text:
The Baptists Want You!
William Martin
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-baptists-want-you/
God, as is His custom, has once again confounded the wise. After listening to a generation of theologians speak bravely of His death, the Almighty has established Himself as the odds-on choice for Comeback of the Decade. Conservative churches are growing, evangelical Christianity has been declared mainstream American religion, and a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher has become Leader of the Free World. And now, as if that were not enough, the Baptist General Convention of Texas is about to launch a media blitz designed to share the good news of God's love with every man, woman, and child in the state an average of forty times apiece during a four-week period in February and March. The $1.5 million campaign, to be called Good News Texas, will feature commercials for Christ on television and radio, ads in newspapers and other print media, booster spots on billboards, pins on lapels, and an extensive personal visitation program to be run by the local churches. It is going to be pure Baptist. Well, almost pure. To help them do it right, the Baptists have hired one of the largest and most successful advertising firms in the country, the Bloom Advertising Agency of Dallas. Neither Sam nor Bob Bloom has roots in the Christian branch of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
I have mixed feelings about all this. Some of my best friends are Baptists, always have been. Still, I have never been able to shake completely the conviction that Baptists are the Aggies of religion. That in itself is not enough to damn them, but it does sort of set them apart. Part of my problem with Baptists stems from the fact that I grew up in the Church of Christ (Romans 16:16). As you may know, Church of Christ people believe the circle of the saved is rather small and not many of them would care to sound too certain about their place in it. Baptists, on the other hand, never seem to tire of telling how sure they are they are saved and how good this blessed assurance feels. I thought their "once saved, always saved" doctrine of salvation was unsound—too easy; cheap grace; why, that would mean you could do anything you wanted to—but at least they had some doctrine, which was more than you could say for the Methodists, and at least we all agreed that nothing could send you to Hell faster than kissing the Pope's toe. No, the main problem wasn't doctrine. It was style. No matter what I believed, I could no more have been a Baptist when I was growing up than I could spend every Thursday night at the bowling alley or wear a seafoam-green leisure suit today.
For one thing, Baptists were so organized about inviting people to church. Once I was in the barbershop getting my weekly haircut when Mr. Joy Tilley, who was a big Baptist—I think it says something that the counterpart of "staunch Presbyterian," "devout Catholic," and "pillar in the Methodist Church" is "big Baptist"—stuck his head in and invited the barber to come sit in his pew at a revival then in progress. That astonished me. We had a few elderly members who sort of had squatter's rights to pews they had occupied for years, but we would never have dreamed of assigning somebody a particular pew and then sending them out to drum up people to pack it.
The contrast carried over to the revivals themselves. The mark of a successful Church of Christ revivalist was his ability to drive the nail of terror into slumbering souls. Though some Baptist revivalists made use of hellfire and brimstone, I always felt that the mark of a successful Baptist preacher was his ability to make you laugh and feel good. That didn't seem much like religion to me.
This difference was further reflected in the Sunday schools, where we gave our classes sensible, functional names— "Preschool," "Elementary," "Junior High," and "Young People"—and encouraged attendance by quoting scriptures, especially Hebrews 10:25 ("For-sake not the assembling of yourselves together"), and threatening slackers with hellfire. Baptists called their classes things like "Sunbeams" and "Pioneers" and "Aviators" and drew crowds by having the youth minister bounce over the church bus from a trampoline.
I used to marvel at what they would do to appeal to young people. Our high school assembly programs fell into two primary categories: magicians, myna birds, and trick-shot artists sent out from the Southern School Assemblies organization and—this was before Ms. O'Hair took God out of the schools—preachers holding revivals over at the Baptist church. They would juggle and tell a few jokes and then talk to us earnestly about taking care of our bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 6:19). Once a revival team from Baylor entertained us with several hymns and gospel tunes arranged for trumpet trio. Then the leader, a young man with the unforgettable name of Horace Oliver Bilderback, placed a trombone mouthpiece in his trumpet and played "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning" while one of his fellow clerics moved an imaginary trombone slide out in front. That, to me, was the pure essence of the Southern Baptist Church.
At times, to be sure, I envied my Baptist friends and made some effort to be one of them. I went to the Baptist Vacation Bible School several years and made bookends and potholders and whatnot shelves, and did right well at a Bible game called Sword Drill—"Attention! Draw swords! (No thumbs over the edges, now.) John 3:16! Charge!"—and I thought it was keen that their pastor, Brother Rose, illustrated his devotional lessons with magic tricks and showed us slides of his trip to the Holy Land. Once, I joined the Royal Ambassadors (and got elected Ambassador-in-Chief) just to have a chance to go to the summer encampment at Alta Frio, but I lost my nerve before the bus left and stayed home. Later, I longed to go on hayrides and swimming parties with the Training Union and even wished I could go into San Antonio and hear Angel Martinez preach in a white suit. But it was just no use. I was like a lonely traveler watching a group of Shriners cutting up in a hotel lobby: it might be fun for a day or two to wear a fez and ride a little motor scooter down Main Street, but you wouldn't want to go home and still have to be one.
Before all the Baptists walk out on me, I have a confession to make. About four or five years ago, I became sort of a Baptist myself. After spending the better part of the sixties studying religion at Harvard, I grew a bit weak on matters of doctrine and decided I would do more harm than good by sticking with the Church of Christ. When I came back to Texas, I cast around a bit and finally wound up at a church which I suppose could be described as liberal and ecumenical, though even now I find it difficult to identify myself as a theological liberal, so strongly was I taught to believe that few states of being are more pernicious. Still, at least half the people in this church grew up as Baptists, a good handful of them are former Baptist preachers, and even though the Union Baptist Association of Houston threw them out for accepting members from other denominations without rebaptizing them, they still persist in calling themselves Baptists. I have had some trouble with it. I am embarrassed when they look at me in amazement because I have never heard of Lottie Moon, and I get a little squirmy when they sing "Do Lord" at the annual retreat up in the woods, and I admit it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference to me whether Baylor wins or loses a football game. Still, we don't have revivals and if we did we wouldn't have trumpets or trombones or jugglers, and nobody checks to see why you haven't been coming to Sunday school and, as far as I can tell, nobody much cares about the details of your belief, so long as you are kind and try to help folk when they need it. It doesn't have anything like the zip of a straight-out evangelical church, but ex-Fundamentalists are some of the best people you'll find anywhere, so I expect I'll keep my letter in a while longer. Besides, if Good News Texas works, we may all be Baptists by summer.
Baptists, of course, have always been aggressive. They sought "A Million More in Fifty-Four" and they have sponsored Billy Graham Crusades and hold "Win Clinics" to instruct people in the techniques of personal evangelism. But this is bigger, better, grander than anything they have ever done before.
My immersion in the project came in Dallas at a regional meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT). The Good News Texas portion of the program was co-chaired by Drs. L. L. Morriss and Lloyd Elder. Morriss, with his smooth gray hair, metal glasses, and high-quality fall woolens, could easily pass for a corporation executive. His speech and manner befit his appearance—one senses he does little by accident. Lloyd Elder's obvious intelligence, warmth, and gentle wit are engaging, but his slightly more rumpled look and apparent unconcern for slickness make it easier to believe he is a seminary professor or church executive.
Morriss declared he was as excited as "an auctioneer at an auction of used furniture," a metaphor I thought fell somewhat short of the mark. He was excited, he said, about what God had done for Texas in the past and about what He is doing now. He introduced Elder, who was also excited. Good News Texas, Elder said, would have three major targets: (1) the 4.7 million Texans—one third of the state's population—who do not belong to any Christian group, persons "who are completely uninvolved in the things of Christ," (2) inactive and apathetic church members, including 700,000 Baptists, and (3) the active membership of local Baptist churches. He summarized what the Bloom Agency had done so far and sketched out the main lines the media campaign would follow. Then he reminded the assembly that Good News Texas "is not a goodwill campaign for the convention. It is not church advertising. It is going with the best product we have, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ." Elder then called on Dr. Jimmy Allen, the pastor of San Antonio's First Baptist Church. Alien is a big man who wears his graying hair rather long for a Baptist preacher and gives off an unmistakable impression of high energy. Working from a few notes scribbled on the back of an envelope, he spoke of "the rhythm in the way God moves in His world, in the tide, in our heartbeat, in the very energy levels of our lives." "There are times," he said, "when God moves in great force and power in our lives, and then there are times of wandering in the wilderness when we begin to appreciate the fact that we cannot live in ecstasy all the time. There must be a hunger before there is filling. There must be thirst before there can be a slaking of thirst. I am convinced we are at the edge of a spiritual awakening in our nation and that some of us are in places where we can already sense the tide of God coming in."
Allen noted that Newsweek had carried Charles Colson's testimonial, that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had printed an editorial that told how to be saved, and that CBS had interviewed members of his church for an hour-long documentary on the meaning of salvation. He went on for about twenty minutes, talking about how much we needed revival and how much he hoped God might choose Baptists to be part of the central apparatus by which He moved. Then, in a hushed voice that visibly moved the audience with its intensity, he concluded: "I find myself saying, 'God, could this be the time? Lord, could you be ready now? Is it something that will take our breath away?' I find myself saying, 'O Lord, let it be good news, not just for Texas, not just for Texas Baptists, but for a nation and a world that desperately needs to find out that, indeed, there is good news.' "
Later that afternoon, I sat down with Morriss, Elder, and BGCT executive director Dr. James Landes. Though he was quick to note he is a chemical engineer by training, Dr. Landes' beneficent countenance and rather sermonic manner make it clear he has been around a lot of preachers.
"The rationale of Good News Texas," Landes said, "is the commandment 'Go ye into all the world.' I have seen the heartbreaking conditions so many people are experiencing throughout this state. I had no alternative but to study how to spread the message that there are people in the world who care, who are interested in persons just because they are human beings, regardless of race or color or creed, and that the reason these people care is because they believe God is, and Christ is, and the Scriptures are a mirror of Christ's mind. I realized also that many of our leaders were reaching out for some undergirding arm that could strengthen and help them in their ministry in the local church. So, as I thought and prayed and did a bit of meditating in between fly fishing on the riverbanks of Colorado, I said, 'Lord, if this great big denomination with two million people and forty-two hundred churches and missions will make up its mind to do one thing across a period of a couple of years, there is no telling what good could come of that.' And I thought if we could just plant a seed, maybe it could grow, maybe it could bless a whole state and the nation. I shared that dream with my associates here on the administrative staff and they asked me to share it with the executive board. I came away somewhat shocked but deeply gratified, because men who do not normally react enthusiastically to another evangelistic thrust got to their feet and said, 'This sounds different, get with it!' "
As we talked, Landes and his colleagues echoed what Jimmy Allen had said about the soon-coming revival. Exciting things are happening among our laymen, they said. Signs of awakening are blowing across our nation. But if revival was coming with or without their help, as they seemed to be saying, why didn't Baptists take their $1.5 million and spend it some other way? "Somebody has to be the agent," Landes replied. "God always works through an Abraham, a Moses, an Isaac, a Joseph, a John the Baptist. He doesn't work without working through people. If Texas Baptists have the favorable image the research for this project shows we have, then we've got a responsibility commensurate with it. If God wants to use us, we have a responsibility to be available."
I brought up something that had struck me from the moment I saw the first piece of promotional literature about Good News Texas. The logo for the campaign is the Christian fish symbol, with the state of Texas stuffed inside it like Jonah. To accommodate both Amarillo and Laredo, the fish is drawn a bit fat, so that it looks something like a football with a tail or perhaps a Gospel Blimp. Several years ago a mild satire, widely circulated in evangelical circles, described the misadventures of a Christian group that hired a blimp to broadcast sermons and drop leaflets on the hapless community below. Though it attracted great attention, the townspeople were irritated and offended, and the initial spirit and purpose of the enterprise were lost and perverted. I was curious about whether these men had considered the possibility that Good News Texas might be a Baptist version of the Gospel Blimp.
Elder was aware of the perils. "If we just saturated the media with the gospel message," he said, "and expected something to happen automatically, that would be the Gospel Blimp approach. Just pay your money and send up the blimp. But we are making a real effort to keep that from happening. We are trying to equip ministers and lay people in the local churches to be witnesses, so that they don't just let the blimp fly over, but can knock on doors and present the gospel to people as caring, sharing neighbors."
Jimmy Allen had said Baptists would need to remember that "when God comes to town, He doesn't always stay in our house. He moves where He chooses to move and leaps over all kinds of barriers." How would they feel if the Methodists or Presbyterians or Church of Christ picked up some new members on Baptist nickels? The prospect did not seem to dismay them. They were, in fact, informing other denominations in the state about their plans so that if the awakening comes, they can also be ready for it. There is, of course, some confidence that their 4200 outlets will give Baptists a healthy share of whatever market develops.
This ecumenical talk emboldened me to raise a point I regarded as of at least mild interest. Why had they chosen the Bloom Agency? Granted, it was recognized as one of the best agencies in the country and its Dallas location provided the advantage of close and frequent contact, but was there no sense of incongruity in hiring a Jewish-owned agency to conceive and produce an evangelistic campaign for Southern Baptists? Apparently not. The Baptists chose their agency the same way Procter and Gamble or Exxon might, with a steering committee of seventeen people and a much larger consultation group from across the state which heard presentations by a number of respected firms.
"Bob Bloom is a good salesman," said James Landes. "When he was through, I heard a Baptist preacher from East Texas say, 'I don't need to hear anybody else. The man knows where he is going.' When that group voted, they did so with a great feeling of confidence in the ability and desire of the Bloom Agency to help us do what we wanted to do. It was almost unanimous. It was an overwhelming decision." Landes admitted to some early personal reservations but insisted things had worked out "more beautifully and fantastically than we had expected." Then he suggested I check out the backgrounds of the men at the agency with primary responsibility for the account.
The Bloom Agency occupies several floors of the Zale Building, which sits alongside Stemmons Freeway like a giant homemaker's misplaced toaster. Instead of the customary rooms and hallways, the agency uses "action offices," work spaces defined by movable partitions about five and a half feet high which can be shaped to fit needs that change with each new client or campaign. Flexible white hoses bring electrical and telephonic nourishment to each of the modules, so that one can tote up the number of offices currently in use by counting the accordion-pleated umbilici. The occupants of these spaces decorate them as if they are planning to stay for years, so I presume one has a fair chance of hanging onto one's own partitions, but I was told reshuffling is not uncommon.
The furnishings run heavily to chrome, glass, and plastic, with plenty of plants and bright colors. Most of the offices are densely decorated in pop-artifactual chic, with tapestries and macramé hangings and inspirational posters framed in Lucite and fire-alarm boxes and street signs and—everywhere—reminders and remnants of past campaigns. Shelves in the reception area hold symbols of the agency's various clients: Bekins, Southwest Airlines, Owens Sausage, Amalie Motor Oil, Rainbo Bread, Lubriderm Cream, Whataburger, and a score of others. I looked in vain for a New Testament or a Broadman Hymnal, but I guess the display had not yet been brought that far up to date.
Bob Bloom showed me around and talked about the Baptist account. "We are in the consumer advertising business," he explained. "Our job is to communicate with the general public and get a response from them. That is what we do best. We try to generate retail purchases, to get people to buy motor oil, or a home, or seats on an airplane. We have never been involved in anything like this before, but the thing that stimulated us was the feeling that the BGCT could give us what we want in a partnership role, a sharing of responsibilities as opposed simply to doing what we tell them. They know how to listen, how to guide, how to tell us when we are off base, and they know how to stroke, so we are pleased to have the association from that standpoint. I was impressed that they could not only accept but embrace aspects of our craft that we have difficulty getting business people, including some Harvard MBAs, to accept."
How did he account for this? "I'm not really sure," Bloom said. "I guess they are just smart. I had expected a sharp drop-off in intelligence between the leaders of the organization and the men in lower positions. In a business organization like a bank, for example, once you get past the president and a few directors to some of the department heads, you find some terrible prejudices about certain things, a lack of understanding about advertising and research, and an unwillingness to bend. I expected that with the Baptists, but frankly, I found a lot of sharp men at all levels. And they are very flexible. When we got out with the pastors, I expected to confront some prejudice, both from my being Jewish and in their willingness to marry our craft with their pulpit responsibilities. I just didn't find any of that. I found a high degree of comprehension when we went through the various alternatives with them. I kind of expected someone to get up and make an appeal to 'throw all that stuff away and just give people the simple gospel.' It didn't happen. They had smart, agile minds and they really embraced what we were trying to do. If I could get forty rabbis together to do that, I would be terribly surprised. They are also very sincere about the undertaking. It is great to have a client who believes in what he is doing, as opposed to someone who is just grinding out a product."
Did he have any misgivings about mounting a campaign whose basic premise he, as a Jew, did not believe? "I never felt any real sensitivity on that issue, except in regard to the terminology, which was very alien to me. Once I became confident they were willing to accept me as a spokesman for the agency and as a craftsman with some expertise, I became very comfortable with it. My role has been much the same as with any client. I feel I am particularly good at organizational work and strategic thinking. I am not concerned with the technological aspects of a motor oil—what it will or won't do for an engine—and I can't comment on the religious aspects of this project. What I am interested in is how we can communicate the selling points to the customer."
Bob introduced me to his father, Sam Bloom, the agency's founder, who professed an interest in the project that went beyond craftsmanship. He was concerned "about both the standards and ethics which appear to be declining in politics and business." The Baptists, he thought, were on the right track on these matters. Their willingness to lay $1.5 million on the line to bolster the ethics and morality of the state was a courageous act and he was "terribly enthused" to have a part in it.
I visited with most of the key personnel working on the account in the agency's new think tank, a tiered and carpeted room with no furniture except for ashtrays and huge pillows covered in plaid, madras, batik, and Marimekko. A tray on one of the lower tiers held coffee, Styrofoam cups, little packets of Cremora, Imperial Sugar, Sweet 'n Low, and a box of those red-and-white plastic sticks that are too skinny to stir anything. On the assumption, I presume, that ideas generated in the room would be too dramatic to jot down on 3×5 cards with a ball-point pen, jumbo pads of paper and Magic Markers lay within easy reach. While a person in Faded Glory jeans with stars on the pockets went out to get Frescas and Tabs and Cokes for the non-coffee drinkers, we took our positions, shifted around a bit to look properly relaxed, and began to talk.
Dick Yob, research director for the project, explained that "the days of doing what we think will work are becoming extinct because of the amount of money that is involved. We have to go out and find what really does communicate. Our approach has been to come at this like we would any package goods account, since that is basically what we know how to do." The first step had been to see what problems were bothering Texans these days. To accomplish this, Yob hired the Dallas marketing research firm of Louis, Bowles and Grove, Inc., to show a list of problems to approximately 300 Dallas and Austin citizens—divided evenly between active Baptists, inactive Christians, and non-Christians—and ask which most accurately mirrored their own feelings and which were the problems they heard other people discuss. On both counts, all three groups ranked hypocrisy as the number one problem, by agreeing with such statements as "It's getting harder to trust anybody or anything" and "People are not what they pretend to be. They say one thing and do another."
Survey participants were then offered three possible solutions: (1) reading the Bible, (2) joining a group of active Christians, and (3) entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and following his teachings. All three groups agreed that of the three answers, Christ was the best—though only 27 per cent of the inactive Christians and 14 per cent of the non-Christians actually felt it was an appropriate solution for them. More than two-thirds of the non-Christians chose none of the three options. In short, despite evidence of considerable spiritual and emotional malaise among backslidden and secular Texans, the field appeared to be something less than white unto harvest. Still, the Baptists and the agency agreed that a personal relation with Jesus was the most commercial of the products they had to offer. The next step was to decide how to package it for wholesale distribution.
At this point, the burden shifted to Bill Hill, the agency's creative director. He did not find the yoke an easy one. What could they say that would communicate effectively to all three target groups? And what vehicle would they use to say it: testimonials? dramatizations? slice-of-life vignettes? cartoons? jingles? During our first conversation, Hill had a discernible case of advertiser's anxiety. "We are trying to avoid coming across as too churchy," he said, "and we want to avoid clichés. The men working with us from BGCT are theologians. When they say 'Christ died for you,' there is a lifetime of knowledge behind it and all sorts of subtleties ripple out of it, but to the people they have singled out as the primary audience—non-Christians—that is a cliche and it may be a turnoff. We want to save the Jesus message to the very end of the TV spots, so we can get people nodding and saying, 'Yes, that is a problem. Yes, I would like to have a solution to that problem.' Then, at the end, we want to say, 'That solution is available to you through Jesus Christ.' We are trying to say, in the simplest form possible, that 'something that happened two thousand years ago is a real force that is relevant to your own individual problems right here and right now. If you are really concerned about your own problems and about what is going on in the world, and you have tried everything else, what have you got to lose?' We are not really trying to say how Christ is the answer, but simply that He is. We may go into how a little more in the other media." The problem of doing justice to the gospel in a brief commercial is tough, Hill admitted: "I keep writing forty-two-second commercials because I just can't boil it all down into thirty seconds. In a thirty-second spot, about all we can say is, 'This aspirin contains more pain relievers than all the others combined.' " Guy Marble outlined the key public relations aspects of the campaign. His main task would be to bombard local churches throughout the state with newsletters, articles, speeches, posters, lapel buttons, and other communiqués to allow them to take full advantage of the media campaign when it hit their area. The agency people and Baptists both agreed that the word would be barren, like seed on stony ground, unless the local churches were ready not only to urge personal evangelism, but also to accept and nurture those who might be converted. As Jim Goodnight, who has overall responsibility for the account, put it, "We are going to give people the opportunity to respond, but when a guy walks in the back door of a Baptist church some Sunday morning to find what he has been looking for—what happens then will be up to the members of that church. If they are not ready for people who may not share any of their values, then it won't work. If they are ready to accept people 'just as I am,' I believe there will be a tremendous awakening of visible growth in both numbers and spirit." Another promotion task will be to make sure the local churches understand the strategy that will govern the campaign. "When we buy time for these commercials," Goodnight explained, "we are not going to be buying the Sunday Morning Revival Hour. We are going to be buying Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and All in the Family and Sonny and Cher. You can anticipate the kinds of reactions thousands and thousands of Texas Baptists are going to have—'What are we doing supporting that kind of program?' Of course, our purpose is not to support the program. It's where we have to go to reach the people we want to reach."
Despite the frequent comparison of selling the gospel to selling aspirin or motor oil, it seemed clear these men were taking the matter more seriously than that. I recalled what Dr. Landes had said about checking their backgrounds, so I asked each of them to characterize his religious position. The agency didn't exactly turn out to be a collection of Madison Avenue cynics. Dick Yob is a graduate of Catholic University at Marquette, sends his oldest son to parochial school, and is active in the Church. Bill Hill is the son of a Baptist preacher in Amarillo but became so disillusioned with evangelical Christianity by the time he reached high school that for several years he dabbled in Zen, studied Rosicrucian literature, and considered going to live with the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Instead, he got married and became an Episcopalian. For the past seven years, he has participated in a Bible class taught by conservative Biblicist Mai Couch, a graduate of fundamentalist Dallas Theological Seminary who specializes in the interpretation of Biblical prophecy. Public relations advisor Guy Marble describes himself as "a lapsed Methodist," but his colleague Frank Demarest is a member of the Northwest Bible Church in Dallas (also aligned with the Dallas Theological Seminary) and admits he stands a bit to the right of Southern Baptists in his theology. Jim Goodnight grew up in the Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas but switched to the Church of Christ after he married the granddaughter of G. H. P. Showalter, a Church of Christ patriarch and former editor of one of its most conservative papers, the Firm Foundation. Though he locates himself in "the liberal, ecumenical wing of the Church of Christ" (a figure of speech like "virile impotence"), he is still active in the Preston Crest congregation in Dallas and has taught classes in C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, hardly a radical treatise.
These men, it turns out, are not the only Christians in the Bloom Agency. "You would be amazed," Goodnight said, "at the number of people within the agency who wanted to work on this account. Not only have a number of these closet Christians surfaced, but about twenty-five of them now meet each Wednesday at noon to pray and share our concerns and testimonials." "It's really neat," Demarest said. "All our working lives we have had this separation between our Christian faith and what we do on our jobs. For me, this is the first time to bring the two together."
"There is a terrible intensity among the people on the team," Hill said. "This is not just another piece of package goods. This is something that is going to affect people's lives. I really feel what I am doing. I keep thinking, 'We are going to save Texas!' and that gets to be a bit of a hang-up and causes a mental block." Another problem Goodnight observed is that "each of us gets his own theology and beliefs, his own personal slant woven into it. One of the hardest things to do in any advertising is to wash yourself out of it and consider only the people you are trying to write for and what their needs are."
"With most products," Yob pointed out, "you are selling to people who are already users. It is a matter of getting them to switch brands or buy more of your product. But in this campaign, non-users are the number one target."
That afternoon I attended a meeting between members of the Bloom team and key staff members at the Baptist Building. Mainly, they were catching each other up on how things were going in their sections of the ball park. Jim Goodnight read the strategy statement that had emerged from their research. "What we are trying to do," he said, "is communicate to people that the frustrations they experience with the hypocrisy and lack of integrity in today's world is the result of misplaced priorities, and that the solution is to place their trust in Jesus Christ who will never fail them, rather than on the imperfect things of the world." The Baptists liked that a lot.
Demarest, Marble, and Mary Colias Carter reviewed PR plans. A steady stream of articles would appear in the Baptist Standard to "soften up the terrain," and a piece would appear in the next issue of the Helper, BGCT's women's magazine. Pastors would be supplied with information they could use to raise money for the program. Every church would receive material explaining the nature and scope of the project. Marble reported that he and his associates had done "much agonizing posterwise," but promised the first in a series of posters would be ready in "six weeks max."
They also talked a bit about honorary chairmen. Billy Graham had agreed to serve as national honorary chairman, but both the Baptists and the Bloom representatives wanted to make sure the campaign did not become a Graham affair. "We are not going to be able to use him much in a public way," Marble said. "If he is flying from coast to coast, we may be able to get him to stop off at DFW airport for a press conference and say how great Good News Texas is. We can do little things like that without much financial or time commitment, but that will be about the extent of it. Right now, we just want to get half a day with him at his place in North Carolina to produce several short items that could be used to stir up enthusiasm in the local churches." In addition to Graham, two state chairmen would be chosen—people who could generate prestige and interest in Jesus just by their association with the campaign. After all, one Baptist executive observed, "Public relations is the name of the game."
Over the next several weeks, Bill Hill and his associates developed four protocommercials in "animatic" form—a series of still drawings with voice-overs rather than the live action or true animation that would be used in the final product. Each of the four took a different slant and would be tested to see which, if any, might appeal most to the Texas contingent of a lost and dying world. If none clicked, it would be, quite literally, back to the drawing board. If one seemed clearly better than the others, it would become the model for the actual spots to be used in the campaign. On three successive evenings in early October, representatives of Louis, Bowles and Grove showed the spots to "focus groups" drawn from the three target populations. Active Baptists met the first night in three churches scattered around Dallas.
I am not supposed to identify either the church or the people I observed, so I won't, but I promise you it was a real Baptist church, with a poster thermometer in the foyer that showed how the fund drive was going.
Judy Briggs, a market researcher for Louis, Bowles and Grove, told the group they were to give their reactions to some commercials being prepared for television. She did not say they were Baptist commercials or mention Good News Texas. She then showed the commercials on a videotape machine and asked the group to fill out a questionnaire after they viewed each one.
The first commercial, identified as "Promises," offered shots of politicians, automobile dealers, and various businessmen making familiar promises—"You've got my word on it." "It's a sure thing." "You can depend on it." It ended with a note to the effect that Jesus is the only one whose promises can be trusted and "Isn't it time we listened?" The positive responses to "Promises" indicated the Christians held a disillusioned view of humanity: "Everybody is trying to put something over on us." "People will let you down, but if you trust in God, He won't let you down." "You have to put your faith in the Lord and not in other people." I got the message, but I felt sad, and the stark ceiling light illumined other, almost forgotten rooms in my soul, rooms not furnished with warm and reassuring memories, rooms abandoned because the heat had been shut off and the broken panes let in too much damp and cold.
The next example showed a man arising to the sound of a strident alarm and struggling to meet the day as he listened to the depressing litany of the morning news. Then a voice-over announcer asked, "Wouldn't it be a change to wake up one morning without anxiety over what the day might bring? To know that whatever the world throws at you, you'll make it? If that kind of change would be welcome, then get with the one person who can do the changing—Jesus Christ. For a change." This, too, seemed to confirm the experience of the group: "We can't depend on the news being good," they said, "but if we have Jesus Christ with us, it makes no difference. You have to have Him because what problems can you face without Christ?"
The third effort did not lend itself so easily to clichéd response. In this one, a black man told of how he had been a revolutionary, seeking social change by whatever means seemed expedient. But not long ago, he said, he had run across another revolutionary and it had changed his life completely. He can change yours, too, the man promised. Then he said, "My name is Eldridge Cleaver. I'm Living Proof."
Bill Hill had told me one of the commercials would be a testimonial, and I would not have been surprised to have seen Charles Colson or Johnny Cash telling about what God had wrought in their lives. I try to keep up with the box scores on notable conversions, but I had somehow missed the news that the icy soul of Eldridge Cleaver had been warmed with fire from above. I was impressed that Texas Baptists would consider pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into publicizing the testimony of a man who might still be regarded with skepticism and caution by some of his new white brothers. And I was especially curious about how the members of this largely working-class church might react.
I studied the lone black member of the group, a man about 45. Was he an Uncle Tom who would fear that the sight and sound of this panther in lamb's clothing might stir resentment left over from the sixties and jeopardize his perhaps lately won and still tenuous place in a predominantly white congregation? Would he say of Cleaver, as Peter had said of Christ, "I never knew him"? No, he wouldn't. "This is very beautiful," he said. "It comes from a controversial person a lot of us can identify with. We know Eldridge Cleaver was searching for something he could not find in the world, but only in Jesus Christ. I had much the same problems in my life at one time. It was very hard for me to accept certain things, but now I am able to face these things and accept them." That is not exactly revolution, but it isn't "white folks always been nice to me" either.
A middle-aged woman who had taken much longer than anyone else to fill out her questionnaire spoke next. I sensed she was about to vent a little of the racist spleen we often associate with working-class fundamentalists.
"This was also my favorite," she said. "It shows that Christ is a Man for all men. He is not a white man's savior or a black man's savior or a Jew's savior. He is for everyone. I think every minority feels pressures and I think there are times in everybody's life when they feel like they are a minority, even though nobody else may look upon them that way. When you are low man on the totem pole in your office and everybody says, 'You do this' and 'You do that,' and it seems like you do everything for everybody, then you can identify with the feeling of being a little bit left out."
The final commercial depicted a child learning to ice skate with the loving help of a parent-figure in a unisex outfit like the Olympic speed skaters wear. The narrator told how important it is to have someone you can depend on when the going gets a bit hazardous and concluded with the slogan, "Learn to live with Jesus Christ." I liked it best of the four. Its symbolism was aesthetically appealing and I liked the way it avoided both the negative connotations about human nature (though I am not especially sanguine about the natural goodness of our kind) and the spurious overgeneralization implicit in any case based on a single testimony. The nine focus groups agreed more strongly than on any other point that "Ice Rink" was clearly the poorest of the four commercials. "It was boring," they said. "It just beat around the bush and didn't really say anything." "I can't ice skate, so I don't identify with that one at all." "A waste of film." I decided not to become a consultant on mass evangelism.
Ms. Briggs asked who they thought might sponsor commercials like these. Oh, the Catholics or SMU or maybe the Dallas Council of Churches. Not one named the Baptists. Baptists have W. A. Criswell; they don't need Eldridge Cleaver.
The meetings with the Baptist groups were designed to see if any of the commercials were likely to run into the kind of opposition that might make funding or other forms of cooperation difficult. But the real test, everyone agreed, would be with those who described themselves as nominal or inactive Christians and those who openly acknowledged they were not religious in any conventional sense. A pool of such people had been obtained by distributing questionnaires in Dallas office buildings; groups representing both sexes and a broad range of ages had been selected from this pool. In keeping with the piety of the groups, we met at a neutral site, the Marriott Inn. Curtiss Grove, a partner in Louis, Bowles and Grove, was moderator for the evening. As we waited for people to assemble, he lamented having to pass up a cocktail party down the hall.
The group looked pretty representative of backsliders I have known: a workingman in his thirties; an overweight balding man who talked knowledgeably about the video equipment; a tall, thin older man who wore a tie with a leisure suit and looked as though he smoked a lot and was perhaps familiar with the taste of liquor; a woman who was pretty in the way that Southwest Airlines stewardesses are pretty, and a thin, serious man who appeared to be with her; a young woman about twenty who wore blue eye shadow and orthodontic braces; a neat woman in her thirties who looked like she was probably in charge of several people where she worked and had a reputation for getting things done on time; one of those ubiquitous, interchangeable young men with a moustache and styled hair and a preference for shiny shirts with sailboats or jockeys on them; a foxy brunette in a suede jacket and lots of bracelets and rings and dark fingernail polish who seemed a poor conversion prospect; and several others I knew then I wouldn't be able to remember. For the most part, they represented a bit higher socioeconomic status than the Baptists I had visited the night before.
Grove is good at his job and easily elicited comments from the group. Interestingly, their reactions were not remarkably different from those of the active Baptists, except that none of them rated the Cleaver commercial highest and four of the twelve designated it their least favorite. (As it turned out, this response was something of an anomaly; the other two groups meeting at the same time felt strongly that the Cleaver spot was the best.) When asked what the commercial sought to accomplish, one man guessed it was trying to stir up pity for Cleaver. Another thought it too controversial even for minority-group people and felt its appeal would be limited to revolutionaries or people "with awful problems."
Each of the other spots got three or four votes as the best of the lot, but what one felt was pungent, another would judge pedantic. The 28-year-old in the shiny shirt said he didn't think any was much better than the others, since they were all about God and the church. A young man about nineteen seemed rather bemused by the whole business, as though he thought his sainted mother had somehow arranged to get him invited to a subtle soulwinning campaign, maybe even paid his way. But all things considered, I think this group uttered more pious clichés than the dedicated Baptists. Since they did not know they had been chosen because of their shared lukewarmness, they seemed to feel some need to let their colleagues know they were believers. In spite of what may have been a bit of overcompensation, however, I sensed almost none of the assurance I had seen and heard the night before. Several people got sad looks on their faces and lit up cigarettes. I believe they were pretty serious about it all. I had agreed not to ask any questions and I may have misread their reaction, but I had not expected what I sensed and it seemed unmistakable. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the older man in the leisure suit had started going back to church with his wife.
As before, almost no one perceived the commercials as Baptist in origin. The President's Council on Physical Fitness, the Cerebral Palsy Association, an ice rink, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Channel 39, and Sominex all seemed as likely as the Southern Baptists to sponsor such spots.
On the third night, self-designated unbelievers viewed the spots. This was the crucial test, the people at whom the main thrust of the campaign was aimed, but their preferences turned out to differ little from their more pious predecessors. Neither "Morning News" nor "Promises" struck a responsive chord. One man who at first thought "Morning News" was touting CBS news was irritated when it proved to have a religious theme. Another picked up the religious slant earlier but just thought, "Here we go again." A woman complained that "it doesn't tell me what to do with my problems, except give them to someone else. A little information about how Jesus is going to handle my problems would be helpful."
"Promises" caused even stronger negative reactions—one woman characterized it as "hateful" and said, "It made me want to lock myself in a room and shoot anybody that makes promises"—and "Ice Rink" once again came in as the unanimous last choice. One woman described it as "childish the way they wanted you to put yourself in Jesus' hands with no mention of adult choices." Another took issue with the whole ice-skating metaphor; she didn't feel at all like an ice skater, but rather "a yo-yo, every day I feel like a yo-yo." A man about thirty said he felt a better metaphor would be someone playing poker, or perhaps even solitaire. I doubt seriously the Southern Baptists will pick up on that.
Once again the Cleaver commercial was picked as the best—unanimously by one caucus. A man who freely called himself an agnostic said, "I know what Cleaver's life has been, and if this guy says he can pull it out with Christ, well, I may think there is something to it." He admitted to some doubts whether Cleaver might just be trying to escape a prison sentence by publicly embracing religion, but rejected them: "I have not agreed with Cleaver in the past, but I have respected his integrity." Others did question Cleaver's sincerity, but what carried the day was the feeling that "it gave me a choice. It told me what his opinion was, but it didn't say, 'You take my opinion, buddy, because it is good for you too.' "
The success of the Cleaver spot naturally raised the question of whose testimonials people could accept. The subject shouldn't be an ordinary person, someone from the viewer's own neighborhood ("I would figure someone was just trying to get on television and get some publicity"); it certainly shouldn't be Richard Nixon or Patty Hearst ("It is still too close. With Cleaver you can almost feel the guy has paid his debt and now has a whole new slant on life"). The ideal person, one man thought, would be a noncriminal figure who still had room for notable repentance—the two names mentioned were Billy Graham and Earl Scheib, the $29.95 auto paint job man.
Interestingly, the non-Christians had no difficulty accepting the idea that Southern Baptists might be behind the commercials. The use of testimonials seemed "more Baptist" than any of the other approaches, even though Eldridge Cleaver seemed like an unlikely star. One woman suggested that if Baptists were indeed the sponsors, they would do well to hide the fact, since "many people are turned off by their extremist actions."
If the consultants were looking for useful criticism, the non-Christians gave them plenty of that, but if they were looking for some signs that Good News Texas was going to send unbelievers flocking to church, the meeting provided little basis for hope. One man quickly deduced that his group contained no practicing Christians and said, "I think people like us tend to rely on ourselves rather than look outside for some kind of placebo. I don't care whether people believe in Jesus or Muhammad or Darrell Royal; just because they believe it and get out and preach it doesn't mean it's true. I just don't buy the idea that you can blindly put your faith and trust in any person, including Jesus."
The bad news for Good News Texas was that the non-Christians didn't like the whole idea of religious commercials. "I am turned off by commercials of this sort," said one. "It cheapens religion to sell it like toothpaste." "There is nothing in these commercials that appeals to me in any way or makes me feel I should investigate Christianity," another said. They make it sound like Jesus is going to open up a used-car lot." But one man who also had a negative reaction to selling Jesus on TV conceded that "television is such a powerful communications medium that if they use it right, it can help. There are some people whose only way of touching anything outside their home is television."
It is Bloom's job, then, to see that TV is used right. The hope that any single commercial might provide Baptists with an offer lost Texans could not refuse seemed pretty well dashed. Still, the response to news that the sins of the apostle of Black Power had been washed white as snow had proven sufficiently promising to convince Bloom and the BGCT that testimonials were the route to take. At the state convention in San Antonio two weeks later, L. L. Morriss proclaimed that the theme of Good News Texas would be "Living Proof" and would concentrate on "presenting the testimony of people who have experienced the saving grace of our Lord." Dr. Landes announced that Baylor football coach Grant Teaff and actress Jeannette Clift George had agreed to serve as honorary co-chairmen and played a tape from Billy Graham, who said the world was hungry for good news and he was pleased to have a part in the boldest evangelistic venture in the history of Texas Baptists.
By the first of December, some of the top converts in the country had been lined up to add their testimony to Cleaver's. There had been minor problems. Some Christian entertainers had been discouraged from participating by their agents, who feared it might hurt their image with the public. Others had been screened out when their faith was adjudged not yet solid enough to guarantee against an embarrassing relapse during the campaign; no one, for example, would want to take a chance on Jerry Lee Lewis if he were suddenly to go into one of his periodic conversion phases. The final list included country singers Jeannie C. Riley and Connie Smith, Mexican musician Paulino Bernal, Consul-General of Honduras Rosargentina Pinel-Cordova, Houston Oiler Billy "White Shoes" Johnson, and Allan Mayer of Oscar Mayer and Company. A couple of big ones had gotten away. For some reason, Charles Colson had backed out and had to be replaced by Dean Jones, and a former Hell's Angel who conducts a bike ministry on the West Coast didn't leave a forwarding address when he set out on his latest missionary journey. But all the others were ready to go and film crews were heading for Nashville and L.A. to record their stories. We'll see the results soon.
As I wait, I am aware of poignant feelings. I have watched and listened as good, sincere, intelligent men and women groped for a way of making that which stands at the center of their lives plausible and attractive to those who live outside the sacred canopy. Perhaps it will work. I think I could accept that in good grace. I generally feel pretty comfortable around people who take their religion seriously, especially if it is one of the leading brands. But I confess I do not believe historians will remember 1977 as the year the Great Awakening came to Texas. I expect Baptist churches may be stirred up considerably and some wayward Christians may return home like the prodigal. These are the groups that have always responded best to the call of revival. The main work of evangelism in American history—with, it should be noted, some exceptions—has been to keep believers plugged into their systems. That in itself is a significant accomplishment and may well justify the cost and effort involved. Of course, here and there a real scoundrel or a true skeptic may be turned around and set on the Glory Road, but I expect Good News Texas will come and go without making a great deal of difference in the lives of the 4,700,000 sinners at whom it is primarily aimed. That will no doubt discourage a lot of folks, but maybe it shouldn't. After all, even though He knew how to use a bit of dash and sparkle to draw a crowd, Jesus never got anything like a majority, and if the Word of God is anything to go by, He never expected to (Matthew 7:13-14).
Tags: Longreads, Media, Religion, Screens, Advertising, Baptist, Billy Graham, Bloom Agency, Christian, Church, Commercials, Eldridge Cleaver, Jesus
Jordan Spieth Unveiled His Under Armour Line As Part Of His Bid For Endorsement Domination
The Texas Law Hawk Is The Internet's New Favorite Lawyer
Watch Kevin Durant And J.J. Watt Be Freaking Adorable
Buy a Truck at Benny Boyd in Andrews and Get an AR-15
The Secret Oil Patch Roots of 'Summer Breeze'
By Michael Hall
By Mimi Swartz
The Best Texas Monthly Longform of 2019
Turk Pipkin's Work Is "Christmas Miracle Fiction, and the Miracle Is Love"
By Andy Langer
Miss Girard's Christmas Gift
By Skip Hollandsworth
The Doctor, the Dentist, and the Killer
Infowars Editor Warned Alex Jones That His Sandy Hook Sources Were "Bat Shit Crazy"
Can Bee Stings Treat Lyme Disease?
By Katy Vine


Learn basic knife skills and other tricks for how to cook a quick and nutritious dinner. Chef Tiffany will demonstrate how to chop, dice and slice up vegetables for a delicious homemade broth. We'll be making a delicious and simple ramen for dinner.
The class is free and open to all.
We're all booked! Registration is closed!
Please check out our Cook and Chats scheduled in April and May.
Questions? Contact Indy Li at ili@rwalliance.org or 718-327-5919.


Echium, or the Pride of Madeira plants begin to bloom along the bike trail in Pacific Grove towards the end of winter. I liked this arrangement against the stone wall. Taken with a wide-angle lens on March 19, 2007.


text:
Q: How to check the classpath where Jython ScriptEngine looks for python module? I have this Java code which I am using to run a python script using Jython ScriptEngine:
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
ScriptEngineManager manager = new ScriptEngineManager();
ScriptContext context = new SimpleScriptContext();

context.setWriter(writer);
ScriptEngine engine = manager.getEngineByName("python");
engine.eval(new FileReader("/Users/folder1/test.py"), context);

In my python script there are several module import statements and when I run the Java code I get error as javax.script.ScriptException: ImportError: No module named psycopg2. All the modules are installed in my machine and when I run the python script normally through CLI it executes. So my understanding is that Jython classpath is looking somewhere else for the python modules.
How can I check where does the Jython ScriptEngine looks for modules and then modify it include where actually my python modules are present? I am new to this so please forgive any lack of understanding.
Note: I have CentOS and python 2.7.5 installed on my machine

A: sys.path is a list of strings that specifies where Jython (and Python) searches for modules. You can check its value like so:
engine.eval("import sys; print sys.path");

To add a directory to sys.path, use the JYTHONPATH environment variable. If yourmodule is installed in /path/to/modules/yourmodule, it would look like this:
export JYTHONPATH=/path/to/modules

Another way is to use the python.path property.

Unfortunately, in  the case of psycopg2 the above won't help since that package is a C extension and therefore only compatible with CPython. Perhaps you can use the port of Psycopg for Ctypes instead.

A: An alternative way to add path to folder with custom python libs using ScriptEngine:
engine.eval("import sys; sys.path.append(\"/some/path/to/folder/withpylibs\")");

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Summary: This is a film that should only be seen by masochist cinema goers.
The wedding has been cancelled but the box office hasn't and so comes the release of the first of two collaborations for Affleck and Lopez. After several unsuccessful films and two failed marriages J-Lo needed to pull out a stonking good film and secure a stable relationship to avoid being Jenny from the flops. This film delivers her neither as it would seem her judgement in picking work is equally as dodgy as her ability to find a lasting leading man. Believe all you've heard about Gigli, it is a truly dreadful film.
The plot follows as such: Gigli (Affleck) is a hitman hired to kidnap 'psychologically challenged' Brian (played very convincingly by Justin Bartha), the younger brother of a federal prosecutor who is about to put away a mob boss. The job however becomes long forgotten when Gigli sets his eyes on hitwoman Ricki (Lopez) who has been bought in to watch Gigli on the job. But alas Ricki can never be his as she, shall we say, hits for the other team. And so ensues all manner of cringeworthy scenes and a terrible script.
Unlike other Hollywood bombs before it, such as Showgirls (which had a camp tongue in cheek tone), Gigli is often offensive and stereotypical. Meathead type Gigli is the ringleader in calling Brian a retard and generally abusing the defenceless boy. Disability is an issue seldomly discussed in Hollywood, and to see it used as a point of comedy isn't the exposure it needs. As is also the case with sexuality in the film. According to Lopez's (I'm sure very well-researched) depiction, being a lesbian constitutes wearing several turquoise rings and constantly reading a book. But put the right amount of bone headed testerone in front of any women and down come the defences and out come the seductive yoga moves. In Chasing Amy , another Affleck rom com which threw up similar sexual questions, sexuality is more convincingly dealt with as a mercurial part of the human make up. In Gigli it is merely as an excuse to show that all lesbians need is Ben Affleck.
Shockingly, it's not just the two leads that will be pulling their careers from the box office carnage. Hollywood Class Christopher Walken and Al Pacino both wonder onto the screen in what we can only imagine as a horrible mistake of them being pointed onto the wrong set. Walken in particularly looks very lost and makes a sharp harp exit.
Gigli is a film that will move people. That is off their seats and out of the cinema. Or as also in my experience to talk on their mobile phones. This is a film that should only be seen by masochist cinema goers.


text:
Academic	Urban seminars	Continuance or Rupture? Discussing Lviv's Future in the late 1980s and early 1990s
Continuance or Rupture? Discussing Lviv's Future in the late 1980s and early 1990s
Natalia Otrishchenko
June 2, 2020 / 4.00 pm
Library, Center for Urban History
What kind of the city would we like to inhabit? What language do we use to describe it? Who defines our imagination about the urban future? These were some of the questions related to the history of urban planning. Natalia scaled them to Lviv during the last decade of state socialism and the first years of Ukrainian independence to understand what ideas are still defining urban development and what ideas remained in the past.
During the presentation, the researcher is going to focus on two discussions that are related to the visions of Lviv's urban future. The first one is about the 1993 Lviv master plan – guiding document for urban development and management in the areas of residential and industrial construction, transport, engineering infrastructures, green and recreational zones, protected areas, etc. The second one is about Lviv underground tram construction. Both of them are using the statements about the future, and both are showing how urban expertise was circulating between different locations and institutions. Furthermore, with these two cases, Natalia would like to challenge the discourse of rupture related to 1991. Even though only a master plan seems to be an obvious example, as it was developed during the 1980s, approved in 1993 and guided urban development till 2010, presenter aims to show how the arguments from the discussion around underground tram from the late 1980s persisted as the legacy of socialism and could be easily mobilized nowadays. This research project is part of the international network "Legacies of Communism? Post-Communist Europe from Stagnation to Reform and between Autocracy and Revolution", which is financed by The Leibniz Association and which is coordinated by the Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) Potsdam. For more details, please visit the webpage.
sociologist, research fellow at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. She obtained PhD with a focus on "methodology and methods of sociological research" from the Institute of Sociology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2015). Natalia participated in a number of international research projects: "Region, Nation, and Beyond" (University of St. Gallen, 2012–15), "Memory of Vanished Populations" (Lund University, 2012–14), "Historical Cultures in Transition" (Collegium Civitas, 2017–onwards). Currently, she is working on a post-doc research project, "Urban Experts and Changing Cities: Reshaping Professional Field (1970s–2010s)". Natalia is interested in the methodology of sociological research, oral history, urban sociology, spatial and social transformations during and after the state socialism.
The event has a format of a workshop, with the guest researchers to discuss academic projects and research works on different stages of progress, and of the completed projects prepared for print.
Participation in the Urban Seminar implies reading and discussing the researcher's text. If you wish to join the workshop, please, send an email to Maryana Mazurak (m.mazurak@lvivcenter.org) to receive the materials in advance.
Cover image: TEO of Lviv master plan, 1983. Archive of the Mistoproekt State Institute for Urban Planning

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A video released by the Florida Immigrant Coalition shows two uniformed U.S. Border Patrol agents boarding a Greyhound bus in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and instructing passengers to show proof of citizenship.
The two uniformed U.S. Border Patrol agents clambered aboard a Greyhound bus in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and instructed passengers to show proof of citizenship.
Minutes later, the agents escorted the woman they had been questioning off the bus.
Video of the encounter Friday spread on social media over the last few days, generating fierce criticism from rights advocates who question the legality of such searches.
"Proof of citizenship is NOT required to ride a bus!" the Florida Immigrant Coalition said in a statement when it shared the video on Twitter.
Though immigration inspections on Greyhound buses are not widely publicized, they are not new. Border Patrol agents routinely conduct such inspections at transportation centers across Florida, the Customs and Border Protection's Miami sector said in a statement Tuesday.
Over the years, activists have voiced concern in cities from Miami to Spokane, Wash.
Some activists say that such enforcement actions violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The ACLU of Florida said it was investigating what happened at the Fort Lauderdale bus station. "We are extremely concerned with the contents of this video," it said in a statement.
"Immigration raids yield to unconstitutional practices that can violate the right to equal protection and the Fourth Amendment by coercing vulnerable individuals to submit to interrogations about their citizenship and immigration status, conducting unreasonable searches and seizure and targeting people of color," the statement said.
Customs and Border Protection officials say they are following federal regulations. The Immigration and Nationality Act allows immigration officers to conduct searches, without a warrant, within 100 miles of any U.S. border. The entire state of Florida is within 100 miles of the coast.
With tickets from Orlando to Miami selling from as little as $28, Greyhound is a popular means of travel for many poor, working people, including immigrants. Many do not have driver's licenses.
Border Patrol agents should not be allowed to board private Greyhound buses to question travelers without a judicial warrant, said Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez, membership director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
While Customs and Border Protection officials say such inspections are vital to national security, activists counter that they erode public trust in police, breed fear and threaten public safety.
Sousa-Rodriguez said there was a need for stricter limits and parameters to the 100-mile rule, as well as more accountability and training of officers.
The video, which as of Tuesday afternoon had amassed 2.3 million views since it was posted Saturday, shows two uniformed officers, with "POLICE U.S. BORDER PATROL" emblazoned on the back of their shirts, walking through the bus.
As the video rolls, passengers near the back of the bus lift up their cellphones to shoot videos. Among themselves, some question the agents' right to demand identification.
He then pulls a red suitcase from an overhead bin and instructs her to exit.
The woman was heading to a friend's house in Miami after visiting family in Virginia and meeting her granddaughter for the first time, Sousa-Rodriguez said.
In statement Saturday shared by the coalition, the woman's daughter-in-law said she was concerned about the officers questioning the woman without a lawyer present.
The Border Patrol's Miami sector said Tuesday that agents arrested a Jamaican woman at the Fort Lauderdale bus station. Officials said the woman had overstayed her visa and was transported to the Dania Beach Border Patrol station and then turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
Activists in Florida say they have long heard regular complaints from immigrants using Greyhound, but the number of calls appears to have gone up in recent months.
With mounting criticism of its practice of allowing Border Patrol agents on its buses, Greyhound released a statement saying it was required to follow all local, state and federal laws and cooperate with enforcement agencies.
"We hear you, and we are listening," the statement said. "Unfortunately, even routine transportation checks negatively impact our operations and some customers directly.


Warning: THIS FUNCTION IS DEPRECATED. It will be removed in a future version. Instructions for updating: Please switch to tf.metrics.precision_at_thresholds. Note that the order of the labels and predictions arguments are switched.
The streaming_precision_at_thresholds function creates four local variables, true_positives, true_negatives, false_positives and false_negatives for various values of thresholds. precision[i] is defined as the total weight of values in predictions above thresholds[i] whose corresponding entry in labels is True, divided by the total weight of values in predictions above thresholds[i] (true_positives[i] / (true_positives[i] + false_positives[i])).
metrics_collections: An optional list of collections that precision should be added to.


It is not openly known, but Microsoft got quite a tradition in Download Managers. Just that until now, every single one of them had been for Internal use, Beta Software Testers or Subscribers. That has just changed.
Microsoft Download Manager is a non browser integrated standalone download manager for Windows. At version 1.1 it looks it is optimized to download files that come from Microsoft. It can also download files only from urls starting with http:// . But it is perfectly capable of pausing, resuming files, you can set up the number of consecutive connections it can have (up to 16) and also setup specific parameters for file url retries in the case of a download error.
It should be stated that Microsoft is only offering this passively and without any info or official statements. So that means it is a Beta state even if not indicated. That could also mean it is a app being worked on for integration with something else. The most probable guess being Internet Explorer 9, thing that would make a whole lot of sense given how simple the app is and because until now IE has never being released with a integrated download manager of its own. So i do hope that is the case.
The Microsoft Download Manager while being a basic download manager is still a good enough choice to try along with IE8 or if you simply want to keep track of your download independently of your browser. It works for Windows XP, Vista & 7.


Dr. Jeffrey C. Lin was born in San Jose, California, and received his bachelor of science with honors in biochemistry from the University of California. He received an MD from Baylor College of Medicine. He completed training in general surgery at the University of California, Irvine, Medical Center, as well as at Allegheny University of the Health Sciences-Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for thoracic surgery, with additional training in cardiac surgery at Emory University-Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Lin is board certified in Thoracic and General surgery, and is a fellow of the American College of Surgery. He is a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, Texas Medical Association, American Medical Association and the Fort Worth Surgical Society. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Surgery.


University of Oregon and the National Science Foundation sponsor a 10 week summer undergraduate research program for Physics and Chemistry majors to participate in a wide variety of exciting research projects. It's not all work, however. Having local and regional adventures are a vital component of the program.
The Oregon REU program offers a variety of research projects for students interested in chemistry, physics, environmental chemistry, optics and materials science. Students work closely with faculty advisors, graduate students, and other research undergraduates for a unique summer experience.
This REU program provides a cutting edge interdisciplinary research experience supplanted with career building and mentoring activities that provide training and practice in the transferable skills that are so essential for success in the next stage of education, and/or employment. In addition to weekly research seminars given by participating faculty, throughout the summer, weekly brown-bag lunches on career building topics indicated below are given. These short courses are an outgrowth of the COACh career development workshops for students, faculty and researchers that Dr. Richmond has helped create and conduct across the country.
Along with the skills learned through research and these workshops, each student is individually coached and guided towards an effective, professional research talk in order to improve their speaking and presentation skills. At the end of the 10-week program, students summarize their projects and present to the group about the research they've conducted.
The program was started in 1987 by Dr. Richmond and is the longest running REU program in the United States. In the 30 years of our REU program we have hosted over 350 undergraduates from across the country with 90% continuing onto graduate school.
Geraldine (Geri) Richmond is the Presidential Chair in Science and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon. Her research using laser spectroscopy and computational methods focusses on understanding the chemistry and physics that occurs at complex interfaces that have relevance to important problems in energy production, environmental remediation and atmospheric chemistry. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) , the American Physical Society (APS) and the Association for Women in Science. Awards for her scientific accomplishments include the ACS Olin-Garvan Medal, the Spiers Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the ACS Joel H. Hildebrand Award in Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Liquids and the APS Davisson-Germer Prize. She is the co- founder and Director of COACh, a grass-roots organization that has helped in the career advancement of thousands of scientists and engineers in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Latin America. Awards for these efforts include the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Engineering Mentoring, the ACS Award for Encouraging Women in the Chemical Sciences, the Council on Chemical Research Diversity Award and the ACS Charles L. Parsons Award. Richmond has served on numerous national and international advisory and editorial boards. She is currentlly serving on the U.S. National Science Board, an independent policy advisory board to the U.S. President and Congress on science and engineering research and education issues. She was recently appointed by Secretary Kerry as the 2015 U.S. Science Envoy for the Lower Mekong River countries and will assume the role of President for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2015-2016.


I love Salzburg (I've written about it here, here and here), mostly because I LOVE the movie The Sound of Music. Every time I hear the opening score from the SOM I'm transported to a happy place, my soul really is lightened. Am I being a bit dramatic, perhaps? But those arial shots in the opening scenes represent the beauty I dreamed about one day seeing in person and define what I've come to love about Southern Bavaria and Austria. How I will miss these green mountains when we leave next year.
This sweet little church is on the road heading to Salzburg and I admire it every time we pass it. I was recently re-watching the Sound of Music for like the 1,000 time when it hit me that this favorite of mine just might be a church featured in the opening credits. Instantly, I was determined to get a closer look to find out once and for all. My opportunity came while my mother was visiting back in August. On our way home from Bertchesgaden, we decided to pull off the freeway and check it out.
The church is set on an artificial podium making it the highest point in the small village and while you can't see them well, there are sheep at the base--it was so charming. So, after analyzing my photograph carefully against the movie, I am happy to report, this IS the church in the opening credits! How awesome is that!
World War I & II memorial.
There is a small cemetery just inside the church yard. Most the tomb stones were from the last 50 years, so while the church looks old, the old dead aren't buried here.
Wow! You have very keen eyes to have picked up on this church being the one and the same as in the SOM opening credits! Awesome find!
so gorgeous! I love visiting your site to see all your amazing images!
I had to google search St. Gilgen, what a beautiful town. I am going to have find myself lost there. Just too many lovely places on this planet.
Thank you! I feel blessed to live in a place where beauty surrounds me.
Inspiring me to dig out the movie! Haven't watched it in a while. I am looking forward to when my girls are old enough to watch it! The first time I went to Europe we visited Salzburg and I twirled around in a field just like Julie Andrews! Such a great movie! What an adventure you having!


Abstract: In fields ranging from economics and finance to energy research and climatology, data on certain continuous time phenomena are collected with high frequency. Often, such data can be parsed into natural, perhaps hourly or daily, segments that may be viewed as a time series of curves. A fundamental issue that must be addressed before an attempt is made to statistically model such data is whether these curves form a stationary functional time series. I will discuss the interpretation of stationarity in the context of function space valued random variables, and introduce testing procedures to test for stationarity with a given functional time series. The tests are developed as nontrivial extensions of the broadly used tests in the KPSS family. When stationarity is rejected, it may be due to a number of factors, including a break or "change point" in the mean. I will also discuss some new methodology that does not rely on dimension reduction for estimating break dates with functional time series that contain a mean change.


text:
You Are Here: SPAICER
Healthcare Innovation Lab
Regional Innovation Lab
Digital Responsibility & Innovation Lab
Sustainable Innovation Lab
Innovation and Structural Transformation (WIR!) Accompanying Research
Study in cooperation with the VDI - AM
Study in cooperation with the VDI - KI
You Are Here:SPAICER
Copyright: © SPAICER
In production networks, faults occur time and again, which can lead to massive costs. Nowadays, production downtime and supply chain disturbances are major business risks and can be caused by a wide variety of disruptions - from damage to machinery, to employee illness, to global pandemics such as the recent Covid-19 crisis. In a world increasingly characterized by volatility and uncertainty, efficient resilience management and the associated robustness of companies is essential for business success.
This is where SPAICER comes in and is intended to contribute to the creation of scalable adaptive production systems through AI-based resilience optimization. The project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) as part of the AI innovation competition "Artificial Intelligence as a Driver for Economically Relevant Ecosystems", develops a data-driven ecosystem that is intended to enable small and medium-sized enterprises in particular to become more resilient.
Disturbances in production networks can be predictable and unpredictable. The aim is therefore to use artificial intelligence to anticipate future disruptions in the best possible way and to react ideally to any disruptions that occur. The combination of anticipation and reaction enables companies to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing conditions and to become more resilient. For this purpose, so-called Smart Resilience Services (SRS) are to be developed in SPAICER, which can be offered via the SPAICER platform and implemented in the production networks following to a modular principle. The resulting recommendations for action will support companies in their resilience management. The basis for this is a continuously expanded database, which is available due to the ongoing digitalization of production and industry 4.0.
In order to ensure application-oriented development, SMEs are involved in the development at an early stage and throughout the project and initial results are validated in various use cases. In particular, business models will be derived that enable the partners of the SPAICER ecosystem to implement the developed Smart Resilience Services and participate in an economically attractive way.
On the part of the RWTH Aachen University, the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) and the Machine Tool Laboratory of the RWTH Aachen University (WZL), in addition to the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) as project coordinator, are significantly involved in the project as leading consortium partners. The consortium also includes Senseering GmbH, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, the Institute of Computer Science of the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, TU Darmstadt, SAP SE, Seitec GmbH, Dezem GmbH, Schott AG, Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG, Feintool System Parts Jena GmbH, and C.D. Waelzholz GmbH & Co. KG. In addition, over 40 associated partners support the project consortium.
Funding Institute:
Further information can be found at www.spaicer.de.
Sebastian Bouschery
+49 (0) 241 80 99184


Hotel rooms and airport terminals never seem to have enough power outlets to charge all the devices today's traveler brings along. Now you can add outlets and peace of mind on business trips and vacations with the Belkin Mini Surge Protector.
This new design features three AC outlets and two powered USB outlets - perfect for MP3 players and mobile phones.


text:
Crystallodytes cookei är en fiskart som beskrevs av Fowler 1923. Crystallodytes cookei ingår i släktet Crystallodytes och familjen Creediidae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Abborrartade fiskar
cookei

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The following programs are for children/youth being registered for camp by an adult.
This short 4-day program occurs each year over the long weekend in May. The days are programmed based on camper choice and the weekend finishes with a mini "Cooch Games"; the first of the year. A great program to make new campers feel more comfortable with camp. Spring Camp is a great way to reconnect with camp, and warm up to the summer that is fast approaching. Transportation to/from Toronto on a school bus is included in the fee! This program is open to campers aged 6-16.
Our Orillia based day camp will have all kinds of fun adventures. In town we'll swim, do crafts, play games, toboggan, skate and then we'll do an excursion to go stomp around camp to see what it looks like in the winter. It's a great mixture of supervised fun and structured activities. Programming starts at 8:30 a.m. each day and ends at 4:30 p.m. at our South End location at 175 Oxford Street, Orillia (on South bus route). Campers bring their own lunches and snacks. We supplement with some treats throughout the week. This co-ed program is open to campers aged 6-12.
Join us for time for exploring and supervised fun with Camp Staff on PA Days throughout the school year.
Our PA Days in September, October, May and June occur on our camp property. Families do drop off/pick up at 6536 Rama Road, The Hub, at our arrival/departure times. No transportation from/to Orillia is provided.
For PA Days in November, December, January, February, March and April, these fun filled days occur in the Orillia area. The exact location for pick up and drop off will be confirmed. Depending on the weather, we may go out to camp however if we do, camp will pay for a bus and pick up/drop off remaining campers at the Orillia location.
Programming starts at 8:30 a.m. each day and ends at 4:30 p.m. Campers bring their own nut free lunches and snacks. We supplement with some treats throughout the day. This co-ed program is open to campers aged 6-12.


text:
Tag Archives: savannah
Interview: Steady as she goes
The Hold Steady in Savannah: "Everybody's invited to this party"
still holding
(The Guide, 5/20/10) Brooklyn-based rock outfit the Hold Steady has been fitted with the title of "America's bar band," thanks mostly to their raucous, salutatory guitar jams, which are evocative both of the epic narrative arcs of Bruce Springsteen and the simple rock fundamentalism of Thin Lizzy.
But the title is slightly inaccurate for several reasons. First, the band these days is too much of a big deal to be stuck playing the grimy pubs evoked by their music. But mostly they just don't spend that much time in bars anymore, since some of its members, such as guitarist Tad Kubler, now have young children (even if his 5-year-old daughter does like to come on tour occasionally).
The Hold Steady earlier this month released its fifth studio album, "Heaven is Whenever." It's a payoff of sorts, one that hits on the themes of reward and struggle — something the band sees firsthand as gets lauded by indie sites like Pitchfork while seeing its albums on the featured rack at Target.
"I think that the one thing that we strive for and really enjoy is to become a bigger band," Kubler said by phone last week. "I always felt that we're very inclusive. Everybody's invited to this party. I think people are quick to write us off as cool kids or hipsters or whatever people refer to people who live in Brooklyn as. That's the opposite of what we're about." Continue reading →
Posted in interviews, music
Tagged interviews, savannah, the guide, the hold steady
Interview: Lewis Black: backer and blacker
(The Guide 4/1) Did Lewis Black, the frazzled and perpetually angry "Daily Show" commentator and comedian with a liberal bent but an intolerance for foolishness of all varieties, realize he had booked a show next door to the home territory of Joe Wilson, whose outburst at the president last year made him a frequent target of late-night mockery?
"Perfect," Black said when this was brought to his attention during a phone interview. "That explains the ticket sales."
Black is making his first-ever appearance in Savannah on Thursday, though his broad appeal and track record as the frustrated, indignant Greek chorus to the nonstop drama that is the nation's political and cultural ridiculousness gives little doubt he will have trouble filling the Johnny Mercer Theatre.
Lewis Black
When: 8 p.m. April 3
Where: Johnny Mercer Theatre, 301 W. Oglethorpe Ave., Savannah.
Information: 912-651-6556, 800-351-7469, www.savannahcivic.com
In fact, Black has gone from an exasperated mouthpiece for informed discontent with his "Back in Black" segment on "The Daily Show" and occasional Comedy Central specials to something resembling a mainstream comedian. He's now got two HBO specials under his belt, as well as a series of movies and voice-over roles, a "Law and Order" role, a History Channel special, various commercials, several books and a stint on the 2007 USO tour with Robin Williams and Kid Rock. Continue reading →
Posted in clips, interviews
Tagged interviews, lewis black, savannah
Interview: REOHMYGOODNESS
Lives 1-7, expended
REO Speedwagon's Kevin Cronin: "When we play live, it's a riot"
(The Guide, 3/12) The upside to being a band that's persevered for more than three decades is that you can play anywhere from Mexico City to Savannah and draw a lively crowd.
The downside is that styles and trends change quickly, and your fans tend to best remember your early days. REO Speedwagon lead singer Kevin Cronin, for instance, is often asked to sign copies of the band's 1979 album "Nine Lives," the cover of which features the group clad in tight black spandex and leather, with tail-wearing vixens hanging on them and a black panther on a chain in the foreground.
"At the time it was considered cool," Cronin said with a chuckle in a phone interview last week. "It definitely wasn't who I was, that's for sure."
REO Speedwagon, Edwin McCain
Information: 912-651-6566, http://www.savannahcivic.com Continue reading →
Tagged interviews, kevin cronin, music, reo speedwagon, savannah, the guide
Interview: Keller Williams freeks out
Keller Williams 2.0: The singer has become a 'Once a Week Freek'
(From The Guide, 3/5/10) Keller Williams' last local show was his 2008 New Year's Eve gig at the Shoreline Ballroom on Hilton Head Island. The musician — known as a one-man jam band for his ability to play and loop different instruments — put together a three-pronged show that featured a regular set, an all-request set and a bonus set of "grunge-grass," his name for bluegrass versions of '90s hits from Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and the like.
And even though Williams is of the genus of musicians who treats every show like a unique moment meant to be shared by tapers, you won't find the Hilton Head appearance in the vast pantheon of his music online.
"I was thinking about releasing it, but got talked out of it due to all the licensing issues that have happened to Pearl Jam and Nirvana," he said. "They keep that stuff pretty close to the chest. But I might sneak it in in my 'Once a Week Freek.' "
When: 9 p.m. March 6
Where: Live Wire Music Hall, 307 W. River St., Savannah
Tickets: $20 in advance, $23 at the door
Information: 912-233-1192, www.livewiremusichall.com Continue reading →
Posted in hilton head, interviews, music
Tagged interviews, keller williams, once a week freek, savannah, shoreline ballroom, the guide
A love letter to Neko Case
what you have to write when you don't get to interview Neko Case. With a hat tip to Nubs Remsberg for his mentioned contribution.
Red-headed woman: A love letter to Neko Case
(From The Guide, 4/3/09)
In describing Neko Case, her soulful twang-tinged tunes, her rise to the top of the modern world of alt-country and her membership in the Canadian ultra-supergroup the New Pornographers, I'm drawn, of course, to Greek mythology. A friend and devoted Neko fan describes it like this: "Neko is Circe, or maybe one of the Sirens. We're all Odysseus tied to the mast of the ship while Neko stands on the shore, singing lovely, gentle songs to lure us back to her island, where we will all be shipwrecked and die. But what a great death it would be."
You can judge for yourself tonight when Case stops at Savannah's Trustees Theater as part of the Savannah Music Festival.
Neko Case, Crooked Fingers
Where: Trustees Theatre, 216 E. Broughton St., Savannah
Information: 912-525-5050, savannahmusicfestival.org
Case's voice asserts her place in that vaunted sorority of indie-rock musicians whose vocals are the important weapons in their arsenal (see also Cat Power). And it's that voice that lets Case break out of the pack as a member of the New Pornographers, the Canadian maximalist indie-popsters, a group that specializes in big, catchy choruses, competing instrument hooks and back-and-forth alternating vocalists.
But Case's solo career stands in contrast. She has produced a handful of albums over the past decade that brim with throwbacks to rock-infused country romps (I'm talking Loretta Lynn and Whiskeytown, not Gretchen Wilson and Kenny Chesney). Her tones are reserved and measured, her songs deep and personal, sometimes spacious. Occasionally she picks up a clip-clop energetic pace, boosted by warbling mandolins and banjos.
Her latest album, "Middle Cyclone," released earlier this month, is a windstorm of Case's interior monologue and personal causes — usually animal rights and environmentalism. "People Got a Lotta Nerve," with its chorus, "I'm a man-eater, and still you're surprised when I eat you," sounds like a self-reprobation over destructive tendencies, but in reality, it's a defense of caged animals. "I'm An Animal," conversely, defends her own mammalian instincts.
Case is at her best when she rides the line between rock and traditional folk and country. Her live album, 2004's "The Tigers Have Spoken," is the best example of this; high-energy tracks such as "Loretta" and "Soulful Shade of Blue" would sound equally at home in a Texas county fair as they would in a cramped Brooklyn club, and the slower-paced cover of "Wayfaring Stranger" shows her dexterity in recalling bluegrass roots. In all instances, though, she draws the listener into comfortable anachronisms that even Odysseus couldn't resist.
Tagged interviews, music, neko case, savannah
Ani DiFranco: "political songs and happy songs don't have to be mutually exclusive."
Posted on March 12, 2009 | 3 comments
Sigh. Another cool show near Hilton Head scheduled after I left the place. At least I got my lifetime allotment of Eagles cover bands out of the way.
Change has come to Ani DiFranco
By Tim Donnelly • Special to the Guide
Change is in the air in Washington, D.C.
Yes, there's the skinny guy in the big house making decisions now. But two miles down the road, Ani DiFranco also is feeling a lot different these days.
Her first daughter turned two on Inauguration Day, and her songs are now channeling positive themes after years of frustration — and occasionally outright anger — at the government, cultural conformity and struggles over love and identity. The feminist icon, neo-folk hero and owner of her own label, Righteous Babe Records, has released more than 20 albums over two decades, and her fan base has stuck with her even as her music has evolved and grown up.
"I was already on a personal mission to write my joy into music more," DiFranco said by phone from the back room of Washington's 9:30 Club, where she performed last weekend. "Now, as it turns out, political songs and happy songs don't have to be mutually exclusive."
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Information: 912-525-5050, tickets.scadboxoffice.com
Q. You've been successful for a long time. Have you seen your fans change over the years as you have?
A. It's hard to articulate specifically, but it's just parallel to me. Having spent so much of my evolutionary years on stage, I sort of play the role of reflecting those lessons we learn along the way, the changes that befall us. I think there is always a new contingent of mostly young women who come along and connect with all these songs written by a young woman with those experiences, that experience of becoming yourself and sort of elbowing out a room for yourself in this world.
Q With having your daughter (in 2007), you spent a lot more time than usual between your previous album and last year's "Red Letter Year." Did that allow you to do anything different with the final product?
A. Yeah — time, the final frontier. Who knew (laughs)? I've always made records really quickly because I've always done everything really quickly. 'Go, go, go,' that's my scene. The baby has slowed me down quite a bit. It's just what the doctor ordered for me — having more time to develop more perspective. It's more kind of ambitious production than I usually have on a record. I feel more solid about it — having not plowed through in the moment.
Q. Does that mean you'll be taking more time with future albums?
A. Yeah – it's definitely a lesson to be learned, one of the many my kid has taught me so far. Slow down, look before you leap.
Q. Do you think the new era of leadership in the country will affect your song writing?
A. Oh man, it feels so different. It's a total atmospheric change if you ask me. It's a great atmosphere, all over the world. I just got back from tour of Australia, and, you know, people everywhere are psyched. Obama's election was a victory for democracy, the very concept. It was a victory for the people versus the corporate elite, the oil tycoons.
There's nothing more that I want to do than support those who are doing good in the world. I think we get caught in sort of trying to fight the great evil, slay the great dragon. That's kind of beating your head against the wall. For the left, it's more important to lift each other up, support each other with our causes. It's great these days to have sort of momentum to contribute to, momentum in a positive direction.
Tagged ani difranco, interviews, music, Obama, savannah


text:
https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/US-Border-Patrol-agents-discover-20-people-in-15850974.php
US Border Patrol agents discover 20 people in camper trailer
By César Rodriguez, LMTonline.com / Laredo Morning Times
Published 3:08 pm CST, Wednesday, January 6, 2021
U.S. Border Patrol agents said there were 20 people inside this camper trailer. All were determined to be immigrants who had crossed the border illegally.
Photo: Courtesy Photo /U.S. Border Patrol
A woman landed behind bars for allegedly transporting 20 immigrants inside a camper trailer, according to an arrest affidavit filed on Monday.
A white Ford pickup arrived at the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on U.S. 59 at about 3:15 p.m. Dec. 31. The Ford was hauling a pop-up style camper trailer.
Authorities identified the driver as Lauren Avery Kilpatrick. She was accompanied by a female front passenger, according to court documents.
A K-9 unit then alerted to the possible presence of narcotics or people within the camper. Agents referred the vehicle to the secondary area for further inspection.
Asked if there were people in the camper, Kilpatrick denied any knowledge and stated she did not know what the agents were talking about, states the affidavit.
Agents could not open the camper because it was locked. Authorities also observed the top of the camper had been tied down with black plastic zip ties, according to court documents.
Agents then allegedly observed matching zip ties in the cab of the Ford on the driver's seat.
Agents cut the zip ties to lift the top and discovered numerous people inside the camper. Agents removed 20 people who were later determined to be immigrants who had crossed the border illegally.
Kilpatrick and the front passenger declined to provide a statement. Kilpatrick was the only person arrested and charged with transport, attempt to transport and conspire to transport the immigrants, according to the affidavit.