text:
ADULTS ADULTS
PROGRAM PROGRAM
CAMP CAMP
The Case for Girl Scouts
About Hornets' Nest
Council Service Units
Lead Like A Girl Scout
Third-Generation Girl Scout Receives Top Honor
About Us About Hornets' Nest News Third-Generation Girl Scout Receives Top Honor
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (July 27, 2017) – Jordan Garrick, a third-generation Girl Scout and Gold Award recipient, was named the Girl Scouts Hornets' Nest Council's Young Woman of Distinction presented by Carolinas Healthcare System.
A Girl Scout alumna, Garrick embodies the mission of providing girls courage, confidence and character to make the world a better place. Throughout her 13 years with the leadership development nonprofit, she participated in countless programs including as a camp instructor at the Girl Scouts' Dale Earnhardt Environmental Leadership Campus at Oak Springs, a Girl Scout Bronze and Silver recipient, and most recently, a Gold Award honoree.
For her Gold Award project, Garrick co-founded a Toastmasters Gavel Club at Weddington High School to cultivate public speaking skills for high school students. Through her efforts at Weddington High School, a website and outreach to other schools, Garrick accumulated more than 80 hours on the community service project.
"It has been an honor to see Jordan grow into her role as a leader within our organization and also the community," said Angela Woods, CEO of the Girl Scouts Hornets' Nest Council. "With two exceptional women and Girl Scout alumnae – her grandmother and mother – as role models, Jordan is driven, fearless when it comes to chasing her dreams, and a role model to countless girls. She is a most deserving recipient for our coveted Young Woman of Distinction award."
The current Hampton University student has accumulated numerous awards that showcase her passion for building a better world and commitment to excellence including the Miss America Scholarship, Weddington High School DECA Club - Regional Best Presenter for Retail Award; Free Enterprise Leadership Challenge Camp at Campbell University; National Honor Society; Science and History National Honor Societies, and more.
To qualify for the Young Woman of Distinction, a competitive list of Gold Award recipients is narrowed by an esteemed panel and then voted on by community leaders.
On Tuesday, Sept. 19 from noon to 1:30 p.m. ET at The Westin Charlotte, Garrick will be recognized prior to featured speaker Dr. Mae Jemison, the first woman of color to go into space.
Since the inaugural event in 2006, Girl Scouts Hornets' Nest Council has honored nearly 60 exemplary women.
For more information, please visit http://www.hngirlscouts.org/.
About Girl Scouts:
Founded in 1912, Girl Scouts of the USA is the preeminent leadership development organization for girls with 2.3 million girl and adult members worldwide. Girl Scouts is the leading authority on girls' healthy development and build courage, confidence and character to make the world a better place. Girl Scouts Hornets' Nest Council serves 17,000 girls and adults in eight North Carolina and South Carolina counties including Anson, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Rowan, Stanly, Union and York. For more information on how to join, volunteer, reconnect or donate to Girl Scouts, visit www.hngirlscouts.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.


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May 17, 2019 / 6:12 AM / in 2 months
GSK and Novartis liniment marketing misled Australian consumers - court
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Australian subsidiaries of British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline and Swiss drugmaker Novartis misled customers and broke the law by promoting identical liniments as though they could treat specific ills, an Australian court found on Friday.
FILE PHOTO: The GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) logo is seen on top of GSK Asia House in Singapore, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Loriene Perera
The court said the companies admitted marketing Voltaren Osteo Gel as a treatment for osteoarthritis-related pain when its ingredients were the same as a cheaper Voltaren product, Emulgel.
Judge Robert Bromwich said in a written decision that it was part of a "deliberate and considered marketing strategy".
"Novartis and GSK misled osteoarthritis sufferers into buying the more expensive Osteo Gel thinking that it was more effective," Sarah Court, commissioner at Australia's consumer watchdog, which brought the lawsuit, said in a statement.
"This is not the case... Both gels are identical and are equally effective in treating osteoarthritis symptoms and a range of other pain conditions."
GSK said it had admitted the allegations and that it was pleased Judge Bromwich also found packaging changes since 2017 rectified the breaches of law, something the consumer watchdog had challenged.
"We take consumer law seriously," GSK's unit said in a statement.
Novartis marketed and sold the gels until the consumer divisions of Novartis and GSK were combined and eventually acquired by GSK in 2016. Novartis said in a statement it did not defend the case and referred Reuters to GSK.
Judge Bromwich is yet to set a fine but the maximum penalty is the higher of A$10 million (5 million pounds), triple the benefit earned from the misleading conduct or - if that cannot be determined - a tenth of the annual turnover of the company in question.
Osteo Gel costs about a third more than Emulgel and the claims of its superior effectiveness appeared online and on product packaging between 2012 and 2017.
The ruling follows a 2016 Federal Court decision against Reckitt Benckiser, which was found to have marketed identical pain relief tablets for different types of pain.
Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Anshuman Daga

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Trinbago Knight Riders thrash Jamaica Tallawahs again.
September 08 - 2021
A masterclass of a bowling performance saw Trinbago Knight Riders rout Jamaica Tawallahs for 92, inflicting a 75-run defeat in the process. American fast bowler Ali Khan ran the show, removing the first three while conceding just two runs in his first two overs and finishing with figures of 4 for 6, before the spinners suffocated Tallawahs and effectively put an end to the chase before it could truly begin.
Put into bat, Trinbago Knight Riders posted a competitive total of 167/4 on the board, courtesy to Lendl Simmons (42 off 39), Kieron Pollard (39* off 18), and Tim Seifert (24* off 8).
Chasing 168, Tallawahs were reduced to 21/4 in the powerplay and the run-chase never took off. They folded up at 92 runs in 18.2 overs, falling short of 75 runs off the target.
-This is my first game of this CPL, I wanted to come and make my mark, very happy. Lot of confidence from the coaching staff, captain, and my teammates, without them it wouldn-t have been possible. In my absence, he (Rampaul) he-s been the leading wicket-taker. I love playing here in CPL, I love coming to the Caribbean. It-s one of the best leagues around the world. I love coming here and bowling. We had a shaky start but we are taking one game at a time, for me, it-s one ball at a time. I have been getting a lot of messages from my fans that why I am not playing. To the TKR fans, this is all for you guys, love you,- said Ali Khan - the player of the match as quoted by Cricbuzz.
Trinbago Knight Riders have now climbed up to the second spot in the points with four wins and three defeats in seven encounters whereas Jamaica Tallawahs are languishing at the bottom second spot with just two wins in six games played so far.
For more updates, please follow Isports247.net!
Catch CPL score updates on Isports247.net!
CPL News
CPL first time champions St Kitts and Nevis Patriots receive social media acclaim!
Trinbago Knight Riders on top of the CPL 2021 points table!
CPL 2021: Amazon Warriors boosted by Romario Shepherd's all-around display!
Guyana Amazon Warriors won by 46 runs!
St Kitts and Nevis Patriots won by 8 wkts.
Saint Lucia Kings won by 14 runs!
CPL 2021: Guyana Amazon Warriors crush Saint Lucia Kings for a victory!
CPL 2021: Tallawahs finally ending their losing spell after beating Patriots!
CPL 2021: Trinbago Knight Riders defeat Jamaica Tallawahs in an exciting clash!
Barbados Royals still have prospects of reaching the semi-finals!


Additional Inventory of 2000 Rooms by 2017.
"Saraf Hotel Enterprises" is a conglomerate of several companies located around the world.
Group Chairman Radhe Shyam Saraf is assisted by his sons Arun and Umesh and grandson Varun in leading and managing his hotels and companies subcontinent-wide.
It is "Saraf Hotel Enterprises" vision to be the leader in the field of hotel development, ownership and asset management.
Hyatt Regency Chennai awarded 'Best Construction & Design in India' by International Hotel Awards.
Hyatt Raipur awarded 'Best Debut Mid-Market Hotel' by East India Travel Awards.
Hyatt Raipur awarded 'IGBC LEED Gold certification'.
Hyatt Place Hampi awarded 'HIFI Award for First Class & Upper Middle Class Hotel'.
Hyatt Regency Ahmadabad received Runner up award by Conde Nast Traveller for 'Favorite New Business Hotel in India'.
Taragaon Museum has been recognized for 'Documentation of 50 years of Research & Cultural Heritage Conservation'.
Bodhgaya Resort & Convention Centre awarded a Certificate of Participation at the Holcim Awards.
The award for Radhe Shyam Saraf was received by his son Arun Saraf.
Asian Hotels (East), the company that runs Hyatt Regency in the city, is planing to set up a luxury hotel in Bhubaneswar.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Umesh Saraf Managing Director at Asian Hotels (East), spoke about the latest happenings in his company and the road ahead.
Grand Hyatt Mumbai is a contemporary luxury lifestyle destination sprawled across 12 acres of greenery located just 20 minutes away from the Mumbai International Airport.
Andaz is a 400 room and 120 Service Apartments Project to start operations in December 2014.We have 10 Upcoming Projects in different cities in India.
© Saraf Hotel Enterprises. All Rights Reserved.


The melodies in this album seemed, at the time of its original issue, to be at the cutting edge of the peaceful folksy pop idiom which it so well represented, and thirty years later this genre is still clearly defined by Storyteller.The moods and sympathies which are portrayed and the stories which are concisely and captivatingly related are timeless. The tunes themselves seemed then to have an easy familiarity which ensured an entertaining first hearing; and now, for me at least, summon up everything that was cool in this evocative vein - the voices are downhome and unaffected, the harmonisation is empathetic, and the items are individually gems of their era. Whilst the whole album is an irresistible mingle of fact and fancy. The addition of half-a-dozen bonus tracks to the original album will give a pleasant jolt to hard-core Storyteller fans who've got it down, and can now just groove a little further.
I first heard this album while staying in a cottage on the Isle of Skye - there was a record player and a small selection of albums, among them this one. It was a bit scratched but I played it quite a few times and liked it enough to try to look out for a copy for myself. Quite a few years later I managed to find a cassette of the album (the record itself is fairly rare). It takes me back to that cottage whenever I play it.
It's what you might describe as folk-pop, a bit dated maybe (especially the string arrangements), but it's one of those albums that just seems to work with all the songs from acoustic harmony pop to the silent movie parody (Song for Buster) working together to create a satisfying whole.
Admittedly not everyone will like this, but if you like folk as well as 60s pop like, say, Honeybus (also posted by our friend Lizardson) you should give this a try.
Finally, did you notice who produced this album....?
Wow! I have been searching all over the internet for this album! I once owned it, but, alas, over the years, it slipped through my hands. I have been trying to find (and purchase) a copy of the album for years!
This is one of the best albums ever recorded! It is a mixture of gentle folk, evocative classical, and fanciful, wondrous melodic dreaminess. The classy strings, fine vocals, clear acoustic guitars, and intelligent lyrics are amazing!
I was --- and am --- disappointed that this album never received the kind of recognition it deserves. Indeed, I feel that it is one of the finest albums ever recorded.
I was saddened to hear that Caroline Attard passed away. She was a fine vocalist. I wonder if you know how I might reach any of the remaining members of this wonderful group? I'd consider it an honor to e-mail them my appreciation of this fantastic, enduring album.
God bless you and please tell me where I can purchase a copy of this gem.
Wow, I'm from The Netherlands and was born in 1971. Did stumble upon this album in the late 80's.
So I took it with me. I got it for free!! The record-store owner told me they had another album 'More Pages'. I got that one for free too.
I was lucky I guess!
But the first one, im my opinion, is way better than "More Pages'.
I have just found the CD of storyteller at my aunt's house, but unfortunately the actual CD is missing. This has spurred me to seek it out and listen to it. I found the More Pages on LP too so I will play that soon. Will be strange and very emotional to hear her voice after all these years.


This week I went to the London Book Fair, so see old friends, network and see what is happening in the market. Despite a big digital publishing section it was clear that publishers are still committed to producing books made of paper and cardboard, and although fiction may be more convenient to read on an e reader, it will never replace the tactile feel of handling and reading an illustrated book, of which there were thousands on display.
I can see the attraction of ebooks, particularly as I travel so much; my pack has always been excessively heavy because of all the books I lug around. I always feel uneasy when I don't have anything to read, I regard a reserve of 600 unread pages as the bare minimum. So to save all that weight I can see myself buying an ebook reader in the future.
Arthur C. Clark the science fiction writer, always foretold a long future for the book. They are cheap to product, look attractive, can be lent and resold, don't need a power source to be used, and can suffer a lot of damage and still be read. Drop your e reader in the bath or even just let the battery run down and you'll be reduced to staring out of the bus window. Besides, books do furnish a room, they are the perfect present. No one will ever cherish an ebook, or look at it fondly on the bookshelf. The fact that in Britain we have a buoyant second hand market for books shows that people are still prepared to track down and buy old favourites.
At a seminar at the Book Fair a publishing executive from the US announced that in America, heavy book buyers were now buying over 50% of their books in digital format. A heavy book buyer is regarded as someone who buys only twelve books a year, itself a pretty depressing statistic. I see part of the problem as the way books are sold, and the demise of book chains like Borders in the UK is partly because they have followed the American retail model. Books are now regarded as just a commodity, they are sold in the same way as baked beans, pile a few titles high, sell 'em cheap, regardless of the quality, and make this the same in all your stores. Waterstones are now doing this making a visit to one of their stores a particularly dreary experience these days. This mode of selling is fine for the supermarkets, after all it's their business model but what the bookshops have forgotten is that book lovers don't like having books sold to them as if their baked beans and they particularly don't like the 'do you want fries with that?' type selling at the till. There are still good bookshops around, with a wide selection of titles and knowledgeable staff and I know many heavy book buyers who shop in them.
Many in publishing regard the advance of the ebook as unstoppable. I believe that people are buying ebooks not because they are so wonderful or practical but because the experience of buying real books is so uninspiring. Both formats can co exist and both have their advantages, as I've pointed out, but the publishing industry needs to stand up for real books. They should be helping to make them a pleasure to buy and own, reading books should be about more than the raw data printed on the pages. The booksellers also need to wake up and start finding out what their customers what and delivering it, instead of using a business model that only makes sense to the pointy heads. Those people don't buy books.


Iron ore by and large has been used to make steel. Over its long history, the evolution of the steel making process have been economically and environmentally simplified into what we have today. Iron ore mines produce lump, fine and concentrate either used domestically or exported into the seaborne market ultimately ends up in either a blast furnace or a Direct Reduced Iron (DRI)/Hot Briquette Iron (HBI) plant to make pig iron and DRI/HBI.
The intermediate products are then fed into either the traditional Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) or the more recent Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) to make crude steel.
Around 94% of iron ore is used to produce pig iron while the remaining 6% is used for DRI/HBI. Production of pig iron has been steadily increasing from 933 million tonnes produced in 2009 to approximately 1,250 million tonnes in 2018 and is expected to increase steadily to over the long term to over 1.4 billion tonnes of pig iron.
Majority of the production of pig iron is expected to come from mainland China forecasted at around 61% for China with Japan and India second at around 6% each. China is however facing increasing environmental and governmental pressures to cap their supply of steel over the long term which is likely to see them turn their focus more towards EAF and DRI/HBI.
Basic Oxygen or Electric Arc? What difference does it make to iron ore?
Both BOF and EAF processes are used to make crude steel using iron ore. However, the consumption rate of iron ore in the BOF processes is much higher with EAF as EAF can process a larger amount of scrap steel to make crude steel. Scrap steel is a strong competitor to the iron ore market as it is able to directly substitute iron ore in the steel making process.
While steel production is forecasted to grow over the long term, the proportion of electric arc furnace production is also increasing at a rate faster than basic oxygen furnaces and is expected to increase beyond 30% of steel production by 2021. This means that in the future, the reliance on iron ore will start to diminish as steel producers look towards increasing their scrap steel supply. However not everything is doom and gloom for iron ore in the short term as basic oxygen furnaces are still considered the cheaper and more reliable method of steel production.
EAF's popularity and growth, with an expected CAGR of 2.2% over the 2024-2039 period, is mainly because it is considered a more environmentally friendly approach to steel making and generates around 73% less CO2 than BOF. While BOF's growth is expected to happen in developing economies, the largest steel making country China have been aggressively pursuing the construction of EAF to improve environmental conditions.
The long-term iron ore demand will still see an upward trend and is expected to grow by around 0.6% per year. Pellet demand is expected to grow by a CAGR of 3.33%. The growth in this demand will, as with many things, be concentrated in developing countries that are bucking the pessimistic global expectations of economic slowdown. Key driving countries to watch out for include India and Vietnam which are ramping up steel production. Both these countries have little EAF presence and will most likely be the emerging source of iron ore demand to feed their BOF operations. In summary, expect end use demand of iron ore to shift away from China.


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package org.jruby.rack;

/**
 * Abstraction of an application context to make parts of the library
 * independent of the servlet context.
 * @author nicksieger
 */
public interface RackContext extends RackLogger {
    RackConfig getConfig();
    String getServerInfo();
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Israel Tal (born 1924), also known as Talik , is an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general known for his knowledge of tank warfare. Tal was a brigade commander during the Sinai War, an armored-division commander in Sinai Peninsula during the Six Day War, and commander of the southern front during the final stages of the Yom Kipur War.
The Israeli government decided in 1970 that it needed tank-building capacity. General Israel Tal led a development team which took into consideration Israel's battlefield characteristics and lessons learned from previous wars, and began the development and building of Israel's Merkava tank.
Israel Tal's picture appears in Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor "Wall of Greatest Armor Commanders" along with Moshe Peled (also Israeli), Americans George S. Patton and Creighton Abrams and German field-marshal Erwin Rommel.
Tal received the Israel Prize in 1997 for "[A] special contribution to the society and state". In 2002 he was chosen "Knight of Quality Government" by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel in the "Military and security" category.
Gen. Tal is the creator of the Israeli armour doctrine which led to the Israeli successes in the Sinai in the Six Day War. After the Suez Crisis, Tal organized the armour into the leading element of the Israeli Defense Forces, characterized by high mobility and relentless assault. General Tal took over Israeli armor corps in 1964 and re-trained all Israeli gunners to hit targets beyond 1.5km.  In open terrain, this long distance gunnery proved vital to survival of Israeli armor corps for subsequent wars. Mobility is comparable to the German Blitzkrieg and many hold it to be an evolution of that tactic. Tal's transformation and success in 1967 led the IDF to expand the role of armour. This led to reduced attention to other less glamorous aspects of the army such as the Infantry. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, excessive focus on fast striking armour left the IDF without adequate defensive ability. Only in latter stages of the war did the armour break out and show its potential when General Ariel Sharon's armour was able to penetrate the Egyptian lines, cross the Suez Canal and envelope the Egyptian 3rd Army near Suez.
While the IDF has become a more balanced force since 1973, Tal's influence on armour doctrine was very important to the IDF's development and has influenced armoured doctrines the world over.
Israel Tal, a teenager at the time, fought as a sergeant in the Jewish Brigade with British forces in Italy in World War II. He would leave that war just in time to participate in the Israeli War of Independence, and again in the 1956 War, and again as a division commander in the Six-Day War (1967). Then as the Israelis struggled to separate themselves from dependence on foreign equipment, General Tal set about to design and produce a tank, a tank for the unique combat circumstances faced by the Israeli Defense Force. The Merkava was the result and is by all odds the best of the world's tanks in terms of most nearly meeting the requirements set forth for it by the user – the Armoured Corps of the Israel Defense Force. In every detail it is Tal's tank. Its capabilities include, among other things, the ability to provide crew and vehicle survivability at levels never dreamed of before its design. Syria's attempt to divert water away from the Jordan River from the snow melt run-off on the slopes of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights prompted the Merkava's capability for long range gunnery. That run-off was a critical source of water into the Jordan. Having failed at political persuasion with the Syrians, Israel called on its Armoured Corps to solve the problem. Tal and his tanks opened fire across the border onto the Syrian bulldozers digging trenches to divert the water. The Syrians backed up the mountain; the tanks opened fire at greater range. After several such episodes, the digging stopped, not to be resumed. The Armoured Corps became world class long-range tank gunners and the water continued to flow into the Jordan.
Un site vraiment très plaisant à la gloire, toute méritée, d'un peuple courageux.


They Did it again, for the 4th consecutive year The BET Awards snags the award for the year's TOP RATED Award show on cable!
On of the BIGGEST NIGHTS in TV just went down in L.A.–the 2018 BET Awards! We are SO glad we still have a PLATFORM to showcase the MAGNIFICENCE that is P.O.C. This is HOME for some that don't always get the ACCOLADES and the STAGE to share their GIFTS and TALENTS to the world. A show of this magnitude takes a lot of PEOPLE, TIME and THOUGHT to pull off, but that does not mean that some things don;t get glossed over. I mean it IS live TV–anything can happen and it usually does. No matter how many hands and bodies you have on deck to pull this off–there are some VARIABLES that just can not be CONTROLLED. SO we are going to run down the GOOD the BAD and the UGLY of the BET Awards..granted these are simply observations and opinions–NOT THE GOSPEL!
One of the STANDOUT performances of the night came from UK implant, Ella Mai. Mai performed her MONSTER hit, 'Boo'd Up' and did not disappoint. Take a LOOK & LISTEN!


It is essential to have roof cleaning performed at least every few years in Frederick, Colorado to get the most from the cash you have invested into your roofing. The problem is that many people are unaware of the fact that their roof can and needs to be cleaned and other individuals have the idea that roof cleaning is a really expensive investment. Thankfully, when you enable our team from Rise Above Roof Cleaning in Frederick to handle your roof cleaning needs, the endeavor is quite inexpensive. Give us a call now to learn more about how inexpensive our roof cleaning solutions are around the Frederick area.
Instead of taking a traditional approach to roof cleaning around Frederick, CO, we have found a method that works significantly better. In contrast to many organizations, our solutions work to safely get rid of streaks and fungi from your roof. Despite the fact that we have perfected taking care of the complex task of killing fungi and getting rid of marks left by environmental elements, we still manage roof cleaning service to remove dirt and dust off your roof covering. In fact, many customers have informed us that they first assumed they were going to need to upgrade their home's roof but the reality was that it merely needed to be cleaned by a specialized company like ours.
Our roof cleaning staff believes in offering the greatest standard of service in Frederick, CO. Given that this is the case, you will never find yourself needing to rearrange your schedule when arranging your roof pressure cleaning service. Additionally, when some companies are hurrying to get the task completed in the shortest time, we want to ensure that the roof power washing restores your home's roof. Our team is one of the greatest components in reaching this objective. Having said that, we also have to give a reasonable amount of credit to the costly roof pressure cleaning equipment we purchase each year. Furthermore, our roof cleaning team understands how to make use of this equipment in a manner that is guaranteed not to damage your roof in the roof cleaning venture.
When many individuals throughout Frederick, CO check out their roofs, they come to the assumption that they will be required to replace it because of its dull and aged appearance. Having said that, they are astounded to discover that we have the capacity to clean their roof with our unique equipment and make it look great for much less than the cost of a new roof. To learn how our roof cleaning services can restore the look of your whole home, do not be reluctant to give our team from Rise Above Roof Cleaning a call today at 888-416-7747.
Why Choose Our Company in Frederick, CO?
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At our Frederick, CO roof cleaning enterprise, we have a highly trained crew that makes roof cleaning look easy because of their extensive training and expertise. Our Frederick, CO company staffs some of the most experienced roof cleaning personnel in the field. This helps to accelerate the roof cleaning task so we have the capacity to help as many clients as possible every day. With that being said, our skilled staff also knows how to carry out the roof cleaning task in a way that is safe, yet efficient. In addition to having your roof cleaning endeavor finished in the most effective manner, you can also rely on getting the utmost level of respect from our team. We make it as simple as possible to schedule your roof cleaning and we appear on time. We in addition provide service to roof cleaning Hickory, NC amongst other places and states around the country.
With regards to roof cleaning, different companies in Frederick, CO have distinct viewpoints. Some companies limit their crew to utilizing power washers to essentially blow the dust and dirt off your roof. Then, there are firms who use abrasive chemicals in conjunction with power washers. Having said that, we do not enjoy the concept of leaving your roof with a oily look nor are we going to risk loosening up your roofing materials by using a power washer. As an alternative, our staff uses soft washers and cleaners that are sure to be completely safe for your roof. The most amazing thing is that our roof cleaning supplies and gear will make your home's roofing look like new without you needing to worry about the possibility of your roof deteriorating. When you've got friends or relatives in other areas such as roof cleaning Emerald Isle, let them know that we provide options everywhere in the U.S.
There are plenty of roof cleaning agencies who offer their assistance around the Frederick, CO area. Since this is the situation, we have put in a great deal of work to isolate ourselves from the roof cleaning competition. Our organization has gained this status by having an experienced staff and top-notch equipment. If you want more information about roof cleaning or if you wish to schedule an appointment, call Rise Above Roof Cleaning at 888-416-7747 at this time.


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Dreaming of the Stars
An 'In Love and War' story
Author: Cora Buhlert
Series: In Love and War (vol. 2)
Even in times of war, the young still have dreams...
Even in a galaxy torn apart by war, the young still have dreams.
On Rajipuri, a poor planet in the Empire of Worlds, Anjali Patel and her two younger sisters look up at the stars and dream of escaping the limitations of a traditional and rigidly stratified society.
At the same time, in a camp for war orphans in the Republic of United Planets, Mikhail Grikov also looks up at the stars and dreams of escaping a life of pain and abuse.
One day in the far future, they will meet and change the galaxy. But for now, they're merely dreaming of the stars…
This is a prequel novelette of 8500 words or approx. 29 print pages to the 'In Love and War' series, but may be read as a standalone.
Richard Blakemore (1900 – 1994) was a prolific writer of pulp fiction. Nowadays, he is best remembered for creating the Silencer, a masked vigilante in the vein of the Shadow or the Spider, during the hero pulp boom of the 1930s. But Richard Blakemore also wrote in many other genres, including an early sword and sorcery series about the adventures of a sellsword named Thurvok and his companions.
Richard Blakemore's private life was almost as exciting as his fiction. He was a veteran of World War I and II as well as a skilled sportsman and adventurer who travelled the world during the 1920s. He may also have been the person behind the mask of the real life Silencer who prowled New York City between 1933 and 1942, fighting crime, protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty, though nothing has ever been proven.
Richard Blakemore was married for more than fifty years to Constance Allen Blakemore and the couple had four children.
Mech Vs. Alien
Tami Veldura
MUTANTEN
Jens Fitscher
Sternenbrüder
Markus Zinnecker
Christmas after the End of the World
La Purga Del Imperio
Axel Lambert Rios
Audienz bei Quin
Uwe Lammers


My husband and I had not been getting along for years, but when the words "I do not think I have ever loved you" came out of his mouth, something snapped inside me. We talked and decided to separate. I could not afford to move out at the time, but he said that was OK. Then he tried to take back what he said, but I have continued with my plan to get out. Last night we got into a fight and actually exchanged blows for the first time, ever. We have an autistic daughter. He is threatening me with a custody battle, because he says he has transcripts of my conversations with another man. The conversations with this man came after he told me that he had another woman in his life and he wanted us to go our separate ways, but maintain a household for our daughter. I am confused, hurt, scared and angry. Please advise!
Your husband is not the type of man who embraces change, unless it is a change he desires or has created. When he uttered that fateful phrase "I do not think I have ever loved you," you snapped, because on some level it rang true. It was a verbal confirmation of one of your deeper fears. It's not that he never loved you, once upon a time he did, but he hasn't been "in love" with you for a long time.
You scared him by taking steps to take control over your life – your future! It all became more real to him, particularly the fact that he was losing control. How to regain order? Threaten you with your child. You have to see that it worked… and he knew it would.
As far as his precious transcripts go, I'm not seeing them as detrimental to you or beneficial to him. I don't think they would actually be read by a judge; therefore, they really hold no power. Well, legal power, that is. However, they have instilled a nice level of doubt and fear in you, which is a whole different kind of power.
I do see that violence isn't the nature of your household, but you missed prime leverage time. Spousal abuse is a crime. Even though I'm not going to sit here and tell you how you were battered and victimized – you have your own level of responsibility and wrong-doing in this episode – you could have manipulated the situation to your advantage. Yes, he has proof of your conversation with another man, but wife-beaters generally aren't looked at as having this wonderful stability and strength of character.
It is time for you to talk to an attorney. Your husband doesn't have boundaries when it comes to getting what he wants. You need to get legal council to put your mind at ease and to help you navigate getting out of that house and marriage. It is not a healthy environment, for you or your daughter. Furthermore, I don't see you being able to find happiness and contentment in this marriage any longer. Sure, you can still choose to stay. Ask yourself if you want a life, or just a familiar existence. You have a choice.
Your husband will not gain custody of your daughter. I see a shared arrangement. While it is going to be a tough transition for her, don't underestimate her. She will adapt, and on her level, understand.


text:
Q: SQL SERVER - Concat NULL Numeric Column I have this table
CREATE TABLE [name].[tblRange]
(
  [RangeId_PK] numeric(6, 0) IDENTITY(1, 1) NOT NULL,
  [Lower] numeric(18, 2) NOT NULL,
  [Upper] numeric(18, 2) NULL
)

I want to concat Lower and Upper but it always give me NULL if Upper contain NULL value.
This is my query:
SELECT CAST(Lower AS VARCHAR(50)) + '-' + CAST(Upper AS VARCHAR(50))
FROM name.tblRange

I can't use the following query because it will give this error (SQL Server Database Error: Error converting data type varchar to numeric.)
SELECT CAST(Lower AS VARCHAR(50)) + '-' + CAST(ISNULL(Upper, '') AS VARCHAR(50))
FROM name.tblRange

Please note that I can't use ISNULL(Upper, 0) because that is a upper limit (can't be 0).
How do I solve this problem?

A: The problem is that the ISNULL gets two different types as arguments. Switch the CAST and ISNULL statements:
SELECT CAST(Lower AS VARCHAR(50)) + '-' + ISNULL(CAST(Upper AS VARCHAR(50)), '') FROM name.tblRange

A: You were far on the right way by using isnull.
You can use something like this to use the correct data types:
This one shows 0, 999 as values when lower and upper are null:
SELECT cast(isnull(Lower, 0) AS VARCHAR(50))
       + '-'
       + cast(isnull(Upper, 999) AS VARCHAR(50))
FROM name.tblRange

Or this one shows only the dash when lower and upper are null:
SELECT isnull(cast(Lower AS VARCHAR(50)), '')
       + '-'
       + isnull(cast(Upper AS VARCHAR(50)), '')
FROM name.tblRange

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: Optimize and append values to dataframe with foreach R I want to optimize my nested for loops by parallelizing them with the foreach package. I'm new to this subject, and I tried several approaches to append the values to a data frame. I know that something is off with the for loops as it returns a value, but I want to combine those values and store them into a data frame. I tried to replace the for loop iterating over the rows with a foreach loop, but I couldn't make it work. The idea is to get a better understanding of parallelizing for loops.
library(foreach)
library(doParallel)

cl <- makeCluster(2)
registerDoParallel(cl)

df <- data.frame(x=sample(10), y=sample(10), z = sample(10))
repeats <- 2

FUN <- function(df, repeats) {

   foreach(k=1:repeats, .combine = 'rbind') %dopar% {

       for(i in 1:nrow(df)) {

          for(j in 1:ncol(df)) {

             c(k=k ,i=i ,j=j , value=df[i, 1] * j )

          }
       }
    }
}

FUN(df, repeat)
stopCluster(cl)

As mentioned before, I tried to replace the for loop with foreach. Again, the values are not stored properly.
foreach(k=1:repeats, .combine = 'rbind') %:% {

       foreach(i=1:nrow(df), .combine = 'c') %dopar%{

          for(j in 1:ncol(df)) {

             c(k=k ,i=i ,j=j , value=df[i, 1] * j )

          }
       }
    }

Example of the output
  k i j value
  1 1 1 3
  1 1 2 6

A: foreach has a special syntax for nested loops (see vignette("nested"):
FUN <- function(df, repeats) {

  foreach(k=1:repeats, .combine = 'rbind') %:%
    foreach(i = 1:nrow(df), .combine = 'rbind') %:%
    foreach(j = 1:ncol(df),  .combine = 'rbind') %dopar% {

      c(k=k ,i=i ,j=j , value=df[i, 1] * j )

    }
}
`rownames<-`(FUN(df, repeats), NULL)

My output is longer than yours, so I'm not sure what you were going for.  Also, whenever you provide an example using random data, use set.seed.  So we all get the same result every time.


text:
Photo by Isaiah J. Downing/USA TODAY Sports
Tonight, one of the NBA's more eccentric characters is making his long-awaited return. Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors will be suiting up for the first time since June 13, 2019 — Game 6 of the NBA Finals.
Who knew that when he tore his ACL that night that it would be roughly 2.5 years before he played another game. And a rough 2.5 years it was. Not just for Thompson himself, who, after the long road back from the ACL injury, suffered an Achilles injury. But for the league and world as a whole. Namely COVID-19.
Under no circumstances would you ever want to suffer back-to-back career threatening injuries and miss multiple seasons of your prime. But if ever you were going to miss 2.5 seasons, this was the time to do it. There's never been a more tumultuous and chaotic time to be an NBA player.
Just think about everything Thompson was able bypass. Here are the broad strokes:
March 11, 2020 — The NBA season comes to a screeching halt after the Jazz's Rudy Gobert tests positive for COVID-19. No one knows how long the hiatus will be or what to do. Some players, like the Raptors' Pascal Siakam, are stuck in limbo. Unable to leave the country. No access to team facilities. Basically confined to a condo for 4 months. Before the season would continue, players were finally allowed to use team facilities. But only a few at a time. And no full practices or scrimmages.
July 30, 2020 — The NBA season finally resumes in Disney World of all places. Players, coaches, team personnel, etc. are confined to a bubble. A resort, yes. But still an enclosed area that they cannot leave. Nor can anyone enter. Not friends. Not friends with benefits. Not family (at least not for a while). Players enter with various amounts of rust and conditioning. And everyone is subject to testing, testing and more testing.
August 26, 2020 — While in the bubble, in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting, and all the previous shootings of black individuals at the hands of the police with no justice in sight, the Bucks walked out of a first round playoff game vs. the Magic in protest. The playoffs looked to be over with the Lakers, Clippers and other teams seriously considering going home.
December 2020 — After many discussions around a mid-January start, the 2020–21 NBA season began in late December, making it the shortest offseason in history. The new season tipped off just a little over 2 months after the Lakers defeated the Heat in the Finals in the grueling bubble. For the teams that didn't qualify for the bubble, the offseason was never ending. But for those who played, especially the Lakers and Heat teams, the offseason was microscopic. For older players like LeBron James, or players recovering from injuries or surgery, who desperately needed a longer offseason for rest and recovery, well, those players were SOL.
2020–21 Season — Due to players testing positive and contact tracing, games were constantly being postponed. Some teams were even shut down entirely for weeks. Practice time was cut. More games had to be crammed into the second half schedule. And players' social habits began to be restricted, especially when on the road, to limit their exposure to COVID-19.
2021–22 Season — So far, this season has been far worse in terms of the number of players missing time to due to the NBA's health and safety protocols. Which, to be honest, I still don't fully grasp. (And I'm not sure the league does, either.) Seemingly every night, a cavalcade of players were entering the protocols. Teams were flying into cities only to find out that the game was postponed. And instead of shutting teams down, even after some teams like the Raptors and Hawks lost 10+ players due to protocols, rightly or wrongly, the NBA's stance was the show must go on. So now teams are allowed to sign G-League and unsigned players to 10-day contracts that won't count towards the cap. Players you've never heard of (and, more than likely, will never hear from again) started suiting up for your favourite team, meeting for the first time just hours before jump ball. Players you thought long retired, like Joe Johnson and Lance Stephenson, started to reappear. The famous "Who He Play For" Charles Barkley game went from somewhat easy to downright impossible. Most games became a joke, with some teams fielding Summer League lineups. Case in point, December 26, 2021, when the Raptors visited the Cavaliers. Check out the "NBA" roster the Raptors deployed that night.
Both NBA, of course, is not out of the woods. But with a huge wave of NBA players returning to action from protocols, and having been able to skip right over the last 2.5 seasons, now's a better time than any for Thompson to make his sharp shooting return.
See more stories from Laced
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text:
FAQ - OS Support
(Updated: Dec 2009)
Which operating systems are/will be supported?
There are three ways for a file system client to access a Lustre volume: directly, with a native kernel driver; directly, via a userspace library (liblustre); or indirectly, via an NFS or CIFS export.
Today, native kernel drivers exist only for Linux. Other native ports, such as to Windows and Solaris are underway.
liblustre is not yet as widely used as Lustre in the Linux kernel, but it is largely the same code. The Cray Red Storm supercomputer runs liblustre on the Catamount operating system on 22000 nodes to provide all client and server storage, including root FS and swap space, so this is a very serious use of liblustre. It could in principle be used on any Unix-like operating system, and has been used as a basis for a FUSE port to OS/X.
CIFS or NFS export will be the solution of choice for most of our customers wishing to integration non-Linux platforms in the short term.
We currently support only Linux as Lustre server nodes. Support for other operating systems such as Solaris may be available at a later date.
Starting with Lustre 1.6.0, Linux 2.4 clients and servers will no longer be supported. See the Lustre Matrix for details about which kernel/distro combinations are supported.
Why have you decided to patch the Linux kernel?
Lustre's goals are ambitious; few, if any, other file systems attempt to achieve such scalability, performance, and consistency goals in a single package. Because this hadn't been done before, the infrastructure was not present in the kernel for such a file system.
The majority of the changes were in the VFS layer, implementing an API extension to make intent locking possible. Another substantial set of changes were made to ext3 to make it more scalable and performant. Some extra symbols need to be exported.
In 1.6 and later releases, Lustre clients run without patching the kernel, for Linux kernels 2.6.16 and newer. There are still a small number of kernel patches needed for servers, and to the copy of the ext3 file system used by Lustre (ldiskfs), but the majority of the ext3 changes have been incorporated into ext4 in the 2.6.27 kernel.
Are there plans to get these patches into the kernel.org/OSDL kernel?
The Lustre patches have been extensively reviewed by the Linux kernel community and vendors. Many of the changes are already present in Linux 2.6, and our contributions to ext3 have been delivered upstream in the ext4 file system.
With 2.6.16 and later kernels, enough of the Lustre kernel patches have been incorporated into the upstream kernel that clients can run without patches. There is a shrinking number of patches needed on the server.
Currently, there are no definite plans to include the Lustre client or server code itself into the kernel. The requirements for getting the Lustre and LNET code into the kernel would consume too much engineering resources that could better be spent on improving Lustre itself.
Can I run Lustre without patching my kernel?
It is possible to run Lustre clients on all kernels newer than 2.6.16 and on the latest RHEL4 2.6.9 kernel without patching.
Which Linux kernels are supported?
We currently support a number of kernels for Lustre 1.4: the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 kernel (based on 2.4.21), SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (based on 2.6.5), SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (based on 2.6.16), and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 kernel (based on 2.6.9).
For Lustre 1.6, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel (based on 2.6.16) is also supported, but RHEL3 is removed.
An up-to-date list of exact kernel versions supported by each release is in the Lustre Support Matrix
Which Linux distributions are supported?
Because Lustre runs almost entirely in the kernel, there are practically no distribution-specific issues.
Lustre enterprise support customers can download packages which have been tested on RHEL5, SLES10 and SLES11 systems, but are likely to work on other clients. You are welcome to use whichever distribution you wish, although we do ask that you use one of the Lustre-supported kernels.
What if I don't run one of those kernels?
If you can't or won't run one of the supported kernels, you can build Lustre for the particular kernel on your client. For servers, it is a fair amount of work to run on an unsupported kernel, as it's not a matter of "just building from source". There are patches for each kernel, and given the differences between most kernels, these are fairly non-trivial to port. Until there is a customer demand for a given kernel series, the Lustre group simply does not have the resources to maintain those patches.
We expect that this will be less of an issue as we move forward, as the upstream kernel is providing more of the interfaces that Lustre needs. In the meantime we will support the kernels that our customers use. Eventually, we hope to be able to run the server on a kernel without patches.
Do you support Lustre on an SGI Altix?
We have tested Lustre in the past on an Altix node, but we don't have regular access to this hardware and cannot test this on a regular basis.
When was Lustre for Linux first used in production?
A pre-1.0 version of Lustre for Linux was first used in a production cluster environment in March 2003.
Retrieved from "http://wiki.old.lustre.org/index.php/FAQ_-_OS_Support"


If you want to test ODF documents that contain password protection, Officeshots.org currently has no way to provide the password to the application in its interface.
Probably the best solution would be to keep input as it is now have a preparser check if a document contains encryption, and offer the user the opportunity to provide the appropriate password at an intermediate page (before the result page). Also, the factory clients would need to be altered.


Your source for original and customized soundtrack covers… and more!
A few weeks back I got a request to do some custom covers for Alan Silvestri's 1986 soundtrack to Flight of the Navigator. I never heard the score on album, but the film was one of my childhood favourites, so I gave it a go. Unlike in this day and age, promotional material was rare back then. And high resolution material was almost non-existent. I usually try to avoid working below 1000px image resolution, so this series proved to be a real challenge.
The only suitable image I found was a really beautiful painting created by Macedonian artist Marko Manev. You definitely have to check out more of his work, especially his Noir series which are simply terrific. Some of the best works I've seen in a while. So I took the liberty of borrowing his Flight of the Navigator tribute art and turned it into the only real custom artwork within this series (#1) – all others are based on actual material from the film. At first my intention was to create a customized hand-drawn film logo to keep the focus on the imagery. But somehow it didn't feel like the same movie anymore. So I completely recreated the official logo and gently tweaked it until it had the right balance between 80's style and modern art.
The next two entries are based on official poster art (#2, #3). Sometimes I prefer soundtrack covers that actually do look like their cinematic counterparts. I had to accept a few limitations though, as for example source material that wasn't as clean or the official logos that had to be cut out by hand and stuff like that. My goal was to reach a consistency that felt just like a genuine soundtrack cover from the 80's would feel like.
Diggin deep into Google image search (everything beyond page 5 is deep…) I've also found some HD screen caps, if one can call 'em like that. They are more like upscaled DVD caps, but they served a purpose (#4, #5). I wanted to create some custom covers in style of these old, big Vinyl jackets from the old days. Complete with tiny, almost unreadable album credits, low-key colours and the inevitable record disc scuffs. I even included a picture of the composer on one cover, an odd thing that rarely happens anymore in today's film music business (rightly so). But it's a simple trick to recall the golden days of my – and anyone's – childhood from thirty years ago, and therefore it's justified.
To round off this entry I decided to remake the liner notes booklet as well. I found some original scans on the web and could have slapped them together carelessly in no time. But since this website's category is called "Digital Booklets", I didn't want to publish an analoge, low-resolution version. So I gave myself one additional day and recreated it entirely, including a completely new front cover.
Wow! You did it! These are brilliant my friend. I'm going to have to start promoting you on my own blog. You should definitely keep this up. I'd bet Silvestri would be honoured.
Wow thank you! I was hoping you'd like them. Which one is your favourite?
My pleasure! My personal favourite is #4. Followed closely by #3. They both have their own qualities of mystery and excitement that the '80s were so good at. I like that you've adhered to a vinyl design ethic, too. The best album covers make you want to listen to the music and that's something you've achieved with these for sure.
Click to follow this blog on social media.


text:
For Los Angeles Students who are Homeless, a School Provides Hope
By Mariah Castaneda • Nov 1, 2017
Vicente Carlos reflects on his past in a college readiness class in East Los Angeles. Photos: Mariah Castañeda
In Los Angeles County, 63,000 students are considered homeless this year. Homeless youths are defined as "individuals that lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence" by the California Department of Education. This can include young people that sleep in cars, motels or shelters.
Many students who are homeless have faced abuse, neglect, abandonment or family conflict.
Los Angeles Communities Advocating for Unity, Social Justice and Action YouthBuild, or LA CAUSA, is a project based learning school in East Los Angeles that provides a high school diploma program for "historically disenfranchised" Los Angeles residents ages 16-24. Here are the stories of three formerly homeless students who are enrolled in the program:
Vicente Carlos, 23, is a LA CAUSA junior. As a teen, he struggled with anxiety and depression, and felt he didn't have anyone to turn to help him. Carlos began to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol to numb the emotional pain he felt.
When he turned 18, during his 11th grade year, his mother kicked him out of their home in East Los Angeles. Carlos took to living on the streets and later found shelter in transitional housing in L.A.'s Boyle Heights neighborhood. As a requirement of living there, he had to stop using drugs and alcohol.
Carlos said he asked himself at the time, "Where do I go from here?"
Carlos reunited his mother and returned to living with her. Soon after, he enrolled in the LA CAUSA program.
Carlos now practices healthy ways of coping with his anxiety, including hiking and photography. As a student, Carlos is close to graduating and recently attended a college readiness class. He hopes to attend CSU San Diego, CSU Humboldt or Scripps College to study oceanography or marine biology.
Alexandra Ramirez
Alexandra Ramirez, 21, was kicked out of her Texas home at age 13 after a conflict with her mother. For the next three years, Ramirez lived in Texas with her 17-year-old boyfriend, who was abusive. During this time, she didn't attend school.
Young and naïve, Ramirez said that her boyfriend convinced her to commit acts of burglary with him. "He dragged me into a life of crime," she said.
At 16, Ramirez reenrolled in school after a run in with law enforcement forced her to return home with her mother. She was put back in school and was placed in the ninth grade, where she struggled to keep up with her classmates.
During this time, Ramirez took anger management courses and learned about dating abuse.
"My mind started to expand," Ramirez said, as she realized, "I didn't want to be like this my whole life."
But life was also difficult at home. Ramirez's immigrant mother worked two jobs and rarely had time to spend with her. When she was 17, Ramirez went back to living with her former boyfriend and again dropped out of school.
That's when she realized she needed to break the cycle of the abusive relationship. This time Ramirez saw the signs of abuse, left her boyfriend and tried to live independently at age 18. She struggled to make ends meet as a teen housekeeper and fell into alcoholism and depression.
"I couldn't find myself at the time," she said.
Ramirez's mother contacted her and told her she was moving to Los Angeles and wanted Ramirez to join her. Ramirez agreed, wanting a fresh start.
Now, Ramirez is nearing graduation at LA CAUSA and is taking college courses at East Los Angeles College. She is studying to be an electronic engineer. She has a nine-year plan that includes having a career by age 25 and purchasing a home by 30.
Cris Bravo
Cristina "Cris" Bravo, 20, is 24 units away from graduating from the LA CAUSA program. The writer, poet and local actor has come a long way since entering the school four years ago.
As a queer teen, Bravo had a strained relationship with her parents. She drifted from school to school, because her parents hoped that one would "set her straight," she said.
At 16, Bravo enrolled in LA CAUSA. Before that, she had attended five other programs, including a job-training school and a continuation school.
That same year Bravo's parents found out about her sexuality and family relations became tenser. "I started dressing like a guy," Bravo said, adding that she is still figuring out her identity but prefers the pronoun "she" for now.
"I feel like they were embarrassed," Bravo said of her family. Her parents ripped her men's clothes.
Cris Bravo shows her gratitude journal.
The road to graduation has not been easy. Bravo's parents temporarily threw her out of their home at age 19, because they didn't want to accept how she identified herself.
"They didn't accept me, so it was really hard to communicate with them," she said.
Bravo admits to making mistakes as a young teen but claims to have grown up while at LA CAUSA, where she felt accepted and encouraged by teachers. She keeps a gratitude journal in her phone. Bravo is writing her first book and hopes to be a movie director someday.
by Mariah Castaneda, California Health Report

For Los Angeles Students who are Homeless, a School Provides Hope

by Mariah Castaneda, California Health Report
November 1, 2017

In Los Angeles County, 63,000 students are considered homeless this year. Homeless youths are defined as "individuals that lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence" by the California Department of Education. This can include young people that sleep in cars, motels or shelters.

Many students who are homeless have faced abuse, neglect, abandonment or family conflict.

Los Angeles Communities Advocating for Unity, Social Justice and Action YouthBuild, or LA CAUSA, is a project based learning school in East Los Angeles that provides a high school diploma program for "historically disenfranchised" Los Angeles residents ages 16-24. Here are the stories of three formerly homeless students who are enrolled in the program:

Vicente Carlos, 23, is a LA CAUSA junior. As a teen, he struggled with anxiety and depression, and felt he didn't have anyone to turn to help him. Carlos began to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol to numb the emotional pain he felt.

When he turned 18, during his 11th grade year, his mother kicked him out of their home in East Los Angeles. Carlos took to living on the streets and later found shelter in transitional housing in L.A.'s Boyle Heights neighborhood. As a requirement of living there, he had to stop using drugs and alcohol.

Carlos said he asked himself at the time, "Where do I go from here?"

Carlos reunited his mother and returned to living with her. Soon after, he enrolled in the LA CAUSA program.

Carlos now practices healthy ways of coping with his anxiety, including hiking and photography. As a student, Carlos is close to graduating and recently attended a college readiness class. He hopes to attend CSU San Diego, CSU Humboldt or Scripps College to study oceanography or marine biology.

Alexandra Ramirez, 21, was kicked out of her Texas home at age 13 after a conflict with her mother. For the next three years, Ramirez lived in Texas with her 17-year-old boyfriend, who was abusive. During this time, she didn't attend school.

Young and naïve, Ramirez said that her boyfriend convinced her to commit acts of burglary with him. "He dragged me into a life of crime," she said.

At 16, Ramirez reenrolled in school after a run in with law enforcement forced her to return home with her mother. She was put back in school and was placed in the ninth grade, where she struggled to keep up with her classmates.

During this time, Ramirez took anger management courses and learned about dating abuse.

"My mind started to expand," Ramirez said, as she realized, "I didn't want to be like this my whole life."

But life was also difficult at home. Ramirez's immigrant mother worked two jobs and rarely had time to spend with her. When she was 17, Ramirez went back to living with her former boyfriend and again dropped out of school.

That's when she realized she needed to break the cycle of the abusive relationship. This time Ramirez saw the signs of abuse, left her boyfriend and tried to live independently at age 18. She struggled to make ends meet as a teen housekeeper and fell into alcoholism and depression.

"I couldn't find myself at the time," she said.

Ramirez's mother contacted her and told her she was moving to Los Angeles and wanted Ramirez to join her. Ramirez agreed, wanting a fresh start.

Now, Ramirez is nearing graduation at LA CAUSA and is taking college courses at East Los Angeles College. She is studying to be an electronic engineer. She has a nine-year plan that includes having a career by age 25 and purchasing a home by 30.

Cristina "Cris" Bravo, 20, is 24 units away from graduating from the LA CAUSA program. The writer, poet and local actor has come a long way since entering the school four years ago.

As a queer teen, Bravo had a strained relationship with her parents. She drifted from school to school, because her parents hoped that one would "set her straight," she said.

At 16, Bravo enrolled in LA CAUSA. Before that, she had attended five other programs, including a job-training school and a continuation school.

That same year Bravo's parents found out about her sexuality and family relations became tenser. "I started dressing like a guy," Bravo said, adding that she is still figuring out her identity but prefers the pronoun "she" for now.

"I feel like they were embarrassed," Bravo said of her family. Her parents ripped her men's clothes.

The road to graduation has not been easy. Bravo's parents temporarily threw her out of their home at age 19, because they didn't want to accept how she identified herself.

"They didn't accept me, so it was really hard to communicate with them," she said.

Bravo admits to making mistakes as a young teen but claims to have grown up while at LA CAUSA, where she felt accepted and encouraged by teachers. She keeps a gratitude journal in her phone. Bravo is writing her first book and hopes to be a movie director someday.

SaveSave

This article first appeared on California Health Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Low-Income Californians Most Vulnerable as Climate Change Exacerbates Air Pollution, Report Says
More Than A Decade Later, Recession-Era Cuts Still Hamper California's Low-Income Residents


text:
Tag Archives: Lackawanna Elementary
This Week's Story: Tip Top Tavern / Randall's Ranch House Restaurant
Before that night the Ku Klux Klan wore their hoods in for dinner, before somebody assaulted Randall Fleiss and stole his ivory, before Ron Pate initiated his "If you want to fight, you have to fight me" policy, Darryl Swearingen asked his mother if he could take a job washing dishes. The story of the Tip Top Tavern / Randall's Ranch House Restaurant dates back almost a century.
Tagged Darryl Swearingen, Donal Godfrey, DuPont School, Ed Canady, Folsom Haven, Helen Fleiss, Helen Wooten, Hines Restaurant, J&L Friendly Tavern, jax psycho geo, John Haven, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna Elementary, North Shore, Panama Park, Patrick Foley, Randall Fleiss, Randall's Ranch House Restaurant, Richard Atkinson, Robert Zortea, Ron Pate, Rose Pate, Tallulah, Tally's Lounge, Tim Gilmore, Tip Top Tavern, Urban Meyer, Woody's Place, Your Tavern, Zorty's Ranch House Restaurant
Click below for the fourth story in a series of seven about the KKK in Jacksonville. On June 13th, come to Coniferous Cafe in downtown Jax at 7 pm, to hear Tim Gilmore's talk "The Klan in Jax: Its Repugnant Rise and Hysterical Collapse.
For most of his life, he'd not realized the full traumatic effect of the Klan's bombing of his childhood home as retaliation for his being the first black child to attend Lackawanna Elementary School.
Can anyone feel the brutality and tragedy in the landscape? Does the Klan's hate and the Godfreys' fear and sorrow and determination remain in the soil or the air or the trees? I can't tell, because I can't not know what happened here.
Tagged Beloved, Bob Gray, Donal Godfrey, Jacksonville, jaxpsychogeo, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna, Lackawanna Elementary, Murray Hill Heights, Ottis Toole, Robert Gray, Sethe, Terianne Summers, Tim Gilmore, Toni Morrison, Trinity Baptist Church, We Shall Overcome
When the Klan bombed a six year old's home
Click below for the second story in a series of seven about the KKK in Jacksonville. On June 13th, come to Coniferous Cafe in downtown Jax at 7 pm, to hear Tim Gilmore's talk "The Klan in Jax: Its Repugnant Rise and Hysterical Collapse.
Fifty-three years later, Donal Godfrey tells me from his home in Monrovia, Liberia, that if the family had been on the side of the house where the bomb detonated deep in the night, they'd be dead.
"It blew the refrigerator through the roof," he says. "Not too many people have survived a Klan bombing. It's an exclusive club."
Tagged Burton H. Griffin, Donal Godfrey, Donald Eugene Spegal, J.B. Stoner, Jacky D. Harden, James Earl Ray, KKK, Klan bombing, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna Elementary, Martin Luther King, NAACP, Robert Pittman Gentry, Stetson Kennedy, The Klan Unmasked, William Rosecrans, Willie Eugene Wilson


What is the CRSC Travel Benefit?
If you have to travel more than 100 miles for specialty care related to your combat-related disability, the CRSC travel benefit reimburses your travel expensesClick to closeAmounts you pay when traveling to and from your appointment. This includes costs for gas, meals, tolls, parking, lodging, local transportation, and tickets for public transportation..
How do you qualify for the benefit?
Note: If you're enrolled in TRICARE Prime or the US Family Health Plan, you qualify for the TRICARE Prime Travel Benefit, so you won't qualify for the CRSC Travel Benefit.
Only costs for actual travel expenses such as lodging, fuel (rather than mileage), meals, parking, tolls or other costs associated with getting the specialty care.
Please contact your TRICARE Regional Office for more information about reimbursable expenses and authorization requirements.
One non-medical attendant (NMA) may also be reimbursed for travel-related expenses. Your referring provider must verify in writing that an NMA is medically necessaryClick to closeTo be medically necessary means it is appropriate, reasonable, and adequate for your condition. and appropriate to travel with you. The NMA can be a parent, spouse, or other adult family member (age 21 or older) or a legal guardian.
If the NMA is an active duty service member or a U.S. government employee, he or she may be entitled to temporary duty allowances (per diem and mileage) if on travel duty per their organization.