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Art scene: Fiesta de la Flor to feature international artists
Visitors from Corpus Christi and around the world will flood the bayfront to celebrate Selena at the third annual Fiesta de la Flor, and the vendors at El Mercado will reflect that diversity.
Art scene: Fiesta de la Flor to feature international artists Visitors from Corpus Christi and around the world will flood the bayfront to celebrate Selena at the third annual Fiesta de la Flor, and the vendors at El Mercado will reflect that diversity. Check out this story on caller.com: http://callertim.es/2nE56WC
Esther M Hackleman, Corpus Christi Caller-Times Published 7:02 p.m. CT March 22, 2017
Helia Tovar is one of 46 international vendors who will showcase her handmade pewter and talaveras at El Mercado during Fiesta de la Flor.(Photo: Contributed photo)
Produce Goods, a native Corpus Christi vendor, will return to the festival for its third year in a row to represent the city's culture
"All of our designs are geared toward Chicano culture, and we try to really represent our city and all its best aspects through that design style," said Carlos Villarreal, managing general partner for Produce Goods. "We are big, big fans of Selena, and so, of course, 'anything for Selenas.' We would always be willing to participate."
Produce Goods is one of 80 vendors that will participate in El Mercado, a collection of artisans from across the world.
"Her stardom is celebrated by a lot of people in the Hispanic culture because she was one of us who came from humble beginnings and made something out of herself," Villarreal said. "With the vendors that come from other countries, it really shows her reach to North and South America, the fact that people would travel and come from so far away really does say a lot about the impact she has had."
There will be 46 international vendors from countries throughout North, Central and South America. One of those artisans is Helia Tovar, who will sell pewter and talaveras, or handmade pottery, during the two-day festival.
"We share Mexican culture, customs and art of every state in Mexico," Tovar said. "I am from San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and that region is home to many artisans who make items out of papier mâché, wood, pottery and more."
The inspiration for Tovar's art is woven into her heritage – one that has seen the conquistadors from Spain, the indigenous tribes of Mexico, the leadership of Miguel Hidalgo who championed the independence of Mexico and the longstanding impact of Catholic missions. Tovar will display her wares that are rooted in culture during throughout the two-day festival for a second year in a row.
"We bring all the culture of our ancestors to share with all the people at the festival," Tovar said. "Last year we came to participate at Fiesta de la Flor, and it was a beautiful experience because it was a very big, organized event with many areas with different art and culture."
Esther Hackleman 👟 (@Caller_Esther) | Twitter
What: Fiesta de la Flor
When: 5:30 p.m. to midnight Friday and noon to midnight Saturday
When: North Bayfront Park, 1500 block of Shoreline Boulevard.
Cost: $10, one-day advance tickets, $15, two-day pass, free children 7 and under. Ticket prices increase to $15 per day on festival days.
Information: www.fiestadelaflor.com.
ART MUSEUM OF SOUTH TEXAS
Guild Hall: An Adventure in the Arts
What: The Art Museum of South Texas will give a tour through America's greatest artists of the 19th and 20th centuries with its newest exhibition, "Guild Hall: An Adventure in the Arts."
Where: 1902 N. Shoreline Blvd.
When: Through April 30
All in a Day's Work:
What: Coastal Bend College will feature "All in a Day's Work" displaying the photography of Jason Collins in the Simon Michael Art Gallery, Frank Jostes Visual Arts Building.
Where: 3800 Charco Road, Beeville
When: Through April 6
Information: coastalbend.edu
GALVAN HOUSE
Tri Group 53 Exhibit
What: The South Texas Art League, The Art Association of Corpus Christi and The Watercolor Society of South Texas will show their annual exhibition with a variety of works including paintings, drawings, photos and some sculpture pieces. The exhibit will open with a reception from 6-8 p.m. Friday.
When: Through March 31
Where: 1581 N. Chaparral St.
K SPACE CONTEMPORARY
Contemporary Art Month Corpus Christi Invitational
What: K Space Contemporary will host the works of Coastal Bend artists Kerstin Dale and Lenard Brown as part of the Contemporary Art Month Corpus Christi Invitational. Dale's plywood sculpture, which will be in the Main Gallery 1, is inspired by the Grand Canyon and Colorado River, where she is a rafting guide in the summers. Brown's drawings and paintings, which will be in the Main Gallery 2, combine African influences and American manmade objects.
Where: 415 Starr St.
Information: 361-887-6834, kspacecontemporary.org
Still Life with Sausage
What: K Space Contemporary will host the works of Coastal Bend artist and metal sculptor Jack Gron. The pieces are inspired by politics, pop culture and organized religions through the artist's perceptions. The works by Gron, the professor of fine arts in sculpture at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, include references from a variety of influences ranging from professional wrestling to sausage.
Paperglyphic
What: K Space Contemporary will host the works of Bernardo Diaz. Diaz's work, which will be on display in the Gift Shop, include paintings, drawings and collage
LA RETAMA CENTRAL LIBRARY
Chicas Bonitas
What: The all-female exhibition will feature works from more than 75 regional, national and Coastal Bend youth artists during Contemporary Art Month. Proceeds will benefit youth art camp scholarships and Friends of Corpus Christi Public Libraries. There will be an artists reception from 6:30-8 p.m. Saturday to introduce the exhibit
When: Exhibit runs from Saturday through April 29
Where: La Retama Central Library, 805 Comanche St.
ROCKPORT CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Rising Eyes of Texas
What: The annual Rising Eyes of Texas will return with works from 34 artists representing 13 universities across Texas to the Rockport Center for the Arts. Of those artists, four will represent Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Where: 902 Navigation Circle, Rockport
SOUTH TEXAS BOTANICAL GARDENS & NATURE CENTER
Wildlife in Focus' photography competition
What: The Wildlife in Focus' photography competition will be on display at the Mary Hope Brennecke Nature Trail through Sept. 30, 2017.
When: Through Sept. 30
Where: South Texas Botanical Gardens & Nature Center, 8545 S. Staples St.
TREEHOUSE ART COLLECTIVE
Tracey Ahoyt exhibit
What: Treehouse Art Collective will host Artist Tracey Ahoyt's, contemporary, mixed media on canvas, paintings for the month of March.
Where: 309 N. Water St., Suite D
Information: 361-882-4822, www.treehouseartcc.com.
Read or Share this story: http://callertim.es/2nE56WC


NEW DELHI: Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio is facing intense competition from incumbent telecom operators, which may impact its profitability and returns, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said in a note.
The agency has also assigned Jio a Long-Term Issuer Rating of 'IND AAA' with a Stable Outlook. It also assigned Jio's Rs 100 billion bank loan facilities an 'IND AAA' with a Stable Outlook and an 'IND A1+' rating.
Ind-Ra said that the country's telecom industry is exposed to intense competition, which is capital intensive in nature, and is subject to changes in technology and regulatory environment.
The agency said that it has equated Jio's ratings with those of its parent Reliance Industries Ltd in view of the strong strategic and moderate legal and operational linkages between the two entities. RIL has invested a significant proportion of capital in Jio.
At end-FY16, RIL had invested equity of Rs 447 billion into RJio and has recently proposed a rights issue of Rs 150bn in the form of 9% non-cumulative optionally convertible preference shares. Furthermore, both parent and subsidiary share a common name Reliance and Jio represents the group's presence in the telecom business.
Ind-Ra expects continued adequate and timely tangible support from the parent for RJio's debt servicing. The agency may reassess the linkages in the event of significant equity dilution by the parent or a longer-than-expected break-even period.
Reliance Jio launched its commercial services on September 5, 2016 and its operations are in the ramp up phase. It recently extended its free offer till March 31, 2017.
Jio post the recently concluded spectrum auction has a large spectrum footprint of 1,108MHz (uplink + downlink) across 800MHz, 1,800MHz and 2,300MHz with an average life of 16 years. This spectrum can be used to roll out any technology without regulatory restrictions.
The company earlier entered into an agreement with Reliance Communications Ltd for sharing of spectrum in the 800MHz band. It has also entered into agreements with telecom infrastructure and telecom services companies to access their infrastructure.


To maintain eligibility for future Arts for Kids grants, please submit your final report by December 31st for Fall projects or May 31st for Spring projects.
Please limit your response to 2500 characters or less.
Please give an itemized list of grant expenditures.
Include at least 3 images (jpg, png or pdf) showing how the grant funds were used to successfully impact student achievement in the arts. File sizes are limited to 2MB per file.


C-NAP1 antibody LS-C531341 is an FITC-conjugated mouse monoclonal antibody to human C-NAP1 (CEP250). Validated for ELISA and WB.
CEP250 / C-NAP1 antibody was raised against partial recombinant corresponding to aa141-240 from CEP250 (AAH01433) with GST tag. MW of the GST tag alone is 26kD.


text:
Catalan language revival fuels backlash in Spain
Fiona Ortiz
Spain(Reuters) - (Refiled story from July 10 in fourth paragraph to clarify that source was referring to Madrid policymakers)
Francesca Munoz, the principal at Sant Miquel primary school near Barcelona, is fighting a linguistic crusade that has fuelled a remarkable recovery of the local Catalan tongue – and of the region's secessionist movement.
For 30 years, public schools in Spain's Catalonia region have taught most subjects in Catalan, not the national Castilian Spanish language.
There are now some 10 million Catalan speakers in or near the region bordering France and the Mediterranean, putting the language in a league with Swedish and Greek after it was repressed under the 1939-1975 dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
"We feel so proud to have achieved this, but we can't relax now. It's still a daily battle," says Munoz, who led her school's transition to Catalan three decades ago, when all the teachers were retrained.
Such is the strength of the Catalan renaissance that it is prompting a backlash among some parents concerned their children are getting short-changed on Spanish, the world's second-most spoken language by native speakers after Mandarin.
These parents, worried that many schools now give only three hours of Spanish a week, have support from the center-right central government in Madrid, which passed an education law last year that will force the Catalan school system to provide more hours in Spanish if parents petition for it.
The nascent movement for more Spanish teaching has only hardened supporters of the Catalan language – and of the wealthy region's independence drive. Catalonia's secessionist movement has gained momentum during Spain's recent economic crisis as taxpayers in the wealthy region complained they were financing poorer areas of the country.
"We need our own country in order to protect our language," Irene Rigau, education superintendent for Catalonia, said in an interview in her office in Barcelona last month.
Opinion polls show that half of Catalonia's 7.6 million residents want independence, and regional leader Artur Mas wants to hold a plebiscite on secession in November, two months after Scotland votes on leaving Great Britain. But the Catalonia vote is not likely to happen, because it is expected to be declared unconstitutional.
REVIVING A LANGUAGE
Franco imposed Spanish-only schooling across the country. The result was that in the 1970s, Catalan – a centuries-old Romance language related to Spanish, French and Italian - was spoken mostly among family and friends.
But when Spain restored democracy in 1978, a new constitution gave Catalonia and other regions control over their education and health systems. Gradually, it beefed up teaching in Catalan.
Catalan has also become the language of the local government here and of businesses. There has been an intense government campaign to promote product labels and signs in shops in Catalan. Public sector jobs demand Catalan proficiency. Half of theater productions in Catalonia are in Catalan, and the biggest newspaper, La Vanguardia, started a Catalan edition three years ago that now accounts for 45 percent of its print sales. In the northern areas of Catalonia, such as Girona, Castilian is little-used.
Educators say schooling in Catalan has been a social integrator for children of millions of immigrants from poorer regions of Spain who arrived in the '60s and '70s who would otherwise be isolated in a Spanish-speaking lower class.
Language educators from other countries look to Catalonia as an example but for some local parents the system isn't working.
Ana Losada last year formed the Assembly for Bilingual Education, a group that is helping parents to petition schools in Catalonia to adopt a 50-50 Spanish-Catalan teaching system. Losada grew up in Catalonia and says she was well-served by a mix of Spanish and Catalan in the schools in the 1980s, when the system was still transitioning to Catalan-only. However, she says Spanish has lost so much ground that now she worries her six-year-old girl won't learn the language properly.
"They argue that people learn Spanish as well as Catalan, but it's not true. We are hearing from university professors that the level of Spanish is deficient," says Losada, who says her group is not political and does not have a stance on the independence issue. "It's impossible to teach it adequately in only three hours a week."
Education Superintendent Rigau says the full-immersion system has not penalized Spanish proficiency and that the vast majority of families are happy with it because their children end up being bilingual.
She speaks Spanish with a deep Catalan accent and says a half-and-half system is a bad idea, because the smaller language of Catalan has to be over-protected or it will disappear. Many teenagers, for instance, turn away from Catalan to plug into pop-culture references that are mostly in Spanish.
At the Sant Miquel school near cosmopolitan Barcelona, most children come from Spanish-speaking homes. The students say goodbye to their parents in Spanish as they are dropped off, but once they enter the building, the teachers speak to them only in Catalan, and the walls are decorated with science, history and music material in Catalan. On the wall of a first-grade classroom the schedule shows two periods a week dedicated to Spanish and they do all their classwork in Catalan.
However, the children revert to Spanish on the playground, where they are free to speak whatever language they want.
"We can't let our guard down because if you do Castilian Spanish just takes over," says Carmen Blanco, head teacher of the school.
Under the new education law, if a school cannot provide more Spanish-language curriculum for parents who demand it, the regional government must pay for the children to attend a private school with more Spanish. It is unclear how the law will be implemented, because the government has not set out detailed regulations yet and because there are few Spanish-language private schools in Catalonia.
"We just want to support those that want more Castilian. We have to make sure there's bilingualism," said a high-level advisor to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Kathryn Woolard, an anthropologist from University of California, San Diego who has studied language and identity in Catalonia since the 1980s, says policymakers should avoid making the region the site of a linguistic tug-of-war.
"There is a new kind of bilingual identity where it doesn't mean you are rejecting either language," she says.
Spain's new monarch King Felipe VI, who took the throne in June, may appear an unlikely candidate to heal divisions. However, Felipe, who takes over at a time when the popularity of the Spanish monarchy has plummeted, is a rare member of Madrid's elite who has studied Catalan.
He paraded his fluency with a speech in Catalan when he visited Girona on his first official trip. In his remarks, he said the region and the rest of Spain needed to share "respect, understanding and co-existence."
Reporting By Fiona Ortiz; editing by Alessandra Galloni and Anna Willard

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
year-struck
old age and other jokes I know
Help! My face has fallen and can't get up!
Frequently Not Asked Questions: Eight
Writer's laryngitis
Sights from roads my feet have walked: the ginkgo
Condiment days
Get free words in your inbox!
All Things Japanese Cartoons Fiction Humor Lovesome words Mostly odds Old age and other jokes I know People I have a hard time trusting Poetry Questions that demand an answer Rants Seriously... Sign Posts Teaching Things I Ponder Things that happened before now Travel Uncategorized Writing
Things we talked about before you came
Please ask before you borrow anything
year-struck by yearstricken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://year-struck.com/.
A day to leap
I perch on windowsills for years, waiting to jump, believing I can fly. When I finally leap into the arms of the air, I land on my feet in another room, just like the one I left.
Staring out of windows, I have believed for years that the outside is a different world. The sky holds her arms out wide and tells me, "Jump. Don't be afraid. I will catch you." It takes me years of courage to push off from that windowsill. With my clumsy wings of hope and desire, I leap and land inside again.
I still believe in windows. And after I readjust my wings, I may take another leap.
Icarus by Keith Newstead at http://www.cabaret.co.uk/artists/keith-newstead/
Image of Icarus from http://blog.dugnorth.com/2008/05/flying-mechanical-icarus-automaton-at.html
Tags flying, Icarus, Leap Day, personal, writing
Froggery bloggery
If a froggery is gathering of frogs, a bloggery must be a gathering of blogs. Or, for my purposes, a gathering of bloggers, who sit around the WordPress pond croaking. Not the kind of croaking that leads to funerals, although some days, because of the posting, the reading, the commenting, the researching, and the revising, followed by more of the same, the exhausted blogger may feel close to death.
Headline: Death by Blog. Today in Podunk, Wisconsin, a husband discovered his wife's dead body in their home office, sitting at her desk and staring at her computer with her fingers still on the keyboard. Mrs. Mortimer had been there for three days before her husband realized she was dead. "We often went days without speaking," he said, "because she spent all day writing, reading, and commenting on blogs." It's the fourth case of death by blog this week. Experts attribute the deaths to blogged arteries, leading to permanent brain freeze.
Okay, back to frogs and blogs. After extensive research, which may translate to over a hundred minutes, I have discovered some amazing similarities between frogs and bloggers, which I think you will find ribbiting. I know I did.
But first, you must understand that the crucial difference between frogs and toads is all in your head. Popular culture put the idea there, along with thousands and thousands of images of J*st*n B**b*r, he who must be asterisked. In spite of their differences, frogs and toads belong to the same order, Anura; they just have different last names. Some have more warts than others, but so do some of your family members.
At last we are on the same taxonomic page, so here are the similarities:
A frog's skin hangs loosely on its body. Compare that with the slack-jawed look of bloggers who sit in front of a computer screen for hours and days. Then, if you dare, stand in front of a mirror with just your froggy skin on. Anything looking loose? I thought so.
Frogs are nocturnal creatures. Think how many people blog at night. When you wake up, are there new blogs to read and new comments to answer? Again, I thought so.
Frogs wear camouflage to help them sleep during the day. Many bloggers have so-called jobs during the day, but most of them just look awake. They are half asleep because they stayed up too late blogging. Also, they have special eyelids that make them look like they are engaging in a conversation with you while they are mentally composing blogs or comments for other blogs.
Some frogs produce psychoactive skin secretions that make you hallucinate. You know which blogs I'm talking about.
Frogs return by the thousands to breed at the body of water they call home. Every day close to 500,000 bloggers gather at the WordPress pond, post close to 850,000 new posts and almost one million comments. Just today, as of 6:30 a.m., that adds up to 182, 325, 317 words. That's a lot of spawn.
A frog is an amphibian, which means "two lives." Before you become a blogger you were a person with a life, once you become a blogger you lost that life and now live in the blog pond. And you look different, with looser skin.
Frogs appear in stories as harmless, unsightly, and clumsy creatures. However, they often hide some talent or their frogginess is merely a disguise. In the blog pond, reading a blog is like kissing a frog and being magically transformed. Sometimes. The other times, it's like kissing a frog. With warts.
Happy Leap Day! I know it's tomorrow, but I have been pondering this for a while and wanted to get a jump on all the celebrations and well-wishing. And, although I have toad you this before, thanks for reading.
All photos courtesy of http://www.theinformationarchives.com/frogs/
Tags blogs, frogs, humor, toads, WordPress
Getting home from the last station
The wind swept out the flooded floor of the sky, drenching the world below. I watched the night through the windows as the train hurried through the falling water. When we pulled into Hamadayama Station, I felt relief and dismay. In ten minutes, I could be home. But I had to walk through the rain to get there.
Ten minutes in that insistent rain felt like a lifetime. The cold didn't think much of my jacket, and my umbrella was built for a kinder world. I carried the taut cloth over my head to hide myself from the sky, believing I could. Then I started walking.
My feet drowned first and my pants clung to me like a shroud. The wind resented the umbrella, which kept my head dry as long as it could. Finally, it threw its hands up in despair and surrendered.
I yielded to the baptism of rain until I managed to half open the broken umbrella. I belonged to the rain now. On the dark streets, I saw a few others, struggling forward. We didn't speak. Lost in our private thoughts, we were willing ourselves to a place of belonging. All I could think of was home, where I would be safe, where I would be warm.
Those last few steps were the hardest. They always are.
You cannot imagine my delight, grasping that cold doorknob, knowing the door would open into a world of warmth and light, with all of my loved ones waiting for me.
It rained with fury that cold November night in Tokyo.
Tags getting home, personal, rain, Tokyo, writing
My feelings about sentimentality
Words are like celebrities. Some of them keep their signature style over the centuries; others turn into parodies of themselves. Public opinion is part of the reason. Words that socialize with people in power often become so popular that everyone knows and remembers their names. They use their connections to stay current. Other words go out of style because they only want to talk about the past.
Word handlers – writers, journalists, poets, and essayists – play a part as well. Too much promotion and people can grow sick of a word. Ask the word to perform in ways it's not suited for and people will look for a different word, one that has honed that skill. Once the handlers start sending a word out on assignments just to make quick money, a word can grow jaded and start to say whatever the highest bidder offers, even if it is the opposite or near opposite its original meaning. Take a word like silly. Back in the 1200s, it meant "pious" or "blessed." A century later, a silly person was "weak" or "pitiable." By the 1570s, only fools and the feeble-minded were called silly.
Trace the root of "sentimental" back to the Latin sentire and you find the meaning "to feel." The words "sense" and "sentient" come from the same Latin parentage. The first usage of the adjective "sentimental" in the 18th century referred to something characterized by feeling or sentiment. However, after the word began modifying ideas and novels filled with excessive emotions, people began to use it to mean too much emotion or sentiment. Hanging out with "maudlin" and "mawkish" ruined its reputation. Now its name is splashed across every dictionary tabloid in the land, so no one will ever believe it when it says, "But that's not who I really am."
Fortunately, even words with a bad reputation have cousins or other relatives that will stick up for them. Words are notorious breeders and there's hardly one who doesn't have at least one good apple in its thesaural barrel.
For some reason (call me tender-hearted), I started feeling sorry for "sentimental." A few bad choices in life and suddenly you're a pejorative. So I looked up some of its first cousins and they introduced me to even more cousins who introduced to me some well-known, likable words that no one would be ashamed to be seen with in public. See the chart below.
Sentimental and its relatives
If you have time and would like to see how words come in and out of fashion, go to the Google Ngram Viewer and type in words. Please don't go there is you have work to do. I didn't, so I tried avuncular, of or about an uncle, and discovered that its growing popularity was unstoppable until just a few years ago. However, verdant, green or covered in green growth, has started to fade, mowed down by the whims of fashion.
Tags avuncular, dictionaries, humor, sentimentality, verdant, word meanings
Sentimental swoons
Sentimentality is one of the nicest pejoratives you'll ever meet. Maude, as I call her, cries easily, regularly rams into icebergs of emotions that sink her unsinkable optimism, sending her to the bottom of the ocean, but not before she can remember her happy childhood when every flower smelled of heaven and housed a butterfly, and house-trained robins fluttered above her head, leading her safely home where she lived happily ever after. She always manages to escape or resurrect from her watery grave and dry off her emotions, just in time to plan her next voyage across the sentimental seas. She calls every sailing vessel the Titanic, closes her eyes or changes the channel when the bad parts of life come on, and always thinks in pink. Even her sunglasses are rose-colored.
The Titanic (photo from Google)
However, Maude wasn't always a pejorative. She was the darling of philosophy and literature in the 18th century; she looked more attractive when she was younger. During much of the Age of Enlightenment, Sentiment had to eat in the kitchen, while Reason sat at the formal dining table entertaining scientists, philosophers, and writers. After a while, Sentiment got tired of eating the leftovers and seduced the master of the house. When she sat down at the formal table and poured her wine, the conversation turned to discussions about subjectivity, introspection and her role in developing a moral sense. Sharing the table was one thing, but now Reason, long used to hunting alone, had to take Sentiment with him when he went out looking for moral truth. Reason always fancied himself the better shot.
Not-so-stern-looking Laurence Sterne, author of The Sentimental Journey, a sentimental novel. (Photo from Wikipedia)
Maude appeared in many of the novels of that era, using her beauty and brilliance to appeal to the reader's emotions. After loosening the reader's hand from the grip of cold logic and reason, she grabbed it and took the reader with her as she supped with sorrow, fought off lascivious brigands, and succumbed to both love and terror by swooning. Carried across the stormy seas of emotion, battered and bruised, now aloft on the crest of a wave, now almost drowning in its trough, the reader arrived at port, armed with a moral compass to find his or her way safely home. It was the only way Maude knew to teach the reader how to live nobly and morally. Ever the heroine, she drowned or died in story after story, the consequence of being too good for this world. She always showed up for work again the next day, ready to teach someone else.
Modern and post-modern readers who have grown up eating irony-fortified cereal for breakfast usually feel seasick after riding the high waves of sentimental novels from that period. Maude's excesses led inevitably to parody and ridicule. She moved out of her manor, where she had entertained well-bred friends with refined sensibilities, and bought a house in town, next to the used bookstore. You have probably seen her shopping at Wal-Mart; the prices make her swoon.
People who write capital L literature want nothing to do with Maude. If she appears in your story or poem or essay, critics will label your writing sentimental, and they will use a sneering font on the label. As you know, labels written in sneering fonts are almost impossible to remove, so you can forget your dream of obscure fame in literary journals. Oh sure, there's always the New York Times best-seller list, but do you really want to end up like Nicholas Sparks?
It's probably too late to try to clear Maude's name, no matter how much we may like her. I've noticed that she often uses her first and middle name these days: Maude Lynn*. She was never one to show restraint, any more than I do when it comes to puns. She chose a life of excess; that's why a lot of people won't make eye contact with her. I think she will always be popular, maybe not with the big L people, but with people who don't capitalize their literature. I feel a certain amount of sympathy toward her, but I don't like it when she glosses over the hard truths or pretends they aren't there. I don't like it when she takes the shortcut to happiness, to avoid the winos, addicts, and broken people who hang out at the bus station downtown.
I would like to live in a world with fewer problems; a world where every broken person is fixed. But as much as I would like to get to happiness faster, today I am not going to try to get there with Maude. I am going to go downtown and take the bus instead.
(*Note to reader: Gratuitous puns found on this blog are the result of an almost imaginary medical condition. Try not to judge.)
Tags Age of Sensibility, history, humor, sentimentality, Titanic
Losing what you never had
I remember the first time I read the stories of the Greek gods, particularly Zeus and the birth of Athena. To most people, the idea of a full-grown daughter emerging from someone's forehead sounds incredible, the stuff of dreams and mythology; however, it didn't seem strange to me. Zeus reminded me of my mother who could open her mouth and speak fully grown siblings into existence.
In the galaxy of our neighborhood, my family was one of the smaller solar systems. Daddy blazed like the sun in the center, circled by mother, his reflecting moon, and his two small planets, my sister and me. Friends and relatives, like distant stars, were out there somewhere, but we lived primarily in a world of four.
Mother had been someone's moon before; this was her third attempt at marriage. She had escaped the drunken rages, violent beatings, and evictions of her earlier life, and found a man who loved and provided for her. As this new man drew her forward and away from those events, her memory looked back and wrote them into a story she told, but no longer lived. Daddy treated her with kindness and love, but he wanted nothing to do with her past. That included her other children, the five she had before she met him.
When my daddy was alive, I moved between two parallel worlds. In one, I was the second daughter of a loving father and his faithful wife, living a typical middle-class life. We lived in a three-bedroom, one-bath brick house with elm trees in the front and a swing set in the back. In the parallel world, I was the fifth daughter of a father who was my oldest sister's abusive stepfather. He married a woman, twice divorced, whose last known address in Alabama had been on White Trash Avenue. The point of intersection of these two worlds was my oldest sister, Connie.
Clyde and Connie: mother's first two children
Connie was mother's firstborn, dragged into mother's three marriages and written into mother's story of abusive men, poverty, and abandonment. She learned early to take care of herself. Funny, independent, and defiant, she left home at 17 to get married. I was two years old, too young to remember. My father, the love of mother's life and the man ever kind to mother and his two children, once beat Connie with an electrical cord, a story I learned years and years after he died.
By age 23, Connie had three children. From as early as I can remember, we visited her and her children. I was their youngest aunt, just two years older than Connie's first child. Mother forbade us to tell our daddy of our clandestine visits. Since Connie had been in my life from the beginning, she was a secret, but not a surprise.
Daddy wanted mother to himself. To please him, she locked her secrets up and never spoke of the past in front of him. But when he was not around, she shared those secrets with my sister and me. Her words carried us back into the past with her, and I began to understand that the story of my life didn't begin with me. I had arrived in the middle of her story, the story she must tell. So, secret after secret, she told us her life. I doubt she had any idea how heavy those secrets were to the two little girls listening and wondering. But how can I blame her? Stories demand to be told and give us no rest until we give them voice.
Clyde as a young boy
I don't remember how old I was when a brother, Clyde, sprung full-grown from mother's mouth into my consciousness. Born two years after Connie, he was mother's firstborn son from her first marriage. She never spoke much about him, but when she did, she prefaced the story by mentioning the car accident. When Clyde was around ten years old, a car hit him and threw him several yards, causing a head injury. "He was never the same after that," she said, as if that explained everything that followed.
What followed was a life of petty theft and then more serious crimes, which led to at least one felony and internment in La Tuna prison in New Mexico.
Even before my daddy died, mother kept in touch with Clyde, sending him small gifts of money, trying to right some of the wrong he suffered by being left behind so many times. Daddy must have known that mother contacted Clyde. If he could have stopped her, I'm sure he would have. On the other hand, my grandmother could have been her go-between, passing the occasional letter back and forth, because she had been the one to raise Clyde most of his life.
Out of focus: how I remember Clyde
Clyde visited us a few times after my daddy's death and during the time mother's fourth husband was stationed in Korea on a remote tour. Out of nowhere, my oldest brother would knock on the door, looking as handsome and charming as his father, with the same dark, curly hair and green eyes. When Clyde left, things left with him: money, jewelry, silver dollars, and even a small revolver mother kept because there was no man in the house at the time.
In my senior year in high school, two men from the FBI came to our house looking for Clyde. Mother denied knowing his whereabouts, and I think she was telling the truth. Clyde drifted in and out of her life, much like she had done to him when he was small. He usually contacted mother when he was in need of money. To support himself, he took various jobs, often driving a truck.
Although I visited Clyde with my mom when he was in La Tuna prison, I don't know or remember what his crime was, but I'm pretty sure it involved theft. After he left prison, mother lost touch with him. A few years before she died, she asked my younger brother to try to find Clyde. He searched online and discovered Clyde's death certificate, and in the space marked "next of kin," the word, unknown.
Postcard from http://www.playle.com/l
I can't believe how little I knew or asked my mother about Clyde. When I was a child, part of my reluctance may have been fear. Mother had children from both of her previous husbands, and the children from those marriages were left behind as she moved on to new husbands. If it happened twice before, maybe it would happen again. She could leave me, find a new husband, and I would become just a secret she whispered in another little girl's ear. "That's her," she would say, pointing at me standing in front of the brick house, "she had green eyes too." The new girl would smile, snuggle closer, and soon forget about me, just as I forgot about Clyde and the others mother told me about. I would be left behind with the scenery, entrusted to my grandmother or some other relative willing to take me.
Or maybe I didn't ask more questions because I chose to hide her secrets, my complicity an act of seeking her favor. Perhaps it was my way of saying: Keep me! Keep me! Abandonment was my greatest fear and after my daddy abruptly left through death's door, mother was all I had.
Fear may explain my childhood disinterest, but I can't explain why I didn't try to find out more about Clyde when I was older. I felt mother's reluctance to talk much about him. She only told the stories she could; the others stayed inside, breaking her heart. My demands to hear more may have awakened words that would have shattered her world or her sanity. Sometimes silence is the only way we can survive. I don't really know why I never asked more questions.
We make choices in life. We walk down a road, afraid to turn back, driven forward until it's impossible to find our way back even if we want to. Now, no one is left to answer my questions. Clyde became the book I never read, buried years ago.
Some stories never find a voice in this lifetime.
I wonder if those buried stories come back as ghosts to haunt us. Do they roam the earth seeking to be embodied in someone's words, willing to take on new names, live in strange locations, just as long as their story can be told? Maybe Clyde's story waits for me in a book: he has changed his name, moved to Montana, and now wears his blond hair short. Maybe he is sitting at a table in a small café, looking for me in the crowds and waiting to tell me what I seek to know.
I cried when my younger brother told me about Clyde's death certificate. Next of kin: unknown. It breaks my heart that he died alone, like a motherless child. I want to tell his story but I don't know how.
Tags abandonment, La Tuna prison, personal, secrets, writing
She reveals her restraint
By fifth grade, my humor was tall for its age. It was goofy and awkward and made my friends laugh. My two best friends, both nerdy, called me Professor Car-Car.
In sixth grade, almost everyone else's humor started filling out and looking more grown up. Mine stayed skinny, scrawny, and flat chested. By year's end, it was shorter than most.
In high school, I was ashamed of my humor. Everyone knew it had stopped growing in the fifth grade, loved dumb jokes, laughed hysterically at slapstick, and snorted through its nose at jokes about gas. Most people my age preferred jokes about sex, but my humor and I secretly preferred Knock-Knock jokes and puns.
There's no cure for fifth-grade humor; it never grows up. I've tried literary supplements but I end up making fun of them. After hours of imbibing ironic artsy films full of sardonic laughter, I create parodies in my mind to mock them. These often involve banana peels.
Contrary to what you might think, I have tried to train my humor to sit quietly through meetings and not make up funny stories in my head about the people talking. However, my humor can only sit still so long. Fifth-graders have a lot of energy and can't be stuck in a chair all day.
Yesterday I wrote about my husband's colonoscopy and titled the post Let's get this party started. In an act of heroic restraint, I did not use my first choice: Let's get this party farted. I should get some credit for that.
Also, I refrained from writing an entire post about Doctor Payne and his daring space probe. He lands on Uranus in search of his nemesis, Paul Upps, a parasitic creature who attaches himself to other living beings and sucks the life out of them. Doctor Payne heard that Paul Upps was hiding out in a dark tunnel deep in the heart of Uranus. In the end, Doctor Payne finds Paul Upps and removes him. However, that's just the pilot story. Paul Upps is not so easily destroyed. He takes on other forms and shows up other places, so Doctor Payne can have a satisfying career seemingly killing off Paul Upps each week, only to find the evil creature has re-emerged somewhere else next week. I haven't decided yet who should play Doctor Payne, but I'm open to suggestions.
I've given my humor free rein in my brain, where it has room to run around in all that empty space. The letter "g" has corrupted free rein, so now we are seeing people given free reign. Free rein means my humor is sitting on the buckboard of my mind letting the horses run wild. Free reign means the little potentate is sitting a throne, dictating what I say. So untrue. I keep my humor in check, and I think it's important that you know that I'm doing my best to keep it from racing around the interblogs, kicking up dust and making a nuisance of itself.
Tags fifth grade humor, humor, humor. colonoscopy, Uranus


text:
Q: Retrofit Error :500 Internal server error in Android Am Using retrofit for my connection with server,My app has signin page and signout page During Login i get the value from text box and send using POST request to the server It works fine,
   public void LoginUser(View v)

{RestAdapter adapter = new RestAdapter.Builder()
            .setEndpoint(ROOT_URL)
            .build();

    WashAPI api = adapter.create(WashAPI.class);

    api.LoginUser(

            Email.getText().toString(),
            Password.getText().toString(),

            //Creating an anonymous callback
            new Callback<Response>() {
                @Override
                public void success(Response result, Response response) {
                    //On success we will read the server's output using bufferedreader
                    //Creating a bufferedreader object
                    BufferedReader reader = null;

                    //An string to store output from the server
                    String output = "";

                    try {
                        //Initializing buffered reader
                        reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(result.getBody().in()));

                        //Reading the output in the string
                        output = reader.readLine();
                    } catch (IOException e) {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }

Interface for signin
public interface WashAPI {
@FormUrlEncoded
@POST("/xxx/yyy/signin")
public void LoginUser(
        @Field("email") String email,
        @Field("password") String password,

        Callback<Response> callback);

}

This works good
After login with my server API it returns me a token, At the time of signout i need to send the token so my session get experied.
code for signout
public void signout(View v)
{
    Log.d("insidetoken",t);
    RestAdapter adapter = new RestAdapter.Builder()
            .setEndpoint(ROOT_URL)
            .build();
    SignoutAPI api = adapter.create(SignoutAPI.class);
             api.signout(t,
                    new Callback<Response>() {
                        @Override
                        public void success(Response result, Response response) {

                            BufferedReader reader = null;
                            String output = "";
                            try {
                                reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(result.getBody().in()));
                                output = reader.readLine();
                            } catch (IOException e) {
                                e.printStackTrace();
                            }

Interface for signout
public interface SignoutAPI {
@FormUrlEncoded
@POST("/xxx/yyy/zzz/signout")
public void signout(
       @Field("token") String token,
        Callback<Response> callback);

}
My code is same for both signin and sigout
but for signin it works and for signout it gives me RETROFIT ERROR : 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR
But Using POSTMAN It works fine

A: 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR means that there is problem in the server side you should have to check it using postman.
I am damn sure that there will be problem in the web service response not of your code at android side.

A: As mentioned in the comments too, it appears you are doing something in the login service that is not being done in the sign out service.
To fix this, make sure in you sign out service, you are checking for a POST parameter named token.

A: Maybe you are giving token in wrong way
In my way It was "Bearer TOKEN" -> for Authorization in Header
In my case I changed my parameters to that
fun setProfileAvatar(token: String,@Part image: MultipartBody.Part) : Single<Message> {
        return apiService.setProfileAvatar("Bearer ${token}",image)
    }

A: You can enable logging in retrofit to show you server-side errors and messages.
use this link to understand how to enable it.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/33256827/9474700

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
How Chinese Women will Save You Time, Stress, and Money.
By aidem.de | Published 3. November 2022
Though many agree to move again residence at their parents' urging, they draw the road at getting married at a young age — unless they find a partner they genuinely feel is a good match. China often blames the country's plunging marriage rate on ladies selecting to remain single.
Women have been particularly deprived in the course of the economic-restructuring and lots of were laid off and discriminated against within the job market.
She's been praised for her professional handling of the media after western pushback in opposition to China's successful bid to host the Olympics.
The lotus shoe is a reminder that the historical past of women didn't follow a straight line from misery to progress, neither is it merely a scroll of patriarchy writ large.
Academics and campaigners worry which will additional hobble women's hopes of getting more political energy in China.
The get together was fashioned throughout a recession and gave expression to the anger felt towards Chinese immigrants on the West Coast who had been regarded as undercutting wages.
And in a stunning flip of events, it appears like the one women are successful. In China, in case you are female, educated and single by the age of 27, people may use a selected time period – "Sheng-nu" – to describe your social standing. This study was initiated to provide an exploration of dating and mate selection traits among young adults in modern China. The sample used for these analyses is a comparatively small and select one and doesn't essentially provide for making broad generalizations to the bigger inhabitants of young adults in China. However, the findings proven herein do supply contemporary perception into both the character of relationship experiences and a few of the pertinent gender variations which exist. Xi's decade as the get together's general secretary has seen the number of women in politics and elite government roles decline and gender gaps within the workforce widen, lecturers and activists say. Feminist voices have additionally been muzzled and in current times, the government has more and more emphasised the worth of conventional roles for ladies as moms and carers, they add.
Neither intercourse seemed to be overly anxious to turn into mother and father, as their relative responses to the question regarding pro-natalist attitudes was considerably low. This is not completely unanticipated, as one would are inclined to believe that school students do not place parenthood high among their priorities at their age. It is price noting that younger dating chinese woman males do espouse considerably more conservative attitudes regarding gender and gender roles inside the family, particularly. Again, given the extra patriarchal nature of Chinese culture, this is to be anticipated. The relative roles and standing of Chinese females and males have been patriarchal in nature for lots of centuries, yet these long-standing variations may be changing.
Her accusatory social-media submit back in November, 2021, appearedpainful and genuine; months later, she retracted the claim while smiling on the camera wearing a track swimsuit embossed with "China" in giant characters across her chest. Pervasive censorship makes it hard to know the truth, but neither the International Olympic Committee nor its Chinese counterpart have talked about sexual assault or committed to safeguards against it. Most west coast states had laws stopping individuals from marrying exterior their race by the mid-1800s. So by effectively barring Chinese women from coming into the nation by way of the Page Act, the us authorities restricted the growth of Asian American families. Nadal points out that there were no legal guidelines focusing on immigrant women from European international locations. It is important that AAPI ladies and the subgroups that exist inside this neighborhood are part of the broader financial narrative as the country seeks to recuperate from the pandemic and resultant recession.
Powerful Strategies For Chinese Girls As You Are Able To Use Beginning Today
Founded in 1962, Catalyst drives change with preeminent thought management, actionable solutions and a galvanized neighborhood of multinational companies to speed up and advance women into leadership—because progress for girls is progress for everyone. Women are the key to Japan's labor force transformation, however they continue to face many challenges. In job advertisements concentrating on women, many embrace necessities for girls to be married with kids and to possess particular bodily attributes (e.g., peak, weight) that are not associated to job duties.
Zhang, a matchmaker based in Shangcai County, Henan province, tells Sixth Tone that over 70% of her shoppers are feminine. They are probably to work white-collar jobs at native faculties and state-owned corporations, and so they want to find a partner who has a safe state sector job, an honest education, and a pleasant persona. Most ladies from smaller Chinese cities are only willing to go so far to respect local attitudes.
These improvements have, in turn, set the stage for a substantial shift away from extra traditional forms of courting and mate selection and have additionally made the potential "Westernization" of ideologies surrounding romance and courting relationships even more likely . Younger cohorts, who've had higher exposure to growing individualism and Western tradition, might approach relationship and mate choice in a special method from the previous generation. However, these younger cohorts must also recognize the existence of long-standing norms, as filial obligation stays a very tangible worth in Chinese tradition , and continues to bind kids to their parents. Indeed, current studies have instructed that courting and decisions inside marriage, itself, are still strongly affected by Chinese parents .
For stigmatised "sheng-nu" ladies, direct confrontation within the type of social activism may lead to serious professional or legal consequences. The probability to spend money on themselves – and infrequently on gifts for his or her dad and mom – helps to positively redefine their single status as something to be pleased with. Patterns in partner preferences which have been found across societies ought to be present among Chinese youth, particularly, concern about physical appearance, financial prospects, and sort or compassionate character of future potential spouses. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to assist uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks.
Young ones, Work and Chinese Women
The regulation was deliberated via an open revision course of which included enter from feminist lecturers and girls attorneys. Other civil and criminal laws have been additionally amended to better shield women's rights and interests, together with the inheritance regulation. The Great Leap Forward's concentrate on whole workforce mobilization resulted in opportunities for women's labor development. As girls turned increasingly wanted to work in agriculture and business, and encouraged by policy to do so, the phenomenon of Iron Women arose.
A major part was the rehabilitation program during which prostitutes and trafficked women were supplied "medical therapy, thought reform, job coaching, and family reintegration." Since the financial reform in 1979, intercourse trafficking and other social vices have revived. Since most divorce disputes are settled at an area degree, the law permits courts to evaluate specific conditions and make choices in one of the best curiosity of the youngsters. Typically, such a choice would concurrently favor the mother, especially in disputes over a home where the youngsters would reside. In some divorce disputes "ownership" and "use" over property can be distinguished, giving a mom and youngster "use" of the household house with out awarding the mother full ownership of the home. In current-day China, ladies enjoy authorized equal rights to property, however in practice, these rights are often troublesome to realize.
Women did historically male work in both fields and factories, together with main actions of girls into management positions. Women competed for top productiveness, and individuals who distinguished themselves got here to be known as Iron Women.
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text:
Swamp Creature Paul Ryan laments 'broken politics' and doesn't apologize for stabbing Trump in the back multiple times
The biggest reason why Republicans lost the House was because Speaker Paul Ryan didn't lift a finger to keep it.
He stabbed President Trump in the back every opportunity he got. Ryan never fought for the Trump agenda, especially for the border wall. He's a disgrace!
Fox News reports outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan lamented the country's "broken politics" and partisan fights during his farewell address on Wednesday, while also praising the achievements of Congress during the chaotic three years he held the gavel.
"We have taken on some of the biggest challenges of our time, and made a great and lasting difference in the trajectory of this country," Ryan, R-Wis., who will likely be replaced by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in the new session, said during his speech at the Library of Congress. "Certainly one Congress cannot solve all that ails us. Not every outcome has been perfect."
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Poll: Under Biden, 71% Say America Is On The Wrong Track… - Basically everyone except the Dems' hard-left base.
Jerry Garcia's Grateful Dead cannabis brand is leaving California - SFG: Jerry Garcia is one of the most iconic pot smokers in California history. Born in San Francisco, Garcia led the Grateful Dead for 30 years as the city...
Second Weakest Hurricane Season of Satellite Era - Liberal elite creepazoids gather in Davos to agree that we must eat bugs and radically lower our standard of living because otherwise our carbon emission...