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Univ of Maryland is looking for a Masters swim coach. There are 3 options available.
Morning coach - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings 6a - 7:30a, 8:30a - 10:45a
Evening coach - Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 6p - 8p
Morning and Evening coach - Coach all practices.
Contact Natalie Taylor at email@example.com if interested.
Specific Job Responsibilities:
· In conjunction with team administrators and masters swimmers, create and develop a training program for our year-round program (6-10 workouts/week) for both competitive and non-competitive swimmers, and triathletes.
· Develop a dry land fitness program for Masters swimmers.
· Keep attendance records and promote swim team participation.
· Follow all RecWell rules and regulations.
· Manage a coaching schedule while responding regularly and promptly to work.
· Provide swimmer feedback and manage swim meet/ triathlon/ open water event schedule of Masters swimmers.
· Prevent accidents and eliminate or minimize hazardous situations to ensure safety of participants.
· Travel to meets/ events with Masters athletes as needed.
Necessary Skills:
· Effective verbal and written communication skills
· Works well with people of all ages and has excellent customer service skills
· Accountable and well organized
· Has excellent stroke refinement knowledge
· Can effectively coach developmental, fitness and competitive swimmers
· High school diploma
· United States Masters Swimming membership or ability to obtain it within 30 days
Preferred Skills:
· Prior experience coaching or swimming at the collegiate level or higher.
· First Aid/Infant/Child/Adult CPR/AED certified (Professional Rescuer preferred)
· American Red Cross Safety Training for Swim Coaches certification or equivalent.
· Possesses a passion for the sport of swimming and working with swimmers.
· Desire to work in a fun, supportive environment with other aquatic professionals.
· ASCA Level 1 coaching certification
Starting rate: commensurate with experience


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Deciding that the Corvette Grand Sport is too big, brash, and American for British roads, the testers at Recombu Cars called up Robert Llewellyn of Red Dwarf to cook a full mean on the V8 engine. Is it as good at roasting steak as it is roasting tires?
Reportedly, the full English meal of bacon-wrapped asparagus, steak, Yorkshire pudding, roast vegetables, and apple pie was pretty good, particularly the steak. A red-meat sports car, what with all the engine heat, turns out to be pretty good at cooking actual red meat.
If you want more cooking-with-your-car recipes, check out our Jalopnik Cookbook.

subset: commoncrawl


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Roger Federer wins in Rotterdam first round
Defending champion Roger Federer cruised into the second round of the ABN AMRO tournament on Wednesday, beating Grega Zemlja 6-3, 6-1.
Federer, a two-time winner at the indoor hard court tournament, had taken a two-week break after losing a five-set semifinal to Andy Murray at the Australian Open.
Zemlja started strong, dropping only one point on his first two service games and forcing two break points on Federer's serve in the fourth game.
But Federer switched gears on the 64th-ranked Zemlja, saving both break points. He broke in the next game and again in the ninth to take the opening set.
The second set was brief, with Federer closing out the match in 58 minutes. Federer conceded it took a while to hit his stride at the indoor Ahoy arena.
"Hall play is different. It's warmer, so the ball flies more and it takes a bit of getting used to," he said. "The first ones are never easy. But I'm happy to be back and playing well."
In Wednesday's final match, Grigor Dimitrov beat Nikolay Davydenko 7-5, 6-3 in the second round.
Earlier, Gilles Simon beat Italian qualifier Matteo Viola 6-3, 6-1 to earn a spot in the quarterfinals, and fellow Frenchman Julien Benneteau joined him after a 6-1, 6-3 win over Victor Hanescu.
Marcos Baghdatis reached the second round when Benoit Paire retired while trailing 6-0, 6-7 (3), 4-0.
Richard Gasquet beat Viktor Troicki of Serbia 7-6 (3), 6-1 to reach the second round.


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Botswana Basket VIAfrican Artisan
Only 1 available!
Botswana baskets are some of the highest quality baskets woven today! Their neutral colors and geometric designs make them super popular in interior design!
Created from "mokola" palm tree fiber coil-woven around grass or vine.
Approximately 9" across
Fair trade, sustainable wage!
Traditionally, these beautiful bowls are used by women of the Bayei and Hambukushu tribal groups and used for winnowing grain or carrying things on their heads. The time taken to weave a larger basket is often measured in months or even years!
You'll receive this exact basket, it's one-of-a-kind!


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Jog and track pants can be used for a wide range of activities these days. It doesn't matter if you're lounging around the house, out running or down at the gym – a good quality pair of men's designer joggers or track pants can separate you from the crowd.
All the major sports brands put a lot of time and resource into producing high-quality joggers, and we have sourced the globe to bring you the very best. Take the classic adidas track pants, for example. These have been donned for decades by high-profile celebrities and fashionistas, cementing their place at the forefront of men's casual wear.
Alternatively, Nike joggers are another classic lounge staple that is as well suited to the gym as they are to the streets.
Done shopping for jog and track pants? Get your hands on all the latest gear with the entire Footasylum men's collection of apparel, footwear and accessories.
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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, faced with a daunting delegate disadvantage and dwindling media attention, nevertheless plans on continuing his campaign to try to change the way Washington operates.
With Mitt Romneyconsidered by many observers to be the presumptive GOP nominee, Paul said he maintains a strong base of supporters who are tired of not having their voices heard. Only Paul, Romney, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrichof Georgia remain in a once-crowded race.
"We're challenging the status quo of the entire country as well as the Republican Party," Paul said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "People don't like to give up their power. But the momentum is very powerful. I'm part of it, but I'm not it. It's much bigger than me."


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At Marquette, Service Learners are involved with the community in several different ways. They may work alone, in pairs, in small groups, or with their entire class. We have identified five models of service learning to summarize the variety of ways students participate in the Service Learning Program.
Students choose from among several placements that have been chosen from their courses. They usually work at these sites 2-3 hours per week throughout the semester. The service students provide is the conduit to their learning; they gain access to the populations or issues related to their courses and, in return, provide needed assistance to the organizations and/or their clientele.
Students in certain courses (e.g. Physics 1001), take material that they are learning in class and create presentations for audiences in the community. The Service Learners work in small groups and choose from among several sites, which have been set up by the Service Learning office. Sometimes professors require students to do their presentations more than once; others have them present in class before going to the community.
This model is similar to the Presentation Model, except the students all work with the same organization and put on a fair, or a mini-conference, that includes several learning stations or short workshops. Service Learners work in groups to coordinate all aspects of the event; they gain leadership skills as well as a greater knowledge of course content working with the Presentation-Plus Model.
In some courses, Service Learners - working alone or in groups - produce a tangible product for their agencies.
Working in groups, Service Learners collaborate with community members to devise and implement a project.


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Nearly 50 universities in London, including some of the best universities in the world, offer over 10,000 courses for students from around the world.
Study in London for a UK degree or enrol on a Summer School course or Study Abroad Programme.
Join more than 100,000 international students who already study abroad at one of the fully accredited universities in London. Enjoy life in a welcoming city to boost your employment prospects with an internationally recognised London university course.
Find advice on university entry requirements, student visas, London university tuition fees, scholarships and living costs and create a student profile that you can send to the universities.
Register now to start your journey to studying in London.


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BEREA, Ohio—No. 2 ranked Mount Union clinched at least a share of its 19th consecutive (22nd overall) Ohio Athletic Conference football championship with a 41-13 victory at Baldwin-Wallace. The victory also gets the Purple Raiders the OAC's automatic bid into the NCAA Playoffs.
The win was also Mount Union's (9-0, 8-0) 52nd straight and 100th straight regular season road win.
Sophomore running back Jeremy Murray (Martins Ferry/Martins Ferry) rushed for 119 of his game-high 170 yards in second half as the Raiders, who led 20-13 at the half, scored 21 unanswered points in the second half.
All-American wide receiver Cecil Shorts (Cleveland/Collinwood) returned to action for the first time in a month caught two touchdown passes and had an 80-yard kickoff return for a touchdown on Mount Union's first possession of the day.
Mount Union's defense held B-W to 200 total yards, had six sacks, three from sophomore defensive end Charles Dieuseul (Winter Haven, Fla./Lake Region) and three interceptions including a 45-yard INT return for a touchdown from sophomore safety Nick Driskill (Wabash, Ind./Southwood). Driskill and senior linebacker Sam Kershaw (West Jefferson/West Jefferson) each had 10 tackles.
Baldwin-Wallace (7-2, 6-2 OAC) took a 7-0 lead on the game's opening drive as quarterback Ryan O'Rourke hit Kevin Johnson on a 50-yard touchdown pass. Shorts then came back with his kickoff return to tie the game at 7 just 2:19 into the game.
Mount Union took its first lead of the game later in the quarter as Seaman hit senior tight end Kyle Miller (Elida/Elida) from 10 yards out, but the extra point attempt was blocked to make it 13-7.
After a 49-yard kickoff return, Baldwin-Wallace scored five plays later on a one-yard run from Tim Miker, but the extra point was missed and the score was tied at 13 at the end of the first quarter.
Midway through the second quarter, B-W fumbled a punt on its own 12-yard line and one play later, Seaman hit Shorts on a pass to retake the lead 20-13.
On the first drive of the second half, Seaman found Shorts again from 16 yards out to make it 27-13.
Murray took over at the end of the third and early in the fourth quarter as he had 38 yards rushing on a 18-play, 93-yard drive that took 10:14 off the clock and his three-yard run moved the score to 34-13.
On the very next play from scrimmage, Driskill intercepted an O'Rourke pass and returned it 45 yards for the 41-13 final.
Mount Union closes out the regular season next week at home against Muskingum with kickoff from Mount Union Stadium slated for 1:30 pm.


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Professor of Theology
Alan Gomes specializes in the history of Christian doctrine and in the theology of American religious cults. Gomes is series editor of the 15-volume Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements, and wrote three books in the series: Unmasking the Cults (the introductory volume to the series), Unitarian Universalism and Truth and Error: Comparative Charts of Cults and Christianity. He also edited an updated edition of W.G.T. Shedd's Dogmatic Theology (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishers, 2004). He has contributed articles to numerous journals, including Westminster Theological Journal, Trinity Journal, Presbyterion, and Christian Research Journal. Gomes has spoken at churches throughout Southern California and has been a featured guest on radio shows across the U.S.


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Did you know?
Genetically modified sheep produce a human protein in their milk.
The average life span in the UK is over 77 for men and nearly 82 for women.
The longest life on record is that of Jeanne Calment, who was 122 years old when she died in 1997.
- Excluding identical twins, it's a one-in-a-billion chance that matching DNA profiles are from different people.Read more...
Barely visible blood spots contain enough DNA to generate a DNA profile.
A fertile man makes around a thousand new sperm per second.
By 10 weeks a human embryo already has unique fingerprints.
By 12 weeks a human embryo can hear sounds.
By 20 weeks a human fetus has eyebrows and hair on its head.
After 5–6 months a human fetus is startled by sudden noises and is thought to be capable of feeling pain.
By 26 weeks a human fetus has eyelashes and fingernails.
By 30 weeks the pupils of a human fetus will dilate and contract in response to light.
Most babies are born within ten days of their due date – but only 5% actually arrive on the predicted day.
The first IVF baby was Louise Brown, born in the UK in 1978.
People once believed that sperm carried a tiny human inside them.
About 5.4 million people in the UK have asthma.
The first child ever to be vaccinated was James Phipps in 1796, against smallpox.
Scientists in over 20 different countries worked together on the Human Genome Project.
Your body makes about 1000 million white blood cells every day in your bone marrow.
98% of the DNA in your genes is exactly the same as a chimpanzee's.
99.9% of your DNA is identical to that of everyone else in the world.


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How Information Moves
At Royal we know that information in the right hands, at the right time is a key factor that
differentiates successful companies from the rest of the pack.
Royal's managed solutions for data delivery offer clients powerful options that leverage
the strength of information, automation, and cloud services.
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Royal Solutions Group was formed in 2008 and is a premiere provider of Software-as-a-Service
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a broad range of clients across North America. Royal's leadership team is comprised
of both technology and business backgrounds with deep industry expertise in Health
Care, Data Security, Financial Services, and Information Technology.
© 2008-2019 Royal Solutions Group, LLC - All rights reserved.


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Throughout the 80's I had recurring dreams about preparing to move into new houses I didn't like. Here's one I had in 1988, three months after I began recording my dreams.
#54 The Unsuitable New House. We've sold the house I love and I'm walking through a rickety plywood house we'll soon move into. I'm appalled by everything I see. The tiny kitchen has huge, old-fashioned appliances and a turquoise and pink wringer washing machine. The window air conditioner unit rattles noisily. The dining room floor isn't level, the flimsy table has a rotting corner, and the ceiling fixture is made of the shoulders, head, and antlers of a deer! Worst of all, there's no room for my beloved books: no library, no shelves, no desk. I hate everything about this incredibly tacky house. Why did I design it this way? How could I have ordered these hideous things? I am filled with remorse. I think I should try to like this house but cannot convince myself I ever will.
I went back to school for my doctorate in the late 70's and spent the 80's teaching university students. The unsuitable new houses in my dreams depicted my unhappiness with myself and my life. It took another year of dreamwork before I trusted my dreams enough to leave a profession that wasn't right for me. Two days after I left for good I dreamed I was escaping from a prison! That fall I began to write my first book about the inner life. That was when I had a dream about touring an exquisite house that was perfect for me. At the end of the dream the woman writer who owned it hinted that it would someday belong to me!
When I was five we moved to Florida and lived in a trailer until Daddy bought the dear crumbling old wooden cottage where I grew up. After he died my mother struggled to support us on a nurse's meager income. I would not have attended college had I not miraculously earned a scholarship. By mid-life I knew I had not developed my true interests and talents and entered a long and difficult struggle to discover my true self. At the age of 45 I found Jungian psychology and began studying my dreams. Since then my house dreams have depicted my progress. Here's the one I had last weekend.
#4253 Revisiting My Childhood Home. I'm in my childhood home standing in a spacious kitchen that used to be tiny, dark, and dingy. Filled with light, it has gorgeous new hand-made cabinets and polished stone counters. A young woman is kneeling on the floor painting the cabinets a creamy white. A man in the adjoining dining room is painting trim around the open doorway. I stand back to look at the remodeled kitchen and am so astonished at its beauty and suitability that I begin to weep in gratitude.
This emotional dream depicts exactly how I was feeling the evening before. My husband and I were driving along a beautiful mountain road to join dear friends for dinner when I was suddenly overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. I love the way I'm traveling through life! I love my family. I love my work, my friends, my lifestyle. I feel loved and am learning to love myself. I am so grateful, feel so incredibly fortunate. The houses are my psyche. Their kitchens and dining rooms are places of transformation and nourishment. The remodeling work I've been doing for 22 years is making them more suitable for me. I'm becoming the woman I always wanted to be, and it feels so good!
How do Dream Mother's houses depict your feelings about yourself and the way you're living your life?


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Chickie and the Path of Awakening
We were both pups when my parents got her—I about eighteen months old, she somewhat younger but older by far in wisdom and experience. She had already had a brief career in the movies, having played one of Daisy's puppies in the Dagwood and Blondie series. But now, too old for the part, she had been given to my father in lieu of payment for a script he had turned in. He was a comedy writer for radio and occasionally movies, and excelled in writing jokes and scripts but not in collecting the fees owed him.
Her name was Chickie, and she was a wonderful mix of Welsh corgi and bearded collie. A white star blazed on her chest, and she had four white feet and a white tipped tail to complement her long black fur. Even though she was scarcely over a year old, she was already motherly and sat by my crib for hours on end, making sure that no harm would come to me.
If I cried, she would be off to my mother, insisting that she come immediately. If I wanted to play, she would bring toys, hers as well as mine. My Dad caught on that this was a special dog with high intelligence plus something else. He taught her many tricks, learned from the dog trainers at the movie studio. Lassie's trainers gave him pointers on how to get Chickie to respond to hand signals, as well as to climb ladders, bark on cue, walk on beach balls, dance on two legs, and jump rope with a willing human. This she did readily and well, but there was more to her still—perhaps one would call it a deep sense of ethics. She seemed virtue incarnate, a Saint Francis of Assisi of dogs, who took on responsibilities of saintly cast. I thought of her as my sister and, what with all of our travels, my constant and closest friend.
Thus it was a shock when one day one of the actors in a picture my father was working on came home with him, saw Chickie, and immediately wanted to buy her. "Jack," said the actor, "that is the greatest dog I ever saw in my life. I'll give you fifty bucks for that dog."
"Can't do it, pal," said my father. "It's the kid's dog."
The actor persisted. "I'll give you a hundred bucks for the dog. I know you need the money." Indeed, we did, and driven by the panic of incipient poverty, the one thing he dreaded more than any thing else, my father acted in an uncharacteristic manner.
Excusing himself, he went into the kitchen to discuss this with my mother. "Certainly not!" she adamantly declared. "It's Jeanie's dog."
"You're right, Mary," my father sheepishly agreed. "It's just that I think I'm going to lose my job at the studio and am damned scared of not being able to bring home the bacon."
"Well, you certainly cannot bring home the bacon by selling the child's dog," my mother fumed. "Anyway, if we go broke again, I'll just do what I always do—start an acting school for children."
A few days later the actor came back, saying, "Jack, I've got to have that dog on my ranch. I want that dog. I'll give you 250 bucks for the dog." During this ordeal Chickie and I were sitting on the floor behind the couch, listening in horror. I was already making my running-away plans with her.
"Well, I sure do need the money," said my father. "Just a minute; I've got to talk to my wife."
"Mary, he's offering 250 bucks for the dog! We can always get Jeanie a new dog at the pound!"
"No way!" said my mother.
The next day the actor returned. He had rarely known failure and was not about to start now. "Jack, I'll give you 250 bucks and my secondhand car. I know you need a car to get around."
"Wait a minute," said my father. "I'm sure this time I can convince my wife." Upon hearing the latest offer, my mother, bless her heart, stormed out of the kitchen, stalked up to the actor, and chewed him out. "Ronald Reagan," she railed, "how dare you try to take away my child's dog!" At least he knew a good dog when he saw one.
Maybe it was that threat of being parted from each other, but after that incident with the actor, Chickie and I took to having long jaunts with each other. We would be gone for hours at a time, and either my parents were too busy to notice or they trusted Chickie's care of me. With Chickie in charge, I was given a great deal of freedom to wander in a world as miraculous as it was marvelous.
Behind our house was a large wooded area where Chickie and I began what I have come to think of as our travels in awakening. Two hours with Chickie in the woods yielded an incredible range of learnings. Chickie was more nose than eyes, and I quite the other way around. But together we investigated the endless treasures of forest and meadow. I remember crawling on four legs in order to follow more closely her interests and discoveries. As she sniffed out deer scat, mice holes, squirrel trails, and bug routes, she would occasionally turn around and check with me to see if I saw them too.
Chickie taught me to be alert to both the seen and the unseen, the heard and the unheard. A whisper of wings would turn her head and mine would follow, waiting for the flutter that would finally announce to my human-hindered head, "Bird on the wing!" Chickie would lift her nose, her tail would signal attention, and we would be off and running to follow the adventures of the air—entrancing molecules luring us to destinies both savory and dangerous. Once it was to a camper's discarded remnants of fried chicken, but once, too, it was to meet up with the snarling fury of a bobcat. Chickie barked, and I, knowing that human words were useless, barked too. Our defiant duet seemed to work, for the bemused cat slunk off, never to be seen again.
Chickie gave me metaphors for my later life's work, especially when it came to digging. Paws scratching away at apparently nothing soon revealed dark secrets hidden in the earth—old bones, ancient feathers, and things so mysterious as to be beyond human knowing. Years later I would probe and dig into the soil of the human subconscious with something like Chickie's fervor to find there the bones of old myths, the feathers of essence, and the great mysterious matrix that still sustains and lures the human quest.
Those early years with Chickie were a whole education in looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching—the feast and lore of the senses. For many years now I have been helping schools in the United States and many other countries to improve education by making it sensory rich, hands on, art centered. When asked who my mentors have been—John Dewey? Maria Montesori? The Carnegie Institute?—I can only reply in truth, "Chickie."
Chickie and I traveled in others ways as well. In fact, we crossed the Mississippi river by train many times before I could spell it. "There it goes, Jeanie-pot!" my father would bleat with excitement. "There goes the Mississippi, the father of waters. Quick, look out your window while you can still see it."
"I've seen it," I'd say, my eye affixed firmly to my comic book.
"Whaddya mean, you've seen it? The greatest river in the world! The crossroads of American history—La Salle, Showboat, the Louisiana Purchase, Huckleberry Finn! And you say you've seen it."
"But Daddy, we just passed over it going the other way a couple of weeks ago."
"Yeah . . . well, that show in New York didn't pan out too well. We'll give California another try. I think I can get back with Bob Hope, and if not, Fibber McGee and Molly could always find room in their closet for me, and if not them, I could always try . . ." Two days later he was writing for Amos and Andy, and if he was lucky, we were set in one place for thirteen weeks—maybe.
For years Chickie served as the center for calm and a kind of spiritual tranquillity in our life of constant change brought about through my Dad's work as well as his penchant for eccentric adventures. Even though I went to something like twenty different schools all over the country before I was twelve, I would always come home to Chickie, who regarded all of life as delightful and who maintained a saintly comportment and stability in the face of any whimsy we humans could invent.
People sometimes ask me how I can keep myself in reasonable mental and physical health even though I sometimes travel up to a quarter of a million miles a year and have a life of ridiculous complexity. In reflection I realize that Chickie's influence continues, to wit: Stay centered in eternity regardless of how much chaos is happening in time; look upon all people and events as opportunities for furthering life and its promise; and greet everyone as a potential awakened one—God in hiding, or dog in drag!
In addition to taking care of us Chickie also taught me my best lessons in ethics and responsibility. She seemed to have little self-interest.
Many of her actions were clearly for others. She was empathy personified, whether in consoling with me when I was upset or in the way she would listen to humans as they railed against their supposed fate. Her answer was simply to be there, to place her head upon their knee and look at them sweetly in the eye, her gaze unblinking and never wavering. However, if their blue mood went on too long, she would try to entertain them, bringing over something to throw or, if that did not work, amusing them with one of her dancing tricks.
When my little brother was born, it was under Chickie's tutelage that I came to take care of him. I remember when he was very young, he managed to bang together some orange crates in the shape of a rocket. For weeks he had been telling us that he was going back home to where he came from up among the stars. One day, Chickie came madly running toward me, barking in distress and pulling me by my dress to our bedroom. I raced after her and found my little brother balancing in the open window in his "rocket." He waved happily at me saying, "Bye, bye. I go up home now." I grabbed his little body and pulled him back as the rocket fell eleven floors to the street.
Entering into another realm, that of the spiritual epiphany, Chickie accompanied me on the most important experience of my entire lifetime. It turned out to be my key experience in awakening. I have described it in other books, but not from the perspective of Chickie's critical role in it. It happened in my sixth year. I had been sent to Catholic school in Brooklyn, New York. My father had been tossed off the Bob Hope show for an excess of high spirits, and we were broke and living with my mother's Sicilian parents in the Italian section of that noble if bad-mouthed borough.
Theologically precocious, and buttressed with questions designed by my agnostic comedy-writing father, I would assail the little nun who taught our first grade with queries that seemed logical to me but blasphemous to her. "Sister Theresa, when Ezekiel saw the wheel, was he drunk?" Or "Sister Theresa, I counted my ribs and I counted Joey Mangiabella's ribs, and we have the same number of ribs, and so do all the other boys and girls. See? (At that moment, on cue, all the children in the class lifted up their undershirts to prove the point.) "So if God took a rib out of Adam to make Eve like you said, how come . . .?
Then there were the Jesus questions. "Sister Theresa, how do you know that Jesus wasn't walking on rocks below the surface when he seemed to be walking on the water?" And "Sister Theresa, when Jesus rose, was that because God filled him full of helium?"
Then there was the day of the question that tipped her dogma as well as her dignity. It had to do with Jesus' natural functions and whether he ever had to go to the toilet. Her response had her looking like a black and white penguin in a state of hopping rage. She jumped on a stool, tacked up a large sheet of heavy cardboard and in large India-ink letters wrote:
All further theological questions of an original bent met with the little nun X-ing in more years for me to endure in purgatory, and each X stood for a hundred thousand years! By the last day of the first grade I had accumulated something like 300 million years in purgatory to my credit. Spiritually bereft, I told my father about the debacle and he, finding it very funny, took me off immediately to see the motion picture The Song of Bernadette.
This famous movie is renowned for its scenes of Saint Bernadette's vision of the holy Madonna in the grotto at Lourdes, which thereafter became a famous place for healing. Unfortunately, during the holiest of scenes, with Mother Mary appearing in luminous white in the grotto before the praying Bernadette, my father burst into long, whinnying, uncontrolled laughter. It turned out that he had known the starlet playing the role of Mary and found the incongruity between her Hollywood life and the role she was playing hilarious. Leaving the theatre finally in a state of mortal embarrassment, I pulled away from my still laughing father in order to get quickly to my house in order to emulate Bernadette's remarkable vision.
My destination was a guest room with a very long closet that looked a lot like a grotto. There were no clothes in the closet for Chickie had commandeered it as a nest for her new eight puppies. I explained my need to Chickie, feeling that she would not mind my moving her pups, being as she would want me to open a space for the greatest mama of them all to show up. When she protested mildly, I further explained that I didn't want the Holy Mother to step on her pups. After that, Chickie watched my actions with interest.
Kneeling in the now cleared Brooklyn "grotto," I prayed to the Madonna to show up in the closet as she had for Bernadette at Lourdes. I began by closing my eyes and counting slowly to 10, while promising to give up candy for two weeks if she would only show up. I opened my eyes to encounter the Madonna Chickie lovingly carrying one of pups back into the "grotto." I kept on counting to ever higher numbers, promising all manner of food sacrifices—mostly my favorite Sicilian delicacies like chicken with lemon and garlic sauce—but my revelation was only to be more and more puppies back in the closet.
Finally I counted to a very high number, 167, and having given up all calories, I told the Holy Mother that I could not think of anything else to give up, so would she please, please, please show up as I really wanted to see her. This time I was sure that she would make it. I opened my eyes, and there was Chickie contentedly licking all eight of her puppies.
"Oh Chickie," I sighed and reached out to pat her, whereupon she bestowed on me a kindly lick and a compassionate look as if I were her ninth puppy. At that moment came a vague spiritual forewarning, as if I had prayed for the Madonna and seen her in one of her many forms in Chickie, the all wise, all loving mother, and her care for her pups. But still I yearned for the movie version and did not yet recognize the truth of what I had been given. And so Herself offered me another chance. In a dreamy, unspecified state I went over to the window seat and looked over at the fig tree blooming in our yard. And suddenly it all happened—the most important awakening state of my entire life.
As I have written, "I must in my innocence have unwittingly tapped into the appropriate spiritual doorway, for suddenly the key turned and the door to the universe opened. Nothing changed in my outward perceptions. There were no visions, no sprays of golden light, certainly no appearances by the Virgin Mary. The world remained as it had been. Yet everything around me, including myself, moved into meaning."1
Only in reflection have I come to realize how much of what I then felt and knew had been prepared for me by Chickie and her guidance in the ways of awakening. All those rambles that we had taken together were now one ramble, all the smells and sights of nature to which she had introduced me were present along with the fig tree
blooming in the yard, Chickie herself and her pups in the closet, the plane in the sky, the sky itself, and even my idea of the Madonna. All had become part of a single unity, a glorious symphonic resonance in which every part of the universe was a part of and illuminated every other part, and I knew that in some way it all worked together and it was very good.
My mind had awakened to a consciousness that spanned centuries and was on intimate terms with the universe. Just as Chickie had taught me, everything was interesting and important: deer scat, old leaves, spilled milk, my Mary Jane shoes, the fig tree, the smell of glue on the back of the gold paper stars I had just pasted on the wall paper, the stars themselves, my grandfather Prospero Todaro's huge stomach, the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad, Uncle Henry (the black porter who took care of me on the train across the country), the little boy fishing in the lake who waved to me on the train when I was crossing Kansas, the chipped paint on the ceiling, my nana's special stuffed artichokes, my father's typewriter, the silky ears of corn in a Texas cornfield, my Dick and Jane reader, and all the music that ever was—all were in a state of resonance and of the most immense and ecstatic kinship.
I was in a universe of friendship and fellow feeling, a companionable universe filled with interwoven Presence and the dance of life. This state seemed to go on forever, but it was actually only about two seconds, for the plane had moved only slightly across the sky. I had entered into timelessness, the domain in which eternity was the only reality and a few seconds could seem like forever.
Somewhere downstairs I heard the door slam, and my father entered the house laughing. Instantly, the whole universe joined in. Great roars of hilarity sounded from sun to sun. Field mice tittered, and so did angels and rainbows. Even Chickie seemed to be chuckling. Laughter leavened every atom and every star until I saw a universe inspirited and spiraled by joy, not unlike the one I read of years later in the Divine Comedy when Dante described his great vision in paradise: "D'el Riso d'el Universo" (the joy that spins the universe). This was a knowledge of the way everything worked. It worked through love and joy and the utter interpenetration and union of everything with the All That Is. And the Madonna—Chickie—was at the center of it all.
In this direct knowledge lay what I later learned was the mystical experience. This experience is not something to be kept sacrosanct in esoteric cupboards. It is coded into our bodies, brimming in our minds, and knocking on the doors of our souls. It is our natural birthright, and naturally it is most available when we are still children. As a child it charged me and changed me and probably gave me the impetus to do the things I later did. It showed me the many faces of God, and for weeks afterward I went around seeing this face in every creature, plant, and person—even in Sister Theresa, who was somewhat bothered by my beaming approval of her inner self.
"Madonna, Madonna, show up, show up!" I had shouted. And of course the Madonna had showed up, present in Chickie with her unconditional love and care for her pups and for me. Kneeling in front of her and her altar of puppies, I had asked for everything and everything is just what I got. And even today, whenever I see a statue of Mary I can not help but be reminded of Chickie's boundless love, the ultimate Madonna bringing the puppies back into the closet, bringing them back into the manger.
As it happened, Chickie lived for a very long time (something like 140 years of dog time), suffering little but one very original and mystical neurosis. As soon as she boarded a train and for about an hour or two afterward, she got the stigmata: all four paws would begin to bleed like the hands and feet of some medieval saint. The vet could never figure out why this would happen, so we all accepted my mother's Catholic interpretation of it as being a sign of God's favor. Certainly, by her actions and saintly comportment, Chickie belonged among the circle of the blessed, so it seemed very reasonable that, along with Saint Francis of Assisi, she should be so honored.
Chickie lived with us until around my ninth year. Then one day, my father took her by the leash and told me to say good-bye to her at the elevator door of our apartment building. He informed me that he was going to give her to a friend who had a farm in Connecticut.
"Why, Daddy? Why would you give her away? She's my sister. You can't just go and give away my sister and best friend!"
"You kids are not taking her out for walks enough, and she will be happier on the farm."
And with that my dear Chickie left my life forever. To this day I have never understood why my father took her away. In retrospect, however, I realize that at that time he was starting to leave us in order to marry another, and perhaps getting rid of Chickie was one of his first acts of detachment.
When I was seventeen, my mother rented a summer house for us on Green Farms Road near Westport, Connecticut. Daily, my brother and I would take long bike rides along Green Farms Road. I always felt that somewhere on that road was something that I had lost, and if only I could find it, I would be restored to grace again.
Several times that summer my father came up to visit us. After each visit, he'd leave to "visit a friend who has a farm further up on Green Farms Road." Just before my
Dad died in 1986 he told me that he also had been visiting Chickie, who even at that time was living very happily on that farm. He never told me that she was just up the road, but something in my soul must have known she was there, since I felt so called to journey up and down that road on my bike. That she was very happy on the farm I have no doubt for she lived to be more than twenty years old.
Chickie was only the first of the remarkable dogs I have known and loved who have revealed to me, through their oneness with nature, facets of the mystical path. Unsullied in their essence and with a natural attunement to the Source, they have a purity that makes them wonderful companions as well as guides for our path back to wholeness.
Chickie was the means for me to understand on the most primal levels the nature of "awakening," the initial stage on the mystical journey. Under her innocent tutelage, I experienced that place where the field of our being shifts and the deepest coding of our life emerges, an unlooked for act of grace. In her presence something in me woke up, rising through all my parts and seeming to reconstitute the whole. My senses become more acute, gaining something that our animals just naturally experience—the air flooded with information, the land infinitely interesting and full of continuous surprises to engage the eye, enthrall the nose, astonish the ear. All flowers become friends, humble bread tastes of manna from heaven, and every thing and every one seem lit from within—a kingdom of God in the midst of what we once thought of as ordinary reality.
Long after Chickie was gone, I found words to describe the experiences I had shared with her in the poetic succinctness of poet and mystic William Blake: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand, / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your Hand, / And Eternity in an Hour."2 Blake also said, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, / Everything would appear as it is, Infinite . . ."3
Awakening can have the most tremendous effect for good on the life of those who experience it, as it had on me after my own revelation, making them wonderfully creative and useful. They seem to live at a higher level, with insight and ideas from some larger expanse of mind, to the betterment of their fellows and community. Yet few arbiters of reality recognize the place where these awakened ones dwell, or dare name it. Whether awakening begins in surprise as a gift from God or from grace or from evolution or from a peculiar synchronicity between nature's elements and one's own state of receptivity or from a wonderful dog, one feels powerfully affected by the sheer unexpected glory of it all.
What we think of as nature mysticism often occurs with such surprise. You are watching the ocean come in, and suddenly you are on every shore, in every ocean, and within every shining drop. And why not? If we are part of the One Reality, as mystics tell us and as many physicists confirm, we are ubiquitous through this universe and in touch with all its parts and particulars. It just takes the shift in consciousness that awakening awakens to experience this absolutely.
In my childhood, Chickie was my William Blake, providing in his own being the key to an experience that showed me that everything was interrelated in an organic universe founded on truth and beauty and a pattern that connected everything with everything else. Early on, I was able to see that all this was part of a holy perfection and was utterly serving of the good. With Chickie as spiritual guide, I also experienced timelessness and entered that state in which the categories of time are strained by the tensions of eternity.
I came to realize that what we call normal time is just the veneer of infinite time. Great eternity surrounds us and indwells us, and we come to think of past, present, and future as merely special laws within its much larger laws. I discovered then that we are citizens in a much larger universe and that we are able to enter into this kingdom of the larger order here and now.
In its everyday form, awakening is experienced as mindfulness—being present and awake to the sights and sounds and particulars of our daily lives. We go off of robot and become alert to the splendor of existence, be it seen in a sunset or a rose, an old man's craggy face, the eyes of an animal, or the side of a mountain. We become awake to the nuances of emotion that pass between ourselves and others. And we respond in turn with a fuller expression to the other's need or question. We move beyond that half-asleep state called ordinary waking consciousness.
And when we do, reality changes. We find ourselves in a world so startling in its vividness, so alive and resplendent in all its parts that we wonder at what planet we have arrived. We realize that we have lived as dim and diminished versions of ourselves, and vow to do so no longer. Chickie was my conduit to this larger reality. With her guidance I came awake to a world once known, long forgotten but held in trust by dogs for their human charges should they agree to follow their lead.
However it comes, awakening is the greatest experience of remembering who and what we really are, why we are here, and how it all fits together. Waking up has never been more important than at the beginning of the new millennium because, as of this moment, the species we call human is on a collision course with global cataclysm. Awakening brings with it answers, solutions, new ways of seeing and doing and being, and, best of all, the impetus to follow through and bring these answers into our particular world and time.
Solutions to our current dilemmas are coded in what we might call symbolically the Mind of the Maker, the Warehouse of God. In states of consciousness such as those awakening stimulates, the bandwidth increases and, with it, the capacity to access this greater realm of knowledge and creativity.
Strange as it seems, we can do this. Judging from the accounts of so many who have had an awakening experience, such access is always there—it is part of our innate human equipment. These experiences are fundamental to the human condition; they are part of our inheritance, the deeper givens of our existence. They are probably coded into our mind/brain system and are our call back to our "spiritual home place."
The opportunity for us today is how to take this natural ability and make it normal, an ordinary-extraordinary part of our regular experience. How can we engage in everyday applied awakening? The story of Chickie gives us some important clues. Chickie was ever curious, always looking, sniffing, digging, and rolling in the continuous revelation of nature, discovering its sumptuous wonders and sharing them with me. For us this means to go forth and do likewise. It means that we halt our automatic responses to things, cease living a posthumous existence.
One celebrated way of doing this is the "stop" or "gathering mindfulness" technique, in which one is able to wake up to the realities both within oneself and without. To begin, walk around the room, but then take a few seconds to stop and become conscious of everything you are doing, seeing, hearing, and feeling—in other words,
allowing the moment to become charged with presence. Suddenly the world ceases to be just background noises and becomes a richness, and your brain/mind system ceases to be on automatic as you reorganize your perceptions into mindfulness.
Do this "stop" exercise now for the next few minutes—simple things like picking up a glass, walking to the door, looking at your shoes. But stop before you take any action, and then do the same action or act of attention consciously, bringing full mindfulness into the act. As you become more conscious of your actions, you will become more naturally aware and alert. Your field of mindfulness will expand and you will feel yourself inhabiting your reality and not just being a bystander.
If you would start by practicing this technique for five minutes a day, then gradually increasing day by day the minutes in which you stop before performing any movement and then doing it mindfully, in a month's time you will be well on your way to having gone off of automatic and into conscious orchestration of your life. Your senses will have expanded because, together with your continuing to journey and explore in imagination your inner sensory world, you will have done much to reweave your perceptions. And not just your perceptions. This simple technique will spill over into your relationships, memory, thinking, and feeling, as well as increasing your capacity to learn and even to create.
Life, then, is no longer a dream but a vast creative enterprise in which one can focus one's enhanced energies and attention to partner with creation itself. Too many people go through life oblivious to most of what is around them, several times removed from reality and many times removed from any passion for the possible. Mindfulness gives passion with clarity.
Most spiritual traditions consider it to be the best possible state of being. With regard to the outer world, it is a quality of heightened awareness and awakeness to life and its experiences. It can be described as becoming alert for 360 degrees. With regard to the inner world, mindfulness demands similar awareness, so that you become able to orchestrate your internal states, whether it be for creative exploration in inner realms or for meditation and prayer.
There is also the state of mindfulness that is referred to as "being conscious of being conscious," what the mystic philosopher and consciousness teacher G. I. Gurdjieff referred to as "self-remembering." In this state you are aware of yourself reading my words, but you are also aware of the experiences you have just explored in the last few minutes as well as the background of sensations in the room where you are sitting, your own bodily sensations, ideas that cross your mind, and your general mood—all of these held together simultaneously. You are aware of all these things, but on the front burner of your consciousness you are also aware that you are aware. I know I am asking much of you, but isn't your life worth it?
To further awakening, devote time to explore and celebrate beauty in nature as well as in poetry, art, music, and the emerging spirit of the times, with its budding of new realities in the wake of the winter of a passing age. Gather unto yourself congenial friends—two legged as well as four legged—who share your drive toward awakening so that you keep on advancing on the path.
Immersion in beauty wherever you find it calls forth inner beauties and brings to consciousness the freshness of a world made new. Reading the rich metaphors of poetry especially can shake the mind from its stolid moorings, and you see deeper into the world and time. Perception becomes more acute, and conception as well. You wake up to what is going on around you, become empathic, know yourself as part of a seamless kinship with all living things. Thus you come to feel and care more deeply about the decay and degradation in the social and moral order.
Like Chickie, you become sensitive to other people's pain as well as joy and offer them the companionship of soul. You reverence their being and hold them as holy—gods in hiding. This helps them to awaken as well as keeping the spirit of possibility alive in yourself.
You say "Yes!" to life wherever you find it, abandon whining, and welcome and celebrate the springtide of change. Like a happy dog, greet each day with wonder and astonishment. Then grace happens, shift happens, and the mind is prepared to receive Reality in all its many colors and textures.
Awakening further requires that you take time and space out of your usual day for a practice of spiritual connection. We know that the universe is a living system of elegant design that seems intent on providing the opportunity for learning on all levels. Access levels of consciousness on the divine wavelength, and the learning unfolds. We are built to travel the wavelength of consciousness and to enlarge it when we wish to live in a larger universe.
Better still, change perspective through meditation, reflection, or focus, and discover yourself to be the latest flower on the tree of the cosmos, ready to bloom. This requires the sun and rain of attention, a conscious dwelling in the midst of eternal fecundity. What had been there dimly as background awareness then moves to the foreground. In this state anything that you concentrate on opens up—objects, ideas, relationships, business, governance, even grand designs. We awaken to the wealth of being and the "Aha!" experiences keep on coming.
Above all, let your animals guide you. They know the way.


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Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to speak about the digital video landscape at conferences with BeetTV, VideoNuze, and Brightcove, and I wanted to share some observations.
Digital video is experiencing an unprecedented outpouring of attention, innovation and creative energy. Even with the challenges that come with any emerging business opportunity, there are many reasons why digital video is at an inflection point and poised for extraordinary growth. Here are five:
1. Consumer behavior is changing in fundamental ways. Individuals are being empowered with devices, like tablets and gaming consoles, which offer the ability to more easily consume media. Over three-quarters of US adults will watch video monthly by 2014, and professional content consumption is currently growing at three times that of user-generated content. Markets respond to consumer-led trends, and this one shows no sign of slowing down.
2. The critical path items for digital video are known. Recently one of the largest global media companies told us that they employ five engineers for mobile video delivery for every one engineer they employ for desktop video. That 5‑to‑1 ratio isn't scalable or sustainable. While all critical path items are not yet solved, hurdles, like device fragmentation, improving user experience, and developing better metrics to buy and prove the value of video advertising are being tackled actively.
3. Monetization possibilities are evident and evolving. In a recent survey, consumers between the ages of 15 and 24 — tomorrow's mainstream — were the most likely to engage with digital video advertising, suggesting that individuals are growing increasingly comfortable with ads while watching TV on desktops and devices. Digital video ad loads are still small relative to TV, pointing to a monetization multiplier effect as more professional content comes online. A recent study also shows the growing popularity of paid media consumption on tablets: 18% of consumers use tablets for viewing paid video content, up from 11% a year ago. We are heading toward a perfect storm of monetization opportunity.
4. Major programmers and operators are leaning forward. Large media companies are motivated by consumers' desire and ability to access content in new ways, and are responding with innovative tools like the Xfinity App for iPad. For several major upcoming sporting events, you¹re going to see creative partnerships between broadcasters, distributors and Adobe that allow viewers to access content (live and VOD) across different platforms and device types.
5. Advertising Follows Engaged audiences – and Digital Video Engages. Proprietary research from Adobe Auditude shows that mid-roll video ads, the most engaging commercial position, easily outperform completion rates of pre-rolls and post-rolls. With an 87% completion rate, mid-rolls are performing close to 30% better. Professional content with engaging, TV-like ad experiences represents tremendous opportunity. The creative possibilities for better digital video and mobile advertising experiences are endless, and exciting.
To position Adobe's customers on the leading end of these evolving trends, we are thrilled to be continuing our work building Project Primetime. Adobe's Project Primetime helps media companies bring their linear, live and VOD content online to any connected device with greater revenues from ads and subscriptions. By combining Adobe's streaming, protection, advertising and analytics technologies, Adobe is in a unique position to address the most significant challenges that will enable the transformation of digital video.


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Re: st: How to vertically align graphs with Stata 12 ?
Francesco <email@example.com>
Re: st: How to vertically align graphs with Stata 12 ?
Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:43:42 +0100
Many thanks Nick,
Your -yla(, ang(v)) idea works perfectly!
Thanks again,
On 13 February 2012 09:37, Nick Cox <email@example.com> wrote:
> Thanks. That is now clear. The easiest way to solve this that I know
> is to insist on -yla(, ang(v))- in both graphs. Then you can also add
> -fysize()- for both graphs and -xsc(off)- for the first as below. Tune
> -fysize()- to choice.
> clear
> set obs 200
> egen week = seq(), to(100) block(2)
> egen type = seq(), to(2)
> gen DUM = runiform()
> gen Y = exp(rnormal(1,1))
> line DUM week, scheme(lean1) name(choice, replace) sort yla(, ang(v))
> xsc(off) fysize(45)
> twoway (line Y week if type==1,sort lcolor(black)) ///
> (line Y week if type==2,sort lcolor(red)) , ///
> scheme(lean1) name(graph, replace) legend(off) yla(, ang(v)) fysize(55)
> graph combine choice graph, cols(1) xcommon
> Nick
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Francesco <email@example.com> wrote:
>> I have a panel database that I aggregate using the -collapse function.
>> First of all, I generate a dummy variable that I would like to study (DUM)
>> - gen DUM=variable_of_interest==1
>> then I collapse the database by week and type of individuals (2 types,
>> identified by the dummy variable TYPE)
>> -collapse (count) count_Y=Y ///
>> (mean) mean_Y=Y ///
>> (mean) mean_DUM=DUM ///
>> , by(week type) fast
>> I create the first graph, which requires at leat 10 datapoints per
>> week and plots the evolution of the DUM's proportion for type 1
>> individuals
>> - line mean_DUM week if count_Y>10&`TYPE'==1 , scheme(lean1)
>> name(choice, replace) sort
>> And I would like to plot it against the output Y for the two different types :
>> -twoway (line mean_Y week if count_Y>10&`TYPE'==1,sort lcolor(black))
>> (line mean_Y week if count_Y>10&`TYPE'==0,sort lcolor(red)) ,
>> scheme(lean1) name(graph, replace) legend(off)
>> Therefore I type :
>> -graph combine choice graph, cols(1) xcommon
>> The graph that I obtain is exactly what I want (one graph per row)...
>> except for the (important) fact that there is a slight lag in the
>> alignment of the x-axis due to (I guess) the difference in length of
>> digits between DUM (0.2 for example) and Y (0.002 for example) ...
>> On 12 February 2012 15:13, Nick Cox <email@example.com> wrote:
>>> The thread you cite from 2003 concerns graphs from -graph hbar-. In
>>> that case the graphs are rather different from yours given Stata's use
>>> of categorical axes.
>>> As you have results from -line-, meaning -twoway line-, I would expect
>>> -graph combine- to give good results but it may require use of the
>>> -xcommon- option.
>>> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Francesco <email@example.com> wrote:
>>>> I created 3 (sub)graphs using the -line command, where the x-axis
>>>> represents dates (months, years, etc), and I would like to align them
>>>> vertically.
>>>> That is obtaining one single graphical output that displays one
>>>> (sub)graph per row and with the following important feature : if you
>>>> draw an imaginary vertical line from a particular date of any graph
>>>> you should cut the x-axis of the other graphs at the same date...
>>>> I tried with the -graph combine option, but it does not work properly
>>>> : there is a slight time lag probably due to y-axis labels... so the
>>>> graphs are not perfectly aligned..
>>>> Also I found a thread which basically concludes that it is not obvious
>>>> to do this with Stata in a slightly different context :
>>>> (http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2003-12/msg00329.html)
>>>> However this post was made in ... 2003 ! I am sure that some
>>>> improvements have been introduced since...
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/


text:
44:01 minutes (20.16 MB)
EdTechWeekly #172
October 17, 2010
Regular hosts: Dave, Jen, John
Guest hosts: Lesley Edwards, Teacher/Librarian from North Vancouver, BC.
This Week's Menu:
Dave's Link: http://www.masternewmedia.org/learning_educational_technologies/media-literacy/new-media-literacy-critical-thinking-Howard-Rheingold-20071019.html
Jen's Link: http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html As we head into our two-week hiatus, Jen needs a link-dump fix!! No better place than Jane Hart's latest round-up of top learning resource links. In her fourth attempt to poll the greater edtech community, Jane's 2010 Top 100 Tools for Learning list includes contributions from over 530 educators and "closed" for new contributions today .. Sunday, October 17th. Let's take a minute and consider some of our past and current favorites to give Jen her edtech resource fix for the next couple of weeks! [oooh ... another resource roundup via a tweet from our guest host ... http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/10/best-of-edtech-web-2010.html ]
John's Link: What is the role of social networking in improving our world? Gladwell says Twitter is not the revolutionary tool it's made out to be. The Twitter founders disagree. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that social networking tools are having a tremendous effect when people need help.
Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted, Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker.
Twitter Founders: Gladwell Got it Wrong, Liz Gannes, Gigaom.
Social Networking to the Rescue, Alexandra Gekas, Woman's Day.
Lesley Edwards: - Experts and Newbies: In this new blog 4 High Tech High teachers write their ideas and experiences around using Project Based Learning (by the Buck Institute for Education) http://biepbl.blogspot.com/ And: WhatEdSaid - blog by Edna Sackson, Melbourne Australia
Next week: No show on October 24 or October 31. We return November 7 with Connie Sitterley, Teacher / Technology Integration Specialist from Pennsylvania, and Kyli Yerse, school technology consultant.


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Melmaruvathur is a small village 92 km south of Chennai city (Formerly known as Madras) in the southern state of Tamilnadu, India. The place where the Temple stands today has more than 2000 years of history. At this place 21 Siddhars (Highly evolved souls or God realized beings similar to Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed or Great Spiritual Masters/Gurus) attained Jeeva Samaadhi (Leaving the mortal body but living in astral plane). These Siddhars hailed from various religions. That is another reason, why this Temple is not considered to be a Hindu Temple, in spite of following similar rituals and methods of worship.
Where the current temple's sanctum sanctorum stands today, there was only a neem tree in 1960's. Unlike every other neem tree, which bear bitter tasting fruit, this tree secreted and dripped a sweet nectar. Residents of that village found that they had a urge in their mind to taste this nectar whenever they passed by this tree. Since many passers reported of curing their illness and diseases after tasting this nectar, the word spread swiftly to entire village and its neighborhood. So it became a customary for these villagers to take a drop of this nectar to ailing friends and relatives. They treated this as a medicinal tree and protected it from grazing cattle and wood cutters.
In 1966, a severe storm uprooted this neem tree, which exposed the Swayambu underneath to the villagers for the first time. Swayambu means "A self emerging, naturally formed oval shaped object (carved of rock)". People built a small hut on top of this Swayambu and conducted poojas (prayer rituals) to it.
This place is known as Siddhar Peetam ("Siddhar" in Tamil language means enlightened or evolved souls. "Peetam" means throne. Thus Siddhar Peetam means The Throne of Evolved Souls or Great Spiritual Masters/Gurus) where 21 Siddhars are laid in Jeeva Samaadhi.
Swayambu alone was worshipped for many years. The idol of Mother AdhiParaSakthi was installed later in the sanctum sanctorum on November 25 1977. The idol of beautiful Mother is three feet tall, seated on thousand-petal lotus seat, with Her right leg folded and the left leg resting on the lotus petals. The thousand petal lotus has significance in meditation. In this idol form, She holds the bud of a lotus in Her right hand, the mudhra (sign) of knowledge in Her left hand and with Her hair plait and knotted upwards like a crown.
The shape of this idol is very different from those described in the codes of sculpture. The Mother wanted the idol to be in this form and so ordered through Her Oracle to one of the devotees to create it. The shape and form of this idol cannot be seen anywhere else.
The OM Sakthi Stage at the entrance. On the highway in front of the Siddhar Peetam there is a stage with the mantra of "OmSakthi" on it. Soolam (Trishul - Trident) of the Mother is erected on this stage. The devotees entering the Peetam to worship the Mother, first go round this stage thrice and then enter the Peetam. Since the AdhiParaSakthi is the Mother Origin of everything, there is no NavaGrahas (9 Planets) that are usually found in all other Hindu Temples. The Mother has ascertained, "Those who surrender to me, need not pray to the planetary Lords. They are my officers who carry out the work of implementing my Law of Karma.
The Sanctum Sanctorum faces the entrance where OM Sakthi stage is located. Inside this sanctorum is the Swayambu and Mother's idol. The sanctorum is only about 10X10 feet room. Amma has revolutionized the concept of spirituality by letting everybody irrespective of caste, creed, religion, language, nationality, social status, gender, education, etc., to enter the sanctum sanctorum and perform the daily rituals and prayers to the Mother AdhiParaSakthi. Women can enter the temple even during their menstrual cycle (which is prohibited in Hindu Temples) after taking bathe.
Putrumandapam: The Mother in order to keep blessing people at all times, dwells in the snake pit (putrumandapam) in the form of a cobra. The Mother appears before the devotees who stay in the mandapam (Hall) at nights, in the form of a snake till this day. It is the putrumandapam where the Mother gives Her Oracle.
Saptha Kanniyar Kovil (The Temple of Seven Virgins: To the right of putrumandapam is the temple of seven virgins. Normally the temple of the virgins will never have a roof. So also this temple of the virgins, with wall on four sides has no roof. To ascertain the fact that all are Her children and that She doesn't differentiate between any of us, the Mother ordained the local Harijans (considered to be low caste people in India) to construct the Saptha Kanniyar (Saptha means seven and Kanni means virgin. Kanniyar is plural for virgins) worship center within the Temple.
In July 1978, one day, AMMA in Her Oracle said, "Son the world has come to a very deplorable state, where black magic and voodoo is being practiced heavily. In such a state of affairs, a lot of innocent people get into trouble and suffer. The great many people who get caught in the web of this evil are coming to this place seeking relief. This is a place of devotion and spiritualism. Although it is not improper for them to come here, in order to continue to promote spiritualism without time being wasted in attending to them, construct the Adharvana Badhra Kaali (Furious Form of Mother AdhiParaSakthi to fight the evils) near the lake. The people afflicted by evil spirits will be relieved off them, if they worship My Furious Form of Adharvana Badhra Kaali". Accordingly the Adharvana Badhra Kaali idol was installed on February 9th 1979.
The abode of Adigalaar is a very simple but a beautiful place. Just opposite to this abode is a garden with green and natural scenery. It is from here that Adigalaar gives dharshan to His devotees and rests whenever He gets time. There is a small pooja (prayer) room here. When one enters the abode of Adigalaar, one feels like entering the sanctum sanctorum.
Although, Siddhar Peetam is called the AdhiParaSakthi Temple, there are no religious codes followed. There are no other Gods or Goddesses as found in other Hindu Temples. People belonging to all religions visit this Temple all the time. They recite their own religious Holy Scriptures such as Bible, and Quran. As Amma says, whichever scripture we read, whatever mantra we recite, everything is received only by Amma. And Amma is the one who disposes them. The visiting devotees are not required to convert their religion.
One of the unique features of this Temple is that it does not have priests to perform or conduct daily prayers unlike other temples and churches. The devotees themselves are allowed to enter the sanctum sanctorum all the time and they can perform archanas and abishekams in accordance with the procedures laid by the Mother AdhiParaSakthi through Her Oracles. Maha yagnas or velvis are conducted by volunteers here.
The Daily Routine:
AMMA is very fond of cleanliness. She resides in a clean inner soul and a clean appearance. In the same way, the Temple and its surroundings are always kept clean by volunteers.
Nobody prevents the people from worshipping the Mother AdhiParaSakthi inside the sanctum sanctorum. Also, it is FREE OF COST unlike other temples in India, where money must be paid to conduct prayers.
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The other night, Cartier hosted an event at the Hotel Americano to showcase a mix of classic, new, and forthcoming Trinity pieces. Located around the corner from Marquee, the industrial block that houses Americano might not be the place you'd expect the storied jewelry house to host an event; nevertheless the just-opened hotel is certainly worth the way westward trek. Modern and understated, the downstairs lounge was brimming with gorgeous floral arrangements making for the perfect backdrop for the Cartier pieces on display – some of which were dripping in so many diamonds they blinded my camera!
The vine-covered cottage in Milly-la-Forêt where Cocteau lived and Cartier has helped restore; The Cartier Trinity Sauvage ring inspired by Cocteau (right).
Released in 1924, Trinity de Cartier is a three-band piece that combines three colors of 18-karat gold to symbolize the different stages of a relationship: white for friendship, rose for love, and yellow for fidelity. French artist, writer, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau was one of the first to wear a Trinity ring – two of them stacked on his left pinkie – and he helped turn it into one of the jeweler's most iconic designs. Interior decorator Elsie de Wolf was the first American client to buy the Trinity bracelet and since stars running the gamut from Madonna to Anne Hathaway have walked red carpets with pieces from the now vastly expanded collection.
Cocteau's study, designed by Madeleine Castaing; one of the Trinity pieces showcased in the Phillip Lim runway show (right).
Among the pieces on display at the event were some of the ones inspired by Cocteau, which were released last year. Named after his film La Belle et la Bete, the Trinity La Belle has six rolling bands to reflect Cocteau's double pinkie rings and one loop is stamped with a star in a reflection of the fact that the artist always added a star to his signature when signing his name. Also in the collection is the Trinity Sauvage ring, bracelet, and pendant each of which has a band imprinted with black-lacquer spots to reflect not only Cartier's famed panther, but as an ode to the leopard-print walls in Cocteau's study.
On a side note, Cartier introduced rings, bracelets, and earrings with a similar star motif made of diamonds at Phillip Lim's fall 2009 show in celebration of their Centennial in America.
The major news at the event, however, centered around the introduction in January 2012 of pearl-accented Cartier Trinity pieces. None of the pieces were yet available to be displayed, but we were shown a slideshow featuring the designs and the lineup includes pearls incorporated into rings, necklaces, and earrings. As for something new you can get now, a platinum, white gold, and black ceramic Trinity ring, bangle, pendant, and pair of earrings just hit Cartier last week (they come in iterations with pave diamonds as well).


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Monday, March 05, 2012
I don't like, and have written about it here before, those 'disability awareness' exercises where people titillate themselves by rolling around in a wheelchair and then get up saying, missing the point entirely, "I could never cope with that." Well people do cope - so shut up. Sorry, but those 'games' annoy me and they seem to be more about people discovering things about their character and their courage than about disability and my life. But I've had a few people beg me for an alternative, an idea, many saying, correctly that I shouldn't criticize without coming up with options.
So I have.
It begins now ..
Try to look at my writing, now, this paragraph, with illumination. Writing is awkward but you can follow what I am saying. Do you worry about my inability to click my laptop buttons such that words flow smoothly? I annoy 'moi' and probably you by doing what I am now doing. But as I do it, it smooths out, I hit buttons quickly now. My mind works hard, HARD. But I finish what I start.
It ends now ...
I am exhausted. That took time. That took energy. That took determination. That took creativity. I was constantly thinking, constantly looking for ways to do what I wanted to to and say, even though not clearly, what I wanted to say. I set myself a lipogram which, if you clicked, you'd see, is a form of constrained writing. That paragraph above was written without using the letter 'e'. It was really hard to do, but it was doable. To me, setting people about the task of writing a story about their dog, their cat, their friend, their child, without using the letter 'e' would give some idea about the mental gymnastics involved in disability. Disability isn't about not having a cut curb ... well it is but it isn't ... it's about figuring out what to do about the fact that there isn't a cut curb. Coming up with options, coming up with ideas. constantly thinking, constantly evaluating what might or might not work.
I see this too with people who have intellectual disabilities when they get stuck on something. Trying desperately to figure out what to do, how to act, what comes next. Disability isn't a passive experience, it's an active one. It's trying to interact with a world that isn't easily accessible. I am more often mentally exhausted by the experience of disability than I am physically exhausted. Even in days that go well, those days have gone well because I've thought, and planned, and developed secondary plans, and reviewed options upon options upon options. It's tiring.
It's a bit similar to typing words into a string for you to sit and look at and say 'I got it!' (that was a lipogram)
Whew, I don't want to do that often.
No, it's not glamorous like riding around in a wheelchair laughing, fully knowing that you can get up at any time. No, it's not like pouring water into a glass wearing a blindfold. No, it's not showy. But it does get the point across. I tried this out on someone the other day who wanted to know why someone he worked with was always happy in the morning and always tired and a bit grumpy in the evening. There was nothing medically wrong. The fellow I was talking to made like the person was being willfully difficult in the evenings. I suggested that maybe, by the end of the day, he was just tired, really, really, tired. This self same staff gave up after trying for five minutes to write a sentence without 'e' ... he looked at me and said, 'this is really hard work'. I suggested that the fellow he supported worked hard like that all day every day. I suggested maybe developing an evening routine that was enjoyable, full of things the fellow chose to do - that he'd choose things that were comforting and less challenging than his day had been. It worked. Everyone is happier.
So there, happy?
I know, just know, that others with disabilities may not like this. Well, I don't really either, whatever happened to empathy? But I tried to find something that might have meaning without being demeaning.
24 comments:
- Kristine said...
I've heard of this exercise before (never tried it), but I don't think I've ever seen it linked to the disability experience like this. Brilliant. It strikes me as a great starting place, at least, for a more meaningful disability awareness day... Because I HATE the usual stuff too. I have a feeling I'll be using this at some point. Thank you!
- 5 March 2012 at 00:09
- Mary said...
Thank you!
I'm another person who can't stand the "parlour games" approach to disability awareness. Any fool can sit in a wheelchair in a church hall and steer it around a little course of cones.
Disability, the experience of being *dis*-abled, begins when, halfway through the course of cones, you get a phone call to tell you that a loved one is being rushed to A&E, and the instinct to leap up, shove the cones aside, grab your car keys and run out of the building turns into an unexpected logistic battle where you have to stay calm enough to get out of the course with wheels unjammed, find the janitor to unlock the platform lift to let you out of the building, and phone around all the taxi firms in town trying to find *one* accessible vehicle that can get to you within the next couple of hours, so that you can go and argue with hospital staff about whether or not your "outdoor" wheelchair will be allowed on the ward.
And instead of finishing the "awareness day" with a sense of achievement (if you coped) or shame (if you didn't) and returning to a privileged life where, to use your metaphor, you have a full keyboard available... disability is when you have to carry on having these tedious, upsetting, belittling battles every single day, in every single aspect of your life. Every meal out. Every job interview. Every friend's birthday celebration. Every trip to the shop for a pint of milk.
So while I see the point that people who say "you shouldn't criticize without coming up with options," are trying to make, it does seem a bit like they are smacking someone around the head with a frying pan, and when you say "I don't like being smacked around the head with a frying pan," responding with "well what would you like me to smack you around the head with, you can't criticize without coming up with options!"
The answer is simply "I'd like you to stop smacking me around the head, and use your intellect and/or human compassion to realise that it hurts me!"
- 5 March 2012 at 03:20
- Hannah Ensor said...
Love this idea! - do you mind if I blog about it? - referencing you & linking to here of course :D
I've never found a good way of explaining why going to new places is so exhausting, and never done on a bad day, but this would demonstrate it brilliantly!
Thanks Dave,
- 5 March 2012 at 04:03
- Dave Hingsburger said...
Hannah, of course you may blog about it, thank you for referencing it to my blog. As far as I know I've originated this approach to disability training and it would be nice to be credited for it.
- 5 March 2012 at 05:50
- John R. said...
Bravo!!! I cannot stand disability "awareness" exercises either. I will not facilitate them and think they are a waste of time.
I know however that people will usually prevail in things despite disability and that they will totally adapt.
As a person who spends his professional life "training" staff and caregivers this post speaks volumes and I am grateful for any better "exercises" in empathy and understanding adaptation....my state requires certain sensitivity awareness exercises in it's crisis intervention curriculum. Hate it.
Lipograms all day long, I say!!
- 5 March 2012 at 06:33
empathy. compassion. This is what it's about.
Wearing those distoring glasses, moving round a building in a wheelchair, being fed by someone else so you can find out better ways of how to support people, ...
I think these exercises sensationalise difference and trivial-ise disability.
Like when people say, I always put my clothes on in the same order, I'm a bit autistic! No you are not. You get how routines can feel comfortable, that's all.
It puts in mind the Pulp song 'common people' about a privileged person with a 'thirst for knowledge' wanting to 'live with common people like you' and that superb line, 'no-body likes a tourist'.
It makes me a bit sick that people laugh and ENJOY these exercises- in the common people song 'I said pretend you've got no money, she just laughed and said oh you're so funny. I said yeah? Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.'
If you use pseudo tourism in awareness training, pls consider ethical tourism.
But better still, when people work with clients who experience impacts of disability, I think providing time and support to overcome the obstacles to PUTTING OURSELVES (staff) IN THIER (clients') SHOES, their individual experiences, connecting in an empathic manner, is more likely to effect positive change.
Certainly it's more demanding of training participants. But isn't that the point, disability results from shirking legitimate requirements?
- 5 March 2012 at 08:06
- Gina @ Inky Ed! said...
How fantastic. I too will try to remember to link to this post on my blog - what a fantastic way to explain why a student might 'droop' a bit or 'act up' at the end of a school day. Oh how i'd love the opportunity to use it a a school prof.development day.
- 5 March 2012 at 08:21
- Atomic Geography said...
It's a lot to ask of people to have any more empathy for others than they have for themselves.
- 5 March 2012 at 09:06
- Nan said...
What Mary said made me laugh!"I don't like being smacked around the head with a frying pan." I like the lipgram. Will remember that one! It is inclusive in many ways (of people with intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, etc...). Thanks for taking the time to share it.
- 5 March 2012 at 09:18
Ahem Dave.....
---myself has an e...
- 5 March 2012 at 10:43
- Wordshurtorheal said...
Oh I never liked those "awareness" things either. In my camp of Ds, the trend now is to have a talk or send a letter to the elementary class about their child. It makes me cringe. It makes me sad. Would we ever do that for our typical child? I certainly know I don't fully "get it" so I appreciate your willingness to educate.
- 5 March 2012 at 12:33
Dear Dave:
I am not a fan of the parlour games either. Yet I see them regularly played out by other programs at my college.
I like the analogy of getting smacked around in the head with a frying pan. Here are some of the things it took for me to get my tenuous grasp:
1) my brother lived in an institution for 40 years and lost so many of the skills he had - not because of anything in him but because he was so brutalized
2) my daughter was born with a disability and she looked "different" - standing in the check out line at a store at the mall - in front of me everyone is oohing and aahing over someone's baby - when they get to me no one says a word about how cute my baby is - and she was darned cute (I am not biased or anything :-))
3) taking my mother in law who had had a major stroke to an "accessible" bathroom where we had to wait until every other stall was empty, remove the trash can and occupy the whole bathroom in order for her to use the "accessible" stall - she never lost patience but she did need to change her clothing due to the wait - and then on the way out a mother with a 3 year old was obviously furious that they had had to wait so long
4) going on vacation and coming back 2 weeks later to my job to learn that 2 of the young women I supported had had hysterectomies in my absence - one because she had menstrual cramps and the other because at 13 she had been caught necking with a boy in the bathroom - despite the fact that I had been arguing vehemently against them being sterilized (I am old - this is before the Eve decision)
I could go on and on. The biggest thing I have learned is that struggle does not have to be part of disability - society makes it that way. You can't learn that from parlor tricks.
I think you said it best in First Contact, Dave - we have to let people tell us what it is like for them to be them. You can't get that from parlor tricks either!
- 5 March 2012 at 14:15
- Dave Hingsburger said...
Julia, that slipped right by me, you have an eagle eye. Dave
- 5 March 2012 at 16:11
I'm with the rest of your readers Dave! I think the lipogram is an awesome idea! I work with children with disabilities in the school system. We are having a pro-D day tomorrow and are asked to give suggestions for things to do. I am going to suggest we try one of these exercises just to help all of us put ourselves into the shoes of those we support. Thanks Dave!
- Beannie
- 5 March 2012 at 19:52
Love this! Mind if I borrow it for training purposes...? no, I thought not... :)
thanks, Dave
- 6 March 2012 at 05:54
- Dave Hingsburger said...
Hugh, of course not!!
Julia, everytime I looked at that damned paragraph all I could see was the 'e' in myself. How I missed that when I read it and read it and read it again. It bothered me so much I had to go back and change it!! LOL Anyways, it's done now.
- 6 March 2012 at 07:07
- Atomic Geography said...
Dave, I'm disappointed you changed the myself to moi. Clearly, you had put a lot of effort and sincereity into the exercise, yet still made the "mistake".
Writing for my brain injured self (on a great day) requires the kind of effort you reported needing for the lipogram. I thought your "mistake" made the point much more powerfully because of how much it bothered you. The "mistake" is not about you but about what you're trying to imagine.
- 6 March 2012 at 08:13
it was a struggle for me wether to point to your "mistake" or not. But because you are indeed able to change it, it was something I must point out to treat you equal.
I hope you get the meaning in my words and understand the thoughts regarding disabilty in them.
- 6 March 2012 at 08:39
Why wasn't that man already spending his entire day doing activities he chose?
- 6 March 2012 at 12:49
I really am surprised at all the negative views towards the exercises typically used. As an educator within a traditional setting for traditional students entering various medical related fields, I find many of these exercises invaluable. Yes - there is often tittering and laughter - but it is not directed at others that fight with disabilities - but at themselves. Their own surprise of awkardness, lack of ability to perform daily tasks even in "pretend" mode. Such activities promotes awareness. How they are approached and how they are performed and how they are discussed are all part of the exercise. Good - actually excellent dialogue has come from students who are going to be dealing with various disabilities during their careers. These tiny touches of the battles that are faced daily by those living with disabilities goes a long way into meeting and dealing with people in their medical related practices. Simple things like clearer instructions, reading levels, more than one way to do things, walking slowly, speaking slower, getting feedback, assisting with form filling, transfers, interuption, dealing with family and caregivers - and so on - are necessary. YES - there can always be improvement and I love your example - but let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Those with the knowledge and experience, like yourself, keep on showing us what to do - and believe me - every person who has the responsibility of trying to educate and integrate and appreciate those with disabilities will be very, very grateful. Until then, I will continue to turn the giggling,eagerness to learn, and experience into awareness and compassion and hopefully a drop of understanding.
- 7 March 2012 at 03:20
- Elizabeth said...
What a wonderful exercise! As both a teacher and a Girl Scout leader, I always seek to learn ways of being more aware of how to help others. Thank you for sharing this activity!
- 7 March 2012 at 12:52
- Elizabeth said...
Thank you so much for sharing this exercise! Both as a teacher and as a Girl Scout volunteer, I try to learn new ways to help others. This will definitely be useful -- thank you again!
- 7 March 2012 at 12:53
What do you think about the Blind Museum in Israel? They have an entirely dark museum in which people sighted people try to do everyday things -- including a mock up grocery store. And blind guides lead sighted tour groups through the museum.
- 9 March 2012 at 11:19
I know that one big issue I have with these trainings is that they fail to meaningfully recognize the ways one can become good at functioning with a disability. Someone who picked up a pair of crutches for awareness day isn't going to have the muscles I've developed, the skills on how to best navigate obstacles such as stairs (which isn't always the technique they teach), the sense of balance, the awareness of what surfaces to watch out for, the fun tricks, etc. They'll have a distorted idea of what it's like to have my disability. Generally, they end up with an exaggerated idea of the physical difficulties and very little sense of the social stigma. This reinforces the tendency to excessive and pushy "helpfulness" and makes my life more difficult.
Now obviously I'm not everyone. However, a significant percentage of people with disabilities have developed skills that aren't going to be readily apparent to an able-bodied person playing around for a couple of hours. If an organization wants to know how to work effectively with people with disabilities, they should talk to (and possibly even employ) actual people with disabilities and not play around with pretend disabilities.
I don't think many people would suggest that increased gender sensitivity would be best achieved by getting a bunch of guys to put on a dress and run around for a few hours and telling them "Congratulations! You now know what it's like to be a woman!"
- 28 March 2012 at 22:12