text:
Yakima County commissioners, during their Tuesday morning meeting, awarded a contract to Russell Crane Service, Inc. of Yakima for the removal and disposal of buildings on Riverside and Midvale roads, just outside of Sunnyside.
According to Mark Brzoska with Yakima County, the buildings being removed from the property include several residences owned by the county. Brzoska said the county plans to clear the land, then sell the property.
The engineer's estimate for the cost of removing and disposing of the buildings was $20,000, with Russell Crane Service's bid coming in at $28,397. It was the lowest of three bids submitted for the project.
Comments are subject to moderator review and may not appear immediately on the site.
Please read our commenting policy before posting.
Any comment violating the site's commenting guidelines will be removed and the user could be banned from the site.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Parliament of Canada is open to visitors free of charge, seven days a week. When visiting Parliament Hill, you can tour Centre Block, attend live debates, or explore the Peace Tower and Memorial Chamber. If you find yourself in Ottawa, we would be happy to help you book group tours of Parliament, and attend Question Period.
Tours are facilitated for individuals on a first-come, first-served basis, for groups of 10-50 upon reservation, or for school groups and classes when booked in advance.
Groups of 10 individuals or more may reserve seats for Question Period, and individuals may make arrangements to sit in Member's Galleries facing their Member of Parliament.
For more details, visit the Parliament of Canada website, or contact my office at 705.941.2900


text:
Earlier this month, Bernhard Huber died. As the last few weeks have been very busy with work I am only now catching up with news from the wine world - and with news like this I almost wish I hadn't. While I have never met him in person I have appreciated his outstanding wines on more than one occasion, and I am only too aware of what he has done for the reputation of German wine, Pinot Noir in particular.
Looking through my cellar, the only Huber wine left is a Müller-Thurgau, not quite the obvious choice, but it has to do for a toast to one of the greats of wine making.
As this week will have a French wine theme - Wednesday I am invited to a French rosé and food event - I figured I should kick it off with a wine from one of my favourite French regions: the Loire. Admittedly, its more famous cousins Burgundy, Champagne or Bordeaux would usually be mentioned first, but I love both the freshness and the quirkiness of the Loire wine. In many ways it is the French region that suits my style most.
It is also the French wine region that got me hooked on Chenin Blanc, partly due to the exciting wines coming from Domaine Huet.
This skin-contact Riesling is reviewed in more detail in our article Two Princes. The short summary, lacking horribly in context, is below.
This skin-contact Riesling is reviewed in more detail in our article Two Princes. The short summary, lacking horribly in context, is below.
Northwest of Stuttgart, there is a land of wooded hills and industrious little towns called the Stromberg. In the Stromberg, there is the tiny village of Schönenberg. In Schönenberg, there is an Inn called Lamm, the lamb. There, I've had some of the best, most unpretentious Swabian regional food of my life, and took away this bottle of home-produced Lemberger.
Price tag: below 4 €. You can't say fairer than that, can you?
We are back. Well, almost. While I have survived three weeks of scorching heat in North America (a hot and humid torture device otherwise known as summer holiday), my co-Rambler Julian is still out somewhere on a secret mission I am not at liberty to talk about. Even so our summer hiatus is over and it is time to catch up with interesting wines and events of the past few weeks.
And what better way to get back into the swing than a German Riesling!
It does not always have to be Mosel. Nor does it always have to be Riesling. Well, there would be worse things in the world than to be limited to Mosel Riesling, but thankfully no demonic power has so far decided to make me choose between German wine growing regions. If that ever were to happen one of the other contenders would have to be the Pfalz. The Palatinate, as some of you may know it, is as large as it is diverse: amongst king Riesling and a range of other white grapes we see more and more exciting reds coming from the region west of Mannheim.
Like this Pinot Blanc most of the wines are dry. The Weißburgunder, as the Germans call it, comes from Koehler-Ruprecht, one of the renowned Pfalz estates. And damn is it drinkable!
Following last week's review of a kick-ass aged Mosel Riesling it seems only fair to follow up with an exploration of a much younger Mosel wine's ass-kicking abilities. Today's hero may just be a baby in comparison but it comes with a good family history and a coup de grâce delivered by one of the grand masters of ass-kicking, Dr Indiana Jones.
Most importantly it comes with an airship (not included in the price sadly): "the wine most often drunk during the flights of the 'Graf Zeppelin' (airship)", as the label proudly claims in German.
I was in Freiburg recently for the wonderful occasion of the baptism of my niece. During the church service, the vicar who celebrated it at some point asked the congregation to join him in a prayer of interecession for the responsible production of healthy and sustainable food. Nothing wrong with that (I fervently joined in that prayer), but surely typical of that corner of the country, as it boasts the oldest organic food producers, highest density of organic anything stores and highest level of general relaxed left-liberal getting-it-right-iness in all of Germany. Small wonder that organic winemaking in the Kaiserstuhl sub-region of Baden, just an hour's bicycle ride away from Freiburg, also has deeper roots than elsewhere and is often into its second or even third generation.
Friedhelm Rinklin, a card-carrying founding member of the organic wine movement in Germany, also has basically done this forever. As early as 1955 already, his father had made the switch to biodynamic winemaking. I imagine that his son looks at those who discover organic wine growing just now with nothing but an ever so slightly raised eyebrow. Does his basic-range, very reasonably prices Pinot Gris exude the same wisdom and experience?
Since the early days of the Wine Rambler I occasionally (and boldly I like to think) set out to explore the world of German wine as UK consumers experience it: in the supermarket. Despite many setbacks I have persevered, out of patriotic and journalistic duty. However, after the flop with German wine from Waitrose even I needed a break - and so I have switched both supermarket and country, in the hope that Tesco and New Zealand would deliver the goods.
And as if that was not enough firepower I also brought in the tenth most powerful woman in wine.
I want to believe. Not in UFOs, Armageddon or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but in wine - in all the lost causes, regions and plucky little grape varieties that no one trusted to ever produce anything of worth. I want to believe, to give them a chance, to celebrate their triumph over the expected. One grape variety that needs such a triumph is Müller-Thurgau. Looking at the statistics you would not believe it, after all MT is the second most planted grape variety in Germany.
However, no one loves it as it is seen as the boring main ingredient for German bulk wine, not even worthy to be mentioned on the label. Can we still believe in it?
2013 has now begun in earnest, and for the Wine Rambler that means it is time to start regular service again and write about wine. With our focus on Germany you would naturally expect the first bottle of the year to be of Teutonic origin - but, behold!, it is not. Geographically and linguistically Austria may not be far away, but even if some see the Austrians as Bavarians with charm, the Austrians themselves insist on their independence. Every single screw cap or capsule of Austrian wine says so in proud colours.
So why not pick a German wine as the first in 2013 on this (mostly) German wine blog? Well, first of all because we are not *that* German, but more importantly because of: tradition, quality and availability.
It could have been the cheap Pinot Grigio. It could have been all the talk about boring Super Tuscans. Or maybe it was growing up in Munich where everyone who wanted to be trendy drank Italian wine and annoyed the heck out of me with their cheap Prosecco talk. Whatever the reason, I don't tend to look to Italy when it comes to buying wine. Now, it has been established that I am a cool climate sucker and a certified acid hound, but a country with such a great wine tradition and amazing range of grape varieties and regions should have something to offer that I like.
Well, it does - and even more shockingly I found it in a supermarket.
One of the glories of being a wine amateur without an ounce of professionalism is the childish pleasure you can take in things that more knowledgeable folk take for granted. Recently for instance, I rediscovered decanting. Now, of course I do know what pouring a wine into a larger carafe for greater air exposure does in theory, but somehow, I had let the habit slip. After all, there isn't always time for these kitchen rituals. But the exceptionally rewarding Grüner Veltliner on review today showed me what I may have been missing, as decanting did it a world of good.
The first swigs of this very young wine straight out of the bottle were not promising: A heavy, awkward and withdrawn wine. After two hours in the wide-bottom decanter, out on the cool balcony, we found something very different indeed:
Remember that one perfect meal? That special memory that has been with you for years? A taste or texture you can still recall? Some treasure these memories so much that they do not want to go back to the restaurant in question as they fear it might not live up to the memory and spoil it. Now, I think it is worth taking that risk, but in the few cases when you are let down I do wonder whether the disappointment might come from expectations that are just too high for anyone to meet.
Today's wine is such a case, but luckily I had help judging it.
Cheap Pinot Grigio, oaked Chardonnay and fruitbomb Sauvignon Blanc are the three banes of the popular white wine world. For my day job I regularly attend functions organised by public sector bodies who have next to no money for entertainment and, perhaps worse, no one who really cares about finding value, so I have had many an encounter with this unholy trinity. Luckily I know that all these grape varieties are capable of producing fantastic wines, although I have to admit that my relationship with Sauvignon Blanc never has been an easy one. Too often even the better wines have me on my knees begging for mercy after a broadside of pungent grassy aromas, gooseberry, intense vegetal flavours and intense blackcurrant.
On the other hand there are very nicely balanced examples too, and sometimes I just crave crisp, fruity intensity. The other day it was one of those moments and I turned to the German wine region of Franken (Franconia) to satisfy my urge.
Should I resist the tired cliché, should I raise above the overused joke? Even if I were that strong and even if I were not secretly in love with clichés I still could not do it in this case. Even my wine merchant felt powerless against the buying-wine-by-the-label joke: "We bought it despite the label!", was her excuse. I didn't have any: I bought it because of the label. Because of the name. And because that day I had set out with a desire to buy something different.
I trust that even after just a cursory glance at the Wine Rambler you will agree that I fulfilled that mission - but was it a success?
Another Austrian wine on the Wine Rambler? Really? Can our national pride and the expectations of our Germanophile readership sustain this Austrian double whammy? They will have to, because the world needs to know about this, the best rosé I've had for months, no make that years, straight away. The way things are going, lives could be lost to summery languor otherwise.
Ever heard of Schilcher? You have now. Schilcher [1] is a regional speciality of Austria's Steiermark region. Rosés made exclusively from the indigenous Blauer Wildbacher grape, these wines are distinguished by prominent acidity and unusually intensive red and black berry fruit. They are never particularly subtle and they can be rustic to the point of rudeness, but they are rarely bland.
Every hype brings with it the danger of disappointment. I mostly suffer from this with regards to movies (which is why I am staying away from reviews of "The Dark Knight Rises" until I have had a chance to see it), but the same can happen with wine. When it comes to the Saar Riesling from the Van Volxem estate hype was never needed to convince me to buy a few bottles every year as it has been consistently good, and also good value.
Even so I could not help notice the bold headlines that my wine merchant threw at me with this wine - headlines of high praise from respected wine critics for a Riesling that does not even follow the "single vineyard" paradigm. Because of the quality of the previous vintages I was confident it would be good, but would the hype spoil my enjoyment when I would not be quite blown away?
I sometimes think that I could, at some time in the distant future, grow conservative. I would remove myself to the country, improve my tax evasion skills and shake my head at the foolishness of do-gooders, environmentalists and labour unions. "They grow good people in our small towns", I would drawl, in the manner of an American republican. But since, for the time being, I'm a European left-leaning, city-dwelling, wine-sipping intellectual (of sorts), I'll have to amend this to the factually indisputable "they grow good wines in our small towns". Baden's out-of-the-way Markgräflerland region, covered for the Wine Rambler by Simon Jones, is the place to go if you want to celebrate small town life. But, far from conservative, it's actually frightfully progressive and reforming when it comes to tackling wine quality. And they grow not only good winemakers, but a speciality: The Gutedel grape, known as Chasselas in Switzerland.
These fresh, light, softly fruited whites can come over a touch boring, but then, they come so invitingly priced that you can afford to taste yourself through a couple before you find one that tickles your palate. I got lucky at the small winery run by the Brenneisen family:


text:
Unbox the Marriage
by James D. Jones Jr.
Copyright © 2018, James D. Jones Jr.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express, written consent of the author for any purpose, other than the inclusion of brief quotations in review.
Unless otherwise noted all scriptural references are
from the New King James Version of the bible.
Smashwords Edition
License Notes:
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold in any form or transferred, even if no compensation is given. If you would like to share this e-book, please purchase additional copies for other recipients. If you are reading this e-book and it was not purchased by you or for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the rights and hard work of the author.
Chapter One
This Thing Called Marriage
Who is this book for? Everyone. For the couple embarking on the journey of journeys called marriage, this is a map of the ground ahead and some simple rules for navigating what could be treacherous waters if they sail obliviously into them. For the couple whose marriage is already underway and seemingly working well, this is an opportunity to understand why what they are doing is working and maybe discover new areas of exploration and adventure to add that extra spark to their life. For the two who seem to be having difficulty bringing their separate lives into the transition that allows them to become one in marriage, it is a life line thrown to them by those who have sailed the rough waters and discovered the way to make the dream come true. Whether just starting out, seeking a tune up or needing extensive repairs, everyone benefits from going back to the roots of what makes something work.
Marriage is the union, or coming together, of two people for the purpose of sharing their individual strengths and creating one stronger, inseparable couple. Marriage is a design of God and thus, in many ways, inconceivable to the human mind. It is more than just two people sharing a life together. Roommates can do that. Two guys can do that. Or two women for that matter. But when a man and a women come together to share their lives on a level that allows them to intermingle their lives so completely as to obliterate the individuals they once were and become identifiable as "them", something must take place on a level of consciousness and in a spiritual fashion outside of the realm of ordinary life. It is not an ordinary thing for a man or a woman to give up who they are to become one. It is an extraordinary thing. Two people becoming one.
Marriage is a complicated endeavor even for the best of us. Two people, coming together to share one life, carrying all the elements of their separate lives and wanting to build something that is both simple and yet diverse enough to make both happy. Something that is so inconceivably complicated that it has to be accepted instead of being understood many times. To the human mind it is an impossible process. How can two separate individuals learn to become one living and thriving couple? How can they move from positions of autonomy into mutually beneficial oneness? Our minds have trouble grasping these marriage descriptions. Is it any wonder, when we try to make it a reality in our lives, that we have trouble pulling it off?
Shouldn't it be easy? Others do it and have done it for years. Why can't we just say we are going to do it and then make it happen? No one said you can not do it. This book is not about some process or steps a couple can take to make a happy marriage a reality in their lives. Instead it is a true resource in a world of many false resources to help couples achieve whatever they have planned to achieve.
When I got married I believed that love was all I needed. The rest would work itself out. Like so many things in our lives I believed that if I wanted it bad enough I could work at it and keep trying things until I got it right. And, if we are very focused, that does work. Like climbing a high sand dune, if you keep trying you may slip backwards a few times but you can eventually get to the top. The problem is that we all have enough stress in our lives already and moving through a stressful transition such as becoming one in marriage does not have to be a back breaker or as in many cases, a deal breaker. There are little things we can do that make the job of growing closer and learning about each other easier. Or we can fight to carve out new ground and suffer the effects of our efforts.
We do not have to reinvent the wheel. God has already built it. He has already given it to us in a package that makes it easy to incorporate into our lives. Marriage is not new. It belongs to God. Marriage without God is an infringement of the designer's authority over His design. We would never tell the inventor of something he or she is not allowed to profit from their invention because that thought would be inherently wrong to us. It would also inhibit us from asking the inventor about how they envisioned the invention working. In many ways we have done this with marriage. God invented marriage. He designed it for a particular reason. When we ignore the designer we also ignore the reason.
In Genesis 2:18, God announces His intention. And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." It is God's desire that a man should not be alone. Why? Because a man is not complete without his wife. Adam saw the other animals and saw that they all had mates. Males and females of each species came together to reproduce and live in the harmonies of their kind. Adam thought it was strange that there was no mate for him. God saw this. And God did something wonderful about it.
It is important to note that God created all other creatures of the dust of the earth to be whatever species they were. But man he created in His own image, meaning with God's own heart for living. God is spirit, so we are not created in His spirit image. We have physical bodies. But God has a heart and we have been given His heart to live life to its fullest.
But woman was not created of the dust of the earth. She was taken from the rib, the protective covering of the physical heart of the man. You can not take something out of something without lessening the original. God had made Adam perfect, complete. In order to give Adam a mate, God had to take some of what made Adam complete from him and fashion it into the new thing that would now make Adam complete. A woman.
In verse 23 of Genesis , chapter 2, Adam says "This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man."
Adam recognized what God had done. The woman was taken out of Adam. She was not another creation, but somehow a part of him was taken out and she was that part that used to make him complete.
When God caused a deep sleep to fall over him and he removed the rib of which Eve was formed, Adam became less than perfect. At that moment in history man became incomplete without woman. And life has been a process of two becoming one ever since.
Adam was a totally complete person when God formed him of the dust of the earth. He was perfect, nothing lacking. God did recognize that man needed a companion, though. Someone to share life with. Being complete is good, but sharing that completion with someone else is essential. Someone who understands always enhances any experience.
Only God can exist in perfect completion. Man can not deal with the loneliness. The physical part of man cries out for a physical relationship to mirror the spiritual one we have with God. Because we were designed to love God we share that ability to love with others. Without others around, our physical man struggles to hold on to the spiritual part and the emotional part withers.
Unlike the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, man does not exist as multiple beings in one. Only God can do that. But in the marriage relationship God lets us peek into the mystery of the Godhead. A man and a woman existing as one. A small part of the power of the Godhead unleashed in the marriage picture.
This is the most fantastic concept in all of life. One man, Adam, being complete and then being made incomplete and then being made complete again. How? Marriage.
If Adam had remained single he would have remained incomplete. Eve would have remained an incomplete part of the image of God that was once complete in Adam. But together they become the complete image of God once more.
Of this process God says in Genesis 1:27 He, created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
In God's image. In completion. But not in ability to be multiple persons in one. Then He created the one in two when He pulled Eve from Adam. He did not recreate them. He merely finished the creation. A multiple being in one. Male and female.
Two males can not complete the package. Two females can not create the package. They can love as deeply as any other but despite every effort, they will never perfectly complete each other. When a man and a woman come together to create the marriage union, then, and only then, is the image of God reflected. God created man complete in His own image. Then He broke that image up into two parts, male and female.
Marriage is the union of one man and one woman in a bond as old as creation itself. In that bond is the image of God. What the perfect marriage is trying to become is the image of God. No wonder so many people have a hard time organizing the perfect marriage. If they don't want to look like God, to be fashioned in His image, they are fighting the very purpose of the invention. And the inventor.
The problem of marriage is easy to identify. The image of what we are trying to become (two people as one) has to match the Creator's image. Too many people either have no image of what they are trying to become or they have a faulty image. If we can not see the target, how are we going to hit it?
Get the image right in the beginning or change the image to match the original purpose and the marriage becomes what it was intended to be. The completion of two people in the image of God.
What can be said to those who refuse to acknowledge God as the Creator and the inventor of marriage? Good luck. (and I don't believe in luck) I am not trying to be hard here or unsympathetic. The fact is simple. Try to put a swing set together in any manner other than what the designer intended and it will not look the same and probably won't function as well or as safely. And there are always parts left over that get tossed out. Parts the designer had a plan and a use for.
We do not need to become fanatics on a crusade to save the world in order to acknowledge God as the Creator of everything. What we need is to be logical. This world screams of intelligent design. God is the designer. The only reason to fight the assertion that God is the designer is that we want to have another reason to do whatever we want with our lives. Because, if God is real, and He really designed marriage, then all that other stuff He says about morals and ethics suddenly applies, too.
Marriage without God is like a man buying a chain saw to cut down trees and then using the heavy, cumbersome chain saw without ever starting it up. It's designed to make the job easier, even pleasurable, but if we don't use it according to the designed purpose, (starting it up) then we sweat and toil to make our version somehow useful.
Instead of a picture of a noisy saw gliding easily through the trunk of a tree we get the fatalistic, frustrating picture of a man pushing and pulling a heavy piece of equipment back and forth (almost funny) until either the tree falls or he does. For some, this is an apt description of their marriage to date. For others, we know people whose marriages resemble this picture. A tree can be cut down with a chain saw that has not been started up. That is true. It can be done. But how satisfying is that experience? How jealous are we of those who start their chainsaws up and cut down entire forests, build a home and life, while we toil over one tree? (How many of us come to believe it must be the tree's fault, so we keep changing trees in hopes that somehow our way will work?)
God must be acknowledged in marriage or the picture we have of what we are creating and growing towards is wrong. Man was created in God's image. God created that image in two parts, man and woman. It is not complete until a man and a woman make it complete.
A good place to begin is with a personal look at the picture we have of marriage. Whether we are planning to get married in the near future or already married, we need to begin with wherever we are. What does marriage look like to us?
Sound simple? The question is. The answer is anything but.
In marriage there are six people involved right off the bat. That is before we involve in-laws and friends and other assorted relatives.
There is the guy he thinks he is. The guy she thinks he is. And the guy he really is.
There is the girl she thinks she is. The girl he thinks she is. And the girl she really is.
Those six people all have a different picture of marriage. Their pictures of that marriage must be forced into a common picture or nothing but bedlam will ensue. Yes, forced. Each part of us develops according to our experiences in life and how we react to those experiences. Life does not just happen to us. We are a part of it no matter how much we believe we were not in control of some parts. A person can hit me, but they can not make me hit them back or respond in any other way than what I choose. Forcing is another way of saying make a choice.
Why is choosing to force ourselves to come to terms with our separate views of marriage important? What are the dangers?
Every time an issue arises, he can choose to approach it from three different angles and so can she. This is the comfortable stance of most people who try to maintain a semblance of personal dignity in today's world. They hold onto these different platforms of their life from which to respond so that however they choose to respond has some historical base from which to operate in their lives. They hold onto a part of who they are as a defense against who the marriage is forcing them to become. Kind of holding a way out for every action they take. (Shamelessly noncommittal)
If there is only one mutually agreed upon picture of marriage allowed, though, then only one avenue will allow them to mutually seek the completion of that picture. We're not talking about some picture given to them by the church, their parents or some other authority. We're talking about a picture they create together for themselves, their life.
A mutually shared picture is important because the real issue is not the argument that may come from it but the separate feelings that may arise because of it. If he is allowed to go down one road while she goes down another every time they have an issue, then they are not really traveling on the same journey. They are roommates maybe, but not married. They may have a piece of paper, but they do not have the image of marriage. The image is a oneness that makes them complete in the image of God.
As long as they continue to operate on separate paths they will continue to be only half the image of God at best. Even if they are both devout Christians going to church every time the doors are open, they will still be lacking the very thing that makes them the complete image of God, a marriage reflecting the multidimensional personhood of God.
Marriage is not an institution or situation. Marriage is the ability to become one couple in the image of God. It is the term that names the process and the disposition of two people who have chosen – chosen – the be one person in the image of God. Anything – Anything – that hinders us from maintaining our relationship as two in one is a hindrance to the marriage.
Christians are well aware that their enemy, the devil, or Satan or the evil one is going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He has come to kill, steal and destroy. Sermons are preached about recognizing this fact throughout the year. Testimonies are given weekly about overcoming the designs the enemy has on our lives. Somehow, though, Christians fail to apply the enemy's attack designs to their own marriage defenses.
A husband and wife may recognize that the enemy is attacking them (as individuals) but they too often fail to see the attack as an attack against the oneness they share. This failure causes them to respond as individuals instead of as the image of God. There is a definite disparity in the amount of spiritual power they can access because of this oversight.
The enemy sees married people as one. He attacks them as a single entity. They need to experience it as a single entity attack and respond as a single entity. Attack his wife and you have attacked him. Compliment her and you have complimented him. Love him and you love her.
The enemy of God is also the enemy of marriage. Like his desire to tear down any ministry that is spreading the gospel of Christ, the enemy desires to tear down the marriage so that God's plan for sharing His completeness and multidimensional image is thwarted.
Why? Because the marriage union between a man and a woman completes the image of God on earth. The enemy does not want God's image to prosper on earth. The enemy hates everything about God. So, consequently, the image of God, and those who would try to complete it, are hated also. The devil hates marriage and, by extension, those who would embrace it.
Few people ever realize there is an active force working against their marriage. Because they try to do it all themselves (they see themselves as individuals still) they also take the blame for when it does not work. Or they blame the other one as an individual who caused the failure. They say, it wasn't meant to be or we gave it a shot or any of a hundred other sayings designed to alleviate some of the pain.
What would have changed about their approach if they had realized that a person they knew was actually doing things to make their marriage fail? Would they not have been motivated to try harder and to keep the intruder out of it? Of course they would.
A woman who realizes she has a competitor for her husband's attention makes adjustments to block the competitor and to increase her hold on her husband's attention. A man who realizes another man is moving in on his territory takes action and makes moves to stop the advances of the other man while increasing his own ability to capture and hold his wife's attention.
That is precisely what many marriages need today. A healthy dose of trying harder and getting the intruder out of it. Not fighting and screaming. Not drama. But real life action designed to save what we have built. Our marriage picture.
The intruder is an unseen enemy that whispers in our ear about the shortcomings of our intended partner in this venture of marriage. The intruder places stumbling blocks in the road trying to get us to quit.
What if we had a clear picture of that marriage and our partner's part in it? Then no whisper in the world could shake us and tear us apart. No stumbling block ever designed could make us give up. We would have a better destination in mind.
The only place where the whisper can get to us is in the areas where we are unsure of ours or our partner's commitment. The only way stumbling blocks can make us sit down and quit is if we do not believe the end result justifies the effort needed to get there. A marriage based on our separate ideas of happiness is not as binding as a oneness based on the image of God.
Couples need to try harder to make sure their picture of the marriage is as solid and complete as possible. Couples need to keep the places where the "whisperers" can get in closed.
Why? We argue about the things we hear whispered in our ear by the enemy. Even people who do not go to church hear the whispers from the enemy. Then they argue about what they hear. They use words like, "I think" and "I feel" but what they really are displaying during the argument is what they have heard "whispered" in their heads. And those arguments cause separation. That separation keeps two people from achieving the image of God. The enemy wins the battle.
The enemy does not care as much about churches as we give him credit for. He is worried about ministries that change the community. He is worried about married couples taking on the image of God. Any married couple.
Why? Because the church is the bride of Christ. If the marriage of a man and woman shows off the image of God (and the power) then the church that understands its place in the marriage with God will show off much more of the corporate power of the image of God. Entire communities could be taken back from the hand of a lying enemy if the church ever gets the idea of the full image of God contained in the marriage picture.
The enemy's job is simple. Stop the marriage. Change it so it doesn't represent God. Take God out of it. Anything, as long as the image of God (and the power He gives to His image) is not released.
In church or out of church. When the image of God is displayed the enemy must flee. He is resisted. He is not given a foothold, not given a place to set up shop. The darkness is replaced by the light.
The devil or Satan or the enemy can not abide being pushed aside. He wants to exalt his throne above God's throne. And he does this by tearing down what God has designed.
The marriage relationship is a battlefield. Where it is a comfort and a completion by God's design, it is also an affront to the enemy. A bold statement that he is being shut out. A declaration of war against the goals of the enemy. A challenge to become the image of God on earth.
In John 15:18 Jesus says, If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. This is a realization of the marriage theme. When a Christian comes to God and repents of their sins and accepts Jesus into their heart, meaning they turn from their sinful paths and seek the path that brings them into the image of God, then they become what the bible calls the bride of Christ. The church – the people, not the buildings – is the bride of Christ.
They enter into the same battle that the Lord faces. If the enemy is against God then he is also against those who would side with God. And taking on the image of God, as in the marriage relationship, is siding with God.
Marriage must be defined. A clear picture of marriage must be achieved. The marriage itself must be protected from the enemy who would seek to destroy it. God must be allowed into the marriage in order to get the picture right. Everyone must realize that the enemy is actively seeking to tear marriages apart.
Sound ominous? Sound challenging? Is it necessary? Is it real? Can we do this?
Philippians 4:13 says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It is real or we would not need to know we can do it. It is ominous because we were created in the image of God. That is who we are. The enemy is trying to deny who we are for his own purposes. The challenge is to make the choice. The choice is to whether or not we are going to make marriage a priority.
We have this promise of assurance as we enter the field of battle. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. The enemy knows this. He can not defeat us by a frontal attack. He must trick us into giving up. We must quit on the very thing that makes us greater than he is. We must give up the image of God and take up the image of something else for our lives. We must give up God's design for marriage and allow some other design to take its place.
Maybe you are a strong Christian. Maybe you are a new Christian. Maybe you are not a believer in God at all. The truth is that the reality is still the same. Marriage makes you a target for the enemy. You have something at stake. Your relationship with your spouse or intended spouse. The enemy wants to make that relationship so miserable that you both go your separate ways.
Divorce is the enemy's goal. Separation. No marriage. No image of God. The enemy wins.
If marriage is your plan then God's design is your plan. Just because you may not believe in the designer does not make the reality go away. Even if we leave parts out of our swing set as we put it together, it is still a swing set, no matter how it functions.
The enemy's hatred of the designer is your reality. To choose not to recognize the enemy is to face the attacks with fleshly weapons that have limited value. To understand the spiritual role of marriage is to empower God to work in our lives and guide us to a victory. The true victory is attaining the image of God in our marriage.
We were never designed to approach this marriage thing without God. God wants to be part of our lives. He wants to be with His bride. Us. As a married couple, the image of God as two in one, and married to God through the acceptance of being the bride of Christ, Christians can unleash a power on earth that can change things and improve life.
God says His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He is not putting us down. He loves us, so He is not putting us down. He is explaining that he has not left this thing called life up to us. He has made Himself an integral part of it and He wants to do His part. He wants us to join in the marriage relationship wholeheartedly and with purpose. His purpose. And He wants to be there every step of the way.
Chapter Two
The Picture of Marriage
The most important place to start is with a picture of what marriage is supposed to look like. There is no way anyone can tell another person what marriage looks like for them. Every person is different and those diversities make the actual picture of the bond of marriage as unique for each couple as the fingerprint is for each person. His strengths and weaknesses combined with her strengths and weaknesses will always – always – look different than their parent's marriages or anyone else they will ever meet. There are just too many variables to use a cookie cutter model as a viable approach.
Instead, we must understand the purpose of the marriage and seek to make our picture of that marriage look like that purpose. As with the individual personalities of him and her the picture each carries of what they see marriage as is different. Their first goal is to combine their separate pictures into a single vision of what they are embarking upon.
Whether they are just seeking pre-marriage counseling or been married for years, if they have never combined their personal views of marriage before, now is the time. There is no point going any further down this road of marriage if they are planning on traveling separate roads.
There may be many ways to get some place but, if they decide to go together, it is imperative that they also decide what path they will take. Including how they will handle obstacles.
Two people can hold hands and walk down a street together. But when they come to a lamp post they must decide which way to go around it. One can not go left while the other goes right and still hold hands. Neither can they stop and argue about it. Arguing implies no more forward motion. They've stopped traveling altogether.
There are many things to consider when combining individual pictures of marriage. An individual's background is important. Their family situation is important. If they come from divorced parents there is a broken marriage picture in their mind. Even if they come from a happy, two parent home they may have learned wrong ways to relate to their spouse. There may be fears assigned or assurances needed to move forward. There may be more questions in the beginning than there are answers. Either he or she may even be uncertain about what they think marriage should look like. There must be time to explore the ideas and the concerns of the two involved.
What is certain is that no one – no one – can decide what marriage looks like for someone else. They have to work it out for themselves, by themselves and with each other. Sure, they can seek advice and even watch how others are doing it. Nothing wrong with getting ideas from lots of places, especially successful marriages.
In the end, though, they must sit down with just themselves and decide what they want it to look like. It has to be their plan. If it is someone else's plan then they can walk away from it easily. If they built it, if they gave birth to it, then walking away is much harder.
The marriage picture should be comprised of their goals and how they picture the successes they are planning. Simple things like, how many children, where to live and work, where to go to church and other necessities of the marriage situation should be answered. More complicated things like, how he pictures her support of him and how she pictures his support of her should be addressed. That way they are both picturing and working toward the same thing. Common goals. Real marriage.
Any goal not pictured in a common or together way is subject to misinterpretation by either side. Whether they can work out the misinterpretation or not they begin thinking like separate sides again. To counter this there needs to be a process for how they deal with the things not thought about yet. That way, when a disagreement or an issue that they believe different things about rises up, they already have a plan of how to deal with it together.
All goals should be emphasizing what they are achieving together. Even if one of the goals is for one of them to achieve a degree in college it is never considered an individual accomplishment. He or she is doing it for some part of a plan that increases or promotes the rest of their marriage picture. That way when they look at it it is not he or she going to school while the other stays home. It is them working on the marriage picture that includes one of them earning that degree. She is just as much a part of his degree or vice versa.
It may sound Utopian to say and aim at such a picture but we must remember that the marriage relationship was created to cause us to shine with the perfect image of God. It is the things of our fleshly nature that taint the image of God in us. Not the plan itself. The Garden of Eden was Utopian. It was the sin of man that caused that Utopian setting to be taken away. The image of God is perfect, even if the setting within which we are trying to attain it is not.
There is only one goal in every marriage picture that should be the same. All other goals will have some similarities to those around us but because of our differences ours will look different. The one thing that should always be the same is that we are trying to achieve the image of God in our marriage. Having said that, it is also relevant to admit that each couple has to create their own picture of what God in their marriage looks like.
To a fifty year old woman, remarrying after her first husband has passed on, God may look like a stern, elderly gentleman sitting on a white throne and ordering the universe about. To a teenage boy God may look like the very picture of young love itself, always caring about his wife and showing it through an excess of polite interchanges and constant attention.
Now, without advocating such a union, or dismissing it, it is very easy to see how the older woman and the younger teen boy would have to discuss their differences before they got married, if they ever hoped to be going in the same direction. There is also no problem imagining all the other things that they would have to work out before such a union could stand. And most people would have no doubt that if they did not work out those issues before hand then down the road divorce would be in the cards.
The same is true of every marriage. There are no perfect matches. Only individuals desiring to become perfectly matched. Both participants need to hold the same picture. Maybe the differences in most marriages are not as extreme as the example of the older woman and the teenage boy, but they are still there. They still need to be worked on. They are still a danger to the cohesiveness of the picture if they are not worked out before hand.
What if a couple chooses not to believe in the God that designed marriage? Does that mean it can not work? Welcome to the real world. God did not design this world to function only for Christians. What he created worked regardless of a person's beliefs. Why? Because God believes in choice. If it only works for Christians, then it becomes a circumstance that forces people to accept God. That's not choice, that's coercion. God does not use coercion.
What must be considered is that the principles can not be violated no matter what. The couple must still prepare a picture of what marriage looks like and settle the issues over all the goals of their picture. They must still work at it like any Christian couple. The difference will be that Christian couples have an advocate against the enemy's attacks in their picture and the non-Christian does not.
Another consideration is that any couple who operates in the bond of marriage and works toward their common goals will be showing off the image of God no matter what they call it. As they work to bring their picture to life it will take on the image of God more and more. That is what marriage is designed to do, look like God.
If someone puts together a model airplane and follows the instructions in the box, then what they will have when they are done will be that airplane the designer created. If they choose to call it a sky flyer instead of an airplane it will still look the same. A rose by any other name will still smell just as sweet. It can not help it. The designer made it that way.
A third consideration is for those who deliberately seek to change the marriage image into something other than God. Not just changing the name, but actually trying to pervert its existence and form it into something other than the two halves of God's heart melded together in perfect union.
This could be a deliberate, violent and abusive marriage relationship where one partner dominates over the other and demands the other see the picture they create. Or it could be two people of the same sex coming together to prove God wrong. Whatever the situation, the same rules apply.
The marriage union is designed to be the coming together of two halves of God's heart in perfect union to show off His perfect image. It's like baking a chocolate cake. Change any of the ingredients and you do not get the cake to taste the same. Two people of the same sex do not have both halves of God's heart to put into the mix. A person perverting either half of God's heart to force their own way does not allow the other half to shine.
It's like putting bad ingredients or weak ingredients into the mix. Whatever is changed in the ingredients changes the flavor of the result. Maybe a chocolate cake was what was wanted, but if the right ingredients do not get added a chocolate cake is not the result. It may still be a cake but it is not the chocolate cake it was supposed to be. And if the wrong ingredients are changed it may not even be a cake when finished.
A bad marriage shows off what is wrong with the relationship. A good marriage shows off what is right with the relationship. God gets the glory for a good marriage because it shows off the image He placed in man and woman from the beginning. An image that can only be seen when they are doing it right.
A bad marriage does not reflect on God. It reflects on the way the two people in the marriage are picturing the marriage. It reflects on their mistakes. Like all of Christianity, when it is being done right, God is displayed. When it is being done wrong, the flesh of the individuals is displayed.
Mistakes can be corrected. Remember, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. A bad marriage can be fixed. And a good marriage can be ruined. Neither of them is a monument to stand forever. What they are is a picture of the dynamic lives of the people involved in them.
When those people are doing it right it is a good marriage. When they are doing it wrong it is a bad marriage. God is never to blame. He set up the process but He does not force or coerce our participation in it. Like the chocolate cake, we can choose to put all the best ingredients into it or we can choose to cut corners and do it our own way until it is no longer a chocolate cake or worse, it is something inedible.
Some may take exception to the fact God gets the glory if marriage turns out great but accepts no blame if it turns out badly. If we build a house according to a master set of blueprints and it turns our great, does not the designer and architect get credit for a great design? And if we cut corners or do it wrong do we expect the designer and architect to take the blame for our choices? God has given us the blueprints. What we build depends on us.
Where the picture comes from is as important as the picture itself. If God gives the picture it is pure and holy. If the picture comes from a source that denies God and wars against Him, chances are the picture is going to be considerably different from what was originally called marriage.
If God creates a chocolate cake using the best pure chocolate He knows of, so He can show off His chocolate, how can the enemy create a better chocolate cake? If he adds strawberries to it it is no longer a chocolate cake. It is a strawberry-chocolate cake. Still a cake but not a chocolate cake. If he leaves out the chocolate and uses vanilla, it is still a cake but not a chocolate cake. No matter what changes the enemy makes the cake is different, if it remains a cake at all.
Marriage is the same way. God decided what marriage was to be. He designed it. He determined what ingredients he wanted in this thing called marriage. He made it to be the union of two hearts, a man and a woman's heart, in the bonds of matrimony and for the purpose of showing off the completed image of God.
God made marriage with very specific ingredients. Change the ingredients and, like the chocolate cake, there is no longer a marriage. It may still be a union. It may still be two people living together. But it is not a marriage because a marriage, has as its purpose the goal of showing off the image of God. If what is put together does not show off the image of God then it is not a marriage. Call it whatever you want but it is not a marriage.
The picture must be right or the shot is going to miss the mark. Like a marksman told to shoot at a target beside a big red barn, if the barn is not in the picture then it is not the right target. The union may be two people but if the target is not to look like God and show off His image then marriage is not the goal. The picture is wrong.
Those who would try to tell people that marriage is anything people decide to call it are mistaken. People did not invent marriage. Therefore people can not reinvent it. When they do, it is a whole new thing. A true marriage is never abusive. No one abuses themselves. A true marriage does not try to combine two like sexes because they do not hold both sides of God's heart and can not, therefore, achieve the goal of showing off the completed image of God.
Those who would advocate such unions are well within their right to do so but equating them to what God invented is ludicrous. Man does not create holiness and purity. Only God does. What man does is tainted by his flesh, at best, and sinful at worst.
It must be determined where the picture a couple uses comes from. If it comes from God's design then it is correct. All other designs are imitations at best. Even if the couple does not believe in God they have a better chance at success if they are using the proper design.
A person may not know anything about building a radio. But if they go to an electronics store and buy a radio building kit they have a good chance of actually ending up with a radio when they are done. Why? Because they started with the right parts and put them together for the right purpose.
Two people may speak about their picture of marriage in the same terms. But it is quite possible, and almost a sure bet, that the picture their individual words conjures up for each of them is different. Anyone who has ever played the rumor game, where one person tells a story to another person, who tells it to another person, who tells it to another person and so on to the end of the line, knows that the story at the end of the line is different than the one told to begin with. Why? Because we picture the words we use differently based on our personal values, experiences and how we see things.
That is why a discussion of each others picture is necessary to get the real picture. It will not happen by accident. They must discuss what it looks like, not just say the words. It will not happen on its own during the course of the relationship. It has to be planned and worked at to make it a reality. To make it clear for both sides they have to come to an understanding of what their words mean.
He may say he wants a business venture of his to be successful for their marriage picture to be complete. She may even agree that she wants it to be successful, too and say she will support him in accomplishing that. The problem is her idea of success may be different than his.
He may believe success is a certain dollar amount in the bank or a particular level of operation. She, on the other hand, may believe that success is more about the time the two of them can spend together.
While he is reaching for that dollar amount he may ignore her pleas for time together thinking he is painting their picture for them. She may be arranging things to make the most of their time together and then growing resentful or bitter because he regularly ignores the things she thought they agreed to.
If they do not work it out ahead of time they are going to come to a place where the goal of the one differs from the goal of the other. An argument could erupt. A discussion will definitely be needed to clarify the difference of opinion. If the situation gets far enough out of hand they may have to bring in a third party to help them refocus and redefine their picture so both of them are headed toward the same thing. (Sometimes a cooler, outside voice can refocus those who want to be refocused.)
It is important to agree on what the real picture looks like. This applies to every area of their lives. Everything. What is red to one may be pink to the other. Clarification may be needed. Don't wait until it cause an argument. Clarify it as soon as it is noticed.
The picture a couple creates is important for many reasons. First, it gives them something to work towards. A common goal. They are going nowhere without it.
Second, it gives them a line of defense. That's right! A line of defense. When the couple create a picture they are both happy with and living in, they are showing off the image of God in that area of their life. Two hearts, joined as one, and living for a common good that invites the blessing of God upon them. Because of their agreement and common focus they are living ordered lives and exercising authority over their lives. God is present in both things.
The footsteps of a righteous man are ordered by God or arranged by God according to Psalm 37:23. It also says, God delights in his way, meaning that God expresses his joy in the path the good man has chosen. He actually does things in the life of the man who pleases Him by doing the right things. That translates as a couple who shows off the image of God within their marriage causes God to delight in them and to do things that make their lives even better somehow, to make their marriage show off more of Him somehow.
One of the intangibles of marriage is the thing God does to enhance and grow the marriage. How can two people grow closer together and learn more about each other, good and bad, and still love each other? What makes them draw nearer together rather than run from each other. This thing called love. What is it exactly?
It is not just emotion. It is stronger than a feeling. At times it makes more sense than anything else and at other times it makes absolutely no sense but it must be obeyed for some incomprehensible reason.
Love is not a rule because no one can isolate how it works. Why does a beautiful woman fall in love with an ugly man? Or vice versa. And is it really falling in love or is a conscious decision made somewhere? Is it an unconscious decision? How is an unconscious decision made? How does love grow? What does it feed on?
The bible tells us God is love. Love is the intangible in marriage and God is it. That is why God can not be taken out of the marriage. Without love the marriage is not necessary. Because of love the marriage is necessary. Without God the marriage is not necessary. Because of God the the marriage is necessary.
This is simple algebra. The unknown quantity is love. When the answer for love is provided, God, then we can plug the answer into all our relationship equations and achieve correct results.
God paints the love into a couple's picture. He provides the enhancement for their decision to come together. He makes it necessary. He makes it desirable. He makes it what seems at times unbearable to live without.
When she is hanging on every word out of his mouth it is because God has drawn a deep batch of love, Himself, into the situation and drizzled it all over the place. He is not that interesting. Her friends do not see what she sees in him. But God has given her eyes of love to see him through, which opens up a picture that includes both of them conquering the world.
The same goes for him. He's telling everyone he has married the most beautiful girl in the world. She's not the most beautiful girl in the world. She laughs with a squeaky voice and she has one ear that hangs lower than the other. But because God had filled him with Himself, love, he sees her as perfect. Her squeaky laugh draws him into her mystery and her one lower ear is a priceless treasure that only she can offer to him.
Together they live in a world of love that they chose and God helped them paint. They sat and worked out their picture of what marriage was supposed to look like. They got close enough for God to delight in their ways and throw in His two cents. Love flows and no one knows where it came from.
Some may claim to be in love even before marriage. Is this possible? Sure. Marriage does not start at some ceremony or licensing agency. Marriage starts at the time when two people start to imagine their lives together. They may be teenagers betrothed to each other and waiting until after college to start their life together. They may be a couple who met through a dating service two months ago and their discussions have been all about painting this picture of their life together from that day forward.
The circumstances do not determine the marriage. The marriage creates the circumstances. The couple draw the picture and God adds His flavoring to it. Why does He add His flavoring to it? Because the marriage is designed to show off His image. His enhancement of a couple's love not only makes the marriage better but it also draws the attention of others to question the couple about how they do it.
Love can touch a person at any time anywhere. That is why so many poems have been written about love. A major theme in our movies and books is love. It is the overriding focus of our lives.
People may try to ignore that true love comes from God. That does not change the fact that God is love. The one place where love can not be dismissed is in the marriage relationship.
The relationship exists because of love. It has no purpose except for it being an outlet for our love. It can not be explained but somehow the element of love in our marriage relationship makes it better, stronger, more satisfying. It just is.
That is the God factor. He is far above us in the area of making things wonderful. He created the Garden of Eden in all its purity and pleasure. This may sound crude but think about it. God created a perfect world where a man and a woman existed in nature without the need for any clothes. The perfect existence and no clothes.
How far could a marriage progress under those circumstances? Everything they needed was there for them. No labor. No toil. Nothing to argue about. Just natural abundance supplied by God. All they had to work on was their relationship, the joining of the two hearts of God in one picture of their lives. A place designed to allow the marriage to succeed.
One thing most people can not answer is why one marriage works and another one fails. Maybe they fell out of love. If God is love that means they stopped looking like God's image. That may be the best determination of a failed marriage yet. Yet the reasons they fell out of love – stopped looking like the image of God – may be as diverse and varied as the sands of the sea.
Chapter Three
This Marriage as His Life
Marriage for a man is different than marriage for a woman. Every woman who reads this is going to say something like, "NO KIDDING!" It sounds like a simple statement but it must be said. It must be realized. Two people are about to get married or else they are already married and the fact must be addressed. Guys do not have the same picture of marriage and life in general as women do. Let's look beyond the obviousness of the statement and see the impact of its reality.
While it may not be a revelation for many people, the fact that it needs to be said speaks volumes. Why? Because most people approach marriage as the coupling or union of two people.
It is not the union of two "people". It is the union of a man and a woman, who both view life differently. What they want out of life is different. Whoever said opposites attract probably had marriage in mind. The strengths of the man combine with the strengths of the woman and produce a strong, unified marriage.
They do not get married because they have the same interests. There may be similar interests involved but the reasons they are attracted to each other are quite diverse from each other. They could both live in the same town their whole lives and work at the same place and like the same foods. But what will attract him to her are things that have nothing to do with the similarities of their lives. His heart is seeking out the heart of the one who makes him complete. (We will deal with hers in the next chapter.)
Guys see things differently. They process what they see differently. What they process comes out different than if a woman processes the same information. As a single man, his life is his own and it is the primary source of his satisfaction. It is not just about ego. Although, if allowed to develop without limits, a man's ego can become a stumbling block to his own development as well as future relationships. But it is specifically that ego that emanates from his heart and drives him to show off the heart of God.
A man with no ego is a rare and pitiful thing. Let's make sure we are talking about the same thing. A man's ego, when in control and operating properly, does not boast or make wild claims of fantastic proportions. But it does seek approval and challenges of self worth. The stronger the heart of the man, or more correctly, the more of his heart he allows others to see, the more apt we are to see his ego challenging others and seeking approval of his own manhood. God designed the man to love the idea of being a man. A man must embrace being a man or die a little bit inside every day.


text:
Career at SPI
Want a great job filled with fun & endless opportunities?
Find it here, at SPI Cinemas!
We want people with a passion for films and a passion for work. People who get charged by the buzz of the serious business of entertainment. Working at the cinema is fun! The roles are dynamic and the career is rewarding.
All our employees have opportunities for both career and personal growth through training, development and counseling.
Please email an updated copy of your resume to email@example.com
Current Openings:
- Restaurant Manager - ID
- Junior Guest Relations Executive


text:
"I'll give my reasons more worthier than their voices."
Caius Martius, a Roman soldier dubbed 'Coriolanus' for her prowess, is the hero of the Roman/Volscian war, and a figure of great contention to all those around her. She deprives the plebeians of food, yet fights for their country without mercy - a proud solider and devoted Roman in a critical moment of history.
Join us for NUTS's Slot 1 Show of 2018!
SHOW DATES: 27th-28th February, 1st-3rd March
Coriolanus: Naks Suresh
Aufidius: Anna Williamson
Brutus: Matthew McAnally
Cominius: Lyndon Carney
First Citizen/Ensemble: Soren Sadeli
Lieutenant/Ensemble: Dane Zielinski-Nicolson
Menenius: Charlie Barnett
Sicinius: Jasmin Borsovszky
Titus/Ensemble: Maxim Adams
Valeria/Ensemble: Manet Conolly
Volumnia: Hannah Irwin
Virgilia/Ensemble: Charlie Fielke
Director: Joe Knights
Producer: Axel-Nathaniel Rose
Lead Designer: Madi Slavin
Stage Manager: Jordan Mah
Grievance Officer: Isabella M-White
Assistant Directors: Damian Wagland and James Ong
Assistant Producer: Keri Tsaoucis
Assistant Stage Manager: Rachel Guest
Choreographers: Chanel Cheung and Sabrina Kirby
Costume Designer: Lise Gluckman
Assistant Costume Designer: Jessica Clark
Hair and Makeup: Tara Buckley
Lighting Designer: Steffany Synge
Publicity/Graphic Designers: Jo Bradley and Maria Okuneva
Set Designer: Isobel Sanby
Sensitivity Reader: Naks Suresh
Sound Designer: Sarah Stormont
CONTENT WARNING: simulated militaristic violence; strobe lights.
Please contact email@example.com with any questions or concerns.


text:
My dad died three years ago. With this time perspective I can easily say it's been the hardest emotional experience I faced in my life. But the amazing thing in life is that you can learn a lot from rough experiences if you take the time to look back. It took me three years to be able to do that.
One of the things that I've learned from that experience is that I loved my dad, and I think he was a great man; however I realized that I have never really been grateful about that. Not everybody has the chance to have a loving father, who guides and supports you through your young life. I had this chance but I never expressed my gratitude or even actually simply thought about it.
I'm a grateful person generally speaking, but this made me realize that I was mostly grateful for things and situations, but not for people.
Now I'm trying to acknowledge peoples contributions to my life and wellbeing and be grateful about it while they are there.
The other thing that struck me when I lost my dad is how much legacy matters. Not the material one, everything material fades one day, what lasts with people is feelings. So I'm talking about the emotional legacy; how much people lives were impacted by your presence here on earth. I was impressed by the mass of people who showed up at my dad's funeral. They showed up because they cared for him, they cared for him because he cared for them at some point in their life.
I want this; I want to have a positive impact on people's lives. I want my life to matter because I helped others. I want people to show up at my funeral, because I think that would mean I cared for them.


text:
The $250 Halloween Treat
With Halloween just around the corner, some highbrow hosts may be pleased to know they have a new option for their neighborhood ghosts and goblins: a chocolate-covered fungus that costs $250. Charles Passy explains on The News Hub. (Photo: www.knipschildt.net)
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... the ... it's a trial ... all sale of fifty ... blocks ... Charles Passy has brought me one on the set now you know really know the the huge and using it in anything you want these truffles I didn't even bring you overshoot part is though all ... the things that ... all I'm so disappointed ... I'm even writing about it ... then you tell me about on that now I'm disappointed but I'm ... this is kind of one of those on ... I don't know that it actually didn't bring that to a review to ... write it in the in the beautiful ... beautifully wrapped present age and are ... on this is one of those things were think it's more about the price and the the the item ... it's more about the shock of how expensive can you get ... this is the truffle made with the truffle so it is a ... yes that is the chocolate covered mushroom ... aam ... some might say that sounds ... pretty disgusting ... oh we can get into a little bit about the flooded the market up in the county to know why now ... does it bring on a ... good thing that someone was so why why why would anyone do this and tells a little more about um well it comes courtesy of of of the chocolate maker of Connecticut ... can the show but not quite sure I'm pronouncing it correctly so awesome and they they they sell a lot of the finer gourmet markets around the country to find the Dean and Deluca ... and they thought what if we created the ultimate ruffle ... the sort of plays into the idea that we have right now on the in the chocolate world which is to do all these kind of odd flavor combination to me ... for a while people what was there and we are doing ... helping of peppers and chocolates that's like so into thousandnine at this point so this was kind of like the ultimate thing what if we covered a mushroom a a a truffle on in in in Sharp lettuce and this is the son of a not a one level but much of this is a different ... so this ... the fungus right this is the kind of pig sniff out that are very hard to get on better the price things to shave them over pasta it's delicious ... aam and so this is now ... layered with a bit of a chocolate can notch ... some gooey stuff and then soared with the chocolate shell on my my my tummy is rumbling right wants it well out of it is for everybody but either way all the costs the tune of fifty dollars on the supple ... robots that although the three thousand so nice ok what what about the three thousand ALM so there was also a two goal of bomb bomb right right which is that the ... Fed will my price range which I ... didn't know I did not bring you while those on a bonnet out those and they are excellent and you be surprised ... how the mushroom flavor of the chocolate is the very earth that I think now on the mushroom flavor ... goes together that's me with truffle oil so it's not the actual truffle its truffle oil ... and for two dollars you can have a ... heck of a Halloween treat that was on ... to McKesson cadres Dairy milk and sprinkle some pretty tough on oil still makes the best off with that with a commercial grade so I'm sure this is beyond that okay I guess I guess that's the aam this is fascinating what did you come across this you don't normally write about it that well I do write about ... topics that we were just looking for something odd that would be ... ridiculously priced for always for the candy corn so it is right that it


text:
Gelli Colours
Speedball Fabric Screenprinting Starter Set of Six Inks
Special Order Item
Speedball premixed screen inks for printing on textiles. 6 x 113ml Black, White, Yellow, Green, Blue and Red. Colours are intermixable. When iron fixed these inks have good light resistance and are washable to 40'c.
No reviews yet. Be the first to leave a review.


text:
UCLA fans are used to hearing about the celebrity sightings across town, with actor Will Ferrell and rapper Snoop Dogg frequent attendees of USC games and practices.
The Bruins appear to be garnering a cult following as well.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and wide receiver Wes Welker were joined by soccer megastar David Beckham at the Rose Bowl, and the trio commanded plenty of attention – and plenty of flashbulbs.
"That was Norm's son's buddies," Neuheisel said. "I didn't see them, but they're good Bruins. It's absolutely the place to be now. It always has been."


text:
Isn't it wonderful to see a relatively unkown player arrive in the Premier League for peanuts and emerge as one of the best players we have seen in the top-flight or even become legends at their respective clubs?
So far this season, we've seen Swansea's £2.5 million signing Michu show the early signs of exactly that, which got me thinking of the some of the best bargain buys of all time in the Premier League.
Not including free transfers, I managed to find 20 of what I think are the best and most influential bargains the Premier League has ever seen. My chosen twenty have made approximately 4000 Premier League appearances combined and scored a grand total of around 1100 goals, while they also share 32 Premier League winners medals.
For a combined transfer total of what Cristiano Ronaldo is worth, that's not a bad return on investment.
Comments are closed on this article.


text:
Memories of the Future
On Countervision
Edited By Stephen Wilson and Deborah Jaffé
What is a memory of the future? Is it a myth, a fiction of a severed arm, a post-human debate or a broken time machine? In an increasingly insecure future-world there is an urgency to consider and debate these questions. Memories of the Future: On Countervision addresses these concerns by speculating on the connections between memory and futurity in fields such as counter-histories, women's studies, science fiction, art and design, technology, philosophy and politics. This book reveals how these subjects regenerate at the intersections of vision, counter-cultural production and the former present. The volume links the re-imaginings of memory into the present with topics such as the fever dream allegory of the adolescent social experience, soft technologies of future dress, reinventions of monetary exchange, rekindled subjectivities of school days, and technics and human progression. These countervisions argue against the homogenizing status quo of the present in order to challenge the customs, traditions and conventions of the past and propositions of the future.
List of Figures
← viii | ix→
Sara Bonner – Girl Acting Out: Revisiting the Fairy Tale Futures of Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White
You are not authenticated to view the full text of this chapter or article.
This site requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books or journals.
Do you have any questions? Contact us.Or login to access all content.


text:
Unfortunately the only way to know how much a home costs to build is to have it bid. This is because there are simply too many variables that have an effect on construction cost. For instance:
- The construction climate (supply and demand) in your particular region
- Labor costs in your region
- Material costs in your region
- The quality of your builder
- The construction quality desired
- Level of service desired
- The complexity / sophistication of the design
- The quality level of the materials and finishes that you select
- Issues pertaining to your building site
- sloped or flat lot
- quality of soils
- proximity to utilities
- Proximity to suppliers / materials
To illustrate the complexity I used a free online construction cost calculator (from building-cost.net) and plugged in identical data for two separate locations - Chicago, Illinois and North Platte, Nebraska. I assumed a custom designed 2500 square foot two story home with a 1000 square foot finished basement, two car attached garage, one fireplace and a pretty high level of custom design and construction quality. The numbers I received were as follows:
- Chicago, Illinois - $871,000.
- North Platte, Nebraska - $672,000
Next I took the exact same specifications but just reduced the quality level by one category. Here are those numbers:
- Chicago - $636,055
- North Platte, Nebraska - $491,800
Now the same house but reducing quality level by one more category resulted in the following:
- Chicago - $473,929
- North Platte, Nebraska - $367,513
A pretty brief glance at the numbers above illustrates my difficulty in answering the "how much does it cost?" question. So how do I answer it?
If you want to know the construction cost of a specific home design you need to have it bid by one or several professional building contractors. Go ahead and purchase the plans. The dollar investment and time commitment are very minimal compared to starting a design process from scratch, and in the end you will have a realistic number you can work with.
If prior to purchasing a plan you want to gain a general idea how much construction costs are in your area; then you need to do some homework. Visit the model homes in your area and talk with the builders. Compare the level of design, the construction quality, size of home, amenities, exterior finishes, interior finishes, etc. After a while you will begin to gain a better understanding of the costs for the kind of home you want. In this process you'll also be narrowing down the builders to those that are best suited for you.


text:
Devil's Lasso
By admin on May 08, 2016 in News - 0 Comments
Renegade Poetics is currently working on his second up coming album "Devil's Lasso" He will be producing, mixing and mastering the majority of the album as well as a few special collaborations with producers and artists! It is scheduled to drop this fall 2016! Stay tuned for updates on the album!


text:
Lemonade review at Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh – 'fascinating'
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. This old adage is explored by Heather Litteer in Lemonade, a fascinating, richly textured autobiographical piece aimed at illustrating how women are manipulated and exploited in the entertainment industry.
Struggling to find her place in life, Litteer eventually finds satisfaction as an actor, albeit typecast in roles such as Bored Hooker or Trashy Blonde. Unable to break this pattern and unwilling to turn down work, Litteer's big break comes in Requiem For A Dream, where she finds herself in one of the most vilified sex scenes in film history.
In this self-penned piece, Litteer explores the roles women are expected to play in life through her own experiences, though her complex relationship with her mother and through the roles she has been cast to play on film. It's a heartbreaking concept because it soon becomes clear that Litteer is an intelligent, thoughtful stage performer capable of so much more.
Despite the parts she's given, Litteer refuses to play the victim, and her consistent optimism in the face of appalling working conditions and casual misogyny becomes a defining feature of Lemonade. Sympathetically directed by Ellie Heyman, Litteer's resilience in the face of adversity has become a tour de force.


text:
The Sun and Other Stars: Katy Grannan and Charlie White
Portraiture has always been motivated by two competing and overlapping desires: the desire to record, and the desire to be recorded. Artists Katy Grannan and Charlie White have examined this tension, exploring concepts of identity and subjectivity in a world increasingly dominated by media representations of the ideal self. The Sun and Other Stars presents two bodies of work that map the fragility and resilience of individuality in contemporary Western culture.
Grannan's unflinching portraits capture adult subjects along the sun-struck boulevards of the American West, transforming them from obscurity to individuality with pathos and candor. White's series of blonde teenage girls frames the popular and tyrannical appetite for celebrity with a deadpan lack of sentimentality. These two photographic series, accompanied by Grannan's first film project and White's new animation, A Life In B Tween, and personal collections of mass-culture ephemera, provide a visual vocabulary for an examination of the human subject and the encumbering effect of desire and aspiration.
Katy Grannan was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1969. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, and her MFA from Yale University in 1999. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Charlie White was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1972. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1995, and his MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 1999. He lives in Los Angeles.
The exhibition is curated by Britt Salvesen, head of LACMA's Wallis Annenberg Photography Department. The exhibition includes 24 photographs and a three-channel video by Katy Grannan; and approximately 50 photographs, varied ephemera, and a video animation by Charlie White.
See this exhibition for free—become a LACMA member.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible in part by LACMA's Photographic Arts Council.
Image Top: Katy Grannan, Anonymous, San Francisco (Detail), 2009/printed 2012, Pigment Print, 28 1/8 x 21 5/8 in., LACMA, purchased with funds from Photographic Arts Council, © Katy Grannan.
Image Bottom: Charlie White, Portrait from Casting Call (Detail), 2010, Pigment Print, 11 x 17 in., LACMA, purchased with funds from the Ralph M. Parsons Fund, © Charlie White.
Curator Britt Salvesen on The Sun and Other Stars
Britt Salvesen talks about working with Charlie White and Katie Grannan on the exhibition The Sun and Other Stars, on view at LACMA through October 14, 2012.
Artists Respond: Joe Biel on The Sun and Other Stars
Artist Joe Biel is the latest to take part in our Artists Respond series: web-based projects inspired by an exhibition at LACMA. Biel created this online project, called Archive (fragment). Here's what he had to say about his response to White and Grannan: I thought the exhibition was brilliantly curated, because both artists deal with a unified view of image but in totally different ways. There are all these things that leap to mind about society, image, entertainment, what's real and what's fictitious..
Q&A with Charlie White
On view now, The Sun and Other Stars: Katy Grannan and Charlie White fills three galleries in BCAM with photographic portraits, videos, and other ephemera by these two California artists. Grannan's photographs depict adults captured on the street in front of stark white walls, while White's portraits largely depict blue-eyed blonde teenagers in a studio setting. Unframed's Stephanie Sykes talked to White in more detail about his works in the exhibition...


text:
New Lawsuit Filed Against Stanley Marsh 3
Multiple media outlets in Amarillo, including NewsChannel 10, have reported that a new lawsuit has been filed against millionaire artist Stanley Marsh 3.
The latest suit was filed by seven men, who are named as "John Doe" in the suit. They allege that Marsh 3 sexually abused them when they were minors and then paid them thousands of dollars. They are seeking $50 million in damages.
The abuse allegedly occurred between November 2009 to June 2011.
Last year, Marsh 3 was indicted on four counts of sexual assault of a child, eight counts of sexual performance by a child, and two counts of indecency with a child.
Stanley Marsh 3 is famous for the creation of the "Cadillac Ranch" along Interstate 40 near Amarillo. The site features 10 Cadillacs buried nose down and painted in various designs.


text:
In a small, darkened room at Lotusland, there's a video playing that is so suspenseful it's almost unbearable. In Bobe's Legend, Milan-based performance artist Robert Gligorov lies on his back with his profile to the camera. When he opens his mouth, a live bird pokes its head out and looks around. Excruciating seconds go by before the baby bird leaves this unusual nest and flies away. The same action is repeated several times with different small birds, each one acting more carefully than the one before it. Multiple questions crowd the mind as one waits for each of these creatures to leap to safety — what would happen if he coughed? Or worse yet, swallowed? How did the artist manage to hold still as tiny claws and beaks poked the inside of his mouth and scratched the tender skin of his lips?
Bobe's Legend is just one of more than 50 provocative works that guest curator Nancy Gifford has assembled for Flock, the latest in a series of contemporary art exhibitions to take place at Lotusland, the world-renowned botanical garden in Montecito. For the occasion, 35 international artists have transformed the galleries and gardens there into an extended meditation on the fate of birds and their habitats in an increasingly inhospitable world. Visitors who remember Swarm, Lotusland's 2013 art exhibit about bees, will be delighted to find that while the same sophisticated sensibility evident in that show is at work, Flock is augmented by an even more expansive vision and includes seven delightful installations that go beyond the gallery walls and out into the gardens.
The first room to receive the Flock treatment is the salon where Lotusland ordinarily presents lectures. There one can see large photos by Sharon Beals showing nests and eggs that have been collected by various natural history museums. These elegant, formal compositions express the incredible variation in nest-building styles and materials, even among birds of the same species. These images are in turn surrounded by Nathan Huff's dramatic owl wallpaper, and a vitrine on the far wall contains the carefully arranged remains of several meals eaten by the owls that live and hoot at Lotusland. The show continues in the courtyard between the buildings with several pieces that attempt to capture birds' irrepressible energy. Carlos Padilla's sound/font sculpture creates patterns on the surface of water that emanate from sound recordings of night birds. The space above visitors' heads is filled with dozens of empty black birdcages; their doors open to reinforce the message of the piece's title, which is "Silent Spring."
Gary smith


text:
Milie Mackintosh rarely looks anything but gorgeous and her latest photoshoot is proof of the pudding.
The former MIC star showed off her super-toned bod as she stripped down to model a range of lacy undies.
While speaking to Event magazine about her figure, she said "everyone has been saying I look too skinny".
Millie, the new face of NIP + FAB beauty range, doesn't agree, though.
"Last year I was on a no-sugar diet before my wedding and I started eating healthier and working out. I'm also gluten and dairy intolerant."
"I don't get upset when someone tweets about me. What's important is what my family and friends think."
And regardless of what people think, Millie cuts a fab figure in these sizzling shots.
In one picture Pro Green's missus can be seen wearing nothring more than a black bra, knickers and a pair of strappy stilletto heels.
Another snap sees her posing on a silk sheet in a pale bikini lace bikini, which shows off her toned belly and enviously long legs. With her hair tumbling around her shoulders and nude make-up, Mills looks like she was born to model.
She also spilled to Event that her greatest achievement was appearing on Celebrity MasterChef. "I felt happy but I was so stressed I could hardly sleep. I kept thinking I was going to be asked to skin a rabbit; as it was I ended up having to cook a pizza."
Earlier this month the star defended a a bikini selfie she posted online this week, after it received serious backlash form eating disorder campaigners.
The star posed in a tiny bikini showing off her impressive washboard abs - but it sparked fury amongst campaigners after her hubby called her "thinspiration" - a term often used by pro-anorexia websites.
Despite Mills quickly correcting her other half, and writing "fitsperation", a spokesperson from eating disorders charity b-eat told the Mail celebrities have a responsibility to think about the body image messages they are sending out.
Now the star has defended herself on ITV's Loose Women today, saying: "I am surprised that it's been taken out of context.
I think I look healthy in the picture. I know that I look slim but I think you can see I've got muscle definition."I think if I was putting pictures up of my ribs sticking out and bones showing like I looked unhealthily thin, then I'd say of course I was being irresponsible. I think anyone that looked at that picture would not say I was anorexic or looked anorexic.
Asked about Pro Green's comment, Mills told the panel: "He was clearly taking the mickey out of me for posting the picture of myself nearly naked. I'm obviously not his thinspiration."Millie makes no secret of her love of fitness on Instagram and Twitter, posting streams of workout selfies and snaps of her healthy meals.
She insisted it's all about being "strong no skinny" - which she regularly hashtags - and wouldn't want to promote dieting.
Millie told the show : "You've got to love your own body. You find exercise and a healthy lifestyle makes you feel better about yourself and it's definitely something to take on. Dieting and doing crazy starvation diets, that's the wrong way to go about it."
Millie Mackintosh is the face of the clinically proven, advanced skincare brand NIP+FAB. Available from: www.nipandfab.com Boots, Superdrug, Sainsburys and Tesco.


text:
…well, the Penguins, anyway.
The 'burgh is my most loved city in the US. Populated by some of my favorite people on the planet. It's great when a fellow Canadian can help out the sports-crazed folk in the city of three rivers.
TORONTO — Jim Balsillie , the 45-year old hockey fanatic and co-chief executive officer of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion Ltd., has signed a purchase agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Rumours have swirled about Balsillie perhaps moving the team Hamilton, which is close to his home and RIM's head office in Waterloo, Ont., but he indicated Thursday that he plans to keep the team in Pittsburgh.
"Pittsburgh has shown itself to be an outstanding hockey market, and the team has an incredible tradition of success and fan support," he said in a statement. "With young stars such as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, we all know the Penguins have a very bright future on the ice. I look forward to owning this team for a long time in Pittsburgh."
And, heck, it's only an hour flight from Waterloo, directly south to the 'burgh – or under a five hour drive. (We've done the Toronto – Pittsburgh trip hundreds of times. Imbi once did it in under four hours…very late at night.)
Technorati Tags: Blackberry, hockey, Pittsburgh, Penguins, RIM


text:
Submitted by SUNY Oswego
OSWEGO — The SUNY Oswego Ke-Nekt Chamber Music Series will present accomplished recitalist and concert singer Nicholas Phan at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 27, in the Church of the Resurrection, 120 W. Fifth St.
The tenor will perform works by Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten, including Britten's "Winter Worlds" and "Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo."
One music critic wrote that Phan is "blessed with a really individual timbre. And besides the beauty of his voice, he has the flexibility and musical intelligence to sing many different kinds of music, both on the opera stage and in the concert hall."
Phan recently made his Edinburgh Festival debut in a concert performance of "Macbeth" and has appeared with several world-class symphony orchestras.
The artist will offer a preconcert talk at 7 p.m. Program host will be Todd Graber, associate professor of voice at SUNY Oswego. Artswego and the college's music department sponsor Phan's visit.
Tickets are $15 ($12 for those 60 and over and for non-SUNY Oswego students, faculty, staff and $6 for SUNY Oswego students). Visit tickets.oswego.edu, call 315-312-2141 or stop at any SUNY Oswego ticket office. Tickets at the door will be cash only.
Free transportation will be provided from campus, leaving the Campus Center loop at 6:30, 6:45 and 7 p.m. Oct. 27.


text:
Monday, January 4, 2016
On Missiles and Mirren
It's been a long year and boy are my feet tired.
(A strained variation on that old joke, "I just flew in from NY and boy are my arms tired.")
Only in this case, it's not half as funny and it requires some explanation.
Here goes.
For the past week and a half many of you have been traveling: skiing, snorkeling, shussing off to see grandma and grandpa. I've been doing none of that. There is no grandma and grandpa. Thanks to a livelong addiction to tobacco and creamed herring, of the Jewish and the Scottish variety, my predecessors have been enjoying the dirt nap for quite some time.
And so, I've been working.
And hiking.
Working, because when the phone pings or the emails come flooding in and someone offers up a day rate to knock out some outdoor boards or banner ads or spamifestos, I immediately reply, "Thank you sir, may I have another."
It's the downside of being a freelancer. You never, ever, ever say 'no' to work. And it's not like I'm in position to pass up the money. Not when I've got two kids in college and a house with enough sewage and drainage problems to keep three full time plumbers on call.
When I wasn't working, or simply needed to step away from the keyboard, we, the Siegels, went hiking.
We Shanghaied our daughters up to Griffith Park and made another unsuccessful attempt to summit the Hollywood sign. We got within a 1/2 mile of our destination before the whining and the foot dragging commenced. Sporadically interrupted with the telltale call of the spoiled West LA teenager...
"I hate you."
Having learned our lesson, we -- sans children-- ventured north to the Oxnard-adjacent Chalmers Park Trailhead. As the sun was setting over the Pacific we found ourselves double backing over unmarked looped trails that we had covered earlier in the afternoon. There was some slight panic. And for a brief moment I thought I'd have to whip out my multi-tool and fashion some kind of lean-two shelter. Or snare some unsuspecting chipmunk for some protein to tide us over until the morning.
Our best hike came later in the week when we decided to explore the nearby Westridge Canyon trail. We didn't know much about it, other than it didn't require a long trip up the PCH or the often frustrating search for parking that sends many Hollywood hikers into get-off-the-road rage.
We simply drove up to the top of Westridge Road and started walking. That's when we discovered the trail extends from deep in the bowels of Brentwood to the southern edge of Encino. In all, an 8 mile there and back. Siri also told us there is an abandoned Nike Missile Station at the very end of the moderately inclined uphill trail.
I hadn't intended to walk 8 miles that day. Nor had my wife. And even though we are in excellent shape and have been fortified by careers in advertising, it's not something two 44-year olds can just wing on an impulse. But, and this is how I know I made the right choice a long, long time ago, my wife was more than up for the adventure.
"Let's do it," as she tightened the laces on her hiking shoes.
It was a beautiful hike. Capped, surprisingly, with the opportunity to explore the old missile launching site. And enjoy some Cold War humor.
On the way home we stopped at the Brentwood Country Mart for a well-earned beer, cheese and nuts. And there at the Farm Shop we saw the iconic Helen Mirren, who strolled about the cured meats and the outrageously expensive bries as if she were Hollywood royalty.
My wife got into an impromptu discussion with the hostess and the waitresses about Ms. Mirren's beautiful timeless skin. And I found myself -- silently of course-- in concurrence with the claim often heard on the inter webs.
She does have a great set of tits.
Anyway, it's good to be back. Happy New Year!
Posted by Rich Siegel at 6:00 AM
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)