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News, views and reviews of the Canadian magazine industry
Dressy centenary moves uptown
Maclean's magazine's 100th anniversary gala, postponed until November 15, is also changing venue. It was to be at the Windsor Arms Hotel. Now it is to be at the Toronto Centre for the Arts in its Main Stage Theatre at 5040 Yonge Street (what some will remember as the North York Centre for the Performing Arts). The black tie event (!) is a sit-down dinner and "curtain" at 7 p.m. What the curtain is being raised on (other than the next 100 years) has not been revealed.
posted by D. B. Scott at 2:21 pm 2 Comments
Better than money?
The Department of Canadian Heritage is planning to give more than money to successful applicants for its various support programs for magazines. Under development is a "benchmarking" exercise whereby each applicant will receive tables and graphs that allows comparison with other magazines, other types of magazines. These will be fairly specific analyses of various components of cost and revenue, compared on a per-page or per copy basis. This data may replace some of the "census" information that Statscan has traditionally (but no more) provided to the industry. However, unlike Statscan, these benchmarks will only be of applicants to various programs such as Support for Editorial Content (SEC) or support for small or literary magazines.
In an industry as starved for good, reliable competitive information, this is very good news.
St. Joes' team building
St. Joseph Corporation wasn't fooling when it said it was intent on becoming a major player. To do so, it needs the best management and it looks like it is well on its way to achieving this.
Two pivotal managers have been appointed at St. Joseph Media, both hired away from Rogers Media Publishing. Andrew Crane has been consulting for the past few months with the Style Group at St. Joe's, after leaving Rogers. He now is to be Vice-President Corporate Development. Donna Clark, the President of St. Joseph Media told staff he was going to be working with her on "ambitious expansion plans". One of Clark's trusted colleagues at Rogers was Clarence Poirier, Research Director. Effective October 3 he is now to be Vice-President Research. Poirier worked closely with Clark at the Rogers' Women's Division and was a key player in repositioning Chatelaine and developing the very effective womens' service websites associated with Chatelaine, Flare and Today's Parent.
The race is not always to the swift
A story out of the U.S. today from the Center for Media Reseach shows so-called "blue state" voters were more likely to have high speed internet access got us to thinking. First, the highlights:
Eight states had broadband penetration over 35% - all voted for John Kerry in 2004
Eleven states had broadband penetration at or below 20% - all voted for George Bush in 2004
Cumulative broadband penetration in states that voted for Kerry was 33% - compared to 25% in states that voted for Bush
Have any magazines out there used readership studies to profile the divide between dial-up and high-speed among their subscribers (understanding that sophisticated Canadians are more likely to have high-speed)? What have they learned? And has it made any difference to what they do?
posted by D. B. Scott at 10:28 am 0 Comments
Good news, maybe, we'll see
The implications of today's article in the Globe and Mail about charitable status are far-reaching. The story itself is about the possibility that Revenue Minister John McCallum may loosen or change the regulations to allow foundation status for The Walrus, whose entire financing model hinges on being able to transfer money from one charity to its own (the famous $5 million). That's very good news.
It seems impossible that the policy would only benefit The Walrus, however. Let's assume that "the minister is in the midst of considering" a policy change (to quote the unnamed staffer quoted by the Globe) means what it seems to mean. The ripple effect among dozens of cultural and literary magazines would be immediate. We could see them re-apply for status that had been turned down and becoming able to offer charitable tax receipts for donations that could be channelled directly to the magazine. Previously, the principal function of a foundation had to be anything but publishing, which could only be an adjunct to "public education". (See posts past).
Even more important, it would take the heat off the magazines which already enjoy this status but have to defend it periodically from Canada Revenue zealots who want to take the status away . Once it becomes permissible for magazines to be not-for-profit charities, many more of them of them will be and it will become a commonplace. Here's hoping.
posted by D. B. Scott at 9:54 am 1 Comments
Eponymous, but anonymous
Interesting that the newish blog from the Periodical Writers Association of Canada (see it here) intends to publish a monthly celebration of member achievements. September's is heavy on kudos for publishing books, being on radio and television, winning awards, teaching courses and so on. But there is very little about achievements in actually writing for magazines. Are magazines not giving opportunities for their members to achieve? Or do they consider work they are doing for Canadian magazines not worth mentioning?
Ted's less than excellent adventure
If anyone was wondering what Ted Byfield, founder of the late Alberta Report, has been doing lately, the news is what he's not doing anymore. According to an item in the Western Standard's so-called Shotgun Blog his Christian History Project, to publish a series of books on the history of Christianity, is being wound up. The last straw, apparently (note the Biblical reference) was when someone stole their computer server.
For those who don't know, Western Standard is the inheritor of the mantle of Alberta Report. Same western alienation. Similar right wing opinions. Handsome package. Wacky blogsters (recently one called Naomi Klein "an opportunistic communist" and "a celebrated anarcho syndicalist"). It does have some interesting publishing initiatives (the latest being a luxury cruise with various mossback commentators). The publisher is the notorious Ezra Levant.
Only room for one in this garden
That sound you heard was a shotgun going off. Gardening Life moves under the sole ownership of St. Joseph Media, effective September 30. It ends an 8-year partnership between St. Joseph (and, before that, Toronto Life Publishing Limited) and House & Home Media (publishers of the hugely successful Canadian House & Home).
Gardening Life's unusual partnership came about during a shakeout after a flurry of launches of gardening titles 10 years ago.
St. Joe's will move the now wholly-owned Gardening Life and its staff under the Style Group umbrella, helmed by Vice-President and Group Publisher Giorgina Bigioni. The Style Group publishes Fashion, Fashion 18, Wish and Wedding Bells.
In a joint press release, Tony Gagliano, St. Joseph Media chairman and Lynda Reeves, President of House & Home Media, said nice things. Reeves said: "We are confident that the capable and experienced team at St. Joseph Media will lead Gardening Life into its next great stage of publication, and we wish them well." Gagliano said: "We are thrilled to gain full acquisition of one of the leading specialty consumer magazines in Canada."
To the barricades
The industry rumbles into action about PAP as Magazines Canada and the Circulation Management Association (CMC) hold a joint session on October 19 at 9 a.m. at the Toronto Marriott; there, Michael Fox of Rogers, Magazines Canada's postal guru, will brief the crowd on the sordid details of the major increases and impacts facing magazines effective November 1. The cost of $49.95 doubtless includes coffee and some of those cute croissants.
Timely circ data: who'd a thunk it?
One of the largest auditing firms, BPA Worldwide, has announced its intention to move to release of at least the "top line" circulation of magazines for each issue, rather than in six-monthly reports as has been done since...forever. According to a report in Media Daily News, advertisers and agencies have long complained that data takes so long to be processed that it is next to useless in determining ad buys. If this reporting change happens, it will happen here, too, since we share both major auditing firms and there will be pressure on the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) to follow suit.
The same report said that Time Inc. has been subpoenaed to appear before U.S. federal investigators to explain the always dodgy practice of magazines counting free magazines distributed on airlines and to business travellers as "paid".
Ten Years of Ricepaper
Ricepaper magazine is celebrating 10 years of publishing, an evolution from a hand-stapled newsletter into a slick and authoritative magazine of Asian Canadian culture. Many magazines with similar roots have flagged and failed over the past decade, but Ricepaper has grown to become one of the leading sources of information about established and emerging Asian Canadian artists, publishing such well-known names as Wayson Choy, Joy Kogawa, Kid Koala and Sook-Yin Lee. Plus it has ventured deeper year by year into non-fiction, covering issues of the Asian Canadian experience.
The anniversary will be celebrated at Wild Ginger in Vancouver on Saturday, September 24 (the eve of Word on the Street).
Sometimes we lose track of what's going right in the Canadian magazine industry. Ricepaper is one of those things.
Sneak peek at the Beav
We said earlier that The Beaver (never noted for its covers) was going to have a whole new look effective with its 85th anniversary issue, out October 3. Here's a sneak peek of what new Art Director Michel Groleau has wrought:
So we think we've got problems?
In Britain, newspapers and magazines are distributed together to retailers and newsagents, mostly by three large wholesalers. Some 90% of British magazines are sold by single copies or by "standing order" with the corner newsagent.
Now, because this distribution system in some way is considered to contravene European Union regulations, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in Britain is considering forcing newspapers and magazines to be delivered separately, according to a report in the Guardian. In part, the story says:
At first glance this may seem like no change at all, or at least not an important one, but if the OFT's draft decision is upheld - its final ruling is expected next month - not only could up to 1,200 independent corner newsagents be forced out of business, but magazine publishers warn that up to 1,000 titles could close. For good. Large retailers would carry only the best-selling titles, and the demise of the smaller retailers would hit people in rural areas.
The reasoning behind this apocalyptic scenario is that the costs of maintaining two systems of distribution will be passed on to retailers. As the thinking goes, the large retailers will mitigate the cost by dropping magazines that have a relatively low sell-through. The smaller corner newsagents will see their margins severely pinched or go out of business altogether.
posted by D. B. Scott at 12:09 pm 0 Comments
Credit where it's due
The magazine industry is quick to complain that newspapers either slothfully or wilfully misreport the issues that affect us. So credit should be given where it is due: today's column by Kate Taylor in the Globe and Mail is as succinct and pointed an explanation about the PAP controversay as you could hope for. (Alas, the Globe charges for online access to its columnists. Search out a hard copy. It's on page R3.)
More news from the Rogers campus
The redoubtable and excellent Paul Wells, who has a lease on the back page of Maclean's, has taken to defending the changes at his employer and points out in other conversations that more people were poached from the National Post by the previous incumbent, Anthony Wilson-Smith, than the present incumbent, Ken Whyte. He also confirms that Scott Feschuk is going to write a weekly column, and that Linda Frum will be joining the masthead as a "special interviewer".
The newsstand
I honestly don't know what to say.
See Masthead Online today, lead story (the longest I recall them ever publishing online). [Subscription required]
Let's just throw it open for discussion. What's everyone think about this?
posted by Jon Spencer at 9:35 am 2 Comments
E-surveys cramped: not enough E-addresses
Many trade publishers, at least in the U.S., have e-mail addresses for fewer than half of their readers, according to an article in Media Business. Many have valid e-mail addresses for only 20 or 30 per cent of their records. This can cause some concerns about validity of results in what is now a headlong trend towards online or e-mail reader surveys. The savings that are possible by online surveys are so big that some publishers have given up on postal surveys altogether. The lack of addresses can be mitigated somewhat by sending to a larger sample. But the problem remains that the researchers and publishers can never be sure if the results they are getting is representative of the whole readership.
Media Business is published by B to B Online. If you click here you can download the entire most recent issue for US$15.
Murdoch Davis now wears Beaver hat
Perhaps it was summer, perhaps we were not paying attention, perhaps it was Ontario-centricity, but somehow we missed reporting that one of Canada's oldest magazines, The Beaver, has a new Editor.
Murdoch Davis, dumped in April as Publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, is in the chair for the redesign and relaunch of the venerable Winnipeg-based history magazine. (Its redesign is due to be unveiled with its 85th anniversary issue, due out October 3rd.) His appointment was announced in an early August press release.
If the name is familiar, it may be because Davis was head of Southam News and was a ferocious defender of CanWest Global's decisions to force "national" editorials onto the editorial pages of all of their papers across the country. He was particularly adept, not to say acid, in his letters to the editor on the subject. According to Black Rod, a somewhat reactionary Winnipeg journalists' blog, his sudden departure was unmourned at the Free Press.
The Beaver is the 50,000 circ flagship of Canada's National History Society, which recently launched Kayak, a digest-sized children's history magazine (see earlier item). CNHS is the inheritor of the legacy, archives and endowment of the Hudson's Bay Company, which started the magazine as a house organ. It evolved into a consumer title with an aging but fiercely loyal audience and a near-invisible profile in the business. Deborah Morrison, the President of the Society, also now Publisher, has been attempting to put 10,000 volts through it to liven it up and grow its audience and have some attention paid.
Fact-checking, some other views
Back in June, the blog carried an item about fact-checking. Recently, it made the rounds of a newsgroup of freelancers in Toronto and at least one of them posted a comment (three months late, as he said) that's worth reading because it argues against fact-checking. Click here or on the head above to read the item and the belated comment.
In addition, another correspondent of the newsgroup, a doyenne of fact-checking who has trained many of today's fact checkers, sent a response directly to me with a number of other people's comments on the topic. (Since I don't have permission to name them, these responses are presented anonymously):
Not surprisingly, I'm pleased to hear these comments in support of fact-checking, since I spend a lot of time teaching people how to do it and have published an article that argues for its existence.
As to the question of whether to hyphenate fact-checking, I usually do. But I also never spell copy editing the same way twice when I'm not being paid to get it right -- copyediting, copy-editing, copy editing; dictionaries differ. The shoemaker's kids go barefoot, the doctor's kids die young and the copy editor is inconsistent. Don't tell [my boss].) The Canadian Oxford Dictionary doesn't list fact-checking, but it does hyphenate fact-finding,which would seem to be a grammatically parallel form.
I, too, appreciate the work checkers do on my stories. (A special nod to the great ones I've so often dealt with over the years -- Veronica Cusak, Dawn Promislow, Geri Savits-Fine, Charles Rowland, Cynthia Brouse.) I'm mainly a writer, & I know that especially with longer features writers understandably end up seeing the forest more clearly than individual trees. After you've lived with a story for weeks or months, even careful re-reading may not spot an error that a fresh set of eyes might.(Sometimes the handling editor, although that person is preoccupied with structure & bigger picture issues; sometimes the copy editor, but copy editors aren't scrutinizing every fact.) Every writer knows that tiny pieces inevitably fall through the cracks. The fact checker is the invaluable safety net catching as many of these stray pieces as possible. It's a great tradition in the magazine business & it's depressing to observe it gradually eroding.
Just thought I'd throw in my two cents here, as someone who supplements his freelance income with regular checking jobs.
I'm not a huge checking partisan or anything - though I am glad to have an
hourly wage supplement to my buck a word ( a buck on the good days, that is. But here's the thing: in three years of fact-checking features, I have
*never* run across a feature that didn't have several mistakes in it. They're generally minor mistakes - money amounts that mix US with Canadian dollar figures, misspelled names of minor characters, etc. - but they're real mistakes nonetheless.
The majority of features I see, including those written by top people, have roughly TEN TO FIFTEEN of these types of comparatively minor errors in them. The absolute cleanest feature might have three to five.
Now, you could argue that these types of errors are things that the writers, had they been working in a checking-free zone, wouldn't have let through. But I don't think that's generally true. I think that most of these mistakes are just a product of the writing process, of the tricky nature of capturing reality in words. There's no way a single mind can account for every single little factual detail in a 5,000 word piece - especially at a buck a word or less.
To me, this justifies checking for mags, hands down (I shudder to think of
the howlers that make it into books and papers on a regular basis, given their lack of checking). And frankly, I find the attitude of DB's friend surprising. I know I'm personally thrilled by the fact that my mag work getschecked - it's not insulting, it's a kind of insurance policy for my research, helping me to breathe easier when the piece comes out.
Let me repeat: I have never in my career as a checker met an error-free
feature.
To add my two cents, I've been lucky to secure a part-time internship that
allows me to do a lot of the work from home, including fact-checking some of the larger stories. Having done graduate research before, I'd thought that fact-checking would be a breeze, but this recent exercise has opened my eyes to just how skilled good fact-checkers are. Beyond simply knowing where to go to look up facts, I've found that it also requires a huge amount of tact,patience and (sometimes) humour, as well as skillful sleuthing.
I've just begun checking one of our features and have already found about half of Nick's quota of errors. I've also noticed that there is a lot of variance between authors -- some submit 'clean' copy that is a joy to check; others submit copy that's a little more difficult to decipher and definitely more of a challenge (though I'm not saying I don't like a challenge!).
Thinking about it now, I probably should have taking the fact checking course at Ryerson if I'd known how difficult this would be. In fact, I may end up taking it in any case!
Looks aren't everything
In June 2002, Maclean's underwent a complete and substantial redesign, under the auspices of then-AD Donna Braggins. Now, it is being redesigned again by the new AD Christine Dewairy. And since the new look is wanted for its 100th anniversary, it explains why the huge black-tie party was pushed back to November. Apparently (despite having 100 years lead time) the anniversary issue was in danger of missing its deadline. Wrapped up in the redesign, Dewairy hasn't yet laid a finger on the day-to-day design of the magazine, leaving the whole thing to her somewhat disgruntled second-in-command Gary Hall.
It ain't what you pay but the way that you read it
How much readers pay for a subscription is a less important indicator of value to an advertiser than how engaged they are with the content (edit and advertising). This said during a high-powered panel in New York, reported by Media Daily News. Rebecca McPheters, president of McPheters and Company, said her company's research showed price did not in fact predict the quality of the reader. Much more important was 'proof' of circulation and 'return on investment'.
Tom Robinson, managing director of Affinity Research, noted that although slightly lower than for paid readers, overall readership of editorial features and recall scores for print ads for non-paid readers still remained surprisingly robust in his group's research.
They were speaking in a panel sponsored by the Magazine Publishers of America.
Another county heard from
A relatively new blog has been started by the Periodical Writers Association of Canada. It can be reached here. Of interest was the take of some of the freelancers about the sturm und drang in the industry about the cuts in PAP (see earlier items). One writer says:
I'm sympathetic with those who ask: why should writers support publishers in their quest for subsidies, when they never bother to let any of that money trickle down to us?
Tut tut
Lewis Lazare, a columnist at The Chicago Sun-Times described the New Yorker decision last month to publish an entire issue sponsored by one national retail chain, Target, as "the most jaw-dropping collapse of the so-called sacred wall between editorial and advertising in modern magazine history."
The August 22 issue had 18 pages of Target ads
He and other critics aren't impressed by the rather flaccid response from the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), whose guidelines for the separation of advertising and editorial are considered the gold (or at least gold-plated) standard for the industry. (The Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME) modelled its own guidelines on ASME's.)
ASME noted mildly that its guidelines require a single-sponsored magazine to include a note telling readers that this didn't influence the editorial in any way. The board of ASME issued a statement:
"Our guidelines do call for a publisher's note to readers in single-advertiser issues, and The New Yorker has agreed to include such a note when and if they do this again."
ASME's ultimate sanction could be to deny the New Yorker eligibility to enter the National Magazine Awards (the "Ellies", named after the Alexander Calder sculpture of an elephant that is given out). But since the New Yorker was contrite, apparently, the board said it wasn't considered necessary.
posted by D. B. Scott at 11:45 am 14 Comments
Everybody into the boat
The chattering classes have always dismissed Maclean's as yesterday's magazine, quite unreasonably. It has a large and largely loyal readership. But what the chatterers haven't thought of is Maclean's as a lifeboat, which is what it seems to be for journalists fleeing the floundering (or is that foundering?) National Post.
Latest word is that Scott Feschuk, ex Postie, ex PMO speechwriter, is to join as is Barbara Amiel, turfed from Maclean's as one of the last acts of Tony Wilson-Smith before he was replaced by Ken Whyte. Now Whyte is throwing experienced people over one side of the lifeboat (talk to your union rep, you whiners) and pulling bedraggled Posties over the other gunwale as fast as he can. Most will, of course, sit on the starboard side (that's the right, for you landlubbers).
[sorry for so many Maclean's posts: but it's making news these days]
PAP flap
In the recent kerphuffle over Publications Assistance Program's funding levels, Heritage's director general of publishing policy and programs Gordon Platt has suggested on Masthead Online [subscription required] that the industry should have known funding percentage decreases were coming in the current fiscal year ... i.e. (as I interpret his comments) that due to the lack of an increase in 2005-06 PAP funding, coupled with Canada Post's Publications Mail price increases, the writing was on the wall.
The only thing being, as far as I can recall, it has been nigh on impossible for Magazines Canada to find out exactly how much of PAP's maximum funding level was actually being used as part of the program. Moreover, I don't think anyone has publicly divulged how much of PAP funding was expected to be (or is being) drawn by the new(ish) PAP on request-circulation copies. Does anyone out there know differently?
Wasn't PAP a "black box" -- its budgetary figure consisting of a maximum contribution amount, the warning bells only set to go off when that ceiling was in imminent danger of being reached (i.e. now)? Or have I missed something?
posted by Jon Spencer at 5:27 pm 0 Comments
Osprey swoops down and swallows Town
With all the kerfuffle about income trusts, very little of it has seemed to touch magazine publishing so far. But quietly, over the summer, a few quite good magazines were absorbed into the Osprey Media Income Trust, with its purchase of Town Media. Town's longtime President and Publisher, Wayne Narcisco, brought with him into the management fold the following titles: Hamilton Magazine, Biz,Visitors, Interiors, Ontario Golf, Golfstyle and Ontario Home Builder. Also absorbed were Town's trade show division, inclduing the Ontario Garden Show, Gourmet Food & Wine Show, Ontario Builders' Forum and a part interest in the Hamilton Better Living Home Show.
Because it hasn't worked in the spotlight in Toronto, Town has not known very much buzz since Narcisco founded it in 1978. He has steered the little ship through good times and bad and has now, apparently, cashed out (or is that in?)
Hamilton magazine has consistently been professional and quite handsome, a surprise to people who think of Hamilton (the city) as a pretty lunchbucket kind of place. But there is a lot of high end housing and a lot of wealth in the area and the magazine catered to it with a healthy dose of lifestyle/shelter and fashion as well as the usual citymag features and listings.
Since Osprey needs to keep on pumping out those payments every month (one of the attractions for investors in income trusts) the purchase must have been predicated on the maturity of the properties and their ability to contribute to those relentless payouts.
But, once again, a mid-rank magazine company is swallowed up by a bigger firm (last time it was Avid by Transcon), leaving a big hole where entrepreneurial, well-financed and innovative magazine publishing should be.
Who's left to put out the magazine?
The continuing Maclean's watch: 17-year veteran Senior Editor Barbara Wickens got her walking papers on Monday. We're losing count of the experienced, senior people who've been shown the door.
Smartmoves (TM) and privacy
Today (Monday, September 12) is the deadline for responses to Canada Post's invitation to Canadian publishers to collaborate in launching a "consumer" magazine tentatively called Smartmoves.
It would apparently be a controlled circulation title, sent to everyone who files a change of address with the post office. At the moment, the content can only be speculated upon -- likely to be a highly "lifestylized" book and a kissing cousin of magalogues everywhere.
There has been much gnashing of teeth among industry groups about the government, or a Crown corporation, competing with the private sector publishers. That's a real question, every bit as much as it has been for Food & Drink, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's glossy catalogue or a similar book in Nova Scotia.
But nowhere has there been any discussion of privacy. Government legislation is causing no end of grief for magazines and other direct mailers who are forbidden to solicit from acquired lists or to sell lists without the recipients' express permission. And while that's probably as it should be, how is it that the post office -- the only option for most people -- is able to take change of address information and convert the data into a mailing list to send an un-requested magazine?
Going into competition with its own customers is not the smartest move Canada Post could make, but it will be interesting to see how many of Canada's largest publishing companies (all of whom do contract publishing to a greater or lesser degree) will bite at the proposal.
Make that leave permanent
Another casualty at Maclean's. Writer Sharon Doyle Driedger, on leave for the past year to work on a book about the Irish in Canada, was due back at work today. That is, until Publisher Ken Whyte personally called her at home over the weekend and told her not to bother coming in. (The book was sparked by an article she did for the magazine about her Irish neighbourhood in Montreal.) Depending on how you figure it, that makes an even dozen out the door in the past few months.
But are they read?
It has been reported that Mediamark Research International (MRI) will conduct a series of studies on readership comparing digital magazines with print magazines. It is being done in conjunction with Zinio Systems, a big purveyor of on-screen versions of some major magazines. This is in the U.S. of course, but measured audience and readership methodology is one of those things that must be settled before digital magazines (pdf or otherwise) are taken seriously by advertisers and become serious competition to traditional magazines.
The pinch in The Walrus wallet
Today's Mastheadonline records rumblings among freelancers about slow/late payments from The Walrus. To his credit, Ken Alexander, the Publisher, give a guarantee that everyone will get paid, eventually. But Mastheadonline notes that, as it always has, the long-term health of The Walrus hinges upon getting charitable status from Canada Revenue Agency.
The charitable status is necessary so that much-needed money can flow from one charity (the Chawkers Foundation) to another (the Walrus Foundation). Meanwhile, Alexander has been paying for the magazine out of his personal, considerable but not inexhaustible, resources. Masthead says this totals $2.5 million so far.
What the item did NOT say was that The Walrus was already turned down once by the CRA and parted ways with the law firm that was considered to have failed in its mission.
As many other Canadian magazines before it have discovered, if you think applying for charitable status is hard, try appealing a ruling that went against you. Even magazines which have charitable foundations supporting their work (for instance, Red Maple and This Magazine) find themselves under seige from time to time, challenged to defend retaining their number.
There are no rules or specific legislation governing who gets charitable status, who keeps it and who loses it -- it is all based on common law and precedent and, some would say, bureaucratic whim of the charities directorate of CRA. The fact is that over the years, the government has allowed such status to be given out willy nilly to a total of more than 70,000 such charitable numbers*, and has been trying to claw them back ever since. In the case of magazines, they qualify only if the majority of their work is "educational" in nature and simply publishing a magazine does not do the trick. One must hold conferences, publish (non-political) books, run internships, do training and lectures and so on and (wink, wink) publishing a magazine can only be one of the things you do. Most magazines apply, of course, to channel money directly to the support of their publication. That, says the CRA, is not allowed, even if the magazine is a not-for-profit corporation, or a struggling literary.
The charity bureaucrats are looking, always, for ways to take back numbers and not give out new ones (after all, every charitable number in theory means foregone taxes). And the word on the street is that it is 10 times harder to win an appeal than to get a number in the first place. Hence the frantic activity of Alexander in appealing all the way to the minister responsible for Canada Revenue Agency, John McCallum. If McCallum demurs, who knows what will happen next.
*The ludicrosity of the situation is that virtually every little Canadian Legion branch has its own charitable number and is considered a separate charity. That's who gets your poppy money. And virtually every church in the country has such status because one of the "qualifications" is the "promotion of religion". But if you wanted to start a charity that promoted atheism? You'd be out of luck.
Wasn't there 100 years to get ready?
And, speaking of Maclean's, a cryptic e-mail has been winging about, pushing back the black-tie, by-invitation-only celebration at the Windsor Arms of the magazine's 100th anniversary. It was to be September 30. Now it's November 15. No reason was given. What to make of that?
Buy my magazine, puhleeze!
Early in August we reported a rumour about Maclean's magazine deep-discounting its subs. Then, it was only a rumour. Today, as a freestanding insert in the Globe and Mail, it is a fact:
The handsome, 12-page digest-sized FSI makes an offer of 4 issues free, plus 24 issues for $29.95 and 24 bonus issues for no extra cost. The total, including taxes, is $32.05 in Ontario, $34.44 elsewhere.
The effective rate (net of tax) is 57 cents a copy, apparently the lowest price for which the magazine has ever been offered. Plus there's a "personal digital assistant" as a bonus gift.
To see the same offer online, click here.
Magazine postage bills take it on the chin
Magazines Canada is reeling from a massive slap in the face from the Department of Canadian Heritage. DCH has quietly announced, without consultation and with less than 60 days notice, a huge cut in the Publications Assistance Program contribution to individual magazines. This came right after Magazines Canada had been able to take some comfort from a restoration of some funding to the program itself (if only for a year).
Here is some analysis of the cuts provided by Michael Fox, Senior Vice-President of Rogers Media and the Chair of the Magazines Canada's postal committee:
On Nov. 1, 2005, small magazines will face an increase of 7% or more in their postal costs. For high-circulation magazines, the increase will be 35%.
For example, for a 200,000-circulation magazine, PAP now pays 61.66% of postage. As of Nov. 1, that is cut to 50.33% -- a shift of more than 11 percentage points from PAP to the publisher. The publisher's share goes from 38.3% to 49.7% -- which works out to a 30% postage cost increase for the magazine.
There's more bad news to come. Based on current activity levels, PAP will have another huge gap in the next fiscal year. Heritage will need to slash PAP percentages further, effective April 1, 2006, in order to cover a gap for 2006-07 estimated at $8.3 million.
Simply put, the cumulative impact of postage rate increases by Canada Post Corp. (CPC) has devoured all the funds allocated for PAP while the program continues to fund roughly the same volume (212 million copies for 1,200 periodicals).
In May 2005, Magazines Canada leaders had told the government that an additional $7 million in PAP funding was required for the current government fiscal year that ends March 2006 in order to continue the PAP subsidy at the percentage level it has traditionally maintained (averaging 62% of postage costs). Since then, there has been no news and no consultation with the industry -- so the severity of the cuts is a shock.
New sales boss at St. Joe's Urban Group
Tracy Miller has been promoted to Director of Sales at the Urban Group of St. Joseph Media. She replaces Associate Publisher Kim Peacock who is leaving to become Publisher, Western Magazines for Transcontinental Media, responsible for Vancouver and Western Living.
This is one of the first moves announced by Sharon McAuley, who just started as Vice-President and Group Publisher of the division that includes Toronto Life and Saturday Night.
Miller has been with St. Joes for 5 years and sold Saturday Night when it was still oversize and part of the National Post.
Another in our sporadic series about Canadian magazines we love. This time, Prairies North.
When a magazine is published so far off the beaten track as is Prairies North, it had better be good. And it is. Norquay, Saskatchewan is a village with one restaurant and one magazine about three good hours drive east of Regina. The magazine is published out of an airy, sunny, renovated house in the town, a world headquarters that the publishers were able to buy on their Visa card and renovate with their own hands.
Originally called Sasakatchewan Naturally, the magazine celebrates the considerable flora, fauna and drop-dead vistas of (particularly) northern Saskatchewan as well as a lifestyle that is not as well known to the rest of Canada as it should be. People from elsewhere tend to think of Saskatchewan as flat flatness, covered in wheaty wheatness, but know nothing about the enormous wetlandsand riverscapes and general stunningness of the Saskatchewan NOT bissected by the TransCanada Highway. For one thing, Saskatchewan is a terminus on a cross-continent migration route for literally millions of birds (something the magazine has made its business to report upon).
Publisher Michelle Hughes and Editor Lionel Hughes (yes, it's a family business; formal name, September House Publishing Inc.) found that the original name, while reflective of the contents (tending to often whimsical writing and lavish photo spreads), tended to make the magazine appear to be published by the government. So, rather than accepting this, they took the bold step of rebranding (and in the process giving themselves the possibility in future of covering more than Saskatchewan but also the whole, sprawling Prairie provinces).
To give you some of the flavour of the magazine, take but one issue, the May "Centennial kickoff" celebrating Saskatchewan's 100th, the magazine contains the following miscellany, much of it compulsively readable: A piece about Carole Stratychuk, the Dandelion lady of Deslisle; a gorgeous mutli-page spread with story and photos by frequent contributor Larry Easton about canoeing the Paull River; an all-season advertorial guide to the Churcill River headwaters (produced by September House); a memoir about the mid-century boom in building grain elevators across Saskatchewan (now being torn down just as fast); a perhaps unintentionally funny story about a man who has created an enormous, portable rig called Merv's Pitchfork Fondue, with the pitchfork used to dunk huge cuts of meat to cook in a vat of boiling grapeseed and canola oil; a first-person celebration of cottaging on Bright Sand Lake in northern Saskatchewan (and with a sidebar investigating the destruction being wrought by declining water levels -- a possible fallout of climate change).
That fabled wall between church and state
Apparently Don Obe, retired head of the magazine program at Ryerson, is writing a piece for Masthead's back page on the crumbling wall between editorial and advertising, exemplified by the Maclean's deal with Cadillac last spring to "brand" an excerpt from Peter C. Newman's book. (I'm looking forward to Don's usually trenchant prose.)
Now, we have a suggestion that -- at least in part -- Kim Pittaway's departure from Chatelaine had to do with mandated association of an advertiser's brand with a feature. So, is this all about Rogers? Or is this a general trend out there?
Are magazine journalists and editors being too exquisite about this "church and state" separation, something that isn't sustainable in the hyper-competitive world? Or is the preservation of editorial integrity and reader trust a lesson that has to be constantly re-taught (or re-learned)?
Discuss, please.
One after another after another...
More word on the wholesale changes being made to staff at Maclean's. Senior Editor Rob Sheppard is the latest to be let go. Recruited from the Globe and Mail, Sheppard has been at Canada's national newsmagazine for 8 years and was considered among its most seasoned reporters and craftsmen.
Apparently disheartenedby the steady erosion and demoralization of the staff, former Assistant Managing Editor Bob Marshall, who has been working steadily on contract for the magazine since being terminated, walked out, after telling Publisher/Editor Ken Whyte that it was no way to run the place. Marshall had always been known as the conscience of the magazine, a senior guy who had seen it all but had somehow kept a sense of optimism and gave wise counsel to his colleagues.
Stirred, not shaken
Search as we might, we cannot find a Canadian magazine that has its own cocktail. Which seems a shame. It came to us upon learning that Tin House, a hip new literary publication in the U.S. had a custom-made martini designed for it by the Four Seasons in New York (where it can be ordered). Now let's not argue about whether a martini can be anything except gin, vermouth and a garnish. The secret of the Tin House is apparently a thin film of Pernod swirled in the shaker before assembling what we would consider a classic martini.
Now, IF a Canadian magazine were to have its own cocktail, what would it be?
She was outta there!
Kim Pittaway jumped from the editorship of Chatelaine, apparently, because she felt she was being pushed by Publisher Kerry Mitchell. This from today's Michael Posner article in the Globe and Mail. No notice or severance pay was involved -- she just quit and cleaned out her desk.
Her departure was the culmination of a series of exchanges, some written (I'd love to read that e-mail) and some face-to-face. Pittaway told the Globe:
"It boiled down to a fundamental disagreement about which areas of responsibility were mine and which were the publisher's."
The sudden move was a surprise, apparently even to Mitchell, who is now faced with a magazine where both the Editor and the Managing Editor Bonnie Reichert are gone.
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I had the team of movers and they were all fantastic! They wasted no time with "chit chat" but we found a little time to discuss the Redskins game with one of them, sailing on the Chesapeake with another and his history in the moving industry with the final mover… he's a talker [just kidding] but he loosened up a bit later in the move. Seriously, these guys are the best! I've had many moves of my homes and businesses over the years but this was the best ever – almost enjoyable. My hat's off to you guys!


Below is the Programme that was enjoyed by our friends from Hameln during their successful visit.
With tea and cakes etc.
Guests and hosts outside Paignton (Palace Avenue) Methodist Church - Spot the difference!!!
Going! - Going! - Gone!
Whilst endeavouring to ensure accuracy these pages do not necessarily reflect the views of the Torbay-Hameln Churches.
artists, composers and authors. If you wish to use any of the material please contact us first by e-mail.


text:
LIFE IS A MYTH
.mammamamiamaria
.botswana
The Love Tapes:
.visual
.writings
.artist spotlights
.think pieces
.4 hours
.coloring book plays subversively in the back.
.stories
Chapter 1: Sometimes I hear crickets
.smile
.business, meet pleasure.
.trip
.innocence lost – a note on Beasts of No Nation
Posted by Nahnakwahmae on August 15, 2018 August 22, 2018
Warning: This Article Contains Spoilers.
Beasts of No Nation has been the first film to bring tears to my eyes in a while.
And no, it's not unmanly or "pussy" to cry, to feel emotions. So STFU.
A sad film, especially a film that makes you sad, is a great film. It's easy to overlook the profundity of this statement because of its simplicity. You may be thinking to yourself. Of course, a sad film will make me sad. But that's not a given, just like it's not a given that a sad song will make you sad.
Take Kendrick Lamar's Swimming Pools for example. The track at the time was an instant hit, with its pitched down vocals and highly suggestive chorus. The song, as I take it to mean, is about substance abuse (something that the song shares with the film):
"I grew up around people living their life in bottles," Kendrick starts.
Stills from Lamar's music video
But people don't listen to the lyrics of the whole song, the song didn't make a lot of people sad, and didn't ask most people to look into the meaning and to feel the emotions of being surrounded by a culture of self-destruction. Instead, the song would find itself played in clubs, or in cars on the way to clubs-and people would sing along blindly with their chest.
"Headshot", we used to bellow.
"Sit down,"
Let the choir say: Faded.
For whatever reason. People were excited when this song came on. It was even a song that played at parties. A song to put on when your friends came over. But it didn't make you sad.
Not at first anyway…and how a song ages to become something that makes you think deep things is a question for another blog. Maybe even a psychologist.
But the fact was it didn't convey the emotion of sadness well enough for a lot of us. Maybe it was the video, with party scenes of with young men and women looking fresh to death, dripped up and swagged down. Beasts of No Nation did not suffer from this ailment.
The film was an intricately woven tale about the Twi-speaking Agu. At a time when he is probably no younger than 12 years, he loses his family to a civil war and is forced to serve in a rebel army. His story, told through tints of murky earthly colors, covered a range of themes such as: the loss of innocence, life in rural areas, the cost of war and the joys of brotherhood. During his time in the rebel army, amongst other horrors he is molested, and also becoming a witness and accomplice to murder and rape (amongst other things).
All before writing IGCSE's.
I use humour as a coping mechanism. Sue me.
What made the film so enthralling for me was how I felt the degrading state of Agu's life and mind.
Really, his situation went from peak but alright, to bad to worse, to horrific. Yet there is a silverlining-ish in it all and just like the beginning, it is peak but alright. Going full circle; and from the perspective of a student of cinema, I enjoyed that…the story "tied up", as it were.
Oh by the way. Peak is a slang word from London meaning, bad, like, like Michael Cera in short shorts bad, as in.
Peak.
But I digress. Again. I do that sometimes.
All I want to say is that this boy was hurt in a way worse than any pain death could bring. At least when something kills you, you don't need to tolerate it anymore. However, Agu has to live with that trauma. Which feels very real. Impacting on our senses with a beautiful use of sound design. Explosions, gunshots and helicopters hovering above. Sound heightens the immersion we feel in films like these..and yet, despite the very real predicaments taking place. We ask ourselves:
"Did that really happen?"
The answer is no.
In Beasts of No Nation, the story isn't particularly based on true events but it certainly feels like it. Rather, the narrative reflects very harsh realities as far as child soldiers are being used all over the world, in every continent except North America. With Africa maintaining nearly 40% of that estimate. The lesson here being that Agu's story isn't far from reality.
The point of this is the story didn't need to rely on massive, expensive computer generated effects budgets to make me believe its truth. The truth was staring at you, and because the film was narrated by Agu himself, the truth spoke to you. And it hurt my ears every time, unlike Kendrick Lamar's hit song. Moreover, keep in mind that Agu spoke with a Ghanaian accent, and because I myself am Ghanaian, this planted a seed of familiarity in my mind and rooted more deeply into his traumas as he recounted them.
This was not a review of the film, nor is it an invitation to watch the film. My intention in writing this, is to tell you about the negative emotions I felt when I watched this movie. It did not make me want to laugh, or smile. It made me tear up. It put me in a world far from my own, and asked me to feel emotions completely removed from my own. The film did a terrific job of asking me to leave any hopes I had for Agu's family, and his home ever returning to their relatively peaceful lives.
Furthermore, the movie did a fantastic job of leaving little to nothing to interpretation. It wasn't like one of those abstract, artsy films. No dear reader, this film laid out a story in front of you with nothing but the facts as they were. Sure, it hinted towards things here and there but the main messages of the film, the main emotions and experiences running through out, were left bare and naked without any floss, without any beautification; and in that my heart wept for a boy I would never meet.
For his losses that were only so real.
For his fractured childhood compromised like bullet riddled buildings.
All images are stills from the original motion picture unless indicated otherwise.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Orinda Halloween shooting: Both patrol units…
Orinda Halloween shooting: Both patrol units were assisting Lafayette police when 'several' complaints about party came in
Investigators exploring possibility killings tied to S.F. gang Page Street Mob
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: People pay their respects to Airbnb house rental shooting victims in a makeshift memorial during a vigil at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: A composite photo of Raymon Hill Jr. is displayed in a makeshift memorial for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims during a vigil at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Farley is survived by his 5-month pregnant girlfriend Johnay Smith. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Johnay Smith, center, who is 5 month pregnant from her late boyfriend Tiyon Farley, and other people gather during a vigil for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: A photo of Tiyon Farley is displayed in a makeshift memorial for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims during vigil at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Farley is survived by his 5-month pregnant girlfriend Johnay Smith. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Johnay Smith, left, who is 5-month pregnant from her late boyfriend Tiyon Farley, places a candle on a makeshift memorial for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims during a vigil at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: A person gives a hug to Tylek Fariley, older brother of shooting victim Tiyon Farley during a vigil for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: A makeshift memorial for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims is growing at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Suzanne Geoffrion, center, and Orinda residents take a moment of silence for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council and its residents discussed on short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: The Orinda City Council listens to a resident discuss on short-term rentals ordinance during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council will determine what changes to make on short-term rentals due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others at an Airbnb rental house. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Orinda Police Chief David Cook, right, gives a report on the mass shooting on Halloween night to the Orinda City Council during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council and its residents discussed on short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting that killed five people and injured four others at an Airbnb rental house. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Orinda City Manager Steve Salomon, right, speaks during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council and its residents discussed on short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Orinda residents listen to speakers discus on short-term rentals ordinance during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council will determine what changes to make on short-term rentals due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others at an Airbnb rental house. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Orinda City Attorney Osa Wolff, left, City Manager Steve Salomon, City Planning Director Drummond Buckley and Police Chief David Cook listen to Orinda Mayor Inga Miller during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council and its residents discussed on short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: Orinda mayor Inga Miller, left, and councilwoman Amy Worth listen to a resident during a City Council meeting at Orinda City Hall in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. The Orinda City Council and its residents discussed on short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 5: A person places a sign in a makeshift memorial for Airbnb house rental shooting victims during a vigil at Orinda Theatre Square in Orinda, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Later, the Orinda City Council and its residents would discuss the short-term rentals ordinance due to the mass shooting on Halloween night that killed five people and injured four others. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
This is a flyer advertising the "Air BNB Mansion Party" that ended with a shooting that killed four people. The Instagram account of the person who posted the flyer has since been deleted. (Instagram screen shot)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 1: The Contra Costa County Sheriff's coroner's van leaves the property where a multiple shooting occurred in a house on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 1, 2019. Four people died and several others were injured at a Halloween party at a short-term rental Thursday night. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 1: A Contra Costa County Sheriff's search and rescue team member searches for evidence on the perimeter where a multiple shooting occurred on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 1, 2019. Four people died and several others were injured at a Halloween party at a short-term rental Thursday night. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
A screenshot from the AirBnB app shows the listing for the Orinda, Calif. home where a shooting at a Halloween party killed at least four people on October 31, 2019.
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 2: The flag at City Hall is lowered to half-mast in Orinda, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019, to honor the five victims who died at an Airbnb rental house at a Halloween party Thursday night on Lucille Way. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 2: Sarah David, left, and her daughter Maddie David, 11, of Lafayette, bring flowers and write a sympathy message for the victims who died at an Airbnb rental house on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. Five people died and several others were injured in a Halloween party Thursday night. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 2: Joy, who did not want to give her last name, posts a sympathy message for the victims who died at an Airbnb rental house on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. Five people died and several others were injured in a Halloween party Thursday night. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA - NOVEMBER 2: Cara, who did not want to give her last name, wipes a tear away after bringing a Hawaiian Lei and a sympathy message for the victims who died at an Airbnb rental house on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. Five people died and several others were injured in a Halloween party Thursday night. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA – NOVEMBER 1: A Contra Costa County Sheriff deputiy stands guard as they investigate a multiple shooting on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019. For people died and four others injured at short-term rental in a Halloween party. according to police chief, (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
ORINDA, CA – NOVEMBER 1: Contra Costa County Sheriff deputies investigate a multiple shooting on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019. For people died and four others injured at short-term rental in a Halloween party. according to police chief, (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Contra Costa County Sheriff's deputies investigate a multiple shooting on Lucille Way in Orinda, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019. Four people died and several others were injured at a Halloween party at a short-term rental Thursday night. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
By Nate Gartrell | ngartrell@bayareanewsgroup.com and Jon Kawamoto | jkawamoto@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: November 5, 2019 at 7:47 pm | UPDATED: November 12, 2019 at 9:52 am
CLICK HERE if you are having a problem viewing the photos on a mobile device
ORINDA — At Tuesday's Orinda City Council meeting, Police Chief David Cook said both patrol units on duty Halloween night were assisting a call in neighboring Lafayette when "several" complaints came in about a large party at 114 Lucille Way in the two hours before gunfire erupted there, killing five.
Orinda officers did not start heading to the Lucille Way house until minutes before the shooting, Cook said, because they had been called to a violent home invasion robbery in Lafayette, where residents had been "held hostage" during an hour-long ordeal. Police said there were three robbers at the home invasion, one armed with a pistol.
"These complaints, while not insignificant, at the time were a lower priority than the Lafayette call that the officers were already on," Cook said at the beginning of the meeting.
There were "probably three or four calls total," Cook said, including two noise complaints and a report of a car striking a parked vehicle as it left the party earlier in the evening.
Orinda is "blessed with outstanding officers," Cook said. Later in the meeting, after an attorney representing a Lucille Way resident demanded to know how many officers were away, Cook said the city had two patrol units and both were in Lafayette. He added that Moraga and Lafayette each typically have two patrol units on duty.
At a candlelight vigil for #Orinda house shooting victims, brother of Tiyon Farley describes how his baby brother was. @EastBayTimes @NateGartrell @jonkawamoto pic.twitter.com/6hM5xOHpQZ
— Ray Chavez (@rayinaction) November 6, 2019
Other speakers at Tuesday night's Orinda City Council meeting questioned the police timeline, saying that if officers had been able to respond instead of providing mutual aid to Lafayette for the home-invasion robbery, the tragedy could have been avoided.
Cook responded by saying that police had received a call only about a loud party — and not a call that guns were involved — at 114 Lucille Way, the 4,000-square-foot home that was being used as an Airbnb rental.
Other residents called for Orinda to hire more police officers permanently. The city contracts with the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department for its police services, and Orinda City Manager Steve Salomon said an additional officer would have to be funded by a special tax measure.
Cook's statement preceded an Orinda council meeting at which the City Council agreed to support an emergency moratorium that would specifically ban unhosted short-term rentals such as the Lucille Way mansion.
Police have mostly been mum on details, though several law enforcement sources say that investigators are exploring the possibility that it is tied to a San Francisco gang known as the Page Street Mob. The gang has existed for decades, and originated in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood. It was the subject of a 2002 racketeering case against seven members and included charges of murder and crack cocaine trafficking.
Before Cook spoke Tuesday, Orinda Mayor Inga Miller read the names of all five victims and held a moment of silence. The victims are: Tiyon Farley, 22, of Antioch; Omar Taylor, 24, of Pittsburg; Ramon Hill Jr., 23, of San Francisco/Oakland; Javin County, 29, of Sausalito/Richmond; and Oshiana Tompkins, 19, of Vallejo/Hercules. A Vallejo man in his early 20s also was severely injured and remains in a coma.
One of the victims, Tiyon Farley, is the half-brother of Lee Farley, 30, who was charged with four counts of murder in a 2015 San Francisco drive-by shooting. The victims in that case were David Saucier, 20; Yalani Chinyamurindi, 19; Harith Atchan, 21; and Manuel O'Neal, 22. The San Francisco shooting occurred on Page Street between Octavia and Laguna streets. Lee Farley was charged in 2016, while serving prison time on an unrelated case.
Questions about Lucille Way home
The day after the Orinda shooting, several Lucille Way residents told reporters that the house was known for wild parties. City officials have said that the property owner, listed as Michael Young Wang, had been given notice for noise and garbage complaints.
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Cook said that since March, there have been two complaints about 114 Lucille Way, neither involving loud parties. He said other complaints that didn't specifically mention the address might not show up when he searched for prior calls. He did not explain why he used March as the starting-off point.
Cook called the shooting an "unfathomable tragedy" and said that several police agencies, as well as the FBI, continue to investigate. The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office was processing hundreds of pieces of evidence and two dozen investigators were brought in, he said. Authorities have said there were more than 100 people at the party, many of whom fled after shots rang out, and detectives are trying to track them down.
"We are confident that in the end, we will bring a successful resolution to this investigation," Cook said.
East Bay Crime
Nate Gartrell
Nate Gartrell covers crime and corruption in Contra Costa County. He joined the Bay Area News Group in 2014.
Follow Nate Gartrell	@NateGartrell
Jon Kawamoto
Jon Kawamoto is a reporter covering the Lamorinda area, Danville and San Ramon. He was the Hills weeklies editor, in charge of the Alameda Journal, Berkeley Voice, El Cerrito Journal, The Montclarion and The Piedmonter. He previously worked as an editor with the Los Angeles Times, the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune. Kawamoto is a central California native and a graduate of Fresno State University.
Follow Jon Kawamoto	@jonkawamoto
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Athena is a purebred Golden Retriever who was born in RAGOM's care shortly after her mom came to RAGOM from a commercial breeder. Athena is a puppy and bites, digs, jumps on people, chews on inappropriate items, and pulls on the leash. She will need lots of love, patience, socialization, and training to grow into the best family member she can be.
Athena was adopted last week by a wonderful family who will love her forever. We totally fell in love with this special girl and will miss her. Be we are excited for her to enjoy her new life with the T family.
We now you will have an amazing life, Athena!
Athena is an adorable puppy who was born to Tessa 18-241A. She is a typical happy girl who loves playing with her litter mates, being cuddled, and exploring both inside and outside.
Puppies enjoying a little snow.


text:
Cu; Zn
chalcopyrite; molybdenite; pyrite; sphalerite
fluorite; quartz
This prospect which has been located as the Caribou 1-59 claims is at an elevation of about 2,250 feet, at the west end of a plateau bounded by Portage Creek, Devils Canyon, and Devil Creek It is 2.8 miles north-northeast of the junction of Portage Creek and the Susitna River in the SW1/4 sec. 17, T. 32 N., R. 1 E., Seward Meridian. The location is accurate to within 1/4 mile. It is locality 8 of Csejtey and Miller (1978).
The host rock of this prospect is quartz monzonite of Cretaceous or Tertiary age (Richter, 1963) Silicified, fluorite-bearing, shear zones in the quartz monzonite contain lenses, vugs and masses of molybdenite crystals and other sulfides, chiefly pyrite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. Channel samples contain up to 0.1 percent molybdenum and 0.1% zinc (Richter, 1963). The mineralization is probably a quartz-monzonite-related porphyry deposit.
(-149.32016221631, 62.8592185503572)
Porphyry Cu-Mo (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 21a)
In Cretaceous or Tertiary rocks.
Silicification along shear zones.
Workings consist of a bench cut and a short adit. Channel samples contain up to 0.1 percent molybdenum and 0.1 percent zinc (Richter, 1963). Further exploration at this locality may be justified but would require heavy equipment or drilling due to poor surface exposure (Richter, 1963).
MAS/MILS number 20760004.
Berg, H.C., and Cobb, E.H., 1967, Metalliferous lode deposits of Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1246, 254 p.
Cobb, E.H., 1972, Metallic mineral resources map of the Talkeetna Mountains quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-370, 1 sheet, scale 1:250,000.
Cobb, E.H., and Csejtey, Bela, Jr., 1980, Summaries of data on and lists of references to metallic and selected nonmetallic mineral deposits in the Talkeetna Mountains quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 80-716, 63 p.
Csejtey, Bela, Jr., and Miller, R.J., 1978, Map and table describing metalliferous and selected nonmetalliferous mineral deposits in the Talkeetna Mountains quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 78-558-B, 22 p., 1 sheet, scale 1:250,000.
Csejtey, Bela, Jr., Nelson, W.H., Jones, D.L., Silberling, N.J., Dean, R.M., Morris, M.S., Lanphere, M.A., Smith, J.G., and Silberman, M.L, 1978, Reconnaissance geologic map and geochronology, Talkeetna Mountains quadrangle, northern part of Anchorage quadrangle, and southwest part of Healy quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 78-558-A, 60 p., 1 sheet, scale 1:250,000.
Richter, D.H., 1963, Geology of the Portage Creek-Susitna River area, Alaska: Alaska Division of Mines and Minerals Geologic Report 3, 2 plates, scale 1:24,000.
Singer, D.A., Csejtey, Bela, Jr., and Miller, R.J., 1978, Map and discussion of the metalliferous and selected non-metalliferous mineral resources of the Talkeetna Mountains quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 78-558-Q, 33 p., 1 sheet, scale 1:250,000.
Smith, P.S., 1942, Occurrences of molybdenum in Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 926-C, p. 161-210.
R.K. Rogers (U. S. Geological Survey contractor)


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Pennsylvania saw mixed results in the statewide elections with Republican's Donald Trump and Senator Patrick Toomey both winning the Commonwealth. Trump's success is the first time a Republican candidate for President has won Pennsylvania since 1988 in a surprising result where Hillary Clinton was expected to win the state. Sen. Toomey barely squeaked by Katie McGinty winning by less than 2% of the vote, but his win also allowed Republicans to keep the majority in the US Senate. However, Democrat Candidates for Attorney General, Auditor General and Treasurer all won their statewide campaigns. Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro won for Attorney General with 51% of the vote over State Senator John Rafferty, Eugene DePasquale retains his position as Auditor General with 50% of the vote to challenger John Brown's 45%. Joe Torsella easily won for State Treasurer with 51% of the vote over Otto Voit who received 45%.
As of January the State Senate will have a 34 seat (veto-proof) majority for the Republicans. Republican Senator Tom Killion (Delaware) won a rematch over challenger Marty Malloy in a repeat of a Special Election earlier this year to replace former Senator Dominic Pileggi. Incumbent Democrat Senators Rob Teplitz (Dauphin) and Sean Wiley (Erie) lost to their Republican challengers John DiSanto and Dan Laughlin, respectively. Also, an open seat to replace Democrat John Wozniak was won by Republican Wayne Langerholc over Democrat Ed Cernic of Cambria County. Other new faces in the Senate include Mike Regan (R-Cumberland) replacing Republican Sen. Pat Vance, Sharif Street (D-Phila) replacing Shirley Kitchen, and Scott Martin (R-Lancaster) replacing Lloyd Smucker who successfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives, succeeding retiring Cong. Joe Pitts. All of the other PA Congressional delegation won re-election.
Pending a potential re-count in Chester County, Republicans in the State House also saw their majority increase to 122 with Republicans winning two open seats that were vacated by incumbent Democrats not seeking re-election. Republicans also defeated Democrat incumbents Jarret Gibbons (D-Lawrence) who will be replaced by Republican Aaron Bernstine, and Tim Mahoney (D-Fayette) who lost to Republican Matthew Dowling. Rep David Parker was the lone House Republican to lose re-election, losing a rematch with his 2014 opponent, Democrat Maureen Madden.
The House and Senate were in Harrisburg only a couple of days this month, to clean up a few pieces of legislation, but primarily to elect their new leaders for the 2017-18 legislative session. There were few contested elections, and only a couple of changes in the leadership rosters of the four caucuses, mostly due to retirements, and mainly in the House Republican delegation. State Representative Stan Saylor (York) was elected Majority Appropriations Chairman, to replace retiring Bill Adolph; Marcy Toepel (Montgomery) becomes Majority Caucus Chair, succeeding Sandra Major, and Kurt Masser (Northumberland) as Caucus Administrator, replacing Rep. Brian Ellis. Current Senate Democrat Caucus Administrator, Sen. John Yudichak (D-Luzerne) was not renamed to the post as of Wednesday. The position is appointed by the Minority Leader. Of note, Sen. Yudichak challenged Sen. Farnese for his role as Caucus Secretary.
The 2015-16 Legislative Session officially ended on November 30. Any bills that did not make it to the Governor's desk died, and must be reintroduced next session. The General Assembly acted on the following bills of interest to PSPE in the past month.
This legislation replaces existing law on general partnerships, limited partnerships and limited liability companies with the most recent revisions of three acts promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC): the Uniform Partnership Act (UPA), the Uniform Limited Partnership Act (ULPA) and the Uniform Limited Liability Act (ULLA).
Amends Title 75 (Vehicles) adding a new chapter providing for autonomous and connected vehicles. Provides for the development, testing and operation of autonomous vehicles in the Commonwealth. Further provides for the requirements for the safety and control of the vehicles, vehicle testers and the traveling public.


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Joy Love Bernstein is Redefining What it Means to Practice Yoga
How one San Antonio yoga instructor is offering a new way to practice
By By Bonny Osterhage
Joy Love Bernstein, photo by Josh Huskin
Mention yoga in a room full of people and you'll likely receive a lot of mixed reactions. Some think it's only for the fit and flexible while others picture yogis sitting in a dark, quiet room meditating. Instructor Joy Love Bernstein, founder of Practice Yoga with Joy, is dispelling those myths one down dog at a time.
"I say, 'Take your practice seriously, just don't take yourself seriously,'" she says. "I always encourage my students to laugh."
Raised in a military family, Bernstein describes her younger self as a "very self-aware child," who learned to meditate in the third grade while living in the Middle East. That's also around the age she began practicing yoga—although she didn't realize it at the time. "I was just getting into poses and meditating," she says. "I didn't go to my first yoga class until I was at NYU, and I thought it was too strict."
It wasn't until she moved to San Antonio 18 years ago that Bernstein met a teacher who embodied the feeling of yoga that first attracted her as a child. "She taught me that my practice didn't have to be strict or perfect," she says. "That's when I decided that I wanted to teach people and show them the yoga that I know—the one that is accepting of all shapes, sizes and fitness levels and that allows you to explore who you are."
That belief led her to eventually cut the number of students in her classes from as many as 20 to 40 to between four and eight so that she could provide each person with individualized attention. "Sometimes you have to take it down to build it up," she explains.
She applied that same philosophy to her business during COVID-19, permanently shutting the doors to her private studio and transitioning to an online-only platform. She still maintains the small class size and connects with every student prior to class.
As a massage therapist for the past 21 years, Bernstein knows the positive effects yoga has on the body, but it's what happens beyond the physical that Bernstein wants her students to understand.
"Yoga definitely challenges the body, but it also challenges the mind because you have to sit in stillness," she says. "My yoga style includes exploring who you are—not who everyone else tells you should be. It's about finding your authenticity… Your size and age don't matter. It is what your body is capable of doing. Yoga is a constant reminder of 'This is who I am.'"
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The founder of SA Charter Moms chats school choice and narrowing down your campus search to match your students' interests
BodegaMa and Bodega Man Lisa and Luke Horgan are using tough-to-find snacks and quirky pop-up events to bring San Antonians together
An international walking event, Feb. 19-26, is meant to get visitors and locals alike exploring on foot


DSCOVR's twin solar wings have opened to provide power to the spacecraft's systems and instruments as it observes the sun and our home planet to show the changing conditions on Earth. The mission is a partnership of NOAA, NASA and the U.S. Air Force.
The Falcon 9 sprung the DSCOVR spacecraft free on schedule to coast toward the L1 point on its own. Data shows that the spacecraft is healthy and getting ready to deploy its solar panels.
Confirmation of a second burn as planned. DSCOVR will separate from the second stage shortly.
The Falcon 9 and DSCOVR spacecraft telemetry is telling ground controllers that everything is OK as the second stage engine re-ignites and DSCOVR is pushed out toward deep space and the L1 point about a million miles form Earth. This burn will last 58 seconds.
The second stage of the Falcon 9 is still in its parking orbit with DSCOVR attached, but in a couple minutes the single engine of the second stage will re-ignite to propel the NOAA observatory on a course to deep space. Re-igntion scheduled for 6:33:41 p.m.


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FACULTY CONCERT SERIES: Laura Kargul in Concert, Wild at Heart
Laura Kargul, internationally acclaimed pianist and director of keyboard studies at the University of Southern Maine School of Music, will give a solo recital, "Wild at Heart," at Corthell Concert Hall at USM in Gorham on Friday, October 19 at 8 p.m. The program will feature works by Mozart, Schumann and Liszt, all inspired by emotional landscapes of passion and drama.
Tickets are $15 for adult, $10 for seniors, USM employees and alumni, $5 for students. To purchase tickets, call the Music Box Office: (207) 780-5555 // TTY: 780-5646, or purchase tickets online at www.usm.maine.edu/music/boxoffice. The University offers free parking for evening and weekend events in student or faculty lots.
The concert is sponsored by University Credit Union.
She will open with one of Mozart's most famous keyboard works, his Twelve Variations on the French Song "Ah, vous dirai-je, maman" ("Ah, shall I tell you, Mother"). The melody of the theme eventually became known to English speakers as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in 1806, but the original French song was composed half a century earlier, during Mozart's lifetime.
"The text of the French song, with its five verses, is actually quite racy," notes Kargul. "A young shepherdess is seduced in the pasture, and she confesses the details to her mother. There is absolutely no mention of twinkling stars. Mozart's genius in setting dramatic scenes is on full display here; it's hard to imagine that he wasn't thinking operatically with a text so rich in both pathos and humor. Each variation seems to contribute to the unfolding of the overall story, from beginning to end. If you hear the work in this way, it takes on a whole new meaning – and 'wild' is not too strong a word to describe it!"
Also on the program will be two works by Franz Liszt: Sposalizio, his transcendent depiction of the wedding of the Virgin Mary, based on the well-known painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, and his lush virtuoso solo piano transcription of the sextet from Donizetti's opera, Lucia di Lammermoor. "Liszt's compositions perfectly embody the 19th century notion of romantic love, rooted in arching passion that can barely be contained. Music is the ideal medium to express such extreme emotions," says Kargul.
The final work on the program will be Robert Schumann's monumental masterpiece, his Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17. Schumann composed the Fantasy in 1836, during a period when his beloved future wife, the renowned pianist and composer Clara Wieck, was forcibly separated from him by her father. "Schumann had no way to communicate with her except by sending her the piano scores he composed specifically for her," says Kargul. "By his own admission, this is the most passionate work he ever wrote, conceived in the throes of excruciating longing and pain caused by his separation from Clara, the love of his life."
Kargul has performed the Schumann Fantasy to high critical acclaim, starting with her European debut, reviewed by the Rotterdams Nieuwsblad: "World Class Piano Playing: This is piano playing of a class that belongs on our great concert stages.... Rarely does one hear this magisterial opus [Schumann's Fantasy] carried from the first to last note with almost feverish inspiration, so controlled and thrilling. Laura Kargul does not try to flaunt her great technique, but rather penetrates deep into the heart of the work."
Kargul is also noted as a Liszt interpreter, one of very few artists ever invited to perform a full recital on Liszt's own Bechstein piano at the Liszt-Haus in Weimar. Her solo CD of Liszt's virtuoso transcriptions, Liszt and Ravel: Transcriptions for Piano, was produced by Grammy winner Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering. She has appeared in concerts throughout Europe and the USA, as well as in Canada and the West Indies, in venues such as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Schleswig-Holstein and Nordhessen Music Festivals in Germany, the Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca in Italy and the Evian Music Festival in France.
Kargul is also a popular lecturer and locally she is often featured on the Portland Ovations Pre-Performance Lecture Series at Merrill Auditorium. Her informative and humorous comments from the stage have become a trademark of her performances.
Those needing special accommodations to participate fully in this program, contact Lori Arsenault, (207) 780-5142, loria@maine.edu. Hearing impaired: call USM's telex / TDD number (207) 780-5646.


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DeKalb's Early Learning Center works toward getting 'the whole child' ready for school career
DeKalb's Early Learning Center works toward preparing 'the whole child'
By KELSEY RETTKEEmail
Mark Black - for Shaw Media
Amy Luckner, assessment research multi-tiered system of support coordinator in DeKalb, talks about kindergarten readiness in DeKalb schools Thursday.
Mark Black for Shaw Media
Lisa Gorchels, principal at the Early Learning Center in DeKalb, shows off a kindergarten readiness pack Thursday.
The contents of a Kindergarten pack at the Early Learning Center in DeKalb on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019.
DeKALB – Lisa Gorchels riffled through the contents of a Kindergarten Pack filled with play-dough, books and colorful worksheets. She said the packs are one of DeKalb School District 428's new strategies to make sure children are ready for school once they enter kindergarten.
Gorchels, executive director of the Early Learning Center, has been with the district for 29 years and said expectations of a 5-year-old when they enter school has changed over the past decade.
"It's a general academic readiness," Gorchels said Friday. "We've moved away from really play-based philosophy in kindergarten to a pretty rigorous academic stance, so people are really talking about do we need to bring back more of a balance to that kindergarten year? I think yes, we do."
The 2019-20 school year for the Early Learning Center, 1515 S. Fourth St., annexed to Huntley Middle School, has just begun, and instructors are working to adjust curriculums to address the ongoing goal of preparing children for their school careers. A June report by the Illinois State Board of Education showed that 22% of children entering kindergarten in District 428 are considered "ready" (39% are not), and that includes surveying readiness in three different areas. New kindergartners were 20% ready in math (basic counting with an understanding of quantities), 36% ready in language literacy (basic communication, understanding story telling and inflections) and 52% ready socially and emotionally (their ability to express basic emotions and interact with peers).
The report showed that 37% of Sycamore School District 427 students were ready for kindergarten in zero developmental areas, while 28% were ready in all three developmental areas. In Genoa-Kingston School District 424, 13% were ready in all three developmental areas, while 41% were not ready in any of the three areas.
The study also shows that other factors can affect a child's readiness, such as being a dual-language learner and socioeconomic status.
What does that mean, exactly? Amy Luckner, assessment, research and multi-tiered system of support coordinator in her fifth year with the district, said the data provides a good framework for moving forward.
"We have a kind of saying: 'Data aren't good or bad, they just are,' " Luckner said. "It gives us a way of quantifying these skills that our students have, and it tells us what they're ready to learn."
Part of pre-K programming is to begin developing a love of reading, a basic understanding of math, language, and behavior early on, so that once children enter kindergarten, they're able to hit the ground running, Luckner said.
Luckner said pre-K programs measure if a child can recognize the right-side-up orientation of a book, understand quantities or basic counting, and cognitive and behavioral patterns such as interacting with peers, expressing yourself when you're angry or sad, developing manners when eating, etc.
"One of the things they were really aiming for in this assessment was the whole child picture," Luckner said.
Students at the Early Learning Center (3 to 5 years old) began classes Aug. 20. The center has nine classrooms, all with half-day classes. Six classes (including one bilingual Spanish class) welcome 20 children in the morning and 20 in the afternoon. The other three are for students who have special needs, Gorchels said, and see 10 children in the morning and 10 after lunch.
Kindergarten Packs (provided to District 428 by a $5,000 grant from the DeKalb County Community Foundation) are one of the key components to the efforts to strengthen early childhood literacy in the district, and were handed out to all families with participating children in April. The packs are full of items that teach fine and gross motor skills, such as play-dough and shapes (what Gorchels calls "manipulatives"). There are also worksheets to practice tracing outlines of patterns, crayons, books and dry-erase boards.
"The assessment has really helped highlight the needs that we have prior to when our kids get here," Luckner said. "There's a certain level of things we can't control, but [it's about] figuring out how we can have access to our families before they get there."
As part of her role in the Early Learning Center, Gorchels conducts home visits for those in her preschool programs, because one of the ways District 428 staff are addressing kindergarten readiness is to assess truancy issues in the district.
"I do a home visit if there's something the parents need help with," Gorchels said. "How can we help you get to school? How can we help you get the resources you need to meet your basic needs as a family?"
Gorchels said the district also enjoys fruitful partnerships with 4Cs, the DeKalb Public Library, the Regional Office of Education, Adventure Works and the DeKalb County Community Gardens.
"We're always looking at how do we get books into the hands of our youngest from the time they are born until they go on in life?" Gorchels said.
Sycamore D-427 to discuss student medication Tuesday
DeKalb school district to compile master building emergency plan
DeKalb school board votes in on Project Hammer tax abatement plan
Project Hammer tax abatement plan comes to DeKalb school board for vote
District 427 board hires Wilder as new superintendent
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How is the important team attribute of flexibility identified? The easiest way is to see whether someone is stubborn. Great teams have a lot of opportunities to measure stubbornness and flexibility because they have great feedback loops. If someone refuses to budge when confronted with solid feedback, they are not flexible. No adjustment is needed because they don't think they are wrong. In fact, the stubborn teammate may even think the rest of the team needs to adjust while they stand their ground. This is obviously a problem for any team dynamic and must be resolved before any team can hope to move forward.


Possibly my favorite all around summer shoe that can be worn by anyone, regardless of age, is the boat shoe. Originally made famous by Sperry, but other brands like Sebago have been producing similar quality boat shoes for years. While the boat shoe's primary function (obviously) was for boating, we'll learn that boat shoes have always been the go-to for the fashion forward.
Sperry boat shoes have been a household name for decades. The man behind the shoe, Paul Sperry, came up with the idea when his dog was able to run over ice easily. Mr. Sperry used a method that was used on tires, called siping. By cutting thin slits in the rubber sole, the shoe was able to catch on slippery surfaces. The nonslip shoe made it ideal for boaters. Boat shoes are also famous for their moc-toe (think moccasin) with oiled leather to repel water.
Since these shoes are normally worn in wet and hot conditions, no socks are necessary. The no sock trend really picked up steam in the 60s with penny loafers and continued through the 80s when loafers with no socks was seen as preppy. Because yachting was a main reason people wore Sperrys, Top-Siders began to be associated with the wealthy.
Today, the shoe seems to be reserved for southern frat boys with salmon shorts and a too-tight polo. Personally, I like to think they are worn by so many Greek Life students because they are always in style. Sperrys have been considered a modern fashion trend for quite some years and it doesn't look like they are going anywhere. At this point, they are really less of a fashion trendvand more of a style icon.
When purchasing a boat shoe, think simple. A complicated, half tennis-half boat is not something you want. This is known as a hybrid shoe that they try to do too much with one design. This design is generally clunky, has too many clashing materials, and is an overall visually unappealing shoe. Meanwhile, a classic one-material boat shoe is simple, sleek, and only uses leather for the top of the shoe. Colors like Oatmeal, Sahara, and Tan are safe classics. Avoid colors like black, gray, and any leathers that are grained. Whatever company you choose, if you're looking for one shoe to wear throughout this summer, the boat shoe is it.


TWO unique choirs will be singing out to celebrate St David's Day in Saundersfoot next week.
As the culmination of the village's Cawl by the Sea day on Saturday, March 2, the award-winning South Wales Gay Men's Chorus will be making its Pembrokeshire debut.
Joining the SWGMC at the concert at the Regency Hall will be Pembrokeshire's own Bella Voce, the lively ladies' choir that last year won a standing ovation at the Royal Albert Hall.
SWGMC was lined up to appear at last year's Cawl by the Sea event, but bad weather forced its cancellation.
So organisers, Saundersfoot Chamber for Tourism, are looking forward more than ever to bring the boys of the Chorus to the county.
SWGMC was crowned festival champion at 2017's Cornwall International Male Choral Festival, where it competed against choirs from all over the UK – including Tenby Male Choir – Australia, Russia, Sweden, America, Finland and Germany.
Alongside the festival's top accolade, the choir also won first prize in the 40 voices and under category, and a prize for the best single piece of music for their moving arrangement of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'.
Doors open at the Regency Hall at 7pm and the concert starts at 7.30pm. A bar will be available.
Tickets for the concert are £10, and are available in Saundersfoot at Little and Large Lite Bites or the Regency Hall and via Anne on 07951 578550.