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Gretna Theatre Presents 'Love 'Round the Piano' Concert 2/12-13
Gretna Theatre and The Lantern Lodge present Broadway's Timothy Shew and Jane Brockman in a dinner-cabaret event "Love 'Round the Piano" for two performances only on Saturday,February 12 and Sunday, February 13, 2011. Guests will be treated to a fully served dinner at the famed dining and lodging establishment in Myerstown followed by a cabaret featuring love songs from Broadway sung by two favorite leading actors, Timothy Shew and Jane Brockman. Gretna Theatre producing artistic director Larry Frenock said, "We are so fortunate to have Broadway blockbuster talent such as Tim and Jane to star in our shows during the summer seasons. The level of talent Gretna Theatre attracts is very exciting - and we are grateful they could slip away from their busy New York careers to join us for this special Valentine's Day Weekend of love songs!"
Timothy Shew recently starred at Gretna Theatre in "Shenandoah" and "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" as well as originating roles on Broadway in the revival of "Wonderful Town" with Brooke Shields, "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and Disney's "King David." He was privileged to be seen on Broadway in over 1,600 performances as Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables," in "Bye Bye Birdie" starring John Stamos, "Sunset Boulevard" starring Betty Buckley, the pre-Broadway Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Whistle Down the Wind" and joins us fresh from the new Frank Wildhorn musical "Bonnie and Clyde" that is slated to open on Broadway this coming August!
Jane Brockman performed at Gretna Theatre starring opposite her husband Tim Shew in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and comes to us directly from Northern Stage where she has been starring as Glinda in "The Wizard of Oz." She recently sang the concert version of ABBA's new musical "Kristina," working with original ABBA members at New York's Carnegie Hall and at Royal Albert Hall in London. Other Carnegie Hall appearances include "Camelot" (which aired on PBS' "Live from Lincoln Center") and "Showboat." New York credits include "Zorba" and "Kismet" and she has toured nationally with "The Light in the Piazza" and "The Sound of Music." Ms. Brockman was born and raised in Hershey!
"Love 'Round the Piano" will also feature Carolyn Dorff, whose credits range from the Broadway National Tour of "The Secret Garden," to regional productions in leading roles in "My Fair Lady," "The Music Man," "West Side Story," "The Sound of Music," "Carousel," "The King and I" and many roles at Gretna Theatre including in last season's "...Spelling Bee," "Peter Pan" and "Mame."
Gretna Theatre's producing artistic director Larry Frenock will not only produce and host the event, but will also step out in front for a song or two. Besides his work as a producer, he has performed in nearly every state in America in major shows on tour and regionally such as "Hello, Dolly!," "42nd Street," "Anything Goes," "Babes in Arms," "Fiddler on the Roof," "The Heidi Chronicles" and was also in the original cast of "Mack the Knife: The Life and Music of Bobby Darin" in New York City. The musical director for "Love 'Round the Piano" is Ryan Wise.
The Lantern Lodge is a full-service Quality Inn located at 411 North College Street in Myerstown that features dining, lodging and hosts many events including weddings, parties and receptions. Performances will be preceded by a fully served meal, with a choice of entrée of stuffed chicken breast or roast top round of beef, salad, side dishes, coffee or tea, and dessert. The Lantern Lodge is offering a Valentine's Weekend Special deal of an overnight stay which will include a performance of "Love 'Round the Piano." Bring your Valentine and "Love 'Round the Piano" meal times begin at 6:30 pm on Saturday, February 12 and 1:00 pm on Sunday, February 13, 2011. All inclusive tickets are just $48 per person and include meal, show, tax and tip. There will be a cash bar for wine, beer, soda and mixed drinks. Reservations will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis and may be made by calling the Gretna Theatre Box Office at 717-964-3627. Visit the Gretna Theatre website at www.gretnatheatre.com for further information.


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Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag Video: AC4 101
Thanks to a new video primer from Ubisoft, you can get up to speed on just what Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will have to offer.
Whether you know only a little or a lot about Edward Kenway and the crew of the Jackdaw, you'll be chock full of information by the end of the video. In the Story section, you'll learn about Kenway and the compatriots he meets along the way, like the female pirate Anne Bonny and the fearsome Blackbeard. The Naval section provides information on how you can upgrade the Jackdaw to take on other ships on the high seas.
The Locations section gives us a tour of the Caribbean and the many exotic locales it offers. There are jungles, plantations, coves and lots of different cities to explore. The Pirate's Life section teaches you how to be a scoundrel by playing games, drinking some grog and hanging out with wenches. The Underwater section gives you a peek at how diving bells will allow Kenway to dive deep below the surface of the ocean to search out treasure.
You'll see how you can hunt the beasties of the seas in the Animals section. You can harpoon sharks or track many land animals in order to sell them as trophies or use them for crafting. The bread and butter of an Assassin's Creed title are Stealth and Weapons. In this section, you'll be introduced to the new blowpipe weapon, which allows you to silently take down enemies from afar. And of course, the hidden blade makes a return, now complemented by multiple pistols, cutlasses, muskets and more.
Watch the video above to see all of these things in action and brush up on your Black Flag knowledge. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will be released on Oct. 29 for the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360. The PC and next-gen versions will be released in November.

subset: commoncrawl


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Nine Ways of Looking at D'Annunzio
Perhaps to compensate for his not-so imposing physique, lack of good looks, and plebeian background, Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) embraced excess in everything he did. And he did many things: novelist, playwright, poet, aviator and sailor, a genuine war hero, a narcissist, a drug addict, a gifted rabble-rouser, debt-evader, and a noted womanizer.
He was also ahead of his time, exhibiting so many of the behavioral traits not openly admired until our present day: selfishness, self-centeredness, sexual promiscuity, ostentatiousness, love of violence, and a narcissistic dictatorial bent. A master of self-publicity, he aimed to shock and dazzle Europeans with his politics, conventional and unconventional sexual gymnastics, heroic and nearly-impossible military feats, and his writing. His life was a contrast between sophisticated urban civility and a crude and violent behavior. He was seldom out of the limelight, shaping taste, societal mores, literature and, after Mussolini's rise to power, proving an annoying competitor to the dictator for public attention.
One of his most recent biographers, John Woodhouse, summarizes the writer's character in one paragraph:
D'Annunzio's sole concern was self-gratification and glory: to make his existence as interesting and preferably as joyful as possible for himself, whatever the consequences for others; to create a work of art from his life and to immortalize it in words. There were, it is true, moments when nationalism or patriotism seemed important … but more often than not the greater glory of his native land served only to throw into greater relief the lustre of his personal brand of glory.
Harry Clément Ulrich Kessler, an Anglo-German diplomat, writer, bon vivant, and patron of modern art, has also left us in his diaries an indelible view of D'Annunzio. In 1911, Kessler attended in Paris the performance of D'Annunzio's five act musical play Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (music by Claude Debussy). Kessler recounts that when he met the playwright after the performance and complimented him on "his masterful command of the French language," D'Annunzio replied: "I accept the compliment, monsieur, because I owe this to a terrific amount of work. I can truly say that I have been heroic!"
Kessler described the poet (as D'Annunzio was always reflexively known, despite all his other literary achievements), who was then living in France to escape from his Italian creditors, as follows:
His suit is also Italian: light gray summer pants such as one sees in bazaars in Florence, or Sunday on Italian traveling salesmen. Add to that rundown patent leather shoes, a somewhat frayed coat with a black-braided casual suit, and a no longer new, light lilac necktie, the whole outfit in the style of a fading coffeehouse Don Juan from an Italian small town, Bologna or Pisa. The bald scalp and the yellow, wrinkled face with the pale blond little beard completes the burned-out impression, standing in contrast, it must be said, to the clever, often witty, often cruelly indifferent eyes.
D'Annunzio's every public word and gesture was designed for effect, as though he were on an opera stage, tinged, as Kessler puts it, with a "light half-ironic melancholy." Taking his leave of the young New Englander Marguerite Chapin (the future Marguerite Caetani, Princess of Bassiano) Kessler confided to his diary that D'Annunzio stopped at the doorway before stepping out and looking at his hostess said: "But truly what a charming woman you are! One of those women of whom you retain a delicious memory. And we will never see each other again. Perhaps later, seeing each other more often, one would discover faults, but, like this, it will be one of those memories that you have in life, the memory of something exquisite that you will never see again."
The Young Seducer
It is hard for us, nearly a century later, to fathom why women were so attracted to D'Annunzio. Photographs of him show that he was short of stature, totally bald by age 23, had spindly legs and rotten teeth, and his eyes were described by actress Sarah Bernhardt as "like little blobs of shit." He was, in other words, unattractive; thus, it must have been his mind, melodramatics, wit, and daring (and, toward the end, money) that made women flock to him like moths to a flame. In marriage, he moved frenetically to affair after affair, his sexuality (and ego) never satiated or satisfied, bursting flamboyantly into the wider world as a shooting star, lighting the nightly sky with its brilliant phantasmagoria of colors before disappearing on the horizon.
D'Annunzio was certainly a typical Latin lover; he boasted that he had seduced at least 1,000 women. If this was not an exaggeration, he had been more promiscuous than Giacomo Casanova, who in his Memoirs, by some counts listed a measly 122 women with whom he had affairs – although D'Annunzio's estimate, even if true, still puts him well shy of such record-holders as Fidel Castro (an alleged 35,000), actor Warren Beatty before he settled down with his wife Annette Benning (12,775), or prolific Belgian novelist Georges Simenon (10,000 – women, not books).
D'Annunzio was born in Pescara (Abruzzi) in 1863 as Gaetano Rapagnetta. His father changed the family name to Rapagnetta-D'Annunzio when a maternal uncle adopted him. Son "Gaetano" became known as Gabriele, after the Archangel Gabriel, because in childhood he had such angelic looks; as a young adult he then dropped the plebeian-sounding Rapagnetta surname and used exclusively the more aristocratic-sounding D'Annunzio (Of the Annunciation).
Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta, Gabriele's father, was a spendthrift and supremely egotistical man who accumulated mountainous debts in order to provide for serial lovers, many of whom were prostitutes. D'Annunzio turned out to be a magnified copy of his father, believing that he had inherited "corrupt seed" from him, a notion which both repelled and fascinated him. In his novel The Triumph of Death, he paints an accurate portrait of his father's proclivities and of his own:
Flesh, flesh, this brutish thing, full of veins, tendons, ligaments, glands, bones, full of instincts and needs; flesh, sweating and stinking; flesh becoming deformed, sick, covered in sores, callouses, wrinkles, pimples, warts, hairs. This brute thing, flesh thrived in him with a sort of impudence, producing in his delicate neighbor at table an impression almost of revulsion … I, I am the son of this man!
At the age of 16, while still in high school, he published his first book of poems, Primo Vere. To stir interest in the publication of these verses, he circulated a press release of his fall from a horse and premature death; it had the effect he intended since the slim volume garnered free publicity when newspapers mentioned it in his obituaries. He also pawned his grandfather's pocket watch to pay for a visit to a brothel, and started a long-term love affair with a fellow student, Giselda Zucconi. He wasn't faithful to her, of course, but throughout the years he kept returning to her in between bouts of affairs with many others.
In 1881 he moved to Rome to study at the university, a task which he did not take as seriously as his social gad-abouting or insatiable love life, but in 1883 he met and married the young Duchess Maria Harduin, despite her parents' opposition. Although Harduin gave the poet three children, married intimacy did not last long and in 1890, after she tried to commit suicide, the two finally started to lead separate lives, although they remained married for 55 years.
In fact, many of D'Annunzio's discarded lovers attempted suicide. Others coped with drugs, alcohol, or else devolved into mental instability. D'Annunzio's trail of lovers, discarded when he got bored, is varied and long. He led several of the abandoned ones to suicide attempts, drugs, alcoholism, and mental instability.
In 1886-87, for instance (after an 1884-85 affair with Neapolitan poet and journalist Olga Ossani), he took up with a woman separated from her husband, Barbara Elvira Leoni, an affair that, on and off, lasted six years (1886-1892). The two had met in Rome in April 1887 at a concert. Her real name was Elvira Natalia Fraternali; pressured by her parents, in 1884, she had married Count Ercole Leoni but for various reasons (among them an abortion that left her incapable of bearing children) in early 1887 the two had separated and she had returned to live with her parents.
She was smart, good-looking, twenty-five, and available and within a matter of days the two had become lovers. Within months they were separated when her parents took her on vacation to Rimini, on the Adriatic, for the summer. They saw each other only once in Rimini before Barbara left with one of his friends, poet Adolfo de Bosis, on a yatcht bound for Venice. D'annunzio followed via land, and the two stayed together in Venice for about a month before returning to Rome, where in the meantime, D'annunzio's wife had given birth to his third son.
In Rome they saw each other virtually daily and during the next few years he wrote her more than one thousand love letters, some romantic and many erotic: "You came into my blood as a sweet and frightening destiny. A caress from you is not worth anything; a kiss from you not worth anything. Every day I am more and more convinced of this. Adored one. Adored one, very much adored and desired…" In another letter, his aesthetic decadence, and fetishism comes to the fore when he wrote to her about, "that bloody (menstrual) handkerchief wrapped in newspaper pages… a very intimate thing… I cannot describe to you the strange life elixir that comes out of these dead objects…"
D'Annunzio financial profligacy kept him always in debt, and only one step ahead of his creditors. After serving in the army for a year, he fled from his residence, decamping to Naples, where he worked as a journalist.
In Naples, although he was still continuing his affair with Leoni, in 1891 he started a new entanglement with the married mother of four children, Countess Maria Gravina Di Ramacca. In October 1892, Maria's husband surprised the two in bed together in her apartment in Via Caracciolo in Naples. He challenged D'Annunzio to a duel, but when the poet declined (odd for an Italian), the husband reported the crime of adultery to the authorities. In July 1893, D'Annunzio and Maria were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to a five-month jail term, which was promptly suspended through royal amnesty. Maria then moved in with D'Annunzio and gave him a child, Renata, but the relationship floundered the following year. Maria always claimed that another child, born in 1895, was also D'Annunzio's, a claim he denied because he believed that after he left her she had relations with other men. Later, Maria moved to Monte Carlo (Monaco), became the manager of a small hotel, and died there.
The Lover of Eleonora Duse
Few streets in Florence are named for women. One of these, Viale Eleonora Duse, crosses Viale Gabriele D'Annunzio near the foot of the Settignano hill. The city fathers, in their wisdom, have thus romantically united, as they were in reality for a decade, two of the most famous Italian figures of the late 19th century.
Eleonora Duse was one of the two most famous European actresses of the era. When not touring, Duse lived in a modest villa, La Porziuncola, Via della Capponcina 75, in Settignano, in the hills above Florence. D'Annunzio had conveniently rented the more grandiose villa La Capponcina, for which he could not afford the rent and which Duse paid for him, at Via della Capponcina 32, living there in princely splendor with his 38 borzoi dogs, 10 horses, 15 servants, and 200 doves. Michelangelo, as a child, also lived at Via della Capponcina 68, in a house owned by his father Leonardo Buonarroti who run a stone quarry nearby.
The short distance between the two villas, on opposite sides of the same street, gave the lovers ample opportunity to see each other. D'Annunzio remained in the lavishly furnished villa even after his affair with Duse foundered in 1904. He lived there from 1898 until 1908, when, as Duse was no longer paying his bills and he lived mostly on credit, he was forced to flee into "exile" in France to escape creditors haunting him for payment.
The affair between D'Annunzio and Duse started with an exchange of correspondence. Duse had just read D'Annunzio's novel L'Innocente and was attempting to convince him to write a play for her. After reading his next novel, Il Trionfo della Morte, Eleonora's fascination with D'Annunzio became a morbid fixation, since she was fascinated and at the same time repelled by the author's energetic but strange ideas. She confided to Boito: "I would prefer to die in a corner rather than love a soul such as his. I detest D'Annunzio, but adore him."
The two had met in 1894 in Venice. The affair, which started in 1895, lasted on and off for close to a decade. The relationship was mutually advantageous, since Duse paid most of D'Annunzio's bills, and he wrote four plays in which she starred.
The personal relationship was a tortured one, since the egotistical D'Annunzio saw Duse merely as an outlet, but not an exclusive one, for his sexual acrobatics, a source of funds to pay for his expensive tastes, and a glamorous and respectable publicity vehicle for his plays. Additionally, the depth of their intimacy provided him material for his novels.
We mostly know of the turmoil of their relationship from the nearly 1,500 letters Eleonora Duse wrote him, which are conserved in the archives of D'Annunzio's residence-museum in Gardone Riviera. Her letters are full of love, but also visions of professional dreams and descriptions of her increasing reliance on her work to forget his frequent slights and escapades, and on opium for her increasing solitude. D'annunzio was not keenly aware of, or else did not care for, Duse's emotionality. He was frenetically active, both writing and engaging in intimate relationships with other women, even using stimulants to stay awake, saying, "The heraldic flags of glory are insomnia and activism."
D'Annunzio's letters to Duse are no longer extant since apparently her daughter Enrichetta Marchetti Bullough destroyed them in England after Duse's death. The poet was apparently incredulous and perturbed when he learned of this and sent Enrichetta a telegram which said, in part: "The destruction of my letters to Ghisola [his nickname for Duse] is an unjustifiable crime against the spirit. Those many pages were the highest testimony of nobility for my loved one and myself. It is not true that she gave you orders to destroy them. I swear it is not true. She is always next to me and speaks to me without words…"
In 1897, D'Annunzio wrote the play Sogno di una Mattina di Primavera, in which Duse starred in Rome. When the play did not do well, D'Annunzio blamed Duse and moved to Paris, where he started to pay assiduous attention to Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora's rival on the world's theatrical stage.
The two actresses worked on stage in totally different manners: Bernhardt was old school and her superb acting was the result of long experience and exaggerated but expressive stage gestures; Duse was an instinctive actress who detested gesturing and conveyed her characters' essence by living their emotions and being able to transmit them to the audience. Bernhardt was also very adept in the favorable use of publicity and relished it, while Duse rarely gave interviews and when not on stage avoided publicity and the press.
Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright, commented that Duse was the greater actress: Bernhardt's success was due to hard work, Duse's to talent. George Bernard Shaw, who saw them both in June 1895 acting the same role in the same play in London, also gave his vote to Duse as the better actress. In one of his most enthusiastic reviews, Shaw, who had already praised Duse for "the best modern acting I have ever seen," wrote that she had inflicted "annihilation on her rival…" He added that the Italian, "with a tremor of the lip, which you feel rather than see, and which lasts half an instant, touches you straight on the very heart," and concluded that Duse "immeasurably dwarfs the poor little octave and a half on which Sarah Bernhardt plays such pretty canzonets and stirring marches." Constantin Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, and Charlie Chaplin – all were vocal in their praise of Duse.
D'Annunzio gave Bernhadt the lead part in his new play La Citta Morta even though it had been written and promised to Duse, who in 1896 had undertaken a new tour in the United States to raise the money to stage it. The tour had been a triumph, and in Washington President Grover Cleveland and his wife attended all her performances. The First Lady even went so far as to invite Duse for tea, a first at the White House for an actress, and had thus shocked the staid Washington society.
In 1900 D'Annunzio, by now bored with his lover (now 37 to Duse's 42), in his novel Il Fuoco revealed in the intimate, somewhat fictionalized details about their affair. And though the break was definitive, she would not admit that her love had ended, as she wrote with reference to the publication of Il Fuoco: "My pain, whatever it is, does not count when we are talking about another masterpiece of Italian literature. Further, I am forty-one years old …and I love (him)."
Still more slights followed. In March 1904 D'Annunzio deprived Duse of the main role in his new play La Figlia di Iorio, which he'd also written for her, and for which she had already had costumes made. He sent a messenger to pick up the costumes, telling her in a note: " The theater is a monster that devours its children; you must let yourself be devoured." The role was then given to the younger Irma Grammatica. D'annunzio wrote in his secret notebook, "Fleeting infidelity gives love an inebriating novelty," and "going down the old streets of Fiesole I would arrive at the gate of a villa barred by a gate…" where "two sisters expert in perverse pleasures" waited for him. He would return from such excursions, sometimes lasting two or three days, in great spirits and charged with boundless energy.
Poor Duse was at wit's end about how to keep her philandering lover from straying. Once, while he was out, she arrived at his villa unannounced, searched the bed and found two hairpins, proof that the poet was taking women to the bed they had shared. In a jealous, hysterical rage, she went about looking for matches so that she could burn La Capponcina. A veterinarian who was at the villa treating some of the animals reminded her that no one in the villa smoked, and hence there were no matches.
Duse, although she still loved D'Annunzio, was finally losing patience. She sent him a note telling him off: "…Do not talk to me of the supremacy of rationality, of your life of the flesh, of you thirst (for glory), of a life of joy. I am tired of these words! I have listened to you parroting them for years… Do not answer this…"
On April 5, 1924, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, walking from the hotel to the theater, she was caught in a rainstorm. That night she came down with high fever and never recovered, dying on Easter Monday, April 21 at the age of 66.
Although she was buried in Asolo, her wishes concerning the private character of the funeral were not respected, since her death and funeral became a political issue. Learning of her sickness, D'Annunzio did not rush to his former lover's side, but soon after she died telegraphed Benito Mussolini, the prime minister, urging that the remains of the "most Italian of hearts" be brought back to Italy by the government. Although the appeal was couched in personal terms, D'Annunzio was likely seeking publicity for himself, since he gave copies of the telegram to the press and the text was published throughout the world. Now that she was gone, D'Annunzio also appeared devastated by remorse and, truthful for once, said, "The one whom I did not deserve has died."
In his older days, D'Annunzio kept a veil over the face of a Duse bust sculpted when they lived together and claimed that he could communicate with her spirit while biting a pomegranate standing in front of a statue of the Buddha.
The Lover of the Flamboyant Luisa Casati
By 1904 his ardors for the "Divine Duse" had cooled, and D'Annunzio became sexually involved with Marquise Luisa Casati, an affair lasting from 1903 to 1913. Casati was flamboyant, erratic, and exhibited shocking behavior; thus she fit well with D'Annunzio's exhibitionist style, as much as a narcissist and insatiable show-off as he was, but one with the advantage of having money, and lot of it.
Born Luisa Annan in Milan, in 1900 she had married Marchese Casati Stampa di Soncino and led a conventional life until age 22, when she started an on-again off-again affair with D'Annunzio. Converted by her lover to a philosophy of excess, extravagance, and decadence, she used the considerable fortune she had inherited from her father, a textile magnate, to pay for this lifestyle. From 1910 to 1924 she lived in her Venetian palace, Palazzo Venier de Leoni, on the Grand Canal. From this grand residence, with its retinue of servants and a menagerie of exotic animals, Casati would take late evening strolls, naked under her furs, parading her pet cheetahs, held by diamond-studded leashes, and accompanied by black male servants whose bodies were covered in gold paint.
Casati's stated aim was "to be a living work of art." To accomplish this, she continued spending with abandon, trying to impress with her originality and uniqueness. In addition to D'Annunzio, she had affairs with artistic figures such as Augustus John, Erte`, Jean Cocteau, and Cecil Beaton. Her parties were attended by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Sergei Diaghilev, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dali. When in New York, she hobnobbed with the likes of John Barrymore and William Randolph Hearst.
By the early 1930s Casati was totally broke, unable to obtain further loans, and in debt for 25 million dollars. Her palaces, art collection, and other possessions were seized and sold at auction and she fled to London, where she was still able, for a time, to move in the intellectual circles of Peter Quennell and Quentin Crisp. During her last years, she kept moving from one rooming house to another, sometimes rummaging for food through garbage cans, a forlorn, strange, pitiful figure.
Casati died on June 1, 1957, poor and forgotten, a figure of oblivious pity and curiosity. She was buried near London at Brompton Cemetery with one of her beloved dogs, stuffed, buried at her feet. Her tombstone bears a quotation from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra:
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her
Infinite variety"
The Lover of Many Others
Even though by 1900 D'Annunzio was a member of parliament on the extreme right, in March of that year he voted with the left against his own party and was beaten by his district conservative candidate at the following election. Certainly, politics was not his consuming passion but only the means for displaying his enormous ego. Literature and women were more important to him.
Concurrently, while he was still carrying on with Duse, Casati, and others, from 1903 to 1907 D'Annunzio also maintained a relationship with Alessandra Di Rudini` Carlotti, the widowed daughter of the Marquis Antonio Di Rudini, a former prime minister of Italy. The poet met the beautiful, statuesque 27-year-old mother of two children when he had acted as a witness to the marriage of her brother, count Carlo di Rudini. He saw her again in Milan at the Club Leonardo da Vinci, and continued to pursue her. Slowly, the initial distrust and antipathy Alessandra felt for him turned first to admiration and then to blind love, creating a great public scandal.
Unlike Duse, whose place she had seemingly taken, Alessandra wanted the poet all for herself and did not think twice about spending her money to keep him happy and in style. The servants at the villa increased from seven to twenty-one, the horses from four to eight, and the dogs from four to thirty-nine.
When scandal followed, and Alessandra's widow's pension from her deceased husband was reduced despite her father's fury, she moved in with D'Annunzio in Florence. Their stormy relationship verged in some respects on the kinky; recently a contract about the rules of their relationship they had both signed on November 27, 1903, has come to light. In it, the first rule read "Alessandra Carlotti of Garda gives to Gabriele D'Annunzio absolute possession of her body – free of any clothing and other impediment- from the nail of her feet to the very top of her light hair, without exclusion of any part, in light, health, and joy."
In 1907-09 D'Annunzio had a relationship with Countess Giuseppina Giorgi Mancini, another married woman. He had been pursuing her since 1906 and finally seduced her in February 1907. In September 1908, while she was on her way to see him, two men sent by her husband had abducted her on the street and brought her back home. In any case, because she had been showing signs of mental malady, the affair had virtually petered. Mancini was institutionalized until 1911.
By then D'Annunzio's creditors had caught up with him, and he had fled to Paris, while most his furniture and personal effects were, on orders from the courts, auctioned off (the balance were auctioned off for charity by the owner of the villa in 2001). He lived in Paris, on and off, about five years, continuing his promiscuous, unstable life: among his new conquests were Countess Natalie De Golubeff, the wife of Russian Count Viktor Golubeff, with whom he had an affair from 1908 to 1915, and Romaine Brooks, an American lesbian painter. She painted three portraits of him, but had the good sense to leave him for expatriate American poet Nathalie Clifford Barney and Russian ballerina Ida Rubenstein before D'Annunzio had the opportunity to ditch her.
During World War I, between 1916 and 1919, a period in which he primarily devoted his energies to military exploits, he frequented Olga Brunner Levi, a singer and musician who was married to Venetian Ugo Levi and lived in Palazzo Giustiniani Lolin in Venice. The palace was a venue for musical and literary dinners, and D'Annunzio, who was then living in Venice recuperating from a plane crash, came for supper. Olga, then thirty years old, fell for the talk of the poet, and the affair started, known to those in their social circle in the city, except Ugo who remained in the dark. The passionate affair lasted several years, and Olga kept hidden in a small trunk the over three hundred love letters he sent her.
In 1919 he abandoned Brunner Levi for classical pianist, Luisa Baccara. He had met her in the Brunner's home in April and was able to seduce her by the fall of that year. She was 27, he 56. Baccara followed him when in 1919-20 he headed the military invasion of Fiume he had organized. Such was her influence on him during those days, that two of his lieutenants, Guido Keller and future novelist Giovanni Comisso hatched a secret plot to kidnap her during a party and drop her off in one of the deserted Dalmatian islands. It did not happen since D'Annunzio nixed the idea of giving that party. She subsequently moved to Venice with him, and installed herself at his retirement villa, Il Vittoriale, in the town of Gardone Riviera on the shores of Lake Garda, as the mistress of the house. Luisa Baccara, despite D'Annunzio frequent "adventures" inside and outside the "family" walls, stayed with him until his death in 1938.
In 1924 a beautiful 22 year old French woman, Angela Lager, made her appearance in Gardone Riviera. Somehow, the 61-year-old D'Annunzio seduced her, installing her in a small apartment in town. He nicknamed her Jouvence and visited her frequently; however when she demanded that he send Luisa away and move her to the villa, he demurred and in August 1925 sent her packing.
Many others succeeded her. In 1932, it was 20-year-old Emy Heufler, employed at the villa as a maid, who on and off stayed put until he died. Emy, who was allegedly from the Tyrol, may have been employed by the German intelligence service to report on D'Annunzio's activities, since after D'Annunzio died she landed a job on the staff of the Third Reich Foreign Affairs minister.
As he got older, D'Annunzio became even more active in proving that his libido was still up to par, and to keep himself " in form," started taking cocaine and engaging in all kinds of erotic games.
One who was often invited to the Vittoriale to entertain the "commandante" was Letizia De Felici, who ran the tailor shop that provided D'Annunzio with his suits and the various costumes he wore around the house.
One of those few women that D'Annunzio wanted to bed and could not was Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish art deco painter. In 1925, sponsored by Count Emanuele di Castelbarco, she had a major exhibition in Milan, and was introduced to D'Annunzio. She visited him twice in Gardone Riviera, hoping he would commission a portrait (for about $ 2,000), but the old man was more interested in trying to seduce her than sitting still, clothed, for a painting. She would not give in to him and left Gardone Riviera.
But this was an almost isolated exception. Thanks to his fame and money, D'Annunzio's bed partners multiplied. In many instances, mothers prostituted themselves and then offered their daughter to the lecherous old goat. He was always very generous both with mothers and daughters; their "happiness" certainly had material rewards. Giuditta Franzoni, his long-time personal nurse, also participated in his unorthodox libidinous games and was in charge of contacting and procuring for him new and varied female companions. A letter dated November 28, 1936, found in D'Annunzio's papers, from a certain Angela reveals that her daughter Annamaria is more than ready to visit him again. Mother Angela writes: "Commander, as recommended by your nurse Giuditta, I had our doctor examine Annamaria and he determined that she is a little weak and ordered a tonic treatment. Annamaria is now well again and has a strong desire to return to you. I am very appreciative of your thoughts toward me. Annamaria is all for me and I am happy that you make her happy – a happiness which I often dreamt during my youth."
The War Hero … and Fascist
On April 24, 1915, Italian customs officers at the Italian-Austrian border engaged in a firefight with Austrian reservists who were burning a small river-crossing bridge. The news that the Italians had suffered casualties prompted the D'Annunzio to address a frenetic crowd with fiery words, spurring the country to enter World War I:
Our vigil is ended. Our exultation begins … The cannon roars. The earth smokes …Companions, can it be true? We are fighting with arms, we are waging our war, blood is spurting from the veins of Italy! We are the last to join this struggle and already the first are meeting with glory … The slaughter begins, the destruction begins … All these people, who yesterday thronged in the streets and squares, loudly demanding war, are full of veins, full of blood; and that blood begins to flow … We have no other value but that of our blood to be shed.
D'Annunzio's rhetoric was rousing, and he continued his campaign for war with several other speeches in Rome. Mussolini, the former Socialist agitator, also continually beat the war drums from the newspaper, Il Popolo D'Italia, (The Italian People), which he had founded with French money after he was kicked out of the Socialist Party for advocating war.
In the war, which Italy entered on May 24, 1915, D'Annunzio served in the army, the navy, and the air corps. He lost sight in one eye in a plane crash, but this did not deter him from continuing to fight.
On February 10-11, 1918, D'Annunzio participated in hit and run raid against the Austrian Navy. The raid, by three anti-submarine motorboats (each with a crew of thirty) led by Captain Costanzo Ciano, had infiltrated the Bay of Buccari and launched six torpedoes against Austrian ships at anchor; nets around the ships had stopped five torpedoes, while the sixth exploded prematurely and raised the alarm. Tactically, the raid was a bust, but the attendant publicity about the daring action reinvigorated the Italians, who were still demoralized by their 1917 defeat at Caporetto.
In August of the same year, D'Annunzio led a flotilla of seven unarmed airplanes over Vienna, carrying only his violin, and dropped 50,000 handbills (his own composition, naturally), urging Austrians to surrender. After the end of the war, he agitated for a "greater Italy." On September 12, 1919, D'Annunzio organized his own small army made up of two thousand discharged soldiers and deserters, and led a motorized column into the city of Fiume, whose status was to be the subject of negotiation with Yugoslavia. He made himself, Garibaldi-style, the dictator of what he called The Regency of the Carnaro, organizing a totalitarian republican government, calling himself Duce (Leader), overprinting stamps, issuing some with his own likeness, and otherwise acting as ruler. His soldiers wore black shirts, pledged allegiance to him, and became convinced that they were defending civilization against "a flood of Slav barbarians."
Evidently, D'Annunzio's ego was thus satisfied for 15 months, and while the Italian government ordered the city blockaded, it did not prevent the Red Cross from keeping it well supplied. Thus the "legionnaires" were able to enjoy their moment in the spotlight, with endless mass meetings in the public squares, replying to the Duce cry, "To whom Italy?" with "To us!". One of his "legionnaires wrote: "The city abounded with beautiful girls; the pastry shops were bursting with extraordinary sweets. One ate, one danced, one drank; indeed, it truly seemed that this city, with its life overflowing with gifts, was the reward for all our exertions during the war."
In November 1920, Italy signed a treaty with Yugoslavia making Fiume for the moment a free city. The new Italian Prime Minister, Giovanni Giolitti, ordered D'Annunzio to leave and disband his "soldiers." When D'Annunzio refused to do so, Giolitti had the Italian army and the navy blockade the city. D'Annunzio then declared that he would resist. When Italian army units attacked on December 24, nearly fifty lives were lost, including five civilians. D'Annunzio knew the game was up when a shell from the battleship Andrea Doria hit his palace and wounded him slightly. He made one final speech about the "Christmas of Blood" and, convinced that he could no longer milk his exploits for publicity, left the city and retired to a villa on Lake Garda, while his "soldiers" evacuated Fiume and returned home.
D'Annunzio's actions and the failure of the state to stop him promptly and prosecute him afterward provided the behavioral example that Mussolini learned well on his ascent to power: violence and illegality could be used with impunity to accomplish one's political aims.
D'Annunzio was a supporter of Mussolini and championed his rise to power, although he did not like Germans and Nazism and warned Mussolini against an alliance with Hitler. Perhaps because he was a mountebank himself, although a more refined and cultured one, he could see through the dangerous histrionics of the former Austrian corporal. In 1934 he wrote in pencil on the inside cover of his copy of Dante's Divine Comedy: "The converted Jew Adolph Hitler with the ignoble face darkened by indelible splashes of the paint or glue that he held in his brush… which has became the scepter of a ferocious clown…"
For his support of (or acquiescence to) Fascism, D'Annunzio was handsomely rewarded: at Mussolini's recommendation the king made him Prince of Monteneveso and gave him a substantial pension. He was made an honorary general in the Air Force, and an integral edition of his writings was published at state expense. In 1937, after the death of sitting president of the Academia d'Italia Guglielmo Marconi, D'Annunzio was appointed to the post, and he was provided with funds to restructure and enlarge the villa he had purchased in Gardone Riviera on the shores of Lake Garda.
The Lion in Winter
D'Annunzio had first rented the villa, then known as Villa Cargnacco, on January 28, 1921. He bought it later in 1921 at a cost of 260,000 lire, which he borrowed from a bank (part of the debt was still outstanding at the time of his death). His expenditures always managed to outpace his substantial royalties, so to create the monument to himself that he wished, he came up with an ingenious scheme. In December 1923, he deeded the villa and its contents to Italy, provided the nation supplied him with the funds to carry out his grandiose redevelopment schemes. Even in the entrance arch to the property he had an appropriate motto carved "Io ho quell che ho donato" (I only have what I have given), reminding visitors that he was just a temporary tenant, enjoying what he had already gifted to the Italian nation.
The Vittoriale degli Italiani (the Victory Monument of the Italians), as he called it, became his obsession. He hired young architect Giancarlo Maroni and directed him to translate his vision into buildings and landscape.
The main building of the complex, which he called the Priory, a reference to the asceticism of monks (which he admired but most certainly did not practice), is replete with strange and symbolic motifs. For example the entrance to his study, which he called officina, was preceded by three steps but the lintel was not raised proportionately, so that visitors entering the room would have to bow before him. One day, distracted by one thing or another, even though he was only 5' 5'', he forgot the height of the door and banged his own head on the lintel. His bedroom in the Priory, keeping with his own brand of monasticism, is unsettling. Called the Leper's Room, it features a very narrow bed, unadorned, and made in the shape of a crib, looking much like a casket. D'Annunzio intended it to be this way to symbolize that the beginning of life (the crib) and death (the casket) are part of a continuum. The room also contains a painting showing the poet, dying of leprosy, being held in the arms of St. Francis of Assisi. The ceiling is frescoed with images of female saints, whose faces, however, are those of some of his lovers.
D'Annunzio was 58 when he moved to the future Vittoriale and 75 when he died. Apart from frequent outside female companionship, he lived there with Luisa Baccara, and for a while her sister Iolanda, his architect Maroni, the "governess" Aelis Mazoyer, his librarian Antonio Bruiers, a cook named Albina, and a number of other household servants. He still kept lot of dogs, mostly great Danes, all having names that followed a distinct pattern: Dangiero, Dannaggio, Dannissa, Danzetta …
Friend – and Enemy – to Mussolini
Mussolini's relationship with D'Annunzio was complicated. On one hand, the dictator admired the fearlessness and intellect of the old man, while on the other he feared him as a potential rival and could not comprehend the attention-grabbing and grandstanding of D'Annunzio. Thus he kept the poet/soldier/lover/adventurer honored and well-supplied with funds and cocaine, but isolated and away from Rome and politics. His invitations were diplomatically refused.
Mussolini had commented: "D'Annunzio is like a bad tooth. Either you pull it or cover it with gold."
Mussolini officially tasked police inspector Giovanni Rizzo with D'Annunzio's personal security, but in fact had Rizzo spy on the rival's activities: screening and reporting on the mail, telephone calls, and visitors. Mussolini's instructions to Rizzo had been short and to the point: "Communicate immediately news about the poet's thinking."
Novelist Giovanni Comisso, an intimate friend of D'Annunzio, believed that Mussolini, afraid that from one day to the next D'Annunzio could re-enter politics, had given orders to subdue the poet with a slow poison: "There were third parties secretly tasked by Mussolini who, taking advantage of the weakness that invariably follows all great artists, procured for D'Annunzio a box, large as a cigarette container, full of drugs that the poet snuffed daily."
On the evening of March 1, 1938, D'Annunzio died in his study while standing in front of his writing lectern. He would have been 75 years old on March 12. Although according to the two doctors that examined the body afterward, the cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage, there have been speculations that he may have committed suicide since, in his own words, he had by then become a "shitting biped."
Mussolini, informed right away telephonically by inspector Rizzo that D'Annunzio had died, if the telephone operator can be believed, exclaimed, "Finalmente!" (Finally!) He then decreed that the poet should be given a state funeral. If D'Annunzio had indeed committed suicide it would have been impossible to conduct religious services at the funeral, and the Fascist regime would have been embarrassed. Mussolini himself decided to take charge, leaving Rome by special train, accompanied by several ministers, the following morning. The funeral was held in Gardone Riviera the morning of March 3, and the body interred the same day, standing up, in the gardens of the Vittoriale. As no autopsy or extended exam of the remains was done, the possibility of death by suicide, the ingestion of an over dose of the many drugs D'Annunzio was using, cannot be excluded.
The Literary Dazzler
Equally at home with drama, poetry, and the novel, D'Annunzio was above all a self-enamored lyrical genius, whose superb command of the Italian language made him a "word painter," equaled, as he himself certainly would have estimated, during the last 150 years only by Victor Hugo and Thomas Mann.
His genius, though, was amoral. For him actions or art were their own justification and he, the epitome of narcissistic selfishness, did not recognize anyone or anything else superior to himself, except perhaps a mythical Italy, as he perceived that she ought to be. D'Annunzio's first novel, aptly titled Il Piacere ("Pleasure" – 1888) is the story of Andrea Sperelli, a man whose aim in life was to experience "pleasures never tried," "horrible sacrileges" in a very refined, decadent, perfectionist sensual quest. In The Innocent (1892), the main character, Tullio Hermil, believed that being a unique individual automatically ennobled his actions, even when he behaved in a perverted, sadistic fashion. Finally, in Il Trionfo Della Morte, protagonist Giorgio Aurispa is an egotist whose aesthetic sensibilities cannot find fulfillment: his desire that "the substance of my life be dissolved in a vaporous dream" can only be achieved by death.
As a playwright, D'Annunzio's most notable plays are La Citta` Morta ("The Dead City" -1896), which was written in the manner of an ancient Greek tragedy, and La Figlia Di Iorio ("Iroio's Daughter" -1907), whose setting was the land of Abruzzi during prehistory.
It is, however, with his poetry that D'Annunzio's fame now most securely rests, as its rhythmical command, enormous vocabulary, and the musicality of chosen words make some of his poetry, in Italian, unforgettable. His desire to shock, repel, but also amaze, fascinate and hook you, can be sampled from this translation by G. A. Greene:
"As from corrupted flesh the over bold
Young vines in dense luxuriance rankly grow
And strange weird plants their horrid buds unfold
O'er the foul rotting of a corpse below…
Even so within my heart malignant flowers
Of verse swell forth…
(Intermezzo Di Rime – 1883)
A different D'Annunzio reaches the reader with the quieter, musical and visual lyricism of La Pioggia nel Pineto:
Taci. Su le soglie(Rain in the Pine Forest:
del bosco non odo
parole che dici
umane; ma odo
parole più nuove
che parlano gocciole e foglie
Ascolta. Piove
dalle nuvole sparse.
"Quiet. on the edge
Of the woods I do not hear
The words you speak
Human; but I hear
Newer words
Which speak of raindrops and leaves
Listen. Rains
From scattered clouds…")
(Translation by the author)
As is evident, D'Annunzio's poetry is a blend of acute aesthetic sensibility, a love of nature, and a fascination with the perverse, macabre, and sometimes the violent. Still, his marvelous use of language, with its vitality, emotionalism, and colorful exuberance, make him one of the major poets of the modern age.
Since his death, D'Annunzio's literary reputation has dimmed, because of his political beliefs, violent ideas, and his Nietzchean elitist views. At one point, he wrote:
Men will be divided into two races. To the superior race, which shall have risen by die pure energy of its will, all shall be permitted; to die lower, nothing or very little. The greatest sum of well-being shall go to the privileged, whose personal nobility will make them worthy of all privileges. The plebeians remain slaves, condemned to suffer, as much in the shadow of ancient feudal towers. They will never feel at their shoulders the sense of liberty.
From the beginning, he was a provincial parvenu who set out to conquer the literary and social milieu of his times and pass himself as an aristocrat, showing in the process his insecurity and drive for constant recognition and acclaim. Like Lord George Byron and Oscar Wilde, he was most adept at seeking publicity for his exploits and manipulating the media to maintain internationally the notoriety of his persona. A man of his times, the acclaim started to wither when he died.
Although James Joyce opined that the three greatest writers of the 19th century were Tolstoy, Kipling, and D'Annunzio, Thomas Mann was not taken in. In his Mario and the Magician (1930), he skewered both D'Annunzio and Mussolini by combining in the person of the magician Cipolla the salient traits of both men: the shocking artistry and oratorical skills jumbled with ideological pastiche, violence, and lust for power. More directly, Mann called D'Annunzio a demagogic rhetorician, "…always looking from the balcony from whence he seduces and dishonors the people," "Wagner's monkey", "the pasta dish of the spirit," going as far as to conclude that D'Annunzio, "does not know solitude, has never doubt about himself, ignores the irony of his pursuit of glory… he is the master of verbal orgies… seeking to celebrate his marriage with the multitude."
Poet George Macbeth put his finger on the essence of D'Annunzio's literary aim and wrote that he, "was the last major writer who could use the Romantic ideal with its full political relevance before it went bad in the hands of the Fascists."
Other dictators found him inspiring and admirable, including Lenin who thought that D'Annunzio was "the only real revolutionary in Italy" – aimed at Mussolini, this was as good a shot as one dictator could take at another.
Ernest Hemingway had an evolving love-hate relationship with D'Annunzio's philosophical views. While he had originally admired D'Annunzio's fictional recounting of his love affair with Eleonora Duse in Il Fuoco, the Italian poet's intense bellicosity prior to and during World War I distanced him, and in 1921 he wrote a short poem expressing disgust for D'Annunzio love of war:
Half a million dead Wops
And he got a kick out of it
The son of a bitch
By 1923 Hemingway had changed his assessment again and expressed his admiration for some of D'Annunzio's character traits, if not his literary writings, by calling Mussolini a faker, while saying that D'Annunzio was, "A old and bald Rodomonte, perhaps a little crazy, but profoundly sincere and divinely courageous…" Then, by 1950 in Across the River and into the Trees, his reflective dislike for D'Annunzio came again to the fore through the mouth of the main character of Colonel Richard Cantwell who refers to D'Annunzio as: "… put beat-up old boy … a more miserable character than any I know and as mean…" Yet, despite Hemingway's apparent dislike, he took inspiration in the structure and form of this novel from D'Annunzio's 1917 prose-poetry book Notturno.
E. M. Forster wrote: "By the time he died he had a number of books to his credit, a still larger number of mistresses, and the city of Fiume. It is no small haul." Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale cryptically said that "not to have learned anything from him would be a very bad sign." Still, in the opinion of Italian author Alberto Arbasino, D'Annunzio is, "the proverbial body hidden in the basement, one of the most cumbersome of all literature, of all countries, vilified, trampled, neglected…"
His reputation as L'Enfant terrible of Italian letters may be reviving. In October 2008, Giordano Bruno Guerri, a controversial historian and journalist, became president of the Fondazione Vittoriale degli Italiani, the organization that runs D'Annunzio's villa and it museum. Since the beginning of his tenure, he has launched many new initiatives, acquired important documents about D'Annunzio and his life, and organized and sponsored many exhibitions of D'Annunziana and conferences – all with the aim of getting his name spoken more often, in Italy and throughout the world. The old poet would have been very pleased.
Luciano Mangiafico was born in Italy and is a retired U.S. diplomat. Among his many foreign postings in several continents, he was U.S. Consul in Milan (Italy), and Consul General in Palermo (Italy), Bucharest (Romania), and Bridgetown (Barbados). This essay is an abridged portion of a book in progress.


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stosh needed a new stationery design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 94 designs submitted by 17 freelance designers.
Update # 1. We will pick a winner. The design does not have to follow the logo exactly. Focus on the biz card and presentation folder.
Need Business card design, Stationary/ Letterhead, Envelopes, Presentation Folder and PowerPoint template for MicroTrain. Our core business is technology training and we are looking for creative concepts that follow the design of our new logo.
Note: the logo can be found at http://www.microtrain.net/logos/
1. 2 sided business card
2. Stationary/Letterhead
3. Envelope, Size: 4.125 x 9.5 and 9 x 12
4. Presentaion folder, size 9 x 12
5. PowerPoint Template (Cover Slide and Body Slide)
Creativity, Please use unique designs and graphics
the same old school designs


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Field and Court Usage Report for Owl's Head Park
The table below lists all issued field and court permits for the current season in Owl's Head Park. Past permits are marked in gray. Permits for upcoming seasons will be shared once the season begins. Visit our Field and Court Information page to find the start date for each season.
If you suspect that a field or court is being mis-used, or that a permit is being regularly unused, please visit 311 to report a violation of park rules. You can select "Obstructing Public Use" from the Details section, and then "Court/Field/Rink" from the additional details section.
There is no field usage information available for this park.


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33 Ways an Amateur Photographer Can Make Money Online
Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:55pm by Site Administrator
Trying to make a living as a photographer is tough. You have to deal with odd schedules, low-paying gigs, and sometimes long breaks between work. The Internet can help make working as a photographer a little easier. You can post your portfolio online, network with potential clients, and even find new and possibly high-paying jobs. Following is a list of 33 innovative ways amateur photographers can make money online. Work with Online Companies
Existing online companies are constantly looking for photographers to supply them with photos that they can sell to their own customers. Check out these sites to get a piece of the profits.
- Buy a Photo: This website serves as an online photography store. Visitors can browse through their catalog of photos, and then purchase the ones they want.
- Shutterstock: Bloggers, designers, and anyone in the market for photos can download them from this site to use for their projects. If your photo is chosen, you'll get a cut of the profits.
- Share A Pic: This company pays photographers through PayPal and Google AdSense. Upload as many photos as you'd like to increase your chances of being published.
- Digital Railroad: This site connects you to buyers from professional organizations who are looking to purchase and publish photographs.
- Fotolia: Register with this system to sell your photos. You'll make making money each time your photo is sold to a new customer.
- Alamy: Get 65% of each sale when you work with Alamy, "the world's largest online collection of stock photography." Alamy makes photographers do a little more work than other stock photo sites, but you'll get a much larger share of the profits.
- CameraDollars.com: This company pays photographers to upload digital images onto their site.
- PhotoBiz.com: Join PhotoBiz.com to make money for submitting your photographs. You'll also meet new customers who with any luck could become your personal clients.
- Instaproofs: With Instaproofs, you can upload whatever photos you want. Read the marketing tutorial to learn more about meeting and working with new clients.
- Backprint.com: Sell your photos through Backprint, and take advantage of their custom marketing campaigns and private label services.
- Photo Stock Plus: Maintain the rights to your photos and earn 85% of the profits when you affiliate your services with Photo Stock Plus.
- dotPhoto Pro: At dotPhoto Pro, their number one mission is to "empower the professional." As an artist and a business person, you have the control to sell whichever photos you want and set your own prices and print sizes.
- MorePhotos.com: This website lets you upload and organize your photos and set up a shopping cart for customers.
Selling your photos
Find the entrepreneur in you, and sell your photos to buyers online. These sites will help get you started.
- Show Me Proofs: Register for this free program which allows you to sell photos through your website. The best part? You get to keep 100% of the profits!
- Zooomr: Their website boasts that Zooomr is "universally the best way to share, search, store, sort and sell your photos online."
- Photoblogs.org Create an account to become a member of the Photoblogs community. Your blog will appear on their website, connecting you to an unlimited number of potential buyers and contracters.
- Image Display Works: This online software designed especially for photographers allows you to sell photos and other photo products from your website. Sign up for direct deposit, and you'll be able to see your profits instantly.
- Smug Mug: Set up your own photo gallery using Smug Mug. Get valuable tips and read funny photo session stories on the site's forum.
- ProBlogger.net: Learn how to design a sleek, profitable blog, on which you can post and sell your photos.
- Lulu: Publish your images on the Internet quickly and easily. Lulu allows you to set your own prices and remain in control of your copyright.
- Shutterpoint: Learn the ins and outs of selling photos online when you participate in Shutterpoint's photo store. Earn 85% of the profits, and then start your own online shop once you've learned the ropes.
- Easy Store Creator: Download free shopping carts and other handy merchandising tools that will turn your website into an online store.
- PMA: Visit the Web site for The Worldwide Community of Imaging Associations to learn marketing strategies and other money making opportunities for independent photographers.
From contests to consulting, you'll find more money making opportunities here.
- Snapfish.com: In addition to developing beautiful prints, this site also allows you to create mugs, cards, and other promotional items that feature your photos. Have fun making these items, and then sell them on your website to make extra money.
- Jyve: Earn money by becoming a consultant over AIM or Skype for Jyve.com.
- Just Answer: Just Answer is another site that hires freelance consultants to participate in Internet dialogues. Share your photography expertise with people around the globe.
- Guru.com: Join Guru.com's directory of freelance professionals and wait for employers to come to you.
- Spy Media: With Spy Media, you can either upload the photos that you have or go out on actual assignments requested by buyers and the company itself. Earn money for each photo.
- Citizen Image: Photo categories include: news, sports and entertainment, travel and daily life, and creative. Submit photos, and earn money whenever they are published.
- FotoSurf Monthly Contest: This website sponsors monthly photo contests. Upload your photos to be considered in the voting process.
- Proof Positive Photo Contests: Proof Positive sponsors several contests year round. Check out this page for deadlines, guidelines, and prize information.
- Elance: Use this job board for freelancers to offer your services as a Web designer. Custom design existing photos to fit a website's theme or take new photos as assigned by your clients.
- PhotoServe.com: Become a member of this photo community to connect with buyers all over the world. PhotoServe conducts year round marketing promotions to make sure your portfolio is seen by the right people.
Photographers don't need to just rely on the occasional wedding gig to make extra money. There are plenty of opportunities to make money online as well. Try out a few of these. You might end up being successful enough to quit your day job!


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An increasing amount of plastic has been entering our oceans since the 1980s. When researchers attempted to map all this ocean garbage, however, they found that the amount of trash floating on the water's surface was much smaller than expected.
"These studies suggest that surface waters are not the final destination for buoyant plastic debris in the ocean," researchers wrote in a study published on Monday, June 30, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Where is the plastic going?
Most plastics that enter the ocean tend to get broken down by the sun and waves into smaller particles around 1 centimeter or less. For this reason, scientists expected to find the tiniest pieces, 1 millimeter or less, in the greatest abundance, but in most of the samples they took these tiny pieces were missing.
In the chart below, you can see what scientists expected (orange) versus what they actually observed (blue). While smaller plastic was expected to be found in larger abundance, actual observations showed a mysterious drop-off (left) in the smaller-sized plastics. The size of the plastics increase as you move right on the graph.
Scientists aren't sure where the plastic is going or the mechanism that's causing it to move, but they have a few theories:
Theory 1 Washed ashore: One possibility is that the small plastics head for land.The problem: Scientists think this is unlikely since there is no reason to suspect only smaller things would wash ashore.
Theory 2 Broken down: The small plastics could be continuously degrading into smaller, undetectable pieces.The problem: While plastic pieces are continually being broken down in the ocean, there is no reason to believe that the rate at which plastic is being degraded has increased, the authors said. Plus, degradation of plastic can take hundreds to thousands of years. Other degrading factors could be at play though, such as small bacteria helping to break down the plastics.
Theory 3 Sinking: Oceanic epipyphytes — nonparasitic plants that usually grow on other plants — will often latch onto anything that floats. For a particle with a lot of surface area for its size, plant growth on the outside of the plastic would make it heavy, causing it to sink.The problem: Previous studies have shown that when a plant-ballasted plastic sinks in the open ocean, the plants growing on it die and fall off, causing the object to pop back up.
Theory 4 Someone's dinner: Zooplankton, tiny animals about the same size as the missing plastic, make up the bottom of the ocean food chain. Fish that eat zooplankton might mistake the plastic for food.
The ocean is full of zooplankton-eating mesopelagic fish, or fish that live between 200 and 1,000 feet deep. These fish tend to migrate to the surface — where the plastic is — at night for feeding. The researchers believe that, if consumed, the plastic could stay inside the fish for anywhere from a day to a year. The garbage can be transferred to larger predators if the smaller fish is eaten. Ingested plastic could easily sink to the seafloor if the fish dies, or if it's removed in the animal's excrement, which is known to sink quickly.
"These microplastics have an influence on the behavior and the food chain of marine organisms," lead researcher Andres Cózar Cabañas of the Universidad de Cadiz at Puerto Real (Spain) said in a press release. The small plastics contain contaminants that can be passed onto to the organisms who eat them or, perhaps worse, get lodged inside them, he said. "Small oceanic fishes are the main trophic linkage between the plankton and marine vertebrates, and serves as staple food for many commercial fish such as tuna or swordfish," he said in an email.
Unfortunately, more research is needed to crack the case of the disappearing plastic.
The beginning
The question first occurred to the study authors while examining data taken from the 2010/2011 Malaspina circumnavigation research trip that sampled water from thousands of sites across the world.
"This task was not initially in our objectives for the circumnavigation, but the plastic presence in the first samples was striking," Cózar told Business Insider. They found that 88% of their samples contained plastic.
The also discovered that the plastic appeared to be most abundant in areas where the subtropical gyres — giant ocean-wide currents — converged. Where these gyres come together they make huge "conveyor belts," bringing trash from shores into the surface of the open ocean.
Based on the data collected, the scientists expect the surface of the open ocean holds anywhere between 7,000 and 35,000 tons of plastic, which is "far less than expected," they wrote.
The Plastic Age
The missing plastic is only a small part of the problem. "Our estimates indicate that the tens of thousands of plastic tons floating on the surface waters could represent only 1% of the plastic pollution into the oceans," Cózar said. More could be hiding below the surface.
"Indeed, the quantity of plastic floating in the ocean and its final destination are still unknown," the researchers concluded.


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Get Cozy With Laura Enever
The newest kid on the Billabong block, Laura Enever, has given us a little peek into her life. Take a scroll through these pics and we promise you will be stalking her on Instagram and dreaming of stealing her wardrobe.
What's your happy place? Swimming underwater in the ocean is the happiest place on earth! It is the most silent, refreshing place on earth. A pure escape from the world above, where you can let go of everything.. I suggest you go dive in the ocean now :)
If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? Tacos! I don't think i could get sick of Tacos. Taco tuesday everyday ;)
What do you like to eat before competitions? I love snacking on fruit and nuts before heats anything that gives me more energy than i already have!
What's in your beach bag? Sunglasses, wallet, Phone, Lip Balm, 30+ Sunscreen foundation, bikini!
Most embarrassing childhood fashion statement? Well thats easy! I went through such a tom boy phase when i was 8, i was always hanging out with boys so i pretty much dressed like them too haha.
What's your style in 3 words? bold, edgy, fun
What's your go-to swimsuit style? triangle top and booty shorts!
Do you have any weird, quirky talents? I make really good smoothies, i can talk really fast, i like drawing clothes, i like cutting clothes, sometimes i can rap (sometimes), i love a good cartwheel!
Favorite surfing memory? My first contest on my dads old surfboard, i had to carry that huge thing on my head down to the water!
Earliest surfing memory? Family Camping trips! We would 4WD up deserted beaches and set up tents by the water. We would surf all day and be total beach bums. So fun :)
Which disney princess did you always want to be? I actually always wanted to be Wendy! I was in love with Peter Pan, wanted to fly to NeverEver Land and never grow up!
What music helps you chill out and get relaxed? The XX and The Lumineers... I'm also obsessed with the best of the 90s! All Saints!
What music helps you get pumped for competitions? Florence and the machine ,


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The dark blue or violet filters (#47) are useful when observing Venus to increase contrast. It will help detect clouds on Mars and enhance the polar caps. On Juiter, it darkens the brown belts.
1.25" Vernonscope Mounted Glass Filters feature 1" clear-aperture optical glass. Numbers are engraved on the mounting to correspond with those of Kodak Wratten series. The mountings are edge-knurled and threaded to fit the bases of BRANDON oculars and DAKIN Barlows. Vernonscope Mounted Glass Filters cut glare, provide superior contrast, improve definition and reduce eye fatigue.


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Co-headliners James Toney ($500,000) and Randy Couture ($250,000) garnered the most attention heading into this past weekend's UFC 118 event, and they also walked home with the evening's largest disclosed checks.
MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) recently requested and today received the list of officially disclosed paydays from the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission.
The total disclosed payroll for the Aug. 28 event was $1.428 million.
Toney and Couture accounted for 52.52 percent of the disclosed figures.
UFC 118 was the first trip to Massachusetts for the world's biggest mixed martial arts promotion. The event took place at the TD Garden in Boston, and the main card aired live on pay-per-view. A pair of contests were also featured on Spike TV.
In a bout UFC president Dana White openly referred to as a "freak show," Couture took Toney down easily and submitted him in the first round. While the contest was only a co-feature, it netted the most attention in the days prior to the fight.
Meanwhile, in the main event, Frankie Edgar proved his April win over former champion B.J. Penn was no fluke. The new champion dominated "The Prodigy" for five rounds en route to a unanimous-decision win.
Edgar took home $96,000 for his effort, while Penn was issued a $150,000 check.
The total paydays included:
Frankie Edgar: $96,000 (includes $48,000 win bonus)
def. B.J. Penn: $150,000
Randy Couture: $250,000 (no win bonus)
def. James Toney: $500,000
Demian Maia: $68,000 ($34,000 win bonus)
def. Mario Miranda: $8,000
Gray Maynard: $46,000 ($23,000 win bonus)
def. Kenny Florian: $65,000
Nate Diaz: $60,000 ($30,000 win bonus)
def. Marcus Davis: $31,000
Joe Lauzon: $24,000 ($12,000 win bonus)
def. Gabe Ruediger: $8,000
Nik Lentz: $22,000 ($11,000 win bonus)
def. Andre Winner: $10,000
Dan Miller: $30,000 ($15,000 win bonus)
def. John Salter: $8,000
Greg Soto: $12,000 ($6,000 win bonus)
def. Nick Osipczak: $10,000
Mike Pierce: $24,000 ($12,000 win bonus)
def. Amilcar Alves: $6,000
Now, the usual disclaimer: The figures do not include deductions for
items such as insurance, licenses and taxes. Additionally, the figures
do not include money paid by sponsors, which can oftentimes be a
substantial portion of a fighter's income. They also do not include any
other "locker room" or special bonuses the UFC oftentimes pays.
They also do not include portions of the pay-per-view revenue that some top-level fighters receive.
For example, as previously reported,
UFC officials handed out $60,000 UFC 118 bonuses to Lauzon
(Submission of the Night), Diaz and Davis (Fight of the Night).
In other words, the above figures are simply base salaries reported to
the commission and do not reflect entire compensation packages for the
For more on UFC 118, including the night's official results, check out the UFC Events section of MMAjunkie.com.
(Pictured: James Toney)


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SparkChess is a free online chess game that allows you to practice chess against the computer and to engage in multiplayer online challenges. To play online, you need to have either a modern browser (IE10+, IEMobile 10+, Edge, Chrome 40, Firefox 40, Opera 15, Safari 7, iOS Safari 8, Blackberry 10) or the Flash Player.
SparkChess is an excellent way to get better at chess - learn the proper rules (including the elusive en-passant), practice openings, test strategies, use the board editor to recreate famous positions via FEN strings, replay famous games, import/export PGN games and databases (with comments and annotations and let the computer help you. With 5 levels of difficulty and a behavior modeled to make human mistakes, this is a very fun game to play. Our online chess game also features an opening database created by analysing 145,000 games from international tournaments. There are 4 different board styles (Full 3D, diagram, 3D classic and 3D fantasy) to suit any style - from the playful kid to the serious tournament player.
With the multiplayer feature, you can put your skills to the test against other players like you! You can create an account or play as guest. You can filter out opponents based on different criteria. The multiplayer service is child-friendly.
SparkChess has won many awards and it was featured by Google, Blackberry and Adobe for its cross-platform capabilities. You can download SparkChess for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets.
This is the "legacy" (Flash) version of SparkChess, that will be removed soon, as Flash, as a technology, reaches its end of life. It is intended for players unable to currently play the modern version. To play this version, you need to have the Flash plugin installed and enabled. Click here to download or enable the Flash plugin.


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Three versions are reserved for AMD's new notebook platforms. All feature support for up to six SATA 6Gbps devices and four second generation PCIe x1 GPPs. Hudson M1 is will take care of Brazos/Ontario. It won't be as feature packed as the rest of the series, so there is no Gigabit Ethernet MAC on board, no RAID support, no VGA DAC and it also lacks USB 3 support.
It does, however, pack 14 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 1.1 ports. Hudson M2 and M3 are part of the Sabine platform, based on Llano processors. They pack Gigabit Ethernet, RAID 0 and 1 support and the only major distinction is the inclusion of USB 3.0 support on the M3 variant.
In the desktop segment, AMD will offer three Hudsons primarily aimed at the Lynx platform, but also a limited number of Brazos products. Hudson D1 is reserved for the Value Lynx platform and Brazos ECSD. It lacks SATA 6Gbps support, on board Gigabit Ethernet, RAID, VGA DAC and USB 3.0, which really isn't that surprising as it is a cost effective solution for the low end. Hudson D2 and D3 are aimed at proper Lynx platforms with Llano APUs. They feature practically everything missing from the D1, including RAID 0,1 and 10 modes and apparently DisplayPort support. However, D2 does not have USB 3.0 support and it packs 14 UBS 2.0 ports instead. The D3 has 4 USB 3.0 ports and 10 USB 2.0 ports.
The Hudson E1 is probably the most interesting of the lot, as it's aimed at the power efficient Brazos AES platform. Sadly, it appears that some aspects of its spec are not finalized yet, but it will feature ethernet, SATA 6Gbps, RAID, but it won't have VGA or USB 3.0.
As we said earlier, Hudson FCH will be used with all upcoming AMD FM1 parts, as well as FT1 BGA APUs. It will be an integral part of all upcoming mainstream AMD platforms in 2011 and probably beyond, so get used to it.


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That's a very good cast, although I hate Colin/Christie and Eric/Jeremy and I dislike Jet/Cord.I don't think Jaymes & James would qualify for me, as they didn't exactly dominate.But here is my "best of the best" and the reason why each team is included:1. Charla & Mirna - ultimate underdog story. Constant frontrunners on TAR5, only lost due to a stupid flight, and made F3 on TAR11 against a super strong cast.2. Dustin & Kandice - self-explanatory. I would object to this concept if they weren't included.3. Meghan & Cheyne - self-explanatory again.4. Rachel & Dave - self-explanatory again.5. Nat & Kat - first F/F winners and dominated their race.6. Derek & Drew - very strong and likeable team who really deserve another go and got eliminated by a bit of really bad luck as much as anything.7. Andy & Tommy - I am tempted to include other teams, but for the sake of having another male/male team in the cast, I can't think of anyone better than these guys!8. Kisha & Jen - first F/F winners against a non-weakling-male cast. VERY consistent performers.9. Kris & Jon OR Hayden & Aaron - strongest teams on TAR6. There are several teams on the TAR6 cast I'd like to see again, but these two are the most worthy for a "best of the best" category.10. Tara & Wil - finished all but two legs in the Top Three.I would give the eleventh spot to either Nick & Starr for their seven wins OR BUT DEFINITELY NOT David & Jeff who were the strongest most boring team on TAR4 and who I would NOT EVER like to see again.
Ew David/Jeff.
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Every Student. Every Classroom. Every Day.
Thank you for visiting Seattle Public Schools' webpage on attendance. We are dedicated to providing the best educational experience for our students and part of that is increasing attendance and reducing chronic absenteeism.
Please contact your student's school directly if:
If you are wondering if your child is too sick to attend school, use this guide and contact your school's nurse or your child's health care provider if you have further questions.
If you have any other questions or concerns about your student's attendance, do not hesitate to contact you student's school, or our the SPS Attendance Office.
SPS believes that maximizing instructional time is critical to the success of our students. Read our Attendance Policy (3121) and related Superintendent Procedure (3121) for more information.
If the absence is planned, provide written or verbal notice to the school at least three (3) days in advance. If the absence is unplanned, let the school know as soon as you are able.
Be sure to check with your student's teachers and get assignments and classwork in advance (if you are able) or after your student has returned so they can stay on track with classmates.
Families are encouraged to not schedule appointments, vacations, or other events at times that would cause students to be absent from school.
Excused absences meet at least one of the criteria set out in state law and our Superintendent Procedure. The are:
The school principal (or designee) has the authority to determine if an absence meets the above criteria for an excused absence.
For elementary students with five (5) excused absences in any month or 10 during the school year, the student's school will schedule a conference with the student and their parent(s)/guardian(s) to identify barriers to the student's regular attendance and to identify supports and resources so the student may regularly attend school. (If the student has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or a Section 504 Plan, a team able to modify that plan must reconvene.)
A conference is not required if prior notice of the excused absences was provided to the school or if a doctor's note has been provided and a plan is in place to ensure the student will not fall behind in their coursework.
For all SPS students with three (3) unexcused absences in any month during the school year, the student's school will schedule a conference with the student and their parent(s)/guardian(s) to analyze the causes of the student's absences and determine supports needed. After seven (7) unexcused absences in a month or 10 during the school year, we are required to file a court petition to help resolve the student's attendance concerns.
Your student's assigned Attendance Rep will be able to answer your questions about court, the court process, and what is available to support your student's success. You can find the Rep for your student's school here.
How do I change the automated daily attendance notifications from SchoolMessenger?
Parents/guardians may update their communication preferences at go.schoolmessenger.com at any time. (See SPS Communication Preferences for additional details.)
If an emancipated or appropriately aged student (18+ years) wishes to stop automated messages to other contacts relating to daily attendance they can send a request to firstname.lastname@example.com. Requests must include the student's first name, last name, student id, and date of birth; and the name(s) and relevant phone number(s) and/or email address(es) to remove from receiving messages.
Checking Student Attendance
Parents and guardians can check their student's attendance on The Source.
General attendance questions should be directed to your student's school or their attendance rep. You should also contact your student's attendance rep if you have questions about truancy or an attendance letter you've received from the district or court.
Other general questions may be directed to: email@example.com or 206-252-0825, or to your school's Attendance Office Contact.


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hen 14 Boston-area Latinos began their journey to the Holy Land, they didn't know what to expect. Few knew the history of the 65-year-old country, and some even pictured it as a war zone.
But after a week of walking in Jesus' footsteps in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth and meeting with Israelis and Palestinians, many are now looking at the country's fast growth as a model that could be replicated in the Greater Boston Latino community.
Far from the hardscrabble streets of home, where she serves as executive director of the Chelsea Collaborative, Gladys Vega said she immediately felt a close bond with Israeli Jews, who came from dozens of countries beginning in 1948 to help build Israel.
"I think what struck me most was the resilience of the people and the eagerness to work together and empower themselves," she said. "They aimed for the prize of unity and building a community of Jews and they got it done. We can replicate it."
Since 2009, the Anti-Defamation League of New England has sponsored trips to Israel for Latino leaders from around the United States, but the recent tour marked the first ADL visit by local neighborhood representatives.
"We really wanted to bring together people who live and work in the same community and give them an opportunity to travel together to Israel for a week and to come back and interact with one another," said Robert Trestan, ADL New England regional director, who led the trip and also is part of the Latino-Jewish Roundtable, an ADL work group that helps build dialogue between the two ethnic groups.
"A lot of this is about coming together and realizing that we have common goals and if we work together, and if we work in partnership, the potential for progress is tremendous," said Trestan.
In addition to Vega, local representatives included Nivia Piña-Medina of Woburn and Diana Ubinas and Anthony Guerriero, both of Lynnfield. The trip also included Felix Arroyo, a Boston city councilor; Gorka Brabo, executive director of the Boston-based El Planeta newspaper; Renata Teodoro, Student Immigration Movement lead coordinator; and Gerardo Villacrés, a journalist who also serves as board president of the roundtable.
One of the first places the group visited was the Bialik-Rogozin School in Tel Aviv, which was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary "Strangers No More." The K-12 school, where children of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish migrants and refugees from more than 40 countries use Hebrew as a common language, has been awarded Israel's National Education Prize.
Piña-Medina, who teaches chemistry at Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston and also owns two restaurants, said she could relate to the school and its students.
"It's a safe haven for the undocumented," said Piña-Medina, who was born in Puerto Rico.
As the group traveled from Tel Aviv to the Sea of Galilee and later to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Ubinas said, the visitors were moved spiritually by the holy sites and by Israelis, many of whom were once part of the Jewish Diaspora. The group visited the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth; met with soldiers along the Syrian border in the Golan Heights; visited an Arab-Jewish Community Center in Jaffa; and walked along the sacred Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem's Old City before praying at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and visiting the Western Wall.
The group also met with Palestinian journalist Elias Zananiri, prayed at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and visited Manger Square.
'I think what struck me most was the resilience of the people and the eagerness to work together and empower themselves.'
As they traveled, many of the participants had similar reflections and ideas about bringing the New England Latino community closer. "What I felt [in Israel] was a resiliency and an entrepreneurial spirit," said Ubinas, who grew up in Dorchester and works as a marketing manager for Comcast.
Ubinas has been part of the Latino-Jewish Roundtable for the last three years, participating in discussions about immigration reform. As she toured the holy sites and met with Israelis and Palestinians, she began to dream about creating a closer-knit Latino community back in Massachusetts. One of her goals is to see grass-roots neighborhood groups — which have worked on issues ranging from immigration to jobs programs for Latinos — flourish with proper funding.
"I would like to help all these different [Latino] organizations be self-sufficient. At the end of the day I think we all want to give back to the Hispanic community," she said.
Since returning, the group has met for dinner and discussed a bill pending on Beacon Hill that would allow undocumented immigrants to receive Massachusetts driver's licenses.
For Vega, the trip to Israel helped her refocus on building community in Chelsea. She said she could better relate to Jews after the trip to Israel, where she witnessed a people that built a country in a region where they had to fight to survive.
"They're in a country where they were not wanted and had a lot of challenges," said Vega, who said the trip inspired her to help recruit a Latino to run for the Chelsea City Council.
"Sometimes you need to go somewhere and see what people are doing and compare your community and see how you can get it done," she said.
In addition to creating a new awareness about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trestan said the trip also helped foster new relationships that will strengthen Latino-Jewish ties.
"We want to work with the Latino community," said the Anti-Defamation League regional director.
"A lot of this is about coming together and realizing that we have common goals, and if we work together in partnership, the potential for progress is tremendous."Steven A. Rosenberg can be reached at srosenberg@globe.
com. Follow him on Twitter @WriteRosenberg.


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Before you congratulate yourself on crossing off those final to-dos for 2012, don't forget this critical one: fine-tuning your applications and cloud architecture. And while it's unlikely that you'll accomplish this task by end of year, here are nine tips to help you optimally manage your cloud applications and architecture in 2013.
Image credit: Santanu Vasant
1. Test to Determine Instance Size and Counts
- All clouds provide multiple server sizes with differing CPU, memory, and local disk capabilities. Research these offerings so you are aware of the range of server types provided.
- Do load testing to determine the ideal instance size and instance count for each server tier of your application. If your application is CPU intensive but doesn't consume much memory, use your cloud provider's multi-core instance size.
- For your databases, it's generally a good idea to use high-memory instance sizes and try to get your entire working set into memory. Pick a size, run some tests, look at the data. Repeat. A good fit is most likely out there, you just gotta find it.
- PlanForCloud cost forecasting is a free service that enables you to do what-if analyses on different deployments, clouds, and purchase options (such as on-demand vs. reserved instances).
2. Build for Server Failure
- Set up auto-scaling to handle dynamic load as well as to accommodate server failure. For example, set a lower bound on your server array size to ensure that you always have at least this minimum number of servers running. Arrays scale collections of servers up and down based on completely customizable conditions: monitors, alerts, batch-processing queues, or operational scripts. For more info on server arrays, see RightScale cloud automation features.
- Configure databases to replicate across zones and clouds to protect your application from single zone and/or single cloud failures. Degraded performance is better than no performance.
- Use dynamic DNS for internal components (such as databases) that may change IPs, and use static IPs for user-facing application entry points to eliminate the need to change DNS records (and the resulting aftermath of issues you'll need to deal with, including browser caching and DNS propagation).
3. Build for Zone Failure
- Always have two or more servers of each tier of your application distributed across two or more zones. Best to lose some of your eggs than all of your baskets.
- Replicate all data (for example, not just databases but also shared file systems) across zones.
4. Build for Cloud Failure
Back up or replicate data across regions (not just zones) of the same cloud provider — or to a different cloud provider altogether — so that in the unlikely event that an entire region fails, you have a "warm DR" environment in another region/cloud that will allow your application to be relaunched relatively quickly.
5. Automate Everything
- Automate your database/datastore backups, including the replication and/or copying of this data to another region/cloud so that if one region/cloud suffers an outage, your application won't.
- Monitor all critical aspects of your application and try to identify little problems before they become big problems. Have automated tools to correct and mitigate these issues as they arise.
6. Cache, Cache, and More Cache
- Virtually all applications will benefit from caching, be it in front of the web/application tier, in front of the database tier, or both.
- Don't use caches that are co-resident with the application server. Most applications pull some common items from the database, and with a co-resident cache you will be hitting the database for that object once for each application server instead of just once.
- Use a separate multi-node distributed cache. While a single high-memory instance may be capable of handling your entire cache, the loss of this single instance would result in the loss of the entire cache, as opposed to just a small percentage if you have that cache distributed across many servers.
- Don't use standard caching solutions in an auto-scaling configuration or you will need to continually update the cache configurations on your application servers, which typically require a restart (and unhappy end users). Also, there will be a big object reshuffling every time a cache server leaves or joins the cluster, and this will result in a flurry of activity in the database, which will degrade application performance. Several third-party solutions provide for seamless dynamic scaling of the caching tier, so if cache auto-scaling is a must-have, take a look at solutions such as Couchbase.
7. Replicate, a Lot
- Replicate data to another zone to insulate your application from single-zone failures. If a zone fails, and your slave is in that zone, there will be no impact to your application, and you can relaunch a new slave behind the scenes. If the zone with your master fails, then you will have a short downtime window as you promote your slave to master.
- Replicate data to another region/cloud to protect your application in the event of a disaster scenario. If something catastrophic happens, your data will persist in a different (and unaffected) environment.
- If possible, have an additional slave with data stored on the ephemeral disk. Several of the past AWS outages affected primarily (or solely) the EBS service, so if your application is not reliant on EBS, you can avoid service impacts from these types of outages.
8. Watch for Single Points of Failure Lurking in Unexpected Places
As one example of a commonly overlooked dependency, if your application code is being pulled from a GIT or SVN repository, then your application's ability to scale is directly affected by the availability of this repository. Your infrastructure design and automation may be spot-on, but if your application servers can't get the code they need, then your seemingly non-single point of failure infrastructure actually has a single point of failure. Look for other dependencies at the application layer in particular, as it is easy to focus on the infrastructure and overlook less obvious areas of exposure.
9. Be Wary of Cloud Lock-In
The use of vendor-specific tools and virtual appliances may make deploying an application easier in the short term, but many times these services are integrated or tied into other services that can result in cascading outages if one of these underlying services suffers a service disruption. The use of vendor-neutral solutions insulates your application tiers from these service integrations, as well as creating a cloud-portable solution that can be used to redeploy your application in another cloud in the case that you need to implement a disaster recovery scenario, or if pricing and/or features of another cloud prove enticing.
If you want more details on any of these nine tips I've covered, check out my white paper on Building Scalable Applications in the Cloud. And here's wishing you a cloudy New Year :)


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Description:ProLiant Essentials Value PackSoftware Workload Management PackPart Number(s)
Manufacturer Part# 303284-B21
Overview:The ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack is a software solution that controls and dynamically allocates system resources enabling application consolidation and performance optimization on Windows 2000 server platforms bringing maximum utilization lower total cost of ownership and improved availability to IT environments. The ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack (WMP) provides the tools you need to fully utilize server resources maximizing business value delivered to achieve greater returns on server investments. While the Workload Management Pack makes it possible to limit the amount of resources available to processes it also gives you the flexibility to add resources on demand wherever they are needed.


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Post Boxes | Letter Boxes | Mailboxes | Post Boxes UK
It has dimensions of 290mm width, 200mm height and a standard 380mm depth, and is a front-entry front-retrieval unit (in-front, out-front). Where applicable, it complies to Secured By Design requirements (clauses 21.19 and 24.6).
The model RH290-2 anti fishing post box is designed to built into a bank of mailboxes.
The RH290-2 is available in any RAL finish, many of which are stock. It is also available in any other (non-stock) RAL finish for which there is a small additional charge. It is also available in brushed stainless steel.
Suitable for both internal and external use with a choice of different casings, surrounds and support legs, the RH290-2 has a very high security Eurolock cylinder with 2000 differs and each unit comes complete with 2 keys.
It can also be fitted with an internal fire extinguisher. This is a much more economical solution to specifying a bank of fire rated letterboxes.
Should you require any further information regarding RH290-2 anti fishing post boxes or wish to discuss your enquiry, please call Post Boxes UK today on +44 (0)121 288 0838. Alternatively, your enquiry can be emailed to email@example.com and where possible, we would that drawings be sent in pdf format. Thank you.