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The Wolf Of Snow Hollow
Date: November 6, 2020Author: hacked2pieces 0 Comments
Not your typical Werewolf film…..
Apart from an opening in which we see a Werewolf targeting a young couple on a break, you'll be forgiven for thinking that what you are watching is a sequel to the 2018 cult favourite Thunder Road.
Writer, director and star Jim Cumming's feature debut has won loads of acclaim over the last two years and while its interesting to see him now dip his toes into the horror genre with his follow up, both films are virtually identical in tone and vibe, even though one does not have a bloody thirsty Wolf attacking people!
For a start, his characters in both films have the same problems in life, struggling to bring up a young daughter while dealing with an estranged ex-wife while dealing with a few anger issues.
Its his character, Office Officer John Marshall, that will be the real deal breaker if you get any enjoyment out of this film as he can be hard to root for, with his sudden outbursts of anger, overshadowing the chaos surrounding his life.
He is not the typical hero of a horror flick. but thankfully for myself, he had me laughing more than I should. The scene where he falls asleep and is awoken and his reply had me giggling more than any other scene in horror this year, so that alone made this worth the watch.
Lets be honest and admit that the horror field needs more Werewolf movies as there has been a severe lack over recent years and when fans look back and mention the classics, they hark back to the The Howling, American Werewolf in London, with only Ginger Snaps getting the same acclaim and that tale was released over 20 years ago.
The Wolf Of Snow Hollow may tickle the funny bone at times and does have this weird quirky vibe that many have compared to the "Cohen Style", but while it succeeds in character, it fails in to offer up any genuine scares that is worthy of the plot its trying to tell.
With bodies piling up and a case of a "Whodunnit?" played out for the audience, even though we do get to see the Werewolf very early on, Cummings refuses to play by the rules of what the viewer should expect with the Wolf virtually taking a backseat to his character and the towns folk.
The late Robert Forster as always is captivating in what sadly is his last ever film performance and Riki Lindhome steals the entire film with an understated performance, a female officer who is probably head and shoulders above her more domineering male colleagues who are just too stupid or just arrogant to realise!
Those looking for a proper creature flick will no doubt be massively disappointed by what unfolds, but if you one those fans who are looking for something different, then The Wolf Of Snow Hollow may intrigue you.
Its uneven, not really a horror flick, but when it works, it really sizzles and I won't be surprised, much like Cumming's feature debut, that this too will gain a cult fan base in a few years time.
Chloe EastHacked 2 PiecesJim CummingsJimmy TatroRiki LindhomeRobert ForsterThe Wolf Of Snow Hollow
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Georgia Boy with a love for Blues, Bikes & BBQ!
Cooking is rooted in my DNA, my grandmother retired as an Executive Chef from a large Hotel chain; my mother and father, were line cooks in that same kitchen. My love for the smoke came at an earlier age, watching my father grill ribs on the brick pit he built in our backyard.


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Five 80s Horror Movies We're Surprised Haven't Been Rebooted
I'm not really a fan of remakes or reboots in general. Nine times out of ten it's almost an identical film as its predecessor; adding nothing new to the story. As a kid who was born in the mid 80s, I've seen many of my childhood horror icons get butchered with a terrible reboot, from Freddy Krueger to Leatherface and more.
With all of the remakes that have been released in the past decade it's surprising that there are still some memorable 80s horror films that haven't gotten the reboot treatment. I looked through my old VHS collection from when I was a kid and noticed many horror films I loved that haven't been given a shiny upgrade.
This isn't to say that I feel they should or shouldn't be remade; it's just surprising that some greedy movie exec hasn't capitalized on our childhood nostalgia. These five films are noteworthy (at least to me); for being quite popular and yet have flown under the reboot radar.
Maybe legal issues have prevented this from happening. Or, maybe these are films are only popular among a very small niche demographic of horror fans. Whatever the case may be, here are five 80s horror films we're surprised haven't been remade yet.
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
The Slumber Party Massacre follows a bunch of young girls as a killer tries to drill them (a drill is his weapon of choice). A rather straightforward by-the-numbers- slasher but it's most definitely one of the most memorable of the decade.
By today's standards it would be rather silly, and that's fine. A spoof or horror comedy wouldn't be out of the question. Even if it wasn't given a proper theatrical release it's surprising that this reboot isn't in the works.
Christine (1983)
Remaking films based on Stephen King novels seems to be a thing nowadays; just look at the upcoming Carrie reboot. It's surprising that a few other Stephen King novels aren't finding their way back to the big-screen once again.
Christine follows a nerd who buys a 1958 Plymouth Fury, which turns out to be an actual killer car (literally). It's surprising this hasn't been remade just because. Speaking of Stephen King remakes…
Cujo (1983)
Cujo is the Stephen King tale a dog who gets bitten by a bat and goes batshit crazy. A good portion of the film follows Dee Wallace and her son trapped in a car with Cujo waiting patiently for them to get out so he can rip them to pieces.
When was the last great killer dog horror film we've seen? Why not bring Cujo back? Or not…
Pumpkinhead hasn't exactly aged all that well over the years. Which is all the more reason why a reboot might actually be a good thing. The technology of today would only be a blessing for the film as opposed to a reboot like Nightmare On Elm Street where it was clearly a hindrance.
Lance Henriksen plays a mournful father who calls on a demon (Pumpkinhead) to get revenge on the teenagers who killed his son.
While Pumpkinhead may not be as recognizable as Freddy Krueger or Jason, the film has built up a cult following in the years since its release. A following that surprisingly hasn't been capitalized on with a reboot.
The Lost Boys (1987)
Two decades before the Twilight craze we had another teensploitation vampire flick. The Lost Boys was a pop-culture phenomenon during the late '80s. The film's tagline — "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." — flawlessly captured its blend of attitude and gore.
At the height of the recent vampire craze it was surprising that we haven't heard an announcement that this reboot was on its way.
Are there any other '80s horror movies you're surprised haven't been remade?
Jesse Gumbarge is editor-in-chief at JarvisCity. He's a fan of old-school horror flicks and starting pointless debates. You can contact him at JesseGumbarge@JarvisCity.com.
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ENCHANTED(director: Kevin Lima; screenwriter: Bill Kelly; cinematographer: Don Burgess; editor: Stephen A. Rotter/Gregory Perler; music: Alan Menken/with songs by Mr. Menken and Stephen Schwartz; cast: Amy Adams (Giselle), Patrick Dempsey (Robert Phillip), James Marsden (Prince Edward), Timothy Spall (Nathaniel), Idina Menzel (Nancy Tremaine), Rachel Covey (Morgan Phillip), Susan Sarandon (Narissa), Kevin Lima and Jeff Bennett (Pip); Runtime: 107; MPAA Rating: PG; producers: Barry Josephson/Barry Sonnenfeld; Walt Disney Pictures; 2007)
"It makes for good family viewing."
Kevin Lima ("Tarzan"/"A Goofy Movie"/"102 Dalmatians") joyfully directs this Disney classic fairytale story and gives it a modern twist–the damsel rescues the prince. It makes for good family viewing, whereby it's pleasing to both child and adult. It's basically the 'Snow White' story retold, but gets a reality check by showing its live action in a bustling New York City–"the place where there are no happily-ever-afters." The opening ten minute scene is animated in a fairytale land called Andalasia. The pretty sweetheart Giselle (Amy Adams) is rescued from a monster by the handsome and dashing Prince Edward (James Marsden), and he proposes to her on the spot. But Edward's wicked stepmother, evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), shoves the naive Giselle down a deep well and she comes up from a manhole cover and lands in the busy streets of Times Square–pictured as hell. The motivation behind this evil act, is because the bitchy Queen Narissa is afraid that Giselle will steal her crown.
Giselle, though ever cheery and optimistic, is confused by the crowds, is drenched by a downpour, feels out of place walking around in a wedding dress, and when she tries to befriend a homeless man she's robbed of her crown. Mistaking the castle on a billboard for real, she's rescued while falling down from the billboard by single parent divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey), whose 6-year-old daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey), has no trouble buying into Giselle's tale that she's about to become a princess. The cynical Robert allows Giselle to spend the night in his luxurious apartment. But there's a misunderstanding when Robert's girlfriend for the last five years and would-be wife Nancy (Idina Menzel), comes over in the morning and finds the attractive Giselle, clad only in a towel, sitting atop of Robert, clad in pajamas, just outside the bathroom. Robert can't shake Giselle in Central Park and relents to let her stay. Also coming down the well to the Big Apple is the evil queen's henchman Nathaniel (Timothy Spall), his orders are to kill Giselle with a poison apple. He's followed to NYC by the charming guileless prince Edward, a song-and-dance man in costume and brandishing a sword, and the friendly to Giselle animated chipmunk named Pip (the voice of Kevin Lima and Jeff Bennett). When Nathaniel fails to poison Giselle, Narissa magically appears at a NYC ball and in a CGI climax is prevented from killing Giselle. Everything gets resolved in the usual magical Disney way, as the fairytale story that mixes live action with animation comes to a happy Once Upon A Time ending.
The lighthearted and corny happily-ever-after film has some genuine fun gently spoofing its fairytale lineage without losing its fairytale story, the songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz though bland were easy to take, the upbeat sugary story not meant to be believable but awe inspiring was just that and James Marsden took the mickey out of everybody with his wonderfully uplifting humorous performance. Everything about the film made it easy to let your hair down and get with the wicked fun even if you really do not trust a Disney heroine whose posse consists of forest animals and she courts only handsome men with either titles or wealth.
REVIEWED ON 11/23/2007 GRADE: B


Federal News Radio unveiled their new logo today, which program director Lisa Wolfe says better reflects the organization as a multimedia news outlet.
The station hired the design firm Marstudio to rebrand the station to add emphasis to the online aspect of the publication. Previous logos have featured the station's dial position, which used to be 1050 AM and is now 1500 AM, while having the website in a smaller font at the bottom.
Because the station now reaches most of its audience through digital platforms, the organization wanted to make the website URL the emphasis. The new logo is a complete departure from the old, using darker shades of the red and blue that were used in past logos, and implementing a new symbol, which was formed from the idea of the Pentagon.
The new logo still features the dial position of 1500 AM, but as a secondary element, with "Federal News Radio.com" being the prominent element. The ".com" part is dropped from the logo on the website, though, as Wolfe says that including it would be redundant.
Wolfe wrote a riveting first-hand account of the station's logo evolution since it first broadcast in 2006. It can be found here. It provides an explanation of the station's process in creating the new logo, and examples of logos that were developed as ideas during the process.


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Learn more about the winners of the 2019 NYC BigApps Blockchain Innovation Challenge!
Announcing the 2017 NYC BigApps Winners!
by Marissa Mann
Mayor Bill de Blasio, Civic Hall Labs, and New York City Economic Development Corporation announced three Grand Prize winners and one Judge's Choice Award winner of the NYC BigApps 2017 competition. "NYC BigApps is about New Yorkers helping New Yorkers. Every year, we ask our tech and creative talent to help solve pressing challenges. They step up and consistently exceed our expectations with innovative ideas for New York," Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Announcing the NYC BigApps 2017 Finalists!
We are delighted to announce the Finalists for this year's NYC BigApps competition! Since the launch of the competition in January 2017, over 500 people have participated in exploring how data and technology can improve the quality of life for New York City youth, seniors, and immigrants across three challenge categories: Transportation, Knowledge, and Community Resiliency.
Join us! Finalist Expo & Awards Ceremony
Join us as we celebrate another exciting year of the NYC BigApps competition at the Finalist Expo & Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, May 23rd! At this culminating event, the finalists will showcase their solutions at the Finalist Expo. The Judges will then announce the Grand Prize Winners during the Awards Ceremony, followed by the opportunity to mingle with BigApps partners, mentors, and the broader #NYCBigApps community.
Meet the Judges!
We are delighted to present our talented panel of judges for this year's competition! Our esteemed judges will be reviewing the top submissions and selecting the BigApps winners at the Final Pitch Event & Winner Announcement on May 23, 2017. Learn more about our judges and their backgrounds in this post!
Launching NYC BigApps 2017
See us in AMNY on your way to work? Coming to the sold out BigApps 2017 launch event at Grand Central Tech? Been refreshing bigapps.nyc since you heard about the 2017 competition in December? Either way, we got here together. New York City's premier civic innovation competition, NYC BigApps 2017 has officially launched!
New York City Economic Development Corporation and Civic Hall Labs Announce NYC BigApps 2017 Competition
New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) President, Maria Torres-Springer and Andrew Rasiej, Co-Founder and President of Civic Hall Labs (CHL) and Chair of The New York Tech Alliance, announced the upcoming NYC BigApps 2017 competition and the new partnership between NYCEDC and Civic Hall Labs at the New York Tech Meetup. BigApps is the premier civic innovation initiative for New York City that aids the development of products and services capable of addressing critical civic and urban issues in the City and improving the quality of life of New Yorkers.


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Actor/Screenwriter Randy Russell Talks Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again
A holiday movie about a heartbroken Christmas tree salesman finds beauty and even hope in the melancholy.
By Randy Russell | December 2, 2015
Randy Russell
Randy Russell is an actor and screenwriter. A purist, he will only work on actual film — American Job, The Pool, Soulmate, Modus Operandi, and the upcoming China Test Girls — so it all might end soon. His website is at rspeen.com.
Charles Poekel
film commentary
Christmas, Again is a great title for a movie, or anything, really. Implying melancholy more than disgust, it could be a gentler way of saying: "Another Year, Same Old Shit." As a rule, I avoid any movie with the word "Christmas" in the title — which is funny because my favorite movie of all time, seriously, is Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940). But the crucial difference there is "July" — and the crucial thing here is that monster comma between Christmas and Again. While Christmas Again (no comma) would be Mickey Rooney in a version of Bad Santa with no sex, violence, drinking, or swearing, Christmas, Again promises something else entirely — complexity, possibly complications. That comma is like Marlon Brando sitting there; you know you're going to get something other than what you expected, but will the return be worth the investment?
Written and directed by Charles Poekel, Christmas, Again is a month in the life of a man selling Christmas trees off a temporary lot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Played by Kentucker Audley, Noel (pronounced like the man's name, not what the angels sing), is a soft-spoken, pleasant young man who seems to be unhappy, and we soon learn about his temporary world. While it might seem cool to be living in the trailer on a tree lot, it's also the job you can never leave. Noel works the night shift — 12 hours — while his friends, Nick and Robin, take care of the day, and Noel tries to sleep in the trailer amidst the city noise and light. It's kind of a nightmarish, twilight existence; for him it's always dark, no benefit from the sun, but never dark enough to sleep. It's also very cold.
The naturalistic, improvised feeling of the acting reminds me of the first feature film I was involved with, Chris Smith's American Job, in which we attempted to solve the problem of not having any actors by not having anyone act, and filming in essentially a documentary style. The actors here are actors (it's New York, after all, where you can't throw a rock without hitting an actor), but the feeling is that of people going about their everyday lives; much of it is the mechanics of selling Christmas trees, and the banter of retail sales. Christmas, Again was shot on film (the grain and feeling makes 16 mm, for me, the most lovely medium), often with existing light, so the contrast of the nostalgic Christmas lights, the harsh, white lights in the trailer, and the deep night shadows surrounding the lot really define the small world Noel inhabits.
Through conversations with previous years' customers (Noel has done this five years running) we learn that a woman named Mary-Ann used to work there, and her absence seems to be at the heart of Noel's sadness. Every time the subject of his ex comes up, the look on Noel's face is of a knife twisting in his back. He seems disinterested in life and is just going through the motions the way people do in uninspiring jobs. He is snippy with Nick and Robin, annoyed by their ultra-coupleness. Oddly, the interactions Noel has with the women customers often seem to be sexually charged, though you can't be certain if that is because the women are attracted to his rugged good looks, or if we are perceiving that through his point of view. Similarly, interactions with men feel passive-aggressive, sometimes bordering on abusive, even with the threat of potential violence.
I suppose, due to the universal nature of shitty jobs, I felt I could relate to much of the world depicted here, but rather than it being depressing, there is some pleasure in observing that particular weirdness, and it brought back some vivid memories. I spent several years delivering flowers on the holidays, which is more or less a pleasant job, until you encounter that person who is totally freaked out by your surprise box of roses, as if you just brought them a death threat. Late-night and third-shift work, at least for me, are the worst, and this film captures the hollowed out feeling of that twilight world that for no logical reason is tinged with fear. Just the sheer, random senselessness of it all. I once worked in a mall clothing store where two of my co-workers were named Ms. Liberty and Ms. Justice — their actual names. It should have felt like an odd, funny coincidence, but in the context of an already nightmarish world, such a thing, to me, took on the weight of a conspiracy.
Besides the gym to swim and shower, and a corner store for scratch-offs and 6-Hour Energy, the only other ritual in Noel's life is the daily communion with his Advent calendar. I figured this was to show the slow passing of time until I realized he chased the treat each day with a swallow of water, which made me think: is there anything more depressing than the squishy, plastic water bottle with ridges on the side? That's the kind of visceral identification this movie pulls you into. Then I realized he was talking a white pill each time. I don't know what the pills were, but if they were intended to make him sleep, or keep him awake, or make him less depressed, they weren't working.
While Christmas, Again's story is not plot heavy, something important does happen; on his shift one night Noel discovers a woman, Lydia (Hannah Gross), passed out, drunk, on a bench in a nearby park (watch out for that Goldschläger, kids, it'll sneak up on you!) and helps her back to the trailer to sleep. This begins an uneasy series of encounters between the two. For me to elaborate here would be a disservice to the prospective viewer, but I will say that their interactions felt, to me, true, and featured that hopeless impossibility of communication between two people, when you think: why is it so hard? It felt much more like something you would experience in real life, or read in a good short story, than ever see in a romantic comedy, or any movie, really.
When I was much younger I used to think a lot about the idea of angels; not the corny Hallmark card, winged cherub variety that make you want to puke, but the more subtle, haunted version. Both are well represented — over-saturated, really — in popular culture, but the angels just keep coming. I really liked the depiction of angels in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987) and the idea of a kind of practical, mundane reality to that supernatural world. But taking that further, I like the idea that there are some people who seem to be here for a reason. Whether you see them as divine beings or just good people depends, I guess, on your point of view, regarding your level of faith, disbelief or acceptance of all things as possible. Maybe what's most important is what you bring to it, and that goes for art, too, and the way this movie plays out. I suppose some people might find it sad, even depressing and kind of tragic. Others, myself included, will see a kind of beauty in it. And, sure, why not… hope.
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Actor/Screenwriter Randy Russell Talks Jan Ole Gerster's A Coffee in Berlin
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Filmmakers Talk Sundance Recommendations and Their Strangest Experiences at the Festival
Zach Clark (White Reindeer) Talks Holiday Movies and What Makes Them Special


Check out our great room rates at the Acadia Park Inn and then click BOOK NOW below to reserve your room.
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PEOPLE are being encouraged to drink a cuppa to raise money for charity.
Macmillan Cancer Relief is hosting the World's Biggest Coffee Morning on Friday, September 26, and is gaining support from across Mid Cheshire.
The Boar's Head in Middlewich is hosting an all-day 'coffee morning', donating money from every cup sold from 9.30am to 11pm.
The Boar's Head is being supported by Cheshire Coffee Services, which will donate the coffee and provide biscuits - perfect for dunking.
The town's MP, Ann Winterton, is encouraging people to register to join the coffee bash, which is now in its 13th year.
She said: 'So many people are affected by cancer, either personally or through family or friends, and many of us have experience of the wonderful care and support Macmillan Cancer Relief offers, particularly through the Macmillan nurses.
'The World's Biggest Coffee Morning is such a simple and enjoyable way to help raise money for the Macmillan charity.
* To register your event, call Macmillan Cancer Relief's hotline on 0845 602 1246. A pack full of handy hints and tips to make sure your coffee morning is a success will be sent to you.
* Don't forget, Liz Graham and Pat McGuinness are inviting regulars of the pub to celebrate their engagement on Saturday from 8pm in the Boar's Head. Everyone is welcome.


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If the climate is changing, so must we6 days, 17 hours ago
Opinion: If the climate is changing, so must we
Tom Marland 14 Jan 2020, 11 a.m.
The difference between grazed and managed National Park and unmanaged fuel loads.
The Gauge | Tom Marland says to prevent bushfires you have to understand the landscape and the climate.
Opinion | The Gauge
The image of holidaymakers huddling on the beach at Batemans Bay in the "agent orange" like hue of this year's raging bushfires, will be seared forever into the Australian psyche.
The million-odd hectares of overgrown and highly flammable eucalypt forest that was incinerated - along with anything that lived in it - only gets a second thought.
The blame for these fires has been split into two camps - one blames climate change and the other the lack of fuel reduction burns.
The reality is both are right, and both are wrong.
Australia contributes 1.3 per cent of global emissions (worst case 4 per cent if we add in the coal we export).
Even if we switched off all the lights 20 years ago - they wouldn't have prevented these fires.
I am not saying we shouldn't be doing more about climate change, but it won't alone do much to prevent the next disaster.
However, even if we could and did undertake hazard reduction burns across the entirety of the eastern seaboard over the last five years - it wouldn't have prevented these fires either.
Open grassland grazed and managed arrested a forest fire without any human suppression in 2018.
To understand and prevent bushfires, you have to understand the landscape and the climate.
Our landscape is one evolved over thousands of years of climate variations.
While fire has played a part of our landscape, climate and land use change has played a far larger role.
Over the last 200 years of European settlement, the Australian landscape has been significantly modified.
The introduction of domesticated livestock, the fragmentation of grasslands by farming, the introduction of highly flammable noxious weeds and non-native grass species and the spread of urbanisation have irreversibly changed the Australian landscape.
This has also led to the modification of the landscape's fire ecology.
Simply reintroducing fire, alone, to the environment now will do little to arrest future bushfires with a changing climate in a highly modified landscape.
Various eucalypt forests that exist along the entirety of the eastern seaboard today are bred to both generate and propagate from fire.
The more frequent and more intense the fire, the higher the propagation.
The higher the propagation, the higher the frequency and intensity of future bushfires.
Cool burnt forest country pictured in 2018.
The old bush saying goes that "a hot fire kills one wattle bush but 1000 come to its funeral."
Over the past 200 years, dry eucalypt forests have been intensively burned through bushfire and then had fire excluded, which has allowed the vegetation to unnaturally thicken.
This unnaturally increased fuel loads and allows fires to burn further, faster and hotter, which then leads to fire intolerant ecosystems like rainforests and wet sclerophyll forests being impacted.
There is no doubt that drought, heat and wind have exacerbated these fires, but the enormous fuel loads held in our native forests has never been larger than they have been in these fires.
The issue is that the focus of conservation policies, particularly over the last 30 years, has been to restrict activities in vast areas of native forests in the form of national parks and state forest reserves in an attempt to restore the "natural balance".
The concept has been that by excluding human induced activities like cattle grazing, forestry, beekeeping, horse riding, four-wheel driving, hunting and camping - that our native forest estates will magically return to the garden of Eden.
The problem is that you can't simply demarcate one area of the landscape and expect it to function in isolation to surrounding land uses.
Noxious weeds and feral animals don't know the boundary of national parks and neither do bushfires, floods and droughts.
With the added complexity of a warmer, drier climate we need to reconsider our entire land management approach from production systems right through to our conservation systems.
We also have to reconsider the way we look at and treat highly flammable eucalypt species and eucalypt forests.
We need to appreciate and accept that over the last 200 years of European settlement we have changed the landscape that has made it more susceptible to large scale bushfires.
But we also need to appreciate that throwing our hands in the air, walking away from the problem and locking up vast areas of highly flammable and highly modified forests, with no human inputs is not the answer.
The end result is what we see in this year's bushfires.
Hot burnt forest country pictured in 2018.
These areas have been "locked up" by governments that have been more focused on trying to reach some magical internationally demarcated quota, than what's actually good for the landscape and forests.
We are continually hearing that fuel reduction burns are no longer feasible due to climate change shortening the cool burn periods over winter.
The window to undertake cool burns between the end of winter, the first rains in spring and the start of summer, is always narrow and across a large landscape almost impossible to implement to the levels we need to prevent future fires.
What we need to look are other, low-risk fuel reduction strategies such as low intensity and controlled stock grazing, appropriate fire break widths and networks, selective silviculture activities and direct vegetation thinning to create low fuel "green buffers" around critical infrastructure and communities.
Tom Marland is an agribusiness lawyer based in Bundaberg, Queensland. He is also the author of the blog, Food for Thought, Thought for Food.
These are all practical, common sense and economically feasible bushfire mitigation measures that are not as risky as fire.
It is estimated that these bushfires have emitted nearly 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide - nearly half of Australians total accounted for carbon emissions.
But these emissions don't count to our Kyoto and Paris Targets.
If we really want to do something about climate change, whether we get points for it or not, we need to implement sensible, practical and achievable landscape and forest management policies and processes.
Surely that is something we can all agree on.
The story If the climate is changing, so must we first appeared on Farm Online.


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California Free Press
Off the Top of My Head
Are Americans Amusing Themselves to Death?
by John Lawrence, July 16, 2019
I was waiting for Joe Biden to formalize an agenda, but so far his only agenda is that he is the likeliest candidate to beat Trump. That's not good enough. The next President and vice President need to set a bold agenda. The media likes to label that :progressive." So be it. Perhaps the next President can save the Iran nuclear deal and rejoin the Paris climate change accords. But he or she must do much more. While Trump and the media will try to sidetrack the issues and get everybody concerned with his outrageous tweets, Bernie and Elizabeth will concentrate on informing the American people about the real issues: infrastructure, climate change, universal health care, the growing dichotomy between rich and poor and what to do about it.
Trump and the media want you to take your eye off the ball; they want to distract and confuse. They want the issues to be all about superficial nonsense. Even Chuck Todd on Meet the Press tried last Sunday to distract Bernie, but Bernie always comes back to the real issue no matter what the question asked. The American people have to get used to the fact that a Presidential election should not be a circus. It should not be entertainment, but, of course, the American people have gotten used to the fact that practically everything in American life is about entertainment.
The book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business hits the nail right on the head. In comparing Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four ", Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Huxley's book, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state control. I would have to agree with him. Postman observed that people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment. The opioid crisis can certainly be seen in that light.
Drugs and entertainment are the hallmark of American society. Reckless lifestyles instead of touch football are pursued with vigor as John Kennedy would say. It's Devil May Care in terms of climate change or any concern for future generations. Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll are the order of the day. A few people are concerned about bettering their own and other peoples' lives, but not very many. Trump is a manifestation of that. Ronald Reagan ushered in the "Me First" age, and Trump has solidified it.
This is from Wikipedia:
Postman asserts the presentation of television news is a form of entertainment programming; arguing that the inclusion of theme music, the interruption of commercials, and "talking hairdos" bear witness that televised news cannot readily be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on visual images to "sell" lifestyles. He argues that, owing to this change in public discourse, politics has ceased to be about a candidate's ideas and solutions, but whether he comes across favorably on television. Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which implies a complete absence of connection between the separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects. Larry Gonick used this phrase to conclude his Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication, instead of the traditional "the end"
In the age of social media, rather than the medium being the message, the newsmaker is the message. We're endlessly distracted by the likes of Jeffrey Epstein and his escapades. Who cares? I guess a lot of people would rather be titillated by a scumbag like Epstein than to contemplate the real issues that Bernie and Elizabeth are talking about. The real issues that all the progressive Democrats are concerned with. The American people, large segments of them, just don't care. They want to get on with their selfish pursuits just like Ronald Reagan and George W Bush told them to do. They are amused by the antics of a clown as President of the US where his every word, no matter how ridiculous, is reported on and televised. America is more concerned with rubbish and entertainment than it is with the real issues facing the country and the world today.
Posted at 08:16 AM in Bernie Sanders, John Lawrence, American Culture, Drugs, Elizabeth Warren, Entertainment, Fake News, Off the Top of my Head | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Gamers Killing Innocent People
by John Lawrence, August 31, 2018
Two recent incidents involving gamers: 1) Wrong way driver in San Diego takes out mother and daughter on freeway. 2) Shooter in Florida at gaming event. The question might be asked: is gaming really an unhealthy obsession? The San Diego Union reported:
"The 18-year-old who sped the wrong way down state Route 805 Thursday, crashing into a SUV and killing himself, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, was a YouTube star who had made a small fortune in video gaming gambling, according to authorities and hundreds of gaming fans on Twitter.
"The California Highway Patrol identified him Friday as Trevor Heitmann of San Diego."
So this young dude had plenty of money he made off of gambling on YouTube and a $250,000 hand made car. Evidently, he knew what he was doing as there were other bizarre incidents involving him that day. Was he on drugs? Whatever his personal circumstances, he had no consideration for the two beautiful, innocent people that he erased from the earth. If he was rich from his ill gotten YouTube gains, his entire estate should go to the family that he destroyed as compensation for this insidious act.
Two people were also killed at a Jacksonville, FL gaming tournament when a fellow gamer gunman opened fire. The occasion was a tournament for competitive players of the football video game, Madden. The winners would go on to a higher level tournament in Las Vegas in October, where large cash prizes could be won. So why is so much money connected with gaming. Most of these guys are young kids, and yet they can make millions of dollars gambling? Is this a healthy lifestyle?
The shooter was David Katz, a 24 year old. According to CNN, Katz went by the gaming name, "Bread", and previously won Madden tournaments in 2017. In February 2017, the Buffalo Bills tweeted out a picture of him after he won the Madden 17 Bills Championship. "Congrats to David Katz, the Madden 17 Bills Championship winner! Thanks for following along, Bills fans," the tweet read. In an interview after the win with former Buffalos Bills player Steve Tasker, Katz talked about his prowess. "I think personally I'm one of the better players," he said.
Heitmann, described on Twitter as "McSkillet", regularly posted YouTube videos about his websites, CSGOMagic and skin.game, devoted to the Counter-Strike video game and gambling. He posted a video in December of the black McLaren 650S he had bought some months earlier. Without appearing on camera himself, he shows close-ups of the car interior, back end and full view with open wing-like doors. He describes the car as "pretty damn insane" and said he could afford it because he had "made a ton" of money online, with nearly 900,000 subscribers. Reportedly, the McLaren can reach a speed of 200 mph.
Some friends of Heitmann tweeted that McSkillet had lost his income when the Counter-Strike game developer, Valve, "banned his life's work" in selling slick decals, or "skins" for virtual gaming guns and other toys. Kevin Hitt, editor in chief of VPesport.com online gaming news outlet, said Valve, under constraints from the state of Washington gambling commission, confiscated about $200,000 worth of McSkillet's skins and shut down his ability to acquire more. Hitt said McSkillet, and others in the gaming gambling world, would take bets on the potential value of skins, and third-party sites would use software to assign a dollar value to different styles of skins, based on their relative rarity. Other sites would make the payouts to betters, taking a commission.
This is all pretty hard to believe. This guy bought and sold skins for some virtual game and then took bets on how much the skins were worth based on their rarity or how much somebody was willing to pay for them? It boggles the mind that there could be so much money involved in something that has no, I repeat no, redeeming social value. These games are allowing young people to get involved in gambling. They are encouraging gambling with all the seamy Las Vegas culture that goes along with it.
No wonder that innocent people are getting killed. The whole gaming world is looney tunes. And the Pizarro family should get young Heitmann's estate.
Posted at 08:11 AM in John Lawrence, San Diego Union-Tribune, American Culture, Entertainment, Looney Tunes, Off the Top of my Head | Permalink | Comments (0)
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
The noose is tightening around Trump's neck. With Michael Cohen singing like a canary, Paul Manifort singing like a canary and Omarosa singing like a tweety bird, how much longer can Trump withstand the pressure to resign provided he's given a no-jail-time deal on the way out. He's in clear violation of all sorts of laws, but paying off Stormy Daniels to influence the election may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. However, there are numerous other straws as well. This guy operates using the same rules as a mobster. He uses money and power to skirt the law. Pay off this one. Sue that one. It reminds me of my attorney, Bernie. If Bernie says sue, we sue. If Bernie says sign, we sign. Bernie's got Dodger season boxes and an office full of foxes.
Oh, but you can't impeach Trump because the market would crash. That's his latest pronouncement. Better to have a mobster as President than to crash the market. We want to keep the US financial machine running smoothly.
The BBC reported:
"I don't know how you can impeach somebody who's done a great job," Mr Trump told Fox and Friends.
"I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor."
Pointing to his head, he said: "Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe in reverse."
Cohen says he handled hush money payments to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The two women, thought to be porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both claimed they had affairs with Mr Trump.
Under oath, Cohen said he had paid the money "at the direction" of Mr Trump, "for the principal purpose of influencing the election"
However, Mr Trump insisted the two payments had not broken election campaign rules.
He said that the payments had come from him personally, not from the campaign, but he had not known about them until "later on".
In July, Cohen released audio tapes of him and Mr Trump allegedly discussing one of the payments before the election.
The president also accused Cohen of making up stories to receive a lighter sentence.
He added: "And by the way, he pled to two counts that aren't a crime, which nobody understands.
"In fact, I watched a number of [TV] shows. Sometimes you get some pretty good information by watching shows. Those two counts aren't even a crime. They weren't campaign finance."
Oh, what tangled webs we weave! Trump's highest virtue or ...ahem vice?, is lying with a straight face. Oh, he can make up stories and his base believes them. It's great entertainment. He's no sober faced politician dealing seriously with the issues. He represents the depths to which the US has sunk in being an entertainment culture. We want a mobster to entertain us as President. Who cares if he's paid off porn stars? Look at the shows Americans watch. Look at the publications Americans read. It's the National Enquirization of the US. While the rest of the world is trying to act responsibly and live for some noble cause, even if many of them are misguided, Americans just want to have fun. Americans just want to be entertained. No other serious candidate can touch Trump in that regard. He'll be reelected by an even wider margin. And he'll promise another two bit tax cut for the hoi polloi, a megamillion for the upper class like him.
Posted at 07:55 AM in John Lawrence, American Culture, Entertainment, Off the Top of my Head, Trump | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Merging of War and Entertainment
by John Lawrence, February 15, 2018
They get kids started early with video games that are all about war. Then they wonder why young men take an AR-15 and mow down students at a school. How did this guy who killed 17 yesterday get into a school with a loaded assault rifle and several extra magazines? By this time don't most schools have security? This is ridiculous. If it takes kids having to go through security every time they go to school to prevent slaughter, then that's what it takes. Metal detectors?
Video games are all about violence, about killing. I wish my grandson was not so involved in them. But he's so good at it! Then when it comes to movies, popular entertainment, American movies in particular, they are all about gun violence. That's probably why some of the more civilized countries in the world have written off the US as a country led by a fool who spends all its money on militarism and has no money for infrastructure. Many other countries are far more advanced where infrastructure is concerned.
The New York Times reported:
Some believe that, in any case, the verdict is already in. This month, the American Psychological Association called for a reduction of violence in all video games, saying the evidence from 20 years of research on the subject was clear. They based their conclusion largely on the work of Kevin M. Kieffer, a psychologist at St. Leo University near Tampa, Fla., who prepared an analysis of dozens of relevant studies.
He found that, in general, children exposed to virtual bloodshed showed greater "short-term" increases in hostility toward peers and authority figures than those exposed to more benign games. And many of the studies included in the analysis were randomized, rebutting the notion that aggressive people are simply drawn to violent games, Dr. Kieffer found.
Terrorism, both domestic and inspired from abroad, is like the chickens coming home to roost. The US makes and exports weapons and weaponry while condoning entertainment of a violent nature. This is what our kids are immersed in. They will grow up to fill the ranks of warriordom when they're old enough.
Posted at 07:22 AM in John Lawrence, Entertainment, Off the Top of my Head | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Deplorable Descent of American Mass Culture into Violence and Depravity
by John Lawrence
The Las Vegas shooter evidently got bored with video poker in don't-give-a-damn sin city so he devised a plan to rev up the excitement in his otherwise boring life. With no checks on how large an arsenal any US citizen can amass, one of his hobbies was to patronize gun stores and spend huge amounts on weaponry. No doubt he wanted to end his nondescript life by going down in the record books with the likes of Bonny and Clyde, Al Capone and John Dillinger.
American culture is all about crime and criminality. It is glamorized and celebrated on TV, in the movies and in novels. "Violence", H Rap Brown said, "is as American as cherry pie." Toxic masculinity identifies manliness with violence. The national pastime, football, consists of huge muscular men, mostly black, violently crashing into each other in an attempt to "win." Being a caring, empathetic person has nothing to do with it in American culture. "Winning isn't the main thing; it's the only thing," according to football coach Vince Lombardi. Winning is getting your name in the history books. Men with no consideration for anyone other than themselves don't mind killing a record number of people in one event in order to do so.
Sin city is a place with no remorse, a town without pity, an empty shell of non-caring, a devil may care, what the hell kind of place. Money talks and shit walks. Of course, that's truer than ever in any large American city until the ever increasing number of "losers," the homeless, start coming down with hep A, something that could endanger the thrill-a-minute tourist industry. Then the caring begins. Once the poor and homeless are a threat to someone's profits, something will be done, not because we care about such people, but because their disease could spread to the general public.
The business of America is tourism and entertainment. A thrill a minute. Once life in Vegas is not thrilling any more, people devise more ways to get thrilled like participating unvicariously in what up till then had been vicarious entertainment which consisted mostly in killing people. If it's touted so much in TV, novels and movies, there must be something to it.
Stephen Paddock perhaps killed out of boredom when he expected a thrill a minute, the empty promise of sin city. He took sinning to a whole new level.
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Created for two proponents of modern architecture and horse enthusiasts, this modern interpretation of a ranch home sits on a large East Sarasota County parcel of land. It was designed by renowned architect Carl Abbott of the Sarasota School of Architecture, who studied under Paul Rudolph at the Yale School of Architecture.
Surrounded by an ample pasture and an ancient canopy of Oaks and Sable Palms, the residence was built within inches of existing trees left on the site for shade and a feeling of indoor/outdoor living. A pitched, cantilevered, overhanging roof on different planes appears to reach up and out to the sun, and oversized glass sliders (both emblematic of the Sarasota School of Architecture) provide unrestrained visual and physical access to the landscape.
The ranch is a classic dogtrot—or breezeway—style, the entrance flanked by a screened porch and guest bedroom wing on the left with the main living quarters on the right. A car park with flat, narrow roof juts to the center of the dogtrot, resulting in a wind tunnel effect for efficient cooling. Interestingly, the simplicity of this design precipitated the complexity of the construction—a challenge MGB successfully met.


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Home Black Women 'Children of Blood and Bone' will snatch your edges
'Children of Blood and Bone' will snatch your edges
Kyndal Wilson
Sometimes, it's hard to review a book. You sit down to write a review, and (if you love it) you ask yourself, "what parts of the book am I going to talk about?" When it comes to Children of Blood and Bone (written by Tomi Adeyemi), I can go on and on about how beautiful the writing is, how awesome the pacing is, how wonderfully constructed the world is, but honestly, that's not what matters to me in this review.
Yes, Children of Blood and Bone has all of those things. The writing, the pacing, the setting, the character development, and etc…are all on point! And everyone and their mama will type with multiple exclamation marks and in all caps about how they couldn't breathe after reading it and they were floored and they were blown away and they wanted to throw themselves out of a window because they couldn't believe the masterpiece they just read and why do they even deserve to be alive anymore because their life is now complete.
Is the book that great? It most definitely is. No question about it.
But what I really want to talk about is the nitty gritty about why this book will snatch your edges. Because on the eve of Marvel's Black Panther (I'm actually typing this review as I'm listening to the Black Panther album) on a beautiful day in Black History Month (raises fist), the timing of this book and this review couldn't be more perfect.
Let me break it down for you…
Here's the story.
Back in July of last year, I interviewed Tomi Adeyemi at San Diego Comic Con, and we talked a great deal about her inspiration for Children of Blood and Bone, and what it means to her. Knowing the inspiration for this novel made the story that much better, and I'd encourage you to check the interview out. While there are plenty of reviews via Goodreads that will give you a breakdown of the plot of the novel, I'll just cover the basics here.
CB&B (which is how I will refer to the book from now on to save my fingers) is set the world of Orïsha, where magic used to be celebrated. Now, the current king has ensured that no one who practices magic can live to see another day, and he uses all of his power to inflict violence and fear into those who oppose him. The Divîners (the ones who are gifted with magic) are oppressed, but Zélie, a young and powerful Divîner, has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy.
Also striking against the monarchy is the king's daughter, Amari. After witnessing her closest friend (a Divîner) being murdered by her father, Amari steals an ancient artifact that can bring magic back and sets herself on a journey to defy her father and do what's right. However, there's one big problem, once the king realizes his daughter has betrayed him, he enlists his son, the Crown Prince, to hunt her down and bring her back. Whose side will the Crown Prince take?
You'll have to read to find out.
Features of CB&B
Lush, African-inspired settings
A pretty hot Crown Prince
Lots of magic
Complicated sibling relationships
A rebel princess
A little love
A lot of violence (gets a little gory at times)
West-African inspired mythology
Snow leoponaires (use your imagination on this one)
Jollof rice
A dark-skinned main character who is magical and smart and a tough fighter
An ending that leaves you wanting more
Questions that need answers (but we really already know the answers)
How many fantasy novels have you read set in a fictional African nation?
How many fantasy novels have you read where every single character in the novel is Black? Every. Single. One.
How many times have you read a fantasy novel and wondered either a) why aren't there any people of color in here; or b) why are the people of color reduced to side characters whose only purpose is to help save the white protagonist? Insert Magical Negro trope here. Won't have that problem with this book!
Are you tired of reading stories featuring main characters from marginalized communities but those stories aren't written by people from said marginalized communities?
Are you tired of seeing the entire continent of Africa reflected in media as being a vast wasteland riddled with nothing but violence and poverty?
Are you tired of people being shocked or upset when they find out the characters they're reading about aren't white?
Are you tired of reading?
Are you tired?
Alas, CB&B is the answer to all of your fantasy novel woes. You will not be let down.
While CB&B is a book for all people to enjoy, no matter their background, let me tell you BGN readers, it is the embodiment of true representation. When we say representation matters, this is what we're talking about. So many people misunderstand that word and think that all they need to do is throw some people who identify as different from them on a page and BOOM! Congratulations! You've met your diversity/inclusion quota! I've got representation!
Those of us who know better know that authenticity is really at the heart of representation. Yes, people want to see themselves on the screen and on the page, but we want to see ourselves reflected in a way that is authentic. And we know immediately when it's not that.
We all know diversity and inclusion in publishing is aboard the struggle bus, but if you're looking to quench your thirst for an inclusive fantasy with Black gods and goddesses and Black kings and queens and Black girl magic and page turning plots and I'm-so-sleepy-but-I-can't-put-this-book-down scenes, then do yourself (and the world of children's publishing) a favor and buy the book!
It goes without saying that you should read it too.
You'll have to wait until March 6th, but you can always preorder to ensure that you get the gold. In fact, I got the book for free, and I'm going to buy it just to show support.
So, here's what you need to do:
Go see Black Panther
Read Children of Blood and Bone
Go see A Wrinkle in Time
The #BlackGirlMagic and all around #BlackPeopleMagic is strong and sprinkling all over the place, and you don't want to miss out on any of the sparkle.
Now, to join the rest of my book reviewing brethren: PREPARE TO GET THY EDGES SNATCHED!!! YASSSSSS!!! *falls to the floor*
I received an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Children of Blood and Bone. Tomi Adeyemi. Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. 2018.
African fantasy
Black Girl Magic
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Kyndal is a free spirit who is convinced she lived in Paris during the 1920's in a past life. Tea Snob. Gastronome. Wordsmith. Proud Ravenclaw. Sucker for a period drama. History, Fantasy, & Book Blerd. Professional Daydreamer. Cursed with Wanderlust. Obsessed with Hamilton (the musical). Always on the advent of her next adventure. You can follow her on Twitter: @ladykyndal and/or Instagram: @ladykyndal
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Several missions are available in this build, but most of them are not completely playable due to missing files.


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Bruce A. Wakefield papers, 1943-1988.
Bruce Alson Wakefield was born in St Johnsbury, Vt. on July 15, 1924 and enlisted in the Army on February 17, 1943 at Rutland, Vt. At the time of his enlistment he was unmarried, had completed three years of high school. Wakefield joined the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, Colo. where he was assigned to Company E of the 86th Infantry Regiment. He also served at Camp Swift, Tex. and Italy. Wakefield attained the rank of Sergeant and ended his service with Company K of the 85th Infantry Regiment. He died on September 26, 1973 in Lyndon, Caledonia, Vt.


"99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn't coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you've thought of.
The devil doesn't need an advocate. The brave need supporters, not critics."
When one of the most influential minds in marketing/business highlights the importance of execution—it's not a bad idea to chew on it for a spell.


Monday: 2.19 miles. Another uphill walk on the treadmill.
Tuesday: 5.92 miles. I was planning to do a bit longer, but my attempt to break in some new shoes was not going well.
Wednesday: 6.10 miles. Standard neighborhood recovery run loop.
Monday: 3.67 miles. Crappy weather meant another uphill power-walk on the treadmill. Almost 1k vert.
Tuesday: 10 miles. 10x800M @ 5% incline.
Wednesday: 6.11 miles. Standard neighborhood loop for recovery run.
Monday: 2.16 miles. Just cranked out some uphill on the treadmill.
Tuesday: 8.14 miles. There was still some crappy winter weather, so I ran an 8x800M @ 6% incline on the treadmill.
Wednesday: 6.12 miles. Easy recovery run around my standard neighborhood loop.
Tuesday: I again decided to rest. We had guests coming into town for New Year's Eve and I decided that cleaning the house, cooking and drinking beer was a more enjoyable way to spend my NYE.
December was a great month for me in terms of mileage, elevation gain and time on my feet, so I wasn't super concerned about a few days of rest to enjoy time with friends. My knee had been causing me intermittent pain the past few weeks so I had no reservations about a few days of rest.


text:
Fred MacMurray Biography (1908-1991)
Full name, Frederick Martin MacMurray; born August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, IL;died of pneumonia, November 5, 1991, in Santa Monica, CA. Actor.
MacMurray is best known for his portrayal of the warmhearted father on MyThree Sons--one of television's longest-running series--but that rolecame late in his busy acting career. The versatile actor, who was comfortable with both comedy and drama, appeared in over fifty films beginning with the1934 Friends of Mr. Sweeney. He won widespread critical recognition with the 1944 classic Double Indemnity, and also appeared in The Caine Mutiny, Miracle of the Bells, and The Apartment. MacMurray displayed his comedic skills in such Walt Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber and The Shaggy Dog.
Kankakee, Illinois, United States
Death Details
Santa Monica, California, United States
The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 3: Actors and Actresses, St. James Press, 1986, pp. 397-98.
Who's Who in America, 46th edition, Marquis, 1990, p. 2078.
Detroit Free Press, November 6, 1991, p. 4B.
Variety, November 11, 1991, p. 68.


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DocsWithDisabilities Podcast Ep 9: Bonnie Swenor
Bonnie Swenor, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins and of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Bonnielin Swenor's research aims to improve the health of persons with disabilities, by transforming traditional thinking on health disparities research. Over the past decade, there has been an increased focus on identifying and addressing health disparities among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic minority groups; however, persons with disabilities have largely been absent from these efforts. Motivated by her personal experience with a vision impairment and resulting disability, Dr. Swenor is working to address this gap. Her work has focused on three interrelated areas: (1) determining the impact of visual impairments on long-term health and aging outcomes, (2) documenting healthcare disparities and improving healthcare utilization, quality, and access for those with vision loss; and (3) enhancing the inclusion of persons with visual impairments and other disabilities in the biomedical workforce. This research has sparked a reframing of importance of visual impairment on overall health, helped to reclassify visual impairment as a health disparity, and highlighted the need to include people with disabilities in science and medicine –which is critical to driving scientific innovation and improving patient care. Seeing the impact and broad applicability of this work, Dr. Swenor is now expanding her research framework, using an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, to establish the evidence needed to design effective policies and programs that will reduce health disparities for persons with all types of disabilities.
Episode 9, Transcript
DocsWithDisabilities Podcast #9
Dr. Bonnie Swenor
Lisa Meeks:
Hi and welcome back to the docs with disabilities podcast. I'm Lisa Meeks, your host, and I have the privilege of being in Baltimore, Maryland at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. And my guest today is Dr Bonnie Swenor. Why don't you introduce yourself?
Bonnie Swenor:
Thank you so much. I am an associate professor and my work focuses on understanding how vision impairment affects individuals lives. And I'm interested in determining how we can maximize health and wellbeing in people with vision loss and eye disease as well as reducing health and healthcare disparities in people with vision loss. And most recently I'm interested in enhancing the inclusion of persons with disability in science and medicine.
I have the wonderful benefit of knowing you personally and you are a rock star. I love our work together. Why don't you tell the audience about why this became a topic of interest?
I was diagnosed with my, a degenerative eye disease when I was 26. It started with a hemorrhage in my retina, so hemorrhage in the back of my right eye and then I had subsequent multiple hemorrhages pretty frequently for a period of 18 months. I still have them. It's a degenerative disease. But for that first 18 months there was a pretty rapid loss of vision. And at that time in my life, I had just gotten married about seven months before and I had just mailed out applications to graduate school just a few weeks before that first hemorrhage.
So this was a really tough impact, I would say. When you transition to a person with a disability, it absolutely changes your role in society. And I was worried about the impact that would have. I was worried about my future. Again, I had just applied to graduate school, and it took me a long time to get to that point in my life. I had worked really hard, and I thought it was all over right. And after, not too long after that diagnosis, I was on disability leave from my job at the point because no one had talked to me about resources like vision rehabilitation.
As an individual who is visually impaired. My research questions almost always stem from my personal experience with vision loss and with disability. From that experience I obviously identify challenges in life and in accessing health care and navigating environments and integrating in society and being a scientist. From those experiences, I've been able to identify challenges and ways that perhaps we can make things better.
As someone who has a disability, who's visually impaired and navigates the healthcare environment, both as a researcher and as a patient, I have seen the challenges that occur. And some of those challenges aren't always what you expect. From my viewpoint, those challenges are largely focused around the fact that we don't often look at the person as a whole person and we don't always meet them where they are. And I think when you have a disability, that fact is only highlighted. For example, when I go to a doctor's appointment and they hand me an after visit summary in normal size font, that's not accessible to me. I can't get that information very easily at least. I have resources to figure it out. But that's a challenge for me. When I started to lose my vision, when I was first diagnosed, I very much struggled with depression.
And that was really a critical part of my process of the disease from my viewpoint. But that wasn't addressed or considered. I think we need to do a better job at integrating care and taking a more holistic approach so that we have better health outcomes for individuals. And when we're talking about disability, we need to consider that. And I think we can do a better job at meeting the needs of patients.
It sounds like when you were at an ophthalmology office or a center for vision care as a patient and as you exit the building, you are handed a survey in regular font. No means of reviewing it from an accessibility perspective cause it's not electronic and not that delivery in electronic form would indicate that it's accessible either. But I think the message that you can receive, and correct me if I'm wrong, is we don't really care about your feedback. We haven't really thought about this. We're going to treat as much as we can of the disease. But beyond the scope of that, we're not considering the impact of what we do on patients.
Right. To give an example of where the approach of taking holistic care falls short is when, for example, a patient is transitioning from inpatient to home care, right to the home. And there has been a lot of effort and focus on aging in place and home health care models. But are we considering sensory impairments that maybe preexisted whatever puts someone in the hospital, right? And so if someone was inpatient and they're transitioning to home care and we're putting resources into making sure that transition goes well, but we're not considering the fact that they have a hearing impairment or a vision impairment, which is affecting the way they're getting information about how they're supposed to care for a wound or take medication or manage those medications, we're not really doing everything we can. We're not setting them up for success. And until we can take a more integrative approach, we're in essence wasting resources.
You expressed how you went through a depressive episode when you were first diagnosed and as your vision was declining, and that that really wasn't addressed as part of your care. Now you're a researcher at Hopkins, so we're going to presume that you have good access to healthcare and you are right there. So, getting to the physician was probably easier for you than it might be for the average patient. But I'm thinking about some of the patients that are impacted by these social determinants of health, right? That they have barriers to transportation and that if they're trying to maintain employment, taking any time out for a physician's appointment risks losing their job, which is the only thing at this point, you know, potentially keeping the household going. It could be it a single income family. And I'm wondering as an outsider thinking about it, I wonder if there aren't multiple missed opportunities for kind of wrap around care of a population if we are so focused on a system or an organ or something specific at the detriment of looking at an individual's mental health care. And I know that that's a really big thought to wrap your head around, but it's, I think it's true for every profession.
I just have to wonder in a population that is being diagnosed with degenerative eye diseases that we'll eventually in being blind, we know that that's going to cause some form of a mental health concern, whether it be anxiety or depression or a combination of the two. I'm wondering, you know, what it would look like to have integrated services in ophthalmology.
This is something that recently we've been discussing a lot. The integration of mental health, ophthalmology and honestly integration of mental health in any specialty is complicated. The rates of depression and anxiety are very high in patients with vision impairment. And I think lots of people can understand why that is, but it's not often integrated for sure. And it's complicated the reasons why.
I think the current medical system doesn't always allow for enough time to address mental health concerns. Ophthalmology doesn't always provide enough resources to address those concerns within the setting. But for patients from their perspective, this mental health component, the emotional component of losing your vision is very real and impacts the individual immensely. And again, if we're not integrating care or thinking about the whole person, we're not fully addressing the full impact of the vision impairment. And how do we do that? And to the point of social determinants of health and health disparities, how do we identify who's at risk for depression, for anxiety, and who has the ability to access appropriate resources? And that's a really tough question because I don't think you can tell just by looking at somebody. When I was first diagnosed, I presented at the retinal specialist. And I had gone through a pretty rapid decline in my vision when I was first diagnosed. I went to every visit with my husband who was very supportive and very concerned. And, at one of the visits my retina specialists said, "Bonnie, you look really depressed." And I was, and I said, "Yeah, I am. I'm losing my vision. Of course."
I had a hard time reading, seeing faces. I had stopped driving. My functioning kind of fell off a cliff and I was again, very depressed. So I was struggling and I couldn't see a future quite honestly. I was worried about our financial wellbeing, right? We were, we were two income household, even though we didn't have kids yet, but I was very worried about how we were gonna have finances. And I don't have a strong family social support network outside of my husband. That was nonexistent unfortunately. And it was really just me and my husband working through this, and that was really hard quite honestly. So when my retina specialist asked if I was depressed and almost seemed surprised by my answer, of course I am perhaps from his perspective as a college educated middle class woman showing up with the support of a husband, that maybe surprised him. But from my perspective, how could he be surprised?
And that disconnect I've thought a lot about in the past 15 years, right? I was mad because it really highlighted the fact that he was there really to take care of my retinas as he should have been. And he was good at it to be clear, but not the rest of my life that was quite honestly falling apart. And I didn't know where to go and I didn't know who to talk to about those things. And he wasn't there to help me and I was so sure he was supposed to be the one to help me. And I didn't know who was going to help me.
And was there ever a referral to counseling or when he asked if you were depressed, was there follow-up?
Uh, no, no, there wasn't unfortunately. And even if there was, I'm not actually sure I would have gone at that point, but I should have for sure.
Well, I think that's the other thing that's so impactful that physicians don't think about is that you have someone right in front of you. You have someone in your office in that moment and they're being vulnerable to you. They're telling you, yes, you know, or you're seeing the symptoms and the space between, "Let me refer you to somebody who does this," or, "you should probably go see this person," could be the difference between life and death. Should we not be training physicians to see the whole person and to think about the impact of whatever system they work on, the impact of that on individuals? I could see this being really relevant in something like oncologists, which oncologists have had psychiatrists on consult for years. This has been part of the normative practices to have a psychiatrist on board. But rheumatology, where you're losing functioning. Ophthalmology. Audiology. All of these specialties where there's a good chance that people will be impacted by disability. And should there be some thought to treating the whole person?
I have been public before about the fact that in this period I absolutely considered if my life was worth continuing. It was a very hard time. I definitely needed some intervention at that point. It was hard. And to me, the message now at this point in my life is, it is hard to understand the context of the patient's life and the impact of what is going on with them. And that is what disability is. It is the impact of the disease, of the impairment in context. And without that context, you don't understand the full picture and you're not taking care of the full person.
Understanding the patient's side and bringing that more into clinical practice is the next step. That's the future. That's how we move care forward. We have to do a better job at integrating these perspectives to move the needle. And part of that is including persons with that lived experience in research, in medicine, in clinical care, because those people have that nuance perspective that lives in both worlds. They talk both languages and that's what we need.
It's gonna take a shift in how we view disability, in how we train individuals, in how we take care of people. It's complicated, but we have to start thinking about it.
Recently, you've been doing some work on why more people with disabilities are not going into biomedical sciences and looking at it from a diversity perspective of, you know, if we all agree and we have that diversity adds to our knowledge, it makes a richer environment, it informs healthcare in a meaningful way, then we need to be looking at how we include disability. So where do you want your work to lead? And in five years, what does this look like?
To increase the inclusion of researchers and clinicians with disabilities that we have to address the barriers for sure. And they're varied. My work really has focused on the side of once training has completed, and I think those barriers are different perhaps than when you're in training, being someone that's been in both places with a disability. So when I became a faculty member, some of the barriers were honestly unexpected. I just didn't have a peer, which is a barrier in and of itself, with a disability to connect with. And I think that is a problem, right? It, this unique experience of being a scientist or a clinician with a disability, you need to have someone else to go to for advice and counsel on this process. And having someone else like you either with a disability or with the same disability is critical.
I'm lucky enough that I have found that network at this point in my career, which has been invaluable to me. That's important. Mentorship just in general, surrounding yourself with people who are supportive of you and understand your disability has been critical and has been critical to me. You know, I am very privileged in that I have a vision impairment and I'm in an ophthalmology department. I am not that strange in my department because I represent the patients that walk in Wilmer all day, every day. I recognize, I am very privileged in that perspective as compared to other individuals with disabilities in other departments who maybe their department may or may not understand that disability. So I think the mentorship component is huge. There's other issues about accommodations that can be problematic for individuals trying to make science and clinical careers. And some of that comes from money. And the way that we pay for accommodations, largely academic institutions, is not always ideal. For example, in most institutions the cost of a disability accommodation is filtered down to the hiring unit. And the problem with that is that can create not only a power imbalance between you and your department. But it's also not in line with the way the ADA policy is written, which indicates that consideration for financial hardship should be determined based on the entire institute or entities financial budget, not the hiring unit. So when an accommodation comes from a departmental budget or a hiring unit's budget, it is not exactly in line with how the spirit of the ADA was written. And that can lead to practices, our limitations in the hiring and retention of persons with disability that may not be ideal.
There's other issues that are perhaps more nuanced but are certainly complicated, which is how do you start a career in science and medicine with a disability? There's metrics that we use for promotion and success. Things like getting grant funding, going to conferences, getting invited talks, being viewed as capable and able by your colleagues around the world who may have varied views of disability. That's critical to how we have structured this system. And depending on if your disability is visible or not or what your disability is, there can be real challenges to that that are driven by stigma. And how do you overcome those things? How do you get the extra funds to manage an accommodation at a scientific conference that's not at your institution? Applying for a grant in and of itself may be a challenge for certain individuals.And if that's a marker of career success, you may be at a disadvantage.
There's also certain policies within federal funding like the NIH and NSF, that may not be ideal for persons with disabilities. So for example, the NIH has a supplement that is geared towards supporting researchers with disabilities, but it only supports principal investigators on R mechanisms. And unfortunately it does not include individuals on K awards. So it leaves individuals at early stages of their career who may really need and benefit from that disability supplement at a loss. They are not eligible. So there are barriers to developing and launching and maintaining a career with disabilities that I think we are not talking enough about.
You've recently taken this passion for disability inclusion and started to marry it to some scholarship. And you were talking about some of the barriers that you've identified and now you're doing some analysis on the barriers. You've had a couple of publications on this topic. Can you share that with our audience?
Yes, so you and I, Dr. Meeks and I have recently published a few papers on this topic. One paper in the New England Journal of Medicine publishing about really a roadmap of how you can enhance inclusion of faculty members, researchers and clinicians with disabilities. It became quite obvious through my personal struggle and my investigation of how to build my own career that this was missing. And when I reached out to you, you echoed that. And so we are trying to fill that void. I also recently wrote a piece of my mind article in JAMA sharing my story and some of the struggles I've had. And it took me a long time to write that article quite honestly. And it took a lot of people, you included, to push me to submitting it. And we have a few other projects in the works, digging deeper into the barriers and trying to figure out how we can start to address some of these barriers for faculty members at the faculty level, for scientists and clinicians. Really again focused on how we can enhance inclusion once you get beyond training and the value of that being that individuals who are at the faculty level are really critical to this whole life cycle of the value of disability in science and medicine. Without individuals at the faculty level, we're never going to see the full potential of training individuals with disabilities. We need those faculty members to mentor the trainees with disabilities. So we've got to work on both ends. If we really want to create this integrative holistic approach to taking care of patients with disabilities, then we've got to have clinicians and researchers with disabilities driving that and participating in those efforts.
What do you say to someone who either is in the pipeline or thinking about entering the pipeline that has a visual disability?
Well, the first thing I would say is keep going. We need you please. Reach out to someone who is a scientist or a clinician or someone that you can identify meaningfully who is in the field of your interest or in an area or as a scientist or a clinician in general who has a disability or the type of disability you identify with that is critical. You need to be able to understand that this is possible and to have someone who will help you through some of these challenges. So that's so important. I think the other thing to know is you've gotta be ready for the hard work cause he got to work a little bit harder and that's the reality. You've got to work harder. You will get questioned, you will get challenged.
I think for me, what's been a journey, and I have to remind myself of it constantly but is helpful, is to always understand why my perspective is valuable and understanding that I could have an impact. So my vision impairment is a challenge and is very hard for sure. But it also gives me a perspective that gives an opportunity. And I feel like that's my role and that's my job, is to use that challenging situation to make things better for others. That's why I do this. And I think figuring out what is meaningful to you with your own unique perspective is critical. And quite honestly, that's not specific to disability. That's something we all have to do. But as a person with a disability, I think that's just even more important.
I think it's important, absolutely to find mentors that have a concordant disability and experiences. That's the type of information you can only get from a person who's lived that experience. But I also want to underscore the importance of mentorship and community period. And you know, last night after dinner we came back, we were having this conversation about the first email that was sent. And I thought about it a lot this morning, August 7th, 2018, shifted my life in a beautiful way when you reached out. And the work that we've done since then has been so meaningful. And the work that we will do will be equally meaningful. But when you find your people and they get it.
And they have the same goal...
It's so important.
It's magical.
And I think not just for us, but for people out there in any profession, you know, finding your people just in life, finding your people is super important.
And I want to encourage the listeners to try to find, you know, that sense of community. And one of the mechanisms for doing that that we started a few years ago was the Hashtag #docswithdisabilities. It really is a hashtag about the whole community, whether it's nurses, dentists, ots, pts, PhDs. It's really about bringing a community together that are all involved in medicine. So I encourage the listener to connect with that on Twitter. And then you have a Twitter handle. Do you know what it is?
Okay. I don't know what mine is. It's like, do you? I know, I'm like what's my email?
@BonnieSwenorPhD.
@BonnieSwenorPhD. The new way to get in touch with people is Twitter, so I encourage individuals to reach out and if you don't hear back the first time, try, try again.
Be persistent.
And you know, maintain your passion and I think and your perspective. So the three p's: be persistent, be passionate and maintain perspective because there are going to be good days and bad days. And that's so true for any researcher. But I think especially true when you layer on the potential bias that's inherent in the identity of being a person with a disability.
So I have to get on a big jet plane and go back to Ann Arbor, but thank you so much for your time and it's always great to be in Baltimore with you and your team, who are amazing. You guys are doing great things, and Bonnie, you are going to change the world for the better. And I'm so glad that you're doing this work.
Kate Panzer:
Thank you for joining us for today's episode of DocsWithDisabilities. On our next episode, we chat with Sarah Sternlieb, a resident physician who has found peace and a renewed passion as part of her journey through medicine.
This podcast is a production of the University of Michigan Medical School, Department of Family Medicine, MDisability initiative. The opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Michigan Medical School. It is released under a creative commons, attribution noncommerical, nonderivative license. This podcast was produced by Lisa Meeks and Kate Panzer.
*This podcast was created using excerpts from the actual interview and is representative of the entire conversation. Interviewees are given the transcript prior to airing. Some edits may reflect grammatical and syntax adjustments for transcription purposes only.
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