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Harding Democrats in the News
Elect Richardson in Harding, 'well-educated,' 'determined'
Observer-Tribune Oct 13, 2019
I want to encourage residents of Harding Township to vote for Amanda Richardson for a position on the Harding Township Committee in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Amanda is young, active, well-educated, engaged in Democratic politics, determined and dedicated to protecting this unique community, while bringing an enhanced level of communication, accountability and transparency to committee meetings.
Amanda will help residents make informed decisions by making recordings of township meetings available to the public in order to facilitate everyone's understanding of township issues.
She also plans to hold o!ce hours and one-on-one meetings on di"erent days and at varied times to create a better informed citizenry. This will also mean that Amanda will be a better informed member of the Township Committee, thanks to these information exchanges. She will
learn what citizens want and need and will bring a fresh voice to the committee. She is determined to protect the natural beauty of Harding; while maintaining low taxes.
Amanda Richardson grew up in Harding, with the Great Swamp in her backyard. Her impressive education credentials include an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and a law degree from Columbia University.
As the co-founder of Resource Equity, an international NGO that works on land rights, Amanda has dealt with issues like land tenure; reform, community rights, and program management.
Amanda and her husband, along with their young son, made a considered decision to return to her childhood home and to help the town she loves become more inclusive through transparent political decisions, communicated simply and clearly to all the citizens of Harding.
MARY JUDITH CHADOURNE
Tulip Lane, Harding Township
Posted on October 18, 2019 October 18, 2019 by callyndemsPosted in In The NewsLeave a comment
Richardson has right qualities for Harding Township
Observe er-Tribune Oct 9, 2019
I write in support of the candidacy of Amanda Richardson for a seat on the Harding Township Committee on Nov. 5.
Amanda is a remarkable individual and her enthusiasm and skills will be a valuable asset to any organization. She grew up in Harding and returned !ve years ago to raise her family here. This history gives her a strong sense of Harding as a community and demonstrates a commitment to the future of Harding.
Amanda represents a constituency that has not been very visible on recent Township Committees – a millennial with deep roots in the community who is willing to put herself forward to give back to the community.
Her experiences as a practicing attorney and the founder of Resource Equity (a non-pro!t with a mission of empowering women internationally) along with her roots in Harding position her to be an e"ective member of the Harding Township Committee.
Please consider her candidacy (additional information at amandaforharding.com) and I hope you will conclude as I have that she is worthy of your vote on Nov. 5.
CHRIS ALLYN
Lake Trail West, Harding Township
Democrat Amanda Richardson runs for seat on Harding Township Committee
Observer Tribune 20-March-2019
Amanda Richardson, shown with her husband, Matt, and son, Henry.
HARDING TWP. – Amanda Richardson, chairwoman of the Harding Township Democratic Committee, is running for a three-year seat on the Township Committee.
The Woodland Road resident will be on the ballot for the Tuesday, June 4, primary and the general election ballot on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Richardson plans to run in the November general election against GOP Committeeman Nicolas Platt. Platt said he plans to run for what would be his fourth term on the Township Committee. No other candidates have announced their intentions to date. The deadline for ling to run in the primary is Monday, April 1.
Platt was chosen by the then-Township Committee to replace Republican Jim Rybka, who resigned abruptly in 2009. Platt then ran for election, and was elected to another two, three- year terms.
Richardson said in a statement that she has received the Democratic committee's unanimous endorsement at a meeting last Wednesday night.
"Harding is an oasis in New Jersey: a small-town community that has kept its character with a commitment to preserving open space and keeping taxes low," Richardson said. "This is what brought my family here over 30 years ago and it is why I returned to Harding with my husband to raise our family here.
"Growing up in this idyllic place, with the Great Swamp in my backyard, inspired my work on land and resource rights. As I embark on this campaign and as a Township Committee member, I pledge to preserve Harding's rural character, to maintain its low taxes and scal discipline, and to move forward with a respectful campaign and healthy debate focused on the issues," she said
Richardson and her husband, Matt Eckman, have a son, Henry, 2.
She is a lawyer, having graduated from Amherst College and Columbia University Law School. She founded a non-profit organization, Resource Equity (resourceequity.org), that is focused on promoting women's rights to land and resources in developing countries.
Richardson was elected to the Democratic County Committee in 2016 and quickly became a leader of the resurgent Harding Township Democratic Committee that emerged as part of the anti-Trump blue wave that culminated in the election of Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-11, in November.
Richardson was elected vice chair of the Harding Township Democratic Organization in January 2017 and was elected chair last June. She managed the unsuccessful Township Committee campaigns of Rhonda Allen and Kate Barry in 2017 and 2018.
"The candidacies of Rhonda and Kate highlighted the benefits of bi-partisan debate and representation in the township and brought a voice to those in Harding who do not currently feel represented," Richardson said. "With open debate and a healthy competition of ideas from varying perspectives, democracy thrives. I look forward to engaging in a vigorous dialogue on the complex issues facing our community in the years ahead.
"We are a small town with big issues: implementation of our affordable housing obligation, the Verizon cell tower at the recycling center, the future of Glen Alpin, and, inevitably, others that will likely arise in the future.
"We need to do everything we can to engage all of our neighbors in the decisions of the Township Committee that can affect their daily lives and their property values. As a member of the Township Committee, I will bring my professional experience and education to discharge my responsibilities.
"As a co-founder of my non-prot organization, I have experience running a business, from budgeting and managing contractors and employees, to negotiating contracts and implementing major projects. As a lawyer, I have experience parsing and crafting laws, regulations, and resolutions.
"Equally important for my role on the Township Committee, I have extensive experience working with and listening to communities to help bring them the assistance they most need," she said.
Richardson said Harding is changing politically.
"Growing up, I viewed Harding as a Republican town. Today, the political spectrum is broader, as evidenced by the results of the 2018 election. I have been pleasantly surprised by how many people have become very active participants in not only our Democratic Committee, but also as enthusiastic citizens in other groups such as the Harding Non-Partisans," Richardson said.
"Harding residents are more engaged and aware of the need for transparency and bipartisanship as key components to successful local government
"Positive change has begun. During their campaign, Kate (Barry) and Rhonda (Allen) provided data showing the lack of broad representation on the township boards and commissions. Kate has since been appointed to the Environmental Commission, which has increased representation to two Democrats.
"One of the goals of my campaign is to continue push for more inclusion and transparency as vacancies on these commissions and boards are filled," she said.
Barry is Richardson's campaign manager and Molly Riley is treasurer.
"As Harding evolves, bringing together long-time residents and relative newcomers, I am committed to ensuring that all residents feel heard and represented. It is at the local level that many of the decisions that most aect our lives are made," Richardson said. "These are not partisan issues. We need to move our Township Committee to a more collaborative, open, and transparent process by taking steps beyond the required legal notices and agenda postings to ensure eective communication and understanding among all of our residents. Giving all residents the information they need to evaluate how decisions aect them and the opportunity to be heard before those decisions are made would be a major focus of my tenure on the committee."
Posted on March 20, 2019 March 20, 2019 by hardingdemocratsPosted in Front Page, In The NewsLeave a comment
Allen, Barry grateful for Harding support
Observer Tribune Nov 20, 2018
We would like to extend our congratulations to Ms. (Nanette) DiTosto and Mr. (Tim) Jones on their election to the Harding Township Committee and to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who supported us and worked tirelessly throughout our campaign, especially our families whose eternal support is deeply appreciated.
We were truly humbled by the dozens of volunteers who hosted events in their homes, accompanied us while canvassing and campaigning at the post office, stuffed envelopes, made phone calls and donated to our campaign.
Amanda Richardson, the current chair of the Harding Township Democrats, deserves special recognition for her work organizing our group and barely coming up for air in the the weeks leading to the election. Special thanks also to Ayse Ergene, our student intern from Seton Hall University, whose competence, skills, willingness to help, kindness, patience, and dedication were invaluable.
We thank the League of Women Voters for coming to Harding with five volunteers to moderate a very successful and impartial candidates forum. Thank you also to the Harding Township Civic Association and the Church of Christ the King for hosting.
We were thrilled and honored to welcome Congressional candidate (now Congresswoman- Elect) Mikie Sherrill and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker to the New Vernon Post Office on the Saturday before the election. Thank you to the more than 100 Harding residents and neighbors who joined us that day and to the Harding Police Department who recognized our gathering for what it was, a peaceful citizen assembly. This is what democracy looks like.
Thank you to the poll workers, who were at town hall from the crack of dawn on election day to ensure all residents who so chose were able to cast their ballots. We were delighted and humbled to have earned nearly 800 votes this year (about 300 more than 2017). Our percentage increased from 33 percent in 2017 to 36 percent this year.
We were proud to do our part as well to support Congresswoman-elect Mikie Sherrill, who earned 45 percent of the vote in Harding Township.
It was a pleasure and an honor running for office in Kate's hometown and Rhonda's home of nearly 30 years. We look forward to remaining active, meeting more residents, and ensuring that the members of our community feel comfortable being and supporting Democrats. We are excited for Harding Township's future.
RHONDA ALLEN
Deer Ridge Drive
Meyersville Road
Posted on November 21, 2018 November 21, 2018 by callyndemsPosted in In The NewsLeave a comment
Election is sign to be optimistic in Harding
There is reason to be optimistic about the state of democracy in our community following last Tuesday's election.
First and foremost, in Harding, in the larger Congressional District 11 and across the country, Americans came out in higher numbers to cast their ballot. Nearly 61 percent of Harding voters exercised their most precious right on Tuesday, as compared to the 43 percent who voted in Harding in the last midterm election. This uptick is a very welcome change from the 2014 midterm that marked the lowest nationwide voter participation in nearly 75 years.
With an open field after the retirement of U.S. Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen who represented the district since 1995, both the Republican and Democratic party competed for our votes. This is a good thing. It imbued a level of enthusiasm and engagement to the race and gave residents a fresh opportunity to assess and to weigh-in on the representation they seek from their congressional, county and local officials.
Continue reading "Election is sign to be optimistic in Harding" →
Allen and Barry will stimulate civic involvement in Harding
Letter to the Editor; Observer-Tribune; Oct 3, 2018
Let's welcome two new faces on the Harding Township Committee: Allen and Barry.
I am writing in support of Rhonda Allen and Kate Barry for Harding Township Committee. Both women are long time residents spanning three generations here. Both have impressive educational backgrounds: Dr. Allen has a PhD in clinical psychology and Ms. Barry holds a masters in environment and sustainable development.
They are committed to Harding's green spaces and low taxes.
Continue reading "Allen and Barry will stimulate civic involvement in Harding" →
Posted on October 4, 2018 October 4, 2018 by callyndemsPosted in In The NewsLeave a comment
Vote Barry, Allen for diversity in Harding Township
Letter to the Editor; Observer-Tribune; 03-Oct-2018
I wholeheartedly support the candidacies of Kate Barry and Rhonda Allen for seats on the Harding Township Committee.
Kate and Rhonda are both well qualified and prepared to assume the role of Township Committee members.
Continue reading "Vote Barry, Allen for diversity in Harding Township" →


SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California, USA.
Center for X-Ray Optics, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, California, USA.
Institute for Nanometre Optics and Technology Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Albert-Einstein-Str. 15, Berlin, Germany.
The influence of B4C incorporation during magnetron sputter deposition of Cr/Sc multilayers intended for soft X-ray reflective optics is investigated. Chemical analysis suggests formation of metal: boride and carbide bonds which stabilize an amorphous layer structure, resulting in smoother interfaces and an increased reflectivity. A near-normal incidence reflectivity of 11.7%, corresponding to a 67% increase, is achieved at λ = 3.11 nm upon adding 23 at.% (B + C). The advantage is significant for the multilayer periods larger than 1.8 nm, where amorphization results in smaller interface widths, for example, giving 36% reflectance and 99.89% degree of polarization near Brewster angle for a multilayer polarizer. The modulated ion-energy-assistance during the growth is considered vital to avoid intermixing during the interface formation even when B + C are added.
Kerdsongpanya, S., Eriksson, F., Jensen, J., Lu, J., Sun, B., Kan Koh, Y., . . . Eklund, P. (2016). Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Cr1-xScxN Solid Solutions for Thermoelectric Applications. Journal of Applied Physics, 120(21), Article ID 215103.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Block EA, Singapore.
Dept. of Energy Conversion and Storage, Technical University of Denmark, Risø Campus, Denmark.
Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany.
We investigate the trends in mixing thermodynamics of Cr1-xScxN solid solutions in the cubic B1 structure and their electronic density of state by first-principle calculations, and thin-film synthesis of Cr1-xScxN solid solutions by reactive dc magnetron sputtering. Films with the composition Cr0.92Sc0.08N exhibit a thermoelectric power factor of about 8x10-4 Wm-1K-2at 770 K, similar to CrN. The results show that the disordered Cr1-xScxN solid solutions is thermodynamically stable in B1 solid solutions at T = 800°C rather than in the B1- L11 ordered solid solutions stable at 0 K. The calculated electronic density of state (DOS) indicates a positive bowing parameter for the electronic band gap of Cr1-xScxN solid solutions. The calculated DOS suggest possible improvement of power factor due to Sc 3d orbital delocalization on Cr 3d orbital gives decreasing electrical resistivity with retained Seebeck coefficient in Cr-rich regime, consistent with the experimentally observed high power factor for the solid solution.
Multilayered thin films of Al/Cu/Fe have been prepared by magnetron sputtering and annealed into the quasicrystalline or approximant phases, for Al2O3 or Si substrates, respectively. The nanomechanical and nanotribological properties; hardness, elastic modulus, friction and toughness, have been measured using a triboindenter and analytical methods. The approximant phase, annealed at 600 °C for 4 h, proved to be harder and had higher elastic modulus values than the quasicrystalline phase, about, 15.6 GPa and 258 GPa, respectively. The fracture toughness of the approximant, <0.1 MPa/m½, was however inferior to that of the quasicrystals with 1.5 MPa/m½. The friction coefficients were measured in a range of 0.10-0.14 for the quasicrystalline and approximant thin films.
Fager, H., Eriksson, F., Lu, J., Jensen, J. & Hultman, L. (2014). Reactive DC magnetron sputtering of amorphous (Ti0.25B0.75)1−xSixNy thin films from TiB2 and Si targets.
Impact Coatings AB, Linköping, Sweden .
Linköping University, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Thin Film Physics. Linköping University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Reactive sputtering by high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) and direct current magnetron sputtering (DCMS) of a Zr target in Ar/H-2 plasmas was employed to deposit Zr-H films on Si(100) substrates, and with H content up to 61 at.% and O contents typically below 0.2 at.% as determined by elastic recoil detection analysis. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals a chemical shift of similar to 0.7 eV to higher binding energies for the Zr-H films compared to pure Zr films, consistent with a charge transfer from Zr to H in a zirconium hydride. X-ray diffraction shows that the films are single-phase delta-ZrH2 (CaF2 type structure) at H content greater thansimilar to 55 at.% and pole figure measurements give a 111 preferred orientation for these films. Scanning electron microscopy cross-section images show a glasslike microstructure for the HiPIMS films, while the DCMS films are columnar. Nanoindentation yield hardness values of 5.5-7 GPa for the delta-ZrH2 films that is slightly harder than the similar to 5 GPa determined for Zr films and with coefficients of friction in the range of 0.12-0.18 to compare with the range of 0.4-0.6 obtained for Zr films. Wear resistance testing show that phase-pure delta-ZrH2 films deposited by HiPIMS exhibit up to 50 times lower wear rate compared to those containing a secondary Zr phase. Four-point probe measurements give resistivity values in the range of similar to 100-120 mu Omega cm for the delta-ZrH2 films, which is slightly higher compared to Zr films with values in the range 70-80 mu Omega cm.
Multilayered Al/Cu/Fe thin films with composition close to the quasicrystalline phase have been prepared by magnetron sputtering. Annealing at 600 °C yields a homogeneous film of the cubic a-approximant phase by Si substrate diffusion, which prevents the formation of the quasicrystalline phase. After 4 h annealing the film contained 8 at.% Si, which corresponds to the expected value of the a-approximant. The amount of Si in the films was found to slowly increase to ~12 at.% during continued annealing (64 h) while the α-approximant phase was retained. The lattice parameter was found to continuously decrease as Al became substituted with Si. The film is observed to be polycrystalline with individual grains being strained in varying magnitude, and with no preferential orientation relationship to the substrate or each other.


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Home Harvard Design Magazine
No. 12 / Sprawl and Spectacle
A Word for Landscape Architecture
John Beardsley
I wish to speak a word for landscape architecture, for design inextricable from the history of a site, from its spatial, material, and phenomenal conditions, and from natural and social ecology, as contrasted with a design merely of buildings—to regard design as a part and parcel of nature, as well as of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if only to make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of architecture.
Anyone familiar with "Walking," by Thoreau, will recognize that I have borrowed the rhetoric of the preamble of his essay. Thoreau used hyperbole to make a point; I am inclined to do the same in order to argue that landscape architecture will soon become the most consequential of the design arts. Admittedly, the profession has been beset by various problems. Relatively young, it lacks the rich theoretical and critical traditions of architecture. It has long been constrained by an attachment to the picturesque. In recent years it has been at war within itself, diverse factions pitting ecology against art—as if the two could not coexist. And so far it has failed to attain the public profile of architecture or the fine arts: built works of landscape architecture are not as readily identified and evaluated as paintings, sculptures, or buildings.
Yet as the landscape architect Laurie Olin has written, "It is hard to think of any field that has accomplished so much for society with so few people and with so little understanding of its scope or ambitions."1
Much in the history of the discipline substantiates this large claim: the 19th-century parks that enhance so many American cities; the national and state park systems; the rise of urban planning in the 1920s, which was an outgrowth of landscape architecture; the development of prototypical garden cities; the stunning Modernist works of such designers as Daniel Urban Kiley, James C. Rose, and Lawrence Halprin; and the embrace of ecology in recent years as a moral compass for the profession. Pressing Olin's argument, I would insist that recent achievements in landscape architecture are as visually compelling as those of the past and even more technically sophisticated and conceptually complex. Combining elements of architecture and sculpture with knowledge from the natural sciences, landscape architecture today is struggling to meet profound environmental, social, technological, and artistic challenges.
Thirty years ago, in Design on the Land, historian Norman Newton could confidently describe landscape architecture as "the art—or the science if preferred—of arranging land, together with the spaces and objects upon it, for safe, efficient, healthful, pleasant human use."2 This definition is too terse for the intricacies of practice today. We are now apt to view landscape architecture as an "expanded field," as a discipline bridging science and art, mediating between nature and culture.3
Landscape architecture is neither art nor science, but art and science; it fuses environmental design with biological and cultural ecology. Landscape architecture aims to do more than to produce places for safe, healthful, and pleasant use; it has become a forum for the articulation and enactment of individual and societal attitudes toward nature. Landscape architecture lies at the intersection of personal and collective experiences of nature; it addresses the material and historical aspects of landscape even as it explores nature's more poetic, even mythological, associations.
Complexity alone cannot engender consequential works of art. Significant cultural expressions often result from the convergence of a compelling artistic language with an urgent external stimulus. The rise of Cubism, for instance, can be viewed as a register of the radical social and technological transformations of early 20th-century modernization, just as the emergence of Surrealism can be seen as an expression of the influence of Freudian theory. The consequences of such convergences are discernable in design as well as in art. Urgent external stimuli have lately been much in evidence in landscape architecture. Demands for the restoration of derelict and often toxic industrial sites pose artistic, social, and technical difficulties; so does the need to reuse abandoned sites in declining urban centers. The emergence of environmentalism and the ethic of sustainable design are encouraging the development of "green" infrastructure for improved energy efficiency, storm water management, waste water treatment, bioremediation, vegetal roofing, and recycling. Intensifying suburban and exurban sprawl requires new strategies for landscape management and open space preservation. Continued population growth, especially in the Third World, is heightening the need to develop minimum standards for the provision of urban green space, while increased leisure time in the developed world is placing unprecedented burdens on parks and other natural places of recreation. Landscape practitioners today are grappling as well with the dilemma of designing at radically different scales—from that of the small urban space to that of the entire ecosystem.
These phenomena raise an important question. Are these urgent social and environmental demands being met by the development of a compelling design language—a language particular to landscape architecture? Landscape architect Diana Balmori has articulated widespread anxieties within the profession that landscape architecture has yet to find a contemporary idiom. "The profession of landscape architecture appears to be finished," she argued. "Its edges have been overtaken by architects and environmental artists. Ecology has been taken over by engineers and hasn't really affected design. At the same time, the profession hasn't found a core. The center has not been defined and held."4
In my view, the situation is not nearly so dire. I would argue that external pressures and contemporary expressive means are indeed working together in recent landscape architecture. I would argue too that this convergence is providing the profession with compelling narratives that might restore the sense of a vital center and help it achieve the visibility so lacking in recent decades.
One such narrative is sustainability—an idea that increasingly informs the design of buildings and landscapes. Indeed, sustainable design seems to require some degree of interdisciplinary cooperation or hybridization in the creation of "green" infrastructure. Examples of this kind of work include landscape designer Herbert Dreiseitl's unusual and visible storm water retention and purification system for architect Renzo Piano's DaimlerChrysler complex at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. This ambitious scheme features rooftop gardens that capture and filter rainwater, which is then directed to cisterns and used in the building. The cisterns also feed a large lagoon, where reeds provide physical and bio-chemical cleansing; mechanical filters furnish backup purification. The benefits of this scheme are not only technical but also aesthetic, even educational; not simply an element of infrastructure, the lagoon is an attractive public amenity that offers lessons in and demonstrations of urban hydrology. More generally, such collaborations suggest that the knowledge provided by landscape architects is increasingly essential to the responsible practice of architecture.
Landscape remediation is another narrative resulting from the convergence of contemporary subject and idiom. At the 200-hectare site of the former iron and steel plant Duisburg-Meiderich in Germany, the landscape architecture firm of Latz + Partner has designed a park that sets new standards for reclamation—for the kind of reclamation, moreover, that does not disguise the problematic history of its site. Designed by Peter Latz and Anneliese Latz, Landscape Park Duisburg North makes an aesthetic and political strategy out of revealing site disturbances. The facility, abandoned by Thyssen Steel in 1985, included blast furnaces, ore bunkers, and a sintering plant; it was criss-crossed by roads, rail lines, and a canal. The soil of the site was contaminated with heavy metals, the canal polluted. The design of the reclamation was guided by existing infrastructure: elevated rail lines and ground-level roads were retained to provide both topographical interest and a framework for circulation. A sewer line and treatment plant were built to clean the old canal; a new storm water collection system filled the former cooling and settling tanks—once contaminated with arsenic—with fresh water.
At the heart of the project are the preserved blast furnaces. Like other relics of heavy industry, these structures seem at once terrible and awe-inspiring. To emphasize these qualities, Latz + Partner have surrounded the furnaces with trees, making them appear like craggy mountains glimpsed through a forest. There is a precedent for such industrial archaeology—I am thinking chiefly of Gasworks Park in Seattle. Both might be understood as instances of the "industrial sublime." The constructions at Duisburg surround a space that has been named Piazza Metallica, where forty-nine salvaged hematite slabs—each about 2.5 meters square and weighing nearly eight tons—are set out in a grid; the recycled metal, which once lined casting pits in the foundry, commemorates the melting and pouring processes that occurred there. Near the blast furnaces are the remains of ore bunkers that have been transformed into enclosed gardens. Deep within thick concrete walls, these gardens produce a kind of uncanny juxtaposition: they are cloistered, almost monastic spaces, yet set in a menacing industrial frame. Perhaps more than any other element in the park, they convey the designers' strategy of retaining and revealing yet simultaneously transforming the structures of the site.
Several remediation techniques have been employed at Duisburg, depending on site conditions. The most toxic remnants, including the old sintering plant, were dynamited and buried. Elsewhere contaminated materials were left in place. Several large slag heaps with low-level hydrocarbon pollution, already in stable condition and colonized by plants, were left undisturbed. They are available for limited access and use while they are gradually decontaminated through bioremediation. Retaining the piles has two advantages: it prevents further dispersal of the pollutants, and it creates compelling memorials to site disturbance. Such "found" landscapes produce some of the park's most intriguing images, such as that of an ore cart—still in its tracks—sprouting vegetation.
Just as important, although less obvious, Landscape Park Duisburg North is an example of social as well as environmental restoration. A place that no longer had any real value to society and that otherwise would have been an eyesore has been given an entirely new life, one that few might have imagined it could have. In a region with little open space, the park offers significant and unusual opportunities for recreation: the blast furnace can be climbed to height of about fifty meters; the cooling tanks are used for swimming, the concrete chimneys for climbing. At a more speculative level, the park offers a lesson in the environmental costs of modern industrial policies and an occasion to wonder about future appropriate choices. Effacing the site's history and erasing its contradictions would have been far less compelling. As Peter Latz says, "The point is, where is the imagination most challenged, in a state of harmony or in a state of disharmony? Disharmony produces a different statement, a different harmony, a different reconciliation… . The seemingly chance results of human interference, which are generally judged to be negative, also have immensely exciting, positive aspects."5
In such circumstances the role of the designer is to decide what to retain, what to transform, and what to replace. Disharmony, discontinuity, contradiction: these are the conditions driving the development of a contemporary language of landscape architecture.
But if I had to choose one project that suggests all the intricacies of recent landscape architecture, it would be Parque Ecológico Xochimilco in Mexico City. Not only does this project articulate the commanding narratives that undergird recent practice, such as remediation and sustainability, it also addresses the challenges of urbanization in one of the most populous cities in the developing world, providing both open space for recreation and productive land for economic development. And it does all this on multiple scales, from the circulation in a flower market to the workings of an extensive ecosystem. Even more than Landscape Park Duisburg North, Xochimilco suggests the large role that landscape architecture can now play in social and environmental remediation.
Xochimilco, meaning "the place where flowers are grown," is a fragment of a pre-Conquest—in places even pre-Aztec—landscape of artificial garden islands, created in the lake that once filled a large area of the valley of Mexico. The islands, called chinampas, were constructed by piling soil on reed mats and anchoring their edges with salix trees. Dating to the 10th century, this landscape of canals and rectangular islands was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987; the designation prompted a large-scale environmental restoration project undertaken by Mexico City and the borough of Xochimilco. Designed by Mario Schjetnan of Grupo de Diseño Urbano and built in the early 1990s, the project encompasses some 3,000 hectares of surviving islands.
The site presented extraordinary challenges. Many of the islands were sinking due to the many wells that fed upon aquifers. Urban development was increasing storm water runoff and subjecting the area to increased flooding. Surface water was contaminated; canals were choked with aquatic plants. Those islands deep in the canal system were hard to reach and thus unavailable for agriculture; those nearer the edges of the site were being encroached on by unauthorized residential buildings. The design was guided by hydraulic strategies: water was pumped back into the aquifer to stabilize the site; large reservoirs were created to retain storm water; polluted water was processed at treatment plants, and the treated water was discharged back into the lake to regulate the water levels in the canals. Eroded islands were recreated using meshes of logs filled with dredge and stabilized by salix trees. (More than 1 million trees were planted on the site.) Agriculture was reintroduced: some islands have pastures for grazing; others are planted with flowers and vegetables. A tree nursery was also located on the site; every year it produces 30 million trees that are then planted throughout Mexico City. Canals were cleared of harmful vegetation and rehabilitated for recreation as well as agriculture. Today, pole barges ply the canals of Xochimilco, especially on weekends; gondolas and gondoliers are available for hire at embarcaderos built along the edge of the site. Out in the canals, you can collect sustenance for body and soul: kitchen barges sell food, while others ferry professional musicians, available to serenade visitors with patriotic and romantic songs.
At one edge of the chinampas landscape is a 300-hectare park, whose different zones emphasize natural, recreational, and interpretive areas. Water again provides the basis for design: the terraced entry is focused on imposing stone-lined aqueducts that discharge cleansed water into the lake; a plaza features a water tower in the form of an Archimedes screw. A visitor center completes the complex. It includes an auditorium and galleries with exhibitions focused upon the region's ecology, archaeology, and agriculture; a roof terrace affords vistas over the lakes and canals toward distant snow-covered volcanoes. From the entry, a 400-meter pergola leads to an embarcadero, past an arboretum and flowerbeds representing the productive activities dispersed across the chinampas. The remaining park area features playing fields and ball courts, wetlands to collect storm water runoff, and demonstration agricultural zones. To enhance economic activity on the site, the largest flower market in Mexico City was built adjacent to the main highway approach. Its 1,800 stalls are fully leased and very busy, especially on weekends. In all, the park is a microcosm of the larger landscape, highlighting its ecological, historic, agricultural, and recreational attributes. More than something just to look at, this is a working landscape.
Both Landscape Park Duisburg North and Parque Ecológico Xochimilco exhibit the high ambition and conceptual complexity of contemporary landscape architecture. Each uses the history of its site to create stirring places and compelling cultural narratives. Each envisions landscape as both natural and social space embodying the potential of design to enhance cultural and biophysical phenomena. Both reveal the capacity of landscape architecture to address the challenges of degraded landscapes and to achieve at least some level of sustainability. And both are works of art; they attain a kind of iconic power in their revelation of the problems and the possibilities of the contemporary landscape.
But what is the narrative being told in these landscapes—told in the language of landscape architecture aslandscape architecture? At the risk of sounding like the boor in The Graduate, who summed up the hero's career possibilities with the word plastics, I would like to respond with a single word: what is being explored and revealed in these contemporary landscapes is entropy. Entropy is disorder or randomness in a system. In thermodynamics, entropy measures the quantity of thermal energy, or heat, available for useful work: the greater the entropy, the less the available energy. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics—the law pertinent to my argument—the change in entropy of a system during any process is either zero or positive; that is to say, the amount of disorder in an isolated system is always stable or increasing. Shuffle a deck of cards, and the result will be as or more random than the initial sequence; the cards will not organize themselves into suits or into numerical order. Heat flows only from a hotter substance to a colder one, never the reverse. Gas expands to fill its container; it will not contract. As heat is dispersed or as gas expands, entropy increases. Natural processes result in a universe of greater entropy.
Those conversant with the language of contemporary art know that entropy was a particular preoccupation of Robert Smithson. Several of his earthworks can be interpreted as pedagogic exercises in entropy. Smithson dumped asphalt into a quarry and let it run randomly down a slope; he piled dirt on the roof of a woodshed until the supporting beams cracked. His Nonsites—sculptures created by collecting materials from a place, sorting them into bins, and exhibiting them along with maps or photographs of their sites—might be described as efforts to reverse the effects of entropy, if only temporarily. "The fact remains," he insisted, "that the mind and things of certain artists are not 'unities' but things in a state of arrested disruption."6
On a broadly theoretical level, Smithson recognized that patterns of human and natural disturbances in the landscape were undermining the reassuring conventions with which landscape has been represented. "The 'pastoral,' it seems, is outmoded. The gardens of history are being replaced by sites of time"—by sites, that is, that manifest the transformative effects of human action or of natural processes like erosion and decomposition. "A sense of chaotic planning engulfs site after site … but to what purpose?" Smithson asked. To Smithson, the struggle against chaos was enormously intriguing. Anticipating Peter Latz's argument that discord excites the imagination more than harmony, he wrote: "A bleached and fractured world surrounds the artist. To organize this mess of corrosion into patterns, grids, and subdivisions is an esthetic process that has scarcely been touched."7
How is entropy relevant to landscape projects like Duisburg or Xochimilco? In each project, the designers addressed conditions that were highly entropic. At Xochimilco, the islands were sinking, the soil eroding. Water was polluted; the land was unproductive, the edges of the site compromised by chaotic urbanization. At Duisburg, the steel works had been demobilized, the energy removed from the site in a literal way; what remained was contaminated earth, polluted water, and abandoned infrastructure. Both Xochimilco and Duisburg might be interpreted as excursions into the "bleached and fractured world" described by Smithson, as efforts to hold the line, albeit briefly, against the drift toward randomness and disorder. (Entropy still marks Xochimilco: the park has not been maintained as it should be.)
All designed landscapes can be seen, in some ways, as expressions of the entropic passage of time. Here too one can find resonances between landscape and contemporary sculpture. The work of Richard Serra, especially, has been studied for how it encourages, even impels, motion through space and over time as a condition of its perception. But the time of sculpture, usually, is limited to the perceptual experience. The time of landscape architecture is more complex. No place is a tabula rasa, without history; any intervention by any designer is part of a series of interventions, of marks already inscribed or yet to be inscribed on the site. Every design is subject to the actions of dynamic and unpredictable natural and cultural forces—the continual transformations produced by growth and decay, for example, or by changing patterns of social use and habitation. Smithson once described a park not as a "thing-in-itself" but "a process of ongoing relationships existing in a physical region"—an idea now exemplified by much forceful design work.8
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' Mill Race Park in Columbus, Indiana, and the firm's Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh are designed to withstand periodic flooding from nearby rivers; George Hargreaves describes his firm's park projects as "theaters of the environment," intended to reveal geophysical, biological, and cultural forces at work in the landscape. If much painting and sculpture aspire to what critic and historian Michael Fried once called "presentness"—the condition of being fully observable in an instant—and if architecture strives for some measure of permanence, then landscape architecture, in contrast, struggles to embrace the dynamic.9
Of course, entropy is only one of many forces at work in the world. Current scientific studies of complexity propose that there may be some counterforce to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, exemplified in the tendency of matter and biological life toward ever-greater levels of organization. Many natural systems are aptly described as chaotic—the weather, the flow of turbulent fluids, the orbit of particles—and in such systems, small changes in initial circumstances can produce big differences in subsequent conditions. But complex systems seem to change within predictable limits and to exhibit tendencies toward self-similar patterns, or fractals. Thus the temperatures at a given place on the globe will vary, but within predictable limits; clouds and waves will resemble each other but will not be exactly the same.10
Complexity science attempts to describe such patterns. It depicts a world that is dynamic and mutable but self-organizing at ever finer levels, for instance in the emergence of life from inert matter, in the evolution of more elaborate life forms from simpler ones, and in the increasingly intricate interdependencies within complex ecosystems like coral reefs and rain forests. Complexity theory might serve as a useful metaphor for contemporary cultural practice.11
Complexity isn't necessarily better; but it increasingly characterizes our environmental and social circumstances. An appreciation of complexity might make cultural responses more discriminating, more robust. Landscape architecture is today exhibiting, in its own way, the tendency toward greater organization and complexity described by theorists and scientists, and in so doing it is endeavoring to keep at bay randomness and disorder. And it is this tension—between order and disorder, between organization and entropy—that provides much of the narrative power of contemporary landscape architecture.
Long overshadowed by architecture and the fine arts, landscape architecture is producing remarkable transformations in our public environments. The profession is maturing, conceptually it is more complex. It is developing the artistic and technical tools to address extraordinary social and environmental demands. The ways in which we understand and represent our relationship with nature are enormously important in the expression of culture. The ways in which we meet the challenges of urban sprawl, open space preservation, resource consumption and waste, and environmental protection and restoration are crucial to the quality of our lives—maybe even to the survival of our species. It is landscape architecture that confronts these challenges. I wish to make an extreme statement, if only to make an emphatic one: landscape architecture will prove the most consequential art of our time.
1. Laurie Olin, letter to the Graham Foundation, August 3, 1999.
2. Norman Newton, Design on the Land (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), xxi.
3. Borrowed from linguistics, the term "expanded field" entered the language of contemporary art criticism chiefly through an essay by Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," originally published in October in 1978 and reprinted in her book The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 276-290; the term was subsequently used by Elizabeth Meyer in "The Expanded Field of Landscape Architecture," in G. Thompson and F. Steiner, eds., Ecological Design and Planning (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 45-79.
4. Diana Balmori, in conversation with the author, January 1998.
5. Peter Latz, in Udo Weilacher, Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1999), 129.
6. Robert Smithson, "A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects," in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 87.
7. Ibid., 85, 83, 82.
8. Robert Smithson, "Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape," in Holt, ed., Writings, 119.
9. Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum (June 1967).
10. General introductions to complexity science include M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992) and Roger Lewin,Complexity: Life on the Edge of Chaos (London: J. M. Dent, 1993).
11. Charles Jencks has begun to discern the relationship between complexity science and contemporary design. See The Architecture of the Jumping Universe (London: Academy Editions, 1995).
John Beardsley is a writer and curator who teaches at the Harvard Design School; his books include Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape.
Landscape Architecture Robert Smithson Mexico City Duisburg
Other Articles From
Seventy-Five Percent
Ellen Dunham-Jones
You Are Here by Frances Anderton
Wouter Vanstiphout
48 Quincy Street
Gund Hall
info@harvarddesignmagazine.org
Harvard Design Magazine Issue No. 1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The first of many. . the beginnings of an installation and possibly a new body of work! Exciting, daunting and such a relief. The forming of new neural pathways are wonderful and necessary.
Following my most recent solo exhibition titled Melancholia, I thought it would be apt to invite all workshop participants and art enthusiasts to join me for a materiality and process-based workshop at the Pathology Museum, UCT Pathology Learning Centre in Observatory on the 4th of May 2019.
Duration: 5 hours including two 30-minute tea and cake breaks.
Venue: Pathology Museum, UCT Pathology Learning Centre, Observatory.
Fee: R550. This fee applies to workshops in 2019 and excludes materials. Participants are required to provide their own materials for all workshops.
Booking: To book, contact Natasja at art@natasjadewet.com.
Please deposit your workshop fee one week before the workshop (account details provided upon booking) and email proof of payment with your name as reference.
The last day of the Melancholia solo exhibition at the Pathology museum, UCT Pathology Learning Centre, is this Saturday. Please take note that this exhibition ends at 12.30pm.
Floorwork on Wall. Wood ash, charcoal, acrylic pigment, wood glue, found muck, canvas fraying's.
I recently explored the University of Cape Town's Pathology Learning Centre. Tucked away in the labyrinth of buildings constituting the Health Sciences campus, in the shadow of the Groote Schuur Hospital complex, the centre is an Aladdin's Cave of medical history.
The former Pathology Museum, dating back to the construction of the medical school on the lower slopes of Devil's Peak in the 1920s, contains some fascinating records. Diligently compiled autopsy reports hint at the details of life stories even as they focus on bodies on the mortuary table. Black and white photographs that ostensibly served to document pathologies - the effects of syphilis, say - capture the humanity of their subjects in evocative portraits.
Most striking, however, are the shelves filled with specimens in various states of preservation: row upon row of organs, tissues, muscles, veins and nerves, resected and cross sectioned and lovingly captured in Perspex and formaldehyde.
They are all tagged and numbered, and one imagines how they might have been viewed with the detachment of medical students or researchers in years gone by.
But when you spend enough time with these bits of bodily detritus, in their amber casing that catches the light - and especially if you happen to glimpse some of the more discomfiting specimens through an open laboratory door - they cease to be mere biological matter.
What develops, beyond wonder at the human body in all its complexity and frailty, beyond curiosity at oversized or damaged or underdeveloped specimens (how did they come to look like that?), beyond shock or squeamishness, is a looming sense of sadness. Each post mortem that produced these body parts was the final act of a tragedy: a life that ended in grief and sorrow, or worse, anonymity and indifference.
Hovering over all this is the often grim history of medical science itself. From gruesome graveyard exhumations in the dead of night to experiments and autopsies conducted on those considered sub-human by certain forms of Western empirical enquiry (vagabonds, Jews, gays, Africans), scientific discoveries have often come at the expense of someone's dignity. It hardly needs emphasising that, even when they were ostensibly life-affirming medical advances in SA were made against the backdrop of - and to some extent were facilitated by - race based segregation and persecution. When, in 1967, heart transplant pioneer Chris Barnard was working in the very building that today houses the Pathology Learning Centre, a few kilometres away the apartheid government was passing the Terrorism Act in parliament and forcing people out of District Six.
As De Wet explains in the catalogue text - a dense but insightful reflection on conceptions of melancholy that cites the work of theorists Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan, and draws art historical connections from Albrecht Dürer to Anselm Kiefer melancholia as a diagnosis dates to Hippocrates theory of the four "humours" developed in the 4th century BCE.
It has thus always been linked both to physiology and to a psychological state, understood simultaneously as temperament and an embodied "pathology" similar to those on display on the shelves that surround De Wet's work.
It is associated with the abject, like specimens of conditions to which the "healthy" individual is averse.
Yet, De Wet reminds us. melancholia is also associated with analysis and creativity; it is not the same as depressive paralysis, and can be "a generative mental and emotional state".
The works included in the exhibition evince the melancholic binary (the chiaroscuro) of "darkness and lightness". This is vividly executed in the main installation, in which paint-and dust-daubed canvases and sheets hang draped in the central atrium.
A number of the smaller works, however, convey the life-and-death conundrum with equal effect. One of my favourites is the layered canvas in Slivered Ball of Constriction, which calls to mind a pair of lungs such as one might see in a jar nearby, at the same time as bringing to the viewer's attention the materiality of art-making and the artist's process.


Eye-hand coordination	refers to the spatiotemporal coordination of vision, eye movements, and hand motion in behaviors such as reaching and object manipulation. Eye-hand coordination (or hand-eye coordination) is often only noticed at its extremes, e.g., in elite athletes, or when mishaps occur. In some situations, like military combat or even steering a vehicle on the highway, small errors in eye-hand coordination might mean life or death. However, proficient eye-hand coordination is equally essential for a large proportion of prosaic daily activities at work, home, and play - from grasping the morning coffee to the use of hand-held communication devices and video games. Despite this familiarity, the mechanisms of eye-hand coordination are incredibly complex, involving advanced physics, several perceptual, cognitive, and motor systems, and many diffferent components of the nervous system.


Located in the exclusive La Veleta neighborhood in Tulum, the new luxury condos at Amena Tulum make up an upscale residential development, offering only 24 beautiful one and two-bedroom luxury condos, as well as penthouse units with lock-off to maximize your ROI.
Amena Tulum features one and two-bedroom luxury condos that range from 53 square meters to 211 square meters, that include an equipped kitchen, luxury finishes throughout, an excellent space distribution and a private terrace. Amenities at Amena Tulum luxury condos provide a list of amenities such as lush gardens and common areas that protect the local flora, a wide pool, gym, elevator, yoga studio and a juice bar.
Perhaps the best of all is that Amena Tulum offers a vacation rental program with an estimated 9% - 12% ROI, which turns this investment property into a great real estate investment opportunity in Tulum.


As a result of recent changes in New York State tax law requiring certain out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales taxes to the State of New York, we began collecting applicable sales tax for all orders shipped to New York addresses starting June 1, 2008.
We appreciate your patience as we worked through this process, and would like to reiterate our commitment in offering our customers the broadest product selection, competitive pricing, fastest shipping, and award-winning customer service.
We look forward to continuing to provide you with the premier online shopping experience for all of your IT and consumer electronics needs.
Disclaimer: While Newegg no longer charges sales tax to its New York customers effective August 21, 2008, you may still have an obligation to pay New York State use tax on your purchases. Newegg cannot offer you any tax advice, so please refer to applicable law if you have any questions about use tax. Nothing in this email shall be deemed to approve the validity of any New York State law, including but not limited to section 1101(b)(8)(vi) of the New York State Tax Law, which purports to require Newegg to collect and remit New York State sales tax on its sales to residents of that state.
I'll be sure to include the taxes I owe for buying stuff online in the same envelope I send the taxes I owe from jobs I got paid cash at.
I wish Amazon would do this.


Girl Scouts of America presents the 11th annual Samoa Soiree on March 16, 2019! This popular event for adults 21 years of age and up challenges top chefs in our area to compete for best dessert or savory dish made with Girl Scout Cookies as a key ingredient. These are truly one-of-a-kind recipes used to create tantalizing dishes that you get to enjoy.
Expect great food in an elegant setting, music to dance the night away with, and terrific items to bid on during the event's silent auction.


Traveling on a budget – Where to stay?
Like to travel? Looking for a way to cut the costs; but, still enjoy those exotic locations we've always dreamed about?
We've traveled to Italy, Greece, Norway, France, Spain, Ireland, Germany, and even Florida for a couple of weeks over Christmas. France, Ireland, and Florida came because we hosted travelers from those countries in our own home – and we stayed in theirs.
The exchange we now use is HomeforExchange, which is owned and operated by Ans Lammers. It provides listings of thousands of people who have discovered this unique way to cut housing, car and even food costs for the traveler.
Our exchange in France was not listed in the exchange we are with now but worked the same way. It came about as a result of an inquiry we made to a French couple with two small children. Their home was listed in an exchange site and we wanted to get back to that area.
We had first contacted an English couple and another French couple in Provence, who also agreed to exchange with us. But, we liked the idea of being 30 miles north of Paris and that seemed like a better fit. And their house, when we first saw where we would be staying, was like something one only dreams about.
We felt like we were hosting them to our home in the US. We set a welcome note on our kitchen table for them, and set a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator for them. When we first arrived at their home, they too had placed for us … a bottle of champagne and hors doerves.
Long term friendships are not uncommon as a result of these special exchanges.
Using their home as a base we made side trips to Normandy, Paris, Chantilly, and Senlis before flying to Ireland, which was on our own, but much less expensive than traveling from the US. We used our exchange couple's car, as they did ours.
While there, we were invited to an early morning training session for 200 thoroughbred racing horses by a trainer we had met at a local photo shop. Incidentally, I also received a haircut which I traded for a photo of the stylists little doggie. That was fun. So, a nice side benefit is that one becomes part of the community. And in our case the french family became part of our home, went to our beaches, shopped at our stores.
On another exchange to Florida, over the Holidays, the couple had other plans and could not stay at our home during our visit to theirs. They stayed at our home during a vacation we took the following July. Those are called "non-simultaneous" exchanges and are arranged between the parties.
Actually, there have been more offers to visit us then we have been able to accept. They include Mexico, Spain, England, Tybee Island-USA, France, and Denmark just to name a few.
For more information go to www.HomeforExchange.com. I believe you will have an opportunity to see the kind of places that are for exchange without joining – and if you decide it might be for you a free trial membership is available.
If wondering about photography or the best things to take while traveling see photo tips at our web site Lens Lugger World. or the blog lensluggers.com.


text:
Kalangarai Values
Kalangarai Work
Why Widows?
The Challenges of Indian Widows
Economic Struggles
Social Struggles
Women's Stories
Challenges Faced by Widows in Indian Society
Click below to learn about the challenges endured by the Widows of India
Customs and Traditions that affect them Psychologically
Remarriage of Widows
Sexual Abuses
Economic Challenges faced by the widows
Social Challenges faced by the widows
Health of the widows / Deserted women in Nagai District
Literacy Rate among the widows in Nagai District
The Widows Movement
In the process of empowering the members of the micro-credit self-help groups, a movement was launched under the banner 'Movement for the Livelihood Rights of Widows & Deserted Women'. The movement had its birth at the International Women's Day Conventions organized in March 2007.
The members of the Movement proposed that the following issues should be addressed by the Indian Government: (1) social ostracism of widows, (2) lack of legal protection of the rights of widows, (3) the social and cultural prejudices against widows such as they being looked down as (a) 'public sex objects', (b) 'women who bring ill-omen' (c) 'women to be looked at with sympathy', and (d) 'women who have no right to live a dignified life', and (4) livelihood concerns.
Within two years, the movement picked up momentum so quickly that in the 2008 International Women's Day celebrations, the leaders of the movement gained confidence to shoulder the entire responsibility of organizing rallies and conventions. Moving a step further, toward the end of the conventions, they were emboldened to pass the following resolutions, which obviously had political resonance:
"We demand the Government a) to come out with a law as that of 'SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act' to protect widows from verbal and physical abuse, b) to evolve a Welfare Board to look into the problems of widows, c) to provide job opportunities to youth who come forward to marry widows, and d) to take care of the education of widows' children living below the poverty line".
The demands, affixed with signatures of the movement leaders, were duly sent to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Minister of Social Welfare, Minister for Rural Development and Administration and the local District Collector.
Empowerment of Widows and Deserted Women
Prior to the tsunami, as well as during and after the tsunami, widows were a totally neglected group both by society and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Their presence in large numbers and their unfortunate plight in Nagapattinam district became vivid to the Kalangarai team while collecting family data prior to distribution of relief materials to the tsunami survivors in different villages. Closer interactions with the widows opened the eyes of the team regarding the cultural and social ostracism thrust upon them for hundreds of years. Their plight obviously demanded from Kalangarai a long-term commitment in their journey towards emancipation.
As part of the initial work, the volunteers and the staff of Kalangarai identified widows in each of the 87 villages and collected all the basic information: their names, age, caste, individual photographs, number of children, other facts needed to make a brief case history of each woman, etc. Thus gradually the staff and the volunteers managed to identify 1638 widows and deserted (abandoned) women in five (Vedaranyam, Nagapattinam, Tharangambadi, Seerkali & Keevalur) out of seven taluks in Nagapattinam district. Following this work, all the women were formed into as many as 87 micro-credit self-help groups. Two leaders were elected for each group and a bank account was opened (joint account) in the names of the two elected leaders. Later, financial help was extended to all the 87 groups consisting of 1638 individuals through a revolving fund system. The widows are being animated with the help of sisters of St. Joseph of Lyons Congregation and 15 trained animators numbering.
Friends of Kalangarai is a non-profit organization in the U.S. that supports the community-based programs of Kalangarai. These programs include micro-credit self-help groups, skills training, children's educational programs, and a community college. More than 1000 widowed and abandoned women and their families participate in these programs.
© Kalangarai India


Here is where you will find others in the field with like interests. Write us to be included here. If you wish to remain anonymous let us know and arrangements can be made.
others working on the book. Also interested in doing TRs. Auditor training.
Co Audit desired, using Dianetics or Scientology materials from FZA.
Details: I am looking for someone to co-audit with. I have and e-meter, and have co-audited Scientology materials before. I am interested in co-auditing Knowledgism, Scientology Grades, and Pilot Self-Clearing processes.
We are looking for other people in our area who are interested in discussing the tech, co-auditing, etc. We recently left the CofS and found the Free Zone and are very happy with our new path.
auditing I learned from Merryl (ex Mayo).
I charge on a sliding scale, anywhere from $ 25 to $ 75 per hour of auditing.
Details: Available to give clearing for people in the PERTH , WESTERN AUSTRALIA area.
Currently working through Self clearing book. Brought up in East Grinstead 1968 - 1981 lived in scio boarding house 'Martyns Place'. Wish to contact others in Melbourne/Sydney who are actively finding their own way thru the myre.
I am a FreeZoner that is interested in auditing. Please do contact me.


Stay 5 nights (3 nights in The Selous and 2 nights at Zanzibar Serena Hotel) and only pay for 4 nights.
Explore the largely undiscovered Selous Game Reserve and spend three nights at the Selous Serena Camp or Serena Mivumo River Lodge and get a fourth night free.
Enjoy a four night honeymoon at the Serena Mivumo River Lodge or Selous Serena Camp in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve and the bride only pays 50%.
Two iconic safaris combine - MalaMala and Mashatu - Botswana and South Africa.
Stay 3 nights at Fancourt and only pay for 2.
Stay 4 nights at Fancourt and only pay for 3 in April, May & September 2019.
Pay 3 and Stay 4 and kids stay free between 1st June and 31st August. Book Full Board Safari & Spa Package and get a free room upgrade.
Combine Mashatu with Amalinda Lodge and Ivory Lodge in Zimbabwe.
Combine Mashatu with Amalinda Lodge and Khulu Bush Camp in Zimbabwe.
Stay three nights and only pay for two at Verney's Camp, Deteema Springs & Deka Camp.


text:
Rev. Kaseman receives the World of Montgomery Public Citizen of the Year Award.
Rev. Kaseman accepted the World of Montgomery Public Citizen of the Year Award on behalf of all who see divinity in the midst of our diversity and are working as sisters and brothers of one human family to create the beloved community in Montgomery County. Please find below Rev. Kaseman's acceptance remarks.
"I am extravagantly blessed thanks to my parents, my wife and family, my church, my association with Brother Martin Luther King, Jr. and catching his vision of the beloved community that is a place where every basic human need is met and every human right respected.
50 years later it is a dream come true for me to be serving our County Executive with the full support of the County Council, in partnership with the directors and staff of every department in county government, the support of my colleagues and director in the Office of Community Partnerships, the resourcefulness of the interfaith Executive Committee, Working Groups and committees, the faith leaders ranging from Anglican to Zoroastrian – all committed to creating the beloved community – otherwise known as the World of Montgomery.
I accept this award on behalf of all who see divinity in our diversity, who know we are essentially sisters and brothers of one human family, who are on call 24/7 responding to acts of hate and violence, who are working to make MC a hunger free zone, who are welcoming refugees and immigrants as our new neighbors and all who believe in healthcare for all.
I accept this award on behalf of all my sisters and brothers, here tonight, who will be leaving to live and to love with far greater abandonment. Thank You! "
Rev. Kaseman honored to have the award presented by the County Executive, Ike Leggett; Council Member, George Leventhal; and Chair of the Fund for Montgomery, Keith Haller. Check out the gallery to view more pictures from the event.
← Muslim Leaders Summit with the County Executive	2016 Strong Cities Global Network Summit →


SAVAR, Aug 15, 2018 (BSS) – The National Mourning Day and 43rd martyrdom anniversary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman observed today on the Jahangirnagar University (JU) campus here with due respect and befitting manner.
To mark the day, the university authorities organised daylong programmes on the campus.
In the early hours of the day, JU Vice-Chancellor Professor Farzana Islam paid homage to Bangabandhu by placing a floral wreath at his portrait at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hall.
JU Pro VC (Administration) Professor Md Amir Hussain, Pro VC (Academic) Professor Md Nurul Alam, Treasurer Professor Md Sheikh Md Monzurul Huq, Acting Registrar Rahima Kaniz, Deans of faculties, Provosts of dormitories and teachers of different departments and institutes accompanied the VC.
Later, Jahangirnagar University Teachers Association (JUJA), different teachers' organizations, students' bodies, cultural and social organizations, officials' and employees' organizations placed floral wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu.
Earlier, a mourning procession, led by JU VC, was brought out from JU Shaheed Minar premises that ended near at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hall after parading different street on the campus.
Besides, an art competition for the children was held at the old arts building in mourning to mark the day.
The university authorities organized Milad Mahfil at the Central Cafeteria after Asr prayers seeking eternal peace of Bangabandhu and martyrs of August 15.
The national flag was kept at half-mast atop all academic and administrative buildings and black flags were hoisted in front of the administrative buildings and all residential halls.


You may have realized that Safaricom has had some Mpesa Upgrades on the platform the last couple of weeks and you may be wondering why so many updates?
Well, the previous updates were to tweak a few issues before the major update which is this weekend and to check the stability of the platform as the updates were done. So this weekend the update will take a longer time because this will be the major update. The upgrade will start on Saturday 9th September 2017 at 10 PM and it will end on Sunday on 10th September at 11 AM. M-Pesa services will be unavailable at this time so make sure you have some cash to pay your bills if you are going out or for your errands on Sunday morning.
Why is the update important?
The update this weekend will enable the M-PESA platform to allow the gradual introduction of new features in coming months including updates to M-Shwari and KCB Mpesa. It will allow increased interconnectivity for M-PESA and enable customers to have access to more M-PESA services even on the Safaricom app.
In August 2017, Safaricom announced the availability of revamped M-PESA Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), providing the capabilities for anyone to build and deploy their solutions on top of the platform. It allows developers through APIs to be able to support a wider range of capabilities of several different partners (like supermarkets, banks and utility companies like electricity and water).
Safaricom has put in place measures to ensure a smooth transition during the upgrade, which will provide our customers and partners with more features and capabilities in the future," said Bob Collymore, CEO, Safaricom.
More than 26 million customers use M-PESA, for both business and personal transactions. More than 10.5 million transactions are done every day. Mpesa has launched different innovations including Lipa Na M-PESA cashless payment platform, M-Shwari, KCB M-PESA, M-TIBA and the M-Pesa 1 Tap Go Payment Solution.


Need A Muse PVC Figure? How About This One?
This PVC figure isn't based on an anime or a manga, but rather a cover illustration by Range Murata in which the character is know as "Muse." Crazy right? Well enjoy and if you want one their pre-ordering now for a about $103 bucks and a May release date.


One of the Christian blogs I've been following of late posted as humor an image that depicts their version of "atheist bingo." The arguments presented are laughable to anyone who's given them any real thought, but there really are those that think these sorts of arguments against atheism are valid or worthy.
I took five or ten minutes and created an animated GIF that refutes each. Sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously (it was originally intended as humor after all). But more detailed and serious refutations are available to anyone interested.
This entry was posted in Culture Wars and tagged atheism, Bingo, christian, Opposing Views, Religion and Spirituality. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Q: Does anyone know how to make my solana collection connect with opensea? well the matter is the following.
I want to connect my collection to opensea, my collection is created in the candy machine v2 and I want that when connecting my collection with opensea the minted NFTs automatically connect with the collection in opensea.
I know that when certifying it, it is uploaded manually, but I think it is not appropriate when talking about creating collections of more than 1,000 NFTs.
So it would be very helpful if someone knows how to make the collection upload mined NFTs automatically.

A: A collection through candy machine nowadays automatically is a Metaplex Certified Collection (MCC).
Please check in the On Chain Metadata (e.g. on solscan) if it's the case for you.

*

*if you already have a collection make sure that the address that you see in the metadata as collection key has metadata. If it's just shown with name "Collection NFT" make sure to attach metadata through it e.g. like this

*If there is no collection key present for your NFTs you should use metaboss or collections.metaplex.com to migrate.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Plastics biodegrade at highly variable rates. PVC-based plumbing is selected for handling sewage because PVC resists biodegradation. Some packaging materials on the other hand are being developed that would degrade readily upon exposure to the environment.  Examples of synthetic polymers that biodegrade quickly include polycaprolactone, other polyesters and aromatic-aliphatic esters, due to their ester bonds being susceptible to attack by water. A prominent example is poly-3-hydroxybutyrate, the renewably derived polylactic acid, and the synthetic polycaprolactone. Others are the cellulose-based cellulose acetate and celluloid (cellulose nitrate).
Under low oxygen conditions plastics break down more slowly. The breakdown process can be accelerated in specially designed compost heap. Starch-based plastics will degrade within two to four months in a home compost bin, while polylactic acid is largely undecomposed, requiring higher temperatures.  Polycaprolactone and polycaprolactone-starch composites decompose slower, but the starch content accelerates decomposition by leaving behind a porous, high surface area polycaprolactone. Nevertheless, it takes many months.  In 2016, a bacterium named Ideonella sakaiensis was found to biodegrade PET.
There is no universal definition for biodegradation and there are various definitions of composting, which has led to much confusion between the terms. They are often lumped together; however, they do not have the same meaning. Biodegradation is the naturally-occurring breakdown of materials by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi or other biological activity.  Composting is a human-driven process in which biodegradation occurs under a specific set of circumstances.  The predominant difference between the two is that one process is naturally-occurring and one is human-driven.
Biodegradable material is capable of decomposing without an oxygen source (anaerobically) into carbon dioxide, water, and biomass, but the timeline is not very specifically defined. Similarly, compostable material breaks down into carbon dioxide, water, and biomass; however, compostable material also breaks down into inorganic compounds. The process for composting is more specifically defined, as it controlled by humans. Essentially, composting is an accelerated biodegradation process due to optimized circumstances.  Additionally, the end product of composting not only returns to its previous state, but also generates and adds beneficial microorganisms to the soil called humus. This organic matter can be used in gardens and on farms to help grow healthier plants in the future.  Composting more consistently occurs within a shorter time frame since it is a more defined process and is expedited by human intervention. Biodegradation can occur in different time frames under different circumstances, but is meant to occur naturally without human intervention.
The distinction between these terms is crucial because waste management confusion leads to improper disposal of materials by people on a daily basis. Biodegradation technology has led to massive improvements in how we dispose of waste; there now exist trash, recycling, and compost bins in order to optimize the disposal process. However, if these waste streams are commonly and frequently confused, then the disposal process is not at all optimized.  Biodegradable and compostable materials have been developed to ensure more of human waste is able to breakdown and return to its previous state, or in the case of composting even add nutrients to the ground.  When a compostable product is thrown out as opposed to composted and sent to a landfill, these inventions and efforts are wasted. Therefore, it is important for average citizens to understand the difference between these terms so that materials can be disposed of properly and efficiently.
The first known use of biodegradable in a biological context was in 1959 when it was employed to describe the breakdown of material into innocuous components by microorganisms.  Now biodegradable is commonly associated with environmentally friendly products that are part of the earth's innate cycles and capable of decomposing back into natural elements.
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