text:
The West End cemetery is full of old dead sea captains and soldiers from the War of 1812, kids that died of cholera and wives that, after six or eight or ten children, just gave up. There are rich people under monuments, the Longfellow family in a vault, and paupers without so much as a wooden marker. No one's been buried here since the middle of this century, and so the place has fallen into disrepair. You see a lot of the marble and shell headstones in puzzle pieces on the ground or standing at crooked attention. About ten years ago the cemetery was a popular hang-out for prostitutes and junkies—but now it's just dogs and their owners.
When I first moved to town a couple years ago with my girlfriend Sara we walked our dog in the cemetery. There was this guy there named Jeff, a big brawny American Indian, from the Duckwater tribe I think, who sort of qualified as my first friend in Portland. He told me how he grew up in Nevada and was adopted by white parents and then raised in a little redneck town where people really didn't like Indians. He'd moved around a lot and I pictured him as I was now, the stranger in a strange place. He walked with me in the cemetery, sometimes twice a day, whatever the weather. Or rather, we were both being walked by our dogs. His was a wolf mix named Keana, with a vacant, slightly menacing glint in her eye, who liked to rough up young puppies. And mine is a simple mutt named Trout, whose passion for chasing squirrels follows her lifetime commitment to rolling in poop.
It seemed like Jeff was always at the cemetery, sometimes up to eight hours in a row. He said he worked at night, supposedly for a local scuba-diving outfit, and that's why he had so much free time during the day. He told stories, endless stories, about his high school football exploits and the blown-out knee that ended his college career at safety. He talked about fishing, how he gill-netted in the rivers of southeast Alaska and then how he and his girlfriend had bought a house and now they weren't together anymore, and she had the house and he was here, a country away, walking his dog with people like me. He didn't seem angry at all. No, in fact, he seemed happy. Like every day he was as happy as he'd been the day before. And because of it he was good at drawing people out, at connecting the various factions inside the cemetery so that everyone stood around, nodding dumbly, listening to Jeff, our oblivious mayor, holding forth on Keana's new collar or perfect shampoo, while Keana took her pound of flesh out of some hapless pup.
This is not the way things usually work in the cemetery. The mere fact that I knew Jeff's name was unusual. Usually people didn't interact that much. Instead, we knew each other by handles. There was Dalmatian Man, father of three speckled dogs, one to whom he spoke in sign language. There was Greyhound Lady, regally walking her trio of Greyhounds until the day that Lightning, her beloved, dove through a plate-glass window during a thunderstorm and died. There was the man who walks and reads, and Frisbee Dude, and the Lawn Chair Family: an old father and his fifty-something son who daily set up their folding chairs near the cemetery gate. And the Pickup Artist, around whom no one was safe. And there was Crazy Shouting Man, owner of three ragtag mutts and an elder statesman of the cemetery, who, when I finally talked to him wasn't Crazy Shouting Man at all. His name was Al.
Sign up for our newsletter and stay in the know.
"There are loads of people up there that I see all the time, some of them I've been seeing for years and I don't know their name. I recognize them and they recognize me, we talk about all sorts of things, and it just never really occurs to you to ask their name because you know their dog's name.
"As a matter of fact, I've always had these funny occasions where you run into people that you talk to a lot at the cemetery—you meet them somewhere … we were down at Granny Killams when it was open one night and this woman came over and said, 'Al, how are you? how's the dogs? how's all this?' and I was with a bunch of friends and I thought, 'And this is …,' and I realized I had no idea, it wasn't that I had forgotten her name, it was that I'd never known her name. I knew her dog … I mean, I had no idea. And, this was not somebody that I just knew very casually, this was somebody that I probably walked with three or four mornings a week. But you always find you know a lot more dogs than you know people, which, I think, says something about who's worth knowing anyway."
Even today what strikes me as amazing about the cemetery is that there are people here, people who show up twice a day and see other people here twice a day for years and many of them just don't know each other's real name, let alone what the other does for a living, or dreams of at night, or loves or hates. They just know each other's dogs' names. So when they refer to one another, they might say, "Circe's mom said Milk Bones are full of preservatives, which is why she cooks her own." Or when they bump into each other downtown Christmas shopping, they'll say, "Ellroy's mom!" and then when nothing's left to say, say, "Uh, how goes it?"
Was this intimacy or a complete lack of intimacy? Sometimes it felt like both at once. You had the warmth of intimacy and the comfort of hiding behind your dog. And yet every day you saw people at their most naked, talking baby-talk to their hounds, kneeling to pick up poop. I asked my friend Julie, Reuben's mother, about this.
"I think I really get a sort-of window into people's … well, into people's souls. You watch people very contentedly walking around, throwing the ball, interacting with their dogs or totally ignoring their dogs, and going at their own pace and every once in a while yelling for their dog and …."
Here's Al again: "I mean, I really judge people by how they behave toward their dog. When I see people hit a dog, I'm really sort of appalled and amazed that you would do that.
"I mean, I know who really, really likes their dogs and who doesn't. I know people who've got trophy dogs and people who've got the scruffiest, ugliest dog, but they really, really love that dog."
I think it was the love part that kept me going back to the cemetery. And then it became my social hour, my escape, where, more often than not, I'd find Jeff and Keana. The minute Jeff realized I was a writer he went to the library and over the course of a week read everything I'd ever written. And then, to my horror, wanted to talk about it. And he did this kind of thing with others, too.
When the leaves began to change during my first October in the West End cemetery, Jeff was already talking about a Christmas card he was planning—a photograph of Keana and himself. He brought it up obsessively, about how Keana was going to have a haircut and shampoo and have her nails clipped, and how he had arranged for a photographer, and how they were scouting locations. There were ups and downs in the saga as it played out over weeks—a good location that might not work out the day of the shoot if a nor'easter hit, the need to time everything just perfectly so that Keana would leave the beauty parlor and then immediately sit for her picture before she could come back to the cemetery and get muddy.
In retrospect there were little clues even then that something strange was going on with Jeff. While he said he owned a truck, I only saw him at bus stops around town. And the scuba-diving … later when I called various outfits in Portland, no one had ever heard of him. In the end, he had the photograph taken at Sears, he and Keana in the stiff, unsmiling pose of a Civil War-era husband and wife, he in his familiar blue sweatshirt hulking behind Keana who was perfectly coifed. He was beaming when he handed the Christmas card to me, literally beaming.
After Christmas I left the country for several weeks and when I came back, some time after a massive ice storm, Jeff was nowhere to be found. The cemetery glittered with glazed headstones. It took days to unravel the story because people didn't seem to want to talk about it … didn't seem to want to talk about anything. Everyone just bundled into themselves, and Jeff … he was a very touchy subject, one that suddenly made us all feel defensive. What I learned was this: he'd had health problems, an infection of some kind. He went to the hospital at the same time that he was apparently forced out of his apartment. Money was tight. He'd asked someone from the cemetery to put him up, another line crossed. But that hadn't worked out. Keana was taken to a kennel by Megan, Matty's mom. And now she was calling the kennel regularly to see if Jeff had picked her up, but he hadn't. Week after week she called until it was clear that Jeff couldn't or wouldn't pick up Keana, that he was gone. That's when Keana was adopted by someone else.
Here's Megan: "You start talking about this stuff with somebody and then you realize, "I didn't even know this person … like with Jeff, I mean, it was like you knew everything about his life but in the end how much of that was actually true? And, you know, you didn't even know this person … it was like August to December and he was gone. But it seemed like forever."
There were completely unsubstantiated rumors that he'd robbed a bank. Someone knew someone whose cousin had seen his photo on a Boston newscast. Maybe. But then most people were quick to accept this as fact. In a weird way, I wonder if we felt betrayed. Betrayed because Jeff had broken the simple rules of the cemetery. He'd become too intimate. Now he was gone and it was hard to say hi, let alone catch someone else's eye. During those dark winter months the cemetery became a kind of haunted, trustless place. In one of the endless conversations we had about him later, some people worried that he knew where we lived … someone threatened to track him down. But what for? So that he might never again bamboozle other hapless dog owners in other seaside towns into chatting about doggy shampoo?
Sara and I kept the Christmas card on our refrigerator right up until a couple of months ago, actually, when it quietly fell to a new rotation of refrigerator photos. We kept it there in hopes, I think, that he would come back and explain where he'd been, for I was pretty certain that he couldn't have robbed a bank. And if he had, I told myself, maybe it was because he had to. Maybe he'd been inches from a life he imagined for himself, with a dog that gave unconditional love, with friends he was guaranteed to see every day and he'd had a couple of bad breaks—got sick, ran out of money, lost his dog and then panicked.
Now time has passed. People come and go and every six months the galaxy inside these gates breaks apart and reconfigures. Dogs die, people leave for nursing homes, others move, more arrive and every day, today even, people are here walking in spectral circles like they're in Mecca. Circling the Ka'ba. In general I'd say things are back to the way they were—intimate but not intimate. We stand around in dumfounded joy with ten, twenty, thirty other gaping grown adults, reveling in the simplicity of stupidly entertaining dog play. Dalmatian Man still flashes sign language at his deaf Dalmatian, the Pickup Artist still works his magic, the Lawn Chair Family still sets up by the cemetery gate each day, covering their legs with wool blankets.
Fact is, even without somebody like Jeff pulling people together, if you stand on a corner with a bunch of strangers, eventually something happens that brings you together. Sometimes something small. The other night I went to the cemetery at sunset. There were the same broken headstones, the same sea captains and paupers, and there were all these living people, too, who only know me as Trout's dad, or as the guy who stupidly named his dog Trout, or however they see me. The dogs were playing hard, racing in circles, not wanting any of it to end, and a gigantic moon came up, came up tangerine. It was the kind of moon that stills everything, and we stood in a circle watching it rise. For a minute or two we just stood there glowing orange, the dogs didn't exist at all.


text: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 American epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan wrote the screenplay, with George Lucas writing the film's story and serving as executive producer. The second release in the Star Wars franchise, it was produced by Gary Kurtz for Lucasfilm Ltd and stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew and Frank Oz. The film is set three years after Star Wars. The Galactic Empire, under the leadership of the villainous Darth Vader and the Emperor Palpatine, is in pursuit of Luke Skywalker and the rest of the Rebel Alliance. While Vader ... more on Wikipedia

subset: commoncrawl


text:
My initial attempts to submit my application online were unsuccessful. Apparently from what I have read in my online "wanderings" other tax pros also had problems with the online process. I discussed these attempts in the post "What a Mucking Fess".
As a result of my difficulties registering online I filed a paper application on Form W-12 on October 4th. I was concerned when I checked the other day to find that my check for payment of the $64.25 fee had not yet been cashed.
I have been told that while the IRS has resolved most of the initial issues it encountered at the start-up of the online process, there are still problems with "authentication". This is because of slight differences between the way tax preparers have entered their addresses in the application and what appears on their last tax return, mostly in terms of punctuation and abbreviations.
I was not alone in abandoning the online registration and turning to a paper application. This has created a backlog in processing W-12s, with which the IRS is trying to figure out how to deal. I have been assured that the IRS is working through the issues – and I do believe the assurances.
So if you gave up on the online system and filed a W-12, and have not heard back from the IRS yet (or your check also remains uncashed) do not worry. Have patience.


text:
Braves' tight victory a fitting opener vs. rival Nats
Benefited by challenge, clutch relief, Atlanta continues winning trend
WASHINGTON -- Following a script similar to the one that led them to the National League East title last year, the Braves manufactured yet another one-run win over the Nationals with the help of their stellar bullpen. But this time, they also received some assistance from Major League Baseball's expanded instant replay system.
Chris Johnson delivered the decisive sacrifice fly and David Carpenter produced an impressive eighth-inning escape act in front of a raucous crowd that filled Nationals Park to celebrate Washington's home opener on Friday afternoon. But these served as just two of the key contributions the Braves received on the way to claiming an eventful 2-1 win over the Nationals.
"We've got [18 more games against the Nationals]," Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. "I think there will be a lot more like these. I know there have been in the last couple of years. There's no reason to change now."
Ten of the past 17 games played between these two NL East rivals have been decided by one run. The Braves have won seven of these 10 contests and 14 of the 20 games played against the Nationals dating back to the beginning of the 2013 season.
Much of this recent success can be attributed to the Braves' bullpen, which has compiled a 1.70 ERA in these past 20 games against the Nationals. This impressive mark was improved with the shutdown performances provided by Carpenter and Craig Kimbrel, who recorded a pair of strikeouts in a perfect ninth inning.
"Every win you can get in the division is going to be big," Carpenter said. "None of these games are taken lightly. You're trying to go out there for 162 [games] and grind them out."
Like Nationals starter Jordan Zimmmerman, Braves starting pitcher David Hale overcame the stomach bug that weakened him the previous couple of days and set the tone for this pitchers' duel with five stellar innings. The Braves gained a lead with Evan Gattis' fifth-inning solo home run off Zimmermann, and the Nationals tied the game with Ryan Zimmerman's sixth-inning sacrifice fly against Gus Schlosser.
Nationals reliever Tyler Clippard paid the price in the eighth inning, when he issued a leadoff walk to Jason Heyward, who raced to third base on Freddie Freeman's one-out single and then trotted home when Johnson lofted his game-winning sacrifice fly to right field.
"It's Relieving 101," Clippard said. "You don't walk the leadoff guy, especially during a tied ballgame like that. That's what ultimately got me. [The pitch to Johnson] was a fastball away. He just bobbed it up. It was one of those weird baseball things. If it was 10 feet in, [Jayson Werth] might have thrown him out."
The Nationals opened the bottom half of the eighth with a single by Anthony Rendon and a walk to Werth. But after getting himself in trouble, Carpenter escaped in authoritative fashion courtesy of three consecutive strikeouts against Adam LaRoche, Zimmerman and Bryce Harper.
"We've got to battle," Johnson said. "We've got to show we can win a ballgame that way. We did that."
Zimmermann, whose season debut was pushed back one day to allow him to recover from the flu, notched nine strikeouts and limited the Braves to one run on four hits. Atlanta had produced just two hits before Gattis opened the fifth inning by belting a fastball into the left-center-field seats.
Gattis' long solo shot accounted for his second hit of the young season and more importantly provided a lead for Hale, who scattered five hits and had the expanded instant replay system to thank for the fact that he did not allow a run in the five innings that encompassed his third career start.
"I was surprised I felt as good as I did after a couple days ago," said Hale, who battled a stomach virus on Wednesday and then recovered during Thursday's off-day.
Hale certainly felt much better after the replay review overturned the initial ruling that Ian Desmond recorded an inside-the-park home run after his fifth-inning line drive bounced in fair territory and nestled under the padding of the outfield wall located just to the left of the left-field foul pole. The review led to Desmond being awarded a ground-rule double instead.
Braves left fielder Justin Upton complicated the unusual situation when he raised his arms to alert the umpires and then panicked by picking the ball out of the wall. His decision to do so prevented third-base umpire Marvin Hudson from getting out to the wall in time to inspect whether the ball was indeed under the padding.
"The next time it happens, if I'm 100 percent sure like I was, I will stand there and make sure they come out and see it," Upton said.
After being sent back out to second base, Desmond took off to steal third base and was caught in a rundown. Three innings earlier, the Braves had negated Harper's attempt to steal second base with a pitchout.
Hale, who has allowed one run in the 16 innings that he's compiled in his first three career starts, also benefited from Nationals third-base coach Bob Henley's unwise decision to have LaRoche attempt to score from first base on Zimmerman's fourth-inning double to left-center field. Shortstop Andrelton Simmons received Upton's relay throw and fired a perfect strike to Gattis, who was waiting to apply the tag when LaRoche eventually reached home plate.
"We did a lot of nice things fundamentally [sound]," Gonzalez said. "We wiggled out of a lot of situations. We played good defense and made some good pitches when we had to."


text:
Laurie RYAN
Dr. Laurie Ryan is Chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch in the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging, part of the NIH. She oversees the development, coordination, and implementation of NIA's basic and clinical Alzheimer's disease research program. Dr. Ryan also directs the Alzheimer's disease clinical trials research portfolio.
Dr. Ryan received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Development from St. Mary's College of Maryland in 1986 and her Masters in Psychology from Loyola College in Maryland in 1991. She undertook her doctoral training in clinical psychology (with specialty training in neuropsychology) at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. During her doctoral training, she focused her research on mild traumatic brain injury. She also completed a neuropsychology-focused psychology residency at the Medical University of South Carolina/Department of Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Charleston, S.C., where she researched disorders affecting geriatric populations, including dementia. She obtained her PhD in 1997 and went on to complete a fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital/Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
After completing her fellowship, Dr. Ryan joined the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC where she served as the clinical neuropsychologist for the Walter Reed site. At that time, the DVBIC was an 8-site military, VA, and civilian partner TBI disease management program delivering clinical care, conducting clinical research and providing focused TBI education. In January 2003, Dr. Ryan became the Assistant Director for Research and senior neuropsychologist for the national DVBIC where she was responsible for overseeing clinical research development and implementation with a particular focus on clinical trials. In September 2005, Dr. Ryan joined the NIA as the Director for Alzheimer's Disease Clinical Trials. In December 2013, she was promoted to her current position.
Research Interests/Portfolio
- Pharmacologic treatment and management of MCI, AD, and other dementias of aging to slow their course, treat and manage the cognitive and behavioral manifestations, and, ultimately, to delay the onset of and to prevent them
- Clinical trial design and outcome measures
- Recruitment


text:
Lovelace & Babbage is a game for 2-4 players.Game info on BoardGameAtlas.comGame info on BoardGameGeek.com
Game info on BoardGameAtlas.com
Game info on BoardGameGeek.com
This form will move this price for this item to a new item. Search for the item you want to move to below, then submit.
You can find a BGG ID for a game by visiting it's game page on BGG's website. Then copy/paste the ID found in the URL. Below is a screenshot of where to find the ID.
Any title for this video is going to be immediately out of date because of how recording breaking fast this board game is getting funded on kickstarter. Fros......
Amazon is having a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale (lowest priced item is free). 7 Wonders ~$41 Above & Below ~$37 Axis & Allies 1941 ~$26 Battleship Shots ~$13 Betrayal at House on the Hill ~$29 Cards Against Humanity ~$25 Cards Against Humanity: Absurd Box ...
Kickstarter Roundup: Lawyer Up, 18 Holes, CATEGORICKELL>
Top Board Games To Play Over Zoom or Video Chat>
An Online Only Board Game Con Was Just Announced - Play Unconventionally>
E11 Interview with Dominic Crapuchettes owner of North Star Games>
Holi: Festival of Colors>


text:
Have you checked out all those fabulous blogs and blocks from Quiltmaker's blog hop so far? Great! Stick around, we have even more to share with you!
Yep, it's day 2 of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks volume 5 blog hop, and today I get to show off block number 4 in my seasonal block series. If you have followed Quiltmaker's past blog hops or have volumes 2–4, you've seen my Ice Crystal (Winter), Sunblock (Summer) and Re-leaf (Autumn) blocks. Here's a recap:
And that means it's finally Spring!
I didn't have any particular flower in mind when I was drawing this foundation design in EQ, but I think it looks like a daisy. When I finished sewing up the final block, the name became apparent –"Whoopsy Daisy." (More on the name later.) What could be better than sewing with an assortment of bright Tonga batiks from Timeless Treasures! How about a design with an entire garden of daisies? (Yes, I see more flowers in my future.)
I'm feeling a little guilty about my orphan test blocks. Since my daisy test block was looking pretty good, I turned it into a pillow.
This is a great way to showcase one block. I added 3″ borders to make it large enough for an 18″ pillow form. I also found this a perfect size to practice some quilting.
Need more inspiration? How about combining all four seasonal blocks for a small wall hanging? Here's my work in progress. All blocks are made from batiks. To tie the designs together, I used blues for all the backgrounds but varied them a little: light for spring, bright for summer, a grayed blue for autumn and a dark midnight blue for winter. I'm still looking for just the right blue batik for an outer border.
By the way, if you like Quiltmaker patterns but struggle with fabric selections, check out our kits at quiltandsewshop.com. You'll find many recent quilt patterns and a few older favorites complete with the fabrics for the top and binding. There are limited quantities of some, so you'll want to head over there soon. And right now the shipping is free for purchases over $50!
In the 30 years since Quiltmaker's very first issue, we've published hundreds of quilt patterns. One of our challenges is coming up with unique names for each. Luckily, most of the designers name their own blocks in the 100 Blocks series. (There must be some interesting stories behind a few of them.) Our own brainstorm sessions for names can be pretty amusing. Contrary to what you might think, "Whoopsy Daisy" wasn't inspired by sewing mistakes. This was an easy block to sew. It came from my "Whoop! It's a daisy!" shout-out when I was finished.
Help me name my quilt above that shows all 4 seasonal blocks. Leave a comment with your creative quilt title by noon MST on Wednesday, May 2nd for a chance to win a copy of 100 Blocks, volume 5 and some special prizes from today's sponsors, Robert Kaufman and Handi Quilter. I'll select one winner randomly from the comments.
Winner! Congratulations Jenny. Your comment (#76) was picked at random and we will be sending you a copy of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, volume 5 and special treats from Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Handi Quilter.
Thank you all for contributing so many creative titles for my quilt. I just have to narrow it down to one. (Otherwise, this could be the world's longest quilt name and the label will be larger than the quilt itself.) Enjoy the rest of the blog hop!


text:
Help us to make this the most complete winners of the best of the Web. Just fill out the info below and we'll be in touch. Thanks!
Sites dedicated to promotion, celebration and presentation of films, movies and film culture. These include movie promotional sites, film news, film resources, film magazines and film archives. This does not include fan sites - See Celebrity/Fan.