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Archive for August, 2013
Simplifying the Roll: June 9 and 10, Lake Natoma, California
Date: June 9 and 10 (two classes on June 9, two classes on June 10)
Location: Lake Natoma, California
Description: Topics that can be covered include first rolls, other-side rolls, layback paddle rolls, forward finish paddle rolls, norsaq rolls, hand rolls and beyond. The techniques examined can be used with any type of paddle and any type of kayak.
Contact: For more information, course fees or to register, e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
The end of the Nordic Tour
Our last week in Sweden was very busy. After leaving Nynashamn, we made our way to Sandhamn. Sandhamn is a gorgeous island just east of Stockholm. It can only be accessed by boat. John Sjoberg of Sandhamns Kajakskola picked us up and took us to the island, which has a very relaxed feel. The small harbor area hosts a couple of pubs and restaurants. The following day we conducted a rolling class in the morning, and a strokes class in the afternoon. During the strokes class we wound our way around several of the islands in the archipelago enjoying the gorgeous scenery.
The following day, John returned us to the mainland and we prepared for classes in Sickla that would take place in the morning. Although in distance, Sickla is not far from Sandhamn, it has busier feel, as it is very close to Stockholm's center. Classes took place through Sjostaden Kajak. Mark and I conducted two rolling classes and a rescue class, all of which took place on a small lake that is part of a chain of lakes that run through the area.
After teaching in Sickla, we made our way across Sweden for our last stop on the west coast. We arrived in Helsingborg and were greeted by Zsuzsanna, a lively and fun woman who organized our visit to Helsingborgs Kanotisterna. Upon arrival I was happy to realize that I'd been there during the first year of the Nordic Tour in 2010. I recognized the club and the active beach, which had lots of organized recreational activities for people to enjoy. The first day we taught two rolling classes, and the second day was filled with strokes, maneuvers and rescues in the harbor area.
After leaving Helsingborg, we crossed the country one last time to return to Stockholm for our final day of classes before flying home. We met up with Karin and Martin of Ornsbergs Kanotsallskap. The following day we conducted a yoga session and a rolling class on another of Stockholm's gorgeous lakes. We enjoyed hanging out with Karin and Martin in the evening and learning all about the beautiful city where they live.
We're now back home, and this year's tour is over. Thank you to everyone who helped organize it, and to all of the participants who came out to take classes from us. We're in the process of organizing next year's tour, and hope to see you all again!
Pictures by Helen, Mark and Mans Langert.
A week in Nynashamn, Sweden
After leaving Karlshamn, we made our way to Nynas Kajak and Upplevelse in Nynashamn, Sweden. This business has been part of the Nordic Tour since it started four years ago. Over the past four years, Pelle and Carina, who own Nynas Kajaks, have become good friends.
Not only do they run a fantastic business, they're awesome kayakers and really fun people to hang out with. It was wonderful to be there for seven days, six of which we had classes.
Nynashamn is an ideal place to run classes. It has a fantastic archipelago which provides spectacular views, protected water, and when the afternoon wind hits, a challenging learning environment. Throughout the six days, I ran morning yoga sessions and rolling classes for all skill levels. We worked on everything from first rolls, to brick rolls. Mark ran a two-day BCU 3 Star Sea Training, a BCU 3 Star Sea Assessment, Coastal Navigation and Tidal Planning and a two-day BCU 4 Star Sea Training.
We had a day off in the middle of the week and spent it on the water with Pelle and Carina. We paddled to the Landsort Lighthouse on the island of Oja where we had a tasty picnic. It was a wonderful day off, and a fantastic place to explore, both on the island and on the water.
On another note, Nynas Kajaks and Upplevelse is our new Europe distributor. If you have a store, organization or business in Europe and are interested in carrying our DVDs, "Yoga for Outdoor People," or "Simplifying the Roll with Helen Wilson," please contact Nynas Kajak and Upplevelse at firstname.lastname@example.com.
The inconsistent roll
Question: Should I push the recovery knee all the way throughout the roll? I kind of stop head down, and use lots of time to set up for the roll. Also, watching you roll in the video, it seems that you lean with your arms fixed and your hands on the side of the kayak in the set-up position from the start. It also seems that you bend your back elbow and already have your recovery arm up high when starting the roll. Is that right? The water kind of stops my upper body going around. What exercises can I do for flexibility? I am 56 years old and not at my strongest right now.
Answer: It is common for the roll to be inconsistent at first, but with practice, it will become consistent. The recovery knee is engaged from the underwater set-up through to the recovery onto the back deck. Essentially, the roll starts from the underwater set-up position. If you are finding that you are stopping head down, bend forward so that your face is just below the surface. Make sure that your shoulders are square to the ground and push your right hand above the surface (if rolling up on the right side). This is the position that you are referring to on the video where the arms and hands are on the side of the kayak.
Here's a link that might help with the problems that you're having capsizing: www.greenlandorbust.org/problems-capsizing/
As far as exercises to increase flexibility, please check out our new DVD, Yoga for Outdoor People, which will be available in August.
More adventures in Sweden
After leaving Norway, Mark and I made our way to the island of Oland, which is located off the east coast of Sweden. We were there to visit our good friend, Johan Wirsen. Johan is not only an awesome person, but he's also the designer of the Greenland, which is how him and I met several years ago. We spent a couple of days hanging out with him and his friends, who were visiting from Australia, as well as his lovely lady Ann. It was wonderful to catch up and have a couple of days of down time from the tour, which has been very busy.
After a fun visit with Johan and company, we made our way south to Malmo. Malmo has a very active club, and throughout the day students worked on many different kinds of rolls. The weather was fantastic! One of the things that makes Malmo special is its setting. Our teaching venue provided great views of Malmo's architecture, as well as the bridge that connects Denmark and Sweden. The spectacular city of Copenhagen could be seen just across the Baltic Sea.
The following day we made our way to Karlshamn for classes on a warm lake. Classes were through Kajak Syd, and they took very good care of us. Participants were lively and fun, and it was great to see some familiar faces from last year. Thanks to Veronica and Goran for hosting us again!
Storm Paddling Strategies and Practice with Roger Schumann!: December 7 and 8, Trinidad, California
Date: December 7 and 8
Location: Trinidad, California
Description: Roger Schumann will be running classes through Greenland or Bust on Saturday, Dec. 7 and Sunday, Dec. 8. The classes are titled Storm Paddling Strategies and Practice with Roger Schumann! This is a fantastic opportunity to take a class from a top notch international instructor.
Contact: For more information, course fees or to register, e-mail email@example.com.


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A U.S. House of Representatives investigative committee today grilled Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Tom Frieden about an accident last month with anthrax and other biosafety problems with dangerous pathogens in his agency's labs—including some revealed years ago that supposedly led to reforms. Frieden explained that his agency failed to see "the pattern" that the latest incidents have exposed.
The hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee investigations subcommittee came in response to a June incident in which CDC scientists in Atlanta moved anthrax samples they mistakenly thought were inactivated from high-containment labs to less secure ones, potentially exposing dozens of workers. Last week, two more problems came to light: a recent CDC shipment of flu samples contaminated with the deadly H5N1 avian influenza and the discovery of smallpox vials from 1954 in a government lab at the National Institutes of Health. The incidents prompted Frieden to announce on Friday several actions to improve safety, including the closure of two CDC labs and a moratorium on shipping samples from the agency's high-containment labs until new procedures are put in place.
Legislators were also troubled by the findings in a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) branch that oversees CDC's work with select agents, or pathogens that could potentially be used as bioweapons. The inspectors, from USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), found additional problems, including expired disinfectant, anthrax stored in unsecure freezers and labs, samples stored in Ziploc bags, and a lack of preparation at CDC's clinic for a large anthrax exposure.
The incidents "have raised very serious questions about the CDC's ability to safeguard properly select agents in its own labs," said subcommittee chair Tim Murphy (R–PA), asking whether CDC's description of them as a "wake-up call" is adequate. Several legislators noted similar incidents at CDC over the past decade and a long list of reports finding broad problems with biosafety at CDC from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general.
CDC responded adequately to the earlier incidents, according to Frieden, but failed to appreciate the extent of the problem. "We recognize the pattern at CDC where we need to greatly improve the culture of safety, and I am overseeing sweeping measures to improve that culture of safety," he said.
Frieden said part of the problem is that scientists who have spent years studying deadly pathogens in nature can become "inured to that danger" in their own labs. Both he and an APHIS associate deputy administrator testified that the existing rules are adequate to deal with the problem and that no new legislation is needed.
Lawmakers asked how the moratorium on shipments will affect CDC's ongoing work. Frieden said the halt has raised concerns from researchers working on drug-resistant tuberculosis, the Ebola outbreak in Africa, and preparations for next season's influenza vaccine. CDC has made it a priority to quickly resume shipments from labs involving patient health and public health emergencies, he said.
Some members wondered if the proliferation of labs working on select agents not just at CDC but at other agencies and universities since the 2001 anthrax attacks has increased the risk of an accidental release. One witness, GAO researcher Nancy Kingsbury, noted that there is no single entity that overseas biosafety and biosecurity or decides how many labs are needed. "The more important issue is, … How many of these laboratories do we really need for what purpose against what threat?' " Congress may need to mandate a national strategy for these labs—although it is not clear which agency would conduct it, Kingsbury said.
CDC's internal anthrax investigation concluded that minimizing the number of labs and staff at CDC working with select agents would improve safety. Asked for his view of the growing overall number of U.S. biocontainment labs, Frieden responded that "this is a complicated topic. … But just logically, the more places where work with dangerous pathogens goes on, the more possibility there is of accidents or accidental releases."
Microbiologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, urged the panel to consider moving oversight of select agent labs from CDC and USDA to another agency that does not fund or conduct such work itself as a way to avoid conflicts of interest. Ebright has long pushed for reducing the number of U.S. labs doing select agent work, and he told the panel the number should be whittled from the current more than 1000 to fewer than 50.

subset: commoncrawl


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Crime & Mystery
Judith Cutler
A Lina Townend mystery.
The last way antiques dealer Lina Townend wants to spend a summer's afternoon is helping at a church fete. However, Robin, the vicar, is an old friend, so Lina ends up selling bric-a-brac. But a harmless event turns into a crisis when someone tries to steal a tatty old snuff box. Tatty it might be, but it's valuable enough for the would-be thief to attack Griff, her dear mentor, to frame Lina for a crime, and to kill an old friend. And maybe other people, too . . .


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A head-to-head rivalry of litigious proportions
So, the biggest thing i wanted to know is if these two root beers taste distinct enough from one another. So to do that, and for purposes of this review, i needed to know what Judge For Yourself! tastes like by itself. By itself, its very thin tasting. It's sweet from the cane sugar and has a decent aroma, but not a great aftertaste. It tastes kind of like a root beer flavored medicine. There is definitely nothing that distinguishable about it and I did't really like it by itself to be honest. BUT... i also had a hard time distinguishing it from Judge Wapner. OOOOO.... murmur murmur... is what you are all saying to each other, because i game Judge Wapner an 8, which is a very good rating in the context of my reviews. So if i didn't like this one and had a hard time telling them apart, does that mean i don't really like Judge Wapner? Sadly, i would probably have to concede that. I was not that impressed with Judge Wapner this time around. However, my original rating stands since i don't make a habit of going back and re-rating root beers. Plus, it's been 9 years and i don't know what did or could have changed during that time.
So to conduct the test, we poured some of each root beer in identical cups with marking on the bottom to tell which root beer each cup contained. The taster then left the room while the cups were being shuffled. The rest is pretty straight forward. The taster would taste both and determine which one was which. As for the results of the blind taste test, i guessed wrong the first time and right the second time. My wife and son both guessed right both times. My daughter put some into a cup of her own with some ice cream and then dipped pretzels and chicken nuggets in it. My wife tipped me off to the secret between them before my second attempt, and the key was that Judge Wapner has a distinct wintergreen undertone which Judge For Yourself! lacked. Perhaps the wintergreen is what helped sell Judge Wapner for me 9 years ago, but sadly it wasn't enough this time.


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Setting Record Straight On Witches
Just a few days ago, just like every Friday the 13th, there was something in the air in Salem, Massachusetts.
It's hard to tell these days, but Salem's main attraction, its historical hysteria about witches, resulted from a great injustice more than three centuries ago. And this year as CBS News Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports, talk around town is on finally correcting a wrong.
"There were 14 women and five men here who were executed," said Salem resident Paula Keene.
Keene grew up on what is still known as Gallows Hill where the alleged witches were hanged in 1692. Since then all of them have been pardoned by name all but five.
Nobody thinks that were these women witches anymore, so what's the point? As Keene explains, History proves they weren't witches.
Keene is on a mission to find a way to pardon the five women and Massachusetts State Representative Paul Tirone has agreed to take up the issue.
"We kinda want to right a three hundred year wrong," said Tirone.
Tirone wants a bill passed that would finally pardon the women by name Ann Pudeator, Bridget Bishop, Susanna Martin, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott and Wilmott Redd.
Descendents of the women are bothered by the fact that their great, great, great grandmother or great, great, great, great grandmother were hung as a witch.
She is obviously a great multi-grandmother, said Craig Martin.
Craig Martin traces his ancestry back eleven generations to Susanna Martin, one of the women hanged and mentioned in Tirone's bill.
I just think it is the final step in clearing up her name and setting the record straight, said Martin.
It's more than that for Paula Keene who's been bothered and bewildered by history's omission.
"Technically they are still hanging on Gallows Hill and it is time to cut the noose loose," said Keene.
The Salem witch-hunt still draws tourist, 309-years-later. Tourist are amused by the legend of this place and unfazed by five old name; legal leftovers of a long ago injustice.
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