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AMC rose with 'Dead,' MTV ebbed with 'Shore'
2012 year-end rankings show TBS getting a big 'Bang' and History reeling in 'McCoys.'
Viewers flocked to TBS and History in 2012, but fled from several other big cable channels, including Nickelodeon and MTV.
Year-end Nielsen ratings out Thursday showed the total cable audience was unchanged from 2011, even as most broadcast networks lost viewers. But as usual, it was a case of the haves and have-nots.
The top-10 ranked networks in prime time were mostly the same as the previous year, though History (up 8%, to a record average 2.2 million) moved up slightly to become the No. 5 network among all viewers thanks to its huge Hatfields & McCoys miniseries and non-historical series such as Pawn Stars and Swamp People.
USA was again the No. 1 network, averaging 2.9 million viewers in prime time, but fell 8% from 2011 and 11% among adults ages 18 to 49. Disney was No. 2 in prime time, averaging 2.4 million, down 9%, and ESPN was No. 3, flat at 2.3 million.
TNT, No. 4, dropped 3% to 2.2 million viewers, though it still had three of the top five original series. But sibling TBS jumped a big 20%, to average nearly 2 million viewers, thanks almost entirely to frequent reruns of CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory, which it began airing in heavy rotation. "This thing is such a phenomenon," says David Scardino of Los Angeles ad firm RPA. "People have fallen in love with that show." And the reruns have helped boost CBS' numbers for originals in the show's sixth season.
Fox News Channel (2.1 million), No. 6 in prime time, was up 9%, helped by the election and a busy news cycle that included Hurricane Sandy and the Newtown school shootings. And while MSNBC (913,000, up 16%) also benefited, CNN (681,000) and sibling HLN (337,000) dropped 2% and 32% respectively as their woes continued and new management was named.
Among kids networks, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel tied on a full-day basis, averaging 1.7 million viewers apiece, though Disney edged Nick among kids for the first time. Nick was down a big 20%, as SpongeBob SquarePants could not sustain a schedule bereft of new hits, and Disney dipped 4%. But Cartoon Network (1.2 million) began closing the gap, climbing 7%, and smaller fry such as Disney XD (+11%), Sprout (+37%) and The Hub (+35%) had their best years yet.
Nick wasn't the only sore spot at parent Viacom: MTV ratings swooned 23% to an average 919,000 in prime time, as Jersey Shore cooled from a record 9 million viewers in 2011 to 3 million when the series was canceled in December. "These numbers are down considerably, and they haven't found something to take its place yet," Scardino says. Nick at Nite was off 35%, Comedy Central fell 16%, BET dropped 9% and Spike was down 8%. But VH1 was a rare bright spot, climbing 16% with reality fare.
Among other gainers were Animal Planet, which rose 14%; Investigation Discovery, up 22%; National Geographic, up 15%; and the Oprah Winfrey Network, which rebounded 29% to a still-low average of 330,000 viewers, as the channel adjusted its programming strategy to compete more directly with channels such as corporate sister TLC, from which it borrowed several programs.
AMC climbed 7% among young adult viewers as zombie drama The Walking Dead soared to new heights and bested big-network rivals last fall among that audience.
Top original cable series
Prime time; viewers in millions, including live plus 7-day delayed DVR viewing:
The Walking Dead (AMC) 11.8
The Closer (TNT) 8.7
Rizzoli & Isles (TNT) 7.4
Major Crimes (TNT) 7.0
Pawn Stars (History) 6.3
Perception(TNT) 6.2
Dallas (TNT) 6.1
Sons of Anarchy (FX) 6.0
Suits(USA) 6.0
Jersey Shore (MTV) 5.9
Top original cable series among ages 18 to 49
Prime time, viewers in millions, including live plus 7-day delayed DVR viewing:
The Walking Dead (AMC) 8.0
Jersey Shore (MTV) 4.3
Sons of Anarchy (FX) 4.1
Kourtney & Kim Take New York (E!) 3.3
Teen Mom 2 (MTV) 3.2
American Horror Story (FX) 3.0
Pawn Stars (History) 3.0
Storage Wars (A&E) 2.9
Gold Rush (Discovery) 2.8
Tosh.0 (Comedy Central) 2.7
(Note: Program averages are 2012 through Dec. 9; network averages are Dec. 26, 2011 to Dec. 30, 2012)


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|Ryan Reynolds shirtless. (source)
|Denzel Washington. To be fair, I searched for a shirtless picture of him too, and was unable to find one! (source)
And the scenery- very much Cape Town, and it felt like the city I know. You know how some movies take place in a city, but they really didn't film there? Not this movie- all real Cape Town places. I recognized many of the roads and buildings in the movie, and I thought that the movie portrayed Cape Town in a balanced way. One of the opening scenes was Ryan riding a motorcycle on a curvy road- I drive De Waal Road at least once a week! And last week, I was across the street from The Standard Hotel, one of the "seedy hotels" that they seek refuge in. The only thing I'm not sure of is how accurate they were with the physical location of different places. The American Embassy is not in the city centre, but fairly far away from where the movie portrayed it to be located.
|The Standard Hotel in Maitland, Cape Town, South Africa. (source)
As Lance Harris of TechCentral says, "The real fun lies in spotting the locations where Safe House was filmed. It's not every day that we get to see American actors tear around the streets of Woodstock in frantic car chases, or shoot up Green Point Stadium, and then, absurdly, escape on the metro train. This isn't a postcard-perfect Cape Town either, but one that spans from pretty views of Table Mountain to the shacks of Langa and the grit of, erm, Parow."
P.S.- I've almost reached 100 posts, and I'm thinking of doing another giveaway!!! What do you think?

subset: commoncrawl


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Jerry Kilgore: From Gate City to the Capital City
Jerry Kilgore is always on his way somewhere else: to a meeting, to a speech in Charlottesville or Roanoke, to becoming governor of Virginia.
Ask the attorney general about the latter, and he'll demur. "It's no secret that I'm interested in the job, but that decision will come in due time," he replies to that frequent inquiry.
Besides, he likes being Virginia's 42nd attorney general. And since taking office with more of the popular vote than the governor garnered, Kilgore's made a big splash for a boy from the far corner of southwest Virginia, taking on Governor Mark Warner– over redistricting– or his own Republican party, when the Edmund Matricardi eavesdropping scandal broke last year.
Kilgore claims no hard feelings with Warner. "We have a good relationship," he says, "and 99.9 percent of the time we're on the same page. There are just a few high-profile issues where we have more political or philosophical differences."
The 2001 election was his first run for elected office, although he's worked on plenty of other elections and served as secretary of public safety for mid-1990s governor George Allen. Kilgore got his first taste of politics when his dad became the local Republican Party chair in the '70s. From a tender age, he's been a party stalwart. "I have worked the polls since I was 10 years old," he says.
And he's found it's a different ball game being the one elected rather than the campaign manager or policy advisor. "You're always on, whether you're giving a speech or out having dinner with your family," he explains. Even at a restaurant, people want to come up and talk to the photogenic AG they've seen on TV. "That's what's most shocking to my children," he says.
Still, Kilgore seems to have taken to the demands of public office and to being on the forefront of state issues in stride. "You don't know what's coming across your desk," he says. "A year ago, who'd have thought the Atlantic Coast Conference would have been an issue, or that we'd be obsessed with trying to catch a sniper?"
Kilgore, by the way, successfully argued that Virginia should try the sniper suspects first.
Being AG is not without its perks: "You do get a cool state police radio," he says.
Kilgore still has that soft, southwestern Virginia accent, despite being a long way from Gate City, just up the road from Slabtown in Scott County. Of course, southwestern Virginia is so far from everything that the western tip of Virginia is directly south of Detroit, according to Kilgore.
Living there, you had to travel 30 minutes to do anything, he says, adding that he appreciates the convenience of Richmond. "You always had to make a list. Now I live a list-free life."
The AG's twin brother, Terry, is a delegate representing their hometown district. "He's the big picture guy, I'm the policy wonk," says Kilgore.
So who's the evil twin? Kilgore laughs. "That would be a split decision," he says, before confessing, "That's his nickname for me."
Age: 42
What do you like best about Charlottesville? The Corner
What do you like least about Charlottesville? One-way streets
Favorite hangout? Any UVA sporting event
Most overrated virtue? No virtue is overrated.
What would people be surprised to know about you? I used to play the piano at church.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would have more patience.
What accomplishment are you proudest of? Seeing my twin brother Terry win his first election
What do people find most annoying about you? I'm a perfectionist.
Whom do you admire? Our men and women in uniform
Favorite book? The Great Gatsby
What subject causes you to rant? Too many to list
What thrills you about life in the 21st century? Blackberry Wireless technology
What creeps you out about life in the 21st century? Identity theft
What do you drive? Tahoe
What's in your car CD player right now? Toby Keith's Unleashed
What's your next journey? Home to Gate City for Thanksgiving
What's the most trouble you've ever gotten in? In the second grade I got in trouble for talking in class– but my twin brother, Terry, was the one who got punished for it.
What do you regret? Not learning a second language
Favorite comfort food? Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard
What's always in your refrigerator? Diet Coke
Must-see TV? CSI
Favorite cartoon? Spongebob Square Pants– which I watch with my daughter Kelsey.
Describe a perfect day. A day I get to spend with my children
Walter Mitty fantasy? Winning the U.S. Open (tennis)
Who'd play you in the movie? Keanu Reeves
Most embarrassing moment? When I swallowed a bee during a speech
Best advice you ever got? Work hard. Be prepared. Do your homework.
Favorite bumper sticker? If you can read this, thank a teacher.
Jerry Kilgore


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Marika 440-6884
Hey I am an intermediate player also. I would be interested to play also. Let me know, my number is 860-997-2212, text or call me sometime if you want to hit around or play.
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The road trip we did this last October will be etched in my heart forever.
I still don't understand why no one had previously urged me to visit W.A.
Can I just say right now… PLEASE GO AND VISIT! It is amazing. The western desert is particularly beautiful.
Above is a map of the road we took from Perth (which is just off the map to the left) to Karalundi.
Love the names of the places out there – this is where we turned left and didn't stop for 8 hours…
I really should have started taking these photos as soon as I started to see the signs for how far it was to Meeka. It seemed like FOREVER.
I loved the difference in the scenery from Perth to Karalundi.
Take a wide berth when you pass trucks and road-trains, don't ask why, just trust me on that one.
My smiling driver
Paynes Find is out in the middle of no where, surrounded by nothing but shrubs and red dirt. We stopped to fill up with petrol but they had run out. So we used their bathrooms and what do you know, the water had run out as well – only an hour before we arrived!
Out in the desert, the colours of the scenery change dramatically when the sun drops.
Road train at Mount Magnet Truck Stop and Petrol Station.
A Magnum at Mount Magnet tasted so good – it needed to for $5.50 a pop. How cute is little Malcolm? That kid is a legend.
Perfect example of a stunning sunset in the west.
The rains-a-coming!
This is where we opened Sabbath – don't know how far it was from Meeka, but I'm pretty sure we were close.
See how much the scenery changes?
This is our little oasis in the desert courtesy of Google. Ain't it beautiful?
More photos to come of our stay in Karalundi… give me a day or so :)


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One of the most exquisitely appointed Custom Estate offered in San Diego, this masterfully designed home is the pinnacle of quality, refinement & sophisticated livability. Aggressively priced to sell-best price /sf in Santaluz. 200yr old European stone floors, century old beamed ceilings, teak windows & doors, handcrafted light fixtures, smart home technology, theater, guest house, resort inspired outdoor amenities, pristinely landscaping, 5 car garage, and so much more. This is the lifestyle you deserve.
Caminito Santaluz to Run of the Knolls to Run of the Knolls Ct.
Residential, MLS# 170009755
Listing provided by Willis Allen Real Estate
Residential, MLS# 150009808
Listing provided by Erwin Realty
Residential, MLS# 170006790
Listing provided by Keller Williams Carmel Valley
With numerous housing options, Santaluz offers homes ranging from 2,000 to 15,000 square feet. It's all about lifestyle here, where residents can enjoy resort living - spa, golf course, hiking trails, village green, oceanfront views, amazing sunsets and star gazing - without ever leaving home. Read More
This information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. You should rely on this information only to decide whether or not to further investigate a particular property. BEFORE MAKING ANY OTHER DECISION, YOU SHOULD PERSONALLY INVESTIGATE THE FACTS (e.g. square footage and lot size) with the assistance of an appropriate professional. You may use this information only to identify properties you may be interested in investigating further. All uses except for personal, non-commercial use in accordance with the foregoing purpose are prohibited. Redistribution or copying of this information, any photographs or video tours is strictly prohibited. This information is derived from the Internet Data Exchange (IDX) service provided by Sandicor®. Displayed property listings may be held by a brokerage firm other than the broker and/or agent responsible for this display. The information and any photographs and video tours and the compilation from which they are derived is protected by copyright. Compilation © 2019 Sandicor®, Inc.


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Carl Howell is Emma's dentist and ex-husband. She had been dating him since her and Will's break up in Season One.
They get married in the episode Special Education, but end up getting their marriage annulled in A Night of Neglect. He was trying to help Emma with her obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was willing to do all he could to help her in the things that she needs to do on a day-to-day basis around the school. He is talented in the arts but often jokes that Will is more so.He is portrayed by John Stamos.
Carl is briefly mentioned by Emma while she talks to Will saying she's dating her dentist.
Carl makes his first appearance, when he visits Emma while Will is in her office. Feeling threatened by Carl and wanting to get a better idea about what he is like, Will suggests visiting New Directions to talk to students about dental hygiene. While doing a quick test for cavities, he discovers that Rachel, Artie, and Brittany all have terrible teeth. He then offers to fix and clean their teeth for free. During their dental appointments, the nitrous oxide he gives them (and Santana, whose teeth are perfectly fine but who insists on undergoing anesthesia with Brittany) results in each of them having Britney Spears-related fantasies, including Baby One More Time, Stronger, I'm a Slave 4 U, and Me Against the Music respectively. Emma tells Will that she has been going out with Carl every night since he asked her out at her last appointment, after showing her the equipment used to sterilize dental tools. Despite Emma's assurances that her feelings for Carl are genuine, Will refuses to accept defeat and states that he will win back Emma. Carl attempts to ask Will to back off on trying to steal Emma from him, and while Will agrees to do as Carl asks, he instead continues to make further desperate attempts to get Emma's attention.Mike Chang is unable to play the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, due to his parents not wanting him to be a transvestite, Emma suggests that Carl, who knows the show inside and out, take the part. Carl is excited at the idea of and performs Hot Patootie. While his performance is amazing, Sue Sylvester and Will both explain that they don't need an Eddie (as Sue had written him out in her edits), but rather a Frank-N-Furter. Carl however argues this, saying he'd rather perform Eddie. At this point Mercedes Jones offers to play the Frank-N-Furter role, allowing Carl to play Eddie. Carl however demonstrates a complete lack of respect for Will as Director, entering the show four scenes earlier than he's supposed to, stating that's what he felt like doing. Later when Will takes over the role of Rocky from Sam, Will and Emma rehearse the song Touch a Touch a Touch a Touch Me, they get a bit out of hand, and almost kiss. Emma tells this to Carl who confronts Will before the entire glee club, claiming that Will decided to do this show only to get Emma.
It is revealed that he and Emma got married in Las Vegas while New Directions were at Sectionals. They are later seen kissing in Emma's office.
We learn that Emma and Carl still haven't had sex after four months of being married. Carl asks Holly Holliday to be their marriage counselor. Holly cuts to the chase asking Emma if she still has feelings for Will Schuester. Emma replies that she is very confused about her feelings, and Carl says that he is moving into a hotel.
Emma reveals that Carl has filed a divorce and completely moved out of their condo, leaving Emma single once more.
He was mentioned by Rusty Pillsbury when Rose mentioned that Will has some red hair in his genetics and not like that Carl.
The Role You Were Born to Play
Emma briefly mentions Carl when she's trying out new recipes at home, stressing out about the idea of leaving to Washington with Will. She tells Will that she came across some cookbooks that her mom gave to her when she and Carl got married.
Carl is an attractive and charismatic man, who is able to draw attention with his good looks and his playfully flirtatious manner. He seems aware of his good looks but does not appear to be vain about them. He initially seemed to have a calming effect on Emma's OCD due to his ability to draw her attention away from her issues, and instead fixate on having fun.
Though he is attractive and may come across as self-centered about it, Carl is a very nice and caring man, making moves to be friends with Will.
Carl seems to want to be friends with Will, who he seems to think is not much of a competition for Emma's affections. However, when he discovers that Will is actively trying to steal Emma back, Carl first asks him nicely to back off, and then furiously confronts Will he when he discovers he didn't do as Carl asked.
Carl seems to be an enthusiast of theater and music, having a great performance ability and also knows The Rocky Horror Picture Show backwards and forwards.
He seems to have a good sense of character, such as being able to see that Will had feelings for Emma off the bat.
Emma Pillsbury
- Main article: Carl-Emma Relationship
- Solos
- Solos (In a Group Number)
|Solos with
|Afternoon Delight
|Emma, Puck, Quinn, and Rachel
- Back-up singing
|Sung by
|Back-up with
|Touch a Touch a Touch a Touch Me
|The Rocky Horror Glee Show
|Brittany, Finn, Kurt, Santana, and Will
- Carl's career as a dentist and love of black comedy rock musical-turned-movie "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" could be a reference to Orin Scrivello, DDS from black comedy rock musical-turned-movie "Little Shop of Horrors." His role as motorcycle-riding bad boy Eddie in The Rocky Horror Glee Show could be a reference to this as well.
- In Acafellas, Emma mentions John Stamos when talking to Will about certainty and talent.
Santana: Can I just say you are the hottest dentist I've ever seen?
—Santana, Emma and Carl, Britney/Brittany
I love that look of instant panic each time I try to change your routine.
—Carl to Emma, Britney/Brittany


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Diorama of the Lister Ward at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, London, England, 1945-1950
This 3-D model or diorama depicts the ward where Joseph Lister (1827-1912) pioneered his antiseptic techniques. The diorama shows what the ward would have been like while Lister was working there between 1860 and 1869. The ward was later named after Lister in honour of his achievements. Each of the twelve beds is below a window and the room is heated by a central fireplace, above which hangs a painting of Lister. This diorama was originally made for display at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
Object number:
Related Themes and Topics
Related Objects
There are 538 related objects. View all related objects
Glossary: antisepsis
The practice of using antiseptic drugs to eliminate harmful micro-organisms.
Glossary: diorama
A model with three-dimensional objects, often sculpture, with a realistic painted background.


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Report: Big 2011 Okla. quake likely man-made
WASHINGTON - An unusual and widely felt 5.6-magnitude quake in Oklahoma in 2011 was probably caused when oil drilling waste was pushed deep underground, a team of university and federal scientists concluded.
That would make it the most powerful quake to be blamed on deep injections of wastewater, according to a study published Tuesday by the journal Geology. The waste was from traditional drilling, not from the hydraulic fracturing technique, or fracking.
Not everyone agrees, though: Oklahoma's state seismologists say the quake was natural.
The Nov. 6 earthquake near Prague, Okla., injured two people, damaged 14 houses and was felt for hundreds of miles in 14 states, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was the largest quake in the central part of the country in decades and largest in Oklahoma records, experts said.
The study by geophysicists at the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University and the USGS says that a day earlier there was a slightly smaller quake in an old oil well used to get rid of wastewater, right along a fault line. That smaller quake triggered the bigger one, and a third smaller aftershock.
The location of the tremors right at the spot where wastewater was stored, combined with an increased well pressure, makes a strong case that the injections resulted in the larger quake, they said.
This area of Oklahoma had been the site of oil drilling going back to the 1950s, and wastewater has been pumped into disposal wells there since 1993, the study authors said. Water and other fluids used for drilling are often pumped more than a mile below ground.


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There is a lot to know about epilepsy. If you are a woman, there's even more to consider, ranging from the impact of hormones on seizures, choosing seizure medications, birth control, pregnancy, parenting, menopause, bone health, and more.
Whether you're new to epilepsy or have known about it for years, the more information you have the stronger you'll be. Browse the information for women and make a list of your concerns and questions. Then talk to your health care team about what epilepsy means for you, as a female, at your age and hormonal state. Remember, as your body changes and you go through different life stages, you will have other concerns and information needs!
Information is only the start. You need to use the information to help you get the care you need. Print out the checklist in this section to help you work with your health care team about issues unique to you as a woman with epilepsy.


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This section is a place where new users can ask questions about (and discuss) basic SEO, social media, and Internet marketing topics.
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Use this control to limit the display of threads to those newer than the specified time frame.
Allows you to choose the data by which the thread list will be sorted.
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On a related note, considering the code has been heavily modified since SoI, I don't think these would work anymore without more coding.Songweaver wrote:NPC archers on palisade walls, please.
I mean I could be wrong, but as it stands PCs can't load bows from quivers. Don't see how NPCs would be able to.


text: This is a blog about Rebol, it's a fantastic free programming language, it permits easily to create complete software with few lines of code. It's cross-platform, so if you write it on Windows, it will work on Linux and Mac, and vice-versa. You can produce also wonderful GUI with just 3 lines of code!


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Rippon Lodge is one of the oldest known homes in Prince William County. It provides a vital link and opportunity to interpret our community's link to Colonial Virginia. The home has links to other important people, events and times in Prince William History. Stop by and step back in time to experience a home and setting that has been around since 1747.
Rippon Lodge History
Built circa 1747 by Richard Blackburn, the house is situated between Neabsco Creek, the Potomac River, and the historic King's Highway (present day Route 1). Mr. Blackburn, and his son Thomas, had extensive land holdings in the county where they grew tobacco, wheat, and other commodities. With the home located just north of the bustling port town of Dumfries, the Blackburn's could easily export their goods and merchandise to England. Mr. Blackburn and Thomas were both active in local politics, and Thomas served in the Revolutionary War as a militia member.
By 1842, the Atkinson Family called Rippon Lodge home for about 90 years before the property was sold to Wade Ellis in 1924. Ellis, and his wife Dessie, purchased 500 acres and began extensive renovations to the home, turning it into the Colonial Revival residence visitors see today. Ellis, a prominent lawyer from Washington D.C., is regarded as being responsible for preserving much of the history of Rippon Lodge.
Admiral Richard Blackburn Black, the last private owner of Rippon Lodge, purchased the home in 1952, and continued to preserve the home and history as Wade Ellis had. Admiral Black was a direct descendent of the original builder Richard Blackburn, and has been linked to many important historical events, including his exploration of Antarctica with Admiral Richard Byrd. Admiral Black's daughter sold the property to Prince William County in 2000.
Extensive restoration work began at Rippon Lodge soon after, and was completed in 2007 when the site opened for public tours. Rippon Lodge Historic Site consists of 43-acres, the Blackburn and Atkinson Family cemetery, formal gardens, and walking trails. The site interprets the history of the house and owners from 1747 to 2000. Visitors are welcome to stroll the grounds and gardens. Stunning views of the Potomac River allow for boat and bird watching of all kinds.
Stewards of Historic and Environmental Resources
Staff with the Historic Preservation serve as leaders in protecting our community's historic and natural resources. We play an active role in the protection, preservation and restoration of the environment under our care. We establish meadows on our properties, look for ecologically friendly ways to mow and maintain the grounds, and use trees from sites to mill our own lumber for our restoration projects.
Rippon Lodge is proud to now serve as a bee sanctuary to help bee populations recover and increase in numbers. Learn more.
Rippon Lodge Time Line
1747 Rippon Lodge built by Richard Blackburn
1757 Thomas Blackburn inherits Rippon Lodge
1772 Thomas Blackburn elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses
1785 Julia Ann Blackburn marries Bushrod Washington
1811 Bushrod Washington sells Rippon Lodge to George Atkinson
1911 Thomas Marron purchases Rippon Lodge
1924 Wade Hampton Ellis purchases Rippon Lodge
1952 Admiral Richard Blackburn Black purchases Rippon Lodge
2000 Debra Black Decko sells Rippon Lodge to Prince William County
2007 Rippon Lodge opens
Volunteers Needed!
We are looking for History and Garden Enthusiasts to help with tours at this lovely site. If you are interested in joining our team to protect the historic and natural resources of our community, please contact us at 703-792-4754 or visit our volunteer page.
Join Us For a Virtual Tour!
You are invited to take a virtual tour of Rippon Lodge with local historians to discover the grandeur and importance of this important colonial home.
Rippon Lodge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a participating member of the Historic House Museum Consortium of Metropolitan Washington DC. Please visit their website below to learn about over 40 historic house museums in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC, including Mount Vernon, Riversdale White House, and many more! www.dchousemuseums.org
Visiting Rippon Lodge
Tours of Rippon Lodge are offered May through October from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Thursday through Monday and by appointment. Grounds are open during operating hours. Special events, programs and tours are offered throughout the year. We also provide Passport Stamps for the Potomac Heritage Trail, and a National Park Service trail that runs from the Allegheny Highlands to the mouth of the Potomac River at our gift shop.
We offer very popular luncheons. These lunches may be served indoors or picnic style, just perfect for small groups of any kind!
For information about tours and programs contact:
Rippon Lodge Historic Site
15520 Blackburn Road
Woodbridge VA 22191
703-499-9812 or 703-792-4754 (main office)
From Interstate 95: Take Exit 156 (78 E/Dale Boulevard) toward Rippon Landing. Follow Rippon Boulevard across Jefferson Davis Hwy./Rt.1. Turn right onto Blackburn Road. Travel ¼ mile and turn right onto Admiral Black Drive.
From Rt. 234: Turn left (north) onto Jefferson Davis Hwy./Rt. 1. Travel 2.9 miles and turn right onto Blackburn Road. Drive approximately one mile and turn left onto Admiral Black Drive.
For more information on historic resources in the Prince William County area click here.


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East Bay Express: Far From Home
As Afghan women go, Fariba Nawa doesn't exactly look the part. She's blond and fair-skinned -- as a child during the Soviet occupation, her classmates used to hiss "Little Russian" at her. But five years ago, as she stood in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan at the foot of the Khyber Pass, her burqa kept her safe. No one knew she didn't belong.
Nawa stood in a crowd of five hundred refugees who strained to cross the border and escape the silent, inert world their mullahs had built. On the Pakistani side one hundred yards ahead, merchants in the bara market sold hashish, opium, and guns, and Bollywood music tinkled in the dusty air. She clutched an Afghan passport -- her American one was stuffed in her bra in case of an emergency. She kept her notepad and camera in her bag.
This wasn't the first time Nawa had fled the country. The war with the Soviets made refugees of her family, and although they eventually settled in Union City, she never felt at ease in America. Now she was trying to make it as a freelance reporter, and hoped that by explaining the land of her birth to others, she could finally begin to understand it herself. She snuck into Kabul posing as an ordinary Afghan woman, and toured the Taliban's utopia. "It was a city of the dead," she says. "More beggars than I'd ever seen in my life, more than in India, which is hard to believe. And there was a stillness and a quietness to the city that made you so sad. ... What I saw through the mesh holes of the burqa was a completely destroyed place, with a people that had no hope anymore."
It was a rough start to a career that has found the young journalist, five feet tall and rail thin, seated next to drug lords, opium addicts, and tribesmen who argued as to whether they should kidnap and torture her. But Nawa just can't stay away. She has never stopped puzzling over her battered homeland, and comes back to it year after year.
A shock of white-gold hair bunches around Nawa's pale, pleasant face. Dark eyebrows stab out from her forehead, and her wide eyes have a way of vibrating when she thinks too hard. She's disarmingly at ease with her family's tragic past, yet something compels her to immerse herself in violence. "The reason I'm so attracted to war zones is because I'm always looking for answers as to what happened when I was a kid," she says.
Standing there amid the refugees, it was time to escape the land of her birth -- again. Nawa waited for the border guards to throw open the gates and start taking bribes. Her "guide," a man posing as a male relative who accompanied her from the capital to the frontier, faded back into the crowd as arranged. Nawa hired a porter, an emaciated man with welts running along his legs, to haul her bag across the border. The mob pushed forward, cursing and shouting, waving visas if they had them, throwing coins at the soldiers.
The guards pulled out whips tipped with iron flecks. They lashed the crowd right and left, beating people on their backs and faces. The women screamed and covered up -- the soldiers focused on the men, but didn't care where the lashes landed in the frenzy. Nawa's porter cringed and begged her to throw a bribe. "He was being beaten badly," she recalls. "And he kept saying to me, 'Paisa!' which means 'Give money, give money.' And so I kept giving the guy, the soldier, money. Whatever I had, I kept giving him money. And then I saw that the porter started to bleed, he started to bleed next to his eye. ... I finally started screaming -- this is a kind of psychological torture that I've never experienced before. I kept yelling, 'Hit me! Hit me! Stop hitting him! Hit me!'"
Then just like that, it was over. Nawa was through the gate and back in the land of the living. Her guide met her on the other side. "I said, 'What the hell happened? Why did you leave me if you know that was going to happen?'" Nawa recalls. "He said, 'Oh, that's normal. It happens every day.' And I said, 'Yeah, but the poor guy needs to go to the hospital. He was bleeding.' And he just laughed at me, like I was some naive idiot."
It was all an act. The porters let the guards whip them to panic customers into throwing more money, and the guards gave them a piece of the action. That was why he was covered in welts. In fact, he'd probably get a bonus for bleeding so well.
Such was Afghanistan. Nawa returned to Islamabad and pitched stories to news outlets around the world, but no one expressed interest. In November 2000 no one cared what was happening in her country. Ten months later, all that would change.
By the fall of 2001, Nawa had abandoned her dreams of being a foreign correspondent and settled into the life of a graduate student at New York University. Then, just one week into her studies, she stood on her Brooklyn rooftop and watched the World Trade Center collapse into rubble. She realized, as she puts it, "two of my countries were going to be at war." Nawa thought she'd finally escaped Afghanistan's nihilism, but it had followed her all the way to New York.
So she did the only thing she knew -- she wrote about it. Although her professional experience was limited, Nawa managed to snag a gig with the wire service Agence France-Presse. The young woman returned to Islamabad, this time as a war correspondent, learning the ropes as she went. She interviewed Taliban and Northern Alliance commanders from her satellite phone as gunfire erupted in the background. She wandered the refugee camps of Peshawar, recorded the stories of widows and orphans, and ran from men who wanted to kill her.
Fariba Nawa's life stands out as a case study of ambivalence in a world where everyone wants you to pick a side. In last week's State of the Union speech, President Bush steadfastly called the American operation in Iraq a noble struggle, "so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom." Minutes earlier, in the same room, activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested for wearing an antiwar T-shirt. What's striking about these opposing personas is their absolute moral certitude. Neither Bush nor Sheehan has lived in a country so destroyed by war, yet both are convinced of their righteousness. Nawa knows far more about war, and after more than twenty years she's less certain than ever. For Nawa, war is never simply noble or simply evil. Soldiers murder whole families, yet people will sacrifice their lives for strangers.
The nuances of Nawa's experience have obliterated her capacity to think in broad moral terms. Nothing will ever be simple again. "Wars to me are exciting in some ways, and disgusting in others," she says. "It's witnessing an extreme of humanity and being able to tell about it. That's the distant explanation that I can give you, that's me as a journalist. But more personally, I think it has a lot to do with my childhood, and trying to figure things out. What happened? Why did this happen? I don't know if I'm looking for a solution, though. I sort of relish in the question marks."
As a result, Nawa doesn't trust uncomplicated loyalties. Fazul, her father, used to be a business manager in Herat City. Part of the country's urban, secular intelligentsia, he loved music and literature, but cared nothing for tribal blood feuds, politics, or religion. When the war came, men with guns would demand to know what kind of Afghans they were -- Communist? Mujahideen? Tajik? -- when all they wanted was to be left alone. In 1981, after three years of seeing family members murdered, tortured, or forced into exile, Fazul gathered his wife Sayed and daughters Fariba and Faiza and ran for his life. Fariba was eight years old.
Nawa never really felt a part of anything larger than herself after that. She grew up ashamed of Afghan culture's attitude toward women, but America's hyperindividualism struck her as lonely and alienating. While Afghanistan degenerated into the most primitive religiosity since the Inquisition, she repudiated Islam as an expression of her religious identity. She's an Afghan who doesn't feel Afghan, an American who doesn't feel American, a Muslim who doesn't see the world through Islamic eyes.
From the fall of the Soviet Union to the attacks of September 11, Fariba Nawa has been intimate with two of this country's key international conflicts, and they have only left her more stranded -- a stranger wherever she happens to reside. The cream-colored walls of Washington Hospital were pleasantly narcotic, but Nawa fumed about lazy doctors as she waited. Her father was hospitalized two weeks ago after he started coughing up blood, and the family had waited six days for a proper diagnosis. Now he lay on a gurney in the endoscopy wing, drugged and waiting for treatment. Fariba lingered outside. "If we lose him, I lose my heritage," she fretted. "And I can't do that."
Fazul Nawa was an important man once. As his country's upheaval got worse, he deftly manipulated the communists who took over his company, and learned to keep a low profile. When death finally closed in, he led his family in a gutsy break for the border. But once he got to America, his role as the family's bedrock was over. He never learned enough English to land a decent job, and spent his days brooding and watching TV. "He had a sense of being lost," Nawa recalled. "I think he really felt like he was somebody back home, and he became nobody."
As with so many refugees, the children took over as the family leaders. Fazul's daughters took retail jobs after school to supplement the welfare checks. Fariba interpreted America's dizzying culture for her parents, and shuttled her mother, who never learned to drive, on daily errands. "My sister and my brother and I did everything after we came here," she said. "I started working when I was thirteen. And we never held it against him, because there was an understanding of his loss. The only thing I felt was sympathy for him."
For almost a week, Nawa had sat by her father's bedside. The wall-mounted TV flashed muted images through the hours. A rough draft of her latest book lay on her lap, clean and unmarked -- she'd been getting less than five hours of sleep a night, and the stress dulled her concentration.
If there's one thing the world couldn't take from Nawa, it was her family. Afghans place a high premium on kinship, and she cherishes this sense of belonging. But every couple of months, the need to return to a war zone overwhelms her, and she flies to Afghanistan or Iraq. Every time she embarks on a new assignment, her father asks why she has to go so far away.
"Family is number one for us, and I value that more than anything," she says. "I value it so much, and yet I leave so often; I've been gone since 1992, really. What does that mean?"
The door swung open, and two medical technicians invited Fariba in. Digital screens flickered in the fluorescent glare. Her father lay there, underweight and blotched, shrinking into the folds of the bed. White stubble caked his cheeks. "Just outside the stomach, there's an ulcer," a technician explained. "And it caused his gastric pain. I'm sure he had some ..."
"Yeah, a lot!" Fariba said.
The techs went over medicine regimens and possible diets, while Nawa listened and nodded. She glanced down at the man who, 25 years ago, put her on the back of a donkey and led her through the desert to safety. She leaned over him, tucked a white blanket around his shoulders, and murmured something in Persian. The Afghanistan of Fariba's childhood was a land of rivers and fruit trees. Her family enjoyed a comfortable life, thanks to two generations of liberalism and modernity. "My godfather was part of the first constitutional convention," she says. "My aunt opened up the first woman's magazine in Herat. My aunts collectively got their first university education and took off their scarves during the king's era. So there was a sort of calling that I had to be at the forefront of change as well."
She divided her time between her grandfather's Herat City orchard and the family home in Lashkar Gah, in what is now one of the last remaining Taliban strongholds. Back then, it was known as "Little America."
"My family says hands down it was the best place they ever lived," Nawa says. "We'd go fishing, we had dinner parties and live music every weekend at our house. ... And there's a river, the Helmand River, that holds together this province. It's a very rich province, with wheat and barley and all sorts of things they grow there. And the river was sort of the lifeline of the province, and we were right on the river. So I remember going fishing all the time, and cooking the fish and barbecuing."
All things considered, life was good around the country as well. Afghanistan is a stew of ethnicities, castes, and language groups; Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and other tribes commingle in the mountains and valleys. Before the civil war, Nawa says, you never saw the tribal warfare that would later curse the country. If anything, Afghanistan was split between the countryside's goatherds and the secular, rootless cosmopolitans of the cities.
San Francisco lawyer Maryam Miazad recalls that time clearly. Her father was a Kabul high school principal before the war, and she didn't ask him about her tribe until almost a decade after leaving the country. "I was reading a history of Afghanistan, and it said something about Afghanistan being tribal, your identity is where you fit in with what clan you're from," Miazad says. "So I went home and asked my parents what clan we were. ... It wasn't as tribal or sectarian as it seems to have gotten."
Afghanistan's tragedy began on April 28, 1978. "We were at a wedding," Nawa recalls. "I was eating cake. I had a spaghetti-strap dress on. I mean, it's funny how certain things will stay in your mind. The music suddenly stopped. ... Nobody talked. Something was wrong. The woman next to us said, 'They've killed the president. The communists are coming.'"
The most radical faction seized power and began a terror campaign to crush all resistance, targeting the educated elite. In the first nineteen months, before army garrisons around the country revolted and Soviet forces invaded, an estimated twelve thousand people were murdered in Kabul alone. The next phase of the conflict was little better. Farhad Azad was the editor of the now-defunct Afghan Magazine -- he was a child in Kabul when the Soviets' proxy government took power. Azad's father lost his government position and took a job teaching high school history before fleeing to Pakistan. "People were disappearing left and right," he says. "You knew somebody, and then they just didn't show up to work. ... Anybody could be an informant. It was a police state. It was a bad, bad period of life. Even my sisters are traumatized. My mother does not acknowledge Afghanistan at all."
Nawa's brother Hadi, a student at the University of Kabul, fled the country to avoid being drafted or executed. Her uncle wasn't so lucky. "He was the head of the faculty of pharmacy at Kabul University," Nawa says. "And they just came and took him from the university and said, 'We want to question you.' And then we never saw him again. He just disappeared. ... To this day, thousands of families don't know what happened to their dead."
According to Fariba's older sister Faiza, the communists weren't satisfied with merely killing their uncle. "They took one of his sons, too," she says. "He was in ninth grade; he was a freshman. He was released after a month, but he was tortured. And he was told not to tell anybody, or they would kill him. He was never the same; he never really recovered. He became a quiet person, and not socializing that much."
The basic social order began to fall apart, and weapons flooded into the country as the mujahideen got organized. As critical infrastructure collapsed, men clotted together in old tribal groups and turned their guns on outsiders. "When there's chaos, people always turn to their own," Nawa says. "We didn't feel safe in Lashkar Gah anymore, because it was Pashtun-dominated territory. All of a sudden, these things started to matter."
Nawa's father felt trapped. His extended family was split over the war -- some joined the communists, while others took up arms with the mujahideen. The communists took over his company. "They kept trying to get my father to pledge allegiance to the party," Nawa says. "He just dodged, he was like, 'Oh, you know, okay. Someday, yes.' He was apolitical; he didn't take sides. He was not religious, he was secular, so he didn't take sides with the mujahideen. That was not an option for him. And he never believed in communism. My dad was a staunch modernist."
By 1981, the family had moved to Herat City. But one day, the war came to town. "I still have a hard time going back to that memory," Nawa says. "I hate being the victim; that's just not my thing. But basically, my mom and I went to the bathhouse that day."
The potable water system had collapsed, so once a week, Nawa's mother took her out of school to wash clothes and take in the local gossip. "The women sit around washing up and talking," she says. "There were some wives of the mujahideen there talking to my mom and saying, 'They're going to bomb the school today."
Nawa's teachers were schooling children in communist propaganda, and the mujahideen had decided to put an end to it. Nawa's older sister was attending classes, but her mother dismissed the story as just another rumor. They walked through the city's eerie stillness. At home, Nawa attended to her chores. "I had a purple dress, and I was ironing it," she says. "And I was happy that I didn't have to go to school that day, that I had played hooky. When a huge boom went off. ... I ran out barefoot, and I kept calling my sister's name. It's about a block from the school. And then I came -- out in front of me there were kids who were just body parts, you know. There was one boy in our school, because a teacher had one son, and she wanted the son to go to the girls' school, because she was teaching there. He was dead. I saw him completely in pieces, basically."
Faiza had survived the blast unharmed, but Nawa's father knew the family had to get out. They couldn't let anyone know of their plans. Some extended family members backed the communists, Nawa says, and although they weren't likely to turn them in, they "would have done anything to prevent us from leaving." So they had to rely on the other half -- their mujahideen cousins. This was what Afghanistan had been reduced to. Totalitarianism had made everyone complicit in the national oppression, and yet the rebels were capable of inconceivable atrocities. Nawa's family depended on both sides, but never forgot whom they were dealing with. "That has always been part of my Afghan experience," Nawa says. "You never know who to trust. To this day, when I go back, I have no idea who to trust, because people are always shifting alliances."
In the dead of night, they snuck out of their home and hid in a safe house. Family brokers quietly sold their house and furniture. Finally, the day came. A cousin rented a donkey and a bicycle, and they hiked six hours through the desert toward Iran. The women were wrapped in burqas. They had to cross the front line, and Nawa's mother was convinced someone would fire on them. Nawa sat on the donkey and wailed for water. When they reached the other side, one of Nawa's cousins gave her a bucket of water. She plunged her head in it and drank like an animal. Then she passed out.
Fariba Nawa fiddles with her latte as a Bach concerto trills from the speakers. She is sitting in a Peet's in Fremont, talking about her life, but she can't wait to leave town. The suburbs saved her in a way, and her family is still here. But it's so boring and parochial, she says -- nothing has changed in twenty years. Her restlessness is starting to gnaw at her again.
While her father looked for a purpose in his new world, Nawa sank into a teenage funk. Mouthy and opinionated, she'd grown to resent Afghan culture's need to control its women. "My mom says I should have been born a boy," Nawa says. "I had a hard time, as a teenager especially. I thought all of these traditions were sexist; they were stupid. I mean, growing up, I didn't understand the complexities of it. All I saw was that mainstream society was much more open-minded and accepting of me."
"At that time, she was a wild teenager," her sister Faiza says. "She wouldn't listen, and my parents just let her be the way she wanted to be. They were not strict with her at all. She was always doing well in school, so that was the most important thing for my father. ... When my parents wanted to go somewhere, like to my Afghan relatives, she didn't want to go with us. She said, 'Oh, I have homework,' or 'I'm going to watch TV.' She did not want to be with the same people as my parents. She did not want to have anything to do with people that we knew."
At Logan High, as with so many other schools, race largely determined who your friends were. Blacks hung out with blacks, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians. Nawa gravitated toward the misfits; she formed a little Goth trio with her two best friends, an African American and a Nicaraguan. "We used to go to cafes in San Francisco, wear black, and wear red lipstick and talk poetry and pretend we were so cool," Nawa says.
At age sixteen, she started writing for Pacific News Service and later cofounded Youth Outlook magazine, the Bay Area's gathering point for urban, literary-minded, hip-hop-loving teens. Nawa's first piece, on misperceptions about Muslims at the time of the first Gulf War, was put on the PNS wire service and picked up by the San Jose Mercury News. "She was adamant about writing about stories that youth don't write about, which is international stories," says Andrew Lam, a PNS editor. "A lot of youth would write about their neighborhood or guns or romance. But Fariba came to us at a young age, thinking about the world."
At this point, the young woman was well on her way to being a post-ethnic, feminist American writer. But in her senior year in high school, something funny happened. "One of the boys came and asked me to be the president of the Afghan club," she says. "And I looked at him like, 'I don't like you people.' And I did it, and it was probably the moment where I started to have friends who were Afghan. ... That's when I started to come to terms with my identity, the duality of it."
While other American girls dyed their hair blond, Nawa began coloring hers black to look more Afghan. She took off for Hampshire College in Massachusetts and devoured Palestinian political theorist Edward Said and what she calls the "academic mumbo jumbo" of college identity politics. After graduating, she spent a year in Cairo, learning Arabic and devising a game plan to break into international reporting.
Nawa landed a gig as a reporter with the Fremont Argus. Although she hated being back in her boring old haunts, she figured she had to pay her dues before she could move up to the majors. "She was always a really aggressive reporter," recalls Argus city editor Rob Dennis. "It was fun to work with her."
After two years, Nawa moved to Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2000 and hit the streets looking for stories. But her real job was rediscovering the culture she'd fled as a girl. She wandered among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan and took a clandestine tour of Afghanistan, gaping at what the Taliban had made of her old world. "It was the most incredible experience of my life," she says. "And the most painful and thrilling, all at once. I cried a lot. And the nostalgia that you're faced with, you have so much nostalgia. We feed on nostalgia as exiles, I think. We live on nostalgia. You never feel like you fit in anywhere. You go, and it's so different than what you remember. And you have to face that. The myth is over."
If Afghanistan broke her heart, Nawa became infatuated with the artists and writers she met in Iran, people who had moved beyond the country's Islamic Revolution. For the first time in her life, she saw an Islam that embraced the literature and culture she loved so much. "Iran has an intellectual side to it that you can't get anywhere else in the Middle East," she says. "It's a very sophisticated, urban class of people that appreciate all the things I thought Afghans never appreciated." When Agence France-Presse offered her a job covering the region from its Iran bureau, Nawa's heart leaped into her throat. But the Iranian government refused to grant her a work visa because of her American citizenship. It was no use trying to explain that she was a woman without a country -- once again, someone had insisted on defining Nawa, and her dream job was gone.
Nawa gave up. She returned to the States and joined NYU's journalism program, thinking she'd spend a few years in the classroom while she figured out her next move. That plan lasted exactly one week.
From my roof, you could see the Twin Towers, on the East River," Nawa recalls. "We had a friend named Osama staying with us -- he's Bangladeshi. ... Osama knocked on my door and said, 'You need to come upstairs on the roof.' And I said, 'What's going on?' I had just woken up. I went up on the roof, and the first plane had hit already."
Nawa was living near Brooklyn's Arab neighborhood, but because of her blond hair, most New Yorkers never figured her for a Muslim. She wandered around town, stopping in at local bars where President Bush was on TV, listening to people mutter vows of revenge. Her two worlds, which had competed for her allegiance all her life, were about to clash.
After a few days, Agence France-Presse gave her a call. Things were about to explode, and Nawa's language skills and Islamabad connections would come in handy. Nawa dropped out of school and took the next plane to Pakistan, where she joined AFP's newsroom. For the next three months, she scribbled notes at Taliban press conferences or phoned commanders of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. "I could hear helicopters, I could hear gunshots," she says. "It was sort of apocalyptic in my mind. I knew this would happen one day, and here it is happening. I ignored it, because I was too busy. ... It was, 'What is this identity bullshit? Out, out! I don't have time for this.'"
Nawa knew her parents would panic if they realized what she was doing, so she never told them. To explain why she couldn't call anymore, she cooked up a story about the minutes on her cell phone being too expensive. When she called her sister, Faiza could hear people shouting in Urdu in the background. Nawa told her she was in a Pakistani Laundromat in Brooklyn.
Nawa got another call, from Aaron Glantz, a producer at Pacifica's Free Speech Radio News. Each night from then on, at the end of a fifteen-hour shift in the AFP newsroom, Nawa summed up developments in the war zone for Pacifica's audience. "We had a terrible time at Free Speech Radio News getting reporters to Pakistan," Glantz says. "At first we sent a reporter with an Indian background, and they wouldn't let her in. ... I always thought this is kind of thing Pacifica should be doing more of, not the ideological stuff, but just bringing you close to all the raw stuff that's happening."
Nawa caught a ride to Peshawar, Pakistan, the great refugee city at the Khyber Pass. She had made contacts with aid workers the previous year and tapped them for stories about women fleeing the war. As she picked her way through the malnourished children and dysenteric puddles, men snarled, "I can see your legs under your shalwar!" When Nawa heard about an infamous madam who lured refugee women into prostitution, she hooked up with an AFP photographer to sneak into the brothel, posing as a potential whore. As soon as she knocked at the door of the apartment complex, the bodyguards made her for a cop. Nawa sprinted down the street before they could grab her.
Upon her return to Islamabad, her stint as a war correspondent was abruptly terminated. Nawa was nagging her editors to let her into Afghanistan when an Interior Ministry official called and ordered her to leave the country immediately.
Nawa decided to blow them off. She left AFP to take a gig with Newsday, essentially going underground for a few days. When she returned to the newsroom to pick up a few items, her former boss leaped up and screamed at her to get out. The government had threatened to pull all the AFP reporters' visas if they didn't produce her immediately. Nawa ran out and burst into tears. "As soon as I got home there were three men, plainclothes in that they were in Pakistani outfits," she recalls. "They said, 'You can no longer stay in this country. In fact, you are not allowed to leave your home until you get a ticket and leave. ... They said, 'We're not going to come inside your house. You're a woman, and we respect that. But we're going to stand outside here and watch you.'"
To this day, Nawa has no idea why she was deported. She flew to Germany to cover the conference that created the new Afghan government, but after that, it was back to NYU. She continued to juggle school and war reporting, flying back to the Muslim belt and covering Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the summer of 2002, eight months after the fall of the Taliban, Nawa took her father back to Afghanistan. She wanted Fazul to see his country free again. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned. "That was an intense experience, because he hated it," Nawa says. "It wasn't what he left -- it wasn't at all what he left. He didn't know anybody there anymore, other than my mom's relatives, and he's not particularly fond of them. He said, 'All the intellectuals have become potato vendors. Don't even bury me here.'"
Nawa followed the US Army into Iraq the following year, sharing a ride through the Jordanian desert with the staff of Voice of America. But the Baghdad occupation reminded her too much of her childhood, and this time, her adopted country was the occupier -- Nawa found herself quietly relating more to the Iraqis than to her colleagues. Meanwhile, she was working on her biggest story so far, a look at the Afghan opium industry through the eyes of its women. She flew to Kabul and started hunting.
"These women, their husbands go across the border: they're caught. Their sons go: they're killed," she says. "And then these women are left with an opium debt. And the drug lord from the next province comes over and knocks on their door and says, 'Where is my money?' And the woman says, 'Well, all the men in my family are dead. And so your opium is gone.' The drug lord says, 'I don't care. I want my money.' So the woman gives everything she has. A lot of times, it's a daughter."
Nawa settled in a small village and hired a fixer to lead her around. Eventually, she found Aziza Khoshsaraj, a twelve-year-old who'd been married to a local drug lord to cover her vanished father's opium debt. For the last two years, the drug lord had been showing up at her house to collect her. Each time, Aziza refused to go with him. "I knew this was going to be my character," Nawa says. "She was very expressive. And also, she did not want to go. This sense of rebellion is what attracted me to her. She's like, 'No! I am not going with this man. I will kill myself. I am going to school, I want to get my diploma. I want to be a normal girl.'"
Every day, Nawa would arrive at the house for tea and interviews. The family was uncomfortable at first -- the villagers had never seen a reporter and crowded around the house, gawking at Nawa. One day, her fixer raced to her house with news: The drug lord was back.
Nawa grabbed her gear and ran to the house. The husband, a turbaned, pleasant man named Haji Sufi, sat cross-legged on a mat, waiting patiently. He was a better man than some: he hadn't simply dragged the girl away -- yet -- and he consented to an interview. But he made no bones about what he wanted. "He said, 'She's young, she doesn't know. I'll eventually convince her. She belongs to me, she's my property,'" Nawa recalls. "She was not a human being to be respected; she was property. And the girl -- oh, this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life, in terms of reporting. Keeping a distance is very difficult in a situation like this. She would sit and hold onto my clothes, my bag. And she would shiver, and kept saying, 'Please don't let him take me!'"
She concluded that she had no choice but to keep her composure and get the story. She later published a feature on Aziza for London's Sunday Times Magazine. But she knew Aziza eventually had been forced to follow her new husband into the desert.
Two years later Nawa returned, intent upon finding out exactly what had happened to Aziza: "I had an emotional attachment; it wasn't just another story. The fact that I left her without really doing anything except writing a story wasn't enough. I wanted to know that she was okay." The last she had heard, the man had taken Aziza into Helmand Province, where Nawa spent her idyllic childhood. Now the place she knew as "Little America" was the core of the Taliban's last base of support, populated by fierce tribesmen who kill foreigners on sight. "The people there look at you, and they look like they've each killed five people," Nawa recalls. "They're scary."
Nawa no longer had any connections in Helmand Province. If she ventured in, she'd go in blind, without any clan to protect her. She found a man from the province who agreed to pose as a male relative. The two hired a taxi in Kandahar and drove into the dust clouds and sand dunes of Helmand.
Nawa went from house to house, showing Aziza's photograph and asking if anyone had seen her. When men asked why, she said she was a distant relative. The first day ended, and Nawa and her guide spent the night with his friends. Nawa was lucky to leave the house alive the next morning.
The wives at the compound were pleasant and courteous, although they didn't speak Farsi, and Nawa had to communicate with gestures. They served her dinner, made jokes, and gossiped with one another about Nawa. Had her guide kidnapped her to be a second wife?
The men, meanwhile, were furious. "The men immediately were like, 'Who the hell is she?'" Nawa says. "'Why is she here? You're not her marham -- we know you! This woman is not related to you! What are you doing with her?'" All night they argued loudly with her guide in Pashto, of which Nawa knows only a smattering. She barely slept. "At one point, four of them -- my guide, my driver, and two of the brothers in this household -- were having this huge shouting match. And later on, my guide told me that they did not want to let me leave. They wanted to interrogate me, to see if I know anything about -- they had their suspicions that I was coming from the West. And they wanted to know who I was, basically. They wanted to interrogate the truth out of me. And he told them, 'No. She's with me, and you're not going to bother her.'"
As Nawa left the next morning, one of the men stopped her. He snarled in Persian about an Italian woman who had recently been kidnapped in the area: "It's my group that took her. And if you had been an American, and you had come here during Taliban time, I would have done the same to you. I would have shown you your punishment!"
Nawa never spent another night in Helmand Province. She spent two more days looking for Aziza, but never found her. The girl who refused to be a slave was gone.
In December, Nawa flew back to Union City, where she will stay as long as her father is ill. But Afghanistan is always in her thoughts. She's finishing a book for the Oakland group Corpwatch, an investigation into which companies have secured reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, and what they have done with the funds. "For the most part, the money that has been sent has been misused, mismanaged, and wasted," she says. She has also sketched out a second book about women in the opium trade.
Meanwhile, Nawa isn't quite as eager as she used to be. She used to love the thrill of the battle zone, the camaraderie that war breeds in strangers. She's watched her old country break out of its long darkness, and seen her new one take Iraq down an uncertain path. Along the way, she's seen a lot of misery. Now, more banal concerns like love, family, and security are beginning to settle in. She's tired of living out of bags and looking for anchorage.
Nonetheless, she'll return to Kabul, and plans to live there indefinitely. She'll always feel like an exile in America, and wants to see something she recognizes from her childhood return to Afghanistan. "People are extremely resilient, and they're full of hope," she says. "After 23 years of war and the kind of destruction that they have experienced, to have that kind of hope is, I think, amazing. Someone was comparing Cambodia to Afghanistan to me, saying that in Cambodia, people walk around like zombies after Pol Pot. You don't see that in Afghanistan. You see a mother who's lost all her children, and she's still working and laughing, and making an effort in life. That's what amazes me."
But her sister doubts that, even in Kabul, Fariba will ever find a place she can feel truly at ease. "All the Afghans who grow up here and return, they have a very big problem over there adjusting with the culture," she says. "All the people she has contact with, they're all the ones who came from here. ... They can't really get along with the local people, because they're so different. Not just Fariba. Everyone who left the US and came back, they all say the same thing, that we are stuck in the middle. They can't be American, and they can't really be Afghan. So they're kind of lost."
When American soldiers killed Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana in 2003, Orville Schell, the dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, wrote a eulogy for him. "It is symbolically fitting that Mazen Dana was a Palestinian, a man without a country," he wrote. "Indeed, it is perhaps fitting for foreign correspondents to think of themselves as members of a countryless, nomadic tribe, the better to find a new global orbit beyond nationalism and patriotism. ... Journalists could do worse than think of themselves as stateless people."
Fariba Nawa hasn't much of a choice. From Union City to Kabul, every city she's ever entered is one more step in an asymptotic journey, in which she reaches ever closer, but never quite makes it home.


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Louisiana Environmental Education Commission (LEEC)
Under the Direction of Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries (LDWF) Application Deadline: March 15, 2019
Grants that are funded are based on sound scientific principles, have an environmental focus, and impact Louisiana teachers and students. Maximum award: $1000 for 1 teacher or $2000 for a team GUIDELINES:
- School administrators or fulltime classroom teachers in accredited public or non-public schools (K-12) in Louisiana are eligible to apply on behalf of their school.
- While the grant is awarded in care of the Project Leader, the actual contract must be made with the applicant's school and the school/school system receives the award payment.
- Grants are to be implemented during the 2016-2017 academic school year.
- Grants will be awarded to individual applicants in single amounts not to exceed $1,000.00. Two or more teachers from the same school may apply jointly for a total amount not to exceed $2,000.00.
- Grants must be based on sound scientific principles, have an environmental focus, and be designed to directly impact the students.
- An individual/organization may not submit more than one application.
- All monies must be spent on materials and/or equipment directly related to the purpose of the project. Travel, furniture, general construction projects, acquisition of real property, lobbying, indirect costs, registration fees, and/or food items will not be funded.
- If funded, applicants will be required to submit a mid-year report and a final report. All projects must be completed, funds spent and the final report submitted by May 15, 2020. Instructions for submitting mid-year and final reports will be emailed prior to the deadlines. Examples of student work, expenditure spreadsheet, and other related documentation must be provided with the final report.
- It is the responsibility of the grant recipient to adhere to school guidelines and related regulations.
- Recipients, by law, will receive Tax form 1099 declaring receipt of these funds, unless the application is made through an agency, university, or foundation.
- Members of the Louisiana Environmental Education Commission (LEEC) may not apply.
- The LEEC/LDWF reserves the right to use the funded projects and photos provided for public information services that may include the LEEC/LDWF website, printed materials, and other means.
- Awarded applicants will be encouraged to attend the 2017 Louisiana Environmental Education State Symposium to showcase their project and network with colleagues and state resource providers. Registration fees and lodging assistance may be provided to those whose presenter proposal is accepted.
- Announcement of awardees will be made no later than April 15, 2016. Awardees will be notified by mail and/or e-mail.
- Failure to comply with these guidelines may disqualify the applicant from any future grants with the LEEC.
IMPORTANT!!! Applications are anonymous and competitive. Identifying information, such as the name(s) of the applicant(s), school, county/parish, or state, should appear only where indicated. Mention of identifying information in the body of the PROPOSAL will disqualify the application.
Questions? Contact Venise Ortego, Environmental Education Coordinator, at firstname.lastname@example.com or (337) 948-0255.


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You Are Here:
Home > Criminal Defense Issues > Eyewitness ID Reform
NACDL has been fighting in the Illinois courts since Feb. 2007 to
secure access to data and other materials related to the Chicago Police
Department's controversial, taxpayer-funded report on lineups and
eyewitness procedures. The report sets forth highly controversial, and
widely criticized conclusions that current eyewitness procedures—those
that use traditional line ups where all suspects stand in a room
together—are more effective than new procedures used in other American
cities to reduce errors that can lead to wrongful convictions. Although
academic research has consistently found that sequential, double-blind
identification procedures substantially reduce false identifications,
the report claimed that in "real life" lineups, the traditional method
was more reliable. The Chicago, Evanston and Joliet police departments
participated in the study with the Illinois State Police ....more
NACDL's FOIA Requests*Circuit Court Decision, No. 07 CH 3622, June 30, 2008Circuit Court Decision, No. 07 MR 530, July 31, 2008NACDL's Opening Appellate BriefNACDL's Appellate Reply BriefBrief of Amici Curiae Supporting NACDLAppellate Court Reversal, February 25, 2010
"A Second Look at the Illinois Pilot Program: The Evanston Data," by Nancy Steblay, The Champion, June 2011. *Evanston is the only municipality to agree to turn over their data
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PLG Newsletter
Tag Archives: Purchasing
Information Management > Project Management Challenge or Opportunity?
Contractors and construction professionals are increasingly realizing that their success depends on their organization's ability to process, manage, filter, keep and leverage information. We live in the age of information and therefore, we understand that our ability to sort through … Continue reading
Tagged with age, Auto, business, Draft, Financial, industry awareness, information asymmetry, insurance documentation, Keeping, management, management challenge, management contractors, management scope, opportunity, organization, Planning, Project, project closeout, project information management, Purchasing, quality assurance project, scope management, sound decisions, sourcing materials, Staffing


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Odrisamer Despaigne became the latest Cuban defector to sign with a major league team Saturday, as the Padres signed the 27-year-old right-hander to a minor league deal with a $1 million signing bonus. According to MLB Daily Dish, Despaigne will head to extended spring training before beginning his affiliated career in earnest at Double-A San Antonio.
Despaigne enjoyed a robust career in Cuba. He spent eight seasons with the Industriales of the Cuban Serie Nacional, the nation's top league, and recorded a 3.38 ERA, 6.8 K/9, and 3.7 BB/9 over 647 2/3 innings. He was part of two Industriales championship campaigns, as a reliever in his rookie year of 2006 and again in 2010, his first year as a full-time starter. He made the Cuban World Baseball Classic roster in 2013, but did not appear in the tournament. Although not a talent on the level of a Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig or Aroldis Chapman, Despaigne has been a consistently above average player in Cuba. As he told Cuban-Play.com in August, "I've won titles with Industriales, I played [in the] World [Baseball] Classic with Cuba and now need new goals, so I left my country to realize the dream of playing against the best in the big leagues."
Scouting reports of Despaigne, mostly coming from a February showcase in Arizona, have pegged Despaigne's stuff as average across the board. Padres GM Josh Byrnes referred to Despaigne as an "old generation" Cuban pitcher, pointing to Despaigne's ability to throw multiple pitches from varying arm angles, much like Livan Hernandez, Jose Contreras and Orlando Hernandez. Despaigne apparently agrees with the assessment. As he told MLB.com's Jesse Sanchez after the February workout, "I hope I can have half the career that [Orlando Hernandez] had, because he's been my idol since I was a child, but like him, I throw from a lot of different angles."
Despaigne had his struggles in his first two seasons as a full-time starter in 2010 and 2011. In 247 1/3 innings and 41 games started over those two years, Despaigne posted a 4.51 ERA with 202 strikeouts and 117 walks, an unimpressive line against a league rated on par with Low Class A by former Baseball Prospectus analyst Clay Davenport. But as Davenport noted, offense skyrocketed in the years between Despaigne's debut in 2006 and his promotion to a starting role in 2010. In 2007, the Cuban league produced a total of 669 home runs. By 2010, the league produced 1,498 home runs. 2011, the year that saw Jose Abreu and Yoenis Cespedes each set the Cuban League record with 33 home runs (in just a 90-game season), produced a comparable 1,449 blasts, all in roughly the same number of games and plate appearances. The power surge puts even MLB's steroid era to shame.
Despaigne gave up 20 home runs in 2010 and 2011 combined, including a career high 13 in 2011. Prior to the 2012 season, the Serie Nacional raised the pitching mound from 10 inches to 15 inches in an effort to counteract the rising power numbers, and there was a noticeable effect. Home runs dropped to 1,150 total in the 2012 season, and Despaigne allowed just six home runs despite pitching nearly 40 more innings than in 2011. He matched that mark again in 2013.
More importantly, Despaigne, a pitcher who works with finesse but lacks the "big stuff" of a Chapman or a Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez, no longer had to pitch so carefully in 2012 and 2013. His walk rate declined from 4.3 per nine innings in 2011 to 3.5 in 2012 and 3.3 in 2013, as he was able to get away with more pitches in the zone and no longer had to fear some of the cheaper home runs that had entered the Cuban game in the power explosion. Unsurprisingly, Despaigne's ERA dropped to 2.58 in 2012 and a still respectable 3.27 in 2013.
Despaigne did not rack up gaudy strikeout numbers in Cuba, likely a big reason why he was limited to $1 million on the free market. In all likelihood, Despaigne's lack of swing-and-miss stuff places a hard ceiling on his career. His 6.4 K/9 in Cuban play is well below the 7.9 MLB average, and only Jordan Zimmermann and Bartolo Colon received Cy Young Award votes with K/9 marks under 7.0 in 2013.
But Despaigne need not be a Cy Young Award candidate to be a successful major leaguer, and plenty -- think Colon, Kyle Lohse, Mark Buehrle and Bronson Arroyo -- have put together excellent careers without piling on strikeouts. Those pitchers have all exhibited either great control or a great ability to prevent home runs. In the scoring desert that is today's major leagues, and particulary in the pitchers' haven that is San Diego's Petco Park, it isn't hard to imagine Despaigne's recent improvements and his finesse style carrying over well to his American career.
Cuban players with transcendent talent like Jose Abreu, Yasiel Puig, Aroldis Chapman and Yoenis Cespedes have drawn the eyes of both fans and scouts toward Cuba as they continue to tear up the major leagues. Unlike them, Odrisamer Despaigne isn't expected to be an All-Star. His path to major league success may require a switch to a middle or long relief role. But he has thrived in the same league that has produced the eye-popping talent dominating the major leagues right now. If he can do it in Cuba, the Padres figure, why not see if he can do it here too?


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'little slow and browsing large volumes'
'sharp and sprawling 4.8-inch, 800-by-480-pixel touch screen'
'The player is a bit awkward to hold because the headphone jack is on the side, jabbing into the palm of your hand.'
'latest home entertainment and digital audio news'
'excellent video format support'
'We became very skeptical of Archos's claim after we noted that a fully charged battery became 30 percent depleted after watching video for about an hour.'
'It was necessary to press the buttons slowly and forthrightly, and I found myself needing to repeat touches far too often.'
'The latest firmware (1.3.05) was very stable and worked in conjunction with the ARM Cortex processor to produce a lag-free experience when moving about the system.'
'gigantic screen'
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'the 705 feels solid and durable.'
'highest quality screen resolution'
'Nothing makes watching a movie more impractical than having to hold your PVP in your hand for more than an hour.'
'Archos devices still behave more like mini PCs with must-read manuals than like intuitive and easy-to-navigate toys'
'Only 30GB of storage.'
'Our only disappointments with the 605's design are the scratch-prone metal panel on the front, the lack of a universal USB connection,'
ReviewGist helps you find the best products to buy by making sense of online reviews.
We are currently aggregating 376,500 reviews
covering over 29,474 products.
© 2019 ReviewGist.com. All Rights Reserved.


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Prices include 21% VAT. Colours may differ due to differences between monitors.
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Hi All,
I've made the decision to start afresh over at integrativenutritionsydney.com.au. Green & Juicy just didn't feel right for me anymore because so many of my ideas about nutrition and health have evolved and changed since beginning this blog and studying Nutritional Medicine. Of course, some of the content here I will probably end up repeating, however there's so many new ideas and information that I was to share. The new site will be a platform for when I graduate as a Clinical Nutritionist. Hope you like!
Any questions, you can reach me at the address below.


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We're proud to be one of the few family-Owned & Oldest RV Dealerships, and it makes a huge difference in how our company operates verses our competitors. For Starters, You are our RV Family, Our Dedication to Service hasn't changed in 55 years. With only one Location in Pensacola Florida, We're hands-on owners, with a staff of 48 associates that works closely together to make sure that your visit with us Exceeds your Expectations.
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As the fiscal cliff talks stumble along, policymakers continue to scrutinize tax breaks that currently shield many people's retirement savings and income. The favorable rates on stock dividends have been on the chopping block for a while, and some reformers have advocated altering or eliminating the tax-deferred status of 401(k) and IRA contributions. This week, the Wall Street Journal's John D. McKinnon and Andrew Ackerman are reporting that House Speaker John Boehner "is willing to consider curbing the tax-exempt status of municipal-bond interest, subject to negotiations with the White House."
State and local governments rely on the $3.7 trillion muni-bond market to raise funds for everything from softball fields to sewage systems. The tax status of muni-bond interest – it's exempt from federal taxes and from taxes from the state in which the bonds are issued – makes it appealing to all kinds of savers; indeed, individual investors now account for ownership of about $1 trillion in municipal bonds.
Nobody is talking about eliminating the federal break outright. But a White House proposal currently on the table could require higher-income voters to pay more tax on their muni interest, by reducing the amount of tax relief they could claim through itemized deductions—an idea a number of Republicans have also endorsed.
Like many other tax issues being bandied about right now, this one would probably have its biggest impact on higher earners. The deduction ceilings President Obama proposes would apply to singles who make more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000. McKinnon and Ackerman cite municipal-bond analysts to the effect that "households earning less than $250,000 earn more than half of the municipal-bond interest received by individual investors." But as with most tax breaks, higher earners benefit more from the exemption because they pay higher rates to begin with.
Every good tax break, of course, has an advocacy group devoted to its defense, and this one is no exception: Municipal Bonds for America launched in October. That group is rallying support from state and local political leaders, who warn that a tax cut could drive up their borrowing costs.


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Green building technologies like site planning, tree canopy coverage, and green roofs have positive impacts on communities and the environment, including reduction of stormwater runoff, improved air and water quality, mitigation of urban heat island effect, and energy savings. ASLA supports efforts to encourage the use of these technologies and other design techniques that will create more sustainable communities.Federal Advocacy
Accessible Design: ASLA works to keep our members informed on compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and to disseminate information on accessible design standards. Beginning on March 15, 2012, entities must comply with the revised design standards adopted in the 2010 Standards for Accessible Design that were announced by the Department of Justice in the Federal Register on September 15, 2010. The Access Board adopted these revisions or changes in a series of rules that addressed recreation facilities, play areas, and certain State and local government facilities. Learn more.Energy Conservation Through Trees Act of 2011 : Introduced in 2011 by Rep. Doris Matsui (CA), H.R. 2095 is designed to help improve air quality and lower the need for energy consumption. The legislation includes key recommendations by ASLA and specifically mentions the Society in the bill. Learn more.The Small Business Environmental Stewardship Assistance Act of 2010: ASLA supports legislation (H.R. 4509 and S. 3279) that promotes tree planting in urban and suburban areas that would provide jobs and revitalize communities by beautifying retail storefronts, rental housing, and local parks. Learn more. Green Energy Education Act: ASLA worked with Congressman Mike McCaul (TX) to re-introduce The Green Energy Education Act (H.R. 957), which would award grants to university programs related to the design and construction of high performance buildings. The legislation specifically states that, in awarding grants, the Department of Energy should give priority to university programs in design, architecture, landscape architecture, and city, regional, or urban planning. A primary goal of the legislation is to improve the ability of landscape architects, engineers, architects, and planners to work together on the incorporation of advanced energy technologies during the design and construction of buildings. Learn more.The GREEN Act: Introduced by Congressman Ed Perlmutter (CO), H.R. 2336, The Green Resources for Energy-Efficient Neighborhoods (GREEN) Act, was re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 7, 2010. The GREEN Act recognizes the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and landscape architects' expertise in site planning, tree canopy coverage, and green roofs, and provides incentives for consumers to buy, build, or remodel their homes and businesses to improve their energy efficiency. The legislation also allows mortgage companies to issue energy efficient mortgages, and location efficient mortgages, both of which offer incentives for reducing energy consumption. Learn more.
Public PoliciesEnvironmental Education (pdf)Environmental Sustainability (pdf)Open Space (pdf)Preservation of Historic Sites, Districts, and Landscapes (pdf)Public Lands (pdf)Public Participation (pdf)Rural Landscapes (pdf)Transgenic Plants and the Environment (pdf)Transportation Corridors and Facilities (pdf)Urban Growth and Development (pdf)Vegetation in the Built Environment (pdf)Water Quality and Conservation (pdf)Wetlands (pdf)Wildlife and Wildlife Habitat (pdf) See full list of ASLA Public Policies
Advocacy PartnersAmerican Institute of Architects Architecture 2030High Performance Building Congressional Caucus Coalition Sustainable Urban Forest Coalition U.S. Green Building Council Resources General Resources:Code of Federal Regulations Federal Courts Federal Government Web Portal – FirstGov Federal RegisterThe Official Daily Publication of Federal Rules, Notices ofRule Making Procedures, and Agency Announcements Government Printing Office Thomas - House/Senate Bills & Resolutions The White House The Supreme Court U.S. Code – Federal Statutes U.S. House U.S. House Legislative Calendar U.S Senate U.S. Senate Legislative Calendar
Read ASLA's StatementCheck Out Web Resources
Roxanne Blackwell, Esq., Hon. ASLA, Director of Federal Government Affairs email@example.com Hebron, Director of State Government firstname.lastname@example.com


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Darling CF's, Today, I bring you your regularly scheduled crunk policy analysis.
I am a bit of a policy nerd, admittedly. Not because I enjoy inaccessible wonkery, but because I think it informs my activism to know as much as I can about the intricacies of policy proposals and political agendas.
That said, I must confess that I find budgets to be completely tedious and almost incomprehensible pieces of policy. BUT, they are arguably the most important pieces of policy there are. Nothing happens unless it is funded: almost no policy can implemented without a funding stream, without a designation of where the money will come from. Public programs, the military, the post office – all exist only so long as we fund them. In the USA, if we believe in something we have to put our money where our mouth is, and in the case of public programs like food access for the poor, it's rather literal.
So, the current goings on in Washington are not a specific-issue based fight. This is not about how much money goes for a particular program, or not. Though, it may seem so at first glance. It is a fight over the very structure and function of our government.
Last night, mere hours from a government shutdown meetings between President Obama, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were still ongoing. The government budget is the major point of contention. The Republican leadership reportedly wants anywhere from 40-33 billion dollars in spending cuts to domestic programs, and the Administration and Democratic leadership are trying to keep the country running without having to concede such drastic cuts.
Soon, this issue will be resolved. The government won't shut down for long, if it shuts down at all. What's more important here are the pivot points in this debate.
What do conservative consider to be "wasteful spending?" Republican Senator Paul Ryan's budget would slash the safety net programs for people living in poverty and those fast-approaching poverty. Programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Yep, this would save money, in a manner of speaking, and likely only in the short term. It would increase the burden on the most vulnerable among us – those of us that are low income, women, people of color, people with disabilities, people who need health care… the list goes on, and these identities intersect.
But you know what would REALLY save some big bucks? Eliminating or reducing funding for one or two of the wars we're in. Or perhaps cutting the federally funded health care that's afforded to all Congresspeople. Or maybe ending some (or all) of the tax subsidies we give to corporations. Those things would save some money, for real. Or we could just tax the rich. This attempt at targeting safety net services, isn't about saving money, it's about cementing the socio-economic strata in our society. The rich will get richer and the poor won't have a chance in hell. Never mind your bootstraps, this is the final blow from which the American Dream (mythical as it is) will never recover.
Without consistent support from the government in the form of public programs, the middle class can't grow. People fall into poverty and have no recourse for getting out of it without robust health care, education and community engagement programs. I realize this might sound a little alarmist, but if we carry the conservative ideal of limited government to it's logical conclusion, specifically if the limits are placed on public and social programs, then this is the path we're on.
Our challenge is to redefine this debate to be about human flourishing, not about the government's role as an abstract entity. Because I believe that the right to be free from poverty is a right that we have to fight for. And to put our money where our mouth is.


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If you have ever cracked a whip or a wet towel, you will have seen that there are at least two phases to the process. Let's use the wet towel as an example.
First, you throw the towel forward. I wind the towel and hold the thicker end in my right hand (I am right handed). I hold the thin end in my left hand (this is the end that I will hit with). Then I throw the towel forward with my right hand, almost like a shuto movement or a side ura ken (backhand).
When the thin end is almost at its target, I pull back with my right hand. This makes the thin end whip forward at the end -- crack!
Here is my point. Most of the energy was put into the towel during the first phase. You use your arm, and perhaps even your whole body, to throw the towel forward. The entire towel -- its entire mass -- moves forward.
For the cracking part, you only need to use your wrist. That small motion accelerates the end (tip) and makes it crack.
The first phases is a big motion that takes time. The second phase is a small motion that is very quick.
When executing a movement in Karate, there are also two phases (usually). The first phase involves getting your whole body behind a punch or strike, and moving the striking hand and arm toward the target. This is a big motion that takes time. The second phase is like cracking the whip or towel. Using your koshi (as broadly defined), you set (vibrate, shake) the motion so that it accelerates. This is a small motion done very quickly.
There are two phases. You need both.
If you only strike using the first phase, you will lack speed. If you only strike using the second phase, you will lack power. You need the first phase for power and the second for speed (which also increases the power).
Koshi is like a blasting cap. It sets off the dynamite -- but it is not the dynamite. Perhaps another way to look at it is to say that the koshi helps the dynamite to not only explode, but enables it to be focused in the desired direction as well.
Koshi is like the snap of the wrist that makes the wet towel crack at the end. If you only snap your wrist without throwing the towel forward first, there will be no crack. You need both.
I think that 80 percent of the power comes from the first phase -- by moving forward, by pressing, by shifting and turning your body, by thrusting your arm forward, etc. Only 20% comes from the second phase. However, the second phase greatly increases the speed of the movement. By hiding the first phase, the second phase is so quick that the attacker cannot react to it (ideally).
Again, you have to hide the first phase as much and as long as possible. By the time you "throw, snap, twitch" your koshi, it is too late for the attacker to react.
It is good to practice with a wet towel. If you can whip the towel, you can learn to whip your movements. Just remember that the base of the whip is your core (trunk), not your arm. The snapping movement takes place in your koshi, not your arm. Your arm/hand is the thin part of the towel.
Charles C. Goodin
Koshi -- Cracking the Whip
If you have ever cracked a whip or a wet towel, you will have seen that there are at least two phases to the process. Let's use the wet towel as an example.
Posted by Charles C. Goodin on Tuesday, May 15, 2007


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By Steve Read
© 2017 Steve Read, Licensed by MGL. www.mglart.com
From popular Wentworth artist Steve Read, this charming and detailed image is brought to life and immortalised in a quintessential wooden jigsaw. It also makes a great gift for Father's Day or any other special occasion.
Artist's Website: www.mgl.com


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Authentic TaylorMade headcover for your TaylorMade R11-S Fairway Wood.
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Tipping, it is customary to just round up. 10 or 20% is what tourists do. The servers are paid a good wage.
So you can get a beer at the Ayinger brewery? Did you need to be on the tour?
Quote from: hopfenundmalz on February 07, 2014, 12:57:42 AMSo you can get a beer at the Ayinger brewery? Did you need to be on the tour?You know, it could be that you have to be on the tour. They have a nice brewpub-like area, though, that seems like it could serve a lot of independent parties. If you're in Aying, I'd check it out, even if you're not doing the tour. The tour is good, though; we got Jahrhundert straight from the lagering tank.Nateo, how great for you to be having such a lengthy stay there!