CHESTER — One hundred forty four tee shirts bearing the names of city residents who lost their lives to gun violence since 2009 made for an emotional and overwhelming sight for those traveling down ninth street this past weekend.
Erected Saturday on the grounds of Chester Eastside Ministries at Ninth and Upland streets, the dedication of the "Memorial to Lives Lost to Gun Violence" took place Sunday and featured a host of speakers.
Sponsored by the Chester Delaware County Chapter of Heeding God's Call, the event was co-organized by Pastor Anita Littleton of Chester's Refuge in Christ Church and Fran Stier of the Ohev Shalom Synagogue in Wallingford.
Standing with tears streaming down her face, Chester resident Delores Banks Strand, spoke of her three sons, who were all lost to gun violence on the streets of Chester. Her oldest son, Calvin Banks, was shot and killed at the age of 17 in 1993; her middle son, Duane Banks, was killed in 2006 at the age of 31; and her youngest son, Marckus Banks, was murdered in 2013 at the age of 32.
Heeding God's Call member Yancy Harrell, who lost his son to gun violence, told those in attendance that they should ask themselves what they are going to do to get involved.
Terry Rumsey of Delaware County United for Sensible Gun Policy, expressed appreciation and congratulated the Chester Chapter of Heeding God's Call for installing a visual reminder of gun violence.
Rumsey said his group is dedicated to changing gun laws. He added that a walk and rally for universal background checks will begin 10 a.m. Saturday at the Calvary Baptist Church, 1616 W. Second Street, go down Ninth Street to the memorial at Chester Eastside and on to the Providence Friends Meeting House in Media.
Littleton said the creation of the display has been exceptionally overwhelming for her. She added that a school teacher stopped to see the display and said several of her students names were on the shirts.
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text:
Anti-LGBTQ+ Christian groups launch sinister campaign to 'reclaim the rainbow' in Ghana
TinyMart is sharing this content, the original was posted on pinknews.co.uk by DANAI NESTA KUPEMBA, JUNE 4, 2022
Religious groups in Ghana have sparked controversy after launching a campaign to steal the rainbow flag away from the LGBTQ+ community.
Two groups, the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values and Advocates of Christ Ghana, announced at the end of May their plot to "reaffirm" the rainbow flag to re-enforce heterosexuality and so-called "family values".
The campaign cites the Bible passage Genesis 9:13 to 16, which describe how God flooded the earth due to sin, then sent a rainbow as a"sign of the covenant between me and the earth".
It comes after a major research project saw 20 biblical scholars, theologians, ethicists, evolutionary biologists and sociologists come together to disprove the foundations upon which the Catholic Church has built its anti-LGBTQ+ stance.
The resulting study, published in May 2021, said claims that the Bible condemns same-sex relationships are based on misinterpretations and mistranslations. The group said its study should "serve as the final nail in the coffin of biblical and other arguments justifying homophobia.
This has not stopped the two groups in Ghana from using the Bible to attack LGBTQ+ rights.
Moses Foh Amoaning, a lawyer and executive secretary of the Coalition, said: "This is a fight between the almighty and man. Anybody who wears those rainbow colours for the LGBTQI, you will be a target of the holy spirit, you will speak in tongues, the power of god will come after you."
The LGBTQ+ rights group Rightify Ghana responded on Twitter with a "crying laughing" emoji.
Some of the 21 people arrested leave after appearing in the Circuit Court in Ho, Ghana, on June 4, 2021. (Photo by Nipah Dennis / AFP) (Photo by NIPAH DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)
The campaign comes a year after 21 Ghanaians were arrested for attending an LGBTQ+ event in May 2021.
They became known as the "Ho 21", and were detained for 22 days while police tortured, humiliated and assaulted them. They were eventually released after a court granted bail, and were ultimately acquitted.
One of the 21, an intersex person, told Human Rights Watch she was stripped naked, told that she was not a woman and thrown into a men's prison where police encouraged inmates to rape her.
She subsequently fled the country, explaining: "My life was at risk in Ghana. When [people found out] that I'm part of that 21 arrested in Ho, I had to change my location to another place, I had to run for my life."
LGBT+ rights in Ghana may deteriorate further if the Family Values Bill currently circulating parliament is passed.
The bill would outlaw almost every aspect of LGBTQ+ life, and would even make advocating for LGBTQ+ rights a crime punishable by jail.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
The Never-Ending Debate About Lottery Lands On Radio Stations
Radio stations are not only most preferred resources for best music: there's actually much more to make up a perfect radio channel, such as advertisements, daily news and/or breaking news and radio shows.
Normally, radio shows attract numerous followers to listen to a certain radio channel instead of choosing other channels. Of course, a radio show should be attractive, interesting, updated and full of external interviews to relevant people, experts and so on.
Confused About Lottery?
Christian radio channels offer a pretty decent selection of radio shows, that are also a useful resource for Christians who want to get updated about latest events or about the opinion of relevant priests or other religious figures.
As a matter of fact, there are a few topics that seem to be never-solving. In fact, the current society throws Christians in confusion when it comes to certain modern things or attitudes. For example, can Christians buy lottery tickets? That's a really complicated topic which generates much confusion among Christians of all places in the world.
It's worth for radio channels to deal with such a topic, in order to help Christians understand the value of their own actions in this life.
What's Wrong With Lottery?
One of the most important points in playing lottery games for Christians concerns the attitude and the reasons for playing lottery games – as well as any other game for money.
Christians should question themselves about the following points:
Are you playing for the thirst of money? or simply for fun?
Do you have superstitious beliefs about numbers?
What would you do if you become a lottery winner?
A few things are 100% wrong, on the other hand what ruins everything is the specific personal attitude when doing something. Lottery games can turn out to destroy a winner's existence as long as the winner cannot manage the winnings and let money overcome on their own goals and life's targets.
But a huge lottery winning can also turn out to be a gift, as you can see in this Godtube video. As you can understand, everything depends on the way you use your winnings, on the attitude you feel for lottery.
Do A Safe Online Lottery Exist?
Sure, there are many online lottery websites that offer safe games and a good ticket sale service!
The bottom line is that you should find for a top comfortable, easy to navigate and rich of information website. This Online Lottery Club website may meet all of your expectations when it comes to safety and fair gaming.
Lottery Club offers a pretty large pool of most popular lottery games, each with all past and latest draw results:
La Primitiva
Euro Millions
New York Lotto
Tickets for each of these lottery games can be bought directly on Lottery Club, as long as you are a registered users and you added your payment method. Transactions take place in a smooth and quick way. Moreover, each transaction is registered and verified, so you can keep track of your purchasing and withdrawal of lottery winnings to your bank account. A full-time customer service is also offered to all users who visit or register on Lottery Club.


text:
import csv
import operator
from serializers import Tweet
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import pylab
import re
from dateutil import tz

all_tweets = {}
all_ids = set([])

def ngrams(input, n):
    input = input.split(' ')
    output = []
    for i in range(len(input)-n+1):
        output.append(input[i:i+n])

    return output

with open("/Users/lorenamesa/Desktop/pytennessee/cta_tweet_data.csv", "r") as csvdata:
    headers = ['id_str', 'created_at', 'text']
    reader = csv.reader(csvdata)

    for row in reader:
        if len(row) == 3:
            data = dict(zip(headers, row))
            tweet = Tweet(**data)
            if not all_tweets.get(tweet.tweet_id):
                all_tweets[tweet.tweet_id] = tweet
            else:
                all_tweets[tweet.tweet_id] = tweet

        # print datetime.datetime.strptime(tweet.created_at, "%Y%m%d %H:%M")  # local time
        # print bus_prediction.get_requested_time_hr()

    print len(all_tweets) # 262

    all_tweet_bigrams = [ngrams(re.sub(r'[^\w\s]', '', data.text), 2) for tweet_id, data in all_tweets.iteritems()]
    all_tweet_bigrams = sum(all_tweet_bigrams, [])

    bigrams_freq = {}

    for bigram in all_tweet_bigrams:
        joined_bigram = ' '.join(bigram)
        if joined_bigram not in bigrams_freq:
            bigrams_freq[joined_bigram] = 1
        else:
            bigrams_freq[joined_bigram] += 1

    sorted_bigrams_freq = sorted(bigrams_freq.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1), reverse=True)
    print sorted_bigrams_freq[:10] # [('trains are', 112), ('Line trains', 100), ('are operating', 70), ('residual delays', 67), ('delays after', 67), ('operating with', 67), ('with residual', 65), ('due to', 60), ('buses are', 50), ('rerouted via', 50)]

    labels = [bigram[0] for bigram in sorted_bigrams_freq[:10]]
    data = [bigram[1] for bigram in sorted_bigrams_freq[:10]]
    pylab.title('Top 10 Bigrams in CTA Tweet Data January 2016')
    pylab.pie(data, labels=labels, autopct='%1.1f%%', shadow=True, startangle=90)
    pylab.show()

    relevant_tweets = []

    for tweet_id, data in all_tweets.iteritems():
        if "blue" in data.text.lower() and "residual delay" in data.text.lower(): #and "O'Hare" not in data.text.lower():
            print data.created_at # Fri Jan 29 05:34:56 +0000 2016
            print datetime.strptime(data.created_at, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S +0000 %Y").replace(tzinfo=tz.tzlocal()), data.text
            utctimestamp = int((datetime.strptime(data.created_at, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S +0000 %Y") - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds())
            data.created_at = utctimestamp
            # print data.created_at
            relevant_tweets.append(data)
        if "72 north" in data.text.lower():
            utctimestamp = int((datetime.strptime(data.created_at, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S +0000 %Y") - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds())
            data.created_at = utctimestamp
            relevant_tweets.append(data)
        if "52 kedzie/california" in data.text.lower() and "delay" in data.text.lower():
            utctimestamp = int((datetime.strptime(data.created_at, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S +0000 %Y") - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds())
            data.created_at = utctimestamp
            relevant_tweets.append(data)

    # pylab.title("Range of Damen Blue Line Train ETAs in January 2016 From Home to Work Between 6am to 12pm")
    # pylab.legend(loc='best')
    # pylab.xlabel("Train Delayed")
    # pylab.ylabel("Number of Trains")
    # pylab.plot()
    # pylab.show()

with open("/Users/lorenamesa/Desktop/pytennessee/tweet_labeled_data.csv", "w") as csvdata:
    headers = ['created_at', 'tweet_id', 'text']

    writer = csv.writer(csvdata, dialect='excel')
    writer.writerow(headers)

    for tweet in relevant_tweets:
        writer.writerow([tweet.created_at, tweet.tweet_id, tweet.text])

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


UPDATE: Beyonce is officially a halftime performer for Super Bowl XLVII. The singer confirmed her role in the Feb. 3, 2013, event via her website, Beyonce.com by posting a photo of herself decorated with the Super Bowl date.
Beyonce will be the halftime performer for Super Bowl XLVII (47), according to an anonymous source who leaked the news to The Associated Press today.
The big game will be held at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, La., next year on Feb. 3, 2013. An official announcement confirming Queen Bey as the entertainment for the night is supposed to come Wednesday, according to the insider.
The choice of the "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)" singer is amusing for that song title alone -- what football player doesn't want a gold championship ring? Beyonce's stellar singing skills and dance abilities will surely be a success for NFL ratings if she is chosen. Football is notoriously a sport watched by men, but with one of the biggest divas in the world performing at halftime, women will be glued to the screens as well.
Since Jay-Z's eight-day stint at the Barclays Center drew so much fan and media attention, and his surprise collaboration with Beyonce on his closing night drew a collective gasp of delight from almost the entire music community, riding the coattails of this power couple is a smart move for the NFL.
Her celebrity star power alone is proof she's worthy of the hype. The 31-year-old songstress has won 16 Grammys, three AMA awards and seven Billboard Music Awards, just to name a few. Don't forget to add personal accomplishments like successful wife and mother to that lengthy list.
If Beyonce performs at Super Bowl XLVII, it is very likely that Jay-Z, and her former Destiny's Child bandmates Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams could make guest appearances. The close relationship between Jay-Z and Kanye leads to speculation that even 'Ye himself could guest.
Stay tuned for an official announcement about her halftime performance.


Can I Use Essential Oils with My Newborn Baby?
Your baby has a stuffy nose and cannot breathe easily. Your baby has been crying because of a gassy tummy, and you have tried everything you can think of to help her. Your baby is overtired, but will not sleep. Is there anything you can do?
This seems like a straightforward question, but, unfortunately, it is actually quite complicated, as the "experts" disagree in this particular area, making it very confusing for parents who are just trying to help their babies be more comfortable.
First and foremost, it is safe to say that one should not give babies essential oils in any manner that would be considered "internal" use. Do not add them to a bottle or put them in a baby's mouth. Although there has been research that has used this method, it is neither necessary nor safe enough to outweigh the possible risks.
Second, there are quite a few essential oils that one should not use around a baby this young at all, peppermint being near the top of the list of "no-nos." Check any blends you have purchased for higher risk essential oil ingredients.
Finally, to address the initial question, is there anything we can do to help a distressed baby? There are two methods we might consider: topical and inhaled use.
When considering inhaled use, environmental use, such as room sprays and various forms of diffusion are the first approach we can try. Diffusion around babies should be of light and short term. Sometimes it can be better to put 1 drop of an essential oil on a cotton ball placed out of reach on top of a shelf or chest of drawers than to use an electronic diffuser.
Babies have a heightened and sensitive sense of smell and can easily be overwhelmed by environmental aromas. Babies are also already exposed to so many different chemicals in our air and water that adding to that load may be overwhelming for their little bodies. If the environmental exposure seems to be too much for the baby, turn off or remove the source of essential oils (diffuser, cotton ball, etc.) open a window, remove the baby from the room, and let the room air out before returning.
Another environmental approach is to put the appropriately diluted essential oil on the parent holding the baby. The baby will be exposed to the essential oil without coming in contact with it. Again, be aware of the baby's heightened sense of smell when determining how much of an essential oil blend to use. You may be able to use far less that you would consider using for yourself.
*If you choose to apply essential oils topically, choose newborn-appropriate oils, dilute to Robert Tisserand's recommendation, and apply the oils to baby's back, chest, or feet. Keep them away from baby's face and hands.
Both Lea Harris of Using Essential Oils Safely and Jessie Hawkins of Vintage Remedies recommend not using essential oils topically with children under 6 months of age.
Andrea Butje of the Aromahead Institute recommends that essential oils not be used directly with babies under the age of 2 years.
Who is correct? What can a parent do?
Have I exhausted all other possible remedies?
Essential oils are not your only alternative for natural remedies. There are also other natural sources out there other than essential oils, such as gripe water for colic and hydrosols for diaper rash or room sprays. Essential oils may be convenient, but they are neither the only option nor the safest option.
How important is it that I "fix" this problem right now?
Babies are in pain when they have gas, but they will get over it on their own. If a baby is truly struggling to breathe, it may be more appropriate to call the doctor or even call 911 instead of trying to rectify it on your own.
What is the risk of using an essential oil and is it worth taking that risk with my precious baby compared to allowing the problem to resolve itself naturally?
Just because something is natural does NOT mean it is safe. I think this is the biggest misconception regarding natural remedies, particularly essential oils. Sometimes natural remedies are safe-ER than a synthetic remedy, but safety is relative in all cases. Even natural remedies need to be used with education, understanding, and discretion.
Our newborns are so very precious. Always weigh the risk you incur when using a remedy to the risk of harm if you do nothing. Babies appreciate being touched, held, rocked, sung to, and loved. Oftentimes that is truly enough, even when we wish we could do more to help baby feel comfortable.
Try every comfort measure possible before considering any kind of "chemical" intervention, whether natural or synthetic. Hold, rock, sing to, and love your baby. Sometimes baths or steamy bathrooms can help.
Try Roman chamomile or lavender hydrosol from a reputable retailer. Dilute it (yes, for newborns hydrosols should also be diluted) and spray it around baby, onto baby's bedding, on yourself as you hold baby, or onto baby directly in some cases.
I will be the first to admit that this is very tough sometimes when you really want to help your baby be more comfortable, but the newborn period is relatively short compared to all the years your baby has ahead of her. You will have plenty of opportunities to use essential oils in the years ahead. For now, reserve your essential oils for your own use, for house cleaning, and to influence your environment (e.g. drop of essential oil on a cotton ball on a shelf, diffuser, etc.), and for yourself to keep yourself calm as much as possible while dealing with baby's difficulties.
Robert Tisserand explanation of the terms "hazard" and "risk"


Rinboo Help Center » What is Caller Identification or Caller ID?
Caller identification lets your friends, family and business contacts know you're calling them.
When you have set up caller identification, your Rinboo Number or mobile number will be displayed when you call mobiles and landlines from Rinboo.
Caller identification is free to set up and use.


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Everyone should be outside frolicking around in glorious autumn, so I'll make this short today.
Don't you hate it when someone talks about the best, most wonderful, stellar book that's old and impossible to find? They imply the best books are old ones and you start to feel like you'll never get your hands on the real greatest books of all time. Well, that's what I'm doing today. I can't help it, because a beloved book around here is Rags. It's about a shaggy dog who is huge but quite the gentle giant. He is adopted by a shopkeeper and his wife to defend their grocery store from burglars. The shopkeeper loves him, but his wife is quite disappointed by his affectionate and skittish character. Something happens that brings the fierce watchdog out of Rags and makes both the shopkeeper and his wife appreciate Rag's loyal and loving nature. If you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it. My husband loved it as a child and my kids love it now.
This is Day 9 of 31 Days of Picture Books. To see the rest of the series, go here. To read more great 31 Days series on the other blogs participating, go to The Nester.


What happens when everyone can read?
When everyone is living longer?
When everyone consumes like I do?
When everyone moves to the city?
The caveat is that everyone never means everyone.
What happens to those last people who aren't connected – the ones who desperately want to be, and those who desperately don't?
If everyone is – is it okay if you're not?
*** with special thanks to WordPress's autocorrect for suggesting "Semi-Annual Kant" as an alternative.


text:
Q: The alternating group is generated by three-cycles
Prove that, for $n \geq 3$, the three-cycles generate the alternation group $A_n$

Proof:  We multiply on the left by 3-cycles to "reduce" an even permutation $p$ to the identity, using induction on the number of indices fixed by a permutation. How the indices are numbered is irrelevant. If $p$ contains a $k$-cycle with $k \geq 3$, we may assume that it has the form $p=(123\dots k)\dots$ Multiplying on the left by $(321)$ gives $$p'= (321)(123 \dots k)\dots=(1)(2)(3\dots k)\dots$$ More fixed indices.
What do you think ?

A: The idea of the proof is that we will show that any product of two transpositions is a product of 3-cycles ; and ,if so, then since every member of the An is a product of even number of transpositions, we are done.
To begin with lets us suppose that we have a product of transpositions a1 and a2  where both have a common number a which belongs to the set {1,2,.....}- say they both move a. Then we have
a1  of the form (a b)
and a2 of the form (a c) .
In this case , we have
a1 a2 =
 (a b)(a,c)= (a,c,b) and we are done.
Now suppose that a1 and
a2 move different numbers .
a1 = (a b)
a2 =  (c d)
Then
a1a2 =
(a,b)(c,d) = ( d a c ) ( a b d ).
And we are done.

A: A permutation is an element of $A_n$ if and only if it is a product of an even number of transpositions.
We first note that the three cycles do not generate more than $A_n$ since for distinct $i,j,$ and $k$, we have $(ij)(ik)=(ijk)$.
For the other inclusion, we note that $(ijk)=(ij)(ik)$ for distinct $i,j,$ and $k$. And for distinct $i,j,k,$ and $l$, we have that $(ij)(kl)=(ijk)(jkl)$. Thus the three cycles generate all products of an even number of transpositions.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
Posted on October 8, 2015 by eduKate Singapore
The Flexible Education System
The Flexible Education System for the new gen Singaporean
Singapore's education system has gone a long way the last 30 years where it was very much rigid and does not allow much flexibility from the norm. That has changed and our new system allows for diverse avenues to achieve an excellent education for an individual. It is a more diverse, forgiving and yet, higher quality education. 30 years ago, other countries like America made waves with child prodigies entering universities before they reached puberty, and right now, our system are starting to show the same education news every year of young Singaporeans doing amazing things in education, like that of Master Mark Sim.
We need to design flexibility into our education system, to allow for different avenues of growth and seed alternate talents to be harvested in the future. The next Colin Maclaurin, Pablo Picasso, or Nadia Comaneci doesn't come from sitting in schools until they reach universities in their 20's. They develop their talents at a very young age, and given the opportunity to develop it too. Being flexible provides small little crevasses that allows talents to thrive in, develop and mature. It is where ur society matures and we seek talents that paints the Singapore landscape into a diverse, multi-hue and capable society, providing an expert to every problem, enlarging the circle of knowledge that is required to thrive in the 21st Century.
We need to shift our education paradigm, to acknowledge that for a successful Singapore, we need a flexible world class education that allows individuals to thrive, and seed talents to mature to contribute to society. It is the way to go for a human resource dependent Singapore, and with bright sparks from our brightest minds that we see ourselves solve the future problems that will come our way.
extract from http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/youngest-singaporean-to-score-a-in-physics-9-year-old-boy-not-born-smart
Straits Times: Youngest Singaporean to score A in physics: 9-year-old boy 'not born smart'
AUG 18, 2015, 4:00 PM SGT
SINGAPORE – With a chunky physics textbook laid out in front of him, Singaporean Mark Sim is a picture of cherubic enthusiasm as he flips through the pages, pointing out the topics he is particularly fond of.
"I like electricity, and oh, atomic physics because my dad explained to me how bombs work. Although I find the property of waves a little hard to understand…"
That caveat, tinged with child-like uncertainty, is a reminder that the soft-spoken Mark is all but nine years of age – but already believed to be the youngest person in the world to score an A in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) physics examination.
The IGCSE is an internationally recognised qualification equivalent to the GCE O-levels.
Mark was eight years and three months old when he took the exam – consisting of three papers spread out over two days – at the British Council last November.
The feat earned him a place in the Singapore Book of Records when his result was ratified earlier this year.
"We tried to check with Cambridge if he was the youngest in the world, but they don't keep such records," Mark's father, Mr Harry Sim Lim Onn, 48, told The Straits Times.
Mr Sim had originally intended for him to take the GCE O-level exam, but the Ministry of Education would not allow it as they had imposed an age limit in order for parents not to put undue stress on their children.
It cost Mr Sim $300 for his only child, now a Primary 3 pupil at Nanyang Primary, to take the exam. But he reckons it was money well spent.
Mr Sim, a Singapore permanent resident from Malacca who has lived here for 27 years and is married to Singaporean Wun Ju Sing, 46, revealed that Mark displayed a precocious talent for grasping basic physics concepts.
"I was explaining to him about acceleration and how my car differed from a Ferrari when he was six years old, and to my surprise, he understood," said the section manager at a semi-conductor firm.
Mr Sim subsequently bought Mark a physics textbook, and the boy was hooked when he was told it was meant for students aged 15 years and above.
For a year leading up to the exam, Mark would study for half an hour every day on weekdays, while Mr Sim spent up to three hours on weekends coaching him.
But both parents, who graduated from the National University of Singapore with bachelor degrees, were keen to stress that Mark was unlike the usual geniuses who were born smart.
Singaporean prodigy Ainan Cawley, for instance, set a world record at seven when he passed his chemistry O-levels in 2007.
"It took Mark a lot of hard work and determination, along with a commitment on my part to allow him to focus on something he was really good at," said Mr Sim.
"His English was not very good to begin with and he had to make an extra effort to improve in order to fully understand the questions."
In fact, Mark's growing up years were a source of constant worry for his parents, who feared that he might have been slower than other children.
"Our maid warned us not to expect too much from Mark; for example, he could not roll over on his own until he was nine months old," revealed Mr Sim, who has written a book about his parenting experiences.
"He was also constantly at the last of his class in kindergarten."
Madam Wun, an accountant-turned-housewife, supervises Mark's daily schedule and coaches him on other subjects such as English and Mathematics. She is also his constant "sparring partner" in chess.
Mark was previously a member of Singapore's national junior chess squad, but he left last year in order to concentrate on preparing for his physics exam.
And Madam Wun says that her son also enjoys computer games and travelling overseas – his small but tidy bedroom is filled with books a child his age would read, while he is also a huge fan of the film Minions.
"He has been getting attention in school and his classmates know of what he has done, but we try to keep him grounded and down-to-earth," she added.
So what's next for Mark?
There are plans for him to take the A-level physics exam within the next two years, although Mr Sim is wary of the demands of such an undertaking.
"Mark was the one who suggested it. He dragged me to the bookstore and made me buy the A-level physics textbook," he said. "We'll take it slow but he should have no problems scoring a B or C with the right preparation."
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Christopher Buckley — Rolling the Bones
Posted in Victor Schnickelfritz on May 17, 2010 by Victor Schnickelfritz
Nobody does ocean reverie like Christopher Buckley. One moment you're focused on some fixed beach point or some behavior of the waves and then you're telescoping out into the cosmos, then microscoping back into the minutiae of a life — often the life of 50's California. What can I say? I'm a sucker for such movement. I have always wanted to have the stars as my mistress too.
Rolling the Bones is a book, Buckley's 17th book of poetry, that concerns itself with the vicissitudes of life and repeatedly suggests the question — why have things turned out the way they have? This, of course, is the question on the minds of all good cosmologists, so it isn't much of a surprise that the cosmos turns up in poems like "Poverty" [Read "Poverty" and Buckley's commentary on it] where with his guide Cesar Vallejo, Buckley ventures into the luck that would have him possess an ATM card and a AAA Plus card while others stave off an Ecuador-styled starvation. The stars become the "rolling bones" in the fifth section.
The old stars tumble out of their bleak rooms like dice—
Box Cars, Snake Eyes, And-The-Horse-You-Rode-In-On . . .
not one metaphorical bread crumb in tow.
Not a single Saludo! from the patronizers
of the working class—Pharaoh Oil, Congress,
or the Commissioner of Baseball—all who will eventually
take the same trolley car to hell, or a slag heap
on the outskirts of Cleveland.
So "playing dice" is the metaphor with which we romp through the book. All of the puzzling phenomenon are seemingly reduced to the probabilities witnessed in a bubble chamber, in a racemic mix of chemical end-products. One begins to have the strange sensation as one is reading Rolling the Bones that God must have really wanted to screw with the human mind by making outcomes not so absolute as partial and dependent on initial conditions.
Buckley chronicles the risks (choices) he has made with his life, and while he disparages a few of them, he generally seems to content to be "here" (the Santa Barbara area—Lompoc, Montecito) and proclaims so in the final poem "Looking West from Montecito, Late Afternoon" where he says
The clouds keep pressing.
I have been here 54 years—
that I want to go
anywhere else
A satisfied life in America? Buckley clearly hasn't looked at all the ads that come in the Sunday paper. Isn't American life about wanting more? A faster gadget? A better neighborhood? Simonized Cadillac? He is still dreaming of the Cisco Kid riding down the avenue in a circa 50s parade rather than a gleaming new Nordstrom's which has sprung up. Clearly if one measured a life in terms of the degree to which it has been realized (rather than some snappy cadre of shiny possessions) Buckley's narrator would come out pretty close to the top. But since the psychological and the spiritual must take a back seat to the material wealth of a baseball commissioner, Buckley's narrator is thrust upon the question of how it all turned out this way.
One way to dodge this question, of course, is to dwell in the past. Buckley luxuriates there, unabashed about the nostalgia he pursues. Ordinarily, this makes me feel a little uncomfortable as a reader. I ask myself why I should want to be a voyeur to a poet's childhood (indeed, when I belong to 1970s Chicago and not 1950s Santa Barbara). However, there is a certain distance that Buckley provides on his past that prevents it from being cloying. Most of the time there isn't any judgment placed on the past episodes. There is just the anecdote, the memory, the quotation that stands apart from any lingering evaluation of it. It is almost as if the these elements from the past appear pure, distilled, occurring before the birth of the knowledge of good and evil itself. Yes, Buckley's childhood is innocent, but not completely so.
There is the memory of winos (or tramps, hoboes as they were one known before the sanitizing "homeless") and the memory of a friend who says to one of the begging crew of winos, "Now promise me you won't waste this on food, and go out and buy some real rot-gut".
I don't know why I so easily sign on to Buckley's reminiscing. Am I appeasing an old-timer who just seems to let himself fade-to-50s? What do I have in common with his 50s past in California? Of course, the answer is nothing and everything. I have to admit I put on my anthropologist's hat and try to imagine that older California when I think about the current California, a place that I, as a Midwestern boy, will never presume to have figured out. Amid the crises of capital in the capitol, it is somewhat reassuring to imagine a kind of California that is a distant cousin to the current one. Again, it affords me the opportunity of thinking of the ways dinosaurs might have turned out—if it weren't for the roll of the bones.
There are a few glitches among the references and reminiscing which should be brought to the attention of a reader. [I normally never comment on such things if there are just one or two mishaps; however, in a book that pays so much attention to resurrecting and reconstructing the past, I think it is important for the sake of authenticity to get these references right]. It is "Voit" not "Voigt" which is the name of a basketball manufacturing company. It is "cosine" not "cosign" which is a trigonometric function. It is "Bertrand Russell" not "Bertram Russell" who is the logical positivist philosopher. It is "Puccini" not "Pucini" who is the Italian opera composer. Most of these did not interfere with the reading (except maybe the "cosine" reference—was there a pun operating here I didn't get? I don't think Buckley resorts to puns very often, if at all.] I must presume that these are typos more than anything else. This then is an issue of quality control at University of Tampa Press. Are undergraduates doing the proofreading there?
Throughout his beachcombing, philosophical meandering and nostalgia-waxing, a bit of the surly outsider emerges, and for me this is the bow on the top of the gift box, the little accoutrement that makes one giddy with excitement when each new volume of his arrives. I'm not sure that the turn back in time would be so alluring if it weren't for the non-conformist attitude that comes through in the present. One certainly gets the idea that Buckley is not the kind of person who has carefully groomed each decision as though he were awaiting a Supreme Court nomination. I like this. No poet should conduct his/her life as though he/she is waiting for a nod of approval from above, an appointment to preside over some kind of heavenly chamber.
Religion plays a no minor role in Rolling the Bones also. God and the beyond is the continual foil in Buckley's cosmological proceedings. The deus ex machina is invoked as comic relief most of the time. However, there are mentions of attending Catholic School and listening to Reverend Ike on the radio, which bring the high-minded yet wise-cracking theologian down to earth. Buckley recognizes that is hard to ignore the fleshly pursuits of organized religion. And also because he recognizes, through Einstein, that God does not play dice.
What Einstein Means to Me
I don't give a good goddamn
anymore what anyone thinks,
just like Albert Einstein sticking
his tongue out at the press,
J. Edgar Hoover, and anyone else
poking their nose in, in his famous photo—
how it lightens my reckless and irregular heart
each time I see it.
Not that I'm
offering any comparisons here,
having received my diploma
in Theoretical Physics from a home
correspondence course requiring
50 years of star-gazing and 500 box tops
from Nabisco Shredded Wheat.
I just admire that self confidence
that says, I'm a free and responsible agent
for my immeasurable will: there's nothing
left for them to do to me now?
And I love
that image of him riding his bicycle
around Princeton in his 60s
without socks, legs splayed to either side
to better glide on the slapdash air,
and his electric white hair shocking the wind,
whose bare-backed imagination
had articulated the invisible
bones in most every particle known
and unknown, who went, over time,
2 out of 3 falls with God, regardless
of the outcome . . . .
Spit into the wind,
we all know the speed of light, and that
soon enough gravity waves will slip
beneath each one of our doors.
in the day, it took a church key to open
a can of beer and it would comfort more
minds and hearts to hand your neighbor
a comparatively cold one than
to direct him to a numbing chorus
of In excelsis deo, a warehouse of hosannas.
No matter what stellar exposition
you subscribe to, you'll still find yourself
living in 4 dimensions, unless you see time-
space as one more component of
a ride on a battered light beam,
the unreconstructed bits of a unified field
against which all the odds are stacked,
regardless of who is the rolling the dice . . . .
Oh, yes, Einstein said that God does not play dice when he was referring to the motion of subatomic particles. He didn't think we lived in a probabilistic universe, that events happen according to percentages. They either are or they aren't. That's a fairly harsh judgmental world. Is it left over from a Jehovah-inspired world, one of wandering around in the desert with a vengeful God whose wrath is pissed down upon his followers through the unforgiving weather? This is not Buckley's world. Buckley's is a long way from "things happen for a reason." One can even argue that in Buckley's world it is even remotely possible to posit that "things happen" with all the metaphysical swirling that takes place center stage. This kind of wrestling with the big picture has gone out of vogue as well—unfortunately. It is seen as a kind of vulgar excess these days to traffic in anything but the trivial and that having minimal effect, the entertaining. To attempt a metaphysical swipe is considered an act of audacity, bombast. Certainly old-fashioned.
But I say bring on the torch singers like Julie London whom Buckley pines after, especially the image of her copper-red hair on an album cover. Buckley seems to be saying: let's face it—living in the past is better than living in heaven. That is the ultimate statement. Of course, there is also the possibility of such a thought being the result of too much rich food:
Driving in the Afterlife
If my dreams take me anywhere,
tel me anything
its that we come to as much confusion
there as here, should we
make it where ever it is we think we're going—
my heart folded up
somewhere like an old filling station map . . . .
It seems that little
woodsy road of childhood is where
I'll turn up, standing
off to the side, life's of afterlife's traffic
occasionally sliding by.
And I think I see my grandmother
in her '53 Dodge,
a little chrome on its small tail wings,
and that is all
I have to get around in as I find myself
behind the wheel,
alone on the wide bench seat, the tranny
slipping, two three-
speeds jerry-rigged on the floor. Each
gear shifts as loose
as a stick in a bucket of water, pushes
along just enough
to get me back to my apartment, empty
except for a motorbike.
My grandmother's chalky sedan disappears
in favor of my Honda 110
with its salt-pitted brake handles and spokes.
I take a short cut
through the living room of the larger flat
I was too late to rent
just down the lane—in the French doors
and out the front
over the Saltillo tiles—the bougainvillea
clustered like forgotten
names above the doorway. I coast downhill
on skinny tires
over to the state university on the bluff,
and amid the cement
slabs, the residual Stalinist architecture,
I come across a group
of my former students . . . they are still poor,
and young, in Grateful Dead
t-shirts and Army surplus jackets, still smoking
those thin, white cigarettes,
like they're going to live forever. No one
has a tattoo, or is worried
about going off to war. They are waiting
for the bus—as unreliable
there as here—scrounging around for a party,
an art reception, free eats.
I offer bread and cheese, some wine if they
want to come over
to my cramped place and talk about whatever
it was we used to discuss
all those midnights ago on the back porch?
but how do we get there
with my lack of wheels, and do any of us
really want to go there
now, wherever it is such roads lead, given
the crowded streets
and the dark coming on so quickly. So
I can take off on my own again,
and stop in the square at the post office,
a hole in the wall with
a post mistress who looks like my grandmother,
and just as nice. I know
enough to want to bring back some stamps
from that long ago, a post mark,
but there's only junk mail in my box—off season
discounts on air conditioners,
carpet cleaners, the cosmetic dentist—which I toss
in the can as I begin
to roll slowly back to this life like ground
mist lifting. I don't think
it's really my grandmother after all in all of this,
but I'd better have
some good reason for having her car
and customizing
the transmission. My mother, who is 82,
who earlier this evening
at dinner wondered what I thought went on
over there, as she felt
she was close to finding out—are there as many
bad, aggressive people?
And if so, why go somewhere as dubious and
only half as beautiful
as the past you know and carry along, metaphorically,
in your mind's glove box?
We were out celebrating my birthday dinner, a dinner
too rich for us both
which pulled me, at 3 am, from my dream
and such questionable
transportation to god knows where.
I am envious of Christopher Buckley for many reasons, but mostly because he can step outside and in short order be cruising the beach for one of its many portholes to the outer galaxy. Clouds, waves, spindrift (though not too much flotsam), light and matter conspire as frequent highways to ponder "the big picture" stretched on an epic cosmological frame. I wish I could do the same as I walk out my back door where a romantic cow pasture awaits me. Perhaps I might scale down to the inner workings of E. coli or ponder the path of the ATPs as it leaves the chloroplast. Though once you've been through the large intestine of a cow once there isn't much ambition to go again. Most readers don't picture themselves wearing an anti-slime space suit hurtling through the bowels of beasts. If such a trip does not appeal to you as a reader, then you shouldn't pick up Rolling the Bones and rocket through the cosmos as reader-astronaut. This move happens very frequently in Buckley's work. It happens with so much regularity that some readers may be put-off by it. To me, this move by Buckley seems more like the baseball glove you put on because it feels right and you know it's reliable. For those who are still bothering to look for the lost Eden, Rolling the Bones will reliably get you there — again and again — and when it arrives, smacking deep in the pocket, it satisfies in all the old familiar ways.
An interview with Christopher Buckley by Chad Prevost in The Chattahoochee Review
Quinton Duval — Joe's Rain
Quinton Duval's book Joe's Rain revels in the slow wisdom of knowing that losing one's aspirations is a kind of achievement. The spirit of "hanging on" rises and animates nearly every poem in the book. The various speakers in the book, invariably mapped onto one shade or another of Duval, feel perfectly at home with the errant turn in life as well as reference made by the speaker to himself as "fat, bejeweled maggot." That'd be pretty harsh stuff if it weren't coming out of such an affable, self-deprecating guy.
Duval's earnest and straightforward work matched the Mark Bowles Central Valley landscape paintings behind him—flatline horizons. Listening to Duval read his poems at The Art Foundry in Sacramento reminded me of an interview with B. B. King I heard recently. King's outlook was always gracious for whatever fortune had smiled on him as he held firm to the things he claimed as his own. Duval keeps the familiar in his clutch at all times. The poems are laced with generous amounts of Central Valley ephemera and natural phenomenon. As is the frequent trope for many Sacramento poets, the familiar and home are mainstays. Sacramento is a place that inspires fierce loyalties and myriad reflections, and though happening upon the Central Valley by chance in the mid-60's, Duval has firmly ensconced himself within the literary imagination that Sacramento's weather and rivers inspire.
Joe's Rain is a tidy collection. Slightly more than half of the poem titles are one or two-word titles. It is a collection of six groups of seven poems bookended by a welcoming and farewell poem. In this way it appears as though you've been visited by a very sociable and amiable fellow with good manners who knows not to stay too long nor say too much. These are characteristics I admire because, for me, they're so damned elusive. One looks up after an evening with Joe's Rain that isn't too taxing or intimidating and discovers a relaxed feeling arriving unexpectedly. His presence is the kind one saves a special bottle for. The bottle is brought out solely for the two of you when he visits. Indeed, beer, wine and bourbon (but no saké) flow throughout the book, but in "Joe's Rain," another elixir is proffered.
Joe's Rain
This late rain drives
into the dry soil
silent through the windows
that look out back.
One big robin bathes
in a saucer left out,
but that doesn't mean much.
Two weeks ago a man stood
where the rain is falling,
frail, stooped, but standing,
forming words and making sense
about plants and birds and
what a garden does for your soul.
All the daylight is nearly burned,
smoke and ash of evening.
Lights from the house shine
back from wet concrete
this late rain has darkened.
The moon, we learn, reflects
the sun, so that's what's real.
I swear I hear a mockingbird
sound just like an alarm clock
mornings when I don't have to
get up. So that is real too.
And today, wet streets
under the overpass, trucks above
barreling somewhere hurried,
a shower of cherries, shaken
from their crates around a curve
rained down in front of me
and adorned the roadway.
Farmers don't like rain
when their crop is on the tree.
But I like rain almost always.
Bury us all near water,
scatter us all on water.
If it can rain cherries, it can rain
anything. Does this help?
Have a glass of rain on me.
Rhetorically speaking, this poem ends the way several poems in the collection do. The you understood suggests a giving of advice or a giving of directions. "Have a glass on me" is an invitation, but it s also a warning that slaking thirst can seem like a useless gesture in retrospect. The speaker knows that a glass of rain really isn't going to help with the bitter pill, but he offers it nonetheless. In this way, "Joe's Rain" can be offered as a kind of Duvalian ars poetica that says—"Hey, I'm just making these poems as a way to take care of what ails you, but I can't vouch for their effectiveness at alleviating a lifetime of your pain." Does this poem help or does that poem help? Duval isn't presumptuous enough to even hazard a guess. However, in "Shine" he makes his humble proposal to embrace optimism such as it is.
This paper hides in back
of a book I'm reading
because it is sad and beautiful,
the last book of poetry
written by a man who knew
he was dying, and still he found
joy and life and shine in most things.
this paper with nothing on it
asks, I suppose, by its blankness,
to be filled.
I don't believe in curses,
good or bad, rubbing off.
Maybe I have a pencil
and this paper to put down
how the turkey vulture came
straight toward the house
so I could see its red head
like stewmeat in the noon light.
Or across the bay, from this high,
a road looks like a backwards C,
like fingers and thumb showing
how much you missed something,
when what you missed by was slight.
I know, I'm not going anywhere
like the eucalyptus that waves
back at something constantly.
I can only describe what's out there
and try to make it shine
like a ring pressing into a finger,
like the shallow water
the boats are careful to steer around,
like, like, like the sun dropping,
the blood spatter on that one gull's beak.
Pencil on paper, I still have things
to say. Here's to everyone trying
in some way to make shine out of shinola.
You know what I mean. It's the difference
between the vulture's beaded eye
behind his meat face, the rain
pouting miles offshore, the lizard
that comes out to share the sun,
the one my wife doesn't like
but I think is a bright little motor
pulsing up and down in this light.
Here Duval sides with the little guy (doing his push-ups in order to survive). That lizard isn't "going anywhere like the eucalyptus." If I weren't sure that Duval doesn't have green skin and a tail, I'd swear he had manifested himself as this reptile sunbathing in the nude. The speaker seems to be getting at the ole accepted wisdom that there is truth ringing through all the sorrow and disappointment. A little shrine of abdications can be built to glimmer in the afternoon heat, fending off a world of menace.
Duval makes great sport of ridiculing the grandiose and celebrating the simple pleasures of common experience. Everywhere in his work there are gestures made to common experience. He is very self-conscious about sounding like a poet with a capital p, like in "Trying to Read Mythology,"—"Or more beautiful,/a pitcher of moonlight spills over/the heat-faint garden and lights up/ a fig tree laden with ancient, ripe fruit.
Maybe we should shut up and eat." Here the poetic gesture is trumped by more basic demands. This kind of deflation is pervasive in Duval's poems, and it tends to nestle into the body of a poem between the yearning and wrenching detail the way a cactus wren hunkers down in a scabbed-over hole in a saguaro.
In I Remember Salt Duval takes the reader to a non-descript Spanish-speaking venue—my best guess places me in Mexico, but I wouldn't rule out Neruda's Antofagasta plains ( I must admit, though, that this second option is unlikely as Duval usually opts for direct experience as his subject matter rather than traveling through to an imagined space). Once there, the reader is greeted by a rather harsh and bitter domain. Life is hard—sleeping and eating and laundry, the trifecta of a barren life. The scenes are working class scenes, and Duval becomes aware of his alienation in such a place where "salt is taken in kind and bitter olives yield the oil year after year." Here again, the focus is on expectations dashed. In such a place dreams are not even worthy of idle chatter. Revealing something like a dream might get one arrested for indecent exposure. Residents of this visited place might be too familiar with the truism Duval offers in "Honey"—"we rarely get to taste the honey we've made." And when we do taste it, Duval in "On a Hot Summer Day" reminds, "being grown up is accepting/the diminishing of all things/we imagined ours forever." Duval seems specifically in tune with this sensibility of accepting the echoing sentiment of nostalgia in "Into the Sea."
Take your tarnished halo
and sail it into the pale blue
line between sky and water
this evening offers you
here at the edge of the world.
Take your faded blue shirt
and strip it to bandages
for the wounded souls
you'll meet along the way.
Bring what you can carry
and remember that no one can tell
what lingers behind your smile.
You know some songs, yes,
but the words seem to have fallen
from the board, as the birds
this evening fall off the face
of the sky and into the ocean's turmoil.
How many songs have you ever known
with "pilgrim" inside, wander
the directive, and the needle
pointing north? A squad of pelicans
clears the space west of you.
Your path leads to woods, a bridge,
a hill, a bluff, a bench
where rest the weary. The sunset's
glorious, it's not so cold,
and everything goes off, everything
except your full heart, your waving hand,
your watery eyes. Into the sea
everything goes.
At the end of the book, the reader might feel like he/she has been witness to a lemon-sucking contest. The leftover lemon rinds are the dregs that serve as reminders of tattered lives, still loved like stuffed bears with their patina of wear and tear. The hard truth of the matter, though, is that the reader is probably better off than those dismembered lemons. The Germans call this schadenfreude, joy at another's misfortunes. It is a strange way to get to catharsis for Americans, but I presume Duval would allow for any of his readers to get there any way they might manage. Besides, all the self-deprecating humor Duval employs, Americans generally don't get that anyway. When was the last time you heard an American tell a joke that started out, "There were these three Americans . . ." Duval is one American who might just rise to this occasion.
Originally posted by Victor Schnickelfritz on Sept. 26, 2005
Eleni Sikelianos — The California Poem
Posted in Victor Schnickelfritz on May 7, 2010 by Victor Schnickelfritz
Crossing over the border into Eleni Sikelianos's The California Poem is like watching an epic biopic with lots of cameos by many known and unknown actors. One goes through the various scenes playing the game of name-that-face, continually familiarizing and defamiliarizing oneself as the movie continues. Mostly the actors are aspects of California's flora and fauna, its physical landscape. At times the images appear in such rapid succession that the eye is quickly sated and the mind is overwhelmed. Kind of like Peter Greenaway is the director. Like Greenaway, Sikelianos uses many ornate multi-syllabics and the technical language (genus and species names proliferate like the animals they describe) of biologists and geologists. However, her California also inhabits the fanciful nature of the place by extrapolating the sober references and creating very imaginative Hollywood-like spaces. There is history of all sorts too. All of these are brought together via a playful sounding that is often rhyming or alliterating itself across the expanse of the page. It is a wild place one might hear someone say from the Midwest who has come to visit.
The textual variety within the book is impressive. Not only is personal autobiography present alongside of the copious amount of material on the natural world, but there are photos, the backs of old postcards, sign language demo graphics, collages, small little diagrams [see page 47 on Google Preview above] that look like they are crude representations of networks or patterns of growth among sea slugs or winged insects. Sikelianos is an avid collector of Californiana throughout the book, a hoarder of every word that washes up on the beach. Through it all though, one particularly strong current running through the book is a sense of loss, a sentimentality for the unfettered California of the past. One senses nature is being encroached on everywhere, and Sikelianos is trying to reimagine the script for its players, sometimes in chronicling the goings-on in the neighborhood of the tidepool, sometimes with a deflating gesture toward the artificial world that has been created by the humans around it.
any peasant with a dumb
cow can make whipped
cream but it takes a chemical factory
in California to make Cool Whip
Also, there is ample quotation in the piece, sometimes attributed, more often not. There are a lot of people talking, creating a strange cacophony that enforces the notion that Sikelianos seems to embrace "Suddenly, everything belongs in California." The residents since birth are forced to be generous hosts. They accommodate by clearing more space.
The language that is used to negotiate the natural world in The California Poem is dense and profuse. Surely, there is a prodigious talent for naming and describing the natural world in the piece, so much so that it seems almost unnatural to carry around that much language about flora and fauna in one's head. Frequently, I wondered if all this "language about nature" wasn't a construction from scientific texts as they were applied after the fact of an experience with them. In her Jacket interview with Jesse Morse, she reveals:
Early on, I loved leafing through biology, oceanography and science books. I've always loved that language and its richness.
Yet, Sikelianos takes such great care to ensure that the reader is witness to the author's experience that I was curious about how much was experienced and how much was come to afterwards, constructed in a language game. Indeed, it is not entirely impossible that where many of us see "a pretty blue shell" she is seeing radial symmetry. In fact, we are told, "At Monterey, I collected 136 hermit crabs to uncover the mysteries of population dynamics." Is this the work of a budding marine biologist who was thwarted midstream with a growing realization that she was a sensualist? [The ecstatic Whitmanesque language throughout the piece suggests that her transformation to sensualist is complete.]
Sikelianos has mentioned in her 2005 "Live From Prairie Lights" reading at the University of Iowa that she did copious amounts of research for the book which took her some 7 to 8 years to write. She looked at the history of flora and fauna and also the rich linguistic history before the conquest of the indigenous peoples. The density of language in its Whitmanesque swirls makes it hard for me to believe that these passages are coming off the top of her head as per Ginsberg. They often feel constructed because of their density. Yet Sikelianos's ear is so adept that rhythmically a seam never appears. The flora and fauna do seem to erupt out of her in a long effortless flow of source. The conversation is exhausting, but one is taken in by the breadth of it, the way it darts here and there after more prey for the intellect to feast on.
Her breath is Olson's, but the absurd and surrealist-tinged turns are Ginsberg's.
I suppose how the lines are constructed doesn't really matter (except to a wonk like me who is perpetually interested in such technical matters). The rich, dense language, no matter how it was arrived at, serves what she says is the purpose of the piece:
mythologizing the landscape beyond recognition
like some simulacra of Saturday Night Fever
The various opossums and nudibranchia are the stars of the piece though. [Picture them beneath a mirror ball if you have to.] These and the hypnotic and expansive language that always seems to branching off to form another dendrite (symmetry be damned!). One might experience a good bit of frustration as I did when I first started reading the poem. I was lingering over each line, expecting it to deliver its weight. I read it like it was a scientific paper. When I realized the rhythm was more "Beat", that I needed to read it like I read Ginsberg, skimming over the surface of the language, I began to settle in and enjoy Sikelianos's topsy-turvy California where it seems
California // is the palace where we're making continents up
(sand, sand dollar, rock . . .) Your job is to
tell the history of each & every piece
Hers is a "Beat eye for the ethologist guy."
The great inclusiveness is reminiscent of Whitman, whom Sikelianos mentions in the Prairie Lights reading as someone she considers to be a California poet as well. Unlike Uncle Walt, though, Sikelianos commingles with gastropods, mesa cliffs, hummingbirds and sea-hares, those citizens whom Sikelianos has deemed worthy of taking up residence in California. Whitman's eye turned to the human activity of all the people taking part in the great democratic experiment that was the United States mid-nineteenth century. Sikelianos's nod to the human realm is largely concerned with her personal experiences in California. She recalls where her friend Adam Davies went down in the King River. The memory of Adam Davies is then projected on a metro busker shortly afterwards, but the human chain ends there. At one point she even muses aloud:
What do I have in common with my fellow humans?
Her reverence stops short because "There [in California] reverence is a kind of fear." One is awestruck and afraid by the complexity and multiplicity that is the many heads of California, some with jaws that bite.
Another personal bit that is dropped into the mix is a short and affecting section that seemingly sums up her teenage years in California:
reprisal:
I was a waitress in a white dress,
an avocado goddess in the land of Phocis
Queen of the Drought in the kingdom
of Prop. 13
I set forth
It was four blocks to the beach
What did I see there?
a kegger with lots of young men
preparing to drink
Go ahead. Say "avocado goddess" three times. That's fun, isn't it? Six staccato bursts followed by a hissing "s".
The sound of the line is very often generative for Sikelianos as she moves through her disparate images and kinds of texts. I'm reminded of Anne Waldman's work whose blank spots on the page do not measure erasure (like with Cole Swensen) as much as they are rests in a musical score. This kind of presentation is a grateful reminder that the poem, at least many of the more lyrical parts, is still intended to be read aloud. It is not just an artifact bound to the page, which sometimes when I'm reading Paterson or The Maximus Poems, I get the sense they are only alive on the page. The Waldman influence would be perfectly understandable as Sikelianos cut her teeth at Naropa and was probably familiar with how Waldman could expertly perform difficult texts, her graphic presentation directing the page. Perhaps the most significant contribution that the Beats made to American poetry is the development of bop prosody, which allowed American poetry to escape the rhythms of the marching band and the ballad, and begin to explore the explosive multi-syllabic runs which allow complicated language to fit snugly inside of a line. Here is a bit for effect:
bathing bathers of the big black lake, SPACE, bodies like golden
apples hanging on the dark branch, EARTH, like
Great Alexander or Eleni or little children finding the ripest apples, last places to be within;
kissing mystical ventral surfaces, occiscles; rise up
for arboreal views
of passionate showy brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), mirror or watery earth & sky;
Uncle Aristotle's lantern, urchin, my mouth remains close to the rock
while the shell falls
off; enter the
sun, such the masseur bully sun
big fiery fruit in his rhymes of ray-on-stone, pounding
the flesh, the one, one, the one
sun was the
melancholy team sun in
matrices whose elements are birds
(words) whose elements are branches,
ladders, shadows, shadders, birds
Each stanza is a distinct musical thought, a complete musical phrase. Between "enter the" and "sun" (that starts the next stanza), the short caesura signals the horn solo is about to head off in another direction a la Sonny Rollins when he cuts from one recognizable melody to another or to a flurry of scales during one of his long and intense solos.
The "School of Disembodied Poetics" (as Naropa is less familiarly known) is also an influence in how Sikelianos likes to remove the speaking voice in the poem from her self. The speaker is invoking mightily throughout, the imagination careening off of the tangible minutiae of the golden State, and this expansive state of the speaker lends itself to an extraordinary amount of inflation which must be regarded as the souped-up construction that it is:
Cilia, spirochete, composite beings
born of symbiont meanings
(humans) fall apart Are you speaking of molecules
or cummunity interactions? I'm speaking here
only of the heart
This direct address to the speaker and challenge to the speaker reminds me of what might be the central project of the Beats, of Whitman: to expand one's self so that it is no longer a part of you. It has moved on without you, moved on to engage the world and to circle around and check back with you from time to time. It floats disembodied, an almost comical balloon that is so precious one cannot let it pop.
The Eleni narrator becomes an affectation throughout the piece as well. While the collected bits of personal narrative indicate that this Eleni is a marker for an experienced life, especially towards the last quarter of the book, that Eleni becomes unhinged and ready to fly away from its moorings from that experienced life. Eleni is other, one more piece of the mythologized landscape that circumscribes the California.
Like any assemblage the size and scope of Sikelianos's California, as a reader, one is forced to do violence to it by trying to make it cohere, by trying to insert Tab A into Slot B. Sikelianos's California is really quite resistant to this readerly impulse though. Besides the autobiography and the persistent references to the natural world, there are not many glaring motifs which are rekindled. If there are motifs, miniature stones resurfacing through the sand on the beach, they become subsumed within dream. Sikelianos's California is a dream as much as a place to dream:
From Jacket 23
Any dream that includes/ends with Marlon Brando growling, "Get up, you scum-suckin' pig" has got to be reckoned with.
The "filmy Vistavision" model of California that Sikelianos has created is an experiment in narrative that brings the disparate home to lodge in the self. It interrupts the stable psychological state (mirrored by the instability of the Golden State), which indicates the ego-self as more fluid than solid. Or perhaps an entity engaged in a hundred phase transitions in a single minute. The result is a surfactant able to exist in one realm while clinging to another. More modern chemistry. And like so much modern chemistry, there are many residual byproducts to negotiate within the racemic mix. California is the perfect laboratory for such an experiment. Its space is essential to sort out the chiral sprawl, the radial outgrowths of successive dreams.
Sorry. I got taken up in a little bit of Sikelianos's verbiage, trying to extend a good hard science metaphor into the world of galloping verse. It's easy to get carried away by this book.
I found that I was cheering for the language more and more as the book wore on. The impulse to parse all the information was stripped away. However, as I mentioned above, it was not my first impulse to read it that way. Perhaps as time goes on I will want to pick out sections for a deeper reading, do my homework on all of the obscure words found there (I'm still looking for "occiscles"). Is reading Sikelianos's The California Poem what reading Pound would be like if he had lived in a trailer park and visited the beach?
Another point of reference for The California Poem might be Philip Lamantia's Meadowlark West. Lamantia, also associated with the Beats, tends a little bit more to the world historical like Pound, but there is a significant amount of California flora and fauna that exists between the covers of Meadowlark Wet. The same hyperbolic language exists, and it works the same way in mythologizing the West, which leads me to wonder if it is always the case that hyperbole and myth go together. Is myth a form of hyperbole? What about writers like Robert Hass who are also trying to mythologize the West to a certain extent, but do it with a very burnished rendition of the quotidian? Would someone challenge that a poet like Hass is not mythologizing the West as much as he is documenting it? Can the documentarian and mythologizer exist in the same room together? And if they can, would they take their clothes off?
All in all, as I go back to The California Poem (and I expect to visit again over time . . . if for no other reason than to help me parse what I'm looking at in the tidepools) I expect that more of its "sense" will leak into me. I will be able to track down more and more of its paratactical moves. However, I suspect that I will be dipping into The California Poem more as a reminder of how ferocious the language can be, how intense its curvatures. I think I will pick it up to help me jumpstart my lines when I feel they are getting too stale, when I resist keeping bodies in motion for keeping them at rest. It's a primer for how to juggle. The California Poem has so many interactive particles within it that it is a veritable cyclotron of activity. Despite the missing gluons, the particles whirl and swirl like they are in a popcorn maker, the more time spent with them, the more likely it is for each kernel to open. The bodies in motion ricochet off of each other at exaggerated speeds that make each one begin to sweat a little, cry a little, bleed a little. There's a lot of body sauce flying around.
Other excerpts from The California Poem
From Cento Magazine
From Octopus Magazine
Originally posted on Nov. 28, 2007
Michael Earl Craig — Can You Relax In My House?
After my first encounter with this Fence Books 2002 edition, I admit I was a bit dismissive. I tended to write the book off as an exercise in the imagination that never came to terms with history or philosophical or social issues. In short, it seemed to lack substance. It was a book that exhibited, of all things, a kind of rural surrealism that provided some amazing observations, some beautiful poems, but left one with a feeling of a bit of "style fatigue" near the end (though in all honesty, this could be due to a bad editor at Fence who wanted the poems to be all of one piece). The book seemed immature in that regard. Perhaps knowing that Craig was several years my junior, my own bias against those who have done what I have not (namely, publish a book) kicked in.
However, I am mending my first impression for mainly one reason. There is such a scarcity of thirtysomething poets who write well and also have something to risk (without risking it all by lumbering through the mire of disjunctiveness—more on this in an ensuing post). I appreciate the courage it takes to do that.
Also, Craig has made interesting choices in his life (just as he does in his poems). He is a farrier (I had to look that one up—it is a horseshoe maker) in Livingston, Montana. The often bizarre scapes he presents seem to return to this rural setting. He is that rarest of commodities, a surrealist in a red state.
The imagery, however, is never baroque; its minimalist bent reflects the movement of a mind across a lot of open range. Also, there is a kind of bemused wonder expressed towards the world, a childlike amazement in the attitude presented in these poems. Perhaps it is this quality which caused me to see his work as immature. The speaker has obviously stopped taking the world seriously a long time ago. From "Unto,"
I was a child crouched in a tub, fixed
in a yogic trance.
Indeed. This seems to encapsulate the speaker's voice. He is calm, but there is very little intellect on display, a penchant for strange words at the most. However, as mentioned above, there is no attempt to take on larger historical issues. The poems exist in a kind of ahistorical place. In this way, seemingly-important-sounding place names can be invoked. These places take on the dimensions of the mythical. They exist outside a recognizable time, a recognizable politics. Perhaps it is not part of the ironic pose to associate oneself with a particular school or view or thought.
Often times the images can evoke real life counterparts, but for the most part there didn't seem to be a lot of cross-fertilization with the real, even by implication. The pieces seemed largely entertaining. The intellectual architecture has been stripped away.
Craig resists the temptation to outline a "thinking life." That would be solipsistic, and he doesn't want to go there either. The most we get we are told is that thoughts are being thought. Craig is not going to risk intellectualizing anything. Apparently, there are no larger fish to fry.
Perhaps this is the right move aesthetically rather than point to a "real context" that could weigh down the poems.
Good Night, Star
You can't step out of your tragedy, it wouldn't be a tragedy.
Neither can I.
Together we walk
and think thoughts in a cornfield.
I take my blue pencil, snap in half my blue pencil.
A thing carries out from the interior of Corn.
A thing cries but nothing rises as a crow.
You light my cigarettes, I smoke two
at a time. I lay back on the tractor
staring up at the sky.
I stare up through you
into the backside of the cosmos, the backlit
blaze of the backside
where a clean-shaven God untangles two lampcords.
That's what one eye does.
The other trails off with the comet.
I am tired and full of sloth, you
have just shown me this.
I look a bobwhite in the eye.
A kind of insect bounces off my forehead.
I feel almost put here to lean against a tree.
Am I whole, dear star?
As my eyelashes grow down
to the ground might you braid them?
The two jarring images here that quickly point to the piece as surreal are the "God (who) untagles two lampcords" and " the braided eyelashes." These are very interesting images, and they involve a similar kind of action, which suggests the images are parallels of each other. I like how Craig sets up these two images with rather matter-of-fact observations that are fairly rooted in real experience. He doesn't want to step on those two images I just mentioned and risk that the reader's mind will not arc across those two similar images. These two pointedly absurd images serve as speed bumps in the James Wright-like delivery and pace of the poem. For this, I'm sure most workshoppers would tell him to take it out. But that's what workshops mainly do is whitewash the odd detail out of something so that it can be more palatable to the mainstream and, therefore, more mediocre. Without those two interruptions, the poem would be much flatter, perhaps too close to lived experience to matter that much.
The New Constellation
I look into the night sky the way someone else might
look into a microscope. Let's face it, snow
is mysterious. Beside me your pillow
fills like a wind sock, which is another way of saying
I am lonely and exhausted, not wanting any
enormous fern to wither and die.
A trolley squeaks along and then bangs
into another, each carrying its own
patient. Good luck I say, wave
and turn away, my left foot dragging a bit
on the sidewalk, making in the snow the patterns
of a foot that recently drags its man through
the snow. The snow that is difficult.
The snow that whispers down on me, that dusts
at the night and leaves its etchings
on my eyepiece. I back away.
I lean forward again and use the eyepiece correctly.
Through the microscope I can see now the new constellation
called Path to the Boathouse at Evening, floating
like a troubled school bus. Also, a field
of bright flowers and rocks
that are spotted with moss and have history.
They have history! And what kind? I can't imagine Aime Cesaire allowing an opportunity to pass by like that. Again, the poem turns on a few absurdities. The "foot dragging the man through the snow" is the first departure from the mostly experiential narrative until that point. The other absurdity is "the snow's etching on the eyepiece." Invoking this image allows Craig to move the speaker to the microscope (which has transformed from a metaphorical microscope to a presumably real one) where the speaker can get at the new constellation. The leap at the end seems almost calculated for impact through the sheer wildness—"floating like a troubled school bus?" (again workshoppers pronounce the "forced simile" accusation. This seems to be the intent of Craig though. Perhaps he wishes to just mention "history" as a way of underplaying it and hinting at the notion of an imagined thing having a life of its own—with a history and everything. I am puzzled by this move, but I will not allow it to dissuade me from seeing the merit in the piece's interesting movements and relative rhetorical ease.
The accumulation of odd and jarring details seems to be what sustains this effort. Craig often seems to be creating his own constellations of items in his poems. In this way, the poem could also be read as an ars poetica.
Unto
And because of my little tuft of hair
they called me Fetlock.
They said I cried too much
and put me in a tub and floated me
down the river. I passed a talking bush
but could not steer the tub toward the bank
so I floated on.
It grew dark and then it grew light again.
From the grassy banks people hissed
and threw tools, calling me
Inventor of Stories, and Robert.
in a yogic trance. When I dropped my rubber balls
into the water they floated
upstream. Someone called me Lamp of Philosophy.
Another called me The Ark.
A great first two lines although a little bit precious. The events seem to transpire fairly evenly until the tools are thrown and then the name-calling of "Inventor of Stories and Robert," a detail, though humorous at first, that seems to be too clever on subsequent reads.
I agree that I am older, perhaps too old to get what this book is about at times. The idiosyncracies are intoxicating until one realizes that Craig's habit of turning away from the reader into more fashionably odd detail gets a little thin after a while. In some ways it is like discovering an unusual little café where the customers and the menu are charmingly quaint. Everything is fine until you realize that all of the customers you have met are odd all in the same way. They're a carefully studied kind of unique.
To be fair (is that possible for me?) to Craig, perhaps the lack of daring in stylistic approach is the result of editorial choice. However, as I go around the Web, I see a very similar tone and diction to many of his pieces. A few more pieces of Craig's reside at Jubilat and Ralphmag 2 and Crossroads: 20 New American Poets, but with all of them the intense psychological and otherworldly landscapes persist.
In "Work Way Up the Ladder" at Ralphmag 1 the line that alludes to a real historical context is "Psychology was invented by the Germans in 1874. Quickly, however, the poem trails off from there into the same dreamy atmosphere.
The larger question here is what responsibility does a poet have to being true to history. If one contextualizes historical material within a clearly imagined realm, is this somehow bastardizing the actual historical record? Going the other way, does the mention of actual historical places and people lend credibility to the imagined realm, a credibility that might cause a reader to blend myth and fact. For my money, I enjoy it when this difficult no man's land is entered into between the imagined and the historical. It challenges a reader's belief system about the limits of reality and imagination. Michael Earl Craig's project is to never have us question that we are in an odd place. This is good enough, all he is asking of the reader. Perhaps this is why, although I admire Craig's chops, I am left a little bit wanting because of Craig's disregard for imposing his intense dreaminess onto anything that matters.
Originally written August 16, 2005
— Victor Schnickelfritz
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text:
Home»News»Netflix is being sued by an internet service provider after too many people watch the 'Squid Game'
Netflix is being sued by an internet service provider after too many people watch the 'Squid Game'
By The West News October 2, 2021 Updated: October 2, 2021 2 Mins Read
Netflix is dealing with a weird problem with Squid Game: far too many people are watching the hit Korean drama. So many, in fact, that a South Korean internet provider is suing Netflix for utilising excessive bandwidth as a result of traffic surges caused by the mega-streamer. SK Broadband is requesting that the platform pays for all maintenance expenditures incurred as a result of the site's soaring streaming numbers.
According to Reuters, this news comes after a Seoul court ruled that Netflix should "reasonably" pay the internet service provider for the abundant network usage. A number of South Korean MPs have spoken out against content providers (such as Netflix) who refuse to pay for network usage despite generating a large amount of traffic.
Netflix has announced that it will investigate SK Broadband's claim. In the meanwhile, they intend to maintain open communication with the provider to investigate measures to ensure that clients do not experience network delays.
The success of Squid Game has emphasised Netflix's position as the country's second-largest traffic generator, trailing only YouTube. Other sites such as Amazon, Apple, and Facebook aid, but only the two pay no network usage fees.
Netflix's internet traffic with SK Broadband increased 24 times from May 2018 to September 2021. Netflix now processes around 1.2 trillion bits of data each second, thanks to the success of Korean films such as Squid Game and D.P. SK projected that the streamer owed roughly 27.2 billion won ($22.9 million) in 2020 alone.
In response to the lawsuit, Netflix stated in a statement that they have contributed to the development of approximately 16,000 jobs in South Korea as a result of investments totalling approximately 770 billion won. According to the streaming giant, they have had a cumulative economic impact of almost 5.6 trillion won.
Squid Game debuted on Netflix two weeks ago, on September 17, and has quickly become one of the streamer's best-performing titles of all time. The mind-bending puzzle series pits a group of down-on-their-luck adults against one another in a slew of children's games, where they must compete to the death for a large cash prize. Squid Game is on track to beat Bridgerton as Netflix's most watched show of all time.
Entertainment Netflix Netflix sued News Squid Game


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Dungeons of Delhi 2008 Review
Dungeons of Delhi-"The Annual Classic Returns"
We arrived on a Sunday night and shockingly there wasn't a crowd. But we were still ready to be frightened by some of the actors and scenes that are in the annual classic haunt, Dungeons of Delhi.
Length-7: Your tour through Dungeons of Delhi will take 10 minutes to complete. There are a variety of scenes and rooms with very few dead spots in between.
Design-7: Dungeons of Delhi has some of the best lighting in the Cincinnati area. Scenes are well lit, but are traditional in every sense of the word. While it's a good idea to try and please your customers with a variety of rooms, there needs to be consistent theme used throughout the haunt. Walking into a vampire scene one minute and then a Michael Myers Victim's room a couple minutes later doesn't make much sense. The scenes need to seamlessly flow together to create a story that makes sense. Scenes you'll experience are Frankenstein's Lab, Hannibal's Cell, the haunted cemetery, Monster Garage and much much more.
Props/Animatronics-7: Rooms are full of decor and haunting props. Surprising there are also a few animated scares such as the classic electric chair and even a victim who rises from the dead. It's obvious that Dungeons of Delhi has been around for many years because the rooms are over flowing with props that enhance scenes and overall make it a more frightening experience.
Acting-7: Most charity haunts in America can't afford to pay actors, so they use volunteers to play various roles. While this is a great way to save money, it also creates a problem. The majority of people who volunteer for these roles are children and everyone knows that small children aren't intimidating the least bit. Dungeons of Delhi has added a few more adult actors this year, but the staff is still primarily made up of child actors.
Some of the scenes may be great, but the characters in them have high pitched voices, overact, and just seem to do it to have fun and are not out to create a convincing character. There isn't really much you can do about it since the actors are volunteers, so you get what you get. But for the most part the actors are well hidden, enthusiastic and compliment their scenes.
Scare Effect-7: Dungeons of Delhi has so much potential, but isn't using it fully. Horror movie themed rooms aren't cutting it anymore and are just falling flat in scares. There needs to be a consistent theme throughout that creates a story that slowly progresses from scene to scene. This would create a much more realistic experience.
Fright Value: Where else can you have 10 minutes of frightful fun for the low price of $6? While many haunts increase there admission every year, Dungeons of Delhi lowers their ticket price. You won't find a better deal anywhere this Halloween season.
Final Stab-7:0: Dungeons of Delhi is one of those haunts that you've grown up loving. But over the years nothing has drastically changed. This haunt needs to be overhauled in a big way so it can be sure that it will be around for the future.


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At 40, sprinter Kim Collins may soon be calling it quits - or maybe not
By Pat Graham
Home » At 40, sprinter Kim Collins may soon be calling it quits - or maybe not
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Retirement is imminent for Saint Kitts and Nevis sprinter Kim Collins. And this time he really means it.
Just maybe don't etch it in stone yet because he's waffled before. Hanging up the spikes is a difficult decision for the 40-year-old.
"But my body is beginning to show signs," Collins said.
Collins had his left leg tightly wrapped before the semifinals of the Olympic 100 meters Sunday. Then, just before the race, his toes cramped up. He didn't make it into a final won by you know who _ Usain Bolt.
Simply the side effects of age. Collins has been in the sprint game for a long, long time.
He raced at the 1996 Atlanta Games, when he didn't advance out of an early round heat captured by Dennis Mitchell, who now coaches Justin Gatlin. Including Rio de Janeiro, Collins has now competed at five Olympics.
That total could've been six, but Collins was expelled from the team at the 2012 London Games for leaving to meet his wife. He said at the time he found the athletes village stressful and needed peace and quiet before racing.
"At the end of the day, I still love (racing)," said Collins, who has five medals from world outdoors, including gold in the 100 at the 2003 championships.
For now, this is his plan: Race through the rest of this season and maybe into the 2017 indoor season. He doesn't plan to compete at the world championships next summer in London. But if his country needs him to be a part of the 4x100, he might make an exception.
"I think this is the time to move on," Collins said.
With one caveat: He reserves the right to change his mind.


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The evening saw the largest gathering of individual members of the Institute of Couriers, representatives from Worshipful Company of Carmen, Institute of Directors, London Metropolitian University, West Thames College, RHA and APC alongside the guests of fellows. Viscount Falkland opened the evening with a lively and warm welcome speech that has seen the new felllows gowned at the House of Lords for the past 8 years. Sir Peter Hendy was keen to follow on with his note of thanks to the industry for their continued support of the Olympics legacy of transport cohension, liking the Institute of Couriers so much he accepted a new Fellows gown with six other leading members of the industry.
Sir Peter Hendy proud to become a Fellow of the Institute of Couriers.
David Stringer Lamare Chairman of the IoD City of London gave reference to last years theme of the Four F's. Fellows, Friendship, Frieght and the Future by putting in the C,D, & E before F. Commerce, Dedication and Energy. All of these elements the new Fellows and indeed all Fellows of the Institute of Couriers have in abundance. The gowning event was a focus for leaders to discuss and influence the commerical business within London and the major citites of the UK. Deliberating and sharing good practise and vision for the future. The event was photographed and a cd will be sent in the New Year to all Fellows.


Finally a steer head tough enough to be made in Texas! Get your practice in but watch out for those horns! Steer head can be used by inserting durable metal spikes into a bale of hay or attached to our Large steer stand by Mustang!
Get your practice in anywhere!


A hand-polished tie clip in brass by BOSS. This everyday accessory features softly rounded edges and a colourful enamel surrounding a BOSS logo plate at the centre. Combine it with the coordinating cufflinks for a modern finish.


No. The Founders made this very clear. Once 34 states apply, Congress has no discretion whether to call a convention and no control over the delegates (see Federalist No. 85, see paragraph beginning "In opposition to the probability…"). George Mason proposed to add the Convention of States provision to Article V because he thought Congress had too much control over the amendment process. The Framers unanimously agreed with him. It makes no sense to interpret Article V to give more power to Congress, when the whole point was to take power away.
This claim that Congress gets to choose the delegates also goes against common sense. Just because one party "calls" a convention, doesn't mean it gets to choose the delegates for the other parties. Think about it. Virginia called the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Did it get to choose the delegates for Massachusetts? Of course not. Massachusetts did. Each state chooses its own delegates; it doesn't matter who calls the convention. This is Agency law 101 and basic common sense.


According to CNN, there were two important breaking news stories today. The first was the emergency interest rate cute by the Federal Reserve, and the second was Heath Ledger's death. I won't get into why the second one is not important, but I just wanted to point out that CNN did not have a story on it so I went to one of my local TV station's sites to see if there was an article on it. There was, and I was sort of interested in one particular sentence.
His housekeeper pronounced him dead? I'm fairly certain that in NY State only a doctor or someone with official medical training can pronounce someone dead. Perhaps he was "found dead" by his housekeeper?
The Australian-born actor was just 28.
Why was his age reported as "just 28"? Is there a hard-and-fast rule that people under a certain age are reported as being "just" x years old, and if so, what is that age? When does someone's age stop being a "just" and start being just an age? If he were 34 would he still have been "just 34" or would he have been "34"? What's the cutoff for getting the "just" in the sentence? Does it depend on the age of the author, and anyone younger than he/she is "just" x years old? Does it have to do with the circumstances of the death…for example, if a 68 year old woman was killed by a hit-and-run, would she be "just 68"? Or is it nothing more than just the whim of the writer, and on a different day he would have been "28" instead of "just 28"?
Update: I wrote to one of the authors of the story and asked why the "just". Never got a response.


November 19, 2018	CX Press, This Just Happened, Three Takeaways, What Are You Reading?
Join us as we discuss: the live experience that tore apart the art world, the employee side of the experiential coin, and the power of birthday cards to drive annual renewals.
The Banksy, The Employee, and The Birthday! Oh my!