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How Political Correctness Hijacked Trump Inauguration Protesters' Brains
By: Stella Morabito
The goal of the Left's campaign against the Trump presidency is "mass resistance" to bring the administration down. Likely, that means you'll be seeing lots of street protests of the 1960s variety, reminiscent of the campaigns to bring down Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.
I suspect they will not only cause Bill Ayers to relive his glory days as a domestic terrorist, he will also be able to test out the inroads he made after 40 years engaged in radical education reform built entirely on the agitprop known as political correctness. These "reforms"—or mind arson, as Robin Eubanks so perfectly put it in her book "Credentialed to Destroy"— replace a child's capacity for reason with raw emotional reflexes. The question is: How many will "rise up" and be mobilized like the good little drones political correctness has primed them to be?
Somehow, this all reminds me of a public service ad from 30 years ago that used a metaphor to warn about the harmful effects of drug abuse on the human brain. In it, a man holds up an egg and says "This is your brain." He then points to a hot skillet and says, "This is drugs." Finally, he cracks the egg into the skillet and as it loudly sizzles, he remarks: "This is your brain on drugs."
The narrator prefaced his remarks with barely suppressed irritation that the harmful effects of drugs aren't obvious to all: "Is there anyone out there who still isn't clear about what doing drugs does? Okay [sigh] . . . This is your brain…"
Political Correctness Also Fries the Brain
Let me take this one step further and ask: Why can't people understand that automatic obedience to the demands of political correctness—essentially a tool to incite mob psychology—will change their brains as well? Blind compliance with the propaganda of political correctness undeniably affects the mind. That's the whole point of it. Your brain on PC is like your brain on drugs.
Consider this: when people fear talking about an idea, it tends to go out of circulation. The alternative view becomes perceived as the only socially accepted view. When most outlets of communication—Hollywood, academia, and the media—collectively push political correctness, social distrust grows and more people believe they are all alone with their "unpopular" opinions. A while back, I "dissected" this phenomenon.
Political correctness is basically mind hacking. It is a form of propaganda that induces self-censorship in order to send politically incorrect ideas into a spiral of silence. After observing the social hostility to your politically incorrect opinion you are supposed to start thinking of yourself as the crazy aunt locked up in the attic. So your only hope for relief is to "come out" and support the PC line. Once you do so (Meryl Streep's Golden Globe lecture just gave Hollywood another lesson on how to do this) you can pat yourself on the back and simply mimic it.
Voila! You don't need to do the hard work of thinking anymore. Instead, PC conditions your brain to respond to the good feeling of being praised, and to reject the bad feeling of being socially punished for saying the "wrong" thing. That's your brain on PC.
Power Elites Use PC to Mobilize Masses
In essence, political correctness is designed to force one view of reality and promote psychological isolation in anyone who adopts a different view. This is the mental state many Americans are now waking up from after a decades-long, force-fed diet of political correctness from so many outlets of communication and the education establishment. Our universities are now accommodating students' inability to absorb different points of view by giving them "safe spaces" in which they can become even further insulated from real conversations.
You may ask: "Why turn students into such 'snowflakes?'" Well, for those with power-consolidating agendas, this type of mind hacking short-circuits independent thought, turning the subjects into deployable agents. (This is how cults operate, by the way.) With their brains fried and fearful, unable to accept a different point of view, the recruits can be used as drones and street agitators. They've internalized the message that their very survival depends upon obedience to the sorcerers of political correctness.
Enter Agitators, Propagandists, and Street Theater
There are numerous reports that "community organizers" of various stripes are planning "massive" protests against Donald Trump's inauguration, hoping even for violence and riots. They are passionate about blockading streets in Washington, calling for what they call "clusterf–ks" of roads. Students whose minds have been indoctrinated with political correctness are no doubt expected to serve as warm bodies to prop up the illusion of mass mobilization that might bring down the newly elected administration. If the agitators can't succeed through messaging, they are likely to pin their hopes on provocations against the police that would then spin stories that accuse the new administration of repression.
Any protesters who hope to march "peacefully" won't exist as a story, particularly since groups like "DisruptJ20" say they are intent on using any means necessary to prevent the inauguration from happening. The central theme of the inaugural protests is that Trump is a "fascist," or as stated in the central theme on ANSWER Coalition's web page : "Donald Trump is a racist, sexist bigot." This boogeyman approach aims to cultivate paranoia that will cause the protesters to act up. By heightening fear and loathing in the masses, the participants can be primed for maximum exploitation and mobilization by their leaders.
This is right out of Saul Alinsky's how-to guide on mass manipulation. In "Rules for Radicals" Alinsky explained it is essential to personalize the opposition so that there is a human face to hate. Then the organizers can stoke resentment in their recruits and channel that hatred into a force for mass mobilization. This is similar to the way political correctness works. To consolidate power, twentieth-century totalitarian regimes mobilized masses of people, especially exploiting individuals who were uprooted and alienated.
The ANSWER coalition, by the way, praises murderous dictators and their henchmen, like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Such organizations are marshaling the snowflakes who have been cultivated by our media and education establishment to bring about its stated goal: "revolution" of the freedom-hating communist variety.
Another "community organized" group has taken out a full-page ad in The New York Times to recruit protesters to prevent the inauguration. It calls itself "Refuse Fascism" and uses the slogan "NO!" It is led by unabashedly self-avowed communists like Carl Dix and Bob Avakian. So to march with this group is really to march for communism, a totalitarian form of government the legacy of which includes the government-sponsored murders of well more than 100 million innocent people.
How Polarization Is Key to Effective Propaganda
I believe we need to see most protesters as victims of political correctness. Propaganda has many definitions, depending on whom you ask. But the common denominator of this mind-altering propaganda pushed by power mongers is its hostility to free speech, free thought, and free association with other people. It is anti-conversation and anti-friendship.
It marches towards conformity of thought, or "collective belief formation." It focuses on manipulating human emotions—fear, envy, desire, anger, hate, etc.—rather than the dispassionate examination of reality. That's because independent thinking always stands in the way of the monolithic conformity necessary to grant power-mongers the raw power and status they crave.
They know that if your exposure to political correctness it is left unchecked, if you are isolated into a bubble of only one viewpoint or way of looking at the world, you'll be less able to think independently of the propaganda. That ability erodes as you become isolated from alternative viewpoints. Your emotional reflexes—in the case of protesters, their fear and loathing—will tend to overpower the brain's capacity for reason and logic.
That certainly seems to be the case for celebrities who have shown us that they cannot manage the reality of Trump's election. From Lena Dunham to Bruce Springsteen, their meltdowns should be instructive. Through repeating politically correct slogans and memes that permeate the media and pop culture, they are transferring an emotional state of despair to the masses—or, as Michelle Obama memed to Oprah Winfrey recently, "What not having hope feels like"—fueling the urge to obstruct Trump's presidency and to agitate against him. They both reflect and irradiate the inability to think or adapt.
Celebrities as Protesters' Ventriloquists
In acts of not-so-quiet desperation, wannabe sorcerers of political correctness hope to get Americans with the program by also showing them what "enlightened celebrity thought leaders" think about Trump. They act like ventriloquists who keep repeating themselves in hopes that you will follow suit. They recently put together a video encourage us to direct Congress to obstruct Trump's presidency.
They throw out all of the usual emotionally-charged epithets—"racist," "xenophobic," etc.—in an attempt to round up Americans to block Trump's cabinet choices. They accuse Trump of intolerance and encouraging violence—and in so doing, arouse the violent and intolerant to "protest" Trump's inauguration.
Protesters' Brains on PC: Hardboiled or Scrambled?
So, political correctness can do a lot of things to the brain. Blind obedience to it can hard-boil those neural connections so no other ideas can compute. When confronted with a different point of view, the signals tend to get scrambled in a process now known on college campuses as "triggering." When that happens, the victim is increasingly led by his PC authorities into a safe space so he is out of the zone of potential conversation and friendship. In this way, he can preserve and maintain his brain's hard-boiled PC status. (Such students are constantly recruited into mass mobilization efforts, as Dix made clear in looking for protesters to join "RefuseFascism's" call to arms.)
But seriously, our brains are not static organs. The neural connections within them can constantly change, based on the effects of stimuli to which they are exposed. In fact, our brains are not only responding constantly to our physical senses and what is in the world outside of our bodies, but they also pick up and assess cues from interactions in the more esoteric world of ideas. (That's the world universities now seem dedicated to protecting their students from.) So if we consider the recent discovery of the brain's changeability—its neuro-plasticity—we can learn to become more aware of the pitfalls of lazy, shallow thinking.
Let's not forget that protesters' emotionally charged behaviors have been in large part conditioned in them through radical education reform and media committed to pushing political correctness. And political correctness is definitely a bad habit for the brain. After watching protesters' irrational behavior, the lesson for Americans going forward is that we must ignite a vigorous campaign to just say NO! to political correctness.
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of "The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer." Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.
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Visit on Twitter @Stella_Morabito
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Home » To Idle or Not to Idle in Winter Weather
To Idle or Not to Idle in Winter Weather
Peter Suciu
How to Educate Drivers on Why "Warming Up the Car" Isn't Necessary and May Be Illegal
Last winter's "Arctic Blast" was one for the record books — with cities such as Chicago experiencing weeks of sub-freezing temperatures and even parts of Florida experiencing unusually cold weather. It is the kind of weather where few want to leave a warm house and head out in a cold car.
Anyone who grew up in the 1980s or earlier where cold weather was a normal part of winter probably remembers a time when dad would go out to "warm up the car." Today, however, the mere concept of idling an engine is enough to send many into a tirade about the damage to the planet — while others may proclaim warming up could damage the engine.
The question to idle or not to idle is worthy of consideration, but the facts need to be presented.
First, dad wasn't wrong back in the day — and we don't mean when Fred Flintstone's feet were the means of propulsion in a car. Rather, the idea that cars should be warmed up in cold weather just dates back to a time when carburetors were installed in nearly every car. Back then, in especially cold weather, the gasoline engines didn't run all that well right after starting up, so "warming up" the car wasn't just about comfort, it was about ensuring that the car would run well.
In very cold weather, it actually took a while for the engine to reach an operating temperature that matched the ability of the carburetor to mix fuel and air well enough to maximize the power output to ensure smooth operation.
"This made sense in the days where internal combustion engines had carburetors and needed to warm up to get air and fuel mixing," explained Chriag Rathi, consulting director for Automotive Research at Frost & Sullivan.
"Over the last three decades, electronic ignition technology has made idling unnecessary because the electronic ignition does the adjustments for you based on ambient conditions," Rathi said.
Yet, many American drivers still think they need to warm up the vehicle. It has become an accepted practice, in part because there has been little in the way of education directed at drivers. One study conducted in 2009 found most adult drivers assumed that it was necessary to warm up the car for at least five minutes before driving when the temperature was below 30 degrees.
Where the issue becomes more complex is there is some truth in the argument that engines may benefit from being warmed up — the key words being "some" and "may." According to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, it does take longer for the engine to warm up and reach an optimal driving temperature in cold weather, but it shouldn't really take a study to know that. It is also important to note that cars do have worse fuel economy when it's really, really cold outside. So drivers can expect to get lower fuel economy when the "Arctic Blast," "Polar Vortex" or whatever buzz word the weather forecasters use to describe an extreme winter cold spell hits — at least for the first couple of minutes or until the engine heats up.
However, this doesn't mean that warming up the car will help save fuel — because gasoline will be used to warm up the engine, and hence, drivers are not really saving anything. In fact, driving the car will warm up the engine faster than allowing it to idle anyway.
This is why auto experts today suggest that drivers should warm up the car for no more than 30 seconds. Some automotive experts even argue that if the car is started up and idled, in addition to the fuel that is potentially wasted, it could actually cause some problems.
If the engine is not under load yet fuel is actually going down into the cylinders and the engine is cold, there is the possibility of a phenomenon known as quench, where the fire is outside the cylinders. This can contaminate the oil much faster, increasing the need to change the oil sooner. This can also affect the lubrication of the engine as it is warming up, which is why many experts say with modern cars drivers shouldn't idle a cold car if possible.
So why has the practice of warming up the car continued?
"Some people still continue to idle cars because of habits," Rathi said. "Considering how impatient millennials are, this is likely to become a thing of the past soon. It is just wastage of energy with no benefits to engine performance."
Yet, it almost seems like the industry encourages people to warm up their vehicles — often times without even having to get into them.
"Several cars come with remote start, which comes in handy to pre-warm the car," Rathi noted. "This is a comfort factor not related with engine performance."
It is also one that could be illegal, depending on state or local community laws.
Many jurisdictions have laws that make it illegal to leave a car unattended while it's running, but the use of remote starters is a significantly more complex issue. While the car may not be able to drive off if the remote starter isn't present in the vehicle, there is the issue of the environmental impact of using such a device.
According to the EPA, today 31 states, as well as Washington, D.C., have regulations against idling a vehicle. As with many other laws, these vary greatly, so drivers — and shop owners — should confirm the laws specific to their state and city. Even in states that don't have laws on the books about idling, many cities do.
These laws usually have fines, which can be $100 or more. California, as an example, has a $750 fine for the first offense for idling a truck — but that is for letting it run 30 minutes or longer. The District of Columbia may also be among the most stringent when it comes to anti-idling laws. Drivers of diesel-powered vehicles who idle for more than three minutes — five minutes if temperatures are below 32 F — can be punished by fines not to exceed $5,000.
Many states do offer exceptions when temperatures are exceedingly cold — perhaps lawmakers don't want to sit in a cold car any more than anyone else — but it is recommended to err on the side of caution.
Even in states where the idling isn't an issue, leaving a car unattended while running could get a driver in trouble. Nick Taylor of Roseville, Michigan, found this out in 2017 during a cold snap when he received a fine for running his truck in his own driveway with the keys in the ignition. Taylor had run to the grocery store and only stepped into the house for a minute, but it still cost him $128 to pay the fine for leaving the vehicle unattended.
With all this in in mind, do some research on the idling laws in your community, and share your findings with customers before the next cold snap hits.
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Magazine|Coming Out in Middle School
Magazine | The School Issue: Junior High
Coming Out in Middle School
By BENOIT DENIZET-LEWIS SEPT. 23, 2009
Austin didn't know what to wear to his first gay dance last spring. It was bad enough that the gangly 13-year-old from Sand Springs, Okla., had to go without his boyfriend at the time, a 14-year-old star athlete at another middle school, but there were also laundry issues. "I don't have any clean clothes!" he complained to me by text message, his favored method of communication.
When I met up with him an hour later, he had weathered his wardrobe crisis (he was in jeans and a beige T-shirt with musical instruments on it) but was still a nervous wreck. "I'm kind of scared," he confessed. "Who am I going to talk to? I wish my boyfriend could come." But his boyfriend couldn't find anyone to give him a ride nor, Austin explained, could his boyfriend ask his father for one. "His dad would give him up for adoption if he knew he was gay," Austin told me. "I'm serious. He has the strictest, scariest dad ever. He has to date girls and act all tough so that people won't suspect."
Austin doesn't have to play "the pretend game," as he calls it, anymore. At his middle school, he has come out to his close friends, who have been supportive. A few of his female friends responded that they were bisexual. "Half the girls I know are bisexual," he said. He hadn't planned on coming out to his mom yet, but she found out a week before the dance. "I told my cousin, my cousin told this other girl, she told her mother, her mother told my mom and then my mom told me," Austin explained. "The only person who really has a problem with it is my older sister, who keeps saying: 'It's just a phase! It's just a phase!' "
Austin's mom was on vacation in another state during my visit to Oklahoma, so a family friend drove him to the weekly youth dance at the Openarms Youth Project in Tulsa, which is housed in a white cement-block building next to a redbrick Baptist church on the east side of town. We arrived unfashionably on time, and Austin tried to park himself on a couch in a corner but was whisked away by Ben, a 16-year-old Openarms regular, who gave him an impromptu tour and introduced him to his mom, who works the concession area most weeks.
Openarms is practically overrun with supportive moms. While Austin and Ben were on the patio, a 14-year-old named Nick arrived with his mom. Nick came out to her when he was 12 but had yet to go on a date or even kiss a boy, which prompted his younger sister to opine that maybe he wasn't actually gay. "She said, 'Maybe you're bisexual,' " Nick told me. "But I don't have to have sex with a girl to know I'm not interested."
Ninety minutes after we arrived, Openarms was packed with about 130 teenagers who had come from all corners of the state. Some danced to the Lady Gaga song "Poker Face," others battled one another in pool or foosball and a handful of young couples held hands on the outdoor patio. In one corner, a short, perky eighth-grade girl kissed her ninth-grade girlfriend of one year. I asked them where they met. "In church," they told me. Not far from them, a 14-year-old named Misti — who came out to classmates at her middle school when she was 12 and weathered anti-gay harassment and bullying, including having food thrown at her in the cafeteria — sat on a wooden bench and cuddled with a new girlfriend.
Austin had practically forgotten about his boyfriend. Instead, he was confessing to me — mostly by text message, though we were standing next to each other — his crush on Laddie, a 16-year-old who had just moved to Tulsa from a small town in Texas. Like Austin, Laddie was attending the dance for the first time, but he came off as much more comfortable in his skin and had a handful of admirers on the patio. Laddie told them that he came out in eighth grade and that the announcement sent shock waves through his Texas school.
"I definitely lost some friends," he said, "but no one really made fun of me or called me names, probably because I was one of the most popular kids when I came out. I don't think I would have come out if I wasn't popular."
"When I first realized I was gay," Austin interjected, "I just assumed I would hide it and be miserable for the rest of my life. But then I said, 'O.K., wait, I don't want to hide this and be miserable my whole life.' "
I asked him how old he was when he made that decision.
"Eleven," he said.
As the dance wound down and the boys waited for their rides home, I joined Tim Gillean, one of Openarms's founders, in the D.J. booth, where he was preparing to play the Rihanna song "Disturbia." An affable 52-year-old with wire-rimmed glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, he founded Openarms in 2002 with his longtime partner, Ken Draper. In addition to the weekly dances, the couple lead discussion groups every Thursday — about self-esteem, healthy relationships and H.I.V./AIDS.
When I asked Gillean if he ever expected kids as young as Nick and Austin to show up at Openarms, he chuckled and shook his head. Like many adult gay men who came out in college or later, Gillean couldn't imagine openly gay middle-school students. "But here they are," he said, looking out over the crowd. "More and more of them every week."
I heard similar accounts from those who work with gay youth all across the country. Though most adolescents who come out do so in high school, sex researchers and counselors say that middle-school students are increasingly coming out to friends or family or to an adult in school. Just how they're faring in a world that wasn't expecting them — and that isn't so sure a 12-year-old can know if he's gay — is a complicated question that defies simple geographical explanations. Though gay kids in the South and in rural areas tend to have a harder time than those on the coasts, I met gay youth who were doing well in socially conservative areas like Tulsa and others in progressive cities who were afraid to come out.
What is clear is that for many gay youth, middle school is more survival than learning — one parent of a gay teenager I spent time with likened her child's middle school to a "war zone." In a 2007 survey of 626 gay, bisexual and transgender middle-schoolers from across the country by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (Glsen), 81 percent reported being regularly harassed on campus because of their sexual orientation. Another 39 percent reported physical assaults. Of the students who told teachers or administrators about the bullying, only 29 percent said it resulted in effective intervention.
A middle-school counselor in Maine summed up the view of many educators I spoke to when she conceded that her school was "totally unprepared" for openly gay students. "We always knew middle school was a time when kids struggle with their identity," she told me, "but it was easy to let anti-gay language slide because it's so imbedded in middle-school culture and because we didn't have students who were out to us or their classmates. Now we do, so we're playing catch up to try to keep them safe."
As a response to anti-gay bullying and harassment, at least 120 middle schools across the country have formed gay-straight alliance (G.S.A.) groups, where gay and lesbian students — and their straight peers — meet to brainstorm strategies for making their campus safer. Other schools are letting students be part of the national Day of Silence each April (participants take a vow of silence for a day to symbolize the silencing effect of anti-gay harassment), which last year was held in memory of Lawrence King, a 15-year-old gay junior-high student in Oxnard, Calif., who was shot and killed at school by a 14-year-old classmate.
Both G.S.A.'s and the Day of Silence have been controversial in places, as some parents and faculty members object to what they see as the promotion of homosexuality in public schools and the "premature sexualization of the students," as a lawyer for a school in central Florida that was fighting the creation of a G.S.A. put it. But there is a growing consensus among parents and middle-school educators that something needs to be done to curb anti-gay bullying, which a 2008 study at an all-male school by researchers at the University of Nebraska and Harvard Medical School found to be the most psychologically harmful type of bullying.
"I certainly don't believe school districts should force a sexual agenda on the community," says Finn Laursen, the executive director of the Christian Educators Association International, "but we can't just put our heads in the sand and ignore the kind of harassment that's going on."
The challenging school experience of so many gay and lesbian students — and the suicides last spring of a sixth grader in Massachusetts and a fifth grader in Georgia, both of whom were relentlessly bullied at school for appearing gay — reinforces the longtime narrative of gay youth in crisis. Studies in the '80s and '90s found gay teenagers to be at a significantly higher risk for depression, substance abuse and suicide than their heterosexual peers.
When I went to work in 1998 for XY, a national magazine for young gay men, we received dozens of letters each week from teenagers in the depths of despair. Some had been thrown out by their families; others lived at home but were reminded often that they were intrinsically flawed. My arrival at XY (at 23, I was only three years out of the closet myself) coincided with the founding of the Trevor Project, which runs a national 24-hour crisis and suicide hot line for gay and questioning youth, and with the first large wave of G.S.A.'s in high schools. (They are now in more than 4,000 high schools, according to Glsen.)
But by the time I stopped writing for the magazine nearly three years later, the content of the letters we received was beginning to change. A new kind of gay adolescent was appearing on the page — proud, resilient, sometimes even happy. We profiled many of them in the magazine, including a seventh grader in suburban Philadelphia who was out to his classmates and a high-school varsity-football player from Massachusetts who came out to his teammates and was shocked to find unconditional support.
That's not to say that gay teenagers didn't still suffer harassment at school or rejection at home, but many seemed less burdened with shame and self-loathing than their older gay peers. What had changed? Not only were there increasingly accurate and positive portrayals of gays and lesbians in popular culture, but most teenagers were by then regular Internet users. Going online broke through the isolation that had been a hallmark of being young and gay, and it allowed gay teenagers to find information to refute what their families or churches sometimes still told them — namely, that they would never find happiness and love.
Today, nearly a decade after my time at XY, young people with same-sex attractions are increasingly coming out and living lives that would be "nearly incomprehensible to earlier generations of gay youth," Ritch Savin-Williams writes in his book "The New Gay Teenager." A professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University, Savin-Williams told me recently that being young and gay is no longer an automatic prescription for a traumatic childhood.
Austin, a gay 13-year-old from Oklahoma. Credit Brent Humphreys for The New York Times
In particular, openly gay youth who are perceived as conforming to adolescent gender norms are often fully integrated into their peer and school social circles. Girls who come out as bisexual but are still considered "feminine" are often immune from harassment, as are some gay boys, like Laddie, who come out but are still considered "masculine." "Bisexual girls have it the easiest," Austin told me in Oklahoma. "Most of the straight guys at school think that's hot, so that can make the girl even more popular."
Still, the younger they are when they come out, the more that youth with same-sex attractions face an obstacle that would be unimaginable to their straight peers. When a 12-year-old boy matter-of-factly tells his parents — or a school counselor — that he likes girls, their reaction tends not to be one of disbelief, dismissal or rejection. "No one says to them: 'Are you sure? You're too young to know if you like girls. It's probably just a phase,' " says Eileen Ross, the director of the Outlet Program, a support service for gay youth in Mountain View, Calif. "But that's what we say too often to gay youth. We deny them their feelings and truth in a way we would never do with a heterosexual young person."
I was guilty of my share of that, too, the first time I met Kera — then a 12-year-old seventh grader — and her 13-year-old best friend, Justin, last spring in a city in New England. Kera had small, delicate features. Justin had freckles and braces. They seemed like kids. Yet there they were at a bookstore coffee shop after school, talking nonchalantly — when they weren't giggling uncontrollably about one of their many inside jokes, that is — about their sexual identities. Kera said she was bisexual. Justin said he was gay. The effect was initially surreal to me, and before long I heard myself blurt out, "But you're so young!"
My reaction surprised me. After all, I'd known on some level that I was gay when I was their age. If I were growing up today, it's possible that I would feel emboldened enough to confide in my parents, or at least a close friend, that I was gay. I'd also spent the morning of my visit reading a handful of studies about when gay and lesbian youth first report an awareness of same-sex attraction. Though most didn't self-identify as gay or lesbian until they were 14, 15 or 16, the mean age at which they first became aware of that attraction was 10. Boys tended to be aware about a year earlier than girls. (Of course, not all kids with same-sex attractions go on to self-identify as gay.)
Those findings are consistent with what many adult gay men have been reporting for years: they may not have come out until adulthood, but they knew they were attracted to the same sex as early as elementary or middle school. Kera and Justin knew that, too, but they're among the first generation of young gay adolescents to take on an identity that many parents and educators associate with adult lifestyle choices.
Kera says she was 10 when she realized she was interested in both sexes. "It was confusing for a while, because for some reason I thought that you had to be straight or gay, and that you couldn't be both," she told me at the coffee shop. "So I thought about it a lot, like I do about everything, and I went online and looked up bisexuality to read more about it. I realized that was me."
She told her mom soon after (more on that later) and then came out to her close friends at school, including Justin, who she had suspected was gay. Last year, the entire school found out when she briefly dated a female classmate. "We didn't think we had anything to be ashamed of, so we didn't want to go around hiding," she told me. "It was a whole big drama at school. Some guys made fun of us, others hit on us. Most middle-school guys are total, complete morons."
Though he wishes he could be as "brave" as Kera, Justin is out to only a few friends at school. "I lie when people ask me if I'm gay," he told me. "Sometimes they leave me alone after that, but other times they still call me names."
Kera doesn't back down when someone harasses her or one of her gay friends. "I don't want to be a bully back, but if I get mad, I will say mean things back," she told me, adding that she has gotten into two fights at school.
Middle school was even worse last year for another boy named Austin, who lives in a small town in Michigan. A tall, heavyset 15-year-old now in his first year of high school, Austin said his eighth-grade classmates regularly called him the "gay freak." They groped themselves in front of him. Not a day went by when someone didn't call him a "fag," sometimes with teachers present. And at a football game last fall, several classmates forced him off the bleachers because it wasn't "the queer section."
"I would have preferred that he not come out in school, but he wanted to be honest — he wanted to be true to himself," Austin's mother, Nadia, told me. "So I took a job as the lunch lady at school because I felt like I needed to be his bodyguard. It seems like I spent the entire year in the principal's office trying to get them to protect my son. But they would say things like, 'Well, what did he do to provoke them?' We live in a very conservative area with very vocal parents, and I believe the school didn't want to be seen as going out of their way at all to protect a gay student."
The school's principal would not comment specifically about Austin, but he insisted that the school "does not tolerate harassment and bullying of any kind." He did concede that teachers don't react to anti-gay language as consistently as he would like, which is something I also heard from a counselor at Kera's school. "We have veteran teachers who have been teaching for 25 years, and some just see the language as so imbedded in the language of middle-schoolers that it's essentially unchangeable," she said. "Others are afraid to address the language because they feel like it would mean talking about sexuality, which they aren't comfortable doing in a middle school setting."
Jennifer Mathieu Blessington, who teaches at Johnston Middle School in Houston, said she has been forced to address the issue in her class. "Many boys at that age are so unsure of themselves and are incredibly worried about being perceived as gay, so they call everything and everyone else gay," she told me. She relayed to me a recent incident when a boy in her class held up a book with a pink cover and said he wouldn't want to read it because it "looks gay." "Everyone in the class started laughing like it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard," Blessington continued, "but I said: 'We don't use the word "gay" in a negative way in this classroom. Gay people are human beings, and that's the way we talk about them in here. Is that understood?' "
By far the most common usage of the word "gay" in middle schools is in the expression "that's so gay," a popular adolescent phrase that means that something is dumb or lame. The phrase has become so ubiquitous in the culture of the average middle school that even friends of gay students sometimes use it. Still, the expression is offensive to many, and last year Glsen and the Ad Council embarked on a media campaign to combat it. (Glsen would have preferred to go after more incendiary language, "but broadcasters would be very reluctant to let us say the word 'faggot' on television," Eliza Byard, Glsen's executive director, told me.)
Though the commercials (featuring the celebrities Hilary Duff and Wanda Sykes) are aimed at teenagers, many of those who work with gay youth say that teachers also need to get the message. "Teachers would never let students say, 'That's so black,' " says Eileen Ross from the Outlet Program in Mountain View, "but I've had teachers look at me like I'm crazy when I suggest that they should say something to a student who says 'that's so gay.' They'll say, 'If I have to stop what I'm doing every time a student says that, I won't have any time to teach!' "
A few yearsago, when I first heard from educators that young adolescents were coming out of the closet, I visited a middle school in Northern California where three eighth graders (a gay boy named Justin and two heterosexual girls, Alison and Amelia) took me on a tour of the school. They wanted to show me how many students were gay, bisexual or "confused," but they wanted to do it discreetly — or as discreetly as middle-schoolers can.
All three were members of the school's G.S.A. "Even though this is a liberal area," Alison explained, "it's still hard to be gay at this school. Most people won't even come to G.S.A. meetings because they don't want people other than their close friends to know they're gay or lesbians, even though straight people also come to meetings. I get called a lesbian all the time even though I'm not." She continued, "People are totally paranoid." She suggested that they "come up with some code words on the down low so we can tell you what's up without anyone knowing what we're saying!" (They settled on "paw" for gay and "woof" for bisexual.)
As we walked past the gym, a group of boys came rushing out. Justin pointed to a short, muscular eighth grader in a baseball cap. "Paw!" he said.
Alison looked surprised. "Isn't he a woof?"
"No, he just thinks he's a woof," Justin said.
Amelia looked confused. "What does woof mean again?"
A minute later, they fixed their gaze on a boy sitting against a wall listening to his iPod. "Paw," Alison told me. "I mean woof!"
"Yeah, he'll make out with anyone," Justin confirmed. "Totally bisexual."
"No, he's not!" Amelia said, apparently distraught by the news.
"Oh, stop getting all mad just 'cause you like him," Alison told her. "Everyone knows he's a woof."
A dance sponsored by Openarms Youth Project in Tulsa. Credit Brent Humphreys for The New York Times
After pointing out a handful of girls who are "definitely woofs," Alison turned to me and recalled a recent "lesbian moment" of hers. "I totally had the hots for this girl in 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' " she said with a giggle. "I was, like, 'Whoa, I'm really attracted to you right now!' "
"Jesus was hot in that, too," Justin offered.
Midway through our tour we were joined by Sayre, a handsome and soft-spoken 12-year-old. Sayre was one of the few students at the school who was out to everyone, which had earned him the respect of the G.S.A.'s dozen or so members. "I really admire him," Justin told me as we walked. "I've only come out to my close friends, but Sayre doesn't care what people think."
I asked Sayre if he was interested in any boys at the school. "I like this one guy over there," he said, pointing toward classmates playing soccer on a grass field, "but I think he's straight, so that's probably not going to happen." A few minutes later, Sayre added that he was in no rush to start dating. "It's not like I have a lot of options anyway," he said, echoing what I would go on to hear from many gay middle-schoolers. "I like guys who are nice and caring and don't act like jerks to everyone. But this is middle school, where guys think it's funny to pick their nose and fart really loud and laugh."
As we came to the end of our tour, we approached a handful of boys sitting in a circle on the pavement eating lunch. "Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!" Justin said, barely able to contain himself. "They're all woofs." One boy heard him and turned to us. "What's a woof?" he asked us.
"Never mind," Justin said.
"I don't think he's really a woof," Alison told me, referring to a boy in the circle. "I think he's straight but just confused."
"He's not confused," Justin assured her. "He's confused," he said, referring to another boy in the circle. "He doesn't know what he is. He changes his mind a lot."
I was certainly confused trying to keep track of it all, but Alison told me not to worry. "We can't even keep up with who's gay or bi and who's into who, and we go to school here!" she said.
All of thisfluidity, confusion and experimentation can be understandably disorienting for parents and educators. Is an eighth grader who says he's gay just experimenting? Could he change his mind in a week, as 13-year-olds routinely do with other identities — skater, prep, goth, jock — they try on for a while and then shed for another? And if sexuality is so fluid, should he really box himself in with a gay identity? Many parents told me they especially struggled with that last question.
Nadia, the mother of Austin in Michigan, told me that she and her husband "blew up" at him when he came out to them. "I really lost it, and my husband took it even harder than I did," she said. "We just couldn't wrap our heads around the idea that Austin would know what he was at 13, and that he would want to tell other people."
A year earlier they asked Austin if he was gay after they discovered his call to a gay chat line. He promised them that he was straight, and he promised himself that he would cover his tracks better. It's not uncommon for gay youth to have their same-sex attraction discovered thanks to a rogue number on a phone bill or, more often these days, a poorly concealed Internet search history. "We see a lot of kids get outed by porn on the computer," Tim Gillean told me in Tulsa. "I knew one kid who told his mom: 'I don't know how that got there. Maybe it was dad!' "
Austin eventually ended up telling his parents he was bisexual, which he knew was a lie (he wasn't attracted to girls) but which he hoped would lessen the blow. But the plan backfired. "My mom said something like: 'What does that mean, you're bisexual? Do you just wake up in the morning and willy-nilly decide what you're going to be that day? Straight yesterday, bi today, gay tomorrow?' " Austin recalled. "For the next two months my parents tried to convince me that I couldn't know what I was. But I knew I was different in second grade — I just didn't really put a name to it until I was 11. My parents said, 'How do you know what your sexuality is if you haven't had any sexual experiences?' I was like, 'Should I go and have one and then report back?' "
While Austin's mother correctly assumed that Austin wasn't yet sexually active, other parents heard the words "gay" or "bisexual" and immediately thought "sex." In reality, many of their kids hadn't had any yet. Some (including Kera's friend Justin) hadn't even kissed anyone. Those who had been sexual in some form often reported that it was with a heterosexual friend who they presumed was just experimenting.
Though many of the parents I spoke to needed a period of adjustment before accepting their children's announcement that they were gay or bisexual, others offered immediate and unequivocal support. "The biggest difference I've seen in the last 10 years isn't with gay kids — it's with their families," says Dan Woog, an openly gay varsity boys' soccer coach at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., who helped found a gay-straight alliance at his school in 1993. "Many parents just don't assume anymore that their kids will have a sad, difficult life just because they're gay."
That was certainly the case for Kera's mother, who told me she hardly batted an eye when Kera came out to her. I visited them last spring in their small two-story house on a quiet street in a middle-class neighborhood. We sat at the kitchen table. Kera's mother, who had just finished her shift as a nurse, hadn't had time to change out of her blue scrubs.
Kera handed me a poem she wrote for her mom a year earlier. "It's not one of my best," she insisted, covering her ears in embarrassment after she agreed that I could read a portion of it into my tape recorder.
I like girls. I know it's true
I like girls, I really do
Not just boys, but girls as well
I'm bisexual as you can tell
"My first reaction to the poem, which she slipped under my bedroom door before going to hide in her room, was that she seemed really worked up about this," her mother recalled. "But I knew I was interested in boys when I was her age, so it didn't strike me as unusual that Kera might know she's interested in boys and girls, put two and two together and call herself bisexual. Kids just know what those words mean a lot earlier than when I was growing up."
On the national Day of Silence last April, I visited Daniel Webster Middle School in Los Angeles, one of 21 middle schools in California with a G.S.A. California is one of only 12 states that have passed laws to protect students from bullying and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. (In May, Representative Linda Sanchez of California introduced the Safe Schools Improvement Act, a federal anti-bullying bill that would require schools to implement comprehensive anti-bullying policies that include protections for gay students.)
I arrived at Daniel Webster, a school of some 850 students, most of them Hispanic or African-American, at lunchtime. About 50 kids milled around two large wooden tables at the center of the school's leafy courtyard. Many of them wore pink T-shirts, and some filled out cards that would later be strung together and displayed: "You Are What You Are — Embrace It," "Never Put Someone Down, and Never Let Someone Put You Down." Others communicated using hand gestures or by writing notes to one another. But most had given up trying to be mute. "Good luck getting middle-schoolers not to talk," the school's counselor and G.S.A. co-adviser at the time, Ruben Valerio, told me with a smile.
One of the loudest students at the tables was Johnny (a nickname), a tall, handsome seventh grader. A leader of the G.S.A., he had only managed to stay quiet for about 30 seconds that morning. "It's just really exciting to be at a school where it's O.K. to be gay," he told me as he bear-hugged his friend, an outgoing seventh grader known to her friends as Lala, who'd come out earlier that year as bisexual. At his previous school, Johnny didn't feel safe and had little support when he came out to his mother. "She would go back and forth between saying things like: 'I love you. I just don't understand why you would choose this lifestyle at this age,' to 'It's disgusting what you're doing. Are you a faggot now?' No one would ever use that word here."
Johnny estimated that there were about 35 girls and 10 boys at Daniel Webster who were out as bisexual, lesbian or gay. (The vast majority of those girls identified as bisexual.) He introduced me to a handful of them, including two members of the G.S.A.: Tina (also a nickname), a seventh grader who considered herself bisexual and was dating a boy at another school; and a popular eighth-grade girl who used to date Tina.
They were joined at the tables by dozens of their straight friends and a handful of teachers. One teacher, Richard Mandl, approached me and asked what I thought of the school. I told him that I'd never seen so many happy gay kids in one place. "It's a little disorienting," I told him. "I feel like I'm in a parallel gay universe."
Support: A gay 15-year-old from Michigan, also named Austin, with his mother, Nadia. Credit Brent Humphreys for The New York Times
He laughed. "Yeah, it's pretty unusual what's happened here," he said. "It definitely wasn't always this way."
When Mandl began teaching at the school in 2002, he said that there weren't any openly gay students — and that it was common to hear anti-gay language. "Kids would run by you and be screaming at another kid: 'You fag! You're so gay!' " he said. "It wasn't until a few years ago when the faculty sort of came together and said: 'You know what? We need to stop this.' "
That became a lot easier two years ago when one of the school's most popular boys came out to his classmates. Because he was so well liked, and because so many of his friends rallied around him, "it became cooler at Daniel Webster to be accepting and open-minded," Mandl said.
The principal, Kendra Wallace, told me that she didn't hesitate when the school's science teacher approached her (on behalf of the boy and several of his friends) about starting a G.S.A. "I had some staff who were livid at first, because they thought it would be about sex, or us endorsing a lifestyle," she said. "But the G.S.A. isn't about that, and they've come around. This is a club that promotes safety, and it gives kids a voice. And the most amazing thing has happened since the G.S.A. started. Bullying of all kinds is way down. The G.S.A. created this pervasive anti-bullying culture on campus that affects everyone."
Not all principals have reacted as enthusiastically to students or teachers hoping to start a G.S.A. (Teachers often wait for students to make the request, because they don't want to be perceived as "having a political agenda," as one school counselor told me.) At a middle school in Massachusetts, the G.S.A. adviser told me that the school's principal initially balked when students asked to observe the Day of Silence and start a G.S.A. "She argued that it wasn't age-appropriate, and she worried about having to deal with negative editorials in the local paper," the adviser said. But because the school had other extracurricular clubs, "the principal was made aware that blocking a G.S.A. from forming is against the law."
Indeed, courts — citing the Equal Access Act, which requires public schools to provide equal access to extracurricular clubs — have consistently ruled against schools that try to block G.S.A.'s from starting. (The 1984 law was the brainchild of Christian groups fighting to allow students to form religious clubs in schools.)
When Yulee High School in northeast Florida was forced by a federal judge last spring to let a G.S.A. meet on campus, the school asked students to change the name of their proposed club to something other than Gay Straight Alliance. The students refused, and a court backed them up in August. Administrators at Austin's middle school in Michigan used the same tactic when he tried to start a G.S.A. there, he said. "They told me I needed to change the name to something 'less controversial,' " Austin recalled. "I didn't feel like fighting them, so I just called it the Peace Alliance."
And because there were so few openly gay students at Austin's middle school last year, all but 2 of the 15 or so students who attended each meeting were straight. At G.S.A. meetings at Daniel Webster, gay and straight members spend two periods a week reading and discussing news stories about gay issues, organizing events like the Day of Silence and talking about navigating the outside world — which isn't always as supportive as their campus. Lala, for example, said the backing of the G.S.A. was critical when she came out to her family.
"They're a lot better now, but the first thing one of my relatives did when I told them I was bisexual was hit me on the head with a Bible," she told me. "So while I was dealing with that insanity at home, I at least had a safe place at school to talk about what was happening."
Later that day, as I sat in a conference room with a handful of the G.S.A members from Daniel Webster, they spent a lot of time talking about dating. Asking 13- or 14-year-olds if they think they're old enough to date is a little like asking them if they're old enough to stay up past 11, so I didn't even bother. I was more interested in learning how their parents reacted to the news that they not only had gay kids — but also that those kids had same-sex boyfriends or girlfriends.
Tina surprised me when she said her father actually prefers that she date girls. "His biggest fear has always been that I'll get pregnant before I'm 18," she told us, "so my dad's really supportive of the girl thing."
Johnny said his mom has made it very clear that he's not allowed to bring a boyfriend over to the house. "She's like, 'O.K., I accept you, but you better not bring any of those people around,' " he told me.
That's one of about 50 "rejecting behaviors" identified by Caitlin Ryan of San Francisco State University, who has spent the last eight years studying the link between family acceptance or rejection of gay children and their mental health in early adulthood. (Ryan found that teenagers in "rejecting families" were significantly more likely to have attempted suicide, used drugs and engaged in unprotected sex than those who were raised in accepting families.)
Of course, many parents of middle-schoolers don't want their child dating yet, no matter their sexual orientation. But several parents I spoke to conceded that it wasn't always easy to fashion the same rules for their gay and straight kids. Their instinct was to tell their gay children to wait longer before they could date. Austin from Michigan said he could see the struggle playing out in his parents. "When I came out, they said I couldn't date anyone until I was 18," he said. "Then I think they realized that was ridiculous, so they changed it to 16."
In a rural area outside of Tulsa a few years ago, I visited a mother and her 14-year-old gay son, Ely, who were struggling to fashion the rules of when, and in what context, he could date. I listened as Ely tried to persuade his mother to let his latest crush spend time in his room ("With the door shut," he clarified):
Ely: So, can we hang out in my room?
Mother: I don't trust you two alone in there. Period.
Ely: What about if there are no body parts touching?
Mother: You don't have that kind of self-control.
Ely: Yes, I do!
Mother: No you don't. How old is he again?
Ely: 15.
Mother: And he has a shaved head and piercings everywhere. Is this who you really want to date?
Ely: All kinds of people have shaved heads.
Mother: I don't think you're ready to have a relationship right now.
Ely: Ugh.
Mother: I know, I know, you can't wait to move away from me. You have the most unfair mother in the world!
As I listened to them bicker, I couldn't help remembering what Ritch Savin-Williams, the professor of developmental psychology at Cornell, told me the first time we spoke: "This is the first generation of gay kids who have the great joy of being able to argue with their parents about dating, just like their straight peers do."
Though dating and sexual activity were a reality for some of the middle-schoolers I spent time with, others were more concerned with simply making gay friends their age. Those who attended a school with other openly gay students or who lived near a gay youth group (Openarms in Tulsa, for example) were the lucky ones. But many, like Austin in Michigan, had never met another openly gay boy.
"He has his close girl friends, but he doesn't have any gay friends," his mother told me. To meet other gay people, he has gone with his father to nearby meetings of Pflag (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), where gay kids often accompany their parents. And in June, she agreed to let him attend the gay-pride parade two hours away in Chicago.
"I told Austin he could go if either me or his dad went with him," she recalled. "So he chose his dad, probably because he knew it would be the thing his dad would want to do least in the world. But off they went, and I give my husband credit, because he will do anything for his son. He doesn't totally understand why Austin is gay, or how he can know for sure at his age, but he's trying to be there for him. And he's rarely seen Austin happier than at the parade. Austin warned his dad, 'You can't get mad at me when I scream at cute guys in Speedos!' And boy, did Austin scream. He was in gay teenage heaven."
Correction: September 27, 2009
An article on Page 36 this weekend about gay teenagers who come out when they are in middle school misstates part of the name of an organization that promotes tolerance in schools. It is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or Glsen — not "Educators" Network.
Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author of "America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life." His new book, "American Voyeur," a collection of his writing, will be published in January.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page MM36 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Coming Out in Middle School. Today's Paper|Subscribe
How to Remake Education SEPT. 25, 2009
Coming Out in Middle School OCT. 8, 2009
Coming Out in Middle School OCT. 15, 2009


After it was revealed earlier today that an air traffic controller at JFK let a child direct planes on February 16, the Post is reporting that the same controller let a different kid do it the next day. On February 17, a minor, believed to be the air controller's child, talked to two planes from the control tower. The FAA suspended both the controller and a supervisor today, but did not release their names.
"This behavior is not acceptable and does not demonstrate the kind of professionalism expected from all FAA employees," the FAA said in a statement. The agency would not comment on the incident beyond the statement.


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The Lamborghini Urus is here. And Top Gear can confirm that the 641bhp, twin-turbo monster SUV can go off-road. While we were testing the car, Lamborghini laid on a dirt rally stage to prove that the Urus can manage big bumps at speed and adopt some amusing angles while doing it. If you live on a farm, you're in for a treat.


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Northwestel plans to drop local phone operators
Soon when you dial zero on your landline you won't be speaking to a Yukoner. Northwestel is eliminating its seven local operator jobs because the company says people aren't using the service enough anymore.
Ashley Joannou
Mar. 18, 2016 2:00 a.m.
Soon when you dial zero on your landline you won't be speaking to a Yukoner.
Northwestel is eliminating its seven local operator jobs because the company says people aren't using the service enough anymore.
Instead, Northwestel is "pooling" its services with its parent company, Bell, so that the calls will be answered at an office somewhere else in Canada, said company spokesperson Andrew Anderson. He didn't say specifically where.
"We have seen, as all telecommunications have, major reductions in the demands for operator services as technology goes online and different technologies become available," Anderson said.
"So for example, people are using landlines less and cell phones more. There are web services such as Google and Canada411 which help customers find the information that we need."
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requires that phone companies have someone answer the phone 24/7 when a customer dials zero from a landline.
Anderson said in the past five years Northwestel operators have seen call volumes decline by 70 per cent.
As it stands now, an operator at Northwestel is only serving customers for an average of 13 per cent of their shift, he said.
Anderson didn't have a specific date for when the switch-over would take place. He said it will be happening sometime "within the following weeks."
Customers shouldn't notice a difference, he said.
Meanwhile, it's not clear yet how many of those seven employees will actually be laid off. The collective agreement means some could be offered other jobs within the company or offered retirement.
"I am disappointed in the fact that they've decided to outsource the operator services positions," said Bud McCue, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local 1574.
McCue said his biggest concern is that the employees have the opportunity to at least move into a different position. All that is still being worked out.
Anderson said Northwestel's overall employment levels in the Yukon over the past year have remained stable.
"We are not looking at any net decrease in jobs in the Yukon."
He said the company has increased the number of employees it has in web production, information technology and other technical areas because these are growing areas of the business.
"So this is about ensuring that we are investing in the services that customers are using and demanding here in northern Canada."
Contact Ashley Joannou at
ashleyj@yukon-news.com
Burwash Landing takes on stray dog issue
Federal budget includes increase to Northern Residents Deduction, funding for affordable housing


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Neda Norbash is the founder of 30 Ponte V, a specialty online boutique featuring a carefully curated selection of luxury jewelry and accessories. Formally trained as a lawyer and having practiced for eleven years, Neda chose to pursue her lifelong dream of sharing her love of exquisite jewelry and precious objects. The site is named after the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy the bridge that features jewelry stall after jewelry stall the length of 30 meters. The idea being to re-create the experience to discover something special to reflect the journey one's traveled. Neda works closely with well-known and emerging designers and artisans often features one-of-a-kind pieces from designers such as Fallon, Iosseliani, Jaquie Aiche, Mawi and Tonya Hawkes.
What made you launch 30 Ponte V after practicing law for 10 years?
It's the age-old expression of "do what you love," and the sentiment hits each person at different times. For me, it happened ten years into my law career. I reached a point when I just felt that following my passion was the only way for me. 30 Ponte V is a way for me to channel my lifelong love of discovering unique jewelry and objects. The details of my career change (and overcoming fear) are best left for a long conversation over coffee!
I've always loved the process of discovering a unique piece of jewelry, especially while vacationing or strolling in a new neighborhood. I wanted to recreate that wondrous experience online. The name was inspired by my family's many trips to Italy growing up. I was always fascinated with the 30-meter stretch of jewelry merchants along the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
Making major investment pieces like purchasing jewelry online can be tough, how does 30 Ponte V put their customers at ease?
Our first interaction with our customers is through our product photos, and we make sure they are an accurate depiction of our products. We have state-of-the-art security for processing transactions, customer-focused shipping and return policies, and we hand inspect every one of our products.
Is jewelry very personal for you?
Absolutely. My love for jewelry started in my early teens, a combination of scouring my mom's jewelry box and being obsessed with the costume jewelry at Contempo Casuals. The first thing I look for on vacation is jewelry, and I always look for pieces that represent the city or place I'm visiting. My jewelry box is filled with personal stories that I love to re-live and share.
What is the difference between a sentimental piece and a statement piece?
A sentimental piece feels like an extension of you, evoking a strong emotion every time you look at it or wear it. A statement piece is more connected with your fashion sense…statement jewelry should always boost your confidence.
Do you currently have a sentimental piece or a statement piece on constant rotation?
Years ago, my late grandmother gave me a gold tassel chain bracelet and I've been wearing it with everything. I love it because I often wear it next to newer pieces, and the old and new make a beautiful contrast…and, of course, it reminds me of her.
How do you balance well known designers with lesser known designers?
My focus is always to find beautiful, well-made jewelry. Sometimes that hunt leads me to new designers, which is extremely exciting. In the end, I want to present a collection of designers who are masters in their craft and who create unforgettable pieces.
Do designers create one-of-a-kind pieces for you?
We do have a few one-of-a-kind pieces in the boutique, like Parme Marin's "drop by drop" necklace featured in Paris Vogue. Over time, my goal is to collaborate more closely with our designers to create exclusive one-of-a-kind pieces that are truly unique and inspirational.
Is it difficult being based in Orange County? What's the fashion community like there?
Do you plan to add other types of accessories or ready to wear to the site?
The focus of the boutique is definitely jewelry, but we do plan on expanding our accessories and home décor offerings. In the Fall, we will be adding two European scarf collections, expanding our selection of clutches and introducing more decorative objects for the home.
You seem to have a very unique and specific eye for things, who are your favorite designers?
Prada shoes fit my wardrobe and lifestyle perfectly. As for clothing, some of my favorites include Marni, A.L.C., Isabel Marant and Chloe. I discovered Cotélac on a recent trip to New York and I love their laid-back style for the weekend.


text:
Q: Scripting.Dictionary Lookup-add-if-not-present with only one key search? I am looking up keys in a Scripting.Dictionary to make sure I add them (and their items) only once to the dictionary:
If MyDict.Exists (Key) Then ' first internal key-value lookup
  Set Entry=MyDict.Item (Key)  ' Second internal key->value lookup
else
  Set Entry=New ItemType
  MyDict.Add Key,Entry
End If
' Now I work on Entry...

Exists looks up the key in the dictionary, and Item () does it, too. So i get two key lookups for one logical lookup operation. Isn't there a better way?
The dox for the Item property say

"If key is not found when attempting to return an existing item, a new
  key is created and its corresponding item is left empty."
   (MSDN)

This is true, i.e. looking up a non-existant key obviously makes this key part of the dictionary, probably with associated item = empty.
But what is that good for? How could I use this to boil it down to one lookup operation? How can I set the empty item after creating the key during the Item () property call?

A: This code and output:
>> Set d = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
>> WScript.Echo 0, d.Count
>> If d.Exists("soon to come") Then : WScript.Echo 1, d.Count : End If
>> WScript.Echo 2, d.Count
>> d("soon to come") = d("soon to come") + 1
>> WScript.Echo 3, d.Count, d("soon to come")
>>
0 0
2 0
3 1 1

shows:

*

*Looking up a non existing key with .Exists does not add the key to the dictionary (.Count is still 0 at #2)

*Accessing a non existing key via .Item or () - as on the right hand side of the assignment in my sample code - adds a key/Empty pair to the dictionary; for some task (e.g. frequency counting) this 'works', because Empty is treated as 0 in addition or "" in string concatenation. This small scale autovivification can't be used for objects (no decent way to map Empty to whatever object the programmer thinks off and no default magic as in Python or Ruby in VBScript)

*If you have to maintain a dictionary of named objects and can access the name and its object at the same time, you can just write Set d(name) = object - d(name) will create the key slot "name" if necessary and the Set assignment will put the object into the corresponding value (overwriting Empty or the 'old' object ('pointer')).

If you append some details about what you really want to achieve, I'm willing to add to this answer.
Added:
If you (logically) work on a list of keys with duplicates and must add new
objects to the dictionary on the fly, you can't avoid the double lookup, because
you need to check for existence (1.0) and assign (2.0) the (perhaps newly
created and assigned(1.5)) object to your work variable (see /m:a or /m:b in my
sample code). Other languages with statements that deliver a value may allow
something like
if ! (oBJ = dicX( key )) {
   oBJ = dicX( key ) = new ItemType()
}
oBJ.doSomething()

and without VBScript's Set vs. Let abomination something like
oBJ = dicX( key )
If IsEmpty( oBJ ) Then
   dicX( key ) = New ItemType
   oBJ = dicX( key )
End If

would do the extra work for new elements only, but all that is a pipe dream.
If those double lookups really matter (which I doubt - can you give an argument
or evidence?), then the overall design of your program does matter. For example:
If you can unique-fy your work list, everything becomes simple (see /m:c in my
sample). Admittedly, I still have no idea, whether such changes are possible
for your specific task.
Code to experiment with:
Dim dicX  : Set dicX = CreateObject( "Scripting.Dictionary" )
Dim aKeys : aKeys    = Split( "1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 5" )
Dim sMode : sMode    = "a"
Dim oWAN  : Set OWAN = WScript.Arguments.Named
If oWAN.Exists( "m" ) Then sMode = oWAN( "m" )
Dim sKey, oBJ
Select Case sMode
  Case "a"
    For Each sKey In aKeys
      If Not dicX.Exists( sKey ) Then
         Set dicX( sKey ) = New cItemType.init( sKey )
      End If
      Set oBJ = dicX( sKey )
      WScript.Echo oBJ.m_sInfo
    Next
  Case "b"
    For Each sKey In aKeys
      If IsEmpty( dicX( sKey ) ) Then
         Set dicX( sKey ) = New cItemType.init( sKey )
      End If
      Set oBJ = dicX( sKey )
      WScript.Echo oBJ.m_sInfo
    Next
  Case "c"
    aKeys = uniqueList( aKeys )
    For Each sKey In aKeys
      Set dicX( sKey ) = New cItemType.init( sKey )
      Set oBJ = dicX( sKey )
      WScript.Echo oBJ.m_sInfo
    Next
  Case Else
    WScript.Echo "Unknown /m:" & sMode & ", pick one of a, b, c."
End Select
WScript.Echo "----------"
For Each sKey In dicX.Keys
    WScript.Echo dicX( sKey ).m_sInfo
Next

Dim g_ITCnt : g_ITCnt = 0
Class cItemType
  Public m_sInfo
  Public Function init( sKey )
    Set init = Me
    g_ITCnt  = g_ITCnt + 1
    m_sInfo  = "Obj for " & sKey & " (" & g_ITCnt & ")"
  End Function
End Class ' cItemType

Function uniqueList( aX )
  Dim dicU : Set dicU = CreateObject( "Scripting.Dictionary" )
  Dim vX
  For Each vX in aX
      dicU( vX ) = Empty
  Next
  uniqueList = dicU.Keys
End Function

sample output:
/m:a
Obj for 1 (1)
Obj for 2 (2)
Obj for 3 (3)
Obj for 4 (4)
Obj for 4 (4)
Obj for 3 (3)
Obj for 2 (2)
Obj for 1 (1)
Obj for 5 (5)
----------
Obj for 1 (1)
Obj for 2 (2)
Obj for 3 (3)
Obj for 4 (4)
Obj for 5 (5)
==================================================
xpl.vbs: Erfolgreich beendet. (0) [0.07031 secs]

/m:c
Obj for 1 (1)
Obj for 2 (2)
Obj for 3 (3)
Obj for 4 (4)
Obj for 5 (5)
----------
Obj for 1 (1)
Obj for 2 (2)
Obj for 3 (3)
Obj for 4 (4)
Obj for 5 (5)
================================================
xpl.vbs: Erfolgreich beendet. (0) [0.03906 secs]

The timing difference is probably caused by the reduced output of the /m:c
mode, but it emphasizes the importance of not doing something more often
then necessary.

A: The key problem to me is the fact that VBScript forces us to use Set with objects, and Empty is not an object.  One trick that I've used in the past to get around this is to use the Array function to create a temporary placeholder for the value.  Then I can check the array to see if the value is an object or not.  Applied to your example:
tempArr = Array(dict.Item(key))
If IsEmpty(tempArr(0)) Then
    ' new entry
    Set entry = New MyClass
    ' can't use Add because the key has already been implicitly created
    Set dict.Item(key) = entry
Else
    ' existing entry
    Set entry = tempArr(0)
End If

In this case, though, you haven't eliminated the double lookup, but moved it from the "existing entry" case to the "new entry" case.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Maybe his eyes were bigger than his stomach.
A rat was captured on a video posted Monday dragging a whole slice of pizza down a flight of subway stairs at the First Avenue L train station. He almost makes it all the way down to the platform, but gives up before reaching the bottom and scampers off.
It appeared to be a plain slice, though its origin will probably remain a mystery.
Twitter responded and soon #PizzaRat was trending.
Riders at the First Avenue L train station also expressed their solidarity with the rat Monday evening.
"It's like I was reincarnated as a rat. Except I wouldn't have given up," said Ruby June, 21, at the First Avenue station.
"I'm a ride or die kind of person. You gotta ride that slice to the bottom of the stairs or die."
Shosong Zhang, 25, who recently moved to the city from Dalian, China to study at Columbia said she thinks the video is definitely a New York phenomenon.
"We don't have any rats in the subway in my city," Zhang said. "But the subway just opened up a year ago so they'll probably come."


Suppliers = from farms to farmers markets, food co-ops, distributors, non-grower CSAs etc.
Support the local restaurants who support the local, organic farmers in San Luis Obispo county!
Meet and support your local organic farmer!
Preparers = restaurants, cafes, burrito wagons etc.


This weekend I attended my first Just Between Friends consignment sale. At the sale you'll find LOTS of clothing for boys, girls, and expecting mothers, gadgets, toys, bedding, books, and other odds and ends. I had no idea what the sale would be like. Here are my tips for shopping at a Just Between Friends consignment sale.
If you go into the sale blind you'll either end up overwhelmed or you'll end up buying more than you need. If you at least go into the sale with a list of what you're looking for, you'll feel more in control.
Remember, this is a consignment sale. People are pricing things as they wish, which doesn't mean you're getting a good deal. Before you buy, look up what the product costs brand new. That $12 play mat may not be the steel you think it is.
The biggest items go fast. If you're shopping for a stroller, certain gadgets, ets., get to the sale early. New moms can get a pre-sale pass when they sign up on their website!
The people working at the sale are volunteers, usually moms who are consigning things, so take their advice with a grain of salt. I had a volunteer essentially show me all of the things she was selling, and although I appreciated her advice, I did feel pressured to buy her things. Go into the sale with a list and feel confident about what you choose buy.
Just Between Friends just may not have what you're looking for and that's ok!!! I thought I would have walked away with more, but I decided to pass on some of the "deals" as I just wasn't sure about some of the products and their prices.
If you're a new mom, just pass on the clothes. You're going to get a lot of clothes as gifts and you have no idea how big your baby will be. If you have children, I think the sale is a great place to get clothes for kids ages 1-5!
I don't know if I'll shop a Just Between Friends sale again, at least not until I have older children, but I do think it's a great place to consign things. We'll see if I tackle that adventure as our daughter gets older.


I've begun a new blog to tell the tails of my travels and conducting. If you are interested in following along, check it out at the Arkansas Symphony Orchetra's webiste, or here: Philip's Blog. You read out recent performances, upcoming projects, and probably more than a few words about the food, wine, and new places my work allows me to discover. An occasional visiter and photo will show up too. Hope you enjoy!


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There must be some important considerations as well regarding to the kitchen sink, and choosing the kitchen sink with drainboard sounds to be the good option and it is the smart idea. Here are some important and simple ideas of kitchen sink with drainboard.
Kitchen sink with drainboard is the best option for your simple kitchen design. As the versatile spot, it eases and assists you very much to wash many kinds of cutlery including your plate, knife, glasses and spoon. You will be very interestingly wash many kinds of cutlery there and after that you can dry your wet cutlery easily and quickly. Thus, having the kitchen sink with drainboard is seemed as the very good idea.
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We have been exploring additional types of chemical peel, and have now settled on some strong additions to our range.
This will massively increase the effectiveness with which we can treat a whole range of skin conditions.
Stop. You won't find a whole new set of options in the services menu. We've seen those elsewhere; they either give you technical choices which you shouldn't have to make yourself, or worse let you pick from a list of fluffy names.
There's a reason we did all that training. To help you to make the right choices.
As always, we'll work with you to decide the most suitable treatment in discussion with you, after your skin consultation/assessment,and with consideration to what you want to achieve.
Not that kind of peel!
We will soon be offering scientifically backed non-invasive remedial skin treatments….
Come on a journey with us to better skin….
This is an extremely effective rejuvenation treatment – as effective as laser resurfacing, but without the associated significant downtime and potential adverse reactions of ablative treatments.
Details (subject to change before launch here.


Living… in a constant daze of work. Ever since her father died, Tiana has been running around non-stop, trying to scrape together as many pennies as she can to make Tiana's Place a reality. In addition to waiting tables at two local diners, she also takes on as much freelance catering as she can.
Visiting… the bayou. Thanks to a smooch gone wrong at Charlotte's ball, Tiana is now a frog. She's also stuck with fellow amphibian Naveen, an irresponsible prince who thought a kiss from Tiana would break evil Doctor Facilier's curse and turn him back into a human. Obviously, it didn't.
Profession… a waitress, but hopefully not for much longer. Tiana expects the extra shifts and the lack of sleep to pay off soon.
Interests… cooking. Tiana is a fantastic chef. Just try her gumbo, and you'll understand.
Relationship Status… too focused on work to think about romance. "Ain't got time for messing around, and it's not my style," she says. While Charlotte is giddy about settling down with Prince Charming, Tiana wants to make her dreams come true on her own. No man can replace hard work and focus.
Challenge… saving enough money to buy Tiana's Place. Fortunately, Naveen has offered to pay for her restaurant if she helps him break the curse. Unfortunately, frogs aren't seen as credible restaurateurs, so Tiana must first find a way to return herself and Naveen to their human forms before Doctor Facilier wreaks even more havoc. People may think Tiana's crazy, but she never doubts herself. She lives by a simple motto: "Fairy tales can come true. But you gotta make them happen, it all depends on you." Even something as unusual as being transformed into a frog won't stand in her way. Tiana is determined to achieve her dreams whether she has to run, hop, or swim to make it happen.
Personality…motivated, diligent, and practical. But most admirably, Tiana's also open to change. She's not looking for love, but when she accidentally finds it in Prince Neveen, she's willing to risk everything to keep it. Because success is nothing without friends and family to share it with.
Tiana's popularity ranking on CharacTour is #1280 out of 5,000+ characters. See our top-ranked characters and read their profiles.