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Nigeria has had a lot of fallen heroes ever since she was colonized by the British Empire 58 years ago. These people made names for themselves as well as they helped build and shape the country into what it is today. One of those who gained recognition was Constance Afiong Ekong, the first Nigerian woman to open a private art gallery and hold a solo art exhibition in Nigeria. Late Ekong was also the first female Nigerian artist to be academically trained abroad. Born to the royal family of Edidem Bassey Eyo Epharaim Adam III, who are popularly known as the Obong of Calabar, Ekong began her primary education in 1936 at Duke Town School and continued at Christ Church School. Constance Afiong Ekong, the first Nigerian woman to open a private art gallery Photo: Woman.ng Source: UGC READ ALSO: Pretty female student dies in accident days to her graduation (photos) According to Woman.ng, late Ekong got married to a district official in the colonial days, Abdul Azizi Atta. His post reportedly influenced Ekong's education at the Technical College in Oxford where she studied fashion designs and painting. She also attended Saint Martin School of Fine Arts and Central School of Arts Holborn where she studied history of costumes. In 1957, she completed her studies in fine arts, applied arts and designs in England and moved back to Nigeria. Late Constance Afiong Ekong in her youths Photo: Woman.ng Source: UGC Ekong who was now a well-trained artist, equipped with the necessary theoretical background to her arts profession, decided to hold a solo exhibition at the Lagos Festival of Arts Exhibition Centre in 1958. This exhibition made her the first Nigerian woman to do that. In 1960, her art was featured in an exhibition held at the United States Information Services office in Lagos as part of the independence celebration. Late Ekong was said to have participated in many art exhibitions and even became the art manager to the National Council for Arts in Nigeria. Through her weekly 'Cultural Heritage' TV programmes in the 1960s, she projected talented artists such as Yusuf Grillo, Solomon Wangboje, Uche Okeke and Simon Okeke, Eraboh Emokpae, Lamidi Fakeye, Akeredolu, to mention a few. Constance Afiong Ekong seen working on one of her art collections Photo: Woman.ng Source: UGC Five years after, the deceased opened The Bronze Gallery, the first and oldest private art gallery in Nigeria. The gallery has many branches in Lagos and is still fully in operation in Calabar. She positively contributed to the development of modern Nigerian art and given intellectual support to the unheard creative voices of women. PAY ATTENTION: Get your daily relationship tips and advice on Africa Love Aid group Also her academic training helped dismiss the general belief that art was not an academic or intellectual profession but meant for those of below average intelligence or those merely with talents. However, Late Constance Affiong Ekong retired to her estate in Calabar, where she continued painting till her death in 2009 at 78 years old. She will never be forgotten in the history of Nigeria!
Constance Afiong Ekong, The First Nigerian Woman To Open a Private Art Gallery And Hold a Solo Art Exhibition


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Chapman, Arenado repeat as Platinum Glovers
So, would we agree with the suggestion that Arenado and Chapman are the best defensive players in their leagues, and, if not, who would we nominate instead?
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三十六计 Thirty-Six Stratagems: 趁火打劫 Loot a burning house
Chapter 1: Winning Stratagems 胜战计
In the story of Journey to the West (《西游记》 Xī Yóu Jì), Xuan Zang (玄奘 Xuánzànɡ) and his disciples embarked on a pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures. They passed through a temple on the way to their destination. The abbot (方丈 fānɡzhànɡ) hospitably received them. He requested to borrow Xuan Zang's beautiful cassock (袈裟 jiāshā) to get a better look and Xuan Zang agreed. In the dead of night, the abbot bolted the door when Xuan Zang and his disciples fell asleep, and then set the bedroom on fire. Meanwhile, the Monkey King(美猴王 měihóuwánɡ) had stayed awake due to his suspicions of the evil intentions of the abbot. To spoil the abbot's scheme, he transformed himself into a honeybee and lingered outside. The Monkey King blew a strong puff of wind. The enormous fire spread to the entire temple and all of the Buddhist monks joined the task of extinguishing the flames. However, a black bear monster came out unexpectedly. He concealed the cassock under the shield of the fire. Although the Monkey King had severely penalized the black-hearted abbot, he lost the master's cassock once again. With no idea of its current possessor or how to reclaim it, he turned to the Bodhisattva Guanyin (观音菩萨 ɡuānyīn púsà) for assistance. She helped him defeat the black monster and finally acquired the cassock.
Keep gathering internal information about an enemy. If the enemy is currently in its weakest state ever, attack it without mercy and totally destroy it to prevent future troubles.


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Arcus Foundation
44 West 28th Street, New York, NY
Empowerment and education emerged as major themes from The National Transgender Advocacy Convening, hosted by the Arcus Foundation on November 12, 2013. The day-long event gathered more than 40 transgender activists and allies to discuss challenges faced by the U.S.-based trans community, including employment, healthcare access, economic security, recognition, equality, advocacy, and the community's future.
"We have to educate people and we have to bring others into our struggle," said Dee Dee Chamblee, executive director of LaGender, Inc., and convening participant. "We're a small population of people and we intersect with other issues that other minorities and other disenfranchised people suffer."
The video and report echo these issues and more while capturing major highlights and next steps for consideration from the convening.


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Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced plans to upgrade every NHS hospital, GP practice and community care service to full fibre connectivity.
Almost 40% of NHS organisations are using slow and unreliable internet supplied through copper lines, which restricts the ability to offer digital services to patients.
Today's announcement is intended to support ambitions in the NHS Long Term Plan to expand and improve online access to NHS services, including the choice of a 'digital first' approach in primary care for all patients, the availability of more outpatients services via 'virtual clinics', and cloud-based patients records.
Upgrading broadband will provide the fast, more reliable connections necessary for video consultations and sharing high-definition images at speed.
Matt Hancock says: "Every day, our NHS staff do amazing work – but too often they are let down by outdated and unreliable technology. It's simply unbelievable that a third of NHS organisations are using internet that can sometimes be little better than dial-up.
"To give people control over how they access NHS services, I want to unlock the full potential of technology – this is the future for our 21st century healthcare system and a central part of our NHS Long Term Plan.
"Faster broadband connections can help us deliver these dramatic improvements – we need clinicians and other healthcare professionals to feel confident they can access fast, reliable broadband so they can provide patients with the best possible care."


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Have you put off using a computer because you can't type? Do you find hunt-and-peck is the best typing you can muster? Do your hands shake or your wrists hurt when you use the computer? Would you like to be able to talk to your computer instead of typing?
If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, your time has finally come. Voice-recognition software has come of age as witnessed by the new Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred Speech Recognition program. As a matter of fact, I am writing this column by dictating the words into the noise-canceling microphone/headphone that comes with the Dragon package.
To do this I simply started Microsoft Word, clicked on the microphone icon, and started talking.As I speak, the Dragon NaturallySpeakingprogram (Version 9) types everything I say.The accuracy of the program is amazing.In the last two paragraphs it has not made one error.It was even smart enough to capitalize "word" when I used Microsoft before it.
I have tried many voice-recognition programs before, including previous versions of Dragon, and none can compare with this version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.You can start using the program with only a few minutes of training.The software works in many Windows programs including Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, WordPerfect, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Firefox. You can even use it to choose commands from the menus.
Right out of the box, the program is remarkable. I was truly surprised by its accuracy and versatility. The more you use it the better you get at the dictation and the better it gets at recognizing your words. So this is one voice recognition program that you can use on a daily basis.
The only drawback is that NaturallySpeaking is a "Windows only" program and it needs a fairly powerful computer.It runs on Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Vista and requires 512 MB of memory and 1 GB hard drive space.I used it successfully on a 1.7 GHz, Pentium-4 computer with 768 megs of memory.
The included tutorials will get you a started quickly and easily.Although you will have to spend a little time to learn how to make corrections, the interface is clear and easy to use.
With a little practice, the only time you will need to touch your mouse or keyboard is to start the microphone.You can even turn the microphone off temporarily by giving the command "Go To Sleep". You can then turn it back on by saying "Wake Up".
While giving commands like this works seamlessly, occasionally, a command can get in the way of your dictation.For instance, in dictating this article every time I tried to use the words "Go To Sleep", the program took it as a command and put the microphone into sleep mode. I had to practice saying the words "Go To Sleep" without pauses before and after before the program would type those words properly.
Special for Compu-KISS visitors
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The Genius of Victory was sculpted by Michelangelo for one of his many projects for the tomb of Pope Julius II, who was Pope from 1503 until his death in 1513.
The famous Prisoners statues also belonged to that project.
Pope Julius II was known as the "Warrior Pope," as he was very active in making the papacy the most dominant military and political force in Italy.
In 1505, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to create the Pope's tomb for his final resting place.
The original idea was to create a freestanding tomb seven meters wide, eleven meters deep, and eight meters high, with about 40 statues. However, due to a lack of funding and people convincing the pope that it was bad luck to have his tomb built while he was still alive, the project was delayed. After the death of the Pope, the project became gradually less ambitious. As a result, the final tomb includes substantially fewer statues and is no longer freestanding. The tomb can be found in the San Pietro in Vincoli Church in Rome.
The statue of Victory may have been started as early as 1519, but it remains unknown whether it was originally planned as part of the tomb.
Today, the most reliable dating for this statue is 1534. The strong manneristic features (exaggerated contortions and complex movements) link this figure to the Prisoners.
The sculpture is almost 9 feet tall (2.61 meters).
It is thought to have been intended for one of the lower niches of one of the last projects for the tomb, perhaps that of 1532 for which the Prisoners, now in the Galleria dell'Accademia of Florence, were also made. On the other hand, the monument may have been coupled with a similar pair of fighters, a clay model in the Casa Buonarroti known as the Hercules-Samson.
With the famous statue unfinished, the Victory forms an interesting footnote in history: left in the artist's studio after his final departure from Florence in 1534, it became the property of his nephew Leonardo Buonarroti, who first tried to sell it in 1544 without obtaining the necessary authorization from his uncle. Then, at the suggestion of Daniele da Volterra, he tried to place it on Michelangelo's tomb in Santa Croce (1564), but Giorgio Vasari, who was redesigning the church's interior, was against it being used there. Vasari suggested giving the statue to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, as in fact happened that year.
If the Prisoners from Julius' tomb ended up in Buontalenti's Grotto in the Boboli Gardens, while the Victory came to decorate the Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio. It was placed along the wall, among the statues of the Labors of Hercules by Vincenzo de' Rossi and others.
In 1868, three years after the opening of the National Museum of the Bargello, the statue was included in the collection of Florentine sculptures gathered in the museum. It was returned to the Palazzo Vecchio on November 6, 1921, and is now placed in a niche in the modern center of the back wall of the room, where, since the time when Florence had been the capital of Italy (1865), the 19th-century statue of Savonarola had stood (now in Piazza Savonarola). Only in recent years has the Victory been restored to its former position along the right wall.
Description and style
In this work the artist wanted to symbolize man's struggle and suffering. The Genius of Victory is an allegory of victory overlooking the defeated. For this reason, the Victory depicts a vigorous young man, standing with a crown of oak leaves and holding a sling, overlooking an old sagging and wrinkled man on the surface of the stone.
The oak leaves in the crown of the standing man refer to the emblem of the house of Della Rovere (which literally means "of the oak tree"), a noble Italian family that produced two popes.
The body is twisted in an extreme way, but Michelangelo makes it look like a comfortable position.
The knee of the young man seems to push hard onto the head of the old man.
It depicts the winner who dominates the submissive loser with great agility, with one leg that blocks the body of the captive, who is folded and chained. The young man who is the genius is beautiful and elegant, while the dominated man is old and bearded, with a flabby body and a resigned expression.
The surfaces are treated expressively to enhance the contrast between the two figures: the young polished to perfection, the old rough and incomplete, still retaining the impression of the heavy stone from which it was made.
"Far easier on the eyes was Michelangelo's breathtaking Genius of Victory, which stood to the right, dominating the central niche in the south wall. At nearly nine feet tall, this sculpture had been intended for the tomb of the ultraconservative pope Julius II—Il Papa Terribile—a commission Langdon had always found ironic, considering the Vatican's stance on homosexuality. The statue depicted Tommaso dei Cavalieri, the young man with whom Michelangelo had been in love for much of his life and to whom he composed over three hundred sonnets." (Dan Brown, Inferno)
According to tradition, Michelangelo depicted in the face of the statue the features of his lover Tommaso dei Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman known by Michelangelo in Rome in 1532, to whom he dedicated many poems in which he expressed his love for him, and from whom he drew inspiration for some of his other works. Michelangelo was 57 years old when he met Cavalieri, who was 23 at the time.
They remained lifelong friends, even though Cavalieri married in 1538 and had two children.
Michelangelo was born in 1475 in Caprese, in Tuscany.
He is considered one of the greatest artists ever and was considered the best artist of his time. He is probably most well known for his sculptures (think about the David and the Pietà) and his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, such as the Creation of Adam and The Last Judgment.
Part of his childhood was spent in Florence. When he was 6 years old his mother died. For the better part of his life he cared above all for his father and his four brothers; it was only for a short period of time, when he was in his sixties, that he began to engage in serious relationships, such as the one with Tommaso dei Cavalieri.
Therefore, we can understand that he would do this in protest against the conservative attitude of the Pope… like our Dante Alighieri, Michelangelo was very proud and stubborn…
This post was originally published in August 28 2013 and has been updated and enriched on January 16, 2018.
Picture by Michelangelo's "Genius of Victory"by vitusincertus CC BY 2.0


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The New Reality
for Fleets Mandated to Use ELD
After all the stress that went into ensuring compliance,
the ELD mandate has been in effect for a while, now.
waited until the 11th hour to implement ELDs
still have not
implemented ELDs*
violation fine
max violation fine
per incident
*Data referenced from C.J. Driscoll and Associates
*16% excludes Owner Operators who have not implemented ELD
Fleets are now required to have their trucks equipped with either a certified ELD or automatic onboard recording device (AOBRD), and they aren't getting a pass for not complying.
Fleets may be able to keep their vehicles in service but face other expensive consequences — fines. Starting at $1,100, fines quickly escalate under the FMCSA's violation schedule and up to $10,000 per incident, which could cost fleets hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, depending on the size of the fleet.
Fleets may be avoiding what they perceive as an inconvenience and a headache by not implementing an ELD solution, but the consequences of the unnecessary expense of punishing fines make further delaying implementation of an ELD solution costly and potentially ruinous, and cost far more than the price of an ELD solution. Implementing an ELD may result in short-term challenges, but the long-term benefits outweigh the negatives by far.
Even if fleets are still willing to absorb the fines, when the ELD mandate is fully enforced and the grandfather clause of AOBRD devices is over on December 19, 2019, drivers will also be cited with points against their CSA scores and, most critical, vehicles will be placed out of service, making it impossible for fleets to carry out their business until they implement an ELD solution.
And now is the time to comply. ELD solution providers, such as GPS Insight, are waiting to help fleets comply with the ELD mandate today. The GPS Insight ELD solution is on the FMCSA's list of certified ELD solutions, and the company provides training and ongoing support to ensure fleets remain in compliance with the mandate.
As with some of the other available ELD solutions, the GPS Insight ELD solution provides a range of other features including vehicle tracking, DVIR capability, navigation, and more.
Engage your fleet with GPS Insight.
Engage your fleet with GPS Insight.


text:
Author: Peter Boykin
Page: 6
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, stepped off a plane and into a crowd of protesters Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport who chanted "free the children" as he waited for his luggage. The chant was a reference to detention centers at the southern border. The Texas conservative has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump's border security policies. Cruz can be seen in video posted to Twitter smiling, shaking a few hands and even taking pictures with some fellow travelers as the group chanted.
A sheriff's deputy in Indianapolis bit off more than he could chew from a local McDonald's — or at least more than he could remember.
The Marion County Sheriff's Office launched an investigation last week after one of its officers said he suspected someone had taken a bite out of a McChicken sandwich he purchased at a McDonald's outside downtown Indianapolis before he completed the sale.
The officer, identified only as "DJ" by NBC affiliate WTHR, is a regular at the restaurant and told the station he did not make the discovery until hours into his shift at the Marion County Jail.
"I started to warm up my McChicken and I noticed several small bites," the officer said. "I know I didn't eat it. No one else was around. I said, 'You know what? I am going to the McDonald's to see if they can get that taken care of.'"
The officer returned to the McDonald's and spoke to a supervisor who offered him free food, which he said he "didn't care anything about."
"I just wanted to find out who the person was and they deal with that person in an appropriate way," he told WTHR.
A representative for McDonald's declined comment Monday, deferring all questions to the sheriff's office.
On Friday, the sheriff's office announced the findings of its investigation: DJ forgot he had taken a bite out of the McChicken sandwich at the start of his shift.
"Last week, a Marion County Sheriff's Office employee purchased a McChicken sandwich from the McDonald's location at 3828 W Morris Street, Indianapolis," the sheriff's office told NBC News in a statement Monday. "The employee took a bite out of the sandwich upon starting his shift at the Marion County Jail, then placed it in the refrigerator in a break room."
The officer returned nearly seven hours later "having forgotten that he had previously bitten the sandwich," the sheriff's office said, adding DJ "wrongly concluded that a McDonald's employee had tampered with his food because he is a law enforcement officer."
The sheriff's office said McDonald's assisted in its investigation and that staff at the fast-food franchise "in no way tampered with the employee's food."
DJ has since formally apologized to McDonald's, the sheriff's office said.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney also resigned from a planning committee in protest. Caucus members said they will also boycott the rest of a weeklong series of events marking the 400th anniversary and have instead planned alternative commemorations Tuesday in Richmond, Virginia's capital. Trump's comments about Cummings were the latest rhetorical shot at a lawmaker of color to spark outrage. Earlier this month, Trump drew bipartisan condemnation following his call for four Democratic congresswomen of color to get out of the U.S. "right now." Caucus chair Del. Lamont Bagby said in an interview the group unanimously reached the boycott decision more than a week ago. But he said the president has "continued his attacks" since then and his remarks about Cummings' district were more of the same. Virginia's black state lawmakers announced Monday they will boycott a ceremony this week commemorating the beginnings of American democracy because President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend. Trump will join national and state leaders and dignitaries at Tuesday's event, a commemorative session of the Virginia General Assembly at which Trump is to deliver remarks. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Monday that the caucus was pushing "a political agenda." "The commemoration of the birth of this nation and its democracy will be tarnished unduly with the participation of the President, who continues to make degrading comments toward minority leaders, promulgate policies that harm marginalized communities, and use racist and xenophobic rhetoric," the caucus said in a statement. The convening of a legislative assembly in 1619 formed the basis of today's representative system of government in the United States. The Virginia General Assembly is considered the oldest continuously operating legislative body in North America. The caucus' statement did not specifically mention Cummings but said Trump's "repeated attacks on Black legislators and comments about Black communities makes him ill-suited to honor and commemorate such a monumental period in history." When the Richmond Times-Dispatch first reported earlier in the month that Trump would take part in the event, top Democratic lawmakers said they would not attend. Republican Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment said at the time that their decision was "disappointing and embarrassing." The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus said its members would not attend Tuesday's event in historic Jamestown marking the 400th anniversary of the first representative assembly in the Western Hemisphere. The boycott comes after Trump's weekend comments referring to Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings' majority-black Baltimore-area district as a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess." Tuesday's events are just one part of a yearlong commemoration called American Evolution meant to honor key milestones in the state's colonial history, including the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first recorded Africans in English North America. "President Trump passed criminal justice reform, developed opportunity zones securing record-setting investment in distressed communities, and pushed policies that created the lowest unemployment rates ever for African Americans, so it's a bit confusing and unfortunate that the VLBC would choose to push a political agenda instead of celebrate this milestone for our nation," she said in a statement.
"Leader McConnell doesn't have to put the bills that we have proposed . . . or the bill the House has passed, there are bipartisan bills —and we can debate the issue," Schumer added. "These pundits are lying, lying when they dismiss the work that has been done," McConnell said, The Hill reported. "They're lying when they insist I have personally blocked actions which, in fact, I have championed and the Senate has passed. They are lying when they suggest that either party is against defending our democracy." Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday chided Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for complaining about becoming a victim of "modern-day McCarthyism" for blocking two election security bills last week. The comments followed McConnell's fiery retaliation at critics, accusing them of "lying" and "modern-day McCarthyism" for targeting his block of the Democrat-supported election security measures. But Schumer challenged McConnell: "Prove them wrong." "If Leader McConnell doesn't like being criticized on election security, I challenge him: Let's debate it on the floor with amendments," Schumer said, The Hill reported. "I challenge him: support additional appropriations for states to harden their election systems. In both cases, Leader McConnell has not done that." "There's an easy way for Leader McConnell to silence the critics who accuse him of blocking election security: stop blocking it," the Senate minority leader said, The Hill reported.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP"I'm not saying we forcibly send her anywhere," Paul said in an interview last week with Breitbart News. "I'm willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to go visit Somalia. I think she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia."Omar was born in Somalia but spent much of her early life at a refugee camp in Kenya. The United States granted her asylum in 1995.
Paul had targeted Omar last week in an interview, following President Trump's claims earlier this month that Omar and other members of the progressive "Squad" should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done."
Paul testified during a three-day trial this year that he feared for his life after Boucher, an anesthesiologist, slammed into him in their upscale neighborhood in late 2017.Rene Boucher, who had a home next door to the senator in Bowling Green, Kentucky, pleaded guilty last year to assaulting Paul. Paul also won a civil verdict against Boucher for more than 2,000 this past January.In an apparent dig, she retweeted Tom Arnold who wrote: "Imagine being Rand Paul's next door neighbor and having to deal with @RandPaul lying cowardly circular whiney bullcrap about lawn clippings. No wonder he ripped his toupee off."Paul said Somalia had "no capitalism" or "God-given (constitutional) rights." As the Louisville Courier Journal reported, he said Omar "might come back and appreciate America more" after going back to Somalia.TRUMP THROWS 'SQUAD' FEUD BACK AT PELOSI AFTER 'RACIST' ACCUSATIONThen, on Monday, Omar apparently took a swipe back.
A federal judge in D.C. wants President Donald Trump, New York state officials, and the U.S. House of Representatives to come up with a solution that would give the president "very modest relief" in the dispute over a law that allows the release of his tax returns, Politico reports. The Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee at the beginning of this month filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the IRS in an effort to obtain Trump's returns. Trump filed a lawsuit against the Ways and Means Committee, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York Department of Taxation and Finance Commissioner Michael Schmidt to prevent the committee from doing so, arguing the committee lacks a legislative purpose for using the New York law to acquire the taxes. A New York law enacted in early July allows Congress' tax committees to request public officials' state tax returns from the commissioner of the New York Department of Taxation and Finance. Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia acknowledged Trump's concerns that his New York state tax returns could be turned over before the courts have a sufficient amount of time to consider constitutional and legal issues with the request. He gave the parties until 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday to use their "creativity" to reach an agreement. The separate cases were filed in federal court in D.C. this month.
He also defended the private option in the Harris proposal, saying, "it puts in place strict requirements for any private insurance company who wants to offer a Medicare plan, including on cost, quality access and services."Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield, noting that Harris was one of the first senators in 2017 to co-sponsor Sanders' "Medicare-for-all" bill, charged on Monday that the Harris plan would result in "a Bernie Sanders-lite Medicare for All and a refusal to be straight with the American middle class, who would have a large tax increase forced on them with this plan."And, former Vice President Joe Biden's team called the Harris plan a "have-it-every-which-way approach" that "both backtracks on her long-promised – but then-hedged – support of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All legislation."The campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont slammed the Harris proposal, saying, "call it anything you want, but you can't call this plan Medicare for All."Biden's lead over his rivals deteriorated following what was seen as a less-than-stellar debate performance.DETROIT, MI – Hours after White House candidate Sen. Kamala Harris unveiled her plan to push the country towards a government-backed "Medicare-for-all" health care system over the next decade, the California Democrat faced incoming fire from two of her top rivals for their party's 2020 presidential nomination.Her campaign spotlighted that the Harris plan would allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans. The system – implemented over ten years – would build on the popular Medicare Advantage system while allowing Americans to choose between the government-run public plan and government-backed certified private Medicare plans to reach universal coverage.Sanders is slated to appear in Tuesday night's debate, standing center-stage with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and eight other rivals.Late last week, Biden again singled out Sanders for being honest about the ramifications of implementing the single-payer health care plan, but he once again questioned Harris' truthfulness.HARRIS UNVEILS HER 'MEDICARE-FOR-ALL' PLAN ON EVE OF DEBATESA few hours later, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir teed off on the Harris proposal, accusing the first-term senator and former California attorney general of "folding" to the health insurance industry.Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams returned fire, arguing the criticism from the Sanders campaign was "so factually inaccurate I don't even know where to begin."Harris and Biden are to be standing side-by-side center-stage on Wednesday night, during the second of the two debates.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPHarris – in announcing her plan Monday morning – emphasized that unlike Sanders' single-payer proposal, hers would not completely eliminate the private insurance currently used by hundreds of millions of Americans. However, two new national polls from Fox News and Quinnipiac University indicated the former vice president retained a large lead over his 2020 primary rivals."This plan is centered around privatizing Medicare, enriching insurance executives and introducing more corporate greed and profiteering into the Medicare system. Further, we can't wait 10 years to fix a dysfunctional health care system," Shakir charged."One idea put forward by Senator Sanders, for example, is increasing taxes for families making as little as ,000 a year," her campaign spotlighted as they released their candidate's plan. "She believes that hits the middle class too hard, so she would not raise taxes on families making under 0,000 to help pay for this plan," her campaign highlighted."I find that people will say they're for 'Medicare-for-all' but they're not going to tax the middle class because we don't need to do that. Come on. My point is, this is a fantasy world here," Biden emphasized.The former vice president, the front-runner among 2020 Democrats and the only top-tier contender who has not supported a single-payer "Medicare-for-all" system, repeatedly has taken jabs this month at Harris over a lack of straightforwardness on how she'd pay for her plan.Harris has seen her poll numbers rise since the first round of debates, when she went on the attack against Biden, as she criticized recent comments by the former vice president spotlighting his ability to find common ground during the 1970s with segregationist senators with whom he disagreed, and over his opposition decades ago to federally mandated school busing.The Harris rollout and the pushback from the Sanders and Biden campaigns came on the eve of the second round of primary debates featuring the Democrats.THE LATEST FOX NEWS 2020 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY POLLThe Harris campaign also highlighted that unlike Sanders' plan, hers would not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for her "Medicare-for-all" system.The Harris plan appeared to stake a middle ground between Sanders' "Medicare-for-all" proposal and the public option to enhance ObamaCare that Biden has proposed.Health care has been a top issue with Democratic primary voters while "Medicare-for-all" has been very popular with the progressive base of the party. Public opinion polling has indicated that a majority of Americans would support such a plan if it allowed them to choose between a government-run public plan and certified private options.THE LATEST FROM FOX NEWS ON THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
In January, Coats again was reportedly in Trump's dog house when he told a Senate committee that North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons, which contradicted the president's more optimistic view. At last year's Aspen Security Forum, Coats reportedly angered Trump when he appeared to criticize the president's ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer slammed on Sunday President Donald Trump's choice of Rep. John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, The Hill reported. "It's clear that Rep. Ratcliffe was selected because he exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump with his demagogic questioning of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller " Schumer said in a statement. "If Senate Republicans elevate such a partisan player to a position that requires intelligence expertise and non-partisanship, it would be a big mistake." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote on Twitter that the successor for Coats "must put patriotism before politics, and remember that his oath is to protect the Constitution and the American people, not the President." Trump had reportedly soured on Coats several times during his tenure. Axios reported that Trump was impressed by Ratcliffe's performance during his questioning of Mueller at congressional hearings on Wednesday. Sen Eliabeth Warren, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, added in a tweet that "Our Director of National Intelligence should be above partisan politics, speak truth to power, and resist Trump's abuses of authority. John Ratcliffe doesn't fit that bill." It is not yet clear how the Senate overall will react to Ratcliffe's nomination, according to The Hill. However, his membership in the House Intelligence Committee will likely appeal to Republican senators.
"I agree with my fellow members of the Washington delegation that, as we have learned about the gravity of the potential threats to our democracy identified in special counsel Mueller's report, it has become clear that the House should begin proceedings to determine whether the president's action necessitate impeachment," Murray said in a statement shared on her website. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., on Sunday supported an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, a decision fueled by testimony provided by special counsel Robert Mueller last week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday said the House would decide whether to begin proceedings, "when we have a best strongest possible case" and that such a decision "will be made in a timely fashion." Murray, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, joins a growing list of Democrats pushing for impeachment, including all seven of Washington's Democratic House members. Mueller in his testimony before the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees noted the 2000 Justice Department determination that "a sitting president is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution." He also said his team did not reach a determination whether Trump committed a crime.


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Female Leadership Development & Emotional Intelligence at DELL
May 2019, Amsterdam
In May 2019, DELL kicked-off the EMEA Releasing Female Potential Programme. SHFT Happens was asked to provide trends analysis in Emotional Intelligence to help create a sustainable and targeted year-long training program and development plans. Because of our expertise as an Emotional Intelligence (EI) training company and helping team members and leaders with EI development, SHFT was asked to kick-off the program with an Emotional Intelligence (EI) immersion. We provided EQ feedback and training in conjunction with recommendations for the year-long mentoring program framework.
DELL EQ Trends & Patterns
Using the most robust & scientifically-validated EI assessment available we measured the interaction between participants and their environment. The power of the instrument is in how the 15 Subscales pinpoint a person's behaviors and the motivations behind those behaviors. We assessed each member individually and the team as a whole.
The EQ Score shown in the chart, is measured as a percentage of the total EQ.
The assessment is designed to detect strengths, as well as "blind spots" or emotional conditioning barriers, that may be preventing members from achieving peak performance and productivity. A person who is too stress tolerant and low on emotional self-awareness may lack the capacity to recognize stress triggers and be short of skills to prevent the onset of burnout. He or she may not have the correct coping mechanisms to generate energy or excitement about his or her work and life.
Core values support the vision, shape the culture and reflect what the company stands for. They are the essence of the company's identity. Almost every company has them. But are employees' behaviors aligned to those values? We use the Values Gap to measure that and offer concrete recommendations to streamline behaviors with values.
At DELL behaviors were measured against Dell's Values with the following outcomes:
- Customers: GAP = – 41
- Winning Together: GAP = -51
- Innovation: GAP = -56
- Results: GAP = -54
- Integrity: GAP = -44
The Leader Index is designed to measure 5 leadership success factors. A person, who is too compliant and lacks creativity or the capacity to think outside the box, may not know how to generate excitement and engagement for a new concept or idea, or positive change. This score reflects the team's leadership potential.
Every team has different targets and objectives. For some exploring the impact of Emotional Intelligence (EI) on job success might be relevant, while others may require building individual and organizational Stress Resilience and improved Decision Making. Our instrument and method allow us to analyze trends and patterns in a targeted way, ensuring that our training, recommendations and development plans are always aligned to your team's objectives.
After being shortlisted to participate, each participant (mentee) in the program was paired with a more experienced employee (mentor) within the organization. Each member of the mentees completed the Emotional Intelligence (EI) behavioral assessment prior to the program.
During the opening session, SHFT provided each person with feedback on their EI results. The participants also completed activities to experience various EQ scales in a team training environment. Mentoring pairs were encouraged to share results of their EQ assessments with each other and to create development plans based on the feedback they received.
Project Info
24 May 2019
Design a Measurable & Sustainable Female Potential Programme
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When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia
"In the '80s, Bollas coined the term "unthought known" to describe experiences which may somehow be known to an individual, but that they're unable to think about. Mental breakdowns can fall into the category of the unthought known: someone with schizophrenia may, for instance, experience a breakdown, but may not have the ability to fully comprehend and analyze the memory of it."
I coined the term "unknown fear" as that is what PTSD instilled in me — horrible fear with no known source or reason. PTSD and many other brain traumas — whether physical, biological, genetic, or "drilled into a child's head by sick people" — causes that kind of fear. "Causes." True. More later...
There is much more to this book.
"We live in a world where people with schizophrenia are heavily medicated, dehumanized, and incarcerated. If we refuse to understand the disease, we will continue to stigmatize those diagnosed with it."


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4 unlikely ways to help sell your home
When it comes to selling your home most people are aware of what they need to do, to get their property ready for sale. Whether you decide to put in the work or not, making that extra effort can potentially increase your homes value and the speed of securing a sale. But there are other ways that you may not have thought of that can also make your home more attractive to potential buyers, although not conventional, they too can impact on the saleability of your home.
Stand out from the crowds
We have talked before about giving your home kerb appeal and one of the main focal points to the exterior of your home is the front door. No matter what street you walk, if you look at the properties around you your eye will always be drawn to the front door, so what is yours saying about your home? If you want your home to stand out then add some colour, but make sure it is keeping with the style of your property and the area.
There is no point adding a bold and brash colour on a door where it will make a statement for the wrong reasons so be mindful and put your own tastes aside or you may have buyers reluctant to view. Yes this may sound strange, but even something as simple as the colour of your front door can turn off potential buyers.
Our advice, it's hard to go wrong with a heritage shade, whether it is a soft and warm tone or a more deep and enticing hue, give your home the front door it deserves.
Love their gardens
Potential buyers will not just be looking how your home is presented but also those around you. Therefore if your neighbours exterior looks like they could do with a little lift, why not offer your time to get them up to scratch. It is surprising how many people can be put off by the presentation of neighbouring properties.
Whether you offer to mow their lawn on Sunday afternoon or trim their hedges, or even lending them a couple of potted plants until you move, not only will you be neighbourly but it will increase your home's appeal.
Be unique
Give your home its own individuality by giving it a name and making it unique. Now don't get carried away with some obscure name, make sure it is descriptive and positive and most importantly relates to your property. Do you have a specific tree or bush growing in your garden or street, maybe use this as inspiration for your homes' name.
Once chosen don't forget to inform the relevant authorities such as the council, land registry and post office.
Area upgrade
Just as your neighbour's presentation can influence potential buyers so can the area where you live, an abundance of litter and signs of fly-tipping can be a real turn off. Why not get involved with a local group, or even organise a litter pick-up yourself to help benefit your local neighbourhood. You could even look at planting some flowers in local public spaces to brighten up their appearance. Show buyers that this is an area loved and cared for by its community by giving your time to make it a better place to live.


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By Maggie Giuffrida, Yoga Instructor
Did you know that anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting nearly 40 million adults ages 18 and older? What's even more shocking is that while anxiety disorders are highly treatable, only about one-third of those suffering actually seek and receive treatment.
Perhaps this has to do with the social stigma attached to mental illnesses — a certain shame and guilt society can impose on those suffering from such disorders — but given that consistent anxiety can also lead to a more serious state of depression, it's important that those struggling with anxiety take action, ask for help, and know their options.
While medication is a common treatment route presented to those suffering from a generalized or acute anxiety disorder, that's not the only road you can take. Another proven path to help alleviate anxiety is through the practice of yoga, which helps shift our focus and attention away from the daily stresses of life and onto our body and breath, releasing physical and mental tension, and is a lot safer in the long-run than turning to medication to solve the problem.
"Yoga helps our entire system slow down," says Elena Brower, yoga instructor, speaker and co-author of Art of Attention, in an article for The Huffington Post. "Our bodies are programmed to heal naturally, and what stops that healing are all the stressors of daily life. Yoga dissolves those stressors for time during practice and usually the effects last for hours after."
Lianne Miller, a certified yoga instructor at Epic Fitness, agrees with Brower — and she knows from experience.
"My mom enrolled me in my first yoga class when I was in high school in hopes that it would help my anxiety, and now, eleven years later, I still practice regularly to help maintain mental balance," she tells Full Fathom Wellness.
Lianne says that yoga helps her deal with every day stressful situations in multiple ways. Firstly, she notes, it's an excellent form of physical exercise, which is vital to overall mental health and wellness. The practice of yoga has also helped her learn to use her breath to regain control of the mind and body during an anxiety attack or stressful situation. And perhaps most importantly, she stresses, yoga has taught her to be more gentle with herself, both physically and emotionally.
"Yoga brings an element of stillness and quiet into your life, which I believe is absolutely necessary for managing stress and anxiety," Lianne says.
The calming effect yoga has on the mind and body works on several levels, she notes, the first of which being the breath.
"When you slow and deepen your breath, the body begins to physically relax and the nervous system is signaled that the body is not under stress," Lianne says. "Secondly, I have found that simply flowing through a series of yoga poses can be very calming. The awareness is drawn to the practice and to the breath, freeing the mind from all of the every day noises."
So what are some of Lianne's go-to yoga poses to help alleviate anxiety? Find out below.
1. Bound Angle Pose
Bound Angle Pose helps to relieve mild depression, anxiety and fatigue, while stimulating the heart and improving general circulation. It also stretches the inner thighs, groins, and knees.
2. Cat/Cow Pose
Cat and Cow poses stretch the front and back torso and neck while providing a gentle massage to the spine and belly organs.
3. Standing Forward Fold
Standing Forward Fold is excellent for calming the nervous system as it provides a release of the upper body and soothes the mind through a gentle inversion. It also helps to stretch the hamstrings, lower back and sciatic nerves, while relieving anxiety and depression, worry and disorder.
4. Tree Pose
Tree Pose boosts confidence and promotes concentration, focus and awareness by bringing attention inward and taking your mind away from stress and anxiety. It also strengthens the ankles, thighs, core and glutes, as well as the back muscles.
5. Half Moon Pose
Balancing poses such as Half Moon Pose help to take our attention off of the mind and into the body, releasing stress and anxiety by quieting the mind and cultivating focused awareness.
6. Camel Pose
Camel Pose stretches the entire front of the body, including the abdomen, chest and throat, as well as the ankles, thighs and groins. It helps to relieve anxiety by opening the heart and throat, facilitating connection and expansiveness.
7. Child's Pose
Releases tension in the back, neck and shoulders, which are areas where most people hold a lot of stress. Child's Pose also helps to promote relaxation by encouraging steady conscious breathing, which is particularly great for anxiety sufferers due to a calming of the nervous system.
8. Supported Headstand
Supported Headstand calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression by boosting the health of adrenals, which can be overtaxed in a state of anxiety. This pose also stimulates the pituitary and pineal glands and strengthens the arms, legs, and spine; improves digestion; and tones the abdominal organs.
Learn how to safely hold a headstand here.
9. Supported Shoulder Stand
Inversions such as Supported Shoulder Stand help relieve anxiety by turning the body upside down — literally — and helping the mind and body get a new perspective. This pose aids in digestion, helps relieve swollen legs, calms headaches, relaxes the mind, and improves circulation to the upper body and brain.
10. Fish Pose
Fish Pose helps fight fatigue and anxiety while stretching the belly and anterior neck muscles, stimulating the belly organs and throat region. It also helps to enhance and correct body posture, provides strength to the upper back and neck's back muscles, and stimulates the hip flexors and rib muscles.
*Only perform this pose if you have no neck issues.
11. Happy Baby Pose
Happy Baby Pose stretches the inner groins and the back spine while calming the brain and relieving stress and fatigue.
12. Corpse Pose
Corpse Pose is the ultimate pose for relaxing the body. This pose helps calm the brain, relieves stress and mild depression, and reduces headaches, fatigue and insomnia.
Model: Lianne Miller
Photo credit: Maggie Giuffrida


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Behold! A brand new podcast show is here and it's called 'We Have Questions' (Oprah Edition), where we tackle a wide range of subjects and ask the fun, intelligent, and whacky questions that are on everyone's mind. Your hosts and question-aires are Gwen Reyes from Fresh Fiction and WFAA TV and Bryan Kluger from Boomstick Comics and High Def Digest, and we dig deep into each researched subject with trivia, amusement, and of course – more questions.
Our 3rd episode tackles the Queen of all Media – Oprah Winfrey! We all know who Oprah is, right? We dive into some questions on Oprah's first jobs, how she became interested in journalism, here early life, some of her best interviews and most awkward moments, as well as why her voice is so impactful on millions of lives. It's super fun, informative, and very funny.
And don't forget to visit iTunes and Stitcher to subscribe to our podcast. Enjoy the show and see you next week! Thank you for listening.
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Hi there and welcome to my little corner of the internet for Day 1 of Power Poppy's August Stamp Release! I hope you are ready for a week of festivities because this release boasts five...yes, five...days of sneaks ending with a Power Poppy Blog Hop on Day 6....whew, that's a whole lotta Marcella Magic for you to feast your eyes upon. I feel pretty confident in saying that you are going to love what is in store for you this week....the images you are going to see, mercy! So why don't we get started with today's fresh from the farm set, shall we?
Cindy Lawrence
Dawn Burnworth
Julie Koerber
Katie Sims <------You are here
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker
Supplies: Images- Farmer's Market from Power Poppy; Paper-Gray card stock from Papertrey Ink, Classic Ivory card stock from Flourishes, patterned papers from October Afternoon's "Schoolhouse" and " The Thrift Shop" 8x8 paper pads; Spellbinders- Grand Circles, Grand Scallop Circles, Labels Eighteen, Standard Circles Large; Other: ribbon and Dotted Scallop Ribbon border punch from Stampin' Up!, button and string from scrap, Collall dimensional glue, and these Copic colors-YG17, YG21, YG23, YG25, YG61, YG63, YG67, R11, E50, E53, E55, E57, and E59.


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Feature image by Svatopluk Klimeš, a Czech graphic artist who teaches applied art and design at university. The technique he has used for this book is "drawing by three matches:" a match on fire, a smoking match, a burnt-out match.
The following is an excerpt from Which Way Out (Kudy ven, Dokořán, 2008), a work of fiction addressing the twin contradictions of freedom in a time of unfreedom and unfreedom in a time of freedom. The book's three pairs of stories alternate in pace and style, from the slow motion of a mountain pilgrimage to the stroboscopic delirium of a marijuana buzz, from the fantastical parade of surrealist ghosts in a Berlin ghetto to a dialogic treatise on the death of freedom in the New World, all topped off with a heaping helping of sexist farce.
(Velvet November, 1989)
Three days before the end of military service: a two-hour interrogation by counterintel about a picture of Popieluszko, the Polish priest, which they found on Franta's person during the morning inspection.
Back to civilian life. An envelope in the mailbox from some do-gooder, with a photo of Franta's girl Alenka getting it on with two guys. Whatever, that wasn't exactly news.
A punk rock concert, in a hotel right in the center of town, totally legal . . . and who else stage diving smack onto Franta's head but Aneta, his former student from design school.
He sank his teeth into her elbow and said, "Come back to my place."
"I can't tonight."
When he got to his front door, Franta discovered that his keys must have bounced out of his pocket while he was pogoing. How cool would that've been if Aneta had said yes? He decided to sleep at his mother's, but passed out on the bus and didn't wake up till the end stop, by the side of some stinky pond in a suburb on the outskirts. On the way back, he passed out again and woke up at the opposite end of the line, by a big crater dug in the ground for a new Metro station. For Chrissake, what was he gonna do now? Riding back and forth all night between a stinky-ass pond and a hole in the ground?
The voluptuous valedictorian from Class 3B in Franta's bed. Or, to be more precise, on a heap of mattresses laid on the floor of his empty apartment in place of a bed. He had often dreamed of this glorious night during his worst moments in training with the 56th Signal Regiment. The next day he drove her to school only to find out that there'd been a revolution.
It swept him up on Wenceslas Square. He would never experience anything like this again. It's here. My God, it's here. It can't be real. It's all going to come to some terrible end.
After he gave what was really a pretty tame speech at the morning meeting of the student strike committee, held in the gymnasium, his coworker the German teacher whispered in his ear: "Just to be on the safe side, I'd get myself measured for a coffin if I were you."
The rest of the day Franta spent trying to think of how he could explain away the speech, visiting the men's room with unusual frequency so he could practice his defense in there, standing at the urinal. But, come afternoon, he was back out on the square.
All of those feelings that had been stuffed down into the depths—buried and frozen and beaten and crushed—now came rushing up like a furious storm, throwing off the routine of consciously corrected behavior, pulsing through his body in waves, washing away the dams of control, overheating his brain's finely tuned thermoregulators, wild tides of turbulence rushing back and forth in his veins, mixing icy cold and fiery hot.
For a brief moment, Franta's typical attitude of detachment came flooding back, his cynical, ironic smirk, as the crowds surged back and forth in front of the glass-walled theater from whose upper floors the stiff figures of the nation's most beloved actors bowed to them so graciously. Christ, not them! Cold War criminals who deserved to swing from the lampposts next to the Communist Party leaders and secret police. Cultural genocidaires. Televisual prostitutes. Ever ready to feed the herds to keep us all mired in shit. Yeah, go ahead, churn out all the shit you can and shove it right in our mouths!
Franta went back to the square after midnight for the bulldog edition of the next day's papers from which he would read to his students later that morning, in a voice shaky with excitement, those unheard of words calling into question the personnel of the Party's highest organs. On the street he ran into Pohvizda, a former editor of the trade union papers, all fired up and ready to fight.
"Hey, c'mere and sign this petition. You're a teacher, right, and a freelance music writer, that pulls some weight."
Luckily, Dasha happened by to save him.
"Sure, I'll sign it. Just wait a minute, I'll be right back, there's something I need to take care of."
Franta pulled Dasha aside.
As it happened, he had a lot of things to take care of with Dasha, but in this case, one was enough to allow him to make his escape. Back in summer Dasha had come to beg him, in her sophisticated squeal, if he would help her prepare for her make-up exam. You see, she had gotten an F from the feared troll Mrs. Sádlová who sat with Franta on the examination committee and whose teaching methods Franta fundamentally disagreed with. Ha-ha, Sádlová, just you wait, Franta thought. Dasha's going to blow this test away so hard your glasses will shatter—and not only that, she'll probably even let me get in her pants. As it turned out, he was half right. Dasha passed the exam. But instead of him, it was the ginger-haired Pepa, the freshly elected deputy chair of the student strike committee, who popped her cherry. Franta screwed up big time. He already had the delectable Dasha lying on his couch with her ass invitingly propped in the air encased in a pair of stretch leggings! As she paged through her textbooks, Franta pictured himself sliding them down over her marzipan buns, and her panties along with them . . . while in reality his hands remained hanging loosely at his side. Perhaps he was blinded by the radiant shine of her long blonde hair—so long that it licked at her behind like a golden serpent guarding the entrance to the cave of treasures. In short, Franta chose to wait. After all, she had promised him they'd go for a shot as soon as she passed the exam! Which would no doubt be an infinitely preferable arrangement. If he fucked her now and she ended up failing the exam, she might get mad and decide to take revenge on him. She could make things pretty hot for him at school. The right thing to do was wait until afterwards to claim his reward. Fine, Franta, if that's what you think. No one's going to pop your bubble. So let's jump right ahead to that long-awaited day of heavenly delights. Dasha passes with a D and invites Franta out for lunch at a place where a friend of hers works as waiter. And her friend is treating! Franta wolfs down his Way Chung How in five minutes flat, so he and Dasha can clear out ASAP and—at last!—jump into bed. But the waiter insists: Won't the gentleman have a drink to celebrate the occasion? Sure! Make it a vodka! Then another. And another. The waiter brings numbers five and six with undisguised glee. As the two of them depart, he mischievously urges them to have fun and stay out of trouble. Fuckin' A, it's been a long time since Franta got this trashed. Dasha patiently guides him out of the public's view so he can vomit discreetly out of sight. But he doesn't feel any better. He apologizes up and down. "You fucked up, Franta, but that's life." She propped him up against the wall of the National Theater and went along her way.
Dasha cautiously said hello, eyes flitting left and right, pushed away his lips as he moved them toward hers, and said: "Just wait a sec, I'll be right back, there's something I need to take care of."
Franta steered a wide berth away from where he'd left his friend, and rode home to type up some fresh material from the big city for his small-town friends.
Every hour, every half hour, every minute of the day was broken up into ever-decreasing fragments of time. His body was absorbing larger and larger doses of emotion at ever-increasing frequencies. His dimensions of perception were piling up to make room for a previously nonexistent spectrum of words and meanings of heightened impact and power.
Franta wore a hole through the rug from running around the room. It was the only way he knew to relieve the pressure. From morning to night he sat listening to the radio, jumping out of his chair and running circles around the table. God, what a declaration! Wow, what an appeal! But careful, did you hear that warning? Jesus Christ, the danger! Man, did you hear that speech? Holy shit, that guy came back from exile! Christ on crutches, that guy too? He's going to give a speech? I must be losing my mind, you mean that guy's back in the country? That could be risky! Oh, of course, they're getting ready for us! We can't even blink for a second!
It was a few days before Franta felt relaxed enough to post a "Kocáb to the Castle" sign on the bulletin board at school. It was purely tongue in cheek of course. Nobody in his right mind would seriously consider a rock star for president. Well, maybe. But the same colleague who had warned him about the coffin took Franta aside and whispered in his ear: "You'd better take that down. We're all for Havel now."
Meanwhile, on TV, they were cutting down the barbwire. So who cares who wins the elections? (Franta himself harbored no illusions. For years now he'd been carrying on the same argument with his opposition-minded pals. "The West made a tragic mistake at the human rights talks in Helsinki," his buddies would say. "They should've insisted that every country in Europe hold free elections with international monitoring." Franta laughed. "If we had free elections, most of the country would vote for the Commies anyway. You don't think so? Think again. People here have everything they need: a guaranteed job till retirement and they don't have to do shit for work. Instead they stand in line all day for a piece of fatty meat, go home, throw on their sweats, pig out, watch TV and fart for four hours, suck down five brews, and roll into bed. What do they miss that's forbidden? Jan Patocka's essays on phenomenology? Teilhard de Chardin? Who gives a shit about Point Omega? Andy Warhol? You call that art? Captain Beefheart live in concert? Captain who? Western newspapers? Give me something I can read without a dictionary. In one hour they earn enough to buy 10 beers, and every Thursday after lunch they climb in their Škoda and drive out to their cottage in the countryside to sit around and get hammered. Travel? They've been to the Black Sea in Romania three times: the first time they got the runs; the second time they got the runs; the third time they got the runs; and the fourth time they stayed home. What would they do in the West anyhow? Walk around staring at all the stuff they can't afford? I don't think so. So what if all the dissidents are locked up? Serves 'em right for disturbing the peace.")
If we let our guard down, even for a minute, no doubt the Commies will put something over on us and the secret police'll cook something up, but at least they won't be rolling out the barbwire anymore. Those days are over. Even amid all the fears and concerns, of that much Franta was certain.
And boom, next thing he knew, the teachers were going to Austria for a Christmas shopping trip. Franta probably wouldn't have bothered except that he urgently needed a refill of Penis Marathon: a sexual aid that a discreet buddy of his had once imported for him from Amsterdam. The urgency of this need was testified to by the distressing fact that the voluptuous valedictorian hadn't been back to Franta's, each time awkwardly excusing herself with the most implausible of explanations. He must have been pretty awful for her not to want to come back, since at least for the grade, you would think she'd be willing to make the sacrifice. The teachers had four hours to spend in Linz, so Franta decided to scour the town until he found a sexshop. Boy, did he do some walking that day: One hour, nada. Two hours, zip. Three hours, still nothing. Then finally, running by this point, he turned a corner and Ha! At last! Only the woman behind the counter hadn't heard of Penis Marathon, so Franta had to quick think of a way to describe the product so she could find it under another name: "An anesthetic spray, typically containing Lidocaine, which desensitizes tissue." "Oh, you must mean Fuck4Ever. We have it in stock for 300 schillings." Franta stood there in shock, vocal cords frozen, unable to speak. He had the money, but for that much he had been hoping to buy five cans of spray, not one, with money enough left over for a pair of Mozart balls.
He returned home from the trip to find an ethereal creature sitting on the doorstep of his apartment, arms wrapped around her knees, with a blonde head of the sort that only one exists in the world perched atop them. Her hair flowed over her legs like a waterfall.
"Franta," she said urgently, "remember that waiter? I just found out he's been with the secret police this whole time. Can I stay here tonight? You're my friend, right? You wouldn't take advantage of me, would you?"
Franta caught himself thinking, "Well, we'll see about that."


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I learned the hard way about WordPress Security and WordPress Backups. I have had this WordPress blog for a good while, but someone hacked the site and destroyed it. It is time to start over. This time I am going to add more Security and Backups. Yes, I did not have good Security or good Backups.
Another thing is that the blog will be moved to a hosting site so I can use PHP 7.0 for better WordPress Security.
I am now using this blog to take notes on WordPress plugins and issues, particularly as it applies to WordPress Security and Backups.
UpdraftPlus can be used for WordPress Backups and Restore. It is the world's highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup plugin, with over two million currently-active installs. Backup your files and database backups into the cloud and restore with a single click!
Wordfence is a good WordPress Security plugin. Wordfence includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner that were built from the ground up to protect WordPress. Our Threat Defense Feed arms Wordfence with the newest firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IP addresses it needs to keep your website safe. Rounded out by 2FA and a suite of additional features, Wordfence is the most comprehensive WordPress security solution available.


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Here's another example of semi-stealth veggies. This time it's a meatloaf — easy preparation, and with a small family like ours, we're eating for days off this, which is great for busy cooks like me. (It makes great cold meatloaf sandwiches!)
You'll notice I don't add any salt. The onion soup mix has salt in it already, and my husband and son find plenty of flavor in this as-is. If you prefer, you can add salt to taste. But I'd suggest trying it without the first time around, just to see if it works for you without the extra sodium.
Hints: use a food processor or hand chopper to finely mince the carrots and celery — the finer, the better.
- 2 lb. ground meat (beef, turkey or a mix)
- 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
- 1 1/2 C herb-seasoned stuffing or dry bread crumbs
- 3/4 C carrots, finely minced
- 3/4 C celery, strings removed, finely minced
- 2 eggs (or 1/2 C egg substitute)
- 1/3 C ketchup or barbecue sauce (or a mix)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all ingredients until evenly mixed and spread in a large loaf pan. Bake 1 hour or until done.
Copyright © Diane Aull. All rights reserved.


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It has taken me over a year after completing my time in the ashram to talk about the experience and what it meant to me. I signed up for the two-week experience on the outskirts of Miramar, Florida to gain my RT200 Yoga Certification. I had preconceptions about the course. I had wanted to attend an ashram that wouldn't be too based in the exercise and physiology side of things, like some of the Western courses can be. As a personal trainer and fitness instructor, I knew enough already to take care of that side of things. I was eager to have a more "authentic" experience, with an Indian guru, so I could really understand the roots of Yoga and build a class more steeped in tradition than full of ab exercises to develop your six pack.
However, I wasn't really prepared for what I had asked for, and didn't really even know what it was I had signed up to experience. The experience was indeed a massive culture shock and one that I spent the majority of my time there battling with. Despite saying I didn't want the "Western" style course, I did still expect a heavy amount of anatomy and kinesiology as it pertains to Yoga, to fully understand the poses (asanas). I didn't prepare myself for so little attention to exercise science, and so much more attention to Hinduism, among many other things, despite knowing that Yoga is part of a system in this religion. My experience with Yoga had been mostly in British and American studios, where none of the teachers had so much as mentioned Hinduism. So I hadn't placed as much importance on this as integral to Yoga, until the course that is. I also thought that since I wasn't travelling to India for my training, I'd get a far more "Western" training course.
As a particularly non-religious individual, my beliefs are far more spiritually based and non-conventional. In fact, I don't subscribe or believe in any organised religion at all, and at times have battled with whether or not I am in fact an Atheist or just Agnostic. I believe in an energy, a oneness in us all, but no deity, convention or practice that should be used to attain some kind of Nirvana or Heaven. However, I do subscribe to many practices that various religions perform to help me be a better person, grow my mind and soul, and help me reach some form of contentness. I describe this about myself to help you understand how my background colored my ashram experience and why.
Upon arriving at the Ashram, my otherwise opened-minded partner whispered in my ear "If you need me to come get you, just call and I'll be right there…..any time, night or day." He took one look at the disciples in the Ashram, dressed in white pyjamas, walking around smiling and bowing, and immediately thought it felt like a cult. I laughed at him and told him I'd call him every day during my break, just so he wouldn't worry. I did find everyone's behaviour a little cult-like, but I had expected a little of this, so it didn't bother me.
I was met by some really nice disciples who showed me to my room, which I would share with five other female students during my stay. We had three bunk beds. So I spent my two weeks feeling like a child again, climbing up my bunk ladder to the haven of my bed over-looking part of the ashram gardens. I really enjoyed being part of the dorm environment. It provided an opportunity to really bond with my room mates and stay focused with group study, opposed to locking myself away to call my boyfriend or check emails.
I wouldn't spend much time however sleeping in that bunk, as the ashram bell would wake us up at 5.30am everyday so that we could begin our meditation at 6am. Our evenings would run late with meditation ending around 10pm, then all twenty students scrambling to use one of four bathrooms and one set of washer and dryer between us. Not to mention personal study time, talking to relatives on the phone, and just unwinding from the day. As someone who is used to staying up until 2-3am on most days, the schedule was like jet-lag for me, with most nights only getting about four hours of sleep at most. I have to say, meditation definitely got me through the lack of sleep, as I was surprisingly not tired and didn't feel sleep deprived from the experience.
Our daily schedule everyday was the same:
5:30 am – Wake up
6:00 am – Meditation, Nada Yoga, Lecture
8:00 am – Asanas, Pranayama
10:00 am – Brunch
11:00 am – Karma Yoga
12:00 – Personal Studies
2:00 pm – Main Lecture
4:00 pm – Asanas, Pranayama
6:00 pm – Dinner
7:30 pm – Meditation, Nada Yoga, Lecture
The course I had picked was focused on the practice of Sampoorna Yoga, the Yoga of Fullness. This practice was passed down to my Guru by his Master in India, and involves equal attention to 6 paths of Yoga: Nada, Karma, Hatha, Raja, Bhakti and Jnana Yoga. In western society, it is Hatha Yoga that has become predominantly practiced as a way to keep in shape physically, but I learned that this as a goal has never been the purpose of Hatha Yoga.
I'm not going to spend this post writing the meanings and details about every aspect of Yoga, suffice to say, you can learn about it by studying it yourself. Instead, my focus is on the person details that most spoke to me, or affected me during my stay.
So, back to what I learned about the purpose of Hatha Yoga. My guru told me that the physical component of Yoga is designed to prepare the body to sit. As simple as that. Think about it. How long can you sit still? Why do we need to sit still? To be able to meditate and chant. To be able to practice the other paths of yoga, one must be able to sit, unhindered, preferably in a lotus, but not necessarily.
I consider myself to be pretty healthy, very flexible and coordinated, and have practiced the physical part of yoga for years, not to mention having been a gymnast and professional dancer for some years in my younger days. Yet, as I sat for hours and hours meditating and chanting during my stay at the ashram, I was blatantly aware that it was incredibly difficult for me to just sit still and focus my mind. I would get cramps, pins and needles, numbness…even my hands swelled up from being unusually still for so long. I developed a misaligned hip from the joint becoming loose and sinking in a lotus position in fact. I've since spent almost a year in rehab trying to reposition the joints. Yes, an injuring from sitting and meditating. Of all things!
We have no idea how much we move around and distract our minds throughout the day! I had even been studying Tai Chi for many years, and meditated through this discipline on many occasions. I didn't expect to experience such hardship just sitting. But I will attest that sitting still was perhaps the hardest thing I had to do at the ashram, and is in fact, a very difficult discipline to master. Sitting for hours and hours every day became very stressful. I would loath those times of day. Mornings were the worst, as it was dark and closing my eyes to meditate after just waking up seemed impossible. I knew I'd fall asleep, so I often had to keep my eyes open with a hot cup of green tea hidden from my Guru behind the back of the person in front of me. I'm sure he was well aware of my open eyes, not to mention the tea. One of my room mates just couldn't handle the morning meditations and managed to keep a low profile, only showing up for a couple of the morning sessions, and sleeping in for the rest. The ashram wasn't a prison camp. No one forced us to participate. We each got out of the course what we needed. During evening meditation, she would also disappear and read about Yoga philosophy in our room. No one really objected.
Nada Yoga was another very interesting aspect of Yoga that I hadn't considered but that made an impact on me during my stay. My guru was big on Nada Yoga, the practice of inner realization through sound. We did this through chanting and making music or rhythms – usually chanting to music, or singing chants. My guru is a master of Nada Yoga, having created many albums of chants that his followers around the world play and meditate/chant to everyday. In fact, many of the students had already listened and memorized many of his chants before arriving at the ashram and were able to sing along perfectly with him from the beginning. I however had not. But I learned fast as he broke the tunes down into small chunks for us to follow, and I really enjoyed singing the different patterns that he had created.
We would spend hours being lectured by our Guru on the stories of the gods and the lessons that they taught us. But in addition to lectures about Hindu gods, our Guru would talk about saints in Christianity, a teaching practice I assume he developed hoping to resonate with Christian students…of which there happened to only be precisely one out of twenty of us on our particular course…..a number I imagine that has changed over the years he has been teaching. Indian philosophy felt much more of a cultural education and a history behind the religion that bought Yoga to the world. But for some reason, chanting religious prayers in particular left me very conflicted. On one hand, the subject matter gave me issue, but on the other hand, the music resonated with my soul, speaking to my ears and heightening my mind. All music has this feeling for sure, but chanting in the manner in which we did, accompanied by traditional Indian percussion or the Indian harmonium, and led by our guru, chanting from the heart, had a much deeper connection and resonance than simply listening to relaxing music or my favorite artist. As an aid to meditation, chanting in this way simply worked. My focus and presence during our meditation after chanting was far more than I ever could achieve through other practices.
My partner will attest to the fact that I came back from this two-week experience with two less frown lines between my eyes and what was seemingly pounds of inflammation all over my body gone. My demeanor was so relaxed and happy that he felt uneasy about it at first. He picked me up and immediately noticed that I wasn't back seat driving. I have terrible passenger anxiety after a traffic accident some years ago that is so bad that he mostly lets me drive to avoid my panic attacks. It seemed to disappear after one week at the ashram. I'm sorry to say the affects weren't permanent, but perhaps with time and more meditation, they will be.
An important meditation tip I learned from my guru was about the source. For years I had been meditating trying to zone into it, or find some connection with an external energy. These concepts I had learned hadn't gotten me very far. My guru taught me that meditation comes from looking inward. He explained that we are all made of the stars. In other words, we are all one. The information and energy of the universe and God, are in all of us. Therefore, to feel God and know her mind, we only need look inside to that part of ourselves. He said it so much more eloquently, but you get the gist. This revelation was very significant for me and jumped my ability to meditate tenfold. I haven't looked back since.
(A year later, I have read Anita Moorjani's book "Dying To Be Me", the account of her deadly battle with Stage 4 Lymphoma, a near-death experience, and miraculous over-night recovery to 100% remission. I recommend this book, and mention it because it backs up these theories of looking inside yourself among other amazing revelations.)
The other hugely impactful thing that I took away from the ashram, was my new found friends! Spending two weeks doing nothing but meditation and Yoga with just a few people can be challenging. There's those people who you spend most of your time trying not to hate, and those who you fall in love with. The beautiful thing is in understanding the reasons why you dislike certain people, and why you resonate with others.
For me, I spent a lot of time being constantly aggravated by the number of smug, know it all, self-proclaimed enlightened individuals that had come along to show off how much they already knew about the universe. These supposed old souls really started getting under my skin by week two, and I'm sorry to say, as outspoken and blunt as I am, those people weren't unaware of my distaste for their constant condescending brags and put-downs. I hadn't really expected this type of smug self-adoration on the course, so it caught myself and some of my friends off guard a little. As it turned out, we studied this behavior, known as Rajas, in our teachings at the ashram – this ego filled fire for success and notoriety, recognition, or whatever you will. I began to see it in those that had proclaimed early on to be so much more enlightened than myself. I don't claim at all to be free from this phenomenon by any means, we all have it, none of us are perfect. It's just unbearable to listen to someone who thinks they are so far up the ladder to Nirvana, knowing darn well that just this simple act of bragging puts them all the way at the bottom with the rest of us. No, it shouldn't bother me. But again, I'm not that far up the ladder myself, so I'm still learning to deal with my own emotional responses, as you can tell!
Not all those that came in thinking they were ahead of the game left feeling the same way. I mean this in a good way. A lot of growth happened for a lot of people. For some of us, it was learning to love ourselves and give ourselves a little bit of a break. For others it was learning to be humble. For some it was all physical…believe it or not, some people paid $2500 to attend the teacher training course, having never seemingly taken a Yoga class in their lives. Not everyone planned to actually teach after the course, using the course as an immersion tool for themselves only. For some of us it was a cultural and philosophical lesson. I can say for sure that each of us got out of our time not what we thought we wanted to learn when we arrived, but what we really knew we needed to learn by the time we left.
I graduated feeling like I impacted some people very positively, and that others impacted me just as positively, and that I made lifelong friends. I left with a basic understanding of Yoga, the ability to teach a great class and a desire to learn more about its multifaceted aspects.
Some left the ashram as newly appointed disciples of the Guru. This was a choice you could call out on your certificate before the ceremony. If you chose to become a disciple, a small fee was required, and a promise to attend 'x' number of courses a year or a number of days working on the ashram doing Karma Yoga (working in the garden, teaching, helping, for the compensation of good Karma). Choosing to become a disciple also gave you a special name like, Govinda or some other Hindu god or term that the Guru deemed appropriate for you. Disciples are only addressed by their special name from then on.
Although I respected those that chose this path for their dedication, I felt this path was not in my own destiny, and so I declined my choice to become a disciple.
Looking at ashram life, it's easy to understand why anyone would want to become a disciple of any faith or system that allows you one unwavering path. One unquestionable understanding that answers all your doubts and concerns if you can just subscribe to its truths. Being told all the answers and how to achieve all your goals opposed to carving your own path in this uncertain world is a comforting and safe thing. Even with my aversion to the dogma involved, I still long to spend more time in such an environment….to give my mind and soul space to breath and grow without the day to day worries of modern day society. It's easy to eat clean, practice yoga and mediate all day when that's all there is to do at an ashram. It's like a stress vacation. That said, for me, at this point in my life, there is so much more for me to explore in this world beyond this one system that I don't feel the urge to shut out everything else. Not just yet at least.
I hope you enjoyed this honest and unfiltered review of my experience, written from my heart. It's easy to write all the positive things about an experience, or to slate something if you hate it. But to write about such a soul searching experience that challenged me both physically and emotionally, in both good and bad ways, has been difficult to do. Hence taking almost a year to do it. I hope my insight will help you understand why, and motivate you to give it a go too. I highly recommend the experience, not just for those wanting to teach Yoga, but for anyone practicing Yoga who wants to challenge themselves in ways they don't even know they need to.
A step outside of your comfort zone is always a good character builder. Two weeks in a Yoga Ashram will do that.


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May 13-15, 2019
ASA Legislative Conference
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September 13-14, 2019
UMA House of Delegates Meeting
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October 20-23, 2019
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November 9, 2019
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March 12, 2020
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