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RheeFormy Logic & Goofball Rating Schemes: Comments & Analysis on the Students First State Policy Grades
On Monday, the organization Students First came out with their state policy rankings, just in time to promote their policy agenda in state legislatures across the country. Let's be clear, Students First's state policy rankings are based on a list of what Students First thinks states should do. It's entirely about their political preferences – largely reformy policies – template stuff that has been sweeping the reformiest states over the past few years. I'll have more to say about these preferred policies at the end of this post.
Others have already pointed out that Students First gave good grades to states like Louisiana and Florida, and crummy grades to states like New Jersey or Massachusetts – but that states like Louisiana have notoriously among the worst school systems – lowest test scores – in the nation – whereas states like New Jersey and Massachusetts have pretty darn good test scores and well respected school systems. I'll go there as well, but not as my primary focus. Clearly there's more behind the test score differences than policy context. New Jersey and Massachusetts certainly have more educated, more affluent adult and parent populations than Louisiana, and that makes a difference.
I'll anxiously await the day good reformers like Mike Petrilli pack their bags and leave their suburban Washington DC districts to move their kids to the amazing future schools of Louisiana! Heck, given these new Students First ratings, any Louisiana school has to be better- or at least have far more potential – than any school in Montgomery County Maryland, run by that curmudgeonly anti-reformer Suprintendent Joshua Starr! In fact, in my ideal world, Louisiana would become a reformy wonderland… magnet for all the reformy types… where they could go live in peace – rate their teachers by value-added models, fire 10 to 20% each year – pay them nothing – get rid of any retirement benefits, make every school a charter school (operating primarily with imported Turkish and/or Filipino labor), engage in at least 50% online learning (sitting at a computer doing test prep modules), and provide tuition tax credits to all of the reformies who prefer a purely religious perspective interwoven across subjects. Of course, this must all be done with Lousiana's current level of financial commitment to public schooling.
But I digress… Now back to the Students First ratings. Students First created 3 broad categories of preferred policies for their ratings – policies that it believes:
- Elevate teaching
- Empower parents
- Spend wisely and govern well
By elevate teaching, Students First means the usual basket of reformy options including elimination of traditional salary schedules, teacher evaluations based heavily on student test scores, reduction of retirement benefits and reduction or elimination of due process rights, and pay based primarily on test-score driven evaluation systems. They also prefer to expand alternative routes into the teaching profession. Of course, there's not a whole lot of transparency into how these various elements are factored into the final grades. But there is a rubric!
By empowering parents, Students First essentially means increasing use of school report cards (more school grades & ratings – yes, a report card that endorses use of … report cards!), reporting to parents when their child is assigned to a teacher with a low rating (driven by test scores), and adoption of policies such as Parent Trigger. And of course, charters should be provided everywhere and anywhere… so everyone has the choice to attend one.
Finally, by spend wisely and govern well… I'm quite honestly not even sure what the hell they mean? They include a broad statement about all kids receiving equitable funding, but seem to imply that this means that charter kids get the same funding as district kids – a pretty narrow interpretation of fairness (and an incalculable one in states with no charters). No actual data seem to be used to rate state funding systems. Fairness is also determined by the provision of publicly finance facilities space to charter schools. Somehow, their ratings of funding totally ignore the vast majority of schools and children across which funds are distributed. In their view, Mayors, not local school boards should govern schools, and schools should report their expenditures uniformly – in a way that shows how the spending affects achievement (good luck with that as a reporting requirement/mechanism).
Every item on their list is somehow mysteriously scored on a "0″(you suck) to "4″(wow… you are REFORMERIFIC!) scale without using any actual data (apparently) to inform that ordinal rating. Then in a wonderful leap of number abuse, these ordinal scale data are averaged to create a grade point average for each broad category – on a 0-4 GPA like scale, where most values of course lie in the imaginary spaces between the original ordinal ratings (like kinda-semi-almost-reformerific = 3.49).
That said, let's dig into those grades, and other stuff that may or may not correlate with them.
RheeFormy Funding Indicators vs. Real Funding Indicators
Let's start with the funding grades which I will relate to two of our primary indicators in our annual report on school funding fairness. First, let's look at the relationship between the RheeFormy GPA for funding/governance and our rating on the percent of gross state product allocated to K-12 education. Top scorers on RheeFormy funding are Michigan, Rhode Island, New York, Alaska and Illinois. Right away this is rather absurd since New York and Illinois are quite well known to have among the least equitable school funding systems in the nation…. but that's the next graph. RheeFormy winners Florida and Louisiana are not particular standouts on their funding effort to education, whereas the states of New Jersey and Massachusetts, despite being much richer to begin with, allocate a much larger share of their economic productivity to elementary and secondary education. But hey, why would anyone want to count how much effort a state actually puts into funding its schools? right? how could that matter?
Figure 1.
Meanwhile, New Jersey and Massachusetts, along with Ohio, are relatively progressive on finance. Yes, Utah is too, but that's because Utah spends next to nothing on most schools and slightly more than next to nothing on lower income schools.
So, apparently, RheeFormy logic dictates that to really make progress on achievement in low income communities, money really doesn't matter. State school finance systems don't matter, and in fact, spending less on districts with more poor children is the way to go. Good for New York and Illinois! NOT!
Figure 2.
What we know about school finance reforms, funding level & distribution & student outcomes
…sustained improvements to the level and distribution of funding across local public school districts can lead to improvements in the level and distribution of student outcomes. While money alone may not be the answer, adequate and equitable distributions of financial inputs to schooling provide a necessary underlying condition for improving adequacy and equity of outcomes. That is, if the money isn't there, schools and districts simply don't have a "leverage option" that can support strategies that might improve student outcomes. If the money is there, they can use it productively; if it's not, they can't. But, even if they have the money, there's no guarantee that they will. Evidence from Massachusetts, in particular, suggests that appropriate combinations of more funding with more accountability may be most promising.
See: http://www.shankerinstitute.org/images/doesmoneymatter_final.pdf
Put bluntly – equitable and adequate financing for the education of all children is a prerequisite condition for achieving equitable and adequate outcomes. The Students First rating system misses this point entirely – measuring neither the equity nor adequacy – nor effort to raise these prerequisite resources.
No, the Students First ratings don't pretend to measure these things. But, they seem to argue that their ratings measure the prerequisite conditions for reforming education systems – where I must assume they mean making those systems better. But the reality is that the ratings focus on trivial and tangential reformy preferences, leading them to praise states that are among the worst in the nation on school funding and chastise states that are among the best.
RheeFormy Teacher Quality Indicators vs. Competitive Compensation
Next up are the RheeFormy ratings on elevating the teaching profession, where quite clearly, having competitive wages for teachers (relatively to the workforce of similarly educated workers) is a non-issue. Figure 3 shows the relationship between the relative weekly wage of teachers – compared to same education level non-teachers – and the elevating teaching GPA. Teachers in Louisiana have among the largest "teaching penalties" earning only about 70% of the weekly wage of non-teachers. That'll certainly elevate the profession! They are right up there with other stellar reformy states including Colorado and Tennessee. Teachers in Florida do a bit better. Teachers in Massachusetts don't do that well either, but Massachusetts is a state where non-teacher wages are quite high. So being relatively low in Massachusetts might not be as bad as being relatively low in Louisiana or Tennessee! (They also have the benefit of being able to send their own kids to pretty good public schools.) Teacher wages in New Jersey are more competitive, even in their higher non-teacher wage competitive context.
Figure 3.
In really simple terms – competitive wages are the first step toward elevating the teaching profession. Given what we actually know from research on "elevating the teaching profession" I don't expect to see America's best teachers flocking to Louisiana, Colorado and Tennessee anytime soon. But, I certainly hope to see those reformers in their caravan, moving their families to those reformy promise lands!
What we know about policy conditions for a strong teacher workforce
A substantial body of literature has accumulated to validate the conclusion that both teachers' overall wages and relative wages affect the quality of those who choose to enter the teaching profession, and whether they stay once they get in. For example, Murnane and Olson (1989) found that salaries affect the decision to enter teaching and the duration of the teaching career,[i]while Figlio (1997, 2002) and Ferguson (1991) concluded that higher salaries are associated with more qualified teachers.[ii]In addition, more recent studies have tackled the specific issues of relative pay noted above. Loeb and Page showed that:
"Once we adjust for labor market factors, we estimate that raising teacher wages by 10 percent reduces high school dropout rates by 3 percent to 4 percent. Our findings suggest that previous studies have failed to produce robust estimates because they lack adequate controls for non-wage aspects of teaching and market differences in alternative occupational opportunities."[iii]
In short, while salaries are not the only factor involved, they do affect the quality of the teaching workforce, which in turn affects student outcomes.
Research on the flip side of this issue – evaluating spending constraints or reductions – reveals the potential harm to teaching quality that flows from leveling down or reducing spending. For example, David Figlio and Kim Rueben (2001) note that, "Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics we find that tax limits systematically reduce the average quality of education majors, as well as new public school teachers in states that have passed these limits."[iv]
Salaries also play a potentially important role in improving the equity of student outcomes. While several studies show that higher salaries relative to labor market norms can draw higher quality candidates into teaching, the evidence also indicates that relative teacher salaries across schools and districts may influence the distribution of teaching quality. For example, Ondrich, Pas and Yinger (2008) "find that teachers in districts with higher salaries relative to non-teaching salaries in the same county are less likely to leave teaching and that a teacher is less likely to change districts when he or she teaches in a district near the top of the teacher salary distribution in that county."[v]
And what do we know about the effectiveness of the preferred Students First policies of providing performance based pay? For recent studies specifically on the topic of "merit pay," each of which generally finds no positive effects of merit pay on student outcomes, see:
- Glazerman, S., Seifullah, A. (2010) An Evaluation of the Teacher Advancement Program in Chicago: Year Two Impact Report. Mathematica Policy Research Institute. 6319-520
- Springer, M.G., Ballou, D., Hamilton, L., Le, V., Lockwood, J.R., McCaffrey, D., Pepper, M., and Stecher, B. (2010). Teacher Pay for Performance: Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching. Nashville, TN: National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University.
- Marsh, J. A., Springer, M. G., McCaffrey, D. F., Yuan, K., Epstein, S., Koppich, J., Kalra, N., DiMartino, C., & Peng, A. (2011). A Big Apple for Educators: New York City's Experiment with Schoolwide Performance Bonuses. Final Evaluation Report. RAND Corporation & Vanderbilt University.
RheeFormy States are NOT a Model for our Nation!
Now for that discussion of outcomes I mentioned previously. Well, here's what it looks like. The new RheeFormy ratings applaud the likes of Louisiana, Florida… Tennessee and even Washington DC. These are anything but stellar performers on national assessments, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. But indeed, these are also states (and a city) with relatively high child poverty rates.
Figure 4.
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
Figure 8.
Finally, I close with a topic that should be another blog post altogether, and likely will be at some point. I've been struck by the logic that the preferred policies in the Students First report are intended – by their framing – to increase accountability, empowerment and transparency. Yet, in all likelihood, most of these proposals accomplish precisely the opposite – substantially eroding public accountability and oversight and compromising statutory and constitutional rights of children, employees and local taxpayers.
Now, we may have our differing perspectives on the structure of our American government and operation of government entities. But, our government has a defined structure with reasonably well conceived overarching laws.
The U.S. Constitution, state constitutions and various federal and state statutes provide important protections to students and employees and the taxpayers that finance public institutions. Importantly, our constitution protects individuals from certain treatments by our government and agents of our government. Public schools – government schools to borrow from libertarian rhetoric – fall under that umbrella, and must, for example, provide children due process before depriving them the right to attend, and must respect – to a limited extent – students rights to free expression, etc. Government schools also cannot promote/endorse a particular religious viewpoint (proselytize). Other protections, many protections of both children and employees of government institutions are invoked through Section 1983 of the U.S. Code which applies to entities that are 'state actors' (uh… government entities). Further, many state laws apply to government entities and to 'public officials.'
We have a representative system of government with multiple levels, where public officials are elected by (and accountable to) voters (albeit often a small share of those eligible), and where additional layers of public officials may be appointed by elected public officials. And, as noted above, many laws, especially those pertaining to public disclosure, public meetings and public records apply to 'public officials.'
The Students First state policy rating system – like many other reformy manifestos – implies that the road to ACCOUNTABILITY and TRANSPARENCY is necessarily (perhaps exclusively) paved through shifting larger numbers of students and teachers and larger shares of public funding over to the management of non-government entities and non-public officials, as well as creating entirely new layers of 'public decision making' by referendum/petition (Parent Trigger). Whatever gripes we may have regarding the efficiency or responsiveness of government operated services, we must think this one through carefully.
Unless detailed accountability requirements are explicitly spelled out in a whole new layer of state and federal laws, the preferred policies laid out in the Students First and by other reformy institutions are more likely to lead to less public accountability and transparency rather than more. For example:
- Shifting substantial numbers of students into private schools or privately managed charter schools means that larger shares of students will have limited constitutional and statutory protections. When students are educated under privately managed schools – including charters – they do not (unless explicitly laid out in state charter laws) have the same constitutional protections with respect to discipline policies and they lack other important statutory protections that apply only to "state actors" (government institutions). Indeed, parents have a choice of whether to forgo these rights for their children. BUT…. advocates of these policies are deceitfully selling charter schooling as 'public' (with all the rights, privileges, etc.) to an unknowing public.
- Shifting substantial shares of public financing to entities governed by appointed boards of private citizens (not public officials), private management firms and private subcontractors reduces financial transparency because these institutions and individuals may – and most often do when challenged – invoke that they are not subject to open meetings, open records and other disclosure laws that necessarily apply to government entities.
Further, specific policies including parent trigger policies and 'opportunity scholarship' tuition tax credits may also substantially erode public accountability.
- Parent trigger attempts to subvert traditional elected representative local government by granting disproportionate power to a temporary class of citizens – parents of children attending a school at a given moment in time – to make relatively permanent decisions, by simply majority rule, regarding operations of public assets, public programs and services, including the option to make them no-longer public. But these assets, programs and services belong to and serve directly and indirectly the larger community of eligible voters who put in place their elected school board (or city government officials that appointed a portion or all of that board).
- Establishment of privately governed entities to manage funds collected through a tax credit program [Opportunity Scholarship Vouchers] is comparable to simply handing over an equivalent sum of funds collected as tax dollars to that entity, except that taxpayers lose any/all rights/accountability over the use of those funds! As with private management firms and schools, private entities of this type are not governed directly by public officials and therefore may not be similarly legally accountable. They may not be subject to the same level of public records or meetings disclosure, etc. This mechanism [Tuition Tax Credit] has been used as a means to get around constitutional concerns over allocation of public tax revenues to religious institutions. That is, this mechanism was created specifically to negate taxpayer standing to mount legal challenges over the use of funds. The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that when tax credit programs are structured in this way, taxpayers have no right [no standing] to bring constitutional (or likely any) challenges over the use of these funds. [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-987.pdf]
So yes – Students First has their policy preferences – and they're certainly entitled to that. They've built their entire rating system on their idea of what's good policy. They've not tried to justify their policy preferences in any research basis on effectiveness or efficiency of these policy preferences, nor could they. There simply is no research basis to support the vast majority of their preferences. Even where Charter school policy is concerned, findings of successful charters seem to occur most often where authorizers are few and tightly regulated, and where charter market share is low (as in NYC or Boston). This is in direct contrast with the SF preference for further deregulating and expanding the sector (as in states with relatively poor charter performance). So, in short, there's simply no research based reason to follow the policy agenda of Students First. But the reasons they provide – accountability, transparency, blah… blah… blah… are also not consistent with their policy agenda.
As a school finance researcher in particular, I've been increasingly frustrated by the lack of detailed consistent financial reporting on charter schools, and I've written much on this topic. I've also written on private school financing, which is even more sparsely reported. The more kids who are shifted into charters, the fewer kids on which we have reliable, comprehensive information on finances, teacher contracts, compensation packages etc. (as charters management companies repeatedly invoke that their employee contracts are private, not public documents). Similarly, financial arrangements involving land deals and capital financing are more opaque than ever – far more opaque and inaccessible than the public financing world of municipal bond financed infrastructure. And I don't see any legitimate effort to make these institutions more transparent – NONE!
[i]Richard J. Murnane and Randall Olsen (1989) The effects of salaries and opportunity costs on length of state in teaching. Evidence from Michigan. Review of Economics and Statistics 71 (2) 347-352
[ii]David N. Figlio (2002) Can Public Schools Buy Better-Qualified Teachers?" Industrial and Labor Relations Review 55, 686-699. David N. Figlio (1997) Teacher Salaries and Teacher Quality. Economics Letters 55 267-271. Ronald Ferguson (1991) Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How and Why Money Matters. Harvard Journal on Legislation. 28 (2) 465-498.
[iii]Loeb, S., Page, M. (2000) Examining the Link Between Teacher Wages and Student Outcomes: The Importance of Alternative Labor Market Opportunities and Non-Pecuniary Variation. Review of Economics and Statistics 82 (3) 393-408
[iv]Figlio, D.N., Rueben, K. (2001) Tax Limits and the Qualifications of New Teachers. Journal of Public Economics. April, 49-71
See also:
Downes, T. A. Figlio, D. N. (1999) Do Tax and Expenditure Limits Provide a Free Lunch? Evidence on the Link Between Limits and Public Sector Service Quality52 (1) 113-128
[v]Ondrich, J., Pas, E., Yinger, J. (2008) The Determinants of Teacher Attrition in Upstate New York. Public Finance Review 36 (1) 112-144
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Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Sunday | Friday/ Saturday |
Kitchen Closes at 10pm. Bar Open 12AM | Kitchen closes at 11pm. Bar open until 12AM/2AM |
The great Thai restaurant called Merlion in Seabrook buys fresh local seafood and creates incredible spicy Thai shrimp and fish dishes with it. It's the best Thai seafood outside of Thailand.
Call Merlions for reservations or directions at 281.385.9975 or check out our menu here.

subset: commoncrawl


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RTS shows KP 32 CLD Color Display Keypanel at NAB 2008
Las Vegas, NV RTS is proud to show the KP 32 CLD Color Display Keypanel at NAB 2008, Booth #C-5928.
With the introduction of the KP 32 CLD, RTS brings to market the flagship product of a new generation of RTS keypanels. This innovative solution addresses both the primary needs and advanced features required by different customers for finer control of keypanel functions. The KP 32 CLD uses a 4.9-inch, full-color LCD display to provide feature-rich operating functions. The KP 32 CLD also boasts an ergonomic design with a flat front panel that fits flush within a rackmount configuration.
Full Color Display
The new color display allows for a rich, modern, and user-friendly interface.
Modern, Modular Design
Flat front panel is ergonomically designed to fit easily into any control room or truck application.
Multi-Directional Keys
32 multi-directional keys used for talk, listen, and emulation of traditional LCP control function.
Future Expansion
Designed to allow for an expansion panel, program assign panel, and optional connections to the matrix. Supports today's and future transmission formats.
Enhanced Features
KP 32 CLD allows up to six auxiliary inputs, independent digital gain control for microphone sources and configurable audio routing. The keypanel has its integrated level control per key, which allow the user to adjust the listen volume on an individual basis.
DSP Processing
Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Equalization, Mixing, Filtering, and Metering
USB connector for future expansion and other planned interface features already integrated.
For more information, visit the RTS Intercom website: www.rtsintercoms.com
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These pages list ancient coins - if possible based on their mints or region of origin.
The content is based exclusive on my own images and data of these coins.
Werner Strauss � mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
The intention for this private gallery and database can not be completeness or showing the best of each type. So it can not compete with similar galleries based on expensive auction material and from multiple sources.
The gallery is supposed to show the culture, history and variety of
AFFORDABLE ancient coins
in Europe
and to motivate
collectors to discover new
areas of
Coin Gallery Overview
Ancient Coin Gallery
The order in wich the coins are arranged follows the geographical system of the old BMC abd many ancient coin catalogues, starting in the NW of the known ancient world (Britannia, Gallia, Hispania,...), surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and ending in Africa.
If you sort the files according title ( "+" in the upper right box on each album page) you will get the sequence intended by the album owner.
Medieval to Contemporary Coin Gallery
If you want to add some comment, correction or information please register or send me an email:
my online shop at MA-Shops
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"In time you can turn these obsessions into careers." -- Elvis Costello
I apologize if I've used that Elvis quote here before. It's quite possible. It's something I've learned to live by, since I am obsessed. Volkswagens, dogs, foreign terms for "sprinkles," vinyasa yoga, the public option, moray eels, drawing pens – it's an exhaustive list.
Sometimes obsessiveness can lead to business, and sometimes it doesn't.
When my kids were in elementary school I became obsessed with science fair. It rolled around as predictably as late-winter mud every March, and consumed my family from January on.
January was when my little science students had to submit their science fair proposals. This took the form of a hypothesis– a what-if question – and a plan for answering – also known as reaching a conclusion about it. Silly me: when my children asked what they should do, I asked, "What do you want to find out about?" They considered, wrote up their proposals, and went off to school. . That's when the rejections started rolling in.
Sam wanted to find out what kind of animals inhabited our stone patio. Bethany wanted to know whether she could get our dog Yogi to notice any kind of music. Emily wanted to study the infection rate of people who got their ears pierced.
"What would that prove?" asked Mr. Seventh Grade.
"It's not an experiment," said Mrs. Fifth Grade.
"It's not scientific enough," said Ms. Fourth Grade.
If you've been to a science fair, you know the kind of experiments that some science teachers do consider to be legitimate: analyzing which toothpastes whiten best; making a tornado in a bottle; blasting different levels of rock music at goldfish, hamsters, and houseplants; and – somebody shoot me, please – demonstrating how a carnation channels water, using food coloring in the water.
At first, I applied for a grant, titling my research and writing proposal "Death to Science Fair." I wanted to find out what scientists thought kids should be doing in science fair. My idea was to come up with ways that parents could help their kids shape their interests into science fair projects. My grant proposal was rejected, and I daresay the problem had something to do with my title – and the obvious anger behind it.
By this time my kids were in high school, and I had stood in the hallway outside the regional science fair with them and all their classmates, waiting for the climactic moment when the cuts were announced. When the cheering erupted, it took me a moment to realize that the kids who were cheering were the ones who'd been cut; so jaded were they with science fair that the winners were pitied for the extra time they'd have to spend on science.
The time had come to channel my obsession positively. I began working on the series of books that eventually would be called Science Fair Winners. The first two books, Bug Science and Crime Scene Science, have just been published. The next books, Junkyard Science and Sibling Science: Experiments on Your Brothers and Sisters, are due out in March: mudtime, science fair time.
The titles of these books reflect my purpose: to start with things kids are interested in and help them figure out ways to make science projects out of them. Each book has 20 workshops – projects, observations, experiments – that put kids to work on real science, while also helping them shape their work for science fair.
To do this, I went to scientists who were working in each of these areas, learned about their work and methods, and asked for their guidance on how to get kids' feet wet in their area: simplifying lab or research or experiment techniques. I hope that kids will consider sociology, physics, biology, forensics, anthropology, economics, and the other sciences included here as potential careers, and that they take their own obsessions into these areas. I hope they'll realize that whatever they're interested in can be used as science fair inspiration.
Just a sampling:
In Sibling Science, a social psychologist tells how to observe families in a mall food court, as a study of favoritism.
In Junkyard Science, an engineer suggests ways to experiment with garage junk to make musical instruments.
In Crime Scene Science, a forensic detective teaches you to train your dog to track your cat.
In Bug Science, a biologist shares ways to assess the bug population of your backyard – and provides his email address, should you come up with something unidentifiable. When he surveyed his own yard – as only a biologist OR a budding biologist would do – he found a new species of moth.
Obsessions…careers…good business…and maybe, good grades at science fair, and cheers for the winners. Science Fair Winners. New from National Geographic and me. Please check it out.


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Home on the Range - Henry and Eleanor Carlson
Home on the Range - Henry and Eleanor Carlson - Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Home on the Range - Henry and Eleanor Carlson - Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Some call the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of the United States and Canada the "Duck Factory" of North America.
Henry and Eleanor Carlson just call it home.
By helping Ducks Unlimited conserve native grasslands and pothole wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region, the Carlsons are not only securing the future of North America's waterfowl-they're preserving their family's history and heritage.
As the second of three generations of Carlsons in South Dakota, Henry Carlson, Jr. remembers when native prairies thrived on land that now grows wheat, corn, and soybeans.
In fact, for Henry, memories are all that's left of many of the grasslands he knew as a boy.
"I was fortunate in that my father had a ranch in South Dakota. As a teenager, I spent my summers there in the late '30s and '40s, so I got to see how people who lived there preserved the land," Henry said. "My father sold it in 1946, right after World War II, to a gal who promptly broke the land and converted it to wheat."
Later that year, the Army Corps of Engineers condemned the property and built the Oahe Dam where Henry had spent his childhood playing in the vast prairie grasslands. Since then, the Carlsons have seen countless acres of native prairie converted to cropland in the Prairie Pothole Region. Now, they're determined to help DU conserve what's left.
"The reason Eleanor and I have given to Ducks Unlimited and other conservation groups is that, while living in South Dakota, I have always appreciated the open prairie," Henry said. "It is disappearing. Ground is being plowed that should never have been plowed. We would like to see that land protected for future generations."
Unfortunately, it's too late for 97 percent of the native prairie already lost in the United States. In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that an additional 1.4 million potholes are at high risk of drainage in the eastern Dakotas. If these wetlands are lost, biologists predict that breeding duck numbers could decline by an estimated 2.9 million birds.
Once native prairie is plowed, it's nearly impossible to restore. "This landscape was created more than 10,000 years ago, when receding glaciers left wetlands-like potholes-across the prairies of North America. When you destroy habitat created by the last ice age, you can't bring it back with modern science," said Dr. Jim Ringelman, director of conservation programs in DU's Great Plains Region.
Still, habitat loss continues to rise in the PPR. With commodity prices nearing an all-time high and crop insurance covering the risk, the financial incentives to put every possible acre into production are all but irresistible. Even if it means the landowner must pay penalties for plowing prairies and draining wetlands enrolled in federal conservation programs, he can still profit more with the plow than with protection.
But there are other options. As part of a long-standing partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, DU is working closely with the ranching community to protect large tracts of native prairie through conservation easements that allow ranchers to preserve their way of life and conserve prairie habitat while also turning a profit. In addition, DU helps prairie landowners restore wetlands and grasslands on former cropland through conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program and Wetlands Reserve Program, and by partnering with agribusiness providers. Ducks Unlimited also offers agricultural extension assistance to help farmers grow winter wheat on intensively cultivated prairie landscapes, which provides more secure habitat for nesting ducks.
The Carlsons spent five days touring conservation project sites on the prairies and learning more about Ducks Unlimited's work.
Eleanor said the experience showed her that DU isn't just about hunters seeking a harvest. "It was surprising to see how much conservation work they do," she explained.
"If more people could see DU's work on the prairies-like how rotating and grazing various pastures works for ranchers and waterfowl-I think they'd find it very useful," Henry said.
For their part, the Carlson family will continue making habitat conservation a major part of the legacy they're building in South Dakota.
Henry &Eleanor Carlson appeared as the featured donors for the Prairie Pothole Region in the 2012 Ducks Unlimited Annual Report, available online at ducks.org/annualreport.
For more information on becoming a DU Major Donor, please visit our Leadership Giving homepage or contact Anita Tyler at (901) 758-3871.


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Posted: 06/22/10 By Henry Lamb
When Smart Growth and Sustainable Development washed across the nation in the 1990s, property rights activists were overwhelmed. Visioning councils sprang up everywhere, and towns, cities, counties, and regions soon had "Vision 2020 Action Plans" that transformed normal communities into "Sustainable Communities," and, for the most part, land owners never knew what hit them.
A common element in this transformation is the creation of what is usually called a "Comprehensive Land Use Plan." This plan, when approved by the governing authority, becomes the basis for bureaucrats to virtually control the use of private property.
The definition of property ownership includes the notion that the owner has control of the property and may use the property as the owner sees fit, subject to damages only if his use of his own property causes damage to a neighbor, provable in court. Armed with comprehensive plans, however, bureaucrats control the use of private property. Bureaucrats, not the property owner, decide whether the owner may use his property as he wishes – or not.
When Houston County Minnesota adopted its comprehensive plan, bureaucrats became little gods, telling landowners what they could, and could not do with their own land. Often, the bureaucrat's decision made no sense at all, but could not be challenged. When the land control god spoke, forgetaboutit!
Houston County landowner, Jim Shimshak owned a 200-acre farm. He wanted to give each of his five sons a home site on the property. The land use control god said no. The comprehensive plan requires no more than one structure per 40 acres. Who is exercising the power of ownership here: the land use control god bureaucrat, or the owner whose taxes helps to pay the salary of the bureaucrat? Does this situation stink, or what?
Houston County landowner, Mel Davy wanted to replace his older mobile home with a new one, on the same site where a well and septic connection already existed. Sound reasonable? The land use control god said no. Davy was required to put his new mobile home across the road, in a corn field, and build a new driveway, dig a new well, install a new septic system, and install new electricity access.
Houston County landowner, Mark Rask wanted to tear down an old farm house on his property and build a new one. The land use control god said no, because there was another dwelling already on the property. Rask could, however, restore the old farm house by bringing it into compliance with current building codes.
Houston County landowner, Milton Burroughs wanted to build a new home and sell his old home. He wanted to build the new home close enough to the existing home to share the same well. You guessed it. The land use god said no. Burroughs had to choose between moving his new home out into a farm field, and dig a new well, or tearing down the old home that he really needed to sell.
For more than 10 years, Houston County residents have bowed before the land use gods. Then they decided to fight "city hall."
They created an organization of local land owners which they called "Landowners Concerned about Property Rights." They began to document instances where the land use god exercised authority which the land owners believed to be well beyond the authority of the county's comprehensive plan, and certainly beyond the authority of the Minnesota or U.S. Constitution.
Then the group circulated a petition that said something to the effect that private property rights should be given high priority in the development and execution of the county's land use plan. The petition gained more than 700 signatures in this county of only 20,000 residents.
Then the group contacted the Budd-Falen law firm in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
On April 7, the county officials were notified of the group's intent to sue, and offered a waiver from the suit if the County Commissioners would sign the petition and work with a small committee from the landowners' organization to modify the most obnoxious provisions of the comprehensive plan.
Apparently the high and mighty land use gods of Houston County feel no need to recognize, nor communicate with mere landowners, taxpayers, and voters. No official even acknowledged the letter of intent to sue.
The landowners group has now filed suit with the Third Judicial District. If the arrogant masters of land use control in Houston County ignore this document, they will lose by default. They can't let that happen, so some kind of response will be forthcoming.
The suit charges the county with exercising authority not granted by the Minnesota Constitution or the U.S. Constitution; and with applying the county's comprehensive plan differently in similar situations; and with exercising power well beyond the authority granted by state or federal law.
Property rights organizations across the nation are waiting to see how Houston County responds, and perhaps more importantly, how the court will interpret the laws and precedents in the many specific examples detailed in the lawsuit.
Landowners Concerned about Property Rights in Houston County Minnesota has become an example that other property rights groups are following. Finally, someone is leading the way to an effective answer to the arrogance of government-imposed land use planning.
Distributed by www.ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com
and the Martin 9/12 TeaParty Committee.


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COMMENTS: Excellent article. I placed it on YBOP because it does such a great job on addiction.
The Diseases We Share with Our Animals, including Reptiles (from HerpDigest)
The following is from the latest Herp Digest release (if you don't subscribe already, please do!) and a collaboration of Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a cardiology professor at U.C.L.A. and writer Kathryn Bowers. This essay is adapted from their forthcoming book "Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing," which is told from the doctor's point of view.
People often ascribe the prevalence of the disease to modern habits like smoking and tanning, but cancer is common in animals. Cougars are susceptible to breast cancer. Photo by Jeff Vanuga/Corbis.
Melanoma has been diagnosed in the bodies of animals from penguins to buffalo. Koalas in Australia are in the middle of a rampant epidemic of chlamydia. Yes, that kind — sexually transmitted. I wondered about obesity and diabetes — two of the most pressing health concerns of our time. Do wild animals get medically obese? Do they overeat or binge eat? I learned that yes, they do.
I also discovered that geese, gorillas and sea lions grieve and may become depressed. Shelties, Weimaraners and other dog breeds are prone to anxiety disorders.
Suddenly, I began to reconsider my approach to mental illness, a field I had studied during the psychiatric residency I completed before turning to cardiology. Perhaps a human patient compulsively burning himself with cigarettes could improve if his therapist consulted a bird specialist experienced in the treatment of parrots with feather-picking disorder. Significantly for substance abusers and addicts, species from birds to elephants are known to seek out psychotropic berries and plants that change their sensory states — that is, get them high. The more I learned, the more a tantalizing question started creeping into my thoughts: Why don't we human doctors routinely cooperate with animal experts?
We used to. A century or two ago, in some rural communities, animals and humans were cared for by the same practitioner. And physicians and veterinarians both claim the same 19th-century doctor, William Osler, as a father of their fields. However, animal and human medicine began a decisive split in the late 1800s. Increasing urbanization meant that fewer people relied on animals to make a living. Motorized vehicles began pushing work animals out of daily life.
Most physicians see animals and their illnesses as somehow "different." Humans have their diseases. Animals have theirs. The human medical establishment has an undeniable, though unspoken, bias against veterinary medicine.
While it rankles when M.D.'s condescend, most vets simply take a resigned approach to their more glamorous counterparts on the human side. Several have even confided to me a veterinarians' inside joke: What do you call a physician? A veterinarian who treats only one species.
My medical education included stern warnings against the tantalizing pull to anthropomorphize. In those days, noticing pain or sadness on the face of an animal was criticized as projection, fantasy, or sloppy sentimentality. But scientific advancements of the past two decades suggest that we should adopt an updated perspective. Seeing too much of ourselves in other animals might not be the problem we think it is. Underappreciating our own animal natures may be the greater limitation.
PEOPLE who didn't smoke, drink or tan and who avoided microwaving food in plastic and cooking on Teflon can develop cancer. It strikes yoga practitioners, breast-feeders and organic gardeners; infants, 5-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 55-year-olds and 85-year-olds.
Even the briefest survey of cancer in other animals sheds light on a critical but overlooked truth: Where cells divide, where DNA replicates, and where growth occurs, there will be cancer. Cancer is as natural a part of the animal kingdom as birth, reproduction and death. And it's as old as the dinosaurs.
Osteosarcoma, the cancer that forced Ted Kennedy's son, Ted Junior, to undergo an amputation in the early 1970s, attacks the bones of wolves, grizzly bears, camels and polar bears. And the neuroendocrine cancer that claimed the life of Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs, while rare in humans, is a fairly common tumor of the domestic ferret and has been diagnosed in German shepherds, cocker spaniels, Irish setters and other dog breeds.
Breast cancer strikes mammals from cougars, kangaroos and llamas to sea lions, beluga whales and black-footed ferrets. Some breast cancer in women (and the occasional man) is connected to a mutation of a gene called BRCA1. All humans have a BRCA1 gene. But about one in 800 of us are born with a mutated version, which increases the risk for certain cancers. For Jewish women of Ashkenazi descent, it's as high as one in 50. And BRCA1-related breast cancer occurs in some animals, too: English springer spaniels, and possibly big cats like jaguars.
But some groups of mammals, intriguingly, may be protected from it.
The latte you sipped this morning contained milk from an animal sorority that very rarely gets breast cancer. Professional lactators — the dairy cows and goats that make milk for a living — have rates of mammary cancer that are so low as to be statistically insignificant. That animals which lactate early and long seem to have some protection against breast cancer is not only fascinating, it parallels human epidemiologic data that tie breast-feeding to reduced mammary cancer risk.
Another thing we can learn from animal cancer is the extent to which it's caused by outside invaders: viruses. Veterinary oncologists see this all the time. Lymphomas and leukemias among cattle and cats are quite frequently viral. Many of the cancers sweeping sea creatures from turtles to dolphins are rooted in papilloma and herpes viruses. Between 15 and 20 percent of cancers worldwide are caused by infections, many of which are viral.
And noticing where cancer isn't can be as instructive as noticing where it is. Dogs rarely get colon cancer. Lung cancer is also atypical, although short- and medium-nosed dogs living in homes with smokers are susceptible. Canine breast cancer is rarer in countries that promote spaying but quite common where most female dogs remain reproductively intact. As the veterinary oncologists Melissa Paoloni and Chand Khanna point out, two breeds of dogs seem to get cancer less often than others: beagles and dachshunds. Like the professional lactators who rarely get breast cancer, these extra-healthy dog breeds may point to behaviors or physiology that offer cancer protection.
ANIMALS don't have access to liquor stores, pharmacies or corner drug dealers. But the intoxicants in those drugs are found in nature — opium in poppies, alcohol in fermented fruit and berries, stimulants in coca leaves and coffee. Given the opportunity, some animals do indulge … and get intoxicated.
Addiction researchers have shown that genetics, vulnerable brain chemistry, and environmental triggers play roles in human substance abuse. But ultimately, on the receiving end of the syringe, joint or martini glass is a person making a choice, at least in the initial stages of drug use. This makes addiction uniquely bewildering to physicians, psychiatrists, sufferers and the people who care for them. Why is it so hard for addicts to "just say no"? It turns out that saying "no" is hard for animals too.
Cedar waxwing birds are known to ingest fermented berries, fly while intoxicated and crash into glass walls. In Tasmania, wallabies have broken into fields where medical opium was growing, eaten the sap and got stoned.
Some animals show chronic drug-seeking behaviors. Bighorn sheep grind their teeth to the gums scraping hallucinogenic lichen off boulders in the Canadian Rockies; some Siberian reindeer seek out magic mushrooms.
A friendly cocker spaniel in Texas once sent her owners' lives into a tailspin when she turned her attention to toad licking. As described in an NPR story, the spaniel, Lady, had been the perfect pet, until one day she got a taste of the hallucinogenic toxin on the skin of a cane toad. Soon she was obsessed with the back door, always begging to get out. She'd beeline to the pond in the backyard and sniff out the toads. Once she found them, she mouthed them so vigorously she sucked the pigment right out of their skin. According to her owners, after these amphibian benders Lady would be "disoriented and withdrawn, soporific and glassy-eyed."
In lab settings, rats have been shown to seek out and self-administer doses — sometimes to the point of death — of various drugs, from nicotine and caffeine to cocaine and heroin. Once addicted (researchers say "habituated") they may forgo food and even water to get their drug of choice. Like us, they also use more when they're stressed by pain, overcrowding or subordinate social position. Some ignore their offspring.
Taking a species-spanning perspective of drug use reveals something important: The urge to use has stayed in the gene pool for millions of years and for a counter-intuitive reason. Although addiction can destroy, its existence may have promoted survival.
Here's what I mean: Foraging, stalking prey, hoarding food, searching for and finding a desirable mate, and nest building are all examples of activities that greatly enhance an animal's chances of survival and reproduction, or what biologists call fitness. Animals are rewarded with pleasurable, positive sensations for these important life-sustaining undertakings. Pleasure rewards behaviors that help us survive.
Conversely, unpleasant feelings like fear and isolation indicate to animals that they are in survival-threatening situations. Anxiety makes them careful. Fear keeps them out of harm's way.
And one thing creates, controls and shapes these sensations, whether positive or negative: a cacophonous chemical conversation in the brains and nervous systems of animals. Time-melting opioids, reality-revving dopamine, boundary-softening oxytocin, appetite-enhancing cannabinoids and a multitude of other neurohormones reward behavior.
We humans get drug rewards for life-sustaining activities just as animals do. We simply call those activities by different names: Shopping. Accumulating wealth. Dating. House hunting. Interior decorating. Cooking.
When these behaviors have been studied in humans, they are associated with rises in the release of certain natural chemicals, including dopamine and opiates.
The key point is that behaviors are the triggers. Do something that evolution has favored, and you get a hit. Don't do it, and you don't get your fix.
And this is precisely why drugs can so brutally derail lives. Ingesting, inhaling or injecting intoxicants — in concentrations far higher than our bodies were designed to reward us with — overwhelms a system carefully calibrated over millions of years. These substances hijack our internal mechanisms. They remove the need for the animal to input a behavior, before receiving a chemical dose. In other words, pharmaceuticals and street drugs offer a false fast track to reward — a shortcut to the sensation that we're doing something beneficial.
This is a critical nuance for understanding addiction. With access to external drugs, the animal isn't required to "work" first — to forage, flee, socialize or protect. Instead, he goes straight to reward. The chemicals provide a false signal to the animal's brain that his fitness has improved, although it has not actually changed at all.
Why go through a half-hour of awkward small talk at an office party when a martini or two can trick your brain into thinking you've already done some social bonding? Drugs tell users' brains that they've just done an important, fitness-enhancing task.
Ultimately, however, the powerful urge to use and reuse is provided by brain biology that evolved because it maximized survival. Seen this way, we're all born addicts. Substance addiction and behavioral addiction are linked. Their common language is in the shared neurocircuitry that rewards fitness-promoting behaviors.
Consider the most common behavioral addictions from an evolutionary perspective. Sex. Binge eating. Exercise. Working. They are exceedingly fitness enhancing.
Connecting brain-rewarding behaviors to increased survival allowed me to rethink technological "addictions" like video gaming, e-mailing and social networking. Our smartphones, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds profoundly combine the things that matter most to animals competing to survive: a social network, access to mates, and information about predatory threats.
Understanding the comparative biology and evolutionary origins of addiction can improve how we understand this disease and its sufferers. First, individual humans vary greatly in their vulnerability to addiction. So do animals, from mammals to worms. In addition, human and animal data both suggest that the younger the animal is at the first exposure to an external drug, the more likely it is to become addicted and responsive to that drug in the future. This is a very important point.
In the United States, we've tried Prohibition and "just say no" campaigns. We've set the drinking age at 21 and the illegal drug use age at never. None of these interventions has completely stopped teenagers from going after what they want.
But the evidence suggests that it's wise for parents to try harder to delay their children's first exposures and, perhaps, to teach them natural ways of achieving those chemical rewards: through exercise, physical and mental competitions, or "safe" risk-taking, like performing.
Substance abusers can learn healthy behaviors that provide the same (albeit less potent) good feelings they used to seek from a bottle, a pill or a needle. In fact, that may be what makes some rehab programs so effective for certain addicts. The behaviors these programs encourage — socializing, seeking companionship, anticipating, planning and finding purpose — are all part of an ancient, calibrated system that rewards survival behaviors with drugs from an animal's inborn pharmacy.
Fat Planet
ALTHOUGH I'm a cardiologist, some days I feel more like a nutritionist. Patients, family members and friends frequently ask me, "What should I be eating?" We all know by now that choosing the wrong foods and carrying extra weight on our bodies can make us sick.
But humans aren't the only animals on our planet who get fat. In the wild, animals as varied as birds, reptiles, fish and even insects regularly gain — and then take off — weight. Closer to home, nearly half of our pet dogs, cats, even horses and birds are now overweight or obese, despite the low-carb, feline "Catkins" diet, canine liposuction and increased exercise for bird "perch potatoes." With our pets' excess pounds has come a familiar suite of obesity- related ailments: diabetes, cardiovascular problems, musculoskeletal disorders, glucose intolerance, some cancers and possibly high blood pressure. They're familiar because we see nearly identical problems in obese human patients.
I'd long assumed that wild animals stayed effortlessly lean and healthy. I'd always thought that wild animals ate until they were full and then prudently stopped. But in fact, given the chance, many wild fish, reptiles, birds and mammals overindulge. Sometimes spectacularly so. Abundance plus access — the twin downfalls of many a human dieter — can challenge wild animals, too.
Although we may think of food in the wild as hard to come by, at certain times of the year and under certain conditions, the supply may be unlimited. Many gorge, stopping only when their digestive tracts literally cannot take any more. Tamarin monkeys have been seen to eat so many berries in one sitting that their intestines are overwhelmed and they soon excrete the same whole fruits they recently gobbled down.
Mark Edwards, an animal nutrition expert, told me, "We're all hard-wired to consume resources in excess of daily requirements. I can't think of a species that doesn't." Wild animals can get fat with unfettered access to food.
Of course, animals also fatten normally — and healthily — in response to seasonal and life cycles. Remarkably, it is the landscape around an animal that determines whether its weight stays steady or rises.
And nature imposes its own "weight-maintenance plan" on wild animals. Cyclical periods of food scarcity are typical. Threats from predators limit access to food. Weight goes up, but it also comes down. If you want to lose weight the wild animal way, decrease the abundance of food around yourself and interrupt your access to it. And expend lots of energy in the daily hunt for food. In other words: change your environment.
Looking across the species divide and seeing weight gain in a broader context forces us to consider factors beyond the "diet and exercise" dogma. Even without an assist from 32-ounce sodas, the yellow-bellied marmots in the Rockies, blue whales off the coast of California and country rats in Maryland have gotten steadily chubbier in recent years. The explanation might lie in the disruption of circadian rhythms. Of the global dynamics controlling our biological clocks — including temperature, eating, sleeping and even socializing — no "zeitgeber" is more influential than light.
New research suggests that when, and how much, light beams through your eyes may play a quiet and unrecognized role in determining your dress or pants size. And the breaking up of light-dark cycles may be a culprit. Light pollution from suburban sprawl, big-city skyglow, electronic billboards and stadium lights has brightened our planet. A rodent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that mice housed with constant light — whether bright or dim — had higher body mass indexes (B.M.I.'s) and blood sugar levels than mice housed with standard cycles of dark and light.
Another invisible weight driver is housed within our own abdomens: the trillions of microscopic organisms that live in our guts. This world is called the microbiome, and it is colonized by two dominant groups of bacteria: the Firmicutes and the Bacteroidetes. In the mid-2000s, some scientists made an interesting observation. They found that obese humans had a higher proportion of Firmicutes in their intestines. Lean humans had more Bacteroidetes. As the obese humans lost weight over the course of a year, their microbiomes started looking more like those of lean individuals — with Bacteroidetes outnumbering Firmicutes.
When the researchers looked at mice, they found the same thing. Although not all research has replicated those results, if that observation turns out to be true, it means that a booming Firmicute colony might help harvest, say, 100 calories from one person's apple. That person's friend may have a dominant Bacteroidete population that would extract only 70 calories from the same apple. This could be one factor in why your co-worker can eat twice as much as everyone else but never seems to gain weight. The power of the microbiome is well known to the veterinarians who oversee the care of animals we make fat on purpose: livestock. Nowadays, it's common for factory farming operations to administer antibiotics to food animals from 1,500-pound steers to one-ounce baby chicks. The effect of those antibiotics on the living colonies of gut bugs in the animals' intestines may inform human obesity research.
Antibiotics don't kill just the bugs that make animals sick. Simply by giving antibiotics, farmers can fatten their animals using less feed. One hypothesis is that by changing the animals' gut microflora, antibiotics create an intestine dominated by colonies of microbes that are calorie-extraction experts. Anything that alters gut flora, including but not limited to antibiotics, has implications not only for body weight but for other elements of our metabolism, such as glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and abnormal cholesterol.
Modern, affluent humans have created a continuous eating cycle, a kind of "uniseason." Our food is stripped of microbes, and we remove more while scrubbing off dirt and pesticides. Because we control it, the temperature is always a perfect 74 degrees. Because we're in charge, we can safely dine at tables aglow in light long after the sun goes down. All year round, our days are lovely and long; our nights are short.
As animals, we find this single season an extremely comfortable place to be. But unless we want to remain in a state of continual fattening, with accompanying metabolic diseases, we will have to pry ourselves out of this delicious ease.
PROBABLY our era's most iconic form of human self-harm, seemingly tailor-made for suburban-parent hand-wringing and tabloid ogling, is cutting. Its name says it all, but in case you don't know: it means taking something sharp — maybe a razor blade, scissors, broken glass or a safety-pin — and slicing it across your skin to draw blood and create wounds. Psychiatrists call cutters "self-injurers" to include the whole range of inventive ways people dream up to hurt themselves. Some burn themselves on purpose with cigarettes, lighters or teakettles. Others bruise their skin by banging, punching or pinching themselves. Those with trichotillomania rub and rip out hair on their heads, faces, limbs and genitals. Some are swallowers, ingesting objects like pencils, buttons, shoelaces or silverware. We see this particular method a lot in prisons.
You may think self-injury occurs only in edgy subcultures or the seriously mentally ill. But my psychiatrist colleagues say it's sweeping through the general population. Why? A 22-year-old woman posting on a university blog put it this way: "I began cutting my arms at the age of 12… I think I could best describe the feeling I get as total bliss. It relaxes me."
Bliss? Relaxation? Relief? Even after years of psychiatry training and two decades around a hospital, I still think this sounds incredible. But cutters and their therapists say it's true. And they confirm that most self-injurers are not suicidal. But as to why they do it, the short answer is that we don't really know.
I decided to see what insights a zoobiquitous approach could add.
A friend of mine once took her cat to the vet assuming it had a skin affliction that was causing all the hair to fall off its legs, revealing red, oozing sores. After some tests to rule out parasites and systemic diseases, her vet said her pet was a "closet licker." It's a common diagnosis for house cats, sometimes called psychogenic alopecia. The cat was injuring itself with no clear physical trigger, in a way that was reminiscent of a human cutter alone in her room.
Owners of golden retrievers, Labrador retrievers, German shepherds, Great Danes, and Doberman pinschers will probably recognize a condition that often affects those breeds — in which they obsessively lick and gnaw at their own bodies. The open sores they create can cover the entire surface of a limb or the base of the tail.
"Flank biters" are horses that violently nip at their own bodies, drawing blood and reopening wounds.
The owners of these horses, like parents who discover their teenager is cutting, are often confused and heartbroken by the behavior, which can include bursts of violent spinning, kicking, lunging and bucking.
When owners bring in pets who circle furniture for hours, do back flips to the point of physical exhaustion or rub their skin to the point of breakage and bleeding, veterinarians sometimes describe these behaviors as "stereotypies." Many of the compulsive behaviors seen in horses, reptiles, birds, dogs and humans share core clinical features, including the potential to cause suffering and profoundly disrupt a patient's life. But many also share an intriguing connection to cleaning activities.
You've probably heard about the repetitive hand washing practiced by many sufferers of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Similarly, a stressed cat may go overboard with a feline's cleaning tool of choice, its raspy tongue. Veterinarians have come up with a colloquial term that cuts right to the heart of what's going on here. They call it, simply, "overgrooming."
Grooming is as basic an activity for many creatures as eating, sleeping and breathing. Evolution probably favored nature's neat freaks because they were the ones with fewer parasites and infections.
Grooming plays a vital role in the social structure of many animal groups, and it feels good. There's also a more private form of grooming — small behaviors that all but the most virtuous of us engage in all the time and often unconsciously. In general, they're innocent enough, but given the choice, we definitely wouldn't want to show them in public or watch other people do them.
Are your cuticles smooth or are there some rough edges begging to be picked or nibbled off? Are you twirling a lock of hair around your finger, twisting your eyebrows, stroking your own cheek, massaging your own scalp? Studies looking at hair pulling, scab picking and nail-biting all point to a calm, trance like state that typically accompanies these small, automatic, self-soothing activities.
Perhaps the fingers playing with your hair sometimes have the urge to pull a strand out. There's that slight tension as the root clings to the follicle …you gently tug harder … and a little harder …until finally, there's that short, sharp sting and the hair releases. Humans rely on this release-relief loop throughout the day. We may rub, pull, nibble or squeeze a little more when we're stressed, but for most of us the behavior never escalates. But for some people the need for that feeling of release and relief is so strong that they seek extreme levels of it. Self-harm is truly grooming gone wild.
In a way, self-harmers are actually self-medicators. That's because, paradoxically, both pain and grooming cause the body to release natural opiates, such as endorphins, the same brain chemicals that give marathoners their runner's high.
The typical middle-class teen is a little like the horse alone in its stall, with most of its needs provided in easy-to-digest chunks. He's left with lots of extra time and few activities as invigorating as a daily struggle for survival. Zookeepers make animals forage to avoid boredom. Should we explore getting teens involved in growing and preparing their own foods, an activity that can produce feelings of profound calm and purpose?
All of us — from full-blown cutters to secret hair pluckers and nail biters — share our grooming compulsions with animals. Grooming represents a hard-wired drive, one that's evolved over millions of years with the positive benefits of keeping us clean and binding us socially.
Our essential connection with animals extends from body to behavior, from psychology to society. This calls for physicians and patients to join veterinarians in thinking beyond the human bedside to barnyards, oceans and skies.


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Quynh-Thu Le, MD received both her medical school and radiation oncology training at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She then joined the Stanford faculty in 1997. She became the Chair of the Stanford Radiation Oncology Department in September 2011. She also holds the Katharine Dexter McCormick & Stanley Memorial Professorship at Stanford University.
Her research focuses on translating laboratory findings to the clinic and vice versa in head and neck cancer (HNC), specifically in the area of tumor hypoxia and salivary gland stem cells. Her research is reflected in both her publications and grant funding. Hers was one of the first groups that identified circulating biomarkers for tumor hypoxia in HNC, leading to the application of some of these markers in clinical trials, testing hypoxia targeted strategies. On the clinical side, she has led multicenter phase II and III clinical trials, testing the addition of novel drugs as either radiosensitizer or radioprotector with chemoradiotherapy in HNC. She has received grant support from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) Education & Development Award, R01 and R21 grants from the National Institute of Health (NIH). She was inducted into the Fellowship of the American College of Radiology (FACR), the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (FASTRO) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). She's also received a distinguished alumni award from Caltech.
Administratively, she is the Co-Director of the Radiation Biology Program of the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Chair of the Head and Neck Cancer Committee of the NRG Oncology Group, which is part of the NCI supported National Clinical Trial Network (NCTN), running large phase II-III studies for radiation in solid cancers. She serves on the editorial board of the several cancer related journals.
Clinical Focus
- Cancer > Head and Neck Cancer
- Cancer > Radiation Oncology
- Lung Cancer - Radiation Oncology
- Salivary Gland Tumors - Radiation Oncology
- Head and Neck Cancers - Radiation Oncology
- Larynx Cancer - Radiation Oncology
- Radiation Oncology
- Oral Cavity Cancer - Radiation Oncology
- Sarcomas - Soft Tissue - Radiation Oncology
- Skull Base Tumors - Radiation Oncology
Academic Appointments
Professor, Radiation Oncology - Radiation Therapy
Professor (By courtesy), Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery Divisions
Member, Bio-X
Member, Stanford Cancer Institute
Administrative Appointments
Chair, Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University (2011 - Present)
Co-Director, Radiation Biology Program, Stanford Cancer Institute (2004 - Present)
Honors & Awards
Distinguished Alumni Award, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) (2015)
Fellow, American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) (2014)
Recipient, ARRO Educator of the Year Award (2014)
Member, Induction into Institute of Medicine (IOM) (2013)
Fellow, American College of Radiology (ACR) (2011)
Recipient, ASCO Clinical Research Development Award (2002-2005)
Recipient, American Association of Woman Radiologist Early Career Professional Development Award (2002)
Recipient, ASTRO Junior Faculty Research Fellowship (2000-2002)
Recipient, Henry Kaplan Memorial Prize for Teaching Award (1998, 2000)
Recipient, Radiologic Society of Northern American Resident Research Award (1997)
Member, Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society (1993)
Top Graduate in Medical School Class, Sadie E. Berkove, MD Fellowship (1993)
Recipient, UCSF Regent Scholarship (1989-1991)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
Treasurer and Executive Committee Member, American Radium Socieity (2012 - Present)
Annual Program Committee - Head and Neck Group Member, ASCO (2012 - 2015)
Chair, Head and Neck Cancer Committee, NRG Oncology Cooperative Group (RTOG, NSABP & GOG) (2011 - Present)
Chair, Education Committee, ASTRO (2011 - 2015)
Chair and Member, Scientific Program Committee, American Radium Society (2006 - 2011)
Editorial Board Member, Journal Clinical Oncology (2006 - 2010)
Radiology Program Co-Director, Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center Grant (P30) (2005 - Present)
Annual Program Committee Member, ASTRO (2004 - 2010)
Panel Member, National Comprehensive Cancer Network Lung Cancer (2004 - 2010)
Annual Program Committee - Lung Group Member, ASCO (2004 - 2007)
Task Force Member of Written Board/Oral Board, American Board of Radiology (2003 - Present)
Professional Education
Internship:Alameda County Medical Center UCSF East Bay Surgical Residency (1994) CA
Medical Education:University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine (1993) CA
Board Certification: Radiation Oncology, American Board of Radiology (1998)
Residency:UCSF Medical Center (1997) CA
MD, UCSF, Medicine (1993)


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Eur J Hum Genet. 2012 Aug 29. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2012.192. [Epub ahead of print]
Genetic perspectives on the origin of clicks in Bantu languages from southwestern Zambia.
Barbieri C, Butthof A, Bostoen K, Pakendorf B.
Max Planck Research Group on Comparative Population Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Some Bantu languages spoken in southwestern Zambia and neighboring regions of Botswana, Namibia, and Angola are characterized by the presence of click consonants, whereas their closest linguistic relatives lack such clicks. As clicks are a typical feature not of the Bantu language family, but of Khoisan languages, it is highly probable that the Bantu languages in question borrowed the clicks from Khoisan languages. In this paper, we combine complete mitochondrial genome sequences from a representative sample of populations from the Western Province of Zambia speaking Bantu languages with and without clicks, with fine-scaled analyses of Y-chromosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms and short tandem repeats to investigate the prehistoric contact that led to this borrowing of click consonants. Our results reveal complex population-specific histories, with female-biased admixture from Khoisan-speaking groups associated with the incorporation of click sounds in one Bantu-speaking population, while concomitant levels of potential Khoisan admixture did not result in sound change in another. Furthermore, the lack of sequence sharing between the Bantu-speaking groups from southwestern Zambia investigated here and extant Khoisan populations provides an indication that there must have been genetic substructure in the Khoisan-speaking indigenous groups of southern Africa that did not survive until the present or has been substantially reduced.


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Source: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
BRUCE, WILLIAM BLAIR, painter; b. 8 Oct. 1859 in Hamilton, Upper Canada, son of William Bruce and Janet Blair; m. 4 Dec. 1888 Carolina Benedicks in Stockholm; they had no children; d. there 17 Nov. 1906.
As a youth, William Blair Bruce studied law at the Hamilton Collegiate Institute before working for three years in a handwriting academy run by his father, a gifted calligrapher and amateur water-colourist. Both parents encouraged his artistic talents. He took painting lessons from his father, from John Herbert Caddy*, and from Henry Martin, and briefly attended the Hamilton Art School in 1877. After three years of study in an architect's office he settled on a career: to become an artist. In May 1881 he showed two oils and a water-colour with the Ontario Society of Artists [see John Arthur Fraser*].
Like many Canadian artists of his generation, such as Paul Peel* and George Agnew Reid*, Bruce planned to further his career by training and exhibiting in Paris. With the blessing and financial support of his mother, grandmother, and aunt, he soon sailed for Liverpool, England. A letter from Paris dated 10 July 1881 marks the first of some 120 letters he sent home. An invaluable chronicle of a Canadian artist abroad, the correspondence documents the sometimes terrible struggle to survive and succeed.
By October Bruce had entered the Académie Julian, where he studied under Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury, respected painters in the then-prevalent academic style. They instilled in Bruce a belief in the primacy of the human figure – carefully observed and then, through an arduous process of drawing and oil sketching, incorporated into large paintings suitable for inclusion in the annual Paris Salon. At the same time, however, Bruce was committed to painting landscape views en plein air, pictures saturated with, in his words, "the feeling of things, the spiritual more than the earthly." His Une lisière de la forêt – matin (current location unknown) was accepted in the 1882 Salon, a mark of favour for one so recently arrived.
The next two years Bruce spent primarily in Barbizon, a small village and artists' community near Paris, labouring intensely towards a single goal – the creation of a major painting full of "the greatest Sentiment" which would gain him a Salon prize and secure his career. He almost foundered under the burden of work and the costs of paint, canvas, models, picture frame, and studio. Yet his large and ambitious oil painting Temps passé (Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, N.B.), with its touching contrast of old age and youth clearly conceived to attract attention, was exhibited in the 1884 Salon, and indeed was well displayed and favourably reviewed. But no prize was forthcoming.
Bruce's great effort had taken its toll. He carried on for a year before succumbing to a breakdown ("I sometimes think my brains are shattered"). In the fall of 1885 he sailed home to recuperate, only to suffer another set-back, perhaps of greater magnitude: the ship transporting approximately two hundred of his works for exhibition in Toronto, Hamilton, and London sank off Île d'Anticosti on 8 November and all were lost.
Bruce remained a year in Hamilton before returning to Paris in late 1886. After spending a few months in Barbizon he settled in Giverny with several American artist friends. Theodore Robinson, a close associate of Claude Monet, who lived nearby, in particular was to have considerable impact on the Canadian's developing style. Bruce's large, carefully worked-out figural pieces of the early and mid 1880s were rapidly replaced by small, brilliantly coloured and vividly brushed landscapes in a pure impressionist mode. (He was eventually to return to the production of vast Salon "machines" in the 1890s, the equivalent of leaping from one of the most advanced styles of the day back to the conservatism of his earlier style.) Landscape with red flowers (1887, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto) pulsates and dazzles – a Canadian masterpiece in this style and irrefutable evidence of Bruce's outstanding talent.
On 4 Dec. 1888 in the British embassy at Stockholm Bruce married a wealthy and socially prominent Swedish sculptor, Carolina Benedicks; a sacerdotal ceremony was held the following day in the cathedral. Over the next two decades they travelled and worked – visiting Paris, Capri, Italy, Hamilton (in 1895, when he painted on the Six Nations Reserve), and, increasingly, Stockholm and the Swedish island of Gotland. There, around 1900, near Visby, Bruce and his wife completed a large house, Brucebo, which was to serve as their primary residence.
The remarkable promise demonstrated by Bruce, particularly in Giverny, was never to be fully realized. A career which might easily have produced the most important body of paintings by a Canadian in the impressionist manner became fractured. Despite a considerable output and many fine paintings from his later years – especially portraits of his wife and twilight views of Stockholm and the sea – his reputation has suffered from the wide variety of his subjects (portraits, landscapes, genre, mythology, and the nude) and, more significantly, the eclecticism of his style (vacillating between impressionism and the academism of his early career with overtones of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the Barbizon School, and Scandinavian romanticism). Yet in his day Bruce enjoyed widespread recognition in Europe as well as an exhibition record that included, in Paris, the prestigious Salon 15 times between 1882 and 1906 and the universal exposition of 1900 (at which, in his words, "it appears" he was awarded a medal); the Royal Academy of Arts in London; the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in Toronto; an exhibition of over 130 works in Stockholm in 1897; the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, N.Y., where he won a gold medal; and a posthumous retrospective of 122 works held in Paris in 1907.
A gift of 29 paintings to the city of Hamilton by his widow led to the founding of what is now the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The largest selection of his works outside Brucebo is currently housed there. A scholarship provided by Carolina sponsors the studies of a Canadian art student each summer at Brucebo.
A selection of William Blair Bruce's correspondence with his family has been published as Letters home, 1859–1906: the letters of William Blair Bruce, ed. and intro. Joan Murray (Moonbeam, Ont., 1982). The originals are housed in the Bruce papers at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ont., which holds the bulk of the primary source material on the artist. A few important items are located at the HPL. In addition to the museums named in the text, Canadian public collections with works by Bruce include the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum (Charlottetown), and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, Ont.).
Art Gallery of Ontario, Library (Toronto), W. B. Bruce artist file (microfiche), "Short sketch of W. Blair Bruce, artist, Paris" (typescript, [c. 1901]). Hamilton Spectator, 16 Nov. 1935. Sylvain Allaire, "Les Canadiens au Salon officiel de Paris entre 1870 et 1910: sections peinture et dessin," Journal of Canadian Art Hist. (Montreal), 4 (1977–78): 141–54. DHB. Exposition rétrospective de l'œuvre de W. Blair Bruce; ouverte du 11 au 26 mai 1907 (catalogue d'exposition, Georges Petit Galeries, Paris, 1907). Harper, Early painters and engravers. Joan Murray, William Blair Bruce (exhibition catalogue, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1975). Saturday Night, 26 Feb. 1927. Robert Stacey, "A contact in context: the influence of Scandinavian landscape painting on Canadian artists before and after 1913," Northward Journal (Moonbeam), no.18/19 (1980): 36–56. Standard dict. of Canadian biog. (Roberts and Tunnell). David Wistow, Canadians in Paris, 1867–1914 ([Toronto], 1979).
© 1994–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval
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Cite This Article
David Wistow, "BRUCE, WILLIAM BLAIR," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 21, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bruce_william_blair_13E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bruce_william_blair_13E.html |
Author of Article: | David Wistow |
Title of Article: | BRUCE, WILLIAM BLAIR |
Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13 |
Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1994 |
Year of revision: | 1994 |
Access Date: | February 21, 2024 |


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The NWTF, the leading conservation organization dedicated to improving upland wildlife habitat, and the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service are partnering on two initiatives to enhance critical ecosystems on private land across 16 states.
The golden-winged warbler and longleaf pine initiatives will improve habitat on private land for targeted species and countless other wildlife and plant species that flourish in the same habitat.
"These are landscape scale habitat initiatives that will have far reaching impacts," said James Earl Kennamer, Ph.D., the NWTF's chief conservation officer. "The NWTF and our expert wildlife biologists are uniquely positioned to be the driving force behind these critical, on-the-ground habitat improvements. These initiatives will make significant impacts on golden-winged warblers, longleaf pines and the countless other species that depend on these shared habitats."
Daily, 6,000 acres of prime upland habitat are lost to development. Improving existing habitat will make a significant, long-term impact on upland wildlife and help counter these ongoing losses.
The golden-winged warbler songbird is listed as a Federal Species of Special Concern and has experienced dramatic declines, particularly throughout the greater Appalachian region, due to the loss of critical breeding habitat. Golden-winged warblers require patchy shrubland and forest edges, which also is critical for a wide range of species, including wild turkey, ruffed grouse and migratory birds.
Longleaf pine forests once covered an estimated 90 million acres across the Southeast; today only 3 percent remains. Longleaf forests are home to hundreds of wildlife species, including 29 species that are listed as threatened or endangered, and are important to the continuation of these species. This habitat is extremely important for wild turkeys.
Through these free public-private initiatives, the NWTF will work with 725 private landowners to help them improve habitat on their land by providing technical assistance and preparing habitat management plans. These efforts will provide expert guidance and help landowners participate in existing federal cost share programs to help fund these critical improvements. The NWTF also will conduct 38 wildlife habitat management field days to provide landowners with the tools to help wildlife on their lands.
"NRCS is proud to work with the NWTF to further the management of longleaf pine forests and habitat for the golden-winged warbler," said NRCS Chief Dave White. "This partnership provides another opportunity for farmers, ranchers and forestland owners to voluntarily protect this critical wildlife habitat."
The NWTF and its partners will be contributing $1.75 million to these initiatives to compliment NRCS's investment.
The golden-winged warbler initiative will include Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The initiative supporting longleaf pine will include the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
For information on participating in either initiative, contact Mark Hatfield at (803) 637-7507 or email@example.com.
This release was produced by the National Wild Turkey Federation


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KNOXVILLE - It's too soon to know if the seven new assistant coaches on Derek Dooley's staff at Tennessee are upgrades over their predecessors.
From the perspective of the Volunteers' third-year coach, though, the new faces offer a fresh start of sorts.
"Is it normal to have seven coaches transition in a year? No, it's very rare for something like that to happen," Dooley said during his interview with the Times Free Press last week. "But I kind of view it as sort of a correction. When you start a company, when you start anything, you always have that little initial correction to kind of fix all the things maybe you didn't get right in the beginning.
"I think it was a good correction for me, and I think it's going to be for the team."
Though from a professional standpoint he didn't have much time to sulk, Dooley had to find it tough seeing seven coaches he hired to join him at UT in 2010 leave after just two seasons. For example, Terry Joseph, the last of the departing group, had been a Dooley assistant for the last five years. All of the coaches that left made lateral moves, though not all for the same reasons.
"I think some left because the fit wasn't right," Dooley said. "I think some left because they maybe allowed the fear ... the fear made the wolf a little bigger than it was. I think some left just because professionally they thought it would be a good growth situation.
"Each coach was unique in why they left, and it's part of the profession."
It's also part of the profession as the head coach to hire the best candidates for the coaching vacancies. After making the comment that his coaching staff needed to have better trust with each other, Dooley said some familiarity was part of his search process. It's the made the transition seamless, he said, even amid so much turnover.
"I think it was important for me at the defensive-coordinator level," Dooley said. "I thought that position, more than any, having to teach somebody everything about me, what I believe, philosophy, how we run things organizationally - I just felt like the learning curve [was too much].
"I wanted to get somebody who had the same philosophy as I've had, they've been in the same system, they believe in the same things that I believe [and] I didn't have to sell what I was doing to them. Sal [Sunseri] fit that mold. I think because of that, that's permeate throughout the staff."
Each coach on UT's entirely new defensive staff has a connection to Sunseri, the Vols' new coordinator. Whether it was coaching under him like Derrick Ansley or just seeing him a few weeks out of the year at the Carolina Panthers' training camp like Josh Conklin, that continuity has had an impact. Offensively, running backs coach Jay Graham played at UT, offensive line coach Sam Pittman knew offensive coordinator Jim Chaney and tight ends coach Charlie Coiner was on Louisville's staff with Sunseri for three seasons.
The familiarity has been an asset for the Vols through spring practice, but whether or not the new staff is upgrade won't be proved until next fall and next February.
"I don't want to compare the staffs; I think it's a little premature," Dooley said. "This group's only been here a couple of months. What I can tell you is that I believe this group has a real good understanding of Tennessee, the SEC and what it takes to be successful in this league.
"It's been a real seamless transition, and I think the players are really embracing the new energy."


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People Powered
....and we're back. Forgive the uncharacteristic silencio on this here blog. However, I was stunned/shocked/pleased/ecstatic/euphoric/buoyed by the fact that our democracy still apparently functions. The people have spoken. Say hello to a few of our people-powered legislators set to bring accountability and oversight back to the 110th congress:
John Tester, Senator-elect from Montana
John will be one of the few non-millionaires in the senate. He still farms the land that his grandfather homesteaded in 1916. Yes, he's got the beer belly and flat top, but he's also a former music teacher with a B.S. in Music. Tester is a good old fashioned populist who's bound to clear some of the stagnation from insider-ridden DC. Oh, and he's pals with Jeff Ament, Pearl Jam's bassist (which makes him aces in my book).
Sen. Tester reminds me of a Tannat-based wine from France's southwest. On first blush, the wine is certainly tough and rustic. However, once the wine begins to open up, surprising layers of complexity are revealed. Raise a glass to Montana's farmer-Senator with Domaine Brana's 'Ohitza'.
Claire McCaskill, Senator-elect from Missouri
Good on ya, Mizzou! Ms. McCaskill won election by focusing on accountability in government, fairness in society and ssssScience. She supported Missouri's Stem Cell Initiative (which passed) to bring access to stem cell therapies and cures to all Missourians through scientific research. I'm confident Ms. McCaskill will assist in changing the country's direction and make government work for all of us.
Sen. McCaskill is like an elegant Grüner Veltliner, replete with butterscotch and earth. Say, "Cheers" to the Show Me State with a glass of Schloss Gobelsburg Grüner Veltliner Tradition.
Jim Webb, Senator-elect from Virginia
Jim will be the sole member of the Senate with a child in Iraq. During the campaign, Webb wore his son's combat boots as a reminder of the human cost to the occupation of Iraq. As a former secretary of the Navy under The Gipper, some have attempted to pigeonhole Webb as a Repub in Dem's clothing. However, Jim has rapidly sunk this meme. He is yet another populist in the new Senate who cares about average joes/janes and who wants to bring sanity to the current non-strategy guiding our Nation's defenses.
I perceive Sen. Webb as a 'rough and dusty' red (perhaps with a little piss-n-vinegar added) like one from Portugal's Dao region. Raise a toast to another people-powered politician with Quinta dos Roques.
To quote one of my favorite political figures: "YEEEEARRRRGHHH!"


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NPR Music Presents: Tori Amos In Concert
"Don't you want more than my sex?" is just one of many memorable lines on Tori Amos' 1992 album Little Earthquakes, jauntily tossed off in the cabaret singalong "Leather." But it encapsulates the challenge the singer-songwriter posed to the music world 20 years ago.
Leading a wave of artists who would take women in rock from the margins to the center, Amos showed the world how a whole woman — brains, guts, heart and, yes, sex — could sound. At 28, Amos was coming into her own after a few false starts in the L.A. pop machine, and she went deep and hard into her feminine experience with a voice that murmured or screamed, but most of all spoke frankly and directly and seemingly right into the hearts of her fans.
Amos' delicate but rocking songs, built around her classically based piano playing, were revelations for generations of young women (and men) trying to figure out how liberation could be the stuff of a personal life, not a distant political movement. In funny, poignant, daring lyrics, Amos offered unflinching views of complicated romance ("China"), power struggles with men ("Tear in Your Hand"), family dramas (Amos' tender song to her father, "Winter") and rape, an experience she describes without apology or the need for pity in the a cappella "Me and a Gun." Two decades after Amos first uttered the words, "I hear my voice and it's been here, silent all these years" in Little Earthquakes' lead single, that voice still startles, moves and uncovers secrets.
Amos' latest album, Gold Dust, commemorates the 20th anniversary of Little Earthquakes by re-imagining a personally handpicked collection of songs from her catalog in an orchestral setting. Experience these new arrangements of classic favorites in an exclusive concert from New York City, broadcast live by NPR Music.
Set List
- "Leather"
- "Cloud On My Tongue"
- "Jamaica Inn"
- "Purple People"
- "Snow Cherries From France"
- "Smokey Joe"
- "Putting The Damage On"
- "Taxi Ride"
- "Jackie's Strength"
- "Flavor"
- "1,000 Oceans"
- "Hey Jupiter"
- "Winter"