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The Health Insurance industry is already gearing up, once again, to fight Obama's health care plans. This time it's not Harry and Louise, but rather cries of unfair competition with a successful model of government organized health insurance.
Insurance companies, along with other vested health care interests, have successfully thwarted every serious attempt at universal health insurance since the New Deal and are taking no chances to keep a solid streak. The standard line of attack is to raise the specter of government-run health care, long lines and losing our choice of doctor. They back it up with endless repetition of ideological arguments that free, unregulated markets are the only way to meet America's needs.
Now, the insurers are crying foul about President Obama's plan to create a public Medicare-like insurance product that Americans could choose to purchase. In a letter to Obama, five senior senators including Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley said that "forcing free market plans to compete with government-run plans would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition." The term "free market plan" is a clever choice of words intended to obscure that these are actually just normal private, for-profit insurance plans.
What makes this ideological about-face so remarkable is that insurers and industry funded think tanks have been arguing for years that competition is the best mechanism to keep costs down and quality high. The message is clear -- competition works, but not when it works against us!
For years, former Indianapolis Mayor Steven Goldsmith and a gaggle of conservative think tanks like the Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation and others have often argued the benefits of competition between the public and private sector for taxpayers.
The libertarian Reason Foundation is an intellectual leader of a national pro-privatization policy and message machine. In their own words, "The added incentives provided by competition will lead to lower costs and higher quality services. When government competes, the taxpayer wins every time."
Reason's push for government to compete with the private sector to deliver services often results in reducing costs by cutting wages and health and retirement benefits of middle class public sector workers. By contrast, Public-Private Competition in health insurance will squeeze overhead and profits from the middlemen in the system so we can put more money into actual health care.
Since health insurance costs are rising at nearly twice the inflation rate, there couldn't be a more important time to eliminate non-essential overhead through healthy competition. Families and employers are being crushed under the burden of increased health care costs. Since the year 2000, employer-sponsored health coverage premiums have increased by 87 percent.
It's no wonder, though, that the Health Insurers are frantically trying to head off competing with a public plan. Private insurance overhead and profits eat up 20% and more of health care premiums while Medicare overhead (and no profit) is closer to 3%. There is big money to be made in health insurance. The top 7 "for profit" health insurers made a combined $12.6 billion in 2007-- an increase of 170.2% from 2003. The same year, the average CEO compensation package for these health insurance companies was $14.3 million. Pay packages ranged from $3.7 million to $25.8 million.
All of that money could have gone to paying for health care for children, cancer treatments or diabetes screening -- in other words, health care.
By contrast, top Medicare administrators' salaries don't come close to these "free market" CEO salaries even though they are responsible for insuring millions more people than any of these private insurers.
In 2003, the "free market" Congress overhauled Medicare so that private insurers who enrolled the elderly were paid about 14% more than the government typically spent under traditional Medicare for service that was nearly the same. It was the same kind of wasteful spending as when we pushed student loans into private banks and increased the cost of a college education and the debt load of college graduates. Thankfully, Obama wants to take the banks out of the picture and provide direct government lower cost student loans.
Despite fear mongering about government run health care, seniors aren't asking for their Medicare to be taken away. Quite the contrary. People with Medicare can choose between public and private plans that contract with Medicare and an overwhelming 80 percent choose Medicare's public plan over the privately contracted plans.
The debate about whether to offer American consumers a public insurance plan couldn't come at a better time. In the wake of deregulation disasters on Wall Street and in our food supplies, consumer products and workplaces, American's now see the value and importance of a government role in creating vital public goods. In a recent report by the Center for American Progress on the State of American Political Ideology, 65% believe the federal government should guarantee affordable health coverage for all Americans. A CBS/NYT poll in January showed only 32% believes health insurance should be left only to the private sector.
A Single Payer system makes the most financial sense if we are really committed to universal insurance. In 2009, though, Public-Private Competition offers the way ahead for an American public that doesn't trust the free market to do it on its own but is still susceptible to insurance company anti-government campaigns.
How to vote
Register by: Varies by state
Your vote is your voice! It is your right and your responsibility. For your voice to be heard, in most states you must register before you can vote. Visit the state elections siteRegister to Vote
Vote-by-mail ballot request deadline: Varies by state
For the Nov 3 election: States are making it easier for citizens to vote absentee by mail this year due to the coronavirus. Each state has its own rules for mail-in absentee voting. Visit your state election office website to find out if you can vote by mail.Get more information
In-person early voting dates: Varies by state
Sometimes circumstances make it hard or impossible for you to vote on Election Day. But your state may let you vote during a designated early voting period. You don't need an excuse to vote early. Visit your state election office website to find out whether they offer early voting.My Election Office
General Election: Nov 3, 2020
Polling hours on Election Day: Varies by state/localityMy Polling Place


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HMC (Herts) LTD
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subset: commoncrawl


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Glucocorticoid steroids such as prednisone are prescribed for chronic muscle conditions
such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, where their use is associated with prolonged
ambulation. The positive effects of chronic steroid treatment in muscular dystrophy are
paradoxical because these steroids are also known to trigger muscle atrophy. Chronic
steroid use usually involves once-daily dosing, although weekly dosing in children has
been suggested for its reduced side effects on behavior. In this work, we tested steroid
dosing in mice and found that a single pulse of glucocorticoid steroids improved
sarcolemmal repair through increased expression of annexins A1 and A6, which mediate
myofiber repair. This increased expression was dependent on glucocorticoid response
elements upstream of annexins and was reinforced by the expression of forkhead box O1
(FOXO1). We compared weekly versus daily steroid treatment in mouse models of acute muscle
injury and in muscular dystrophy and determined that both regimens provided comparable
benefits in terms of annexin gene expression and muscle repair. However, daily dosing
activated atrophic pathways, including F-box protein 32 (
Mattia Quattrocelli, David Y. Barefield, James L. Warner, Andy H. Vo, Michele Hadhazy, Judy U. Earley, Alexis R. Demonbreun, Elizabeth M. McNally
Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is an autosomal dominant neuromuscular disorder that is characterized by extreme variability in symptoms, with females being less severely affected than males and presenting a higher proportion of asymptomatic carriers. The sex-related factors involved in the disease are not known. Here, we have utilized myoblasts isolated from FSHD patients (FSHD myoblasts) to investigate the effect of estrogens on muscle properties. Our results demonstrated that estrogens counteract the differentiation impairment of FSHD myoblasts without affecting cell proliferation or survival. Estrogen effects are mediated by estrogen receptor β (ERβ), which reduces chromatin occupancy and transcriptional activity of double homeobox 4 (DUX4), a protein whose aberrant expression has been implicated in FSHD pathogenesis. During myoblast differentiation, we observed that the levels and activity of DUX4 increased progressively and were associated with its enhanced recruitment in the nucleus. ERβ interfered with this recruitment by relocalizing DUX4 in the cytoplasm. This work identifies estrogens as a potential disease modifier that underlie sex-related differences in FSHD by protecting against myoblast differentiation impairments in this disease.
Emanuela Teveroni, Marsha Pellegrino, Sabrina Sacconi, Patrizia Calandra, Isabella Cascino, Stefano Farioli-Vecchioli, Angela Puma, Matteo Garibaldi, Roberta Morosetti, Giorgio Tasca, Enzo Ricci, Carlo Pietro Trevisan, Giuliana Galluzzi, Alfredo Pontecorvi, Marco Crescenzi, Giancarlo Deidda, Fabiola Moretti
Mutations in laminin α2-subunit (Lmα2, encoded by
Karen K. McKee, Stephanie C. Crosson, Sarina Meinen, Judith R. Reinhard, Markus A. Rüegg, Peter D. Yurchenco
Myotonic dystrophy type I (DM1) is a disabling multisystemic disease that predominantly affects skeletal muscle. It is caused by expanded CTG repeats in the 3′-UTR of the dystrophia myotonica protein kinase (
Marielle Brockhoff, Nathalie Rion, Kathrin Chojnowska, Tatiana Wiktorowicz, Christopher Eickhorst, Beat Erne, Stephan Frank, Corrado Angelini, Denis Furling, Markus A. Rüegg, Michael Sinnreich, Perrine Castets
Treatment options are limited for severe asthma, and the need for additional therapies remains great. Previously, we demonstrated that integrin αvβ6-deficient mice are protected from airway hyperresponsiveness, due in part to increased expression of the murine ortholog of human chymase. Here, we determined that chymase protects against cytokine-enhanced bronchoconstriction by cleaving fibronectin to impair tension transmission in airway smooth muscle (ASM). Additionally, we identified a pathway that can be therapeutically targeted to mitigate the effects of airway hyperresponsiveness. Administration of chymase to human bronchial rings abrogated IL-13–enhanced contraction, and this effect was not due to alterations in calcium homeostasis or myosin light chain phosphorylation. Rather, chymase cleaved fibronectin, inhibited ASM adhesion, and attenuated focal adhesion phosphorylation. Disruption of integrin ligation with an RGD-containing peptide abrogated IL-13–enhanced contraction, with no further effect from chymase. We identified α5β1 as the primary fibronectin-binding integrin in ASM, and α5β1-specific blockade inhibited focal adhesion phosphorylation and IL-13–enhanced contraction, with no additional effect from chymase. Delivery of an α5β1 inhibitor into murine airways abrogated the exaggerated bronchoconstriction induced by allergen sensitization and challenge. Finally, α5β1 blockade enhanced the effect of the bronchodilator isoproterenol on airway relaxation. Our data identify the α5β1 integrin as a potential therapeutic target to mitigate the severity of airway contraction in asthma.
Aparna Sundaram, Chun Chen, Amin Khalifeh-Soltani, Amha Atakilit, Xin Ren, Wenli Qiu, Hyunil Jo, William DeGrado, Xiaozhu Huang, Dean Sheppard
Myotubular myopathy (MTM) is a devastating pediatric neuromuscular disorder of phosphoinositide (PIP) metabolism resulting from mutations of the PIP phosphatase
Nesrin Sabha, Jonathan R. Volpatti, Hernan Gonorazky, Aaron Reifler, Ann E. Davidson, Xingli Li, Nadine M. Eltayeb, Claudia Dall'Armi, Gilbert Di Paolo, Susan V. Brooks, Ana Buj-Bello, Eva L. Feldman, James J. Dowling
The X chromosome–encoded histone demethylase UTX (also known as KDM6A) mediates removal of repressive trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27me3) to establish transcriptionally permissive chromatin. Loss of UTX in female mice is embryonic lethal. Unexpectedly, male UTX-null mice escape embryonic lethality due to expression of UTY, a paralog that lacks H3K27 demethylase activity, suggesting an enzyme-independent role for UTX in development and thereby challenging the need for active H3K27 demethylation in vivo. However, the requirement for active H3K27 demethylation in stem cell–mediated tissue regeneration remains untested. Here, we employed an inducible mouse KO that specifically ablates
Hervé Faralli, Chaochen Wang, Kiran Nakka, Aissa Benyoucef, Soji Sebastian, Lenan Zhuang, Alphonse Chu, Carmen G. Palii, Chengyu Liu, Brendan Camellato, Marjorie Brand, Kai Ge, F. Jeffrey Dilworth
The maintenance of skeletal muscle mass is critical for sustaining health; however, the mechanisms responsible for muscle loss with aging and chronic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, are poorly understood. We found that expression of a member of the AMPK-related kinase family, the SNF1-AMPK-related kinase (SNARK, also known as NUAK2), increased with muscle cell differentiation. SNARK expression increased in skeletal muscles from young mice exposed to metabolic stress and in muscles from healthy older human subjects. The regulation of SNARK expression in muscle with differentiation and physiological stress suggests that SNARK may function in the maintenance of muscle mass. Consistent with this hypothesis, decreased endogenous SNARK expression (using siRNA) in cultured muscle cells resulted in increased apoptosis and decreased cell survival under conditions of metabolic stress. Likewise, muscle-specific transgenic animals expressing a SNARK dominant-negative inactive mutant (SDN) had increased myonuclear apoptosis and activation of apoptotic mediators in muscle. Moreover, animals expressing SDN had severe, age-accelerated muscle atrophy and increased adiposity, consistent with sarcopenic obesity. Reduced SNARK activity, in vivo and in vitro, caused downregulation of the Rho kinase signaling pathway, a key mediator of cell survival. These findings reveal a critical role for SNARK in myocyte survival and the maintenance of muscle mass with age.
Sarah J. Lessard, Donato A. Rivas, Kawai So, Ho-Jin Koh, André Lima Queiroz, Michael F. Hirshman, Roger A. Fielding, Laurie J. Goodyear
Here, we have described and validated a strategy for monitoring skeletal muscle protein synthesis rates in rodents and humans over days or weeks from blood samples. We based this approach on label incorporation into proteins that are synthesized specifically in skeletal muscle and escape into the circulation. Heavy water labeling combined with sensitive tandem mass spectrometric analysis allowed integrated synthesis rates of proteins in muscle tissue across the proteome to be measured over several weeks. Fractional synthesis rate (FSR) of plasma creatine kinase M-type (CK-M) and carbonic anhydrase 3 (CA-3) in the blood, more than 90% of which is derived from skeletal muscle, correlated closely with FSR of CK-M, CA-3, and other proteins of various ontologies in skeletal muscle tissue in both rodents and humans. Protein synthesis rates across the muscle proteome generally changed in a coordinate manner in response to a sprint interval exercise training regimen in humans and to denervation or clenbuterol treatment in rodents. FSR of plasma CK-M and CA-3 revealed changes and interindividual differences in muscle tissue proteome dynamics. In human subjects, sprint interval training primarily stimulated synthesis of structural and glycolytic proteins. Together, our results indicate that this approach provides a virtual biopsy, sensitively revealing individualized changes in proteome-wide synthesis rates in skeletal muscle without a muscle biopsy. Accordingly, this approach has potential applications for the diagnosis, management, and treatment of muscle disorders.
Mahalakshmi Shankaran, Chelsea L. King, Thomas E. Angel, William E. Holmes, Kelvin W. Li, Marc Colangelo, John C. Price, Scott M. Turner, Christopher Bell, Karyn L. Hamilton, Benjamin F. Miller, Marc K. Hellerstein
The Popeye domain–containing 1 (
Roland F.R. Schindler, Chiara Scotton, Jianguo Zhang, Chiara Passarelli, Beatriz Ortiz-Bonnin, Subreena Simrick, Thorsten Schwerte, Kar-Lai Poon, Mingyan Fang, Susanne Rinné, Alexander Froese, Viacheslav O. Nikolaev, Christiane Grunert, Thomas Müller, Giorgio Tasca, Padmini Sarathchandra, Fabrizio Drago, Bruno Dallapiccola, Claudio Rapezzi, Eloisa Arbustini, Francesca Romana Di Raimo, Marcella Neri, Rita Selvatici, Francesca Gualandi, Fabiana Fattori, Antonello Pietrangelo, Wenyan Li, Hui Jiang, Xun Xu, Enrico Bertini, Niels Decher, Jun Wang, Thomas Brand, Alessandra Ferlini


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12 x Slim Secrets Designer Cookies Choc Chip w/ Chia 32.5g
Slim Secrets Designer Cookies are a delicious source of protein, fibre and chia and make the perfect snack to fight the junk food cravings. With less than 130 calories per cookie, each one is small in weight but the flavour packs a satisfying punch, and still leaves plenty of room for that designer lunch later!
- Slim Secrets Designer Cookies
- Pack contents: 12 x 32.5g
- Flavour: Choc Chip w/ Chia
- Only 122 calories per serve
- Source of protein and fibre
- No artificial colours or flavours
- Contains chia seeds
- GMO free
- Please note: contains oats, wheat, milk and soy. May contain traces of peanuts, tree nuts, egg, sesame seeds and sulphites.
- Always read the label
- Dietary supplements should not replace a balanced diet
- While weight management products may be of assistance in your weight loss journey, a healthy energy-controlled diet and a sufficient and appropriate exercise program is also important to achieving your weight loss goal.


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Page 103
on December 26, 2014 at 12:00 am
Chapter: Chapter 4
Nnnnnnaga. Second appearance of naga so far in rdd. The first being Kadri in chapter 2. This one's a real jerk though.
Did you know Rainy Day Dreams was having a contest from December 2014 – February 2015? Check out the details here!


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CityGuide WordPress Theme By Templatic, Theme Type: Directory, Real Estate , free trial: available
CityGuide is a child theme for the Directory Theme, that allows you to create a city directory website with WordPress. There's nothing particularly interesting or special about this Directory child theme as Templatic explain: "this one isn't focused on a particular niche or market segment. Instead, the primary role of City Guide is just to provide another new look for Directory".
- Multiple City Listings – create listings on your site from anywhere in the world and for any place in the world
- Smart Locations – 242 editable preloaded countries, 3898 editable preloaded states and space to add as many cities you want
- City Logs – log the total number of visits for each of your city with an IP address of the visitors
- 5 Map Widgets – 2 types of home page maps as well as category page maps
- Changeable Map Marker Icons
- 3 Page View Options – List View, Grid View and Map View
- Geo Location Detection Homepage Display – can show map and listings based on the users location
- Unlimited Post Types – create various custom listing types along with matching category taxonomies, description, custom icon and various labels
- Add Listings – with organized categories, listing tages, feature images, image galleries and assigned cities
- Two Sorting Box Styles – dropdown and simple links
- PinPoint Map Effects – pinpoint buttons which invoke the related location on the map and displays all its relevant information
- Listing Page Details
- Multi Tab View
- View Counters
- Social Media Buttons
- Related Posts Section
- Category / Tags Search
- User Registration
- Auto User Login
- Author Listing Page
- Unlimited Submission Forms
- Listing Expiry
- 13 Input Fields
- Category Map Page
- Detail Page Map
- Map Shortcodes
- 27 Unique Widgets
- 24 Widget Areas
- Advanced Search
- Layout and Style Options
- Advertising Options
- Monetization Options
- Payment Options
- Claim Ownership
- Rating and Review Options
- WooCommerce Support
- Gravity Forms Support
- WPML Support
- More
City Guide Child Theme: $39
City Guide + Directory Bundle: $129


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I intend to lay 90mm wide solid oak flooring planks by either nailing to an existing wooden floor. I am told i need to leave a 15mm expansion gap around the perimeter of the room and to cover this gap with beading, i do not intend to remove the skirting. But, if the new flooring is fixed to the old, then would it still expand & is there a need for such a large the expansion gap.
Could i get away with less than 10mm?
I intend to fit some beading to the skirting to cover the gap & i think 18mm beading wouldn't look right.
Thanks in advance.


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Steve Wayte, the owner of Fresno, CA's Roll One For Mi sushi restaurant, is scrambling to address the outrage prompted by a recent Facebook post of his disparaging the Latinx community.
Former Fresno County supervisor Henry R. Perea took a screenshot of the now-deleted post from Wayte's personal Facebook page. In his post, Wayte suggested restaurant staff were ready to "[build] a wall" around his establishment after several customers—whom he claimed were Latinx—left without leaving a tip.
Speaking with the Fresno Bee on Sunday, Wayte apologized for the post, and insisted it was not written out of xenophobic malice.
"I'm not even a Trump supporter," he said. "I'm a smart aleck and I like to be provocative, and apparently I was a little too provocative for Mr. Perea."
Wayte's mea culpa was readily accepted by Chef Carlos Rucker, a first generation Mexican-American who has worked at Roll One For Mi for three months.
"Being Hispanic, I know that it's a fact … that some Hispanics are very bad at tipping," he told the Bee. "It might be a cultural thing."
Nevertheless, not everyone has been so forgiving. Wayte has since reportedly installed a security officer at the front door to his restaurant, after receiving a barrage of criticism over his comments—"just to make sure we don't have any issues," he explained to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The restaurant's Facebook page has since been removed, and its Yelp profile is currently being monitored by site staff, after Wayte's comments were made public.
According to the Star-Telegram, Wayte is the co-founder of the Central Valley Tea Party. He has reportedly not seen a drop in business since his post was shared by Mr. Perea, and insisted to the paper that he's getting "a lot of email support."


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Consensus Panel Report Addresses Challenges of Implementing the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain
February 15, 2019, CHICAGO – A new report issued by a multidisciplinary consensus panel convened by the American Academy of Pain Medicine Foundation discusses the challenges clinicians have experienced since the 2016 release of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. The report also proposes solutions and recommendations that can assist policy makers, regulators, and clinicians in future efforts to ensure that patients receive safe and effective care.
"The panel is largely supportive of the CDC Guideline," says W. Michael Hooten, MD, one of report authors. "Yet, since the release of the guideline, substantial implementation challenges have emerged, including the application of dosage ceilings and prescription duration limits, impeded access to multimodal pain care, barriers to the diagnosis and treatment of opioid use disorder, and a critical failure to appreciate the importance of patient involvement in decisions to taper or discontinue opioids."
The CDC Guideline, which offers recommended steps to help reduce the risks associated with opioid therapy, has had its share of unintended consequences. In some instances, the guideline has been interpreted as a regulation enacted by policymakers, leading to inflexible application of its recommendations, such as dosage limits. Imposing such prescribing rules and limits would violate the guideline's own guidance, suggests Dr. Hooten. "Less observed aspects of the guideline are clinical reminders that prescribers must first emphasize patient-centeredness and individualized care. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to pain management, so arbitrary prescribing limits will not benefit all patients."
The consensus panel report, Challenges with Implementing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Opioid Guideline, which was recently published in Pain Medicine, outlines proposed steps to address these unintended consequences of the guideline. Among the panel's proposals are educating clinicians on risks related to the abrupt discontinuation of opioids without focused care; avoiding misinterpretation of the guideline by insisting upon opioid reduction or cessation in situations when opioid use may still be warranted; and supporting sufficient reimbursement and coverage for comprehensive pain management services including psychological and physical treatments.
"An overarching principle for the panel was to support efforts that reduce the overprescribing of opioids, which has contributed to opioid-related patient and societal problems, while at the same time using opioids in an appropriate and reduced-risk fashion for acute pain and in a small subset of patients with chronic pain," says Dr. Hooten.
About AAPM Foundation
The AAPM Foundation was created in 2011 to support the American Academy of Pain Medicine's (AAPM) efforts. The Foundation supports AAPM's core purpose to optimize the health of patients in pain and eliminate the major health problem of pain by advancing the practice and the specialty of pain medicine. Information is available on the Foundation's website at aapmfoundation.org.


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The UK construction industry has started to tap the potential of BIM. But the profound role that BIM is predicted to play in transforming the industry is only just being explored.
BIM 2050 was set up to explore BIM as a catalyst to change the industry profoundly and for the better. BIM 2050 brings together young professionals from across the industry to assess how wide the impact of BIM will be and in particular how the use of innovative digital technologies might propel the industry into a different way of learning, collaborating and utilising technology.
We are called BIM 2050 because we have one eye on how the world might look at a time when our careers are coming to an end. As a group and individually we have a passion for exploring how BIM might help us leave an industry in 2050 that is responsive to society's demands, provides aspirational career choices and is collaborative and profitable.
The journey to get to 2050 however clearly requires more than just the BIM 2050 Group.
The public sector in particular has a role to play as both a major client and a policy driver. The Government has recognised the developing role of BIM and is keen to see it become a British success story.
It is against this background that on 23 April, members of BIM 2050 met with the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Chloe Smith MP, whose remit also includes the UK Government as a construction client. The meeting was arranged to give the Minister an insight into the thinking behind the group, its aims and how it hopes to engage with those in the industry and outside it over the next few years.
An introduction by David Philp kicked off proceedings, with deputy chair Neil Thompson introducing the way in which the group has divided its resources into thinking about three core areas: process and technology, education and training and the culture of integration. Chris Barker, Rachael Park and Rebecca Hodgson-Jones respectively gave brief introductions to the three core areas with Stefan Mordue bringing together the issues in conclusion.
The Minister is no BIM sceptic. She had given a key-note speech a few days earlier to BIM4SME on how BIM will give the construction supply chain a competitive edge in a fiercely competitive international environment. She was engaging and clearly shared the BIM2050 vision.
As a mark perhaps of the seriousness of the Government's commitment to engage on BIM, the Minister was keen to assist practically in the work of BIM 2050. In an unusual move she has agreed to become the honorary member of BIM 2050, again underlining the meeting of minds between the group and Government.
The Minister laid down a challenge to the group to spell out its vision and objectives and the milestones to achieving them. The greater challenge, the Minister said, was identifying those parts of the industry that the group must engage with and "take on the journey". The Minister is keen on ensuring that the challenge of deepening the levels of collaboration within the industry must be felt at the grass-roots of the industry so engagement must for example involve those on apprentice schemes. The Minister was keen for the group to report back so as to continue to process of dialogue with the Government. The group is currently working to meet this challenge and to make a real impact. The Minister concluded by saying that she was keen to be kept in the loop and the group is already preparing to report back to her very soon.


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Shop Announcement:
Hello! Please contact me if you've seen something at a craft market you're interested in, but it's not listed here - I have lots of stock that isn't (yet!) listed here.
Tanzanite with Fine Silver Circle Pendant Necklace
A sparkling faceted Tanzanite sits on top of a Fine Silver Circle, suspended from a Sterling Silver chain. The silver circle is handmade by me and I've textured it so it catches the light and sparkles prettily. Fine silver is 99% pure silver, and has the advantage that it tarnishes less readily than Sterling Silver (92.5% pure silver).
Tanzanite is the birthstone for December and is a Precious Gemstone.
Chain length: Your choice from 16", 18" or 20"
Circle: approx 25 mm top to bottom
Matching earrings are also available.
This pendant comes in a gift box.
This style is available in a variety of different stones: Black Diamond Black), Ruby (Red), Blue Sapphire (Dark Blue), Emerald (Mid Green), Peridot (Lime Green), Tanzanite (Lavender Blue), Pink Sapphire (Hot Pink), Rose Quartz (Pale Pink), Amethyst (Purple), Aquamarine (Pale Blue).
With any handmade item there is bound to be some tiny variation in the piece - but that's what makes each one unique.
Shipping & delivery
This item will be posted to you by Sarah de Larrinaga Jewellery within 5 days of receiving payment.
|Shipping destination
|Additional items
|United Kingdom
Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Germany, France, Spain, Finland, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Latvia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar
|United States
|Rest of the World
Returns Policy
You have 14 days, from receipt, to notify the seller if you wish to cancel your order or exchange an item.
Unless faulty, the following types of items are non-refundable: items that are personalised, bespoke or made-to-order to your specific requirements; items which deteriorate quickly (e.g. food), personal items sold with a hygiene seal (cosmetics, underwear) in instances where the seal is broken.


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Tablets, move over
Later on, the tablet started to catch on (again, not invented by Apple but marketed well by them) but it didn't really impress me. Not something you always have with you (phone), nor serious tool (laptop). Great for kids who don't have a phone yet, and great for those impressed by flashy gadgets (like "managers" and "leaders" and politicians). Of great practical use in many vertical applications, but as a general-purpose device generally beaten by either the phone or the laptop.
The one advantage over the phone was a larger screen, and it was a big one. But in 2011 Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note with its 5.3" screen (to the iPhone's 3.5"), and that was the beginning of the end. It did take most people time to warm to the idea of a large phone, especially when it was presented as qualitatively different ("here, draw pictures on it") and in the English-speaking world even given a different name ("phablet") that suggested that it was neither a phone nor a tablet. Now that it's a few years later, large phones are accepted, and even the former holdout Apple doesn't make smaller phones any more.
In recent days I've seen a television ad for Toronto Star Touch, a tablet edition of that newspaper. The people who run The Star have been persuaded that tablets are the future, and the app doesn't run on any phone, not even if it's got a 6" screen that's almost as big as that of a 7" tablet – i.e. not even if it's the one device that pretty soon almost everyone will have. Fortunately this could be changed in future, and I expect it will be after The Star caves in to the public's preferences the way that Apple did.
Anyone not convinced that the only essential general-purpose device of the near future is the large phone should see the numbers shown in Fred Wilson's latest blog post. It's short; read it here.


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Wake County Changes Elementary School Report Cards
Wake County's report card for elementary school students has received an overhaul, with a new grading scale and so many additional grades being awarded that the district will send parents a guide to understanding the changes.
The majority of families still haven't received the report cards yet because of problems involving a new statewide computer system. But when they come, families will find that the 3* grade – denoting a mark between 3 and 4 on the scale – has been removed. And instead of one overall grade in subjects such as math and language arts, they'll also see individual grades for the things student are supposed to learn within that subject.
"We're happy to provide parents with additional information," said James Overman, senior director of elementary school programs. "As an elementary school parent, I can look at the report card to see if additional measures are needed at home to help my child."
The distribution of the new report cards has been delayed because school officials say that some teachers have reported not being able to save their students' grades in the new state computer system.
The first-quarter report cards for year-round students in tracks 1, 2 and 3 didn't go out until mid-October. Students on track 4 received their report cards on Friday, a week later than scheduled.
Wake is hoping to begin distributing the report cards for traditional-calendar students, who make up the majority of children in the district, on Nov. 12, more than a week later than originally scheduled.
Aligned with Common Core
Overman said the report cards were modified to align them with the Common Core state standards that were implemented in North Carolina's public schools in the 2012-13 school year.
For instance, the Common Core says first-grade students are supposed to learn math concepts such as adding and subtracting within 20, measuring length and telling time. Wake's new report card will list grades for those concepts, called the "big ideas," along with an overall math grade.
"Anytime we can give more information to parents it's better," Overman said.
All these grades will now be given under a four-point system of 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest. Last school year, elementary school students received subject grades based on a five-point scale.
Before 2004, Wake used an A through F letter grading system in elementary schools. But the system was changed that year because school officials said the 1 to 4 system would allow teachers and parents to better know how students were doing on mastering the state curriculum.
Scores on the state's reading, math and science exams in elementary and middle schools are divided into four levels with Level 3 and Level 4 being passing. A three in the old report card was considered to be demonstrating proficiency.
But so many parents complained that teachers weren't giving a 4 grade that the district implemented the 3* grade.
Overman said 3* was dropped because it would have been a problem entering that grade in the new state computer system. Plus, he also said the four-point scale was in line with what other districts are using with the Common Core.
Overman also said that students should have multiple opportunities to get a 4 under the Common Core standards.
Concerns about report cards
School board member Jim Martin is concerned about the new report cards.
One of Martin's concerns is that under the new scale a 4 is now considered to be exemplary with a 3 being proficient, 2 being approaching proficiency and 1 being non-proficient. He said there's too big a jump to go from proficient to exemplary in just one grade.
Martin is proposing that Wake consider redefining 2 to be proficient.
"I'm not a big fan of this," Martin said of the report cards. "I don't support the grading system only having one level above proficiency. I don't think it's adequate."
Martin also worries that the new report cards may be too confusing to parents and that what's being measured isn't appropriate. For instance, he questioned the value of giving a science grade in first grade for "pebbles, sand and silt."
Overman said they've mostly received positive parental feedback so far.
But Susan London, a Wake Forest parent of two elementary school students, says after hearing all the hype about the new report cards that she's underwhelmed by what she's seen. She said that the big idea grades are the same as what teachers had included in the comment sections of past report cards.
via Wake County changes elementary school report cards | Education | NewsObserver.com.


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Focus Features has released a new trailer for filmmaker Sofia Coppola's new film The Beguiled. The pic is based on the Thomas Cullinan novel of the same name and stars Nicole Kidman as the headmistress of a seminary for young ladies in Civil War-era Virginia. The school's seclusion is disrupted when a wounded soldier from the Union Army, played by Colin Farrell, arrives and kicks off a yarn of "seduction and jealousy."
This is without a doubt one of my most anticipated films of the summer, which kind of makes me wish I hadn't watched this trailer because it really lays the cards out on the table in terms of Coppola's take on the film's pivotal moments. If you're familiar with the novel or the 1971 incarnation that starred Clint Eastwood, you'll notice that the trailer is basically a condensed version of the film, even if the plot is slightly obscured by the editing. That said, I can't wait to see how Coppola reinvents the complex, intertwining relationships at the heart of the story and it looks like yet another fine performance for Kidman in what's shaping up to be quite a year for the veteran actress.
Watch the new The Beguiled trailer below. The film also stars Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, and Oona Laurence. The Beguiled will have its world premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival next month, opens in select cities on June 23rd, and expands wider on June 30th.
Here's the official synopsis for The Beguiled:
"The Beguiled" is an atmospheric thriller from acclaimed writer/director Sofia Coppola. The story unfolds during the Civil War, at a Southern girls' boarding school. Its sheltered young women take in an injured enemy soldier. As they provide refuge and tend to his wounds, the house is taken over with sexual tension and dangerous rivalries, and taboos are broken in an unexpected turn of events.


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Fox hasn't been shy about teasing its upcoming X-Files revival, what with those little trailers and that 21-minute featurette. But with the miniseries premiering later this month, the network has now decided to simply start showing everybody some X-Files. On a website called DoYouStillBelieve.com, Fox has released the first full minute of the first new X-Files episode, and you can watch it over and over again until you've convinced yourself that aliens have abducted your sister.
The minute is surprisingly spoiler-free, unless you haven't seen the old series and also have absolutely no idea what it's about, because it all centers around David Duchovny giving a (very) abridged synopsis of the original show's story via voiceover. It's technically all new footage, but the new footage consists entirely of photographs of characters and events from old X-Files episodes, so it doesn't really feel that new. Still, it's the first minute of the first new X-Files episode in very many years. This isn't the time to get picky.
X-Files premieres on Fox on Sunday, January 24, and will air on Mondays after that.


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Mk 4:35-41
On that same day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, "Let's go across to the other side of the lake." So they left the crowd, and took him along in the boat he had been sitting in, and other boats set out with him. Then a storm gathered and it began to blow a gale. The waves spilled over into the boat, so that it was soon filled with water. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.
They woke him up, and said, "Master, don't you care if we drown?" And rising up, Jesus rebuked the wind, and ordered the sea, "Quiet now! Be still!" The wind dropped, and there was a great calm. Then Jesus said to them, "Why are you so frightened? Do you still have no faith?"
But they were terrified, and they said to one another, "Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him!"
There is something a bit comical in the episode reported in today's first reading. And this comic side of a story which, in itself, is quite dramatic (it involves the death of Uriah the Hittite and of David's illegitimate child) arises from the fact that David is unable to connect the dots and see through Nathan's little parable. He is spiritually blind and does not really see his guilt in his adulterous affair with Bathsheba—until Nathan spells it out to him: "You are this man!"
The end of the story (the illness and death of Bathsheba's baby) is of course a very debatable interpretation on the part of Nathan. In typical Old Testament fashion, when witnessing an untoward event (such as the death of a baby), people spontaneously attribute it to either God or some evil entity. But that is pure projection on God of their own primitive convictions about what they would do if they were God. But, in reality, God does not kill babies or anybody else for that matter. Our God is essentially a God of life. When Jesus comes and shows us the true face of God, he kisses children. He doesn't kill them. Would his Father be any different?
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- 5 Beds
- 5 Full, 1 Half Baths
Property TypeResidential – Condo
SubdivisionTIMBERS ON RIVER RUN CONDO
Listing Date09/18/20
Year Built1999
Property Description
This true ski-in/ski-out 5-bedroom penthouse sits atop the most desired address in Keystone, The Timbers. The ultimate in location and exclusivity, nothing exists like this in Summit County. Reminiscent of the world's finest ski lodges, the true beauty and character of the stunning residence shines the moment you step inside. You will love the soothing sounds of Camp Creek, soaring cathedral ceilings, the grand stone fireplace, scenic views, multiple outdoor spaces and resort's finest amenities.
Presented By
- Borders National Forest
- Ski In /Ski Out
- Mountain(s)
- River
- Ski Area
- Southern Exposure
- Creek/Stream
- Valley
- Golf
- Trails/Paths
- Pool
- Sauna
- Fireplace
- Jetted Tub
- Vaulted Ceiling(s)
- Elevator
- Electricity Available
- Natural Gas Available
- Municipal Utilities
- Phone Available
- Sewer Available
- Water Available
- Cable Available
- Sewer Connected
- Radiant
Financial Information
3 Beds 3 Baths
2 Beds 2 Baths
2 Beds 2 Baths
1 Bed 1 Bath
We get asked this question a lot. Below is a tool that gives you the ability to see what the market is like in your community. Find out what homes like your own are selling for right in your back yard. Simply enter in your address, choose the proximity of the search and find out market data for other homes that are selling near you.
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Listing courtesy of Slifer Smith & Frampton R.E.


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Meet the Team
The Deanna Kory Team is dedicated to providing the highest level of service to all our clients. Together we focus on the needs of our clients, tailor an individual strategy to achieve their goals, and provide them with unsurpassed expertise in real estate marketing and negotiation. The Deanna Kory Team is consistently ranked among the top 3 teams in sales volume company-wide every year.
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4th & 5th Grade Mathematics
Fractions can be a challenging concept for 4th and 5th graders. One of the most difficult things about fractions is understanding the relationship between the numerator and denominator, rather than looking at the two numbers as separate pieces of information. Visualizing fractions is a key component to overall understanding. When students are learning math, there is a lot of mental processing happening. They need to be able to focus their attention, inhibit distractions, order tasks, recall information for their long-term memory, and integrate new concepts into an old schema. It is beneficial for students to give their working memories a break while learning new information, so as to better process it. This is where anchor charts come into play. Studies show that anchor charts and visual aids play a very important role in students being able to process new information.
At the beginning of our math lessons, students are asked to get their math journals to copy notes from the board. Writing new information down can help store these new skills in our working memories. This will further deepen our understanding of fractions.
After being introduced to a new concept, students then apply what they've learned. It's important for young learners to be given time to interact independently with the new concept in different ways.
Another way to ensure student understanding is to allow students to explore these new concepts through a variety of modes. One engaging and fun way to practice our new skills is by playing math games.
We also introduced students to fractions through song. Students listened to and learned a rap about "Simplifying Fractions." By catering to student interests and introducing the material in a way that is relatable, students are that much more likely to process and hold the information. All of this adds up to a better understanding of fractions, a mathematical concept with countless applications in everyday life that lays the groundwork for higher-order math courses in the future.
Ashley Kraft, MAT
4th/5th Grade Head Teacher


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Cyclist Jason White has received a two-year ban from UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) for refusing to take part in a drug test in September.
UKAD attempted to test White, who finished first in the British Cycling rankings in 2011, at the conclusion of the Richardsons-Trek Road Team Road Race on September 28, but the rider refused to provide a sample.
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White took part in a recorded interview with UKAD representatives in October, where he admitted he had refused, without compelling justification, to participate in the test.
He also admitted to committing an Anti-Doping Rule Violation contrary to Article 2.3.
Under Article 2.3, White will now be ineligible to compete for two years – the standard length for a first offence – starting on November 12, 2014.
>>> Four-year doping ban comes into force for 2015
UKAD confirmed to Cycling Weekly that the rider in question finished third in the September race, with White's BC registration number also correlating to that held by the authority.
White took third place in the UCI World Masters Championships Scratch Race, in the 40-44 age group, in October, while his only win in 2014 came at March's Wally Gimber Trophy.
Before White, the most recent British cyclist to receive a ban was former Team Sky rider Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, who was hit with a two-year suspension in September.
When CW tried to contact White's team earlier today, Clay Cross Road Team, the rider was not available for comment.


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Our main goal is to provide our customers with products they need, or just want, in ALL categories. We pride ourselves in being efficient and putting our customers first. Specialty items or not, we might just have what you are looking for. If you are ever in the area, come visit our store located in Old Town Spring, TX.


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thanks to Matthew Russell for permission to put up his essay, It was originally printed in Red & Green # 5 in 2005
Expressing his surprise that people ever consented to submit to their governments David Hume elegantly wrote, "Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular." (Russell, 1995, p632) Considering Hume was hardly a libertarian by the standards of the day, this is a revealing quote. It is recognition of the simple principle that in societies where obedience can no longer be maintained solely by the whip, containment of thought becomes the foundation of state.
While this truism has been basic to the most divergent of revolutionary thought, and employed for the most divergent of revolutionary purposes, it has been perhaps most usefully theorised by Antonio Gramsci through his concepts of hegemony and passive revolution. I think these concepts provide a useful theoretical context in which to analyse the development of contemporary Maori protest, a movement which started as a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the colonial state and the capitalist social/economic system, and was steered on a course that lead it far away from any such challenge. The first half of this article focuses on the development of Maori militancy in Aotearoa/New Zealand between 1965 and 1980, drawing primarily from Evan Poata-Smith's insightful analyses of the period. (1996, 2005) In the second section I will discuss the strategic modes of power employed by the Pakeha state to circumvent this threat. Finally, I will look at what these developments mean for the future of Maori self-determination. Firstly, a brief outline of terms is required.
Hegemony refers to the processes whereby certain social groups maintain social authority through the manufacturing of consent, that is, achieving a monopoly over the means of discourse circulation to such a degree that they are able to frame all competing definitions within their own discourse, so that subordinate groups, while not necessarily controlled, act within an ideological framework that is essentially invisible. By achieving a level of ideological saturation throughout all dimensions of social life the dominant discourse appears natural, "to lie outside history." (Simon, 1982,p49) Ideology is rendered inescapable and becomes a framework for making sense of the world such that its very taken-for-grantedness makes it a completely lived relation. A hegemonic order does not simply determine the content of ideas, but it does attempt to set the boundaries within which the ideas and conflicts of subordinate groups are articulated and resolved. When these boundaries are respected hegemony is strong; when they are challenged or transgressed there is a crisis of hegemony. In this way hegemony attempts to naturalise the prevailing structures of power, it serves as the foundation of their legitimacy. The burden falls on the critical analyst (read: everybody) to pierce this taken-for-granted veil of normalised forms, to expose the set of rules and conventions that are at any time 'given' and 'natural' for all of society.
A passive revolution is the path hegemonic groupings will usually follow when faced with what Gramsci termed an 'organic crisis': "immediate and fundamental political and economic problems requiring a reformation of state institutions and the dissemination of new ideologies, and characterised by incessant and persistent efforts which are made to conserve and defend the existing system." (Simon,1982,p39) This is a notion derived from conservative tradition going back to Burke who argued that society had to change in order to say the same, that sometimes superficial institutional and ideological reorganisation is required in order to preserve the essential features of a status-quo. (Adams,1998,p75) While a passive revolution is geared towards the re-establishment of hegemony, any required institutional or ideological modifications are usually made from above, through the agency of the state apparatuses, without relying on the active participation of the population. The key point with both passive revolutions and the concept of hegemony is that is that the consent they aim to create and sustain is not simply a false consciousness in the Marxian/Feuerbachian sense, but is built on real albeit limited concessions and negotiations - it is more concerned with the incorporative deflection of opposition, rather than simply ushering it out of existence with 'ruling class ideas'. Hence for a passive revolution to be successful, it depends on the flow of real resources within the hegemonic system, and they serve to encumber and deflect the development of a counter-hegemony.
In New Zealand state hegemony over white settlers has only been called into question in extreme circumstances, such as the periods of dire economic decline suffered during the depression era of the 20's and 30's, and the fiscal crises of the 70's and early 80's. As a whole however, it has been efficiently maintained through consent. By contrast, rule over Maori for much of the past 150 years has been exercised via coercion, primarily legal and economic, what Jane Kelsey has termed "legal imperialism". (Spoonly et al,1984, p20) During the late 1970's and early 1980's the state was confronted with a crisis of legitimacy brought on by the failures of the capitalist system, as well as the increasingly militant reassertion of Maori economic and political rights guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi. This forced the New Zealand government to engage in a passive revolution, redirecting the ethic of tino rangatiratanga into the legal, bureaucratic and political channels of state hegemony. In essence, this was the subjugation of a refractory social group through consensual means at a time when coercive methods had become ineffectual. In order to elucidate this process it will be necessary to look at the history of Maori protest.
The collapse of the post war boom and the emergence of the new left between the 1960s and 1970s saw an unprecedented resurgence of political engagement internationally, events that were closely paralleled in New Zealand. Maori protest groups formed part of the progressive social movements of the time and sought to broaden the fight against racism and Maori oppression. A close working relationship was formed between Pakeha anti-racist groups such as CARE and HART which galvanised around opposition to sporting relations with the South African apartheid regime. The dramatic increase in strike activity and class struggle provided an organisational base for Maori protest groups demonstrated in the emergence of Te Hokioi and the Maori Organisation on Human Rights (MOORH). Both organisations had solid trade union links, and both advocated an alliance between Maori and progressive sections of the Pakeha working class. For Te Hokioi, the fundamental cleavage in society was between labour and capital, and racism was seen as symptomatic of class domination and inherent contradictions within the capitalist system. Both Te Hokioi and MOORH embraced the Treaty as a means to Maori autonomy in a harmonious bicultural society, providing past injustices were redeemed. Both groups advocated a pan-racial struggle along class lines as the most effective strategy for resolving racism and Maori inequality. (Poata-Smith,1996, p101)
The momentum of these groups subsided gradually during the early 1970s as the drive of the movement shifted towards the brown power of Auckland protest groups. Organisations such as Nga Tamatoa and the Polynesian Panthers were heavily influenced by the black power philosophies of American revolutionaries Stokley Carmichael and Huey Newton, and forcefully emphasised the goal of Maori self-determination. The Polynesian Panthers saw the roots of Maori and Pacific Islander inequality in the oppressive social relations embodied in the capitalist system, and promoted a strategy of liberation based on complete overthrow of the capitalist system. "The revolution we openly rap about is one of total change. We see that many of our problems of oppression and racism are tools of this society's outlook based on capitalism; hence for total change one must change society altogether." (Poata-Smith,1996, 102) As these movements developed however a rift formed between those who saw the whole system as fundamentally flawed, and those who sought real change for Maori through existing political structures, who believed that providing the appropriate legal measures were implemented, New Zealand capitalism coupled with the parliamentary system could be cleansed of racism and provide the basis for Maori success. Nga Tamatoa was especially polarised between revolutionaries and reformists which lead to its eventual collapse in the late 70's. Nevertheless, as Poata-Smith writes, "Despite the divergent political and strategic philosophies, there was no room to mistake the object of protest and the enemy of Maori as anything other than a state which was seen as being both racist and capitalist." (1996, p105)
Although the reformist tendency was present throughout early Maori protest, the failures of the third Labour government to halt land alienation and secure Maori rights crystallised the movement's challenge to state hegemony. The 1980s land rights movement fuelled intense political activism and mass civil disobedience demonstrated in the land-occupations at Bastion Point and Raglan, mass protests such as the hikoi of 1984, and the systematic militant boycotts of Waitangi day celebrations. These direct action tactics brought together the diverse Pakeha left and generated wide public support, solidarity actively promoted by many Maori activists. As Te Roopu o te Matakite, the organising committee behind the 1975 Land March on parliament published, "We seek the support of workers and their organisations as the only viable bodies which have sympathy and understanding of the Maori people and their desires. The people who are oppressing the workers are the same who are exploiting Maori today." (Poata-Smith, 1996, p110) The high level of political intensity which characterised the period provided the environment for the emergence of a more radical leadership and a level of group solidarity that the Maori protest movement has yet to regain. By the early 1980s Maori had become a cohesive and powerful protest group that directly challenged the legitimacy of state, and could no longer be efficiently contained within the hegemonic system thorough purely coercive means.
The push towards Maori autonomy was only one part of a general legitimation crisis suffered by the colonial state between 1979 and 1985. The politicisation of gender and ethnic inequality, political turmoil, a rise in unemployment as well as fiscal instability and extreme economic immiseration brought on by the natural tendency in capitalism for the general rate of profit to fall seriously endangered the hegemony of the ruling political forces. In order to resolve its organic crisis the colonial government was forced to engage a passive revolution on two fronts. The first an economic policy based on radical neo-liberal economics and ideology known as Rogernomics. The second a race relations policy aimed at pacifying and containing Maori demands without disrupting the economic and political structures of the Pakeha state. The latter was principally achieved through the Waitangi Tribunal, and the official policy of biculturalism.
Kelsey describes the judicial initiatives of the fourth Labour government to ostensibly 'expand' the Waitangi Tribunal as "a shift from overt contempt to a much more subtle and pernicious form of subjugation, and the evolution of the Waitangi Tribunal as a panacea which helped stabilise, and later actively legitimate the Pakeha state." (Spoonley et al,1991, 108) The Tribunal was constructed as an ideological state apparatus concerned with shaping the nature of Maori demands and integrating a recalcitrant social group into the hegemonic system. This was carried out through a judicial rewriting of the Treaty which eschewed the contradictions between the Maori and English versions of the texts, and the dilemma of applying rules of Treaty interpretation which would give primacy to the Maori text, and hence tino rangatiratanga. The court's rewriting of the Treaty via the principles of the Treaty gave precedence to the colonial version and dictated the Tribunal's mode of operation. This was essentially a redefinition of the government's obligations under the Treaty to make them compatible with the absolute authority of parliament to make laws and policy, including corporatisation. Thereby, "The Tribunal was a victory for all parties it had provided sufficient relief to satisfy the specific and limited demands of the Maori litigants, whilst reinforcing the legitimacy of the state." (Kelsey,1991, p111)
The Tribunal was soon revealed to be a toothless tiger, limited to making recommendations on particular claims on which the government was under no obligation to act. While the Tribunal has served a positive function, protecting Maori rights in specific areas, (mostly through the dedication of under-funded and under- resourced personnel) it has been easily marginalized in times of political turbulence and Pakeha reaction and cynically lionized in periods of cultural conflict. Its subordinate position has been made clear by the Court of Appeal, "However persuasive its research, findings and recommendations may be, they do not approach those of the character of a court or of judicial decisions. While some of its insights are valuable, and while they cannot bind us some of them deserve attention for their careful analysis of the Treaty and its principles." (Walker,1987,p76) Furthermore, the processes by which commercially restructured iwi authorities were able to position themselves as the principle Maori authorities in negotiating the parameters of the Treaty settlement framework meant that by the early 1990s, those representing tribal corporations and Maori business interests were able to exert a powerful influence over the formation and framework for settling historical injustices. (Poata-Smith, 2004, p74) Thus the Tribunal can be described as having 4 main functions: (1) a legitimation and consolidation of colonial legislative and state hegemony, (2) a safety valve for more radical Maori demands, (3) circumvention of the Maori version of the Treaty, (4) channelling Treaty resource reallocation back into the capitalist system.
The second dimension of Labour's passive revolution was the doctrine of biculturalism. In theory this was framed as a final break with the colonial ideology of assimilation to a society based on the recognition and celebration of ethnic diversity. In practise, biculturalism aims at recasting images of nationality and the nation state in terms of unity through diversity, rather than a system of domination and subordination, and exclusion and inclusion. Biculturalism has a specific functionality within societies based on ethnic domination; just as liberalism and egalitarianism have a specific functionality in societies based on class domination. As Pearson has written, "in their various cross-national forms, both multiculturalism and biculturalism have been shown to consistently reify culture to the detriment of class and race such that these divisions within society are simply glossed over by elites, majority or minority, who are the main beneficiaries of ethnic and class hierarchies." In other words, biculturalism in class or ethnically stratified society is ideological in the sense it represents an individual's imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence.
In New Zealand biculturalism was (and is) characterised by the large-scale appropriation of Maori personnel, Maori models of organisation and Maori social practices and cultural symbolism and their incorporation into the institutions of state. The hegemonic system easily accommodated ethnic rhetoric, giving the illusion of partnership as enshrined by the judicial rewriting of the Treaty and thereby marginalizing more radical demands. While no significant gains were made towards rectifying the peripheral position the majority of Maori occupy in New Zealand society, the policy of biculturalism did result in an expansion of opportunities for middle class professional Maori within the hegemonic apparatus. Indeed, Labour actively pursued a strategy of containment, co-opting key members of the protest movement within the institutions of state, forcing many Maori elite to walk the razors edge between pushing the movement forward and maintaining the status-quo. For Poata-Smith, "The prestige and wealth that went with such privileged positions within the settlement process meant that Maori leaders became increasingly removed from the concerns and vitality of the flax-roots Maori struggle." (1996, p109) The result of such divisive tactics was demonstrated in the 1994 Sealord deal where the National government embarked on a series of clandestine negotiations with select Maori elite for a full and final settlement of fishery claims under the Treaty. The undemocratic nature of these negotiations fuelled intense anger and an upsurge of Maori protest, pointing to the fact that no matter how successful a passive revolution may be in the short-term, it can only ever be a temporary respite.
The massive state dissemination of bicultural ideology provided the environment for a dramatic shift in Maori protest and the emergence of 'cultural nationalism', a political strategy also concerned with the reification of Maori culture. This was a widespread ideology throughout the 1980s and 1990s and was endorsed by affluent right wing ideologues such as Donna Awatere who argued that all social disjunctions in New Zealand occurred within a common cultural matrix. Stratified society was said to reflect certain inherent Pakeha cultural characteristics such as materialism, competitiveness, and destructive self-interest, which had undermined traditional Maori egalitarian values. Maori culture was said to possess an intrinsic integrity that had been systematically debased since colonisation. The solution was an immersion in Maoritanga, or Maori identity as a way to combat social alienation.
This was essentially a reactionary ideology that characterised Pakeha as homogeneous and monolithic cultural blob, all of whom apparently confronted Maori in a universally antagonistic manner. (Poata-Smith, 1996, 2005) Perhaps more dangerous, cultural nationalism, as reified binarism, served to obscure the class differences and conflicting class interests within Maori society itself. Such an approach that aims at harnessing the fear of the Other, stabbing the master with their own knife, necessarily negates all the all the messy, oppositional, dynamic, ceaselessly turbulent ensembles of discourses that constitute any culture, elements best left undiscerned by tendentious ideologues who are content to view the Other through the binary gaze, as an object of fear and hostility. While ethnic identity and cultural self-determination should be the start and end point of any movement attempting to subvert colonial hegemony, an introverted and ideological focus on identity alone does not pose a threat to the underlying social relations of capitalism, and secures the continuation of the primal sociological causes behind ethnic hierarchy and racism. Strategically, such an approach encumbers the necessity of building alliances with other progressive social movements aimed at the change or transformation of society. The pervasiveness of cultural nationalism has been crucial to the longevity of the passive revolution and the containment of tino rangitiratanga.
In order for a non-reductionist reading of Gramsci it is necessary to note what sets him apart from classical Marxism, from which he takes his pedigree. Gramsci has, and will always remain relevant precisely because he was a Marxist neither in the positivist, scientific, dogmatic, orthodox or religious sense, and explicitly set his face against the economic reductionism of the 'classic' base-superstructure model canonised at the time of the Second International. For Gramsci, there is never a single, coherent unified 'dominant ideology' that radiates out from above and incorporates everything. His concept of hegemony is a 'moving equilibrium' in which ideology is an uneven and differentiated terrain of varied, competing and clashing discursive currents, what is best described as an ideological ensemble or a discursive formation. Moreover, hegemony does not simply mirror the class structure of society, nor can hegemony be directly reduced to its economic content or function. Because hegemony relies on the winning of consent it has a multi-arena, multi-dimensional character - so while we may perceive its most concentrated and lurid form within the state and state apparatuses, it cannot be said in any meaningful way to originate from within and radiate out from the state. The exercise of the kind of power that requires consent only has meaning as a power relation - it requires active participation.
Gramsci went to great pains in stressing the diversification of social antagonism, and the dispersal of power throughout society. Consent is maintained through allowing the greatest level of articulation between the will-to-power of subordinate groups and the will-to-power of the dominant social alliances, the 'historic block'. Unless hegemony is to collapse into a purely coercive class-domination model, there must be a flow of real resources and real compromise within the hegemonic system, and these must be substantial enough to assuage the will-to-power of a significant proportion of the masses, without debasing the fundamental political and economic foundations of the dominant hegemonic groupings. Thus a historic bloc, if it is to maintain a position of hegemonic supremacy, depends on articulating its own power agendas with, in Foucaultian terms, the 'capillary' power at the level of organic society i.e.; schooling, the family, churches, cultural and economic organisations, but most importantly the so-called private sphere; gender, sexual relations, ethnic identities and so-forth. These connective hegemonic mechanisms between civil society and the historic bloc have both a material and an ideological dimension. In regards to the latter, Gramsci distinguished between two 'floors' of ideology, 'philosophy' and 'common sense'. Ideology depends on a solid, coherent philosophical elaboration, but in order to enter into and influence the directions of social interaction, it must ground itself in the everyday, practical and lived consciousness of the population - common-sense. Common sense is not wholly organic, nor is it wholly a reducible to the agencies of hegemonic dissemination or the material relations of capitalist society. Rather, as Hall writes, "Common sense is usually disjointed and episodic, fragmentary and contradictory. Into it the traces and stratified deposits of more coherent philosophical systems have sedimented over time without leaving any clear inventory. It represents itself as the traditional wisdom of the ages, but in fact, is deeply a product of history." (1996, p431) Common sense is important because it is the arena in which the lived consciousness of the masses is formed, it is the 'taken-for-granted' terrain on which all political and social ideologies must compete for articulation. Thus, when those social groups who are in a position of political and economic supremacy wish to pursue their agendas within the framework of consent, they are forced to enter into a kind of dialectic with these structures of popular thought. The Western state can never be simply an administrative and coercive apparatus, it is the point from which hegemony over society is ultimately exercised and condensed, though it is far from the only place where hegemony is constructed and sustained.
Thus we can see how hegemony in New Zealand incessantly seeks to articulate itself with capillary level power. One such development evident since 1984 has been the way in which the state has relied on representatives of iwi, hapu and urban Maori communities to sell the idea of Maori capitalist development and self-advancement. (Rata, 2000) This strategy has been effective since it appealed to the material interests of those Maori linked to the Pakeha bourgeoisie and has found no forceful opposition from a movement that no longer specifically links capitalism with ongoing Maori oppression. Indeed, the fourth Labour government introduced legislation that allowed iwi to enter into privileged arrangements with government and the private sector on the condition that they restructured themselves along the dictates of corporate organization. After 1990, National governments increasingly recognised restructured 'neo-traditionalist' corporate entities as the orthodox representative bodies for receiving and managing the assets that would flow from compensation deals with the Crown. For Elizabeth Rata, "the appropriation of these traditionalist ideologies serve to present these developments as reviving traditional, non-exploitative, democratic, communal relations of production within iwi and hapu while concealing the underlying exploitative character of tribal capitalism." (2000, p102) The cultures surrounding 'the corporate warrior' and 'tribal corporatism', as with the current Clark government's 'culturally sensitive' initiatives on Maori education, encouraging the 'pursuit of mana' through Pakeha educational and employment institutions are all lucid examples of hegemony working itself through capillary terrain.
Similarly, today it seems likely that the anger and action generated by Labour's latest attempt to curtail Treaty property rights will be redirected and contained within the hegemonic system via an easily marginalized, politically ambiguous, and seemingly culturally centred Maori Party potentially dominated by elite interests. 1 While the Party has been ambivalent and deflective in outlining any clear policy on anything, Willie Jackson made it clear right at the start that tino rangatiratanga will not be on the agenda for the new party, Taraiana Turia quickly shied away from any suggestions of forming a separate Maori parliament, and Pita Sharples has been consistent in touting 'race based funding' as the best way to combat Maori inequality, rather than the fair and equitable redistribution of productive economic resources which is a fundamental Maori right as guaranteed under the Treaty, and the bulwark of Maori economic disadvantage. Certainly, considering the current climate of Pakeha reaction, and the lack of alternative avenues for struggle, the Maori Party hardly needs policy. Both the Party's unwillingness to situate themselves politically and the stated possibility of coalition with National are suspect in the extreme - astounding in light of Brash's recent spectacular attempts to cast Maori as deviant and use the subordination of an entire ethnic group as a vehicle for his own political aspirations. Asserting her support of the corporate iwi, Turia remarked in a recent Listener interview, "In reality, if you look at the history of the National Party, because of their free-market, private enterprise philosophy, they have actually allowed Maori people to participate and take back some control". (Black, 2005, p16) The utter devastation wrought on Maori communities by neo-liberalism is a non-issue, apparently. The Maori Party is quickly and clearly demonstrating the bankruptcy of the colonial state in achieving any real change for Maori, and its commitment to following the same orthodox and fruitless methods of parliamentary reformism that have largely dominated Maori politics for the past 20 years.
Most importantly however, hegemony in New Zealand has its foundations of legitimacy most firmly embedded in the capillary level will-to-power of the Pakeha majority, and it is this group that is responsible in the last instance for maintenance of hegemony. Pakeha cultural identity has been intimately formed around the cultures of colonial domination, and our ethnicity (if such a thing can be said to exist) draws most of its paltry substance from these very colonial binaries and ethnic hierarchies that secure Maori subordination. Pakeha, as the ruling ethnic group, does not recognise its culture as an ethnic one, but a national and hegemonic one, one that is so firmly established - through political and legal institutions; schools the media etc - as to be common sense, to exist beyond both history and consciousness. Our ethnicity, and its privileged position of a national one is of course deeply a part of history, and only the end-product of the systematic violence employed in the subjugation of another ethnic group. As Bell rightly stresses, "This conflation of ethnicity and nationality results in a primary identification with the nation on the part of many white New Zealanders in a way which helps to maintain their control over the organization of social life. Our way of doing things, our structures, our aims are normal and common sense. Conversely, those of others are strange and not to be countenanced in the organization of politics, work etc, but to be reserved for picturesque display and consumption in leisure, tourism, or wherever else exoticism may be required". (1996, p149) Pakeha ethnicity, as a hegemonic ethnicity, only has meaning contrasted to Maori marginalisation, and thus any transgression of Maori power onto Pakeha hegemony - whether it is simply an attempt to remind us of the historical facticity of our violently achieved hegemonic position, or a more substantial move to restructure our institutions of power along non-European lines - are perceived as a most personal threat that must be eliminated, the degree of transgression determining the degree of vehemence employed in its elimination. This is the will-to-power distilled: predictability, calculability, efficiency and control. The yearning to maintain these discursive fortifications of predicability; the power to mark, assign and classify reflects the most personal desire to exercise the greatest possible measure of control over one's social reality. Just how reliant Pakeha cultural identity is on these ethnic hierarchies has been demonstrated in depressingly clear terms over the past 13 months.
In concluding, while this essay, in the limited space I have here, has focused primarily on the economic and material factors which secure Maori subordination, this is certainly not to say these factors have any kind of determining character in perpetuating ethnic inequality and racism, or that a simple change of the relations of economic production will somehow correspond to a withering of racism within New Zealand society. While it is important to theorise on the strategies of hegemony that the bodies of centralised social power will employ so that we can predict on future patterns of reaction these structures may follow and thereby impede and subvert them, it is also important to recognise the limits of such an analysis. Any overriding 'classist' approach that seeks to prioritise economic factors over cultural factors in the perpetuation of ethnic hierarchies is of scant theoretical value. Racism, as with sexism, are not creations of the capitalists, and as shown here, the functionality of hegemony may be to protect the mastery certain social groups hold over the major means of economic production, but the consent on which this mastery is ultimately founded is explicitly cultural. For Gramsci, while common sense cultures can be influenced, manipulated, sustained, suppressed, augmented and altered via state power, they are by no means created by this power. The calls for a 'return to class', if this is taken to mean a corresponding retreat from culture - which appears to be currently fashionable within the discourse of the New Zealand left - seems to be a matter of false dichotomies and false solutions. An adequate understanding of how power operates within mature-capitalism reveals the needlessness of any such prioritisation, or any such separation at all.
Similarly, the corresponding leftist condemnation of Maori 'identity politics' is in need of discussion, since identity politics are the most powerful of all revolutionary politics, and do not deserve to be condemned. I would say any kind of identity politics separated from the transformation of society isn't real identity politics, it would be more accurately termed 'image politics' - in Debord's words, "the simultaneous negation of life and affirmation of appearance". (1994, p13) Because Pakeha hegemony cannot subsume real ethnic identity, it relies instead on the appearance of ethnic identity. Within the discursive circumscriptions of hegemony Maori identity is only permitted so long as it reaffirms the illusion of equality and obscures the reality of inequality. Whether it takes the form of a commodity as in the tourism industry, an icon of nationalism as with the haka or the Anzac day celebrations, Te Reo Maori in state subsidised classrooms, Maoritanga in Te Papa, taonga outside the Beehive or the specious biculturalism of government institutions concerned with the biggest confiscation of Maori land in over a century; Maori identity, at one time both reified and enshrined by the very establishment it once organised itself against is stripped of is subversive potentiality and serves as an affirmation, rather than a refutation of the status-quo. Biculturalism did not liberate but liberize Maori identity. In this way hegemony attempts to reduce Maori identity to a social role, a ticket issued by Pakeha society to be bought and stamped in return for initiation into Pakeha society. The role locates one in a representational hierarchy - whether at the top, bottom or middle, but never outside the hierarchy. In this sense, the desire for real identity, identity free from the circumscriptions of hegemony, must necessarily imply a way of living; relative cultural autonomy, ownership of rightful productive resources, self-determination in structuring modes of social organization, self-governance, equality - all goals of the flax-roots radicalism of the 60's and 70's. Identity should rightly be both the means and the end of revolutionary struggle.
So in sum the passive revolution has and continues to be successful to the degree in which it has diffused the elements of Maori protest which directly challenged the legitimacy of colonial legislative, political and economic hegemony and has succeeded in maintaining the status-quo through superficial institutional reorganisation. As stated above, a passive revolution is only a temporary respite, and we have seen a periodic resurgence of Maori protest demonstrated in opposition to the Sealord deal, the fiscal envelope proposal and Labour's foreshore and seabed legislation. However, the movement is yet to regain the intensity, depth and revolutionary ethic which characterised early Maori protest. The circumscription of Maori identity, as with economic inequality and group stratification are at the heart of New Zealand social organization, and will not be changed through the legislative and political institutions of the Pakeha state. It's true that a few drops of blood have been squeezed out of these particular stones, but this was overwhelmingly a result of the early protest movement, not the parliamentary diversion. It is my argument that a return to militancy will be required if ethnic equality in New Zealand is to become anything more that a seductive illusion, a militancy that perceives in the desire to destroy ethnic hierarchy the necessity of the transformation of society in total. History shows us that anything less is mere palliative.
Bell, A. (1996) "'We're all just New Zealanders': A Survey of Pakeha Identity Politics" in P. Spoonly, C. Macpherson & D. Pearson (eds.) Nga Patai: Racism and Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.
Black, J. (2005) "Let Us Be Our Own Solution" in The New Zealand Listener, VOL 198 NO 3391, May 7-13 2005,
Debord, G. (1995) The Society of the Spectacle, New York: Zone Books
Forgacs, D. (1988) A Gramsci Reader, London: Lawrence and Wishhart.
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge : Selected Interviews and Writings, 1972-1977, Brighton, Sussex : Harvester Press
Hall, S. (1996) Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, London: Routledge.
Kelsey, J. (1984) Legal Imperialism and the Colonisation of Aotearoa in P. Spoonley, C. Macpherson, Pearson, D. & Sedgwick, C. (eds.) Tauiwi: Racism and Ethnicity in New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dumore Press.
Kelsey, J. (1991) Treaty Justice in the 1980s in P. Spoonley, D. Pearson & C. Macpherson (eds.) Nga Take: Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.
Pearson, D. & Sedgwick, C. (eds.) Tauiwi: Racism and Ethnicity in New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dumore Press.
Pearson, D. (1991) "Biculturalism and Multiculturalism in Comparative Perspective" in P. Spoonley, D. Pearson & C. Macpherson (eds.) Nga Take: Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.
Pearson, D. (1990) A Dream Deferred: The Origins of Ethnic Conflict in New Zealand, Wellington: Allen and Unwin.
Pearson, D. & Sissons, J. (1997) "Pakeha and Never Pakeha" in Sites, 35: 64-80.
Poata-Smith. (2005) "Ka Tika A Muri, Ka Tika A Mua?" in Tauiwi: Racism and Ethnicity in New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dumore Press.
Poata-Smith, E. (1996) He Pokeke Uenuku i Tu Ai: "The Evolution of Contemporary Maori Protest" in P. Spoonly, C. Macpherson & D. Pearson (eds.) Nga Patai: Racism and Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.
P. Spoonly, C. Macpherson & D. Pearson (eds.) (1996) Nga Patai: Racism and Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.
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Walker, R. (1987) Nga Tau Tohetohe: Years of Anger, Auckland: Penguin Books


text:
My husband and I met a consecrated virgin last week. Later he commented to me, "She is full of light," and then added: "Why didn't I find a girl like that when I was young?" I broke out laughing. But he did not.
"Honey," I nudged him with a helpful tip toward his improvement, "You met me, remember?"
Only weeks earlier at a family dinner, his 85-year-old father barked aloud: "Why did I have to stay married to the same woman all these years? How come I couldn't have a bunch of marriages like other people until I found the perfect one?" My dear mother-in-law paid him no heed.
I wonder: Is this premeditated behavior? Is there a worn, tattered book – Beastly Things Men Say – secretly circulating among the men in my family? My mother-in-law once cautioned: "Ignore him. God didn't give him sensitivity or kindness or empathy or consideration or thoughtfulness… " I don't know where she stopped. But, like her, I have a growing list of attributes that God forgot to give my husband Bill.
I know I am not alone. My girlfriends have reported the following remarks from their men:
"You did all this to make me better and now I have to be holy, too?" "You wanted the children, so why do you complain about them so much?" "The guys were discussing why Jack's wife left him, and we all agreed, it's menopause." "Dear, I don't know why you get scared when I go 80 mph – why don't you try an antidepressant?" "I thought you would like to go to the motorcycle races for Mother's Day."
Do these comments make sense within the male brain? Could these men possibly think they are being tender, making interesting conversation?
Recently, I've detected a worrisome lack of progress in our efforts to improve them. I should not be surprised; my own husband's brain often seems limited in range. He has seven permanent topics of public interest: video equipment, cars, fitness, real estate, baseball, politics, and almonds. In these categories, he has astounding, detailed knowledge. We receive at least one monthly magazine related to each area, except almonds. But his new friend Jim works as national sales manager for Blue Diamond Almonds – that's even better.
It's hard not to be somewhat disappointed and wonder where I am going wrong. Bill thwarts my efforts to improve him. When I complain that he has arrived late, he says, "You didn't tell me what time I had to be there." I whip out a hard copy of the e-mail I sent him. Then, he says, "I was held up in traffic." I speed dial his office manager who yelps: "Boy, was he late today or what?" I look intently into Bill's lying brown eyes and he says, "Stop nagging me."
Why, I grieve, why can't he be more like me?
Frankly, it's very hard not be disappointed, chronically disappointed, with his resistance to his own betterment. I can stew for days, charting fresh, stealth approaches to improving him. But my failures choke me with frustration, and I become gloomy and pessimistic…
. . . until he dazzles me. It's always a surprise. Once, he sent a dozen red roses with a note, "I don't deserve a wonderful wife like you." He gave me an effusive talking Mr. Wonderful doll that "can say the things to you I can't say." One day in Atlanta, I received this voicemail: "Hi, honey. I want you to know how much I love the life we lead together." (I resaved that message until it disappeared one day.)
Then I notice he does amazing things I cannot do; he is who I cannot be. He concentrates like a brain surgeon as his buddy describes a whistle in his woofer and tweeter. He asks detailed questions as they follow a maze of wires between socket and sound. They guffaw aloud, exclaim "There's the little bugger," and clap each other on the back.
Later, Bill roars through the house chasing our two sons in a game I do not comprehend – a game that provokes such laughter, such bellowing joy, that I feel pleasingly puzzled as I dive for tipped lamps and straighten furniture thrown back in their wake. The boys fall exhausted into his arms, a pile of Campbell men that makes me cross my arms and hum happily.
Last week, this husband of mine gathered us for a family photo for his re-election brochure – a position on the San Francisco Republican Central Committee. Never mind that there are only 72 voting Republicans in San Francisco; he focuses his energy like he is leading an international movement, making heard a voice that the liberal urban mass would deride and silence. One day, after working the Republican table at a local street fair, he mentioned in passing that an angry, bearded young man had swept their literature to the ground and spit upon them. To my worried look, he answered with a grin, "Don't worry about lame jerks, honey."
In these moments, I forget that the man disappoints me, and I become lightheaded. "That," I whisper proudly, "is my husband."
Later, as his flaws resurface, I grow confused. How does he do this, showing such skill, such prowess, yet stubbornly persisting in his defects? Where's the normal learning curve, the improvement? Why won't he listen to me?
"Silly you," I tell myself, drying off tears after Bill has announced he's going four-wheeling with someone named Maniac on our anniversary. "We'll just celebrate later in the week, dear. No big deal," he said off-handedly.
"Silly you," I tell myself as I contemplate the original design of our marriage, our attempt at unity. Here's what God commanded: "Your yearning shall be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you." This was the world's first formula for disappointment. My husband alone proves the creation story. The tireless longing of my heart provides the soundtrack.
Yet here we are, doing what we were designed to do, some days better than others. Together we are made in the image of God. Divided and fallen, ours is the struggle to find that image, day upon day. Alone, our souls know their incompleteness. Together, through the disappointment and joy, we live our hope, our purpose. Somehow, it's comforting to know that it's going according to plan.
Topics: Marriage