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Baby hipsters and BFFs Kaylee Vega and Madi Spadaro, both 13 and from Redondo Beach, are navigating the South Bay Galleria in Torrance with shark-like aggression. They've been saving pocket money all summer, and now, just weeks before school starts at the end of August, they're hitting the mall, determined to put together the most fabulous possible wardrobe for fall 2012. After all, no one wants to start the new semester looking "awkward" (Vega and Spadaro's word du jour).
All across Southern California teens have been making the same pilgrimmage this month. Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District went back to class on Tuesday; other districts are rolling out their start dates over the next three weeks or so. For parents, it may be all about finding functional gear at a reasonable price. For teens, it's about fashion and fun. We're tagging along with Vega and Spadaro on a recent Saturday to get some insight into what's cool enough for school this year.
They skid to a halt by a stand selling cell phone cases. Some look like cartoon puppies, others mimic 1980s cassette tapes, more are covered with Murakami-esque polka dots. "One of my friends had a completely mirrored phone case," says Vega, contemplating the ultra-bedazzled iPhone cases. Directly opposite is an Icing by Claire's Accessories store, selling bags, jewelry and other accessories. They wander inside. "Icing is more teenage than Claire's is," explains Vega, while Spadaro holds a pair of big, dangly, faux-crystal earrings to her ear. At $12.99, they're not especially cheap for a 13-year-old. "It's OK, I have a million gift cards for this place," Spadaro says.
Next door is Hot Topic, a chain of pop-culture inspired boutiques (more than 600 across the nation) geared specifically towards fashion rebels and underground music fans, although more laid-back kids often like to stop in for accessories. Vega and Spadaro head straight for the rubber bracelet display, oohing and aahing over one that has "BESTIES" printed on it in capital letters. Turmoil ensues when they spot a unicorn backpack, whose attached hood has a unicorn's horn projecting from it. More squeals when they spot the black and white backpack that mimics a skunk. Squeals explode into piercing screams when Kaylee's half sister Peyton Bishop surprises them in the store. Bishop's mom and dad are in the food hall, and she convinced them to let her shop with Vega and Spadaro for a half hour or so.
Bishop, a 5-foot-9 15-year-old who dreams of becoming a model, freezes — she's just spotted something major. "Oh my god Pikachu!" A huge Pokémon fan, she sprints over to the Pikachu backpacks. "This is like Peyton's favorite store," explains Spadaro. She and Vega think Hot Topic is OK, but they're bigger fans of the more chilled out fashions at PacSun and Tilly's. Tilly's is Spadaro's favorite store, selling looks by Vans, Volcom and other major surfwear and skatewear brands. "They have all the latest stuff, and the most amazing backpacks," says Spadaro. Vega's spiritual home, on the other hand, is PacSun, the Anaheim-based clothing brand with more than 800 stores in the U.S., selling looks by skate, surf and streetwear labels as well as its own fashion-forward designs. "I'm in love with PacSun," Vega says. "Its all beachy stuff…the one in Redondo Beach is the coolest." As far as their fashions go, all three girls are SoCal through and through, although PacSun has a slightly sunnier vibe than Tilly's, which is 100% skater cool, with Hot Topic blending all three with a little Black Sabbath metal chic thrown in for good measure.
Regardless of whether you're a PacSun beach hipster, a Tilly's skater girl or a Hot Topic heavy metal chick, there are some things that transcend all teen fashion borders for back to school this year — like Adventure Time. An animated series set in the "Land of Ooo," Adventure Time features characters such as the "Everything Burrito," an extremely large tortilla filled with almost everything that is food. A T-shirt bearing the likeness of the Everything Burrito causes near hysteria in all three teens. Likewise, mustaches are still very hot for back to school — Spadaro likes the mustache mood rings at Hot Topic in particular. Also hot are furry animal hats with ears, like the ones from Spirit Hoods. "You can wear them in school, just not in class," Spadaro explains. Detachable furry animal tails are in. "Everyone wears tails," says Bishop, clipping one (priced $14) to the back of her jeans. Anything Domo, a brown monster who is the official mascot of Japan's NHK TV station, works for back to school. "Domo is like the biggest thing you need to get," says Spadaro. "Domo everything. Domo in general." Likewise with suspenders. "I need suspenders or I will die," announces Vega, and the others agree. All three girls buy a pair, Vega in checker-print, Spadaro in teal and Bishop with little Batman logos.
But what about back to school fashion fails? Tutus are out, ribboned corsets are a "hell no" ("I wore those in fifth grade," says Peyton), and there's continuing controversy about skulls. Spadaro thinks skulls are super awkward, and Vega agrees ("they scare me.") But Bishop is a fan. "I'm an oddball," she explains. "I don't want to blend in with the everyday crowd." The rift between the girls is heightened when Vega and Spadaro spot a series of One Direction tees at the back of the store. One Direction, in case you haven't heard, is pretty much the biggest boy band in the world right now, kind of like five British-Irish Justin Biebers singing about teen romance. Bishop could care less. "I don't like One Direction, I like heavy metal," she shrugs. "And Justin Bieber can go die in a hole."
Hot Topic fully mined, the girls head across the way to Tilly's, where they are met by walls upon walls of Jansport backpacks. Spadaro loves the tie-dye and neon print bags; Vega's into the ethnic prints, while Peyton makes a beeline for the "Stach Straws," drinking straws with mustaches attached at the top. She gets a kick out of the longboard skateboards on display too. "Longboards are the perfect paradise of surfing on the ground," she coos. Vega and Spadaro browse the selection of Soda shoes — "they're like Toms but way less expensive" — before hopping back across the way to Spencer's, which sells Pikachu and Domo gear alongside caps and tees emblazoned with distinctly R-Rated frathouse type sentiments. "I feel really awkward in here," says Vega. "Can we leave please, before I am scarred?"
Vega wants to visit PacSun, but is horrified to lean that the SouthBay Galleria no longer has one. A few days later we send her photos of some of PacSun's latest back to school fashions, a pair of flower print skinny jeans, an ethnic print black and cream sweater, and some distressed skinny jeans in black. Vega's response, sent via text message, is immediate and confident. "i loved the flower pants they're my fave i wouldnt wear the sweater only bcz it lacks awesome colors but its definity cute i luve the ethnic print its totally in so is floral print," she wrote. With just days left before school starts, another visit to the mall, she says, may be in order.


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"Barack Obama: The Story"
A new biography explores President Obama's past. We talk with David Maraniss about his latest book, Barack Obama: The Story, on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm. Read an excerpt from the book below.
Maraniss will be at the Harold Washington Library at 400 S. State St. for a book signing and reading on July 11 at 6:00 pm. View a schedule of more of Maraniss' appearances.
On a whitewashed ledge at Punahou School bathed in Honolulu sunshine, we sat and talked about the past, revisiting the days when Alan Lum and his friend Barry were teammates on Hawaii's state championship basketball team. Then we got up and took a short walk. We left the athletic center and strolled past the prep school's outdoor pool, constructed after their days there in the late 1970s, and along the edge of a vast green playing field, before climbing the broad steps leading up to the Dole cafeteria. Lum turned left on the Ianai and cast his eyes downward. Where was it, again? He walked farther toward a set of outdoor benches, then stopped and brushed the pavement with his shoe, cleaning away the daily soot. There it was, etched in block letters decades ago by a stick or index finger before the concrete had set: OBAMA.
No historical marker designated the site. Generations of students had walked over and around it without taking notice of the name below their feet. For the first twenty-five years or so after it was written, the name would have provoked little interest in any case. Just one name among multitudes, and locals might have assumed Obama was Asian American; the syllables had a familiar Japanese cadence. The testament of a teenage boy, and he didn't even write it himself. The story goes that one of his buddies scratched his name there to get him in trouble. But it had the same meaning nonetheless: A name etched in concrete, like Kilroy was here carved into rock, is an expression of time and history and fleeting existence. Looking down, I could only think: That could have been the only mark he left.
One April morning in Topeka, the capital of Kansas, my wife and I went searching for an address in the eleven-hundred block of Sixth Avenue. Long ago there had been an auto garage there—the Palace, it was called—and a drugstore next door. In the intervening decades, as often happens, addresses had changed and seemed two or four off from what they had been in the 1920s. The drugstore had vanished. A wide driveway now opened from the avenue into a few parking spaces in front of a nondescript building. A sign said it was an auto repair shop, an unwitting reiteration of what once had been. In front, a single-room office had gone up in recent decades, sparsely furnished with desk, telephone, and shelves of manuals, but farther into the interior was the old garage, with a high-ceilinged work area where one could envision the scene from more than eighty years earlier: a mechanic in overalls sweating under the hood of a Studebaker Big Six. Windows had been bricked up, and most of the old tin ceiling had been covered, but the place seemed to trap the dust and suffocating air of the past.
The shop manager was obliging and let us look around. As we stood in the dingy garage, staring up at the ceiling, I asked whether he knew the building's history. It had undergone many transformations over the years, he said. There had been a pharmacy attached to it once, and next to the pharmacy was an apartment building. According to legend, the landlord had built a secret passageway from the shop to the back door of one of the apartments, where his mistress awaited for illicit trysts. Quite a story, but there was another bit of history about which the present-day tenants knew nothing. It was in that very garage that Barack Obama's great-grandmother Ruth Armour Dunham took her own life on a chilly Thanksgiving night, setting off a chain of events that changed the course of American history.
Out in the western reaches of Kenya, a harrowing seven-hour drive from the capital city of Nairobi, in the region hugging the uppermost gulf of Lake Victoria, I encountered a tale of two villages. The first village was Nyang'oma Kogelo, in the brushland northwest of the major city out there, Kisumu. That is where a woman known as Mama Sarah lived. She had become a celebrity in Kenya as the step-grandmother of Obama and a figure in his best-selling memoir. A trip to her compound now was like visiting royalty. The entrance was gated. Vendors sold tourist trinkets at tables just inside the grounds. She was connected to the outside world by giant satellite dishes, and protected by armed guards. There were lists to be checked, names to be vetted, rules to be imposed, factotums to accommodate. "Mr. David… David," said one young relative during his inquisition in the shade of a mango tree, stopping to assess my name and worthiness. "Is that Christian or Jew?" "Both," I responded. All to see a woman who had no blood relationship to the famous American and was, as one Kenyan put it, nothing more than a historical accident.
The second village was Oyugis. It was around the gulf, down and to the east, a bumpy journey into the hills of southern Nyanza. An old toothless woman named Auma Magak lived there with several relatives, including her son, Razik. In her seventies, Auma was a recovering alcoholic who scratched out a living by selling charcoal from a shack by the side of the road. It was Auma, in her isolation and anonymity, who had the strongest link to the Kenya side of the Obama story. She was the younger sister of Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the president's father, and in a tribal culture where polygamy was routine, her bloodlines were the most direct because she and Obama Sr. had the same mother and father. Her compound was not on the tourist maps. It was surrounded by high euphorbia bushes, but no guards checked visitor lists and there were no vendors selling trinkets. Yet step inside her hut, into the darkened stillness, and there were the testaments on her mud walls: four framed photographs of President Obama with his wife and two daughters, along with two posters and a calendar from his most recent visit as a U.S. senator. And she and Razik had stories. She talked about how her mother ran away from a brutal husband and how the little children, including Obama Sr., ran after her. Razik recalled the time in the late 1980s when his American cousin came to visit and they went fishing for Nile perch in the great lake and drank chang'aa, a potent gin distilled from fermented corn, and smoked weed together.
In Jakarta, in the midmorning humidity of early September, our taksi driver wended through the traffic-clogged roadways of Indonesia's booming capital city until we came to the corner of Dr. Supomo and Haji Ramli Streets, where he turned left and let us out at the entrance to the Menteng Dalam neighborhood, or kampung. To the right, we looked down at a swampy urban culvert strewn with trash. Straight ahead, up a gentle slope, ran the opening stretch of Haji Ramli, a row of storefronts at first, then zigging and zagging left-right-left up to the small whitewashed house on a corner where Obama had lived forty-plus years earlier, when he was six, seven, and eight years old. He was Barry Soetoro then, taking the family name of his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, his mother's second husband. Some things had changed in the ensuing decades. Then the neighborhood was on the edge of a city of about three million residents; now it is surrounded by an urban sprawl that goes on for several more miles, skyscrapers sprouting in every direction as Jakarta's metropolitan population has swelled to nearly twenty million. Then Haji Ramli was unpaved, nothing but dirt that turned to mud in the rainy season, and a small playing field and forest were within an easy walk of the Soetoro house. The street is paved now and the green space long gone; houses and people are everywhere. But the sensibility of the neighborhood remains much the same: the narrow pathways and alleyways; the street carts with pungent offerings of nasi goreng and rendang, fried rice and spicy beef; the symphony of neighborhood rhythms and sounds; a daily song of the kampung, the low undulating buzz of a call to prayer at the nearby mosque; the beseeching voice of the bread seller; the hollow bock-bock-bock-click of a meatball vendor knocking his bamboo kentongan; and the shrieks and laughs of children down on the playground at the neighborhood school, SD Asisi.
There are no markings outside the gate at No. 16 Haji Ramli to designate that Barack Obama once lived there, nor are there any official designations of his presence at the nearby school. The first section of SD Asisi was built in 1966, one year before Barry arrived. It was long and narrow, one story, with the look of an army barracks. That structure still stands, but is enfolded into a handsome complex of buildings that now hold classes for more than five hundred students in kindergarten through grade 12. Then and now, the fact that the school happened to be Catholic in a predominantly Muslim community seemed to make little difference to the residents, reflecting both the moderate form of Islam that prevails in Jakarta and the common appreciation of a good school no matter its denomination. Barry was just another neighborhood kid here. He learned Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, so well that by the end of his first year his classmates assumed he was Indonesian, a little darker than the rest, probably from one of the easternmost islands. Just another kid playing kasti, a form of softball, under the shade of the commodious mangosteen tree. No one special. But now there is one telltale sign, something inside Kelas III, the third-grade classroom, on the wall above one of the tiny wood-on-metal chairs where he once sat. It is a color poster showing the president and First Lady smiling on the night he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. Seeing that classroom and strolling up and down Haji Ramli Street in the morning and at sundown, I could not help but be overwhelmed by how utterly improbable it was that Barry Soetoro, the boy from Menteng Dalam, had made his way to the scene depicted in that poster.
One glistening afternoon in Chicago, I sat across from the Reverend Alvin Love as he peered out the window of his second-floor office in the rectory of Lilydale First Baptist Church on 113th Street on the city's sprawling South Side. A young man stood down below on the sidewalk, gesturing up, trying to catch the minister's attention, a pantomime plea for some kind of handout. It was through that same window, a quarter century earlier, that Love watched a tall and slender stranger wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeve shirt stroll down the sidewalk, stop at the front entrance, and ring the doorbell. He thought it was another unexpected visitor needing some kind of help. It was, in fact, Barack Obama, community organizer, who was asking not for assistance, but for fifteen minutes of the pastor's time. This happened in 1985, not long after Obama had left New York to start a new life in Chicago. He and "Rev," as he would come to call Love, ended up talking much longer than fifteen minutes. From that initial meeting they developed a relationship that lasted through the years. Love was Obama's first guide through the subculture of African American churches in Chicago, and later helped connect him to a larger network of Baptist ministers throughout the state of Illinois. He came to his aid when Obama's relationship with another Chicago preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, jeopardized his political career just as it reached sight of the promised land of the White House. Love had watched Obama rise from an unseasoned young man trying to organize a troubled neighborhood to president of the United States trying to organize a divided country.
Now, as we sat in the same office where they first talked, Love took me back into the past, recalling that visit and their subsequent struggles to force political change in places where people were poor and powerless. He spoke of preachers who were supportive and preachers who were not, of how young Barack helped him and his church as much as he helped Barack, and he closed with the story of how President Obama, hours after taking the oath of office, paid a private visit to a gathering of old friends who had traveled to Washington for the inauguration, shaking hands with fifty of them one by one in a hotel conference room, until he came to Love and said, "Rev, you gotta keep me in prayer. This is something else." Minutes later, as he left the room, he turned back one more time, his eyes fixing on Love in the crowd, and said, "Rev, I wasn't playing. Don't forget me."
"The past is never dead. It's not even past," William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun. They are words that Barack Obama himself has paraphrased more than once in his writings and speeches, and for a biographer and historian, their meaning seems self-evident. That is why I went looking for that name in the concrete in Hawaii, and stepped inside the auto garage in Kansas, and visited those villages in western Kenya, and walked the alleyways of Menteng Dalam in south Jakarta, and roamed the South Side of Chicago, and made many other ventures from the present into the past during four years of travel researching the world that created Obama. The past, where the shaping of individuals and of cultures and societies took place, is where many of the most revealing clues to the present and future are found.
This volume is not a traditional biography. It begins long before Obama was born and ends before he entered politics. He is inevitably the principal subject, and I would not have undertaken the book if not for his history-making rise, but he does not appear until the seventh chapter and even after that at times gives way to his relatives. He came out of an uncommon family, brilliantly scattered and broken, and although the parts could never be fitted neatly together again, my goal was to examine them as a whole and see the story in all its jagged and kaleidoscopic fullness. To write a book that leaves its protagonist before his days of notable accomplishment requires an implicit belief that the past is never dead. But when it comes to this book, to the particulars of the Obama story, there are some crosscurrents and countervailing notions to consider.
Obama grew up without his father, with his mother often gone, and in a sense raised himself, working his way alone through many confounding issues life threw his way. If he emerged in adulthood as a self-creation, one argument goes, how relevant are the genealogy and geography of his family, and his own early life, in decoding what he later made of himself? Valid question. My answer: they are certainly not everything, but they are crucial. The supposition that Obama is a self-creation is inadequate. One can see the imprint of his mother and maternal grandmother in almost every aspect of his character. That is nurture. The effects of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia are also readily evident in the adult Obama, his uncommon combination of cool remove and adaptability. That is environment. As for nature, there are parts of his appearance and personality—his voice and self-confidence, for starters, each of which should not be underestimated as factors in his political ascent—that can be traced clearly to his absent father. He has his white grandfather's long face and his motions and gestures. And, all in all, the past might be even more essential in figuring out someone who has remade himself. People are shaped equally by action and reaction, by what they accept and what they reject from their own inheritance. Obama is best understood with that in mind, not only by how his family and environment molded him but how he reshaped himself in reaction to them.
Then there is the aspect of his past that tends to overwhelm everything else, the fact that he was the product of different continents and different races, an American made from the multifarious world of colors and cultures. He was reared by white relatives and grew up mostly in Hawaii, where being hapa—half and half—was almost the norm, though the multihued combinations involved mostly Asians and very few blacks. He came from all sides and no sides, a fact equally relevant to his past, present, and future. There is a familiar lament when white people talk about Obama. He is black and white, some say, so why is he called only black? Most of the answer comes from the history of this country. That is how society categorized him before he could choose. But he also did make that subjective choice. The arc of his life, emotionally and geographically, traced a route toward blackness and home, which he found in Chicago. From the other side, less frequently but still noticeable, comes the question of whether he is black enough. He had no slaves in his heritage and had never fully experienced the African American condition until well into adulthood, some blacks have argued, so what does he know?
His memoir, Dreams from My Father, confronts those and other questions about race. It is much more about race than about his father, a man he barely knew. I consider it an unusually insightful work in many respects, especially as an examination of his internal struggle. In that sense it is quite unlike the average book by a politician, or future politician, which is more likely to avoid self-analysis. But it is important to say that it falls into the realm of literature and memoir, not history and autobiography, and should not be read as a rigorously factual account. In his introduction Obama states, "For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known, and some events appear out of precise chronology." There is more to it than that. The character creations and rearrangements of the book are not merely a matter of style, devices of compression, but are also substantive. The themes of the book control character and chronology. Time and again the narrative accentuates characters drawn from black acquaintances who played lesser roles in his real life but could be used to advance a line of thought, while leaving out or distorting the actions of friends who happened to be white. Sometimes the composites are even more complex; there are a few instances where black figures in the book have characteristics and histories that Obama took from white friends. The racial scene in his family history that is most familiar to the public, the time when he overheard his grandparents in Hawaii argue because his grandmother was afraid of a black man at the bus stop, also happens to be among those he pulled out of its real chronology and fit into a place where it might have more literary resonance. Like many other riffs in the book, it explored the parameters and frustrations of his blackness.
Without dismissing the anger and confusion that he surely felt as he tried to sort out his identity, I would argue that to view him primarily through a racial lens can lead to a misinterpretation of the root causes of his feelings of outsiderness and a misunderstanding of his responses to it. In any case, the point of my book is not to keep a scorecard recording the differences between the memoir and the way things were remembered by others; that would distort the meaning and intent of his book, and of mine. But I do not hesitate to explain those discrepancies when they occur.
As Obama approached the fourth year of his presidency, many people considered him more of a mystery than when he was elected. This seemed especially true for those who supported him and wanted him to succeed but were frustrated at various points by his performance in office. It is always dangerous for a biographer to deal in the present. The present is transitory and mutable; what seems relevant today fades into irrelevance tomorrow. But there are certain tendencies and recurring themes from Obama's history that help explain his presidency. When I wrote a biography of Bill Clinton, one central theme that emerged from my study of his past was a repetitive cycle of loss and recovery. Whenever Clinton was on top, one could see the seeds of his own undoing, and whenever he was down, one could see that he would find a way to recover. Again and again, this pattern in his life played out in his presidency. With Obama, a comparable recurring theme is his determination to avoid life's traps. First he escaped the trap of his unusual family biography, with the challenges it presented in terms of stability and psychology. Then the trap of geography, being born and spending most of his childhood in Hawaii, farther from any continental landmass than anywhere in the world except Easter Island, along with four formative years on the other side of the world, in Indonesia. And finally the trap of race in America, with its likelihood of rejection and cynicism.
The totality of the effort it took to get around these traps shaped his personality. It helped explain his caution, his tendency to hold back and survey life like a chessboard, looking for where he might get checkmated, analyzing the moves two and three steps ahead. There were times when this approach made him appear distant, slow, reluctant to decide, and out of touch with the zeitgeist. Sometimes that perception was accurate, sometimes not. He could be behind the curve or ahead of the curve, but with the notable exception of his campaign for the presidency in 2008, rarely was he right at the curve. Wherever he was, it helps to keep in mind the patterns of his caution and the reasons for it. As he worked his way through the traumas and troubles of his young life, he developed what one close friend called "a perfectionist's drive for unity"—within himself and within his community. It burned inside, underneath his cool exterior, and was another reason that he would have so much trouble with confrontation. To confront was to acknowledge division, rupturing, imperfection, the traps of life he so wanted to transcend. One of the ideas he became obsessed with as he reached adulthood was the notion of choice—how much choice he really had in determining his own future and how much was already shaped for him by his history and family. He worried about the narrow choices others made, and concluded that the only path he could follow, the only choice he had, was to "embrace it all," meaning a philosophy that was large enough to take in life in all of its colors and contradictions. That is not to say that he disparaged the role and meaning of struggle—his entire early life was a struggle, inside and out—but he was always trying to look past that, to resolution.
There is a chapter in this book about his college years that I titled "The Moviegoer," an image drawn from the Walker Percy novel of that name in which the main character is one step removed from his life and unable to live in the moment. That was young Obama, through and through. He was the son of an anthropologist, with an anthropologist's mind-set as a participant observer, sitting on the edge of a culture and learning it well enough to understand it from the inside, yet never feeling fully part of it. He was at the same time a double outsider, both as a biracial kid and a cross-cultural kid, living in a foreign country, often on the move, tending toward contradictory feelings of inclusiveness and rootlessness. If he had not gone into politics, he would have been a writer, and he still holds on to much of that sensibility. He stands not alone but apart, with the self-awareness of a skeptical witness to everything around him, including his own career. These are unlikely characteristics for a successful politician, the seeming antithesis of what it takes to rise in a world of emotion and visceral power, yet Obama holds that contradiction in subtle balance with his uncommon will and overriding sense of purpose.
When examining a subject's ancestry and early life it is important to draw a distinction between revelation and responsibility. No one wants to be judged or held responsible as an adult for how he behaved in his youth, or for how his relatives behaved, and that should be neither the function nor the intention of a biographer. But there is an important difference between laying blame and searching for clues to a life, and many important clues come in the early years. Some people grow and change, some never change and only become more so, and most people (Obama fits in this category) change in some ways and not in others. But the point in any case is to explore that territory in search of understanding, not retroactive condemnation. It seems obvious, but it demands explanation in the modern American political culture, where facts are so easily twisted for political purposes and where strange armies of ideological pseudo-historians roam the biographical fields in search of stray ammunition.
My perspective in researching and writing this book, and my broader philosophy, is shaped by a contradiction that I cannot and never intend to resolve. I believe that life is chaotic, a jumble of accidents, ambitions, misconceptions, bold intentions, lazy happenstances, and unintended consequences, yet I also believe that there are connections that illuminate our world, revealing its endless mystery and wonder. I find these connections in story, in history, threading together individual lives as well as disparate societies—and they were everywhere I looked in the story of Barack Obama. In that sense, I reject the idea that every detail in a book must provide a direct and obvious lesson or revelation to be praised or damned. I believe the human condition is more ineffable than that, and it is by following the connections wherever they lead that the story of a life takes shape and meaning.

subset: commoncrawl


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New light is shining on Road to Omaha sculpture
New light is shining on Road to Omaha sculpture
OMAHA, Neb. —
Fans attending the College World Series at night will notice some new lighting on the Road to Omaha sculpture in front of the main gate at TD Ameritrade Park.
Lighting fixtures and glass panels attached to the sculpture's concrete backsplash, as well as a new spotlight, provide a different kind of illumination.
CWS Inc. president Jack Diesing Jr. said the lighting is synchronized to provide an alternating spectrum of colors behind the sculpture.
The 1,500-pound bronze sculpture was created by John Lajba and depicts four baseball players celebrating victory at home plate. It was dedicated in 1999 and moved to the downtown ballpark from its original location at the old Rosenblatt Stadium.


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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
FSU: The PvPkin
Who would be better to talk to then FSU. He will list some of his accomplishments below, but there are two I would like to highlight. According to the SK-Gaming Arena ranking his 5v5 team Hopesfally We Win is ranked 13th in the US. Before the patch I looked at the arena ranking for just moonkin. At the time he was ranked 24th in the world without an active 2v2 team. If he had had a 2v2 team with an average rating he would easily have been in the top 10. I don't think anyone would disagree that FSU knows how to PvP.
Gray Matter: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Please tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been playing WoW? Why PvP? Why Moonkin?
FSU: Hey, my name is Jason, but you probably know me better as Fsu, Balancedruid, or Influenza. I've been playing WoW since release, where myself and quite a few others came over from WC3: The Frozen Throne. I enjoy PvP just because I feel it is the most challenging aspect of the game where individual skill can stand out but you only are at your best when you and your teammate(s) have good coordination. I play Moonkin because I think it's one of the most fun specs in the game and although it has many problems it has enough to work with that I can continue to make it work, especially in 5v5 where it is probably at its best.
In terms of arena accomplishments I didn't play until late s1 but still managed gladiator in a double healer warrior comp. S2 I was very active, holding #1 in 5s on bg3 and then bg9 when we transferred. I also finished top 5 in 5s as moonkin, top 5 in 3s as resto, and top 20 in 2s as resto. In s3 my 5s was #1 at one point on bg9 running shaman / priest / moonkin / rogue / mage. I then transferred to Boulderfist (bg cyclone, dunno the number) and played on a top 5 5s team. S4 my 5s is currently #1, my 3s was top 20 when we were playing, and I hit 2200 as full balance / rogue in 2s early in the season.
GM: Are you or have you been active with a PvE Progression Raiding guild? If so, what is/was your progress?
FSU: I was in Predestined of Mannoroth at level 60 and saw and killed up to 4H. They continued on to kill Saph and Kel'thuzad but I was inactive at the time due to playing lacrosse for my school. In BC I joined Bloody Knuckles for a few months and we made it to Kael before the guild died out due to leadership issues. It was at this point that the team I played on, Spray n Pray, decided to transfer to Tichondrius. After we did quite well there my friend Realz went casual and transferred to Boulderfist to play with RL friends, and after being inactive for quite a few months he got me back into the game by begging and pleading (slight exaggeration) and eventually paying for me to come to Boulderfist.
GM: What do you think is the moonkin's roll on an arena team? What are a moonkin's core strengths and biggest weaknesses?
FSU: The Moonkin's role on an arena team can vary depending on what sort of make up you play on. One thing (and for those that read my guide on the druid forums I mentioned this) that is important in playing arena as Moonkin is playing to your strengths and weaknesses. I think the main role for a Moonkin is to DPS and CC (order changes depending on what you're playing) as well as offheal when needed. For example, on my 4 dps team, I often times will pop tranquility as soon as we land a kill on someone so that our team can stabilize. A strength of Moonkin is our extremely high damage as well as great cc, especially against melee classes. If you use those tools correctly you can put yourself into great situations to win matches. The main weakness of Moonkin is our complete and utter lack of true outs. If a rogue is on you and you can't fake their kick you get into trouble very fast, as despite our large amount of armor we still take damage very fast from rogues, and warlocks can shut us down too easily often times.
GM: Your current build on the armory is 44/0/17 and seems to focus entirely on Moonkin DPS. In the past I have seen people advocate a build that includes 11 points in feral to get Feral Charge and Brutal Impact for the interrupts. Are their any merits to this type of build, and why have you chosen against it?
FSU: My 44/0/17 build is made for having dispel resistance on my DoTs for 2s and 3s while still maintaining all the DPS I need for my 5s comp which as I said earlier is for dps. I think people that advocate 11 points in feral are BG enthusiasts, because a build such as that used in arena is just a waste of mana. The amount of mana you have to use to feral charge then go back to Moonkin form is too much, and I prefer just using cyclone offensively to help interrupt heals instead of wasting mana and losing out on valuable talents such as subtlety and intensity. It can be helpful for a Moonkin to get furor sometimes for 2s to get that instant bash off, but my 3s and 5s teams (I only play 5s right now but I was serious about 3s earlier) I don't have time to be bashing and the like because I'm busy cycloning and pewpewing.
GM: Spell Power, Stamina and Resiliance are obviously key stats for a PvP moonkin. How would your rank Haste and Crit for PvP?
FSU: Crit is now arguably the most important stat, especially once you reach at least 1050 spell power. The toss up is between crit and intellect, and it will be interesting to see how the math works out as to whether gemming for intellect or crit is better (more crit from gemming just crit obviously, but intellect gives you more mana, spell power, and crit; this means that when you do crit you get even more mana back from the new mana mechanic). I've been lazy and haven't done any math yet, and probably won't until wrath is actually out and I have the gear available to me. But for now, I think the gemming ideals will be either crit or intellect. Haste is a good stat, but I prefer less haste because the more you get the harder it is to time your starfires out of cyclones.
GM: What are the most common mistakes you see/hear moonkin make when the start PvPing? What advice would you give to some one looking to get more involved with PvP?
FSU: Something I've noticed is a lot of Moonkin seem to be against starfire usage in arenas. This couldn't be further from correct, and if you're not using starfire you're missing out on a lot of potential DPS and burst DPS from starfire crits. Also, you should be prepared to heal, especially in 2v2, because many times you will have to play like a healer if you expect to win. I think some druids get into the mindset of being a fully offensive caster sometimes, but you have to remember our heals are decent as well as our mana regen, and you should always use them to your full advantage when playing arenas or even bgs or world pvp.
GM: What Addon's do you think help you most when you PvP?
FSU: Proximo is invaluable to pvping in arenas. It makes targetting people extremely easy and should definitely be used by all people that want to be serious in arenas.
GM: Do you have any macros that you find are particularly useful that you can share? If so, why are they so valuable?
FSU: The only real macros that I use involve shape shifting, and are something I think all druids and moonkin should have. The first one is a travel form to travel form macro, allowing you to break snares instantly and continue running without having to hit travel form more than once. The other one is moonkin to moonkin form for the same purpose, breaking snares insantly in one button while staying in moonkin. This macro is used often vs rogue / mage teams where they try to get shatter combos off.
GM: You play Horde. I play Alliance. The few times I have PvPed in BGs and Arena it seems to me Horde always win even when I'm in a premade. This is probably because I suck, but a lot of people seem to have had the same observation. Do you think there is/was a faction imbalance in PvP? If so, what do you think caused it? Does horde attract better players or was it the racials?
FSU: Each faction thinks they suck. I'm pretty sure that horde wins wsg / ab more, but alliance win av (a lot more) and eots slightly more. This is from playing on 3 different bgs, this is normally what it feels like. I think it switches from time to time (before the av changes horde were winning a lot more (right after afk was made a punishable offence)). Really though, until perception was changed I think alliance had the best racials between that and escape artist, for pvp anyways. Those 2 racials are so strong, and as Blizz even stated no other racial increased one's ratings like having perception did for alliance players. I think Horde is probably stronger now, but with human's getting a free pvp trinket it's pretty close. Will of the Forsaken and War Stomp will always be great though. Also, I think, avoiding the stereotypes, that horde might have attracted more PvPers. I know at least from my experience that many RTS guilds from wc3 rolled horde, mostly because it was expected to be the underdog in terms of population. Don't know if RTS experience helped make better PvPers (I was ranked 4th on the US ladder on The Frozen Throne at one point :P) but then again there's some good RTSers who suck at WoW.
GM: Wrath of the Lich King is just around the corner and you have been one of the lucky one's to get a Beta Key. Is the Arena system at all active in Beta? Have you gotten a chance to test moonkin out in an arena environment?
FSU: I haven't really participated too much in beta arenas. I find beta somewhat depressing at the moment mostly because deathknights, ret pallies, and mages are all so strong that it is hard to have fun getting so utterly destroyed by players you can tell aren't very good. I did get to play moonkin on ptr with my rogue partner, we still seem to do very well but arcane mages have 4 shot me and ret pallies are obviously just as insane on ptr as they are on beta. Blizzard has acknowledged 2 of these 3 classes, and I can only hope that at level 80 arcane mages aren't as crazy, but playing against some they are still quite strong, especially with their ability to spam spell steal now, basically killing my HoT production.
GM: In general how are Moonkin shaping up from a PvP perspective? What are the positives? What would you like to see changed?
FSU: The positives are that we finally got some bloat reduction in our talent tree. I still think we need more, but I doubt Blizzard will give any. We also gained 2 new spells, both of which we can use while being attacked. This is very helpful to PvP where before when you're focused if you don't fake an interrupt you end up only being able to spam DoTs. I like starfall as a gimmicky sort of out, where I can use it to stun melee chasing me as well as doing damage. Typhoon is pretty bad overall, I only like it for it's damage; the mana cost and knockback are laughable at best. I also like the new eclipse for PvP. Ironically Blizzard made it for PvE but 30% crit to starfire after a wrath crit is no laughing matter; my plan currently is to spam wrath until I have wrath of elune and eclipse up, then throw out a 1-1.5 second starfire that crits for a ton.
I'd love to see us given a 4-5 second silence instead of typhoon. This would be infinitely more helpful and allow us to finally be able to interrupt casters more consistently. I also still must advocate for a PvP survivability talent. The amount of damage classes can do is very strong, and our inability to do anything while stunned or feared after our first trinket and barkskin is very disheartening. A simple 2 point talent that gives us 30% reduction on fear duration and 30% damage reduction while stunned (primal tenacity for Moonkin basically) would help so much. It boggles my mind that we haven't been given any survivability talent yet.
GM: From my perspective Lake Wintergrasp seems to be the most exciting PvP related change in WotLK. What do you think of it? Have you had any problems with faction imbalance?
FSU: I've only participated in Wintergrasp once when it was first released and it was pretty buggy. It seems like it could be fun though. To be honest I only like to arena or duel on beta / ptr because I don't want to spoil the game for myself. I'll have plenty of time to test wintergrasp and the new bg when I hit level 80 and I don't want to take away any fun I might have with my own character.
GM: Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you would like to say or anyone you would like to recognize?
FSU: Shout outs to my partners in crime Realz and Girlz, my 5s team Hopesfally We Win (and get Brutal Glad!), Hafu, my druid Queen, and ym.
If you have any questions for FSU please feel free to post them here in the comments and I will pass them on. You can also ask them in the guide thread he wrote that I linked above.
6 comments:
Do you think that its good to use Starfall as a way to break rouges from stealth before they eat you? For example when my partner gets sapped or i hear the annoying little stealthy sound. I found that it works really well because it not only catches them off gaurd but stuns them too giving me time to use typhoon to knock them away from my partner (yes i know its kind of pointless but it makes me feel better about myeslf lol) and root them while I DPS them. From what ive seen Starfall actually does have alot more potential in PvP than its given, though you do have to spend 4 talent points in order for it to have multiple uses. :/ Oh well... I still love it, afterall... it is very shiny!!! =D
- October 23, 2008 at 11:11 PM
Starfall is great for getting rogues / druids out of stealth in the beginning of matches. I'd suggest only doing it if you're in the middle of the map or if your partner has just gotten sapped, because if you mistime it and get stunned you'll end up wasting part of the duration.
Starfall is shaping up to be very strong in PvP, as it basically is a guaranteed 3 second stun, often times a 5 second one. I like to use it when I need to get away from someone or just to overload the other team in the beginning, e.g. my rogue opens on the target, I starfall, dots the target and the healer, then go to town on the target. This makes the healer's life hell because if he trinkets any of the stuns he's getting cycloned within a second.
- October 24, 2008 at 10:58 AM
I dont have a question exactly, but thought i should say big up to the Q&A blog there. Great advice all around, i will be using this come lvl80 arena.
- October 29, 2008 at 6:36 AM
I have a question... Is Eclipse in its current form of very much use in PvP in its current form? From what i have experienced its way too random and i usually wind up waisting the proc because its too late to use it effectivley both in arenas and battlegrounds.
- November 7, 2008 at 12:16 PM
Eclipse is going to be one of our best PvP talents come wrath. With the right amount of crit it will proc very consistently and with a 15 second duration you should easily be able to make use of it in both arenas and BGs.
- November 9, 2008 at 4:58 PM
- This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- April 10, 2009 at 8:42 PM


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Lee Nelson needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 391 designs submitted by 85 freelance designers.
A 5-star Japanese-style luxury wellness retreat based in New Zealand featuring delicious functional food and teaches guests how to change their lifestyles for optimal health and longevity while maintaining the highest standards of quality.
Emphasizing luxury and exclusivity, we would like to convey the concept of a doctor-run wellness retreat with functional food where guests can not only relax and reduce stress but get educated in lifestyle changes to increase the quality and quantity of life.
Providing top-quality lodging facilities including all meals. Cooking lessons in functional cuisine; every single ingredient has a function. Facilities include Japanese baths with breathtaking views, infinity swimming pool and spa, shiatsu massage, high-tech meditation (brain-entrainment), infrared sauna, wet steam room, state of the art home theatre, gym, and private paths to 2 magnificent beaches.
Upper end international and local guests who are interested in wellness and longevity but want absolute luxury. Entertainers, executives, entrepreneurs, and poker players.
We're looking for a company logo that is relevant to our company name, Split Apple Retreat and where we are situated, Split Apple Rock, New Zealand. Split Apple Rock is famous for its unspoiled beach and just few meters from the shore is this huge apple-shaped rock that is split in the middle. You can view the place via Google earth.
The successful logo would be used in our website in-progress. Emphasis in absolute detail and high-quality professional design. The logo should be simple, elegant and relevant to our name and services.
We require the design to be in vector format.
The name Split Apple Retreat or SAR should be incorporated in the logo.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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Music Lyrics
Bass and Guitar Tabs
and More...
Goo Goo Dolls
Close Your Eyes
Return to my to my Goo Goo Dolls tabs page
The tablature is Copyright its respective owners.
Website © 2000-2014 mattsmusicpage.com. All rights reserved.
Legal & DMCA: Matt's Music Page has been providing lyrics and tabs in a legal way, paying royalties each year to a few organizations. Then, all lyrics and tabs were removed from the site. Now, there's a new owner to the site, which purchased it August 26, 2014, and he is in negotiation to obtain licensing from BMI at the moment. If you have a specific DMCA request -- please do not hesitate to contact me via the contact button on top. I will do my very best to keep this site fully legal.
Bobby Dall (Poison band) Ampeg Pro Formance bass guitar amp 8 x 11 ad print
Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) Ampeg SVT-II bass guitar amp 8 x 11 ad print
Hondo Series of Banjo Bass Guitar original 1982 ad 8 x 11 advertisement print
Faith No More Billy Gould Aria Pro II Integra Series Bass guitar 8 x 11 ad print
Mr. Big Billy Sheehan 1991 Ampeg Bass Guitar Amps ad 8 x 11 advertisement print


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Shewsberry Has An Idea For The Next Version of The Sticka Color- Ask The Readers For Nominations And Put It To A Vote!
So we are now accepting nominations for colors for the next GMG Sticka!
Enter your idea below in the comments to this post and after tomorrow I will create a poll.
If you don't see the word comment below this post click the title of this post and then all the sharing options including pinterest, print this, Facebook, twitter, ect should appear.
What color scheme would you like to see?
At Most It can Be Two Colors. Yellows and the like don't show up.
Special thanks to GMG logo designer Beth Swan, and our producers Frank Ciolino and Shewsberry


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My 4-wk old has been in a growth spurt for abt 4 days, with more frequent feedings than usual. However, starting last night, he's also wanted to nurse for much longer each time, going from what normally is 15 mins to now up to 30 mins! (and then sometimes followed by a large spit up). If I try to cut him off after say 20 mins, he will start to cry and fuss. Are these longer feedings also normal for growth spurts? I don't think it's a supply issue b/c he is still having lots of wet diapers that are if anything, heavier than before.
Thanks for the insights!!


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from ARGENTINA : +54 115 252 1423
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from UK : +44 203 318 6993
from SPAIN : +34 911878153
The Hotel See Kandy is a boutique hotel located in Kandy, Sri Lanka, where this becomes heaven on Earth. Fabulous rooms all with modern amenities including a private Jacuzzi for the luxury suite, make staying at the Hotel See Kandy a heartwarming experience. Antique furniture, spacious luxury bathrooms and an incredible decoration are the hotel's main attributes along with a possibility to enjoy the fine Sri Lankan cuisine on-site. Overlooking the wonders of Sri Lanka, the Hotel See Kandy is on the hilly outskirts of the city, where being surrounded by lush gardens and a friendly staff make staying at the Hotel See Kandy like a dream come true.


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Don't quite get what you are saying. Are you saying that your new parish is trying to be very insulated and not friend to visitors or non-Orthodox? If so, then that really IS distressing.
 However, there isn't a large pocket of RC here in this area, due to it being so highly baptist.ÂÂ
You know Greek, I have no idea?!! I always just existed inside of the religious framework because with my limited "free time," that was the best place to be anyway. I had to consider folks I would let my kids hang around with and play with and form relationships with, and the church environment seemed like a naturally *safer* place. Despite all the nonsense, it was still better than the bar crowd-most of the time.
I just recently got involved with a homeschool group that has many different belief systems represented, and it was hijacked by a wiccan recently. No one can say anything or she gets this angry "poor me" attitude. I don't buy any of it, due to my own legacy and therefore don't put up with her mood swings.
What other types of groups, homeschooling or otherwise, would I look for. Right now in life, hs'ing and raising children eats up pretty much all of who I am-so when I look for people to hang around with it's going to be based on family, children, etc. That's just the season of life I am in now. Today is taken up at an all day medieval camp for my 3 boys and a hs'ing crowd. But this weekend, at the neighborhood 4th picnic, I will be called all sorts of names and get dirty looks and whispers-all because I have 7 children. My one neighbor is rather mean. That type of attitude keeps me a little cautious in venturing out, who needs more attacks right in front of their children?
Church crowd better than the bar crowd??? You must live in a pretty rough neighbourhood, because in my experience the bar crowd (even when drunk) is always better than the Church crowd. Sometimes there's an annoying person or once in a great while someone may agressive, but they're usually thrown out before too long, pretty much they are just normal people trying to have an enjoyable evening. At even the best of Churches on the otherhand, there is political fracturing, gossip, backstabing, disputes, and fights that would put a Hells Angels biker bar to shame...many people who frequent Church are simply not good people.
You must hang out in some REALLY vicious Greek parishes then. Sure, there is lots gossip at church, but most of it in my experience is not backstabbing, etc. The bar crowd usually has a lot of carnal, hedonistic talk, which is very bad for children.
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SEA CHANGE: Once the nation's first shipyard, A sprawling Philadelphia property is now home to 130 companies and 10,000 employees in industries as varied as fashion, pharmaceuticals, colleges and cupcakes.
RIDING THE WAVE: About $130 million in publicly funded infrastructure improvements at The Navy Yard has spurred more than $700 million in private investment.
CRUISING: A master plan update estimates that more than 30,000 people will work at The Navy Yard, possibly in 15 to 20 years, with private investments of $3 billion.


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Dr. Catherine Schmidt
Dr. Catherine Schmidt is Professor of Music Education at Winona State University and program director for music education. She is also a co-advisor for WSU's Collegiate Chapter of NAfME (The National Association for Music Education) and teaches the class piano sequence for music majors. She is a past Classroom Vice-President on the Board of Directors for the Minnesota Music Educators Association and Co-Chaired the MMEA New Teacher Mentoring Program from 2005-2008.
Dr. Schmidt received both her B.S. and M.S. degrees in music education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her doctoral work focused on multicultural music education and her minor field was ethnomusicology. Other professional training includes Orff Certification from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Kodály Master Teacher Certificate from the University of Saint Thomas.
Dr. Schmidt has 12 years of experience in elementary classroom music and has presented workshops throughout the Midwest in Orff-Schulwerk, Kodály, multicultural music, and a variety of other topics in music education. In the summers of 1997 and 2000 she traveled to the Philippines where she served as guest clinician at the University of Saint Thomas in Manila and taught seminars for the department of education in several other provinces on the island of Luzon in multicultural music, elementary choral techniques, and music technology.
Dr. Schmidt's current area of interest is in mentoring and new teacher induction. She has presented sessions at the National Society for Music Teacher Education Colloquium, the National Association for Music Education Biennial Conference, and the Mountain Lake Colloquium for Teachers of General Music Methods on topics surrounding mentoring and the use of Cognitive Coaching in teacher preparation and mentoring.
- Bachelor of Science - Music Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Master of Science - Music Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Ph.D. - Curriculum and Instruction
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Courses Taught
- MUS 234, 235, and 335: Class Piano I, II, and III
- MUS 298: Foundations and Principles of Music Education
- MUS 322: Elementary Music Methods I
- MUS 332: Elementary Music Methods II


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In just 3 shops in Paris you'll find Le Negus de Nevers.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Le Bonbon au Palais
In just 3 shops in Paris you'll find Le Negus de Nevers.
22 comments:
tres charmante histoire!ReplyDelete
must try these CARAMELS!!
The umbrellas are so cute..remind me of my youth.ReplyDelete
Mango caramels? Jacques Genin, here I come!ReplyDelete
(Faints, and then books a flight to Paris)
Caramels, chocolates, and marshmallows--oh my! Thank you for such a sweet post. ;) I return to Paris in a few months (too long a wait for me) and my list of places to visit grows by the minute thanks to you! :) I will definitely pick up some of those caramels. KatieReplyDelete
I'm a chocolate lover, but you converted me after seeing all those bon-bons. You must have been there ALL day ! so many to see & then all the tasting you had to go through.Wonderful post thanks. BarbaraReplyDeleteReplies
So funny!Delete
I went to Le Bonbon in the evening after spending the day at the chocolate salon at the chateau
No wonder I'm pooped!
Thank heavens for Amazon and my coquellicots! The only way I could get through this post...and even with help, I just barely made it. No, I didn't make it: I'm going out now in search of sweets!ReplyDeleteReplies
The coquelicot makers told me they are really good for sore throats/mal a la gorge!Delete
or did I say that already...
Yummy medicine
Oh my!! I am so enjoying your trip! France and fabulous bonbons - could it get any better? (I hope Bear has recovered from his encounter with Biff.)ReplyDelete
Meanwhile, here where I live, there's 6" of snow on the ground and the high temps are below freezing. Needless to say, I'd rather be in Paris! Instead, I'll make myself a nice cup of chocolat chaud and look forward to your next post.
I did remember your past post and DID stop in here while I was in Paris!ReplyDelete
The caramels from Brittany were wonderful. The small bag of marshmallow-type things was a bit strange - both to me and my French friend. T
he store is a delight, however, and I will certainly be back!!
Definitely worth a stop.
Thanks for the tip.
the nickname for Brazil is 'Grande Bunda'
I went 5x
my teeny Brazilian bikini comes from the bum bum shop :)
now that is an assortment of exquisite candy! so marvelous! :)ReplyDelete
This is ONE SWEEEEET Post! Très sucré! Carol, you are still in France? This seems like a terrific reserach trip! The top drawing~you are expanding your style, n'est-ce pas? Moi, just got back from la ville de Québec..thought of you when I saw macarons, especially at the indoor Marché de Vieux Québec...I'll probably post a few journal pages from the trip...Anyway, amuse-toi bien, R.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous9:11 PM
In Paris it makes a huge diference if you know where to go. This article on the lolly shop or sweets store (Australian language) is exceptional. Everything is so expensive (per 100 grams) but you convey the dedication and finesse of the confectionery in such a way that it makes sense to target a place like this and budget accordingly. It's all so very French. Congratulations. Gwendoline in Australia.ReplyDelete


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Los Goes In Depth About Leaving Bad Boy, His Career & Battles DeRay Davis
Check out Los going in depth about his situation with leaving Bad Boy Records on a Sway In The Morning interview right before he rips the 5 Fingers of Death. King Los also goes into detail about his friendship with Diddy, the Bad Boy situation, how Zero Gravity II was dark and lonely compared to his other projects, how he blames himself and not his record label, his career after losing his first deal, how The Wire was upsetting to gangsters, his flow and style, if he purposely writes hits for people or not and more.
After watching the video, it seems as if King Los is changing his work ethic, meaning what he's been doing in the rap game hasn't been working out for him too much so he's going to change it up. This may mean more singles, freestyles and maybe even more mixtapes since Los is now independent (again), he is hungrier than ever before and is about to show the world what a Baltimore rapper can do. Also, watch a hilarious freestyle battle with comedian DeRay Davis. You can view these videos after the jump.
Continue reading: Los Goes In Depth About Leaving Bad Boy, His Career & Battles DeRay Davis


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The school district is actively working with Ottawa Public Health and Ottawa Police Services to raise awareness about drug use in our community. We all need to be concerned about the recent rapid increase in opioid use in Ottawa.
Parents are a child's best defense against drug use. The top two things that a parent or guardian can do is to be informed about drug issues and talk to your kids about drugs. Make sure that you secure prescription medications in your home - two-thirds of Ottawa students who used prescription drugs got the drug from someone they live with.
For more information, including tips for talking to your kids about drugs, information on opioids including fentanyl, how to spot an overdose, what to do in an overdose, and where to get naloxone go to Youth and Opioids: What Parents Need to Know on Ottawa Public Health's Parenting in Ottawa website.
Know the facts:
Canada has the second-highest level of prescription opioid use globally.
Prescription opioids are misused more than most illegal drugs in Ottawa
Opioids were responsible for 45% of drug overdose deaths between 2009 and 2011
Fentanyl was the leading cause of death due to unintentional opioid overdose death in Ottawa
Lock up your prescription drugs at home and check regularly for missing medications
13% of Ottawa high school students used prescription drugs and two-thirds of students got the drug from a parent, sibling or someone else they live with
Return unused or expired medications to your pharmacy or to a pharmacy participating in the Ontario Medication Return Program.
A searchable link of pharmacies is available at DrugDropOffOttawa.ca


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Amarillo, TX – Passage by the Florida House Healthcare Council of a bill to require a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion was praised today by Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life.
"There are no second chances after an abortion," said Fr. Pavone, "no way to undo what's been done. The finality and gravity of abortion makes any waiting period, even one as short as 24 hours, a logical, prudent step to take. I pray that the full House will adopt this measure if only to save one woman from the grief and torment caused by abortion profiteers."
Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.


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VANCOUVER, BC - In a well-contested first leg in the 2012 Amway Canadian Championship final, Vancouver Whitecaps FC (2W-0L-1D in ACC) earned a very late 1-1 home draw with three-time Voyageurs Cup winners Toronto FC (1W-0L-2D in ACC) on Wednesday evening.
A stunning volleyed finish from Eric Hassli in second-half stoppage time denied Toronto FC their first-ever victory in Vancouver after Ryan Johnson gave The Reds the lead midway through the second half. Though the first leg ended in exciting fashion, Whitecaps FC will be disappointed not to be heading to next week's decisive second leg at Toronto's BMO Field with an advantage, as the Southern Ontario outfit have the upper hand of an away goal at the midway point of this two-leg final. Whitecaps FC's undefeated home record versus TFC now extends to six matches (2W-0L-4D), while The Reds extended their unbeaten run in the ACC to 12 matches (7W-0L-5D) with Wednesday's result.
"It was an exciting cup tie tonight," said Whitecaps FC head coach Martin Rennie. "Toronto played well and scored a good goal and created a lot of other chances. It wasn't one of our best performances, so it's nice to be in the position we're in. At 1-0 down, I still felt that we were in a good position, but at 1-1, we have a much better chance for the next game. The thing that I like is that we never give up. There have been a number of times when we've played until the last minute and that's the very basic part of building a good team. That character shone through tonight again. We're really looking forward to next week's game in Toronto."
Having rotated his squad through this busy month of May, Rennie went with a strong starting line-up for the home leg, as the Scotsman made six changes from the side that started last weekend's MLS defeat at New England Revolution. Among those changes was a first-ever Whitecaps FC start for striker Etienne Barbara in a 4-3-3 formation.
A beautiful spring evening on Canada's west coast meant the BC Place roof was open for the 14,878 that were in attendance. With a lot at stake in this final, both sides surprisingly showed plenty of attacking commitment during a goalless and evenly-played first half. The early stages belonged to the home side, with Camilo Sanvezzo at the centre of a several chances in the first 10 minutes, while Barbara and Alain Rochat struck shots wide of the target for Vancouver.
Having weathered that early pressure, TFC made some chances of their own, with former Whitecaps FC players Terry Dunfield and Adrian Cann having headed opportunities before the break. The visitors' best chance of the half came on 44 minutes, as Johnson's twisting header was well saved at the far post by Whitecaps FC goalkeeper Joe Cannon.
The opening half ended with the 'Caps forcing a good save from TFC goalkeeper Milos Kocic on the counter-attack. Sebastien Le Toux got in behind the Reds backline from the right flank and powered a shot straight at the Serbian shot-stopper. The rebound fell to Barbara in front of goal, but the Maltese international was unable to get a shot on target. It resulted in a 0-0 scoreline at halftime.
With only 45 minutes left in this final at home, Whitecaps FC looked to claim the series advantage after the break. This included Rennie using his three substitutions, with Hassli the first to enter the action on 56 minutes before Davide Chiumiento and Darren Mattocks made late appearances.
Yet, much credit must go to TFC, who have shown the ability this season to perform in important matches - be it ACC or the CONCACAF Champions League. On 66 minutes, The Reds scored a valuable away goal from a well-worked move around the Vancouver box. Julian de Guzman's first-time cross found Johnson in between two Whitecaps FC defenders in the six-yard box. The Jamaican international's well-placed header nestled in the near corner of the net to give TFC a 1-0 lead.
The goal stunned the BC Place crowd and left Whitecaps FC with the task of replying in positive fashion. Camilo looked to turn the tide with a free kick effort and a cross for Hassli that the Frenchman headed straight to Kocic on 83 minutes. Then a minute later, a moment that could be looked back on as a pivotal one for Whitecaps FC at the end of this two-leg final. A TFC break saw Johnson pick out substitute Nick Soolsma unmarked in front of the Vancouver goal. Cannon came off his line to block the Dutchman's shot with his legs and keep the aggregate margin at one goal.
It was a crucial save by the experienced shot-stopper, and as the match entered more than four minutes of stoppage time, Hassli became the Whitecaps FC hero again with a sensational equalizer. Rochat's cross from the left found the big Frenchman unmarked in the TFC box. With sublime technique, Hassli struck a full volley past a helpless Kocic to earn a 1-1 first-leg result. It was the striker's second goal in this year's Canadian Championship and fourth goal in Vancouver's last five matches.
The manner of the equalizer sent the 'Caps fans home buzzing, but there will still be a measure of disappointment at the way this first leg unfolded for the Blue and White, who know they face a big task in the second leg in Toronto next Wednesday night. Before that, Whitecaps FC will turn their attentions to their first Cascadia Cup derby match of the season, as they host Interstate 5 rivals Seattle Sounders FC on Saturday afternoon. Toronto FC, meanwhile, go in search of their first MLS win of the season at Eastern Conference rivals D.C. United on Saturday night.
Budweiser Man on the Match: John Thorrington
Scoring Summary:
66' - TOR - Ryan Johnson (Julian de Guzman)
90+1' - VAN - Eric Hassli (Alain Rochat)
Match Stats:
Shots: Vancouver 10 - Toronto 12
Shots on Goal: Vancouver 6 - Toronto 5
Saves: Vancouver 4 - Toronto 5
Fouls: Vancouver 12 - Toronto 22
Offsides: Vancouver 2 - Toronto 1
Corners: Vancouver 3 - Toronto 7
11' - TOR - Jeremy Hall
49' - TOR - Terry Dunfield
Vancouver Whitecaps FC
1.Joe Cannon; 12.Young-Pyo Lee, 15.Martin Bonjour, 6.Jay DeMerit, 4.Alain Rochat; 16.Matt Watson (20.Davide Chiumiento 69'), 27.Jun Marques Davidson, 11.John Thorrington (22.Darren Mattocks 86'); 7.Sebastien Le Toux, 8.Etienne Barbara (29.Eric Hassli 56'), 37.Camilo Sanvezzo
Substitutes not used: 18.Brad Knighton, 3.Jordan Harvey, 17.Omar Salgado, 28.Gershon Koffie
Toronto FC
30.Milos Kocic; 25.Jeremy Hall, 12.Adrian Cann, 4.Doneil Henry, 5.Ashtone Morgan; 23.Terry Dunfield, 6.Julian de Guzman, 8.Eric Avila (14.Danny Koevermans 65'); 19.Reggie Lambe (18.Nick Soolsma 71'), 9.Ryan Johnson, 7.Joao Plata (11.Luis Silva 80')
Substitutes not used: 40.Quillan Roberts, 2.Logan Emory, 15.Matt Stinson, 20.Ty Harden


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The Children's Enrichment Committee is a nonprofit that works through Social Services to enrich the lives of Orange County children in foster care.
The Children's Enrichment Committee is a nonprofit that works through Social Services to enrich the lives of Orange County children in foster care.
The committee, originally known as the Orange County Citizens Welfare Committee, was renamed a few years ago, but its work has remained basically the same through the years. The committee was formed years before there was a Welfare or Social Service Department.
There were no government agencies when a group of women met to talk about needs that a foster child might have that his adopted family couldn't provide. The women helped with music lessons, high school rings, senior prom gowns, and holiday gifts, including mittens, gloves, scarves and hats.
The women wanted to encourage scholastic achievements, and offered scholarships. And it wasn't a one-time donation. They often followed a student through college, assisting wherever they could. When the committee first started, the women delivered the gifts and made visits.
In the early 1970s, I can remember some of the older members talking about deliveries made when dirt roads were muddy and their vehicles would be stuck in axle-deep mud.
I can remember the late author Emily Akers of Blooming Grove, then in her 80s, talking about the friendships she treasured with many of the scholarship recipients. She headed the Scholarship Committee and followed recipients from high school through college, even through jobs, marriage and children. She was a letter-writer, and the committee was her favorite involvement. Each person brings her own specialness to the group.
Rosemary Dellechiaie loves to knit. Her gifts are created throughout the year. Author Susan Pfeffer, who has written more than 50 novels for young people, takes photographs and helps with publicity. Teacher Pat Darcy helps in any way she can, whether it is shopping for a gift or helping with paperwork for a scholarship recipient.
The membership is still just as devoted as it was originally, and as always new members are sought and welcomed. To see how you can help, call Sandra Strohsahl at 342-5563.
With theme baskets galore, Scotchtown Avenue School's PTO will host its fifth annual Tricky Tray Friday, weather permitting. If it snows, it will be carried over to the following day. It will be at the school, 120 Scotchtown Ave. in Goshen. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; calling is at 7:45 p.m. Refreshments will be available.
For information, contact Janet Albanese at email@example.com.
The rhythmic cadence and cleverness of the late Dr. Seuss will entertain many children at Minisink Valley Elementary School, thanks to the Kiwanis of Minisink Valley for a super gift.
A complete set of the Dr. Seuss series was donated to Maureen Cardinale's first-grade class. The gift was prompted by the New York District Kiwanis Governor's Project, which aims to wipe out illiteracy by encouraging reading through books and book-related projects. Kiwanians have collected many children's books and have distributed them at many locations and events within their communities. Super job!
Barbara Bedell's column appears daily. Reach her at 346-3125.


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I took a look at CloudFront today. They have really good intentions. The CDN space is quite a mess -- it could easily be a pay-as-you-go, self-service industry. However, players such as Akamai try to make a large profit. The CDN space is especially hard for small sites -- you can't get any reasonable pricing unless you are doing high levels of traffic.
Amazon wants to change all of that. However, I think they made a number of missteps in their initial offering.
- They aren't using it on amazon.com. They use Level(3)'s CDN! Why should anybody consider using a service Amazon isn't using themselves. This is a chance to prove your CDN in real life.
- Tiered pricing. In a self-service model, it doesn't make sense to offer different prices for different bandwidth usages. One customer with 100 TB of traffic is the same as 10 customers with 10 TB of traffic.
- Pay per request. For S3, this made sense. Every request was one disk seek on the servers, and people need to pay for that. However, in a CDN, you are expected to serve from memory. The 1 cent per 10,000 requests effectively adds 6 KB of data to every file. So if you serve a 1 KB file, this increases your cost by 6x. At the very least, the fixed cost per request should be less than that with s3 to account for the lack of disk seeks
- Lack of peering. Doing a traceroute to cloudfront from a few locations (Carnegie Mellon, colos in New York and LA), it appeared that all of my traffic was going over transit links. In contrast, traffic to amazon.com went over fast and cheap peering links.
I do hope that Amazon fixes up CloudFront. It's a fantastic concept. They have the power to force reason into the market.


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Today's Meditation
Quiet Wisdom
Read Psalm 32:1-7
Hear, my child, your father's instruction, and do not reject your mother's teaching.
- Proverbs 1:8 (NRSV)
My parents had gone shopping. As I stood alone in Mom and Dad's bedroom and my grandmother was napping in another part of the house, I noticed a box of matches on my Dad's bedside table. As I picked up the box, I could hear in my mind my father's voice saying as he had many times, "Don't play with matches!" Behind the table were lovely white curtains. What would happen if I struck a match and touched the curtain quickly? A small hole appeared in the curtain. I was horrified and quickly tucked the curtain behind the table. Maybe they would never see it.
That night as I got in bed and pulled the covers over me, my stomach began to hurt. It got worse, and I wept. My father came to me and asked, "Son, what is the matter?"
I said, "I have a bad stomachache."
My father sat quietly by my side, "Where does it hurt?"
He put his strong hand on my chest and asked, "Does it feel like a burned curtain?" Then he said, "Son, I think you have learned your lesson. I love you. Now get some sleep."
My stomachache immediately stopped. My conscience was clean. I never forgot my father's quiet wisdom.
Through the years as I have grown in my faith, I have come to understand that God's love and forgiveness clear the conscience.
Woody A. Adams
(North Carolina, USA)
Thought for the Day: God cleanses every repentant heart.
Prayer: Dear God, thank you for the wonder of forgiveness and the freedom it brings. Thank you for being ready to forgive us even before we ask. Amen.
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Electronic reproduction of any kind forbidden without written consent.


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SAN ANTONIO -- Greg Bryant repeated plenty of the cliches about the excitement of playing in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. He's anticipating a big week, he hopes to perform well and he wants to win.
Then he cracked a wry smile.
Bryant, a Notre Dame commit, is ranked as the second-best running back by Rivals.com. But the Delray Beach (Fla.) American Heritage School standout is out for the top spot, currently held by East squad teammate Derrick Green of Richmond (Va.) Hermitage.
Greg Bryant is clear about what he thinks of his talent.
"I can't wait to compete and show them why I'm the best," Bryant said. "It will be a great competition to go up against the top backs. I'm confident. I'll never be down. I know I'm the best."
Running back is one of the most loaded positions at the Army game and they're all out to prove their ranking -- and sometimes more.
Thomas Tyner has bounced back-and-forth between five- and four-star status throughout his senior season and the Beaverton (Ore.) Aloha standout is at the Army game to prove he's one of the top backs in the country.
The 6-foot, 200-pound Oregon commit posted amazing statistics his senior season -- he totaled 2,325 yards and 29 rushing touchdowns -- but being injury-prone has always been an issue for him.
Tyner said he realizes that accusation has some validity and he's changed his preparation, training and mental approach heading into this season. It paid off. Tyner didn't miss time as a senior and intends to prove he should be considered among the best backs.
Green, Bryant and USC commit Ty Isaac from Joliet (Ill.) Joliet Catholic are ahead of Tyner but a good week at Army can influence the rankings.
"I feel like I have a lot to prove," Tyner said. "The big thing is staying healthy. I showed that this year and I had my best season in my whole high school career. The last couple seasons I didn't really train that hard but this season I saw where I could take my abilities and it paid off.
"Over the years I went through all the injuries and I got a wake-up call on what I needed to do. Obviously that showed this season. I iced more, I stretched more and it paid off."
Bryant, Green and Alabama commit Derrick Henry lead the East squad and Tyner, Alabama pledge Altee Tenpenny, Ohio State commit Ezekiel Elliott and USC pledge Justin Davis round out the West squad.
Both teams are loaded at the position and everyone is out to prove they're good, better than the rest.
"I get to go against some of the top guys in the country and that's very exciting," Tyner said. "It's a good way to prepare for college and I'm going to take this as an opportunity to see what else is out there and to get ready for college."
Even Elliott, a respectably ranked ninth-best at the position in the 2013 class, is here to show off his game against many other top prospects.
Everybody at every position is at the Army game to compete on the highest level, but running back is so loaded it's intense. No. 1 is in sight and many talented players are going after the top billing.
"It's fun just to be able to come out here and compete with the best," Elliott said. "I already know a lot of these guys because I met them at The Opening and some different camps. This is another chance to come out here and compete.
"Rankings are important. You want to get the credit for what you do. I want to come out and compete and go out and prove what I want to prove."


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Kyle WilbornFree Agent
Offensive Line
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News | Stats | Stat vs. Team | Targets | Injury | Depth Chart | Roster
|Redskins | Kevin Matthews signed
Wed, 08 May 2013 10:47:34 -0700
The Washington Redskins have signed free-agent C Kevin Matthews (Titans). Terms of the contract were not disclosed. In a corresponding move, the team released OL Kyle Wilborn.
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|| Source: The Washington Times - Rich Campbell
|Redskins | 11 UDFAs signed
Thu, 02 May 2013 10:50:30 -0700
The Washington Redskins have signed undrafted free-agent OL Jacolby Ashworth (Houston), LB Marvin Burdette (Alabama Birmingham), LB Will Compton (Nebraska), WR Skye Dawson (Texas Christian), LB Jeremy Kimbrough (Appalachian State), OL Xavier Nixon (Florida), TE Emmanuel Ogbuehi (Georgia State), WR Chip Reeves (Troy), WR Jason Thompson (New Haven), OL Kyle Wilborn (Troy) and WR Nick X. Williams (Connecticut). Terms of the contracts were not disclosed.
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|| Source: Redskins.com - Brian Tinsman