftiness, and rejection and acceptance ceases to exist. Once the five poisons have been neutralized, even the concept of samsara disappears. Once obsessiveness has been eradicated, there is no effort in any direction. [126] This presents the gate of the gnosis of the whole which dawns on the experiencer as symbols."
Several symbols recur in Padmasambhava's presentation. The experiencer finds himself in the precarious situation of either losing or finding himself by growing into the fullness of being, including:
- the mystery of the luminous emptiness of the temple;
- the whole's unfolding intelligence symbolized as a rider represented as a rainbow human being riding on a stallion of light, whose racing reflects the speed, storminess, vehemence, and perturbation of the instinctual/emotional stratum in us, and reflects the stress or tension within the light itself;
- the "cypher of transcendence" (lha), symbolized as a divine figure in whom the self-realization process culminates, corresponding to the male polarity; and
- the image of the objective sphere of Total Knowledge, reality itself, symbolized as the mother to whom the child returns after going astray, corresponding to the female polarity.
The process of self-realization starts with the inarticulate mystery that is our own being and culminates in an even greater mystery, the working out of which we sense by means of symbols.
[1] Pali Buddhism has the five complexes or aggregates of clinging (skandhas): body, sensation, perception, karmic predispositions, and consciousness. The rainbow body or body of light is the penultimate transitional state of meditation in which matter begins to be transformed into pure light, before stepping over the threshold to the state of nirvana. In the Tibetan tradition, the colours represent five modes of wisdom: wisdom of reality, wisdom of sameness, mirror-like wisdom, wisdom of discernment, and wisdom of accomplishment.
Tibetan Glossary
bdag-mo: great lady
bdag-po: lord, master, owner
blo: cognition
brda: symbol, word, sign
bskyed-rim: generation, creation, or development stage
bu: son, child, boy
chos-can: subject
chos-nyid: suchness, reality
chos-nyid dbyings: reality field, fundamental nature of existence
don: meaning, object, function, fact, purpose
dpe: example, simile, model
dran-pa: mindfulness, memory, recollection
gdams-ngag: advice, instruction, teaching
grol-lugs: modes of liberation
gyur: become, change, transform, arise, be
ka-dag: primordial purity
ka-nas dag
klong: expanse, sphere, space, dimension
lha: yidam, deva, cipher of transcendence
lha-khang: temple, shrine, sanctuary
lung-rigs: quotations and logic, scripture and reasoning
ma: mother
med: not
ming-med: nameless
mkhar: castle, mansion, citadel, fort
pha: far, father, ancestral
rag-bzhin: self-similitude
rang-drol: one's own state of being
rang-grol: self-release, self-liberation, natural freedom
rang-sa: one's own place or natural condition
rang-snang: self-manifestation
rdzogs-chen: Great Completion, Great Perfection
rdzogs-rim: completion, fulfilment, or perfection stage
rig: knowledge, awareness, perception
rig-pa: knower, knowledge, awareness [vidya]
sems: mind, consciousness, thought
sems-nyid: mind bent on, mind proper, mind essence
shes-rab: wisdom, insight [prajna]
spyi-ti: universal yoga
stong: empty, emptiness, void
thabs: method, skilful means [upaya]
thod-rgal: leap-over, breakthrough
yab: father
yid: mind
yum: mother


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Leon Pittard, Fairdinkum Radio Show Responds to "David COHEN POSEL 'Global Depopulation Policy' Pawn"
* * *
David COHEN POSEL, you have already LOST your self-declared "war" and you don't even realize it yet. Give it up before you hurt yourself more than is necessary and than you can handle because this "war" update below is merely a heads-up to BACK-OFF for it is a fact and promise that slowly but surely we will see to it that your sites will crumble if you really force us to. Back-off and we might allow you to further deceive your remaining readership.
Recently Mega Fraud DAVID COHEN POSEL, the husband of decepticon and copy/paster SUSANNE COHEN POSEL, declared "war" on us and claimed that we couldn't win this because his organization is so very big and he is so very powerful. His declaration came about after he was remembered about what kind of fraudsters that he and his wife are.
Now we could widely expand on the whole list of "his" writers over at The US Independent, and his Facebook friends, and it would surely be a cute florilegium when we did so but to be honest we lack the time since we have really important work on our hands right now.
Therefore we will just cut to the chase and put the information out that proves what kind of person he , DAVID COHEN POSEL, is and what the REAL AGENDA is at the COHEN headquarters.
When you see or hear DAVID and SUSANNE COHEN POSEL talk or write about how bad the UN, the government, the new world order, and so on, is it is advised to know that ALL of "their" copy/paste jobs are nothing but a HUGE SMOKESCREEN.
As you will witness today, DAVID COHEN POSEL is a full-blood professional SHILL, DECEIVER and MEGA FRAUD who is derailing the remaining truth movement. Just like these persons right here.
How is it that we can be sure that DAVID COHEN POSEL is a full-blood professional SHILL, DECEIVER and MEGA FRAUD?
That is VERY SIMPLE and EASY to answer.
Look at his Facebook profile, more specifically, look at the image, the cover photo on his personal profile. The profile from which he declared "war" on us:
Hunger Strike Against Depopulation is a campaign run by one of "his" writers, Kevin Mugur Galalae who claims to be part of the Civil Rights Party of Canada (CPRC), NCPC and who claims to be Canadian Deputy Prime Minister (?????), according to the FAKE alternative news outlet and copy/paster The US Independent.
DAVID the PAWN and SANNE COHEN POSEL, Kevin Mugur Galalae and Kimberlee Schultz claim and make their readers and followers believe that they are against depopulation and that for this reason their followers should support and fund this campaign. This cannot be denied nor "debunked" because this campaign is all over their website(s) and Kimberlee is running a fundraiser for it.
But what is this campaign really saying and what are the promoters really preaching?
Well, that information can be found at Galalae's website in the article: "FRIENDS NOT ENEMIES: A Letter to the Heads of State of Non-Affiliated Movement."
An excerpt, actually THE excerpt, is displayed below:
"We, the people, have awakened to the brutal reality that humankind has become the victim of its own success and has outgrown the planet's resources. We, the people, now understand that it is not right to sacrifice our children and the planet to satisfy our impulses, greed, indifference and ignorance. We, the people, have acquired the wisdom necessary to take responsibility for the Global Depopulation Policy and to voluntarily accept family size restrictions rather than continue to be covertly poisoned into sterility and ultimately oblivion. You no longer need to fear us."
As that entire article shows, including the words "The objectives of the Global Depopulation Policy are absolutely necessary if we are to ensure peace on earth and the survival of the species," the whole readership and supporters of DAVID the PAWN and SANNE COHEN POSEL are deliberately misled and lied to BIG TIME. The fact that those people can't find this out for themselves shows the pity level of the COHEN POSEL readership.
DAVID and SANNE COHEN POSEL are not patriots, nor anti-globalists, nor are they professional researchers. What they truly are behind the Occupy Corporatism mask is COPY/PASTING ARTICLE SPINNERS with no other qualities then deception. And at that they are good, we have to give them that.
Unfortunately our time is up for now, we can't further elaborate on the COHEN POSEL SCAMMERS although we wish we could, but like we wrote at the beginning of this update, we have more important work on our hands than exposing these decepticons.
As a bonus, here are some popular names that appear on DAVID the PAWN COHEN POSEL's Facebook friends list:
These are "his," DAVID COHEN POSEL's, writers who either have been duped or are knowingly playing the game of deception along with SANNE COHEN.
Dane Wigington (Geoengineeringwatch.org)
Rima E. Laibow (Natural Solutions Foundation)
Kevin Mugur Galalae (Linkedin) [Civil Rights Party of Canada (CPRC) (NCPC)- Deputy Prime Minister – Real-Agenda.com]
John Connor (Angry Beaver Radio Show)
Leon Pittard (Fairdinkumradio.com)
Christopher King, JD (Mortgage Movies Journal – Financial Revival Group)
Jack Blood (deadlinelive.info)
Stephen Lendman (sjlendman.blogspot.de)
Catherine Shakdam [Wikistrat (Shakdam is not listed there) (Wikistrat is a zionist – CFR – Bilderberg front operation, just look at the "experts" of which "New World Order" Anne-Marie Slaughter is a perfect example – 1, 2, 3, 4) – Russian International Affairs Council]
Karen Quinn-Tostado (United We Strike)
Christof Lehmann (NSNBC International)
Ralph Fucetola, JD. (Vitaminlawyer.com)
Ken Lambert (Keepsoundminds.org)
Scott E. Stafne, JD. (Stafnetrumbull.com)
Some of the COHEN POSEL family on Facebook
Dori Cohen (Doreen Fink) (Grandma COHEN POSEL)
Cohen Posel on Myspace
"Jack Eating for the First Time"
"The Training of Jack"
"What we do After Lunch"
David Posel
The Many Faces Of Occupy Corporatism
Global Tin-Foil Hat Day *Wear it with Pride* Conspiracy "Theory" Awareness
Vinnie Eastwood And Susan Posel Exposed
Exposed AGAIN: Suzanne Posel a.k.a. Sanne Cohen (Occupy Corporatism)

subset: commoncrawl


text: The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently announced its intention to add a new drug to the list of banned Schedule I drugs, alongside heroin, LSD, ecstasy and marijuana. The drug the DEA wants to ban is actually a plant called kratom. If you\u2019ve never heard of it, you certainly aren\u2019t alone. Here\u2019s a brief overview of kratom and its uses: What Is Kratom? Kratom\u2019s botanical name is Mitragyna speciosa, and it is a tree native to Southeast Asia. The leaves of this plant contain psychoactive chemicals called mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, and it has been used as a folk remedy for a number of ailments, including arthritis, fibromyalgia, diarrhea and general pain. In low doses it also acts as a stimulant, while high doses have a sedative effect. Due to the euphoric feeling that kratom users experience, it is also taken recreationally or as an antidepressant. There are different strains of kratom that are said to be better for one use or another. Traditionally, the leaves have been chewed and ingested, but the plant is tough and has a bitter taste, so it is more common for the leaves to be dried, ground into a powder and added to food or drink, or for the leaves to be boiled in water to produce a tea. Kratom\u2019s Association With Heroin People struggling with heroin addiction sometimes turn to kratom to help them quit. Heroin addiction is difficult to beat due to the intense withdrawal symptoms, which can include deep muscle pain, extreme gastrointestinal upset, depression, anxiety, paranoia and insomnia, to name just a few. These symptoms are extremely uncomfortable and are alleviated when a user takes another hit of heroin, driving the cycle of addiction. To quit heroin, the body must detox, and that means living through days of withdrawal symptoms without turning to heroin again. To help addicts do this successfully, medications are taken to alleviate the withdrawal symptoms. Suboxone and Subutex are popular medications used to help heroin addicts quit. Like heroin, they are opioids, but unlike heroin they do not have addictive qualities or produce a high. This makes it possible to taper off of Suboxone or Subutex while also keeping the extreme withdrawal symptoms at bay. But back to kratom. Kratom is often discussed in the context of heroin because it is used much like Suboxone or Subutex. It relieves the vast majority of heroin withdrawal symptoms while providing a mild high at the same time. Unlike heroin, Suboxone or Subutex, kratom is not an opioid. Is Kratom Addictive? Kratom may be mildly addictive if taken in large doses daily for more than a few days. Therefore, it\u2019s recommended that the doses be tapered when it is used as an aid in quitting heroin or other opiate drugs. Most addicts would like to be free from the grip of addiction rather than simply change to another addiction. Know that kratom can help you quit opioids, but it should be used conservatively during the withdrawal period. It\u2019s also advisable to avoid using it recreationally if you have a history of drug addiction. Why Does the DEA Want to Ban Kratom? The DEA announced its intention to ban kratom in August 2016. In the official press release, the DEA says kratom meets the three requirements of a scheduled drug as outlined in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970: \u201c[it] has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.\u201d The DEA also cites an occurrence of 15 kratom-related deaths in the last two years and approximately 660 phone calls made to U.S. poison control centers related to kratom use in the last five years. Following the DEA\u2019s announcement, people who successfully used kratom to break their addiction to opioids like heroin or pain pills protested the ban. On Oct. 12, the DEA temporarily withdrew its intention to classify kratom as a Schedule I drug and opened a public comment period, which will run until Dec. 1. However, kratom has already been banned in Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin, while legislation has been introduced in New York and North Carolina that would also ban kratom.


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Search results
This interactive tutorial (Licensed Resource) teaches students the critical thinking skills they need to apply to their online experiences, including online safety, authenticating online information, recognizing online marketing ploys, protecting their privacy, managing online relationships and dealing with cyberbullying.
This interactive quiz, for Grades 6 to 8, is designed to increase students' knowledge and understanding of alcohol marketing aimed at youth.
This tutorial (Licensed Resource) aims to teach students essential digital literacy skills through simulating their favourite online experiences.
This interactive narrated tutorial teaches students about the benefits and drawbacks of sharing information online. Students give their opinion about what the characters in the story should do about their privacy dilemmas, from posting photos to buying music online, and they receive feedback on their responses as the story unfolds.
This interactive unit is designed to help kids between the ages of 5 and 8 recognize the marketing techniques used on commercial websites that target children.
In this game, designed for ages 8-10, the CyberPigs play on their favourite website and encounter marketing ploys, spam and a close encounter with a not-too-friendly wolf.
This tutorial introduces children, ages 7-9, to the concept of online privacy and teaches them to distinguish between information that is appropriate to give out and information better kept private – and to recognize how this may change in different contexts.
Schools are supposed to be public spaces, but more and more advertisers are using them to target youth. Corporations know just how much time kids spend at school, whether in class, in after-school activities or just hanging out with their friends, and they don't want to pass up a chance to reach them there. A school setting delivers a captive youth audience and implies the endorsement of teachers and the education system.
Today's kids have become the most marketed-to generation in history, due to their spending power and their future influence as adult consumers. By talking to kids about advertising - how it works and how they're targeted - we can help them to become more savvy as consumers and more resistant to the pressures to be "cool."
Most young children enjoy pretend play and love to imitate action heroes. But many teachers, parents and child care workers say the influence of children's superhero TV shows or movies, can result in havoc when little fans get together.


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Face acknowledgment feature was first introduced in Picasa then it was adjusted in Google plus and now Facebook, this face recognition attribute has actually benefited a a great deal for individuals who wished to tag their close friends based upon their faces, Google has actually adjusted this feature to YouTube to becloud chosen faces while uploading a video.
This terrific feature of Google is now live on YouTube. You could access the attribute of YouTube while submitting your video by picking Enhancements and then under Additional setups and afterwards pick Blur all faces.
1. After your have uploaded your video on YouTube just click on the video and press the enhancements options.
2.Now under Special Effects there is Blur All Faces option.
3.Now if you have so many faces in your video then just press the Apply button you can see like in the above image.
4.Now just wait it will process your video and it will apply the effect to your video.
So now your faces will get Blurred away, well you also have the option to delete your original video and get this new video live + the effect is irreversible, so make sure you really want this effect to be live in order to achieve it.


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Things to keep in mind while renting home to tourists
If you want to rent your holiday home to tourists, it is important to set the rental rates before putting your holiday home on the market. If you want to manage your business personally, it's up to you to set up the rent. Doing it properly is essential to get abundant requests and reservations. This simple guide can be used by those who have never rented before or by those who are trying to position themselves competitively on the market. We will also give you information on the best way to show your rates when you publish online. In order to know more about oak bay luxury homes you may always go for the official websites.
Discover the Competition
There are factors that can attract tourists to a particular property when they are booking their vacation. These are variables that can affect rental income. We advise you to pay attention to property advertisements similar to yours on the internet and take a look at the rental prices of other properties. Finding properties similar to yours will give you a realistic idea of how much your rent income will be. The comparison points include
- The position
- The number of bedrooms
- The type of property
- Special facilities (such as the swimming pool)
If you have fittings or fittings you may be able to increase your rent income even further. We suggest looking at properties similar to yours. Try and find out how many properties in your area have a similar standard. By comparing your property with vacation home listings, you may find that you own a luxury property that can be rented at a higher price.
The points of comparison, to be careful of, include
- Type of property
- Special features
- Luxury facilities
- Maintenance and decoration standards
- Proximity to hot spots or in a highly requested area
It is also worth taking a look at the areas that are comparable to each other, such as an area that targets a similar market, and has properties similar to yours (for example, places similar to a half hour car), to confirm your results. Note one of the most common mistakes that owners make when they set the rent for their holiday home is to set prices that are too high or too low. If you set a rent too high It is unlikely that someone will book a property too expensive, especially if they have the opportunity to book a solution, practically identical and not far away, unless. Sometimes it is possible to increase the price if you offer special facilities or services to travelers. If you are thinking of doing so, put yourself in the traveler's shoes and ask yourself "this is an additional cost for the guests?".
A New Central Heating Boiler from Arktek Heating
If you found that your energy bills were unusually high last winter or you had to keep turning up the thermostat to keep warm because your heating didn't seem to be performing as well as it should be, maybe you should consider having a replacement central heating boiler fitted. Having it done during the warmer months can be a really good idea as you won't miss not being able to turn on your heating while work is being carried out and you will have the peace of mind that you are completely prepared for the winter, at Arktek Heating they have an excellent team of engineers available all year round that will be able to get your new combi boiler fitted in no time at all.
Having an efficient, well fitted combi boiler can make a real difference to your bills and you will be surprised how much warmer your home is, with many more modern boilers having excellent features such as wireless controls you can be sure that your home will always be warm when you need it to be while using the minimum energy required, at Arktek Heating they supply a great selection of modern combi boilers from a range of well trusted suppliers and will be more than happy to help you make the right choice for your home and lifestyle.
Having a replacement boiler fitted won't only benefit you and your family in the short term it will also help you to add value to your property and make it more attractive to buyers if you do decide to sell in the future, so it is a really worthwhile investment to make.
At Arktek Heating they aim to offer some of the most competitive rates available without compromising on safety or quality, and with some excellent finance options available having your new combi boiler fitted could be far more affordable than you think. So if you want to avoid the winter rush to find an engineer that can replace your boiler fast as it has let you down when you need it most why not get in touch with Arktek Heating today?
At Arktek Heating they offer a free no obligation quote on request, so making an appointment with them to find out more about the gas replacement services they have on offer won't cost you a thing, with reasonable rates and excellent warranty options available when you see how affordable having your boiler replaced by Arktek Heating can be you will be pleased you gave them a call.
For further information about the range of replacement gas boilers available or the landlord emergency repair and maintenance services, please call 0191 516 6911 or visit the Arktek Heating Services website. We will be in touch with you as soon as possible.


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Some of our wonderful pals that played bad cop good cop and also were up to no good.
Thank you all for hanging out and having a great time helping charity.
To read more about Kitty Devore Rescue Network. CLICK HERE
Fallow them on Twitter HERE
Fallow them on Twitter HERE
Also you can click the photo below for more info.


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The 4th of July is just around the corner, and anyone who enjoys Orange Line Living knows this is a wonderful place to be when celebrating America's birthday. With the nation's capital right across the… read more →
Just over a year ago, the Embassy of the Republic of Korea offered a parcel of land to Arlington County. The parcel, located along Clarendon Blvd between N. Adams and N Boston streets, had long… read more →
The AKA Luxury Suites Residences building at 3409 Wilson Blvd. in Virginia Square on the Orange Line has been purchased by the Goldstar Group, and they have grand plans in mind. The building was originally… read more →
Orange Line Living offers a host of wonderful, inexpensive or free music events throughout the summer. If you are looking for something fun for the whole family, Arlington is the place to be. From entertainment… read more →
Located at 717 Annie Rose Avenue, Alexandria, VA this 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom townhome is better than new. Enjoy living at Potomac Yards near plenty of shopping, dining and entertainment and tons of future… read more →
Enjoy living in Lyon Park, just a few minutes away from Clarendon, in this 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home. Located at 2600 1st Road North, Arlington, VA, this home is in one of the most… read more →


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How to make a French Memo Board
by bloem
I just made a French Memo Board for one of our friends daughters. These are a fun and stylish way to display and stash mementos like pictures, tickets, hair clips, etc.
Here's how I made my French Memo Board.
1. Pre-stretched canvas, your choice in size. 2. Fabric of choice, enough to cover canvas with about 1.5" to spare on each side. 3. Batting. 4. Ribbon of choice. 5. Buttons of choice. 6. Scissors. 7. Staple gun. 8. Glue gun or needle & thread (not shown).
|Click this image to enlarge
1. LAY the canvas face-down on the batting. PULL the batting around the edges and STAPLE the batting to the back. Stretch the batting as you go, just enough to be taught.
2. LAY the batting covered canvas face-down on the fabric and do the same thing with the fabric that you did with the batting.
3. TUCK the fabric to make your corners are neat and STAPLE.
4. LAY the ribbon out in the pattern that you want (Generally criss-crossed). You may want to double check that the ribbon is spaced far enough apart to hold whatever you plan to put in the memo board.
5. & 6. STAPLE the ribbon onto the back. Tip: tape the ribbon in place first to make sure the ribbon is evenly spaced and where you want it to be.
7. SEW buttons on at the ribbon cross sections, or GLUE them with a hot glue gun.
That's it! It's super simple!


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New Advisory Board formed for Master of Community Development program
To enhance the experience of Master of Community Development (MCD) students, University of Detroit Mercy's School of Architecture has formed an MCD advisory board.
The goal of the board is to bring together a group of thought leaders to provide advice and guidance for the Master of Community Development Program.
"We constantly strive to ensure excellent programs that are nimble and relevant to our students, and the organizations and communities they serve upon graduation," said School of Architecture Dean Will Wittig.
Wittig hopes the board will also expand the program's spheres of influence by reconnecting with alumni who are a making a difference through their work, as well as other influential community development leaders in the region.
The board features 20 members, including Wittig, Detroit Mercy alumni and major players in several different fields.
"We are very pleased at the response from those who were invited to join the board," said Wittig. "It is a very diverse group that includes leaders of community development organizations, foundations, and a variety of service providers. We are confident that the program and our students will benefit from their collective wisdom in the future."
Since its initial launch in 2006, the MCD program has produced talented graduates who have gone on to successful careers that reflect a broad range of interests. Many graduates have also been selected for competitive fellowship programs as they make their professional transition. Most recently, current MCD student Madhavi Reddy was named a 2017-19 Detroit Revitalization Fellow.
The MCD board will help ensure the continued success of the program and its graduates.
"This new Board of Advisors will continue to strengthen and advance one of Detroit Mercy's most unique academic programs, founded specifically to serve a need that was identified a decade ago for the next generation of community leadership in our region," Wittig said.
For more information on the MCD program visit our website at http://architecture.udmercy.edu/programs/mcd.php or contact Assistant Professor and Director of the MCD program Virginia Stanard at 313-442-3520 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
Master of Community Development Advisory Board
Heidi Alcock, Director of Grant Development and Communications, McGregor Fund
Phillip Caldwell '16, General Motors (Alumni)
Larissa Carr '14, Grand River WorkPlace Manager, Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation (Alumni)
Fr. Phil Cooke, Co-Director, Center for Social Entrepreneurship, University of Detroit Mercy
Shelley Danner, Program Director, Challenge Detroit
Priscilla Darby '16, Parent Outreach & Community Partnerships Coordinator, Growing Minds Learning Center (Alumni)
Ja'Net DeFell, Director of Real Estate Services - Michigan, IFF
Shamyle Dobbs, Chief Executive Officer, Michigan Community Resources
Ed Egnatios, Program Officer, The Kellogg Foundation
Donna Givens, CEO/Executive Director, Eastside Community Network
Tom Goddeeris, Director of Community and Economic Development, Detroit Future City
Lauren Hood '03, Director, Live6 Alliance (Alumni)
Lisa Johanon, Executive Director, Central Detroit Christian CDC
Gaston Nash, General Engineer, Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA)
Megan McGreal Papi-Wark, Project Manager, Community Partnership Program, Detroit Land Bank Authority (Alumni)
Ceara O'Leary, Associate Director, Master of Community Development Program
Molly Redigan '10, Architectural Designer, Patrick Thompson Design (Alumni)
Sarida Scott, Executive Director, Community Development Advocates of Detroit (CDAD)
Virginia Stanard, Director, Master of Community Development Program
Will Wittig, Dean School of Architecture, University of Detroit Mercy


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We gratefully acknowledge the original 'Disapproving Rabbits' website, that inspired this site, and its creators, Sharon, Bill, Cinnamon, and Dougal. Without you, we would not be here. We Approve Of You!
Friday, February 5, 2016
3 comments:
Nicole leads a charmed life in many ways!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 5, 2016 at 11:37 AM
Isabelle demonstrates the phenomenon of bunnies being so quick they make wormholes look slow. Isn't that why they are called lag-omorphs? Everything around them seems to 'lag?'ReplyDelete
-Jen (Kohl's mom)
Stay away from the bun when the pink background echoes her beautiful little nose and mouth? Impossible!ReplyDelete
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


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Ben Hanisch publicly offered his girlfriend some pre-Golden Globes love Sunday when he posted a fun new shot of the pair just hours before the awards show.
"So excited for this woman tonight!" he captioned the black-and-white selfie of the pair wearing sunglasses and casual clothing, seemingly while on a hike.
So excited for this talented woman tonight!
A photo posted by benhanisch (@benhanisch) on Jan 10, 2016 at 9:03am PST
Although the Chicago-based furniture designer won't be Schumer's official date to the Globes – that honor is reserved for her sister and BFF Kim Caramele – the Trainwreck star confirmed on social media that Hanisch will also be joining her at the awards show.
What Did Jennifer Lawrence Send Amy Schumer After She Won Her First Emmy?
It'll be a busy night for the Inside Amy Schumer star, who is not only presenting at the awards show, but is nominated for best actress in a motion picture, comedy or musical, alongside pal Jennifer Lawrence.
Schumer, 34, confirmed her relationship last Tuesday, and posted an image of her with Hanisch at the White House while attending President Barack Obama's speech on his new gun control measures.
A source recently told PEOPLE the comedian is "so, so happy … She feels like she hit the jackpot."


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Hello everyone!
Pardon the quality of my image (see above) but I do not photograph well, it's a minor miracle that the camera used is still intact.
I am affectionately known as the giant redwood, probably because I am very tall, but also because of my love for trees. Most afternoons I can be found repotting or taking care of my bonsai collection, but my love of detective mysteries soon brings me back indoors. I have written three fiction novels in this genre, Nine Lives, Out of Time and Crossfire and I'm about to publish Silent Payback, my fourth book.
I spend any free time learning everything I can about self-publishing, and despite all the obstacles, I never give up on anything and I'm as stubborn as a mule. I also share a website http://jenanita01.com with Anita Dawes…
Our Watering Holes
e-mails email@example.com
website https://jenanita01.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/jaydawes2
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/doubletrouble44/
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6586480.anita_dawes
Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anita-Dawes/e/B0034NUE10/
Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jaye-Marie/e/B00O2ZUFOK/
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/anitajayedawes
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jenanita01/
Medium https://medium.com/@jaydawes2


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Makers of Academy Award® Nominated Documentary, The Invisible War, Urge More Action
Makers of Academy Award® Nominated Documentary, TheInvisible War, Urge More Action
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The following are statements regarding The Invisible War, which was nominated earlier today for an Academy Award® in the Best Documentary category:
Statement of Kirby Dick, director of The Invisible War:
"We're thrilled and gratified by this honor. However, to truly honor our service members we need to stop the epidemic of rape in the military.
"What's different about this film, in comparison to my other films, is that rape in the military is STILL a burning issue and one that we can profoundly impact by changing policies within the military. Today, on the day Oscar® nominations are announced, 50 more men and women will be sexually assaulted in the military, according to the Department of Defense estimates. We hope the attention this nomination brings will send a message to the Department of Defense to protect our women and men in uniform."
Statement of Chris McGurk, Chairman and CEO ofCinedigmand distributor of The Invisible War:
"We are extremely proud that The Invisible War has been acknowledged by the Academy with this nomination. Not only did the filmmakers, led by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, create a powerful, evocative and haunting film, their documentary is helping to bring systemic changes in the way our military treats both the victims and perpetrators of the terrible crime of sexual assault. However, despite the significant progress that has been made since the film's release, the transformation in our military's policy and culture regarding this issue is far from complete. We hope this nomination will bring even more focus on Kirby and Amy's objective of ensuring sexual assault will never again be an occupational hazard for our military service members."
About the Film:
"CRITICS' PICK: This is not a movie that can be ignored...the candor and bravery displayed in the telling is admirable." - The New York Times
"A poignant, powerful documentary that just might change the system." -TIME
Winner, Audience Award, 2012 Sundance Film Festival
100% Fresh - Rotten Tomatoes
"Heartbreaking...what makes this savage indictment of the epidemic of rape in the U.S. military so unforgettable are not numbers but the devastating personal stories of the victims." - Los Angeles Times
"An incendiary expose...a real game-changer." The Boston Globe
From Oscar®- and Emmy®-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick ("This Film Is Not Yet Rated;" "Twist of Faith") THE INVISIBLE WAR is a groundbreaking investigation about one of America's most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within the U.S. military. THE INVISIBLE WAR paints a startling picture: today, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. The Department of Defense estimates there were a staggering 19,300 service members sexually assaulted in 2010 alone.
Focusing on the powerfully emotional stories of rape victims, the film is a moving indictment of the systemic cover-up of military sex crimes, chronicling the women's struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. It also features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the perfect storm of conditions that exist for rape in the military, its long-hidden history, and what can be done to bring about much-needed change.
THE INVISIBLE WAR is nominated for a 2013 Academy Award®for Best Documentary and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. Additional 2012 nominations included Best Feature from the International Documentary Association (IDA), the Gotham Audience Award, and the Cinema Eye Honors Audience Choice Prize. THE INVISIBLE WAR was the recipient of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for U.S. Documentary, the 2012 Human Rights Watch Festival's Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking, the HBO Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature from the 2012 Provincetown Film Festival, the Silver Heart Award from the Dallas International Film Festival, and was an official entry at Full Frame Film Festival and HotDocs.
THE INVISIBLE WAR is a film by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering; written and directed by Kirby Dick; produced by Amy Ziering and Tanner King Barklow; executive producers: Regina Kulik Scully, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Abigail Disney, Maria Cuomo Cole, Sarah Johnson Redlich, Women Donors Network, Teddy Leifer, Sally Jo Fifer, and Nicole Boxer-Keegan.
CINEDIGM Corporate Contact:
Maggie Begley
THE INVISIBLE WAR Awards PR Contact:
Acme PR
Nancy Willen
KEYWORDS: United States North America California
The article Makers of Academy Award® Nominated Documentary, The Invisible War, Urge More Action originally appeared on Fool.com.Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 - 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Postdoctoral Research Fellow Position in Network Science and Biomedical Smartphone Research
- Recruiter
- Location
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Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Position Description
The Onnela Lab in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is seeking candidates with a Ph.D. in biostatistics, applied mathematics, statistical physics, computer science, or a related quantitative field for two-year Postdoctoral Research Fellow positions. These positions involve developing statistical methods, data analytic tools, and mathematical models for analyzing two different types of systems. In the first area, statistical network science, we develop methods that are at the intersection of statistical learning and network science with applications in social and biological networks. In the second area, smartphone-based digital phenotyping, we develop tools and methods for analyzing data collected by our smartphone platform. Our ongoing applied studies in this area involve diverse patient populations from neurology to psychiatry and oncology. The candidates can focus on one of these areas only or may work across both, depending on interests and expertise.
Basic Qualifications
Doctoral degree in biostatistics, computer science, applied mathematics, statistical physics, or a related quantitative field. Excellent programming skills in Python or similar language, as well as strong oral communication and writing skills are required.
Special Instructions
For more information about the lab, please visit https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/onnela-lab/.
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Kenzie Carlson
Contact Email
Equal Opportunity Employer
We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions or any other characteristic protected by law.


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Were women really absent from pre-89 Czechoslovak dissent?
Twenty-five years after its fall, a fascination remains with those who chose to openly oppose communism in the former Czechoslovakia, however women's oppositional activity has not adequately been acknowledged. Were women really absent from pre-89 Czechoslovak dissent? Or might we need to take a closer look at dissent in all its forms?
Photo: CreativeCommons/ Pavel Matejicek
Václav Havel's seminal essay, The Power of the Powerless, led many to romanticize Havel and his fellow dissidents' valiant acts of defiance. Their courage and conviction in choosing to "live in truth" while fighting the communists and eventually, single-handedly, overthrowing them in the Velvet Revolution brought widespread admiration. However, it is now clear to observers that many factors contributed to the fall of Communism in 1989; and that the message of The Power of the Powerless only resonated with a very small portion of the Czech population. Havel's ironic use of the word "dissent" was initially lost on most of the essay's readers. Few of the high profile individuals who opposed the regime in Czechoslovakia considered themselves "dissidents."
In an interview with the Czech writer, Eda Kriseová, Michael Long, an American professor of Slavic and East European Studies asked: "what incident or event turned the thinking of a potential dissident, eventually leading that person to live in defiance of the regime and join the underground?" 1In an answer representative of most oppositionists, Kriseová told Long, "we are not heroes, we simply did what we had to do to make life livable." 2
Despite the fact those labelled "dissidents" rejected the term, they have continued to be referred to as such. With few exceptions, scholarship on normalization-era Czechoslovakia has focused almost exclusively on the human rights manifesto and movement of the same name, Charter 77. This is largely due to the public nature of its activities. Although small compared to other civic initiatives like Solidarity in Poland, Charter signatories were the most visible group openly opposing the regime in Czechoslovakia.
The majority of Charter 77's signatories happened to be male, and with few exceptions, they have received most of the attention in the foreign media and scholarship. However, "making life livable," as Kriseová put it, took different forms for different individuals, and was not limited to public acts of defiance. It is this narrow understanding of the nature of resistance, coupled with conflicting views of gender roles on either side of the Iron Curtain, that can be attributed to the inadequate acknowledgement of women's oppositional activity in pre-89 Czechoslovakia.
The "spectrum of dissent" and the "grey zone"
Barbara Falk has written extensively about the political philosophy of dissent, and has suggested that opposition should be thought of as a spectrum, with "resistance" occupying one pole and "dissent" occupying the other. 3According to Falk, between these two poles were various activities that ranged from refusal to abide by communist principles through excessive drug or alcohol use, listening to or reading banned material, or agreeing with a petition to finance the operation of a an underground publishing house. It was only at the far end of the spectrum that one encountered actual dissent through, "the production and distribution of samizdat, public protests, [or] active involvement in independent groups outside the control of the party-state." 4
Though dissent occupies only a portion of the spectrum, it has received the most attention not only because of it visible aspects, such as open letters, the publication of illegal documents or the persecution and imprisonment of dissidents, but also because of the availability of resources related to its study. Collaborative acts of open dissent have proven much easier to chronicle than individual acts of passive resistance.
The "grey zone" is a term that has often been used to encompass some of the activity on the spectrum of opposition between private, non-conformist acts and open acts of dissent. The sociologist Jiřina Šiklová, who also played an active role in the Czech opposition, described people in the "grey zone" as those who "agree with the views of dissidents and are in favor of the relaxation of political conditions," but at the same time "hesitantly, reluctantly, they cooperated with the establishment all the same." 5 Most women oppositionists operated in this "grey zone," not because they were conforming, but because oppositionist activities could be carried out in the private, or domestic sphere, giving women greater scope for anti-regime activities.
Private women, public men?
The scholarly emphasis on open dissent, which was heavily dominated by men, has led to the mistaken view that the few women who were active played only a minor role. According to literary historian Jonathan Bolton, couples involved in dissent should be thought of as a "spousal unit" because they "worked out a clear division of labor, in which one member remained politically engaged, while the other held down a job in order to support the family financially, and often took care of the children as well." 6 Usually, though not always, it was the husband who took on the public "role" meaning that all too often "women seem to be erased from the picture." 7
Thinking of spousal units as part of the spectrum of dissent is useful in understanding the range of possible oppositional activities carried out by women. While couples sometimes signed the Charter, those women who did not sign with their husbands often fell somewhere in the "grey zone," frequently agreeing with their spouses and often performing less visible acts of opposition. For example, Marie (Madla) Vaculíková, whose husband Ludvík Vaculík was very actively involved in the Charter and head of the samizdat publishing house, Edice Petlice, did not sign the Charter, but took part in oppositional activities in their home by organizing meetings and seminars. 8
Although the spousal unit model did not apply to Šiklová; she did not sign the Charter until after her arrest in 1981 (the signature was not published until 1989) because she had been actively smuggling samizdat in and out of the country since 1972, and publishing her signature would have further jeopardized her efforts. In a tribute to Josef Škvorecký, the Czech author who immigrated to Canada and established 68 Publishers, she describes an instance where a woman she had never met came up to her with a baby stroller, and under the baby, there was a hidden manuscript that was to be sent to Toronto. 9
Emancipation inside and outside the Iron Curtain
Differences in women's access to the labor market on either side of the Iron Curtain further complicated Western understandings of Czech women's relationship to public and private spheres. In the 1950s, the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia brought more women into the work force in an effort to promote equal employment, in addition to facilitating equal opportunities to education, and encouraging women to participate in party activities and public life. 10 By the late 1960s these initiatives had mostly been realized, but with unintended consequences. Full employment for women, together with continued shortages of consumer goods and housing, led women to delay having children, resulting in a reduction of the average number of children women had. The birthrate in Czechoslovakia fell dramatically, reaching an all-time low in 1968. 11
The declining birthrate created "widespread fear among Czechoslovak planners that the population would shrink, potentially jeopardizing the future labor supply and socialist modernization." 12 In response, the government introduced what it called "motherhood incentives," which consisted of the extension of paid and unpaid maternity leave, as well as the provision of additional maternity and family allowances, as most Czechoslovak women had limited the number of children they had due to financial concerns.
The government measures were successful, and the birthrate rose steadily throughout the normalization-era. 13 These policies, however, contradicted the earlier 1950's communist commitments to equality. Social scientist Jacqui True argues that this contradiction was reflected throughout the 1970s and 80s in the, "persistent gaps between men and women's remuneration and employment positions." She also pointed out that, "many women responded to government policy and employer perceptions by focusing more of their efforts on their family and household activities than on their state employment." 14
Thus women were not working less than before, but in addition to their regular work hours they were expected to take on more responsibility at home. This meant women were increasingly spending more time in the private sphere. Consequently, conflicting interpretations of this shift towards home life occurred on either side of the Iron Curtain.
Czech sociologist Hana Havelková suggests that women not only claimed power in the private sphere, but that this could be done while still performing public functions. She argues that although both women and men were active in the public and private sphere, "the latter has remained, more than the former, the 'domain of women'" and that it was generally "the woman rather than the man who shaped the compensatory functions of the family and its entire lifestyle." 15
Czech women saw themselves as powerful and thus had trouble accepting Western feminist ideologies, that were "based on the idea of their powerlessness." 16 Commentators in the West and the former Czechoslovakia acknowledged the role of state-imposed restrictions, with the former arguing it prevented women from realizing their creative potential in reinforcing patriarchal structures, while the latter argue that the opposite occurred; women reclaimed the private sphere and exercised their own power by determining how this sphere would appear. It is largely because of women's exponential growth in the 1950's labor force that equal access to employment was not a priority for Czech women during normalization. Essentially, Western feminists were critical of Czech women's 'take it or leave it' attitudes towards the public sphere and their embracing of the private sphere; while many Czech scholars studying women's issues had trouble understanding Western feminist's desire to distance from home-life and to attain equal rights in the public sphere.
As a result of equating opposition to dissent, if one was going to subvert the social order, whether it was to advocate for women's rights or to oppose human rights violations, it had to be done publicly. Since Western feminists viewed emancipation as attaining equal rights in the public sphere, they had trouble reconciling the actions of Czechoslovak women, misinterpreting their embracing of the private sphere as a passive acceptance of communism. Understanding these paradoxes helps paint a better picture of the oppositional activity women engaged in, and why it took on the forms that it did.
Unconventional politics or traditional gender roles at home
Given the nature of communism, women's roles were not always clearly defined. Jacqui True argues that due to women's dual roles, they found "a place within Czechoslovak opposition to practice unconventional politics." This was because under President Gustáv Husák's regime "politics got pushed into the private sphere," allowing women to control "the very space for independent civic initiatives in Czechoslovakia." 17
In an interview soon after the fall of communism, Ombudswoman Anna Šabatová, Charter 77 signatory and chief editor of INFOCH (Informace o Chartě 77), reflected on the relationship between politics and home life while her husband was in prison. She recalled that most of the work undertaken by the Charter was realized in Czech homes and that "from a practical point of view, this gave women with children the option to participate in any kind of activity." 18 Ironically the government's own program that incentivized women towards the private sphere worked against it, by creating new circumstances under which women could participate in oppositional activity.
Charter signatory and spokesperson, Eva Kantůrková, advocated one of the most commented upon and unconventional approaches for women to oppose communism. She thought women should "rediscover their 'authentic' traditional feminine qualities of compassion, love and tolerance," and like other Charter members, "she found the universalist concepts of human rights and human liberty more relevant to women's circumstances than the ideas of Western feminism." 19 The problem with this approach, historian, Paulina Bren points out, is that through her emphasis on traditional feminine qualities as an element of emancipation, "Kantůrková comes close to sanctioning the regime's program, which asked women to mend the inter-human relations that had gone awry." 20 It begs the question whether disavowing equality is a form of emancipation or a rejection of it.
Locating the women oppositionists of the former Czechoslovakia in outside scholarship, therefore, requires re-evaluating the view that opposition is only limited to open dissent, and re-framing the conflicting interpretations of emancipation. From the 1950s to the normalization-era, emancipation and feminism in Czechoslovakia, unlike the West, were seen as mutually exclusive things. At present, as debates around feminism continue, and change globally with vastly different approaches, further treatment of the topic of women in opposition will surely yield new findings.
This article is based on, and includes various excerpts from, the author's Masters dissertation for the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London submitted in September 2015. Information used and derived from other sources is acknowledged in the text and footnotes.
- Michael Long, Making History: Czech Voices of Dissent and the Revolution of 1989, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2005, p. xiii. ↩
- Long, Making History, p. 141. ↩
- Barbara Falk, 'Resistance and Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe: An Emerging Historiography,' East European Politics and Societies, 25, 2011, 2, pp.318-360 (p. 321-322). ↩
- Falk, 'Resistance and Dissent,' p. 322. Samizdat is the Russian word for 'self-publish' and opposition to the regime often took this form. The word is often italicized because it has not been naturalized into other languages. ↩
- Jiřina Šiklová, 'The "Grey Zone" and the Future of Dissent in Czechoslovakia,' Social Research, 57, 1990, 2, pp. 346-363 (p. 351). ↩
- Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe and Czech Culture under Communism, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2012, p. 42. ↩
- Ibid, p. 41-42. ↩
- Bolton, Worlds of Dissent, p. 239. Bolton describes a 2002 interview in which Vaculíková recalls discovering with her husband that their entire flat had been under surveillance, and so they 'avoided talking about important things by writing them on paper and flushing them down the toilet.' ↩
- Jiřina Šiklová, 'Někdy je lepší nevědět. Vzpomínka na spolupráci s Josefem Škvoreckým a Zdenou Salivarovou během normalizace', Paměť a dějiny, 2012, 1, pp. 99-102 (p. 100). ↩
- Alfred Meyer in Sharon L. Wolchik and Alfred Meyer (eds.), Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe, Durham: Duke University Press, 1985, p. 23. ↩
- Tomas Frejka, 'Fertility Trends and Policies: Czechoslovakia in the 1970s', Population and Development Review, 6, 1980, 1, pp. 65-93. ↩
- Jacqui True, Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism: The Czech Republic after Communism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, p. 37. ↩
- Alena Heitlinger, Women and State Socialism: Sex Inequality in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1979, p. 184. See also Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and his TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2010, p. 175. ↩
- True, Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism, p.37. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and his TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2010 p.176. ↩
- True, Gender, Globalization and Postsocialism, p. 50. ↩
- Anna Šabatová in Marta Marková (ed.), Olga Havlová a ty druhé: Ženy ve vnitřní emigraci, Brno: Barrister & Principal, 1997 p. 145. ↩
- True, Gender, Globalization and Postsocialism, p. 50. ↩
- Bren, The Greengrocer and his TV, p. 173. ↩


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Many people believe that the lead trumpet player has the most important role in the big band. It is the lead trumpet player's responsibility to lead the band. If the lead trumpet player cannot do this, the sound of the entire band suffers.
Therefore a good lead trumpet player is someone who can lead the band with his performance skills without saying a word. This requires him to develop a very specific skill set. Let's take a look at the six most important skills of a good lead trumpet player:
1) Style
To me, musical style deals mostly with musical elements such as note shape, vibrato, and effects. The most important of these is note shape. Unfortunately, many of the younger lead trumpet players today don't have a very good concept of note shapes. Their note shapes tend to be rectangular, which is a crude, astylistic way of playing. Rectangular note shapes are typical for those who have never studied note shapes in a lead trumpet context.
It would be wrong to say that all note shapes in jazz follow the same contour, but we know for certain that rectangular notes are unacceptable. In most cases in jazz, the note is always doing something and going somewhere. Rarely does it stay at the same intensity and same volume from its beginning to its end.
Sometimes the notes swell. Sometimes they start with what would be called a sfortzando in classical music. Other times the notes fade away. The possibilities are limitless and depend largely on the context. But staying static is, in my opinion, just sophomoric, undeveloped musicianship.
2) Time
Everyone in the band has to have good time, but a lead trumpet player with bad time will make the entire band sound like it's on the verge of falling apart. In a really great band, it is the lead trumpet player who leads the rest of the group in the overall feel of the time. Yes, it is the rhythm section that lays the foundation. But where the band sits on top of the foundation is largely determined by the time concept of the lead player.
Sometimes a good lead player will lay back on a tune when it's appropriate. Other times (more rarely) he might push the tempo to help create a feeling of greater intensity. The rest of the band, if it is a good band, will take it's sense of time feel from the lead trumpet player and adjust accordingly.
3) Phrasing
Different people have their own definitions of what phrasing is. Because I originally came through a classical education, my definition of phrasing deals mostly with intensity and dynamics of the melody. A typical classical phrase begins with low intensity, grows to a climax with high intensity and then resolves back to a lower intensity level. In jazz, phrasing is not as predictable as that.
In the big band, it is the lead player who determines where most of the phrases will climax. It is the lead player who determines how long the phrases are and how they will connect to each other.
4) Dynamics and Balance
There is some overlap between the subject of dynamics and phrasing. Phrasing deals with dynamics on a micro level. Here we are discussing dynamics at the macro level. A lead trumpet player who can only play loud is not very practical. I would much rather play with someone who has trouble playing loud enough than someone who cannot play soft.
Depending on their physical approach, some lead trumpet players have more difficulty playing softly than others. All lead players are capable of playing softly, but there are some popular methods that I believe handicap the players in this respect. They find that they can master the dynamics of their instrument only after a great deal of effort is invested into it.
5) Consistency
In order for someone to be considered a good lead trumpet player, the rest of the band must be able to follow him. This requires a certain degree of predictability. The band needs to have confidence that the way he played a certain musical passage one time will be the same the second time, and the third and fourth, and so on.
This consistency applies to everything that I've listed here so far. It applies to style. It applies to note shapes and note lengths. It applies to breathing and phrasing. It applies to dynamics and time feel.
6) Communication
That consistency must be communicated clearly so the band can follow correctly. Most of the time, this type of communication is musical. The lead trumpet player almost exaggerates the musical aspects so the rest of the band gets it with very little miscommunication in the process.
Other times the lead player must communicate verbally. A good lead trumpet player should never feel timid or apologetic about telling the rest of his section how he wants to play the music. On rare occasions he will even have a need to communicate verbally to the lead bone and sax players. This is part of his job. It is his responsibility to do whatever is necessary to shape the entire band into one cohesive unit.
Style, time, phrasing, dynamics, consistency and communication, these are the treasured aspects of the greatest lead players. Notice the one aspect that I intentionally left off of the list…high notes. Having a good range does not make you a great lead player. It only gets your foot in the door. Being a great lead trumpet player assumes you have a good range and the six musical aspects I listed here should be added to that.
That said, one of my favorite lead trumpet players does not have a very impressive range. His name is Jimmy Brannon and he is one of the best lead trumpet players I ever worked with. He demonstrates all six of the qualities I listed here, but his range is not as impressive as some of the younger players of today.


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Because CVS is file based transferring a project from one CVS Server to another is easy.
Just do the following:
1. FTP the entire project directory structure from one CVS Server to another.
2. Change the owner, group, and permissions of the project structure on the new server
- chown will change the owner of the files and directories -R is recursive
- chgrp will change the group of the files and directories -R is recursive
- chmod will change the permissions of the files and direcotories -R is recursive -g+w gives the group write permissions.
chown -R my_cvs_group_name my_project_name chgrp -R my_cvs_group_name my_project_name chmod -R g+w my_project_name
NOTE: All your CVS server users should be in a linux group that corresponds to cvs
- To check the group see /etc/group
- To check the users in that group see /etc/passwd
- To learn more about setting this see: http://www.samspublishing.com/library/content.asp?b=red_hat_linux7&seqNum=208&rl=1


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Indiana University Bloomington
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Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina (1931– ) has achieved international acclaim for her unique musical oeuvre which draws on Eastern and Western musical traditions and reflects a deep-rooted belief in the mystical and religious qualities of music.
Kurtz's biography of Gubaidulina is the first in any language. Based on her papers and extensive interviews with Gubaidulina, her colleagues, and family, the book places her life and the evolution of her work within the broader cultural and political context of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. For the English edition, the text has been revised and updated and a chronology of Gubaidulina's life and a complete list of her works have been added.
Michael Kurtz is currently working on a retrospective view of 20th-century music presented in biographical portraits of selected composers.
"This is a fascinating biography that places the personal details of Gubaidulina's life and the evolution of her work within the broader cultural and political context of the post-Stalin Soviet Union."
". . . Taking a thoroughly biographical tack, Kurtz explains the origins of many of Gubaidulina's compositions . . . He . . . offer[s] accounts of Gubaidulina by colleagues and performers, and these are a rich source of new material on the composer. Including a handful of photographs, notes, a chronological summary, and a list of Gubaidulina's compositions, this book will be useful to those interested in musical culture and religious life in the Soviet Union. . . . Recommended.July 2008"
— Choice
". . . a solid piece of work whose straightforward design and clarity of prose (even in translation) will benefit scholar and general reader alike.Vol. 68.2 April 2009"
— David Haas, University of Georgia
". . . valuable as the first English-language guide to Gubaidulina. . . . Kurtz has expertly presented us with valuable material . . .Vol. 90.2 May 2009"
— IVANA MEDIC, University of Manchester
"With this thorough and well-researched biography of the eminent Russian composer Sophia Gubaidulina, author and scholar Michael Kurtz has made a landmark contribution to the growing body of literature on that emergent group of post-WWII composers. Vol. 54.2, Summer 2010"
— Slavic and East European Journal
"This is an extremely helpful publication for future researchers of Gubaidulina's music. It comes with a detailed chronology, and with a full list of the composer's works. Vol. 89.1, January 2011"
— Slavonic and East European Review
"Kurtz's biography gives a good, thorough account of Gubaidulina's life that is more immediately accessible and less vexing for general readers than for specialists. Yet specialists will find it necessary reading due to the many significant details uncovered thanks to Kurtz's interviews with Gubaidulina and her associates65.1 Sept. 2008"
— Notes
Preface by Mstislav Rostropovich Preface to the American Edition Introduction and Acknowledgments 1. Ancestors 2. Childhood and Youth, 1932-1949 3. At the Kazan Conservatory, 1949-1954 4. At the Moscow Conservatory, 1954-1959 5. Searching for Her Own Way, 1959-1965 6. A Late Artistic Birth, 1965-1970 7. Finding the Legato in the Staccato of Life, 1970-1975 8. Composing and Improvising, 1975-1979 9. "Offertorium"-a Musical Offering, 1979-1981 10. The Rhythm of Musical Form, 1981-1985 11. Travels, Travels, and More Travels, 1985-1991 12. Worldwide Fame-Worldwide Demand, 1991-1996 13. The Center of Life: St. John Passion and St. John Easter, 1996-2004 Chronology of Gubaidulina's Life List of WorksNotesBibliography Index
Fulfilling the Promise
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