text:
Nice round of public relations ABOUT public relations last week surrounding the new album launch by Beyonce'. (do we even call them "albums" anymore?)
The first round of pundit discussion was how she side-stepped the music industry's traditional marketing engines and self-released her 14 new songs and 17 new videos. No media tours or pre-emptive marketing work ie: Entertainment Tonight exclusive premiere. No artist in the music industry has ever released an entire album in this manner. Did it work? 828,773 downloads in one week, a new record for iTunes sales.
Ta-da! Simultaneous!
To repeat, there was no pre-emptive outreach. What she did use was the online simultaneous channels of social media and… a press release.
Why was a tried-and-true press release in her communications mosaic?
PR Newswire's Shannon Ramlochan explains:
"Journalists and fans alike could not rely on speculation from the internet as a credible source. However, the press release was able to definitively answer burning questions such as why Beyoncé chose a groundbreaking visual approach to her album and explains how her team was able to accomplish such an extraordinary feat in the public eye."
To repeat, Beyonce' did not tell any media that she was releasing an album. There was no selective disclosure (now you see where this is going…) She timed her 1.) "new school" communications of social media along with her 2.) brand (corporate) website and 3.) with an "old school" press release. The press release both cemented the material facts and made sure all news channels were reached simultaneously. (boy, that sounds familiar) Obviously, she was not concerned about RegFD: she did require simultaneous fair disclose as the album's ninja-like "Ta-da" launch – an essential element of the album's release. It was an earnings surprise that exceed analysts expectations.
I don't need to convince Investor Relations on the value of a press release:
- Broad, non-exclusive distribution
- Verified, time-stamped content
- Uneditable, undelete-able disclosure
- Easy-to-execute
What Beyonce demonstrated is an excellent use of the stakeholders communications mosaic and the importance of a balanced strategy even if you're a megacap Fly Girl.
What can IR do?
Reverse her model. Ease social media SAFELY into your mosaic. Bring a full-channel communications balance to your newsflow. Click here to download the whitepaper titled "How-to Automatically and Hands-free Send News Over Social Media." This whitepaper has a tactical map that mitigates RegFD risk for Twitter and StockTwits.
Oh. Take a wild guess which newswire gave Beyonce' the bootylious new reach she needed to break the new sales record?
Have a great day.


text:
L. Neil Smith's
Number 342, October 23, 2005
Tenth Anniversary Edition, Part 4
Rocky VI: Don't Call It A Comeback
Special to TLE
Everyone is a connoisseur of something. Some people know their wines. Others know their cigars. Me? I know Rocky movies. I've seen all five Rocky movies hundreds of times each. And counting.
Last week, I learned that a long-rumored Rocky VI is inching ever closer to production. People are going to wince when they hear this. They're going to roll their eyes and say, "Really? What's next? Rambo IV?" (Well, actually, yeah. Sylvester Stallone's planning that one, too.) I'm not going to lie to you. I don't think Rocky VIor Rocky Balboa, as they're apparently calling itwill be a good movie. In fact, it may well be horrible. Most people would agree that the original Rocky is a great film. Any fair-minded person would agree that Rocky II is very good. And anyone who can't find something to enjoy in Rocky III lacks the qualities I look for in a person. But after that, all bets are off. For most people, Rockies IV and V were the cinematic equivalent of a steaming pile of horse crap. They ruined the credibility of the entire Rocky franchise. But as low as the series may have sunk, that shouldn't exclude Stallone from making another one. And as a Rocky connoisseur, I'm here to tell you that, if anything, he should.
To understand why I say thisto understand why I want to subject the Good Earth to another 120 minutes of poorly spliced fight scenes, 2-D antagonists, and Sly Stallone's apparent case of early onset dementia pugilisticayou have to understand how closely the Rocky series resembles the average pro boxer's career trajectory. Pro boxers are notorious for hanging around the ring a little too long. With the exception of Rocky Marciano, Marvin Hagler, and Homer Simpson in that episode of The Simpsons where Homer becomes a boxer because he's too dumb to go down from a punch, no boxer has ever known when to call it quits. Ever. Take Evander Holyfield, for instance. Evander Holyfield has a career record of 38 wins, 8 losses, and 2 draws, with 25 knockouts. Not bad, right? Well, not bad until you consider that both draws and five of his eight losses came in his last ten fights. In fact, of his last ten, he's only won three. Suddenly "not bad" isn't so good anymore. The man's skills have clearly faded. And the sad part is, he's probably not done boxing yet.
So what makes fighters keep fighting past their prime? Well, two things. Sometimes, money. Other times, ego. But whatever the case, it's always because boxing is the only thing they've ever known how to do. Boxing used to be big business in this country. Back in the day, it was a way out of the ghetto. Men of various races and weight distributions routinely packed large arenas as they battled for lucrative purses. But then something happened. College sports and pro leagues exploded on the scene. Suddenly you didn't have to bash your head in for money anymore. All you had to do was jump real high, or run with a ball. Gifted athletes flocked to basketball courts and the gridiron. They earned scholarships, sneaker contracts, even segments on MTV's Cribs. As a result, boxing's talent pool dwindled. The Sweet Science no longer attracted the lowest of the low; now it called upon people even lower than that. Fighters are some of the most genuine folks you'll ever meet, but they're also some of the most destitute and desperate. These are the guys with few other talents, who often times need other talents the most.
Rocky Balboa fit this description when the original Rocky hit theaters in 1976. Set in Philadelphia at the time of America's bicentennial, it's the story of a down and out clubfighter, a man who supplements his income by breaking thumbs and collecting debts down by the docks. But then heavyweight champ Apollo Creed comes to town, riding his high horse and wearing red, white, and blue. He offers Rocky the chance of a lifetime. And Rocky gives him the fight of his life. Our hero doesn't win at the end of the movieoops, spoiler alertbut he gives it his all. That's what makes it so beautiful. Here's a guy who has absolutely nothing left to live for, who's long since stopped dreaming of fabulous riches and being fed grapes by half naked ladies at the pool. And yet, when opportunity knocks, he answers with furious left-right combinations. He doesn't win the fight, but he wins the girl and wins the crowd. Failure has never looked so human before. It's never looked so natural, acceptable, or bold.
Rocky II throws this out the window, of course. The movie opens with a promise that there won't be a Balboa-Creed rematch, and ends with a Balboa-Creed rematch. But it's a solid flick nonetheless. The two men fight for what seems like four hours, throwing lots of body shots that don't necessarily land but are somehow still strong enough to lift each other up into the air. Then, finally, with everything on the line, Rocky and Apollo manage to knock each other down at the same time, giving them ten secondsor two minutes, for those watching at hometo get to their feet. Apollo tries and fails. Rocky gets up and wins. Ding, ding, ding, ladies and gentlemen. We have a new champion.
This represents a turning point.
In Rocky III, Rocky isn't the underdog anymore. He's the titleholder. He's every man who's ever let success get to his head. Caught up in fame and untold fortune, he loses his belt to a brash, angry black man named Clubber Lang (played by Mr. T), and soon finds himself faced with uncertainty. Should he do the smart thing and walk away now, preserving his brain cells as well as his riches? Or should he befriend Apollo and ask him to train him, so the two can go running down the beach together and participate in an awkward hug as they jump up and down and splash in the water? Like I said, the smart choice was the first choice. But this is boxing. And boxers don't always make smart choices. Rocky goes for glory. He beats Lang in the rematch and wins back his title. But it comes at a price, for soon we will learn that his health has started to erode.
In Rocky IV, the brash, angry black man has been replaced with a cold, angry Russian named Ivan Drago, whose fists are apparently made of steel. I could probably write whole volumes on this particular Rocky movie, so I'll save most of my comments for another day. But to make a long story short, James Brown performs "Living In America," and Dragoperhaps angered by the performancekills Apollo in the ring. Rocky then flies to Russia to run up a mountain and scream Drago's name at the top of his lungs. Then he beats the crap out of Drago and wins over the crowd, thus fulfilling Sylvester Stallone's weird one-man-brings-down-the-entire-Soviet-Union fetish, which seemed to haunt him through most of the 1980s. (Interestingly, this is the only movie I've ever seen in which we are treated to back-to-back musical montages. It's also the only movie that ever made me want to grow a full beard. Those are two feats unparalleled in cinematic history. But like I said, I'll have to expand on that some other time.)
Finally, in Rocky V, Rocky retires, having taken too many blows to the head. Just when you think it can't get any worse, a convenient accounting error wipes out his entire fortune, and Rocky's forced to move back to the streets. This is the movie where everything comes full circle, and the part of the column where I stop making jokes. You see, as contrived as Rocky V was, it's the only Rocky movie as important as the first one. Because boxing history is littered with fighters who, like Rocky, reached the highest heights of the mountains in Russia (or Vancouver, where IV was filmed), only to fall back to Earth with nary two pennies to cushion the blow. Boxing is the cruel pimp of professional sports. Boxers are routinely ripped off by people they think they can trust. Mike Tyson is a prime and glamorous example, but there are othersmen whose stories are much worse. In the 1940s, Cleveland's Jimmy Bivins was a top ranked heavyweight contender. In the '90s, they found him locked in his daughter's attic, the blanket over his shoulders covered in urine and feces. He hadn't eaten in weeks. His bones poked through his once heavyweight flesh. This is how boxers' lives end: Back in the gutters from whence they rose.
You wonder why fighters keep fighting well into their 40s and 50swhy they never know when to say when, when they could easily work as trainers and stop taking physical punishment. But then you look at the poverty so many of them come from, and you look at the poverty so many of them end up in, and you realize they're fighting because, deep down, they have to. They've been fighting all their lives. In the words of LL Cool J: "Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years."
Sylvester Stallone is pushing 60 at the moment. People are going to hear about Rocky VI, and they're going to cast it off as a washed-up actor's last-ditch attempt at recapturing past glory. On some level or another, I suppose that's what it is. (Rambo IV won't help his case much.) Look, don't get me wrong: I don't want him to make this movie. I don't want Evander Holyfield to keep fighting, either. I also didn't want Michael Jordan playing his last two miserable seasons in Washington, but, sometimes, storybook endings only happen in storybooks. In a way, the Rocky series wouldn't be complete without one final comeback. Because just when you thought it was overjust when you thought you owned the entire Rocky anthologyit turns out there's some fight in the dog left. Maybe not a lot of fight. Maybe not enough to win. But enough to try andif nothing elsefail.
Thirty years ago, a young Sly Stallone shopped Rocky all over Hollywood, and against all odds scored the hit that shocked the world. Here he is, 30 years later, still fightingstill trying to make his movie. This is how careers end in boxing: Not with a bang, but a whimper. Boxers jump the shark. They become parodies of their once fearsome selves. Nothing can highlight why this happens quite like one final Rocky. We deserve to see it. And who knows? Maybe it'll shock you.
Buy from Amazon.com: The Rocky Anthology 6 DVD set
Help Support TLE by patronizing our
advertisers and affiliates.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Thursday, 10 March 2011
7 comments:
So sorry to hear of yet another loss to your family Neetz. So sad :(ReplyDelete
Totally go hard with the photos - here's to many precious memories captured and treasured for ever!!!
(((hugs))) and love for you and your WhanauReplyDelete
Maybe you might be allowed the really big camera ;)ReplyDelete
Even though it will be a sad time, may you have a blessed time with your whanau.
Awwww sorry to hear of your family losses xxReplyDelete
Loss is a sadness that lingers for a long time...but we were certainly grateful for all the photos we had taken and then I had managed to journal and place in albums to be able to relive the story as it was through the happy eyes of the time not the sad reflective ones we can have now.ReplyDelete
Take some time and reflect but snap away lots and lots.
Oh Neetz, what a year you guys have had. Hugs to you at this sad time.ReplyDelete
Yes, photos are so precious and those memories are so important.
hope you took heaps of pics.
Amen! Hugs sweet lady...ReplyDelete
You truly ROCK for leaving a comment .. Ta Muchly xx
(Due to lots of spam I have turned the word verification on again!) sorry x


text:
TORONTO, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The Toronto Stock Exchange's main index jumped more than 100 points in early dealings on Wednesday after a steep drop at the open, rising on strength in the materials and financial sectors.
The index fell more than 300 points at the open as investors initially took little comfort from coordinated interest-rate cuts by central banks around the world, including the Bank of Canada, that were designed to calm financial markets.
But after about 20 minutes of trade, the S&P/TSX composite index .GSPTSE was up 130.63 points, or 1.33 percent, at 9,960.16.
$1=$1.11 Canadian Reporting by Ka Yan Ng; Editing by Peter Galloway


text:
The dwarf mountaineers appeared in WD116 where there was both rules and a new mini for them. Here´s the rule page:
Being scouts the mountaineer act in every sense as skirmishers except that they can charge normal troops and they don´t have to run away if charged by such (WFB rules page 101). Their points value is pretty low as normally scouts cost you additinal 5 points. "Correct" value for a blunderbuss armed dwarf should be 15 (dwarf 8 + scout 5 + blunderbuss 2).
A blunderbuss is a pretty rarely seen weapon in WFB. It has a range of 16" and it hits with S3 and -2 armor modifier on 0-8" range. For 8-16" range the strengh is reduced to S1 and no armor modifier. One of the mountaineer´s special rules is that the blunderbusses can be fired when doing a downhill charge or ski charge as it is called. With the blunderbuss´ tendency to misfire on to-hit-roll of 1 this can lead to pretty hilarious situations. Imagine exploding dwarves speeding down a hill side - yodeling as they come!
The rule about using a blunderbuss in ski charge lacks the explanation on how the casualties caused by shooting are handled. I would use the throwing spear rule as a basis so that the wounds caused would count directly towards close combat result. The other option could be to count them seperately which could lead into the unit that is shot at breaking before melee. Use a GM or agree before playing how to deal with this.
On normal movement mountaineers can do double their movement rate if doing down a slope. Good skiing skills mean that they do not suffer penalties on going down a steep hill. They can also negate movement penalties for moving in a forest on a downhill slope.
Muontaineers can have a special magic instrument in the form of Yodel of Doom. The yodel puts the mointaineers in the state of battle lust that gives them a +1 to hit rolls on first round of close combat and on all following turns if they are not pushed back. Yodel is a must for mountaineers!
Dwarf mountaineer diorama from WD.
The original model is pretty sought after and you propably won´t get one for cheap. The only examply on ebay when this was written had a price tag of 84€ on him. And with minimum size of unit is five you´ll be paying A LOT to complete one.
Luckily Ral Partha produces a good alternative model in the form of DW020 Ullr the Intrepid. His weapon is not exatly a blunderbuss by the looks of it rather than a short musket or something like that. But as this mini costs only a friction of what the original mountaineer model does I think most of us can live with the not-trumpet-like barrel. Or can make one with some green stuff.
And this kickstarter should be a must for all mountaineer fans. A full unit of skiing dwarfs with real blundersbusses, a banner and all. Looks very promising!
A wonderful dwarf mointaineer from Billy Bunter´s Collection.
What I would like to see is a painted unit of mountaineers. I wonder if any of my readers has one? Or even better - a battle report including these alpine dwarfs.
If you want another view on the mountaineers Orlygg has written about them in his Realm of Chaos 80´s blog.


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Lentils to Welcome the New Year
Did you know that the world's celebration of the New Year is a somewhat recent phenomenon, which couldn't have been possible without the acceptance of the Gregorian Calendar?
Before the 17th century, many countries had their own calendars, establishing different year beginnings. It wasn't until the British Empire adopted the reformed calendar in 1752 that the British and their colonies started to celebrate the New Year on January 1st (instead of in March).
Eating lentils is one of my family traditions to welcome the new year. According to the superstition, enjoying these pulses (small dry seeds) would guarantee health and wealth in the upcoming year. The beliefs behind the tradition vary:
- they symbolize money. In ancient history, grains were used in trade and as currency. In ancient Babylonia, the shekel was a unit of weight or currency—worth about 180 grains of barley or 7.2 grams of silver.
- they represent the never-ending life cycle (from birth to death) and allow us to mourn the past year and celebrate the new one. (A little bit like when a King dies and people shout "The King is dead! Long live the (new) King!"
- they are a delicious luxury dish worth exchanging your birthright for. In Genesis, Esau sells his rights to the family name, title, and a large portion of the family's inheritance to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew.
One thing is certain: they may be an acquired taste for some, but lentils are wonderfully nutritious due to their high level of protein, iron, and fiber. Plus, they are as versatile as pasta and you can accompany them with almost any meat, fish, eggs, or vegetables, and can be eaten hot or cold.
Cheers and Happy New Year!
PS: Make-over courtesy of Snapchat's star filter : )


text: With the formation of the Nazi regime in Germany, this country lost its influenceon domains like engineering, art and philosophy. For years, instead of being reminded of Beethoven, Mozart Nietzsche, Goethe and thousands of other important names, people throughout the world could just recall Hitler and his genocide. After the collapse of the Nazi regime, the Allied armies turned Germany into two eastern and western parts and for almost thirty years not only did political conflicts continue, but Germany's internal situation also got worse. However, within thirty yearsbefore and after the fall of the Berlin Wall andthe reunification of East and West Germany into the Federal Republic of Germany, this countrywas driven to the path for significant growth and development.Not only it could compensate for many of the damages it had suffered, it could also grantitself a leading position in the field of technology and industry.Perhaps it could be claimed that although Germans do not have the marketing intelligence that Americans have, it is clear to everyone that the land to create sustainable brands is nowhere except Germany, a country in where Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, Adidas, Fanta and dozens of other major brands have been offered to the world.


text:
We are pleased to announce that the British Council have now awarded us with the International School Award and Conisborough College has been officially e-twinned with College Vauban in Belfort, France.
Teachers and students at Conisborough launched a unique partnership with College Vauban in 2014.
We were extremely pleased to welcome our French exchange students and their teachers to the college in 2015 and again in the summer of 2016 and more recently in March 2017. Conisborough students were equally thrilled to see the friends they had made when they visited College Vauban in France. This cultural exchange really helps our students to look beyond the world that is Lewisham and London. It broadens horizons and helps to raise aspirations as well as developing their linguistic skills.
We are, therefore, very proud to have the work of our MFL department officially recognised with this award as part of eTwinning, the digital community for schools in Europe.


text:
The Romulos moved to Manila in 1914, when Carlos was sixteen years old. They bought and moved into a house in Intramuros at 266 Calle Cabildo. Prior to the move, Carlos attended the Tarlac Provincial High School, the country's first public school. It was established on September 1, 1902, in Tarlac City, by Thomasite Frank Russell White.
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Copyright 2009 Carlos P. Romulo Foundation


text:
Firstly, if there be any doubt, I will continue to record certain aspects of my life here on these pages as I continue to live with depression. My previous posts have been read then re-read in my head over and over as I have struggled to decide whether or not to continue blogging in some form or just to let it go. I have once said upon these pages that if my experiences with the Black Dog help just one soul feel better about themselves then this blog is a worthwhile thing to do, so I shall continue with my words with this hope in mind.
Secondly, a huge thankyou for the many comments on previous posts, the help provided is not a thing that can be quantified in any shape or form. It is enough just to say that they are important to me.
Thirdly, a work in progress list of future posts include;- Cornwall (where friends 'not met yet' became 'friends for life'), Compromise Garden updates, Boraras urophthalmoides (my latest relaxation helpers), Rugby (not for the England fans among you), Retirement strategy, Rewilding, Nature, Stress coping (or not as the case usually is!) these and other topics amongst all the usual drivel and if you want any requests? well you may ask as perhaps you never know.
So that be about it for this evening, t'was going to be a post about the fortnight in Cornwall but I just couldn't be arsed sorting through pictures, bar one......
|She calls to me doth the sea...
......part of the retirement plan is to be near as possibly to the sea.
So that's all for now, my eyes are heavy and I must head up the wooden hills to let sleep cradle me till the morn. Till the next time, take care my friends.


text:
Well today is the first day since last week that I have my day to myself-lol.
PC- working ( check), Nathan at school- (check), Wayne at work ( check)! Yup- back to routine. WOOHOOOOOOOO!!!
Boy, putting it mildly - my life is NEVER boring as things get thrown at me from all directions that can turn a *normal* day into a crazy fun fair ride-hahahaha. It sure keeps me hopping I tell you.
OMG- we had Waynies Bday party on Saturday, with everyone here watching rugby in the afternoon too. Not only did we WIN, so there were MAJOR celebrations going on- but poor Wayne was given tons of *shooters* too ( well he was the Bday boy-lol). He managed to sneak down the passage at 1am and climb into bed!! hahahahahahahaha- Yup, I was up till 4am seeing everyone out.
Proudly *Souf A-freak-ens* as Bunny Wunny calls us-hahaha. All in our rugby supporters gear.
All gathering around the fire just after the match ;-)
Happy BIRFFFFFDAY to you Waynie- lol.
Ant bought Wayne some BLUE BULL slippers ( his provincial rugby team he supports) and made him wear them the WHOLE NIGHT! OMG, they are *FUGLY*- but he was a great sport and wore them laughing his ass off every time he slipped outside or someone stood on the back of them-hahahahaha
And of course the *girls* having their fun - pouring shooters and SINGING our hearts out and dancing our asses off-lol
Yup- that's a cell phone being used to *record us*- BWAHAHAHAHA.
AND YES- we slept most of Sunday ( well I did- hahahaha) Waynes phone rang all day from early in the morning with everyone wishing him happy Birthday- *tee hee*.
OOOOHHHHHHH- and of course it's the beginning of AUGUST already ( wow, this year is flying by!) and my new Colour Challenge is up-
Please check out the forum challenge thread HERE to get the correct swatch ( I was uhum,lets just say BLONDE and didn't change the hex numbers for the preview here- BWWWWAHAHAHAHA).
Come and join in the fun- there are already kits and gifty's and stunning LO's in there already!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO!
Ok, going to get some creative juices going and get my FIX in photoshop today- boy I've missed not being able to create the last week! ADDICTION I swear! hahaha.
hope you all have a fantastic day further
Big hugs


text:
IIMTS Certification Training
In addition to 'Executive Education and Continuing Professional Development' though Cutting Edge Digital Learning, IIMTS also helps in preparing management professionals to achieve their career through certification in their various fields. IIMTS's Certification Training Team is specialised in providing professionals the knowledge & tools to drive their businesses and various functions. We develop and deliver corporate and professional certification solutions to empower the professionals across various business verticals.
For details of the Certification Course, click here


text:
4×4 & Forward Command Vehicles
Technology and equipment is fitted to a 4WD vehicle to create a mobile command centre able to operate in remote locations for extended periods of time. The high level of connectivity in the vehicle enables communication with a central base and personnel in the field. Active repeaters fitted to the vehicle boost signal strength, supporting communications in the most remote areas. The vehicle can be fitted with solar panels to ensure power is constantly generated so equipment will operate without being constrained by the vehicle's battery capacity.
Power management systems also intelligently aid in extending the length of time the equipment is operational in the vehicle without impacting battery charge. The vehicle is fitted ready for deployment reducing response time when there is an incident.


text:
Born in 2011 and growing ever since
Over the years we've built a fantastic team at TDL and have worked on design projects across the globe; read on to find out how it all started.
Information design at the core
After finishing his BA in Product Design at Staffordshire University in 2004, Oliver Tomlinson spent nearly three years working as an in-house designer within the Highways Sector. His user-centric design approach, and skills in explaining things visually, led him to be part of the bid team where he produced graphics and diagrams for some of the largest highways contracts of the day.
In 2008 Oliver decided to become a freelance designer (Tomlinson Designs) to broaden his skill set. He didn't want to call himself a 'graphic designer' as he felt it didn't quite encapsulate what he did; instead he thought he actually translated information into graphics – an 'information designer'. A quick search on the internet for this term (hoping he could have the informationdesign.com domain!) unveiled a whole new world of information design, so established it even had a dedicated Masters Course at the University of Reading. There was really only one direction for Oliver here, to enrol on the MA…
A team starts to develop
In September 2010 Oliver graduated with distinction, and freshly armed with his MA Information Design, set up Tomlinson Designs Limited in April 2011. His focus was still in understanding complex information and translating it into graphics, predominantly for large bids and tenders.
Hard work and dedication to his clients soon led to too much work for him alone, so it was time to employ some help from like-minded designers; designers who put functionality and usability before pure aesthetics, and who could work face-to-face with subject matter experts to really understand the content they were visualising. We moved into our first office in June 2011, located in Earlsfield, London.
In early 2012 the team created a new identity for the company and started trading under the name TDL-London. Oliver wanted to show the company wasn't just about him, so omitting 'Tomlinson' from the name illustrated the company's desire to be more about 'we' and less about 'me'.
Why settle in Richmond?
The team soon started to expand and quickly outgrew their office in Earlsfield and found themselves in Clapham North where they shared the space with a bid management company, PCS. The Clapham North Arts Centre was a great place to work but could only contain the team for a year before they found their long-term base in Richmond-Upon-Thames, where you will find the TDL-London team based today.
People have wondered why a creative agency would like to be based in Richmond rather than trendy East London, but we've found it's a great place to work with reliable connections into London for client meetings, and gorgeous surrounding boroughs for the team to live in. Richmond doesn't just seem to work for us; PayPal, eBay, Not on the High Street and Graze all have head offices there.
As TDL grew we found we had more design skill-sets within the team, so our projects and client sectors became more diverse. Instead of purely working on bid and tender graphics, we successfully designed things like newsletters, menus, how-to guides, instruction manuals, timetables and editorial infographics; but whatever we worked on, we would always ensure the project had a focus on information design – making the information and data easy to understand.
Giving something back
Around 2014 we decided to start working on a few pro bono projects for good causes, projects where design can really impact lives. Our first was an instruction manual design to help Syrian refugees keep warm during winter – designed for CARE International. It was a great success and is still being used as a guide for relief agencies during disaster situations. We now have a structured approach to using a proportion of our profits to design projects that can really make a difference.
We felt it was also important to give something back to the design community, and help our clients understand more about the benefits of good design. For this reason we created a resources section of this website which will be continually updated with inspirational and useful information.
Expanding the TDL 'Galaxy'
In 2016 Oliver and his family moved back to their home county of Herefordshire, so it was the perfect opportunity to expand the presence of TDL by starting a new 'solar system' in the West Midlands. TDL-West Midlands, like TDL-London, will be offering our renowned face-to-face design service to existing clients in the West Midlands, but also to businesses in new sectors that will benefit from our expertise in information design. By Autumn 2016 Oliver and two new graduates will be settled into a new TDL office in Birmingham; watch this space for more news!
For more details on office life over the years, please take a look through the archives on our Facebook page.


text:
SANDUSKY, Ohio -- Northern Ohio authorities were seeking former Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Odell Thurman on Friday on a felonious assault warrant. fficeffice" />
The 25-year-old Thurman, of ffice:smarttags" />
Cincinnati, was indicted last week by an Erie Countygrand jury on the charge, accusing him of punching a 19-year-old lace w:st="on"> North Royaltonlace> man, the Erie County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. >>
Police said Thurman punched the man in the face, breaking his jaw, on May 27 at Kalahari Waterpark Resort in
after they argued about a place in line. lace w:st="on">Sanduskylace> >>
Thurman's agent Safarrah Lawson said he had been unable to speak to his client and could not comment on the charges. A message seeking comment was left late Friday with Thurman's lawyer, John Michels.
Thurman was suspended indefinitely by the NFL in June after violating the league's substance abuse policy.
Thurman sat out the last two seasons after skipping a drug test and getting arrested for drunken driving. He had been reinstated by the league in April, but the Bengals released him in May after he skipped a series of voluntary workouts.
He was a second-round pick in 2005 out of Georgia.
When will the NFL stop letting people like this into the league? Give them millions of dollars to play a game, then all they do is piss it away.


text:
The Emerald Triangle of Northern California is known for the forest, scenic coastline and cannabis. For generations, people have been cultivating the plant in the region. Now, with the trade show Emerald Exchange, those in Los Angeles have access to the near-mythical cannabis of Northern California and a chance to meet the cultivators who grow it.
Farmers, including Justin Calvino, have built a livelihood cultivating cannabis within the Emerald Triangle. With the passage of Proposition 215, which legalized cannabis for medicinal use in California, business in the region boomed, with more people across the state wanting and needing to medicate. However, larger agricultural businesses also demanded a share of the profits being made in the thriving industry. The small, independent farmer that had provided the region with homegrown cannabis for decades was, in a sense, overshadowed.
Calvino saw people who had virtually no history in the industry entering the cannabis market to make a profit. That's when he decided to team up with Michael Katz of EVOXE Laboratories and event producer Jessica Cure to create the Emerald Exchange.
The Emerald Exchange is a destination for cannabis connoisseurs across California. It is part tradeshow, part outdoor market, with a focus on small-scale, sun-grown cannabis farms.
"We saw this as a great way to give small farmers direct access to the market, in the largest consumer market in California, which is L.A.," says Calvino.
The idea was successful, and the third Emerald Exchange is scheduled for March 18. They are expected to host 40 vendors and have approximately 500 guests. Attendees are invited to interact with the farmers providing sun-grown cannabis, learn about holistic health, visit a spa and interact with people of similar interests. There is a centralized focus on business, wellness and education.
"Whether they're a business insider or consumer, they're coming to learn about the product," says Cure. "At the end of the day, people feel like they're part of a bigger community."
The event brings small farms back into the light—both literally and symbolically. The event is scheduled on the Saturday before the spring equinox, the tipping point between the dark winter months toward the journey until summer. Appropriately, the event is held outdoors in the fresh seaside air, creating a relaxed and positive setting for attendees. Symbolically, it is reminding small famers that they are needed, they are appreciated, and people are interested in what they're doing. It's a bold statement about protecting the livelihood of long-time cultivators who have recently been shut out of the industry.
"What we are doing, in large part, is to protect the way of life," Calvino says. "The protection of the small farm and that way of life is paramount.
A tasting panel will also be present at the event, with professionals who have a background in classifying cannabis varietals. The goal is to identify the specific characteristics of various strains so there is a more reliable guide to strains and their flavors and effects.
"Basically the tasting panel was born as a necessity as we need to start identifying characteristics of each strain across industry lines," Justin says. "So there will be a Blue Dream in Arizona that is the same as in Northern California. We want to know how the phenotype expresses itself in different geographic locations.
Furthermore, the panel will focus on topics like laws, taxation and cultivation—all prevalent issues for people consuming or growing cannabis.
"The data collection is a point that will be useful for the industry moving forward," says Katz. "But we are also supporting the needs of the community . . . so people take away more than just meeting other people."
Justin expressed many of the farmers he works with, and will be present at the Exchange, focus in on the Entourage Effect found when ingesting cannabis. This means there is more attention given to the overall effects of the plant—how the cannabinoids and terpenes interact—rather than just potency.
"Part of the soulmate relationship between Justin, Jessica and myself, is we all believe in wellness and healing and wholeness," Katz says. "There is a sort of Entourage Effect that [we] bring to the Emerald Exchange."
The Emerald Exchange is a unique event for dispensary owners, wholesalers, growers and cannabis consumers to interact, learn and support small farms; this is all accomplished in a classy and comfortable environment. The event is not limited to one topic, but brings together many interacting aspects as necessary to a true holistic lifestyle. Ultimately, the Emerald Exchange promotes the empowerment of the individual in the context of supportive communities.


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Stay Connected
Fun! Mt. Helix Academy (MHA), in La Mesa, CA, is a T/K - Grade 9 school where amazing students are allowed to soar academically. It is also a really really fun place! Just see how much fun these amazing kids have in this entirely MHA produced video.
This song is now available on iTunes!
Filmed and Edited by Alex, an MHA 8th Grader!
Music Recorded and Produced by Tripp Sprague, MHA Dad
Music Written and Video Directed by Tracey Singer, MHA Marketing Coordinator/MHA Dad
For information about this amazing school call (619) 243-1400 or visit online at:
© The Institute for Effective Education
The East County Californian | 119 N. Magnolia Ave, El Cajon, CA 92020 | Phone: 619-441-0400 | Fax: 619-441-0020 | email@example.com


text:
Airport Technology & Passenger Comfort - Efficient infrastructural solutions made in Germany
Bon voyage – a feeling of well-being among passengers is also a crucial factor in determining the success of an airport.
GATE and its member companies offer technologies and equipment for a perfect, efficient infrastructure. The development in the low-cost carrier market as well as the significant trend towards "airports becoming mini cities", increase the demands for innovation and cost-effective solutions.
Integrated technologies and excellent networks can respond to these challenges.
Our news about exhibitions and events
A listing of of all news and topics can be found here.
Tuesday, 11 October 2016 GATE FUTURE
September 30th, 2016 in Berlin/Germany
German airports and their industry met at the famous Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin for the first "GATE FUTURE" – the innovation forum in cooperation with the ADV.


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CEOs Repudiate Keyes, Embracing Tax Cuts Instead; Favour Strong Dollar to Enhance Standard Of Living and Innovation; In Personal Investing, Are Increasingly Oriented to Active Investments.
Big Heart, Big Impatience: Public Opinion on Aboriginal Policy
September 11th, Depression, and Employment
Interest Rates, Capital Tax, Petro-Canada, Air Canada - Canada's CEOs Applaud The Bank Of Canada's Interest Rate Reduction, Consider The Tax On Capital As The Most Destructive Tax And Favour Its Abolition, Want The Federal Government Out Of Petro-Canada, Preferably In Stages, Applaud The Federal Government's Tougher Competition-Related Monitoring Of Air Canada, But Are Divided About How Much Assistance To Give The Airline.
Muddled Mandate
Diversifying Oil/Energy Dependency and a Continental Energy Deal in the 9/11 Aftermath
The Water Cooler Poll
Canada Day Poll Toronto Gets Gold, Vancouver Gets Silver
Federal Liberal Strength, Opposition Disarray, and the Uncertain Future of the NDP
Canadians' Intense Concerns about Water Quality
Valentine's Day Poll


text:
Buttes and mesas, and endless views of the desert floor make this one of the most photographed areas in the world. From the commonly recognized formations, to the lesser known canyons and desert scenes, Monument Valley has so much to offer!
Monument Valley has starred as a film location for countless movies such as Forrest Gump, The Lone Ranger, Back to the Future III, and John Ford's Stage Coach.
To inquire about filming at Monument Valley, visit LocationsHub.com.


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Sigil ePUB Editor
SECTION 1: Formatting Options
There are many different opinions about how to format your eBook, some of them less disinterested than others. Any information you receive from a retail store is going to be written with their particular conversion engine in mind — and, yes, almost every retailer will run your eBook through an automated conversion as part of their processing paradigm to protect customers from poor formatting. And numerous third-parties exist to format your eBook, sometimes at a considerable price and sometimes with misleading marketing which implies that formatting is the hardest thing in the world. In my opinion, that doesn't need to be true for most authors.
What I'm going to outline here is a self-formatting method that I believe to be easy to learn, simple to master, and (above all) financially free. If you decide to go with a professional formatter on the grounds that your time is worth more than your money, I strongly recommend going with a fixed-price formatter rather than one that will take a cut of all your book sales. This latter category usually combines formatting services with uploading services and will call itself a "publishing group" or something similar. Some authors decide that these arrangements are beneficial to them, but I recommend putting off that decision until your second book, after you've seen all aspects of the self-publishing process.
In the Smashwords distribution section, I will discuss in more detail a third-party formatter I have worked with in the past, but briefly here I can recommend the 52 Novels group as fixed-priced professionals who do good work and conduct good communication and good customer service. However, it is important to note: Even if you go with a third-party formatter in the end, you very likely will still need to know the basics outlined in this chapter. So keep reading.
SECTION 2: Why ePUB, and How To Download Sigil
If your book is a text-based book — such as a novel or instruction manual, in contrast to a graphic novel or comic book — then as soon as you've finished writing and editing your book, you need to get it into ePUB format.
The statement above is a statement of opinion not universally shared, but I could not believe it more strongly. The ePUB format is the format that the majority of retail stores will use when selling your book, and it is the format that the majority of your readers will expect to use on their eReaders. The ePUB format is also immensely easy to convert from but tremendously difficult to convert to: in other words, once you have your book in ePUB format, it's very simple to get other formats from it later as needed.
Having an ePUB copy of your book will save you an inordinate amount of time during the uploading phase and will prevent the myriad of conversion errors that plague indie authors when they try to utilize retailer conversion methods (such as .doc to .epub or .pdf to .epub) which will almost certainly result in errors that your readers will assume are your fault. And having an ePUB copy at hand will allow you to send free review copies through email without having to pay your retailers for "gift copies".
So now that I've convinced you that ePUB is the way to go, what does that mean and how do you go about it?
There is a longer description of the ePUB format online — which will go into all the technical background of the ePUB format as a free and open standard maintained by the International Digital Publishing Forum — but all you really need to know is that we're talking about an electronic file format, .epub, just like .doc is a file format. Only where .doc requires Microsoft Word in order to read or edit the file, .epub requires its own editor for reading and writing. And for our purposes, we're going to use the Sigil editor.
The Sigil editor is a free and open source software tool which you can download here. I'm going to suggest that you download the 0.3.4 version of Sigil, because at time of writing I believe it to be a better editor for our purposes than the more recent versions. You can find the following 0.3.4 versions at the link above for the following operating systems:
- Sigil-0.3.4-Windows-x64-Setup.exe
- Sigil-0.3.4-Windows-Setup.exe
- Sigil-0.3.4-Mac-Package.dmg
- Sigil-0.3.4-Linux-x64-Setup.bin
- Sigil-0.3.4-Linux-Setup.bin
If you don't know which version you should be using, probably Sigil-0.3.4-Windows-Setup.exe is the correct one: most of you in the audience will be running 32-bit Windows. Once you've downloaded Sigil and installed it, open it up and the program will automatically open a nice, shiny, clean ePUB for you to put words into.
SECTION 3: The Nuclear Option
The first method I'm going to teach you for ePUB formatting will have the unfortunate effect of stripping out all your formatting: all the bolding, all the italics, all the underlining, and so forth. The term for this process in the self-publishing world is the "nuclear option" — popularized by Smashwords — because it is so destructive to the formatting.
As you get more skilled with eBook formatting, the nuclear option may not be necessary for you to use, but I still recommend walking through this section. It's important to know why the nuclear option works in order to understand how formatting errors happen. And once you know how to employ the nuclear option on a global scale for the entire novel, you can transition to using it for bits and pieces as your future novels may require. Here I will also talk about how to make the nuclear option as pain-free as possible, and how to ensure that all your formatting gets back in before you publish.
Prepping The Text With

Copy and paste the first chapter of your book into a text editor that provides find-and-replace options for special characters. Microsoft Word provides this capability, and I will be using that here as an example. Open the find-and-replace dialog and replace all line-returns with a line-return that is framed by paragraph tags. In Word, the syntax for this request is to replace all ^p (line-return) with
^p
 (closing paragraph tag + line-return + opening paragraph tag). The process should look like this:
Inserting The Text
Once you have your paragraph tags in your novel, open up Sigil. Go up to the Sigil tool bar and find these three buttons:
The button on the left that looks like a book is the text-view for the editor. The button on the right that looks like < > is the code view. The button in the middle is a combination view that shows the text on top and the code on bottom. For right now, open the code view. You should see a mostly-empty body tag, with a single paragraph tag containing a   (non-breaking space) inside. Highlight that line —

 — and paste in your prepared novel text. You'll note that what you pasted in isn't, strictly speaking, clean code. You should have a leading
 tag at the top, for instance, which has no corresponding
 tag. Sigil will clean this up for you, though; switch to text view and then back to code view and you'll see what Sigil did behind the scenes. The entire process should look like this:
1. Open blank file and switch to code view.
2. Highlight the blank paragraph and paste in your prepared text.
3. Switch to text view and then back to code view to trigger a final clean-up.
The third picture above shows what a completely clean nuclear-optioned ePUB file should look like. Now that you know what your file should look like, you can police your results in the future when you move to simpler conversions and easier copy-paste movements. For instance: for some text, some of the time, you can copy your words into the Sigil text view without having to go through all that

 prep work above, and it will still come out just fine. But! For other text, other times, all kinds of formating awfulness can come over invisibly from the original text editor (Microsoft Word is particularly bad about this at times).
Because you now know what the nuclear option should look like, you can always switch over to Code View after a copy-paste from the Text View in order to confirm that your file is clean. If you start seeing a lot of unexpected formatting in your code, like
 when you were just expecting a simple
, you'll know what is wrong and how to fix it.
Putting The Formatting Back
The nuclear option, as noted above, will strip out all formatting. For most novels, this will only affect bold, italic, or underlined text, but you may also be looking at having to re-indent anything that has a deeper indentation than the surrounding text, such as lines of poetry. You will also have to manually add in any images (more on that below).
The buttons pictured above are the Sigil formatting buttons for bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough. Once you're in the Text View in Sigil, it's easy enough to highlight a word and apply one or more of those formats. What isn't easy is eye-balling your entire novel line-by-line to make sure you didn't miss an italic word somewhere. So we're going to use technology to make the process easier.
Earlier we used a text editor with find-and-replace options for special characters in order to prep your text for copy-pasting. Now we're going to use that capability again to make sure that you catch all your special formatting. Instruct the find-and-replace engine to find all words with special formatting (in the below case, italic formatting) and "replace" them with red-coloring. Now you can see more easily at a glance which words need tweaking in Sigil. You can even use the find function to go directly from word to word so that you don't lose anything.
This is still a time consuming process. But it is possible to get into an experienced rhythm where most authors can do a chapter in about 10-20 minutes, or five chapters to an hour. That means a twenty-chapter book can take about four hours of your time … or you can hire a third-party formatter for around $200. Really, the choice is yours, but I can say that any time or money invested into getting your novel into ePUB format is time/money well spent.
SECTION 4: Internal ePUB Formatting
And now a few words on formatting within your ePUB: keep it as simple as possible.
The reason for this has almost nothing to do with the ePUB format and almost everything to do with retailers and readers. Retailers want to minimize costs and maximize happy customers. They don't know where your ePUB came from; for all they know, you wrote the code from scratch in a plain-text editor and left broken code tags everywhere. So retailers have a cost-effective solution: just run the ePUB file through an ePUB-to-ePUB conversion and if no errors are thrown, then the file must be clean!
The problem for you as the author, though, is that some of these store conversions will muck up special formatting (as well as frequently stripping out your cover page image to save space on the retail end), and your readers will blame you for it. Additionally, different eReaders display special formatting differently — or in some cases, not at all. I've seen eReaders and eReader apps strip out italic text, only to mean that the reader couldn't tell the difference between narration and inner monologue.
These things aren't your fault, but they're part of the self-publishing process and you are going to have to work to minimize them. One way to do this is to own a number of eReaders and eReader apps and test each store-bought version of your book once the stores have uploaded the book for sale. Another way minimize risk, and much easier on the wallet, is to cut down formatting to the bare minimum. We'll talk about special characters in a later chapter, but for now here are some things to be aware of.
Minimal CSS
If you add a CSS stylesheet to your eBook (Sigil —> Styles folder —> Add new item —> Style0001.css), I recommend keeping it simple and straightforward. Here is a css block that I've used in the past for homemade and converted ePUBs with good reading results:
body { margin: 0; }
h1 { text-align: left; }
h2 { text-align: left;}
img {text-align: center;}
p {
direction: ltr;
display: block;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 5px;
orphans: 2;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
padding-top: 0;
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0;
widows: 2
.text {
direction: ltr;
display: block;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 5px;
orphans: 2;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
padding-top: 0;
text-align: left;
text-indent: 30px;
widows: 2
.quote {
direction: ltr;
display: block;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 0;
orphans: 2;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
padding-top: 0;
text-align: left;
text-indent: 60px;
widows: 2
.superscript {
vertical-align: super;
font-size: 50%;
In the case above, a paragraph that was meant to take the appearance outlined in the ".quote" portion of the css would be framed by paragraph tags that looked like

. In the case of single words within a paragraph, the code would use a span tag to frame the word, like . Here is an example text from my novel Pulchritude:

While she spoke the Beast stretched on the ground, his head thrown back, only evinced that he still breathed by his sorrowful sighs. He answered her in these words: "I can refuse you nothing; but it will perhaps cost me my life. [...] If you break your word you will repent it, and regret the death of your poor Beast when it will be too late. Return at the end of two months, and you will still see me alive."

In this single exchange, the Beast hits every area except one on the "Power and Control Wheel" of domestic violence. 12

You can find more information and examples at Amalthia's eBook Formatting Tutorial online.
Header Text and Tables of Contents
The ePUB format uses special tags to denote text for headings. These tags also signal to the eReader software that the heading be included in the internal Table of Contents that the reader can access at any time while reading. Heading text should be framed by

 tags (or

 for sub-headings, and so on down) for sub-headings, and so on down) and should contain a "title" attribute for the TOC description. Here are some example headers from my novel Pulchritude:

Chapter 1 - Rosella

Chapter 2 - Ezio

Deconstruction

La Belle et la Bête

[INSERT TEXT FOR READER HERE]

Duplicating Your Meaning (The Italics Failsafe)
A good rule of thumb when formatting is this: if somehow all the formatting was removed, would the reader still catch your meaning? Formatting for emphasis can usually be lost without altering the meaning too much, but italicized text for thoughts can be a major problem if the italics go away. I highly recommend providing duplicate clues to your meaning in the case of formatting failure. In my novel Pulchritude, I indicated internal thought by both italics and quotation marks:
"I meant it this time," he realized sorrowfully.
Font Color and Night Mode
Unless it is really crucial to your novel, do not specify color for your text. A significant number of your readers will be using eInk devices, which will strip out your colors (at best) and potentially render them washed-out and hard to read (at worst). Above all else, do not fall into the trap of designating your novel text as black. This may seem like a sensible, if unnecessary, line of code to add into the mix, but it means that some reading apps will render black text on a black background when trying to read in "night mode".
Use margins carefully and sparingly. In the CSS block above, I have provided small margins (5 pixels) and indentations for regular text and quoted text (30 and 60 pixels). If you can, test your margin settings on a smartphone; there are too many margin settings out there in the wild that are measured in half-inches and end up rendering as a little worm of text on the small screen of a phone. Don't do that to your readers.
Images are tricky, and may take a little practice in order to get them right. Let's first talk about formatting: you're going to need to use .jpg / .jpeg files in your eBook. The ePUB standard supports more image file formats than that — it can, for instance, handle .png files with transparent backgrounds quite well — but a number of the stores you'll be uploading to will convert your image formats to .jpg and may do so very badly. For example, here is how the Google Play store converted one of my Pulchritude images, rendering the transparent background into strange boxes and lines:
So save yourself the headache and just use .jpg files from the get-go. If you really wanted that transparent background, just save the background off as white — for the majority of readers, it will look transparent as intended, and the Sepia-themed and Night-mode users are used to images looking a little different.
Getting the images into Sigil is a bit roundabout. Right-click on the Images folder and choose "Add Existing Items…", then browse to the image on your local computer and select it for addition to your ePUB file. Once the image is in the Images folder, you can reference the image directly in code by name. Here is an example:

The  tag contains an image. The "alt" attribute provides a brief description of the image for readers who cannot view or render the images for whatever reason, such as eReaders set up to accommodate visual disabilities. The "src" attribute points to the location of the image, in this case ".." (up two directories within the internal ePUB structure), "Images" (the Images folder in Sigil), and the file name. The "%20" you see above (Chapter%20Break) is the ascii code for a space, since the image was named "Chapter Break". To avoid this, pull spaces from your images; an image named "Chapter-Break" would have a src of "../Images/Chapter-Break.jpg".
SECTION 5: Conversion Choices
If you have any background in HTML at all, you will have noticed by this point that ePUB formatting looks a lot like HTML. You might be wondering why you wouldn't just load up an HTML page and save it as an ePUB for an easy conversion. And you might go from there to thinking that you could save a Word document as an HTML page (the Microsoft Word editor provides this option) and get an easy ePUB that way. Less work, more value!
Well, maybe. You can open an HTML file from within Sigil and save it as an ePUB. And if the HTML file came from a really clean webpage where the author had lovely code and everything was wonderful forever, then the results can actually be pretty good. (This is one reason why the dotEPUB web extension is so cool to have on hand.) But! A number of webpages online are not clean and pretty in the HTML, and the ePUB result will be less so. Also, the ePUB standard does not encompass everything that HTML can do, so the bottom line is that any HTML-to-ePUB conversion is going to need a lot of cleanup. Really it comes down to what will take longer: building it up correctly from scratch or editing something existing until it's correct. Only you can answer that.
As for the Word-to-HTML-to-ePUB, I really don't recommend it. I use Word a lot (though not for writing books, but we'll deal with that in another section), but it has a lot of invisible formatting that gets carried over into any conversion and which has to be laboriously removed by hand after the fact. I have never seen a Word-to-ePUB method that wasn't more hassle and more error-prone than just building the ePUB from scratch to begin with.


text:
"So, what did you do to piss Satan off?" My friend asks casually as she starts the car. I glance back at the children who are happily devouring Dairy Queen ice cream, which happens to have been the parking lot we broke down in. But let me back up. Past the fibroids, the car wreck and the broken air conditioner.
It started, at least this round, with the latter. I love a good warm house so I was oblivious to the issue as finally I woke up comfortable instead of freezing. When I talked to my husband for the first time that day I launched into the latest office drama that was going on and had I been listening to him I would have heard the worry in his voice, but I did not. Originally we had planned for me to man the boy child for the evening so hubby could take Kaiya on a daddy-daughter date but I remembered a little too late that I had to get my sonogram done.
You see I've been having this weird bleeding issue, and don't worry, that's all I'm going to say about it, but for all the world I have been grasping at Jesus' feet for weeks now trying to catch the hem of his robe. It's only been a few months of this latest medical drama, so I can't even imagine what it would have been like for the bleeding woman. Who literally bled for years. If it had been me I would not have stopped at catching the hem of the robe, nope, I would have tackled Jesus. And lately I have been doing all the prayer-tackling that I can squeeze into one day.
Just when I was set to dash out the door to my appointment someone had an impromptu meeting that apparently couldn't wait which set me back fifteen minutes. Now, I know it's silly, especially because I rarely have them be on time for me, but I hate being late to doctor's appointments. I don't mind when I have to wait fifteen or even thirty minutes but if I'm so much as exactly on time instead of ten minutes early it drives me nuts. So I dashed out the door and proceeded up the highway like I was heading home, thus missing the convenient East-West cut through.
Instead I had to turn off on quite undesirable road that has these gigantic square-shaped speed bumps that I like to call Satan's brownies and the road winds and curves like a creek bed. Not to mention that it's not in the best part of town and I was getting funny looks in my business clothes. Deciding to change to a different road I ended up back-tracking a bit and at this point decided to call the office and let them know I was running late. I got put on hold for eight minutes and then the line disconnected. I turned down another road thinking it would be quicker but the entire two mile stretch was a school zone that I was inching along on. Then the next road I tried was having construction work and was down to one lane.
I finally got through to the doctor's office and they graciously told me to just call back if I was going to be more than fifteen minutes late and I told them that at this point anything could happen so even though I was five minutes away I would certainly call if the Earth happened to swallow me up or an anvil dropped down from the sky.
Then the car in front of me hit the car in front of it and the car in front of it hit the car in front of it and so on for a good four cars. I, thankfully, was far enough behind the last car that I was able to stop. I whispered "thank you Jesus" and eventually wound my way around the fender bender. I pulled up and walked in, just five minutes late. I then enjoyed a good ten minutes of waiting where I got to calm down and browse a lovely magazine. I also enjoyed the art on the walls. This has been something I've been doing lately, as for various reasons I can't take a vacation this year I've been trying to see little moments as "little vacations." So I whip out my phone and start taking pictures like I'm at an art gallery and not at the hoo-hoo doctor. (Yes, that's what we call it in my house. You get to name private parts silly things when you have small children. It's the law.)
Then a technician comes out and walks me to the separate office to get my sonogram. I make awkward conversation during it because that's what I do, but it was seriously odd to be getting one and not be looking for a little peanut head, two arms and two legs. I could tell by the immediate way she started clicking on the screen and marking off "x marks the spot" on something or other that she had obviously found something. I was also fairly certain there wasn't the slightest chance it was a baby.
A few minutes later as my OB sat down, tired and ready for her day to be over, she asked if we had discussed the fibroids before. The what? No. OK, well you have two, they aren't serious but likely were what was causing the bleeding, we can't really do anything to remove them because of where they are. Then she asked where I was at with wanting more kids. Truthfully that answer is, I'm quite done, but given this context I wanted to keep my options open thank you. So when she explained that if the treatment that had already been prescribed, a stronger dose of birth control, doesn't work, we would have to do more drastic measures like get my tubes tied I suddenly found myself desperately wanting to give the Dugger woman a run for her money. What do you mean I might "officially" not be able to have any more kids??
I called home, and still when I heard the nervousness in his voice I assumed it was because I was explaining my new reproductive development. So when I pulled in to the driveway and saw an air conditioning repair truck I naively assumed the neighbors were having theirs worked on. One step into our sauna straightened me out. I braced myself for the news as he wrote down the several thousand dollar figure it was going to cost since we needed a whole new system installed. How on Earth are we going to pay for it, and when we need to get our SUV fixed? We have multiple friends offer to let us stay with them until it gets fixed, which is the first sign that we are well-loved, but then it gets fixed relatively quick and since our friend owns the company he says we can pay for it on a payment plan. Second blessing of community.
Our neighbors that are expecting a baby text us, joking, "Can Courtney deliver a baby?" So we ham it up and I grab salad tongs and put on some latex gloves and go running across the street ready to spring to action. We settle down to bed, to the hum of a new machine, and get up for another day.
I call home, ready to tell of more office drama and the tiny ulcer it's starting to give me that might just be located in my eyeball, and he launches into a tale of car trouble. Yes, I think tiredly, I know the car has been acting up for months now. But then it hits me. He had taken my car for the day. MY CAR IS ACTING UP TOO? I have a mini panic attack about having to deal with two broken cars and a broken ac unit in one week and then I see the verse I scribbled that reminds me to pray instead of the worry and so I do, I pray. I tackle the Almighty in my cubicle.
It's after lunch now and my day is quickly coming to a close when I get a text from my husband telling me to get a ride home. So I text my first round of friends and just as I'm about to go to round two I get a call from one of them. Chipper and excited to help she informs me that it's no trouble at all as she was picking her son up from school not far away at all and that she had to go all the way up to the Antarctica part of the city we live in anyway. My instincts are to be suspicious, but then I remember that maybe something crazy happened: maybe when I prayed it got answered! So I thank her profusely, finish my work-out and then wait for her call. As she is medically inclined I launch into my new fibroid issue and it is quite an encouraging conversation.
We get home and my husband explains that he learned that the issue might not be that bad and he wants to try and make it to church tonight for our art group meeting, so we said good-bye to the friends and we all pile in the car. Arriving in time for the dinner we dine on hotdogs and peanut butter sandwiches and have a fantastic evening herding cats. Because that is what discussions with artists are like: herding cats or sweeping flower gardens.
A friend comes out to chat with us as we head to our car, the same friend that happens to live in our neighborhood. She also had similar car issues so she gives some advice while he pours coolant into the engine. We then start home and soon there is this horrible sputtering sound. He asks if there is white smoke behind us and at first I can't see anything and then our car looked like a little row of mushroom clouds was shooting out from its butt.
Just as he's barely able to turn into the Dairy Queen parking lot, as the white smoke splays out like it was the fantastic climax to a theatrical performance, he says to call the neighbor friend. Just as i pull out my phone to get her number she pulls up beside us.
Getting out of our cars and waving away white, smelly smoke she explains that she saw the smoke from a ways back and so she carefully followed us and she was just about to call us to tell us about it. We decide that the kids and I will ride home with her while my husband waits with the car for the tow-truck driver and then I call another friend to see about getting him a ride home. Meanwhile the details get worked out I decide to go inside and get some icecream. For the kids of course.
Just before we leave we work out a plan for this same friend to pick me up in the morning and I'm relieved I don't have to scramble around calling people at eight o'clock at night. Talk about true community in action, but it didn't stop there.
So I had just gotten the kids settled in bed and was sitting down with a slightly bewildered look on my face when my phone rang. It was the other friend who had picked me up earlier and she explained that they were going to loan us one of their cars. I about sang.
When my friend asked me: what did you do to piss Satan off I had no answer at first. My other friend said that she believes that when Satan throws crap at us, trials like car trouble and health problems and work tension God sometimes allows it so we will trust more in him. That sometimes he wants us to call a friend and humbly ask for a ride, and then have our socks blessed off when they offer one and then offer their car as well.
Maybe Jesus knew what he was saying when he said the kingdom of God is here. Maybe he meant, all y'all go out and bless the socks off each other when you're having cruddy car-junky days. Maybe I'm just stupid enough to glare down at the floor, cause I'm quite certain heaven is up and hell is down, and taunt: "Is this all you got?" Psssshh. Bring it. I got a kingdom behind me. And I done tackled me JC and I'm gonna cling to his robe for forever.


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Dead Samurai Unblocked
Choose to yourself the fighter and begin participation in the most dangerous championship. Each duel deadly and to win, it is necessary for you for only one attempt to spend the Samurai through all fights. At each of them the weapon, but the main thing – to be able to treat him. As soon as you are able to own the weapon, without problems you will become the winner in any fight.


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VERGENNES — The Vergennes Farmers' Market will officially open this week in and around the north end of the Kennedy Brothers building on North Main Street, an action made possible when on May 23 the Vergennes City Council signed off on the proposal.
The market plans to open this Thursday from 4 to 7:30 p.m. and operate during those hours every Thursday through Oct. 4. The market operated indoors at Kennedy Brothers this past winter.
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VERGENNES — Vergennes Farmers' Market board members said the combination of a recruiting effort, a switch from Mondays to Thursdays and a little bit of momentum helped triple the number of vendors at the market in the past two years.
MIDDLEBURY –– In an effort to support the local food industry, Middlebury College employee Francisca Drexel is taking grocery shopping online.
Drexel recently opened a local market for Middlebury College on yourfarmstand.com, a website that is run as an online version of local farmers' markets.
VERGENNES — The growing Vergennes Farmers' Market will make its 2011 debut on Thursday on the city's downtown green with an expanded variety of local fresh produce, flowers and even crafts.
The market will open earlier this year than in the past, said coordinator Rhonda Williams, and will run from 3:30 to 6 p.m. on Thursdays through the fall.
VERGENNES — Vergennes aldermen at their April 12 meeting approved the city's farmers' market request to use the downtown green for another season, but not without some discussion triggered by the proposed inclusion of a pizza maker among the market's vendors.
City Manager Mel Hawley first raised the issue that such a vendor might conflict with existing downtown eateries.
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Home | Contact
Bahamas Aggressor Captain's Log 12-19 Nov 2016
Air Temp. 75-84+ F
Water Temp. 77-81 F
Visibility 40-100+ft
Captain Dennis
Engineer David M.
Instructor Gabi
Instructor Alex
Chef Robert
Vania, Ruth, Daniel, Luc, Beth, Victor, Herman, Marc, Ken, April and Wayne
Sunday – Periwinkle Reef, Blue Hole, Crab Reef, Barracuda Shoals
Monday – Up Jump The Devil, Austin Smith, Pillar Wall, Madison Avenue
Tuesday – Primo Wall, Knucklehead, Split Coral Head, Jake's Hole
Wednesday – Split Coral Head, Cave Rock, Tunnel Rock
Thursday – Cut & Run, Monolith Wall, Aquarium, Flat Rock Reef
Friday – Blue Hole
Saturday November 12th
After guest board the Bahamas Aggressor at her home dock of Elizabeth On Bay, we departed and made way to a wonderful anchorage area just off Rose Island.
Sunday November 13th
After enjoying the sunrise we raised the anchor and traveled the short distance to our first dive site called Periwinkle Reef. Periwinkle Reef is a shallow area made up of three colorful coral heads. While diving Periwinkle Reef we enjoy swimming with a lot of Marine Life, like Spotted Moray Eels, Blue Chromis, Sergeant Majors and Stingrays. Normally we do the Blue Hole for the last dive of the week, but this week it was number 2. While diving the Blue Hole we saw schooling Snappers and Grunts, Angelfish, Caribbean Spiny Lobsters, Spotted Moray Eels, Nurse and Caribbean Reef Sharks. After enjoying the Blue Hole we made our way to the Exuma Islands and Crab Reef. Here we encountered Channel Clinging Crabs, Arrow Crabs, Lobsters and Spotted Moray. We finish the day with a night dive on Barracuda Shoals and swam with Sharks, Snappers, Groupers, we also saw Lobsters, Rays, Crabs and a couple of Turtles.
Monday November 14th
Our Monday was sweet. It started with a dive on Up Jump The Devil. A colorful wall dive that had several swim thru's for us to enjoy. We also enjoyed Arrow Blennies, Black Corals, Colorful Sponges, Big Groupers and Sharks. Everyone enjoyed the Sharks so our next dive we headed to the Wreck of the Austin Smith where we swam with several Caribbean Reef Sharks some coming with a few inches from us. Plus we saw Groupers, Angelfish and Eels. Pillar Wall was next with its Canyons and Small Swim Thru's, Mackerel, Parrotfish, Spadefish, Hawksbill Turtle and more Caribbean Reef Sharks. Madison Avenue was our last stop for this Monday. We encountered so much Marine Life that we could have stayed here the entire day. Lots of Small Creatures plus Horse-Eye Jacks, Tiger Groupers, Coral Banded Coral Shrimps, Creole Wrasses, Huge Caribbean Spiny Lobster and Spotted Lobsters add two Turtles and it made for a fantastic dive site.
Tuesday November 15th
After the night dive we cross the Exuma Sound to the Island of Eleuthera. After watching one of the Best Sunrises I've seen in a long time we splashed on Primo Wall. We enjoy this beautiful wall looking at a variety of Marine Life such as banded Coral Shrimp, Mackerel, Spotted Moray Eel and Hundreds of Garden Eels. Next was Knucklehead Reef with lots of Colorful Christmas Tree Worms, Swim Thru's, Small Creatures and a couple of Flounders. The best place in Eleuthera to dive with Sharks is Split Coral Head and that's where we headed. As we pulled up to the mooring several Caribbean Reef Sharks swam up to the Bahamas Aggressor. Before the dive was over we had 11 very Healthy Caribbean Reef Sharks swimming Very Close. We finish the day on one of the crew's favorite, a dive site called Jake's Hole. A shallow site with scattered corals heads with lots of color and Marine Life. Some of what we encountered were Arrow Crabs, Channel Clinging Crabs, Spotted Lobsters, Caribbean Spiny Lobsters, Stingrays and one Big Green Moray Eel.
Wednesday November 16th
We enjoyed the Sharks at Split Coral Head so much we made another trip back to not only enjoy the Caribbean Reef Sharks but the Very Colorful Wall and the variety of Marine Life on Split Coral Head. We made our way back North to Cave Rock and saw Lettuce Sea Slugs, Banded Coral Shrimps, Caribbean Spiny Lobsters, Yellowtail Snappers, Feather Stars, Sea Cucumbers and Moray Eels. We ended the day with a late afternoon and night dive on Tunnel Rock. Both the afternoon and night dive had a huge variety of Marine Life to see. Just some of what we enjoyed shooting pictures and video of was Magnificent Urchins, Atlantic Thorny-Oysters, Red Night Shrimps, Spotted Spiny Lobsters, Spotted Moray Eels Swimming out in the open and Octopus, which stayed on top of a small coral head so we could take lots of pictures and video.
Thursday November 17th
We started today with a pre-breakfast dive on Cut & Run. It was a nice easy diving around an Encrusted Anchor, Small Plane Wreck and a Colorful Wall, seeing Stingrays, Spotted Moray Eels and Flying Fish. Monolith Wall was next and it was fantastic. We saw Big Caribbean Spotted Lobsters, Mackerel, Roughtail Stingrays and Spotted Moray Eels. During lunch we made our way back across the Exuma Sound to the Northern Exuma Islands and the dive site Aquarium. This is always a beautiful site to dive. Aquarium is a shallow dive so everyone was able to get a lot of underwater time seeing a huge variety of Marin Life. Some of what we saw was Jawfish, Butterfly Fish, but the best was seeing 10 Nurse Sharks lying in the sand close together. We finished the day with a Sunset Dive on Flat Rock Reef. It was perfect timing getting in the water just before the sunset and swimming with Lobsters, Rays, Sharks, 2 Huge Turtles and Octopus. A Great Time Had By All!
Friday November 18th
We ended a fun week of diving on the Bahamas Aggressor by diving the Blue Hole again. We stopped at the Blue Hole on the first day of diving; everyone enjoyed it so much we went back for another look. Just like the first day, all had a good time. Lots of Marine Life, such as Angelfish, Nassau and Tiger Groupers, Southern, Yellow and Roughtail Stingrays, Lobsters and even a few Sharks.
The Crew Would Like To Thank Everyone For Joining Us On The Bahamas Aggressor!!!
Until The Next Time Safe Travels…
Best Fishes,
Bahamas Aggressor Crew


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Eric Sedler
- Chicago US-IL
- [email protected]
Eric Sedler is the Managing Partner at ASK Public Strategies, a communication management firm based in Chicago. Sedler's expertise is in developing communications programs for complex business and public policy issues. Sedler has worked with clients in major industries including telecommunications, energy, financial services, health care, entertainment and land use. His clients include corporations, trade associations, organized labor and advocacy organizations. He is a top-level communications expert sought out for his proficiency in applying public opinion research to communications management and executing strategic communications to educate select audiences on specific issues. Prior to co-founding ASK Public Strategies, Sedler managed regional corporate public relations departments in AT&T's Chicago, Atlanta and Miami offices. In that position he directed the company's corporate public affairs campaigns in the central and southeastern United States. Sedler spearheaded a number of successful high-profile business initiatives while at AT&T. He led a communications and public affairs effort to secure regulatory approval for AT&T's acquisition of cable systems in several Midwestern states. He directed AT&T's communications for the updating of state laws in Michigan and Ohio. Sedler oversaw the launch of local telephone service in key markets. As a result of his work, Sedler was selected to participate in AT&T's executive development program in 2002. Earlier employment included several years at Edelman Public Relations working in the Reputation Management practice where he directed media and public affairs campaigns. At Edelman, Sedler developed and implemented public affairs campaigns in the fields of telecommunications, insurance, health care and professional services. Before entering the field of communications management, Sedler spent nearly a decade working in politics and government. He worked for federal, state and local officials and managed a number of successful state and local political campaigns. Sedler worked for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan as a leading member of the Issue Department. Sedler worked directly with the House leadership and state legislators to develop and implement communications programs that advanced the caucus agenda. Sedler had specific responsibility for developing communications programs on behalf of legislators. In this role, Sedler developed communications programs that resulted in extensive news coverage for legislators. Sedler's work included developing legislation dealing with telephone area codes, mammogram coverage and fireworks safety regulation. Sedler is a frequent guest speaker on communications and issues management. He has lectured at the University of Chicago, Loyola University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sedler is the recipient of the Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America and the Silver Trumpet Award from the Publicity Club of Chicago. Sedler is a native of Detroit and a graduate of the University of Illinois. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two children.


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To review: The Constitutum Constantini is an imaginitive reworking of an older myth that occurs in the fifth-century Actus Sylvestri -- the so-called Sylvester legend. In this legend, among other things, the pope prompts the emperor's conversion to Christianity by curing him of leprosy. The Constitutum adopts big chunks of the Actus word-for-word. The forger innovates by having Constantine give Sylvester, his successors, and the Christian church a lot of stuff, all in a surfeit of piety and gratitude. This stuff includes supremacy over the patriarchal sees at Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem; a variety of ceremonial clothing including Constantine's crown (which Sylvester refuses to wear); Constantine's "Lateran palace," the churches of St. Peter, St. Paul and the Lateran basilica; the city of Rome; and ultimately the entire Western half of the empire. At the end Constantine concludes that it's not right for him to rule in a place where priests and the Christian religion have supremacy, and he heads off to Constantinople. There's other stuff in there too: Constantine holds the bridle of Sylvester's horse and acts as his groom and declares that the Roman clergy will have the same honor as the Roman senate. Do let me know if I'm forgetting anything important.
Anyhow, the Constitutum only appears to overlap with Pseudo-Isidore's concerns insofar as it relates to the pope's preeminent position in the Christian church. I quote the relevant passage from the translation online at the Medieval Sourcebook:
And we [i.e., Constantine] ordain and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well over the four chief seats Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem, as also over all the churches of God in the whole world. And he who for the time being shall be pontiff of that holy Roman church shall be more exalted than, and chief over, all the priests of the whole world; and, according to his judgment, everything which is to be provided for the service of God or the stability of the faith of the Christians is to be administered. It is indeed just, that there the holy law should have the seat of its rule where the founder of holy laws, our Saviour, told St. Peter to take the chair of the apostleship.... There...let them seek a teacher, where the holy body of the teacher lies; and there, prone and humiliated, let them perform the service of the heavenly king, God our Saviour Jesus Christ, where the proud were accustomed to serve under the rule of an earthly king.Pseudo-Isidore also insists on papal supremacy, though for him the pope's position at the head of the Christian church is most often invoked as a legal protection for bishops. The point is that bishops and other clerics can appeal their way out of the provincial synod and seek impartial judgment in the papal court. The Constitutum casts the pope's position in a much different light. He's a religious leader in charge of Christian faith and piety. The pope as an exalted teacher, as the head priest of the Christian religion, as the embodiment of the holy law, the lex sancta -- I can appreciate that this pope might have flattered some of Pseudo-Isidore's biases and preconceptions. But the fact remains that Pseudo-Isidore's pope plays another game entirely. He's a pragmatic, administrative figure whose role in the church is above all important as a protection for bishops -- the bishops who, to use Pseudo-Isidore's favorite architectural metaphor, are the pillars of the Roman Church.
For Fried, though, there is considerably more overlap between the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals and the Constitutum. At the end of the document, as we saw above, Constantine confers "the city of Rome and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions" to the potestas and the dicio of the Bishop of Rome, and to the ius of the Roman Church. These lines have traditionally been interpreted as conferring (or rather, purporting to confer) some sort of secular jurisdiction -- an interpretation that Fried might ascribe to the "canonists and propagandists of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries."
Unwilling to take this interpretation at face value, Fried goes in search of what exactly it means to transfer things like cities and provinces to the pope's potestas and dicio. He finds that both secular and ecclesiastical authorities can have potestas and dicio, and that all the words really appear to mean is "some sort of legitimate power" (40). Thus the wording is "by no means unambiguous," but Fried nevertheless thinks it significant that, according to the Constitutum, "the emperor did not grant any new authority, but assigned the places and regions mentioned to the existing authority of the bishop of Rome" (39). In Fried's mind this forces us to conclude that the forger intended only to depict Constantine handing the western empire over to the ecclesiastical authority of the pope. The Constitutum is thus not only partly but almost entirely about the pope's position at the head of the Church, and it has precious little to do with the pope's secular jurisdiction. Suddenly, Pseudo-Isidore and Pseudo-Constantine seem to be on the same page. Or at least in the same book.
Pseudo-Constantine, as we saw above, goes on to leave Rome because (Fried's translation now) "it is not right that an earthly emperor should have jurisdiction...where the...head of the Christian religion has been established." Fried concludes: "As far as earthly power and dominion were concerned, and as expressed at the end of the document, the...goal was more modest.... Not power over the entire West, but only over the City of Rome was granted to the successor of St. Peter" (45).
Fried's reasoning, specifically with respect to the meaning of potestas and dicio, deserves a closer look. Lexicographical investigations convince him that these terms can refer, above all, to four different things: 1) "an aspect of legal ownership," 2) "administrative sovereignty," 3) "imperial or royal authority," and 4) the "jurisdiction of a bishop" (40-42). Fried finds reasons to exclude the first three possibilities, thus driving us into the fourth. Now I should confess, at the outset, that I suffer from a serious allergy to this Lord, Liar, Lunatic style of persuasion. I'd rather accept an interpretation because it seems intrinsically convincing than because it's the least objectionable of the (perhaps artificially) limited possibilities on offer. Fried does bring some positive arguments to bear on the question, but they're weak tea indeed; and what's more, the alternative interpretations he outlines weather his attempts at exclusion quite well. We'll go in order:
Possibility #1, "legal ownership," is rejected because "a similar transfer of property, including the Lateran Palace, had already been referred to earlier, and the pope will certainly not have received any personal property." Nor were things like "provinces" "part of the emperor's 'property.'" (41 with n. 127). It strikes me, first of all, that Fried is expecting too much linguistic precision from the forgery. And does the Constitutum Constantini really grant the imperial palace twice – once as property and once in some other sense? Here are the two passages he's talking about, from the translation provided in his appendix (so you know I'm not massaging the meaning):
c. 14: To those same holy apostles, my masters, St. Peter and St. Paul; and through them, also to St. Sylvester, our father, and to all the pontiffs his successors...we concede and...confer our imperial Lateran palace....
c. 17: In order that the supreme pontificate may not deteriorate, but may rather be adorned with dignity and glory even more than is the dignity of the terrestrial empire..we confer to Sylvester...as well as our palace, as has been said, as also the city of Rome, all provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions and we...relinquish them to his and his successors' power and rule (potestas and dicio) and we decree that they shall remain undert he law of the Holy Roman Church.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Does that first bolded bit above amount to a first grant of the Lateran palace as property, and does that second bolded bit above amount to a second grant of the Lateran palace in some further additional sense? Or does that second bolded bit above simply refer to the first bolded bit above? Is it simply a reference made by way of comparison or analogy, to suggest that Constantine wanted to give Rome, Italy and the West to Sylvester in the same sense as he had given Sylvester his palace? This latter possibility strikes me as the only obvious way to read these words. Suddenly, and despite Fried's objections, "legal ownership" as a translation of potestas and dicio doesn't seem all that objectionable.
But we move on. Possiblity #2, "administrative sovereignty," is excluded, first of all, "because it would have implied a parallel secular order besides the emperor, or an interim authority between the emperor and holders of office, for neither of which there is any evidence" (41). I fear that I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. The Constitutum Constantini is a forgery. What does "evidence" mean in this context? It is possible both for a forger to insist that the popes should exercise "administrative sovereignty," and for there to be no evidence that the contemporary papacy exercised any "administrative sovereignty." All apologies to Fried if I have misundertsood the import of his words. He continues that "administrative sovereignty" is also to be rejected "because before Constantine the Bishop of Rome cannot possibly have received any secular potestas to which the emperor could have transferred any cities or provinces" (41-2). Once again, I invoke my complaint about Fried's expectations of linguistic precision.
Possibility #3, "imperial or royal authority," is rejected "on the grounds that neither was the pope already emperor, nor did the pseudo-Constantinian Constitution assign him any imperial authority and so did not make him emperor" (42). Again, I don't understand how this argument is supposed to work given that the Constitutum is a forgery that has to contend with contemporary realities. Fried is simply wrong to go hunting for legal or lingquistic precision in a document like this. Pretend, for a moment, that you are a forger. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you want some unspecified people to think that the pope is supposed to wield some sort of imperial power in the West – or something analagous to imperial power -- or that he's the counterpart of the Byzantine emperor -- or whatever. Do you forge a document that has Constantine explicitly granting Sylvester "imperial authority" and "mak[ing] him emperor"? No, because reality constrains your fictions. People tempted to accept your forgery will have to wonder why the pope isn't still referred to as an emperor and why nobody thinks of his position as imperial. So you have to obfuscate. You have to use vague terms like potestas and dicio – terms that mean everything and nothing. You can make implications with abandon, but at every turn your document must allow for the fact that the pope does not hold imperial office. The words you put in Constantine's mouth must be prepared to deflect suspicion at every turn; they must deny potential opponents and critics any purchase. Plenty of people will doubt that the pope is an emperor; fewer will deny that he exercises, or ought to exercise, potestas and dicio in the West, at least in some sense of these terms.
Otherwise, and beyond these specific objections to Fried's approach, I simply can't reconcile his reading with the contents of the Constitutum. The entire forgery is awash with symbols of imperial power, all of which are signed over to Sylvester and the Roman clergy. It seems strange to argue that all of these explicitly imperial and secular trappings are brought in to emphasize the pope's ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
As we've seen, the passage that Fried finds so helpful for his argument has the pope granting his palace "as mentioned above, as well as the city of Rome, all provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions." All of these things are to accrue to the potestas and dicio of Sylvester and his successors, as well as to the ius of the Holy Roman Church. It is only after this dispositio – that is, after Constantine is done signing away everything – that he picks up and moves to Constantinople, because he doesn't think it appropriate that an earthly emperor should exercise power in the place where the prince of priests and the Christian religion is established. This is described purely as a consequence of the preceding donation; it is not an additional donation of anything at all, and I do not see how it limits the extra-ecclesiastical implications of the Constitutum to Rome alone. Of course Constantine frames his transition with specific reference to the city of Rome – as is appropriate, given that Rome was the seat of the Western Empire. In effect, though, the document has Constantine leaving the entire West.
Put another way, Fried's reading requires us to distinguish among things that the dispositio treats in exactly the same manner. Let's keep Rome in consideration. The Sylvester legend and the Constitutum both understand, after all, that Sylvester was bishop of Rome before Constantine ever contracted leprosy. When the Constitutum signs over a list of things that includes Rome to the pope's potestas and dicio, then, how can this grant have anything to do with ecclesiastical jurisdiction? In what other sense, if not the extra-ecclesiastical, could Constantine conceivably be granting the city of Rome to the bishop of Rome? We have seen that not even Fried wants us to understand that Constantine's palace and the city of Rome are being given over to the pope's ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone. Yet the dispositio does not grant Rome with different terms or with different syntax than it grants the "places, provinces and cities of Italy and the western regions." All are ceded to Sylvester in the same breath, as part of the same list, with the same verbs.
Quite plainly, the Constitutum aims to give the pope some claim to extra-ecclesiastical jurisdiction over his palace, Rome, Italy and the entire West. Exactly what sort of jurisdiction is not clear; probably the forger does not want to be clear. His obfuscation is on display elsewhere, as we have noted many times: Pseudo-Constantine does not grant any imperial title and Sylvester shrinks from wearing Constantine's crown over his tonsure. This is a forgery designed for a world in which the pope was not an emperor and did not wear an emperor's crown.
Back to Part I or Part II.