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I wish all of my readers a Happy and Prosperous New Year!
2018 was a trying year for me and much more of an ordeal for legions of people around the world.
I expect 2019 will be another difficult year.
Here is a poem posted by my friend Jason Chappell today;
Imagine the Angels of Bread
This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side?
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery?
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth?
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant?
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year?
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.
-Martin Espada, 1996
Posted by Counterlight at Monday, December 31, 2018 No comments:
Christmas in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
"From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can't eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don't fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can't find their glasses and to poets who can't find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word "How" (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who can't stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think--plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air--the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but aren't sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can't think of a moral, gagmen who can't think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow!"
--E.B. White, 12/20/52
Posted by Counterlight at Sunday, December 23, 2018 No comments:
Yet Another Apologia
The conventional view these days sees the world as an arena of struggle for power, that life is about domination and submission, that language is a weapon, and all other aspects of life are weaponized. This concept appears to be shared across the spectrum.
The left accepts this view of the world with a prosecutorial zeal. The world is divided between aggressors and victims; predation and defense against it is the law of life. The world is a battleground strewn with innocent casualties. Wrongs must be righted and justice done; and indeed they must. By what authority we are obliged to do so remains obscure. Religion marginalized itself by its rejection of modernity and the hypocrisy of its practices. Jacques Derrida among others demolished the philosophical foundations of secular liberal humanitarianism quite thoroughly. So, what is left other than personal instinctive sympathy? Ta-nehisi Coates writing from very painful personal experience comments on this prevailing order of the world with anguished despair. He suggests that we are doomed to live in a world shaped by struggles for power that are never fair and always rigged whether we like it or not.
The right positively embraces this concept of the world as an endless battle for power with a determination to win. They want to dominate, and to force all the rest of the world to submit. Derrida is among Steve Bannon's favorite philosophers precisely because he demolished the foundations of liberalism; a liberalism that Derrida himself continued to practice despite his own philosophical claims. Bannon and his fellow ethno-nationalists/racists proclaim the most radical of all modern politics. They reject all the Enlightenment ideas that form the foundation of the modern constitutional state; the law as social contract, the supremacy of law, human dignity, equality, democracy, education, internationalism in trade and treaties. What matters to them is national/racial identity and loyalty above all else. The only true peace is through victory and domination. Bannon professes to be a devout Catholic. I wonder if what appeals to him is Catholic Christianity; or if like another of his favorite thinkers Charles Maurras, he's more interested in the Catholic Church's authoritarianism.
I am the worst kind of religious believer; one who is loyal not because I am convinced that any of this obscure mishegoss is in any way literally true, but because I wish to. I want it to be true. That pleases neither the orthodox nor the anticlerical. But that is the best that I can do. What keeps me in the Christian faith is its radicalism. It is not a radical worship of identity and power, but a radical hopefulness that takes that whole idea of life as "who may" versus "who must" and throws it out the window. Christianity at its worst is an imperial religion; another identity, another nation – Christendom -- determined to dominate all others. Christ challenged all concepts of identity, power, and domination by which we always find our way through the world. No more nationalism. No more compulsion. Instead, a universal human family, each member a unique unrepeatable image of God. What could be a more radical rejection of the whole formula of power versus powerlessness than God arriving on earth not in some glorious theophany making everything right with the sweep of his irresistibly powerful hand, but as a helpless infant; and more, as a bastard child born to poor migrants forced to travel by some edict from a distant imperial capital. God wants to win the one thing from us that he cannot command, our love.
Luca della Robbia, one of the "Bambini" from the facade of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence from the 15th century. The "'Spedale" was an orphanage and the world's first hospital exclusively for the care of children. The institution still exists, though no longer in this building. The original building designed by Filippo Brunelleschi now houses a museum and offices of UNICEF, The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund.
Posted by Counterlight at Thursday, December 20, 2018 1 comment:
Charles Bewick
During this period of national mourning, I remember Charles Bewick. He was a native of England, from Kingswood in Surrey. He was from an affluent background, what he called "the gin and jaguars set." He knew personally a lot of musicians and dancers including Michael Tilson Thomas, Lynn Fonteyn, and Rudolf Nureyev. He told remarkable stories about some very wild parties he attended with all those folks both famous and not so famous. I remember one story he told about a party where 6 people shared a bed and passed champagne bottles across the bed. The bottles each ended up empty by the time they got to the other side. All six were very drunk, but had presence of mind to suddenly realize that they had to go to a wedding at St. Martin in the Fields by a certain hour. Among the revelers in the bed were the bride and groom. They were all so drunk they could barely stand, and yet they made it to their wedding on time. At the time, Charles was a young City stock broker who made and fortune and lost a fortune, as he described it.
Very unexpectedly, Charles became an Anglican priest. He was very close to his father, but his father tried to talk him out of it. Charles persisted and he did his first tour of duty as a priest among auto-manufacturing factory workers living among them and taking a job at the plant. While serving as a priest on the staff of Southwark Cathedral in London, Michael Marshall the Bishop of Woolwich hired Charles to be a chaplain. In 1983, Charles accompanied the bishop to Saint Louis, MO in the USA to found The Anglican Institute at the Church of St. Michael and St. George. While there, Charles became seriously ill and was diagnosed with AIDS. Bishop Marshall immediately fired him and tried to have him defrocked (only the intervention of William Jones the local Episcopal bishop in St. Louis prevented Bishop Marshall from defrocking Charles) Charles Bewick found himself seriously ill, unemployed, and marooned in the USA. Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Louis hired him as an assisting priest where he lived out the rest of his days.
Charles was a founder and served on the board of directors of Doorways, an interfaith organization that provided housing for AIDS sufferers facing eviction in St. Louis. Most of them were people of color. Charles faced down very hostile racist landlords in order to find housing for AIDS victims at the height of the panic and hysteria over the disease. He found himself often a target of verbal abuse and threats of violence, but calmly persisted in his work. Landlords and hostile neighbors described his clients with the N word and the F word, and frequently addressed Charles as the "N word loving F word" and ended their rants with something like "... and you call yourself a priest!" Charles would usually let them rant on and on, and when they were finished or exhausted, he would calmly continue with "this is what we are looking for and this is what we are willing to pay, do you have anything available?" Sometimes they would storm out of the room, but greed plus the expense of maintaining vacant units would usually overcome their bigotry.
Charles died of AIDS in 1989 at age 42. On his deathbed, he forgave a very penitent Bishop Marshall, and asked him to preside at his funeral, which he did.
I was very privileged to know Charles in the last years of his life. He now rests in peace with the saints in light.
A panel from the National AIDS Memorial quilt commemorating Charles and two other AIDS victims from Trinity Episcopal Church in Saint Louis.
Posted by Counterlight at Thursday, December 06, 2018 No comments:
George HW Bush
Flowers by Henri Fantin-Latour
Former President George Herbert Walker Bush died yesterday at the age of 94.
I remember today a whole lot of people who didn't live to be 94. Over 507,000 people died of AIDS in the USA between 1987 and 2015; over half a million people, more than the entire population of Kansas City, MO.
Most of those people never lived to see 50. A lot didn't live to see 30.
Painting by Mark Rothko
We all will die, and so will everything else; even the space that contains us. Everything we have down to our own bodies is ultimately on loan and will be paid back. Like most other gay men of my generation, I've seen too many people die before their time. Life is short and uncertain, and the absurd and the arbitrary happen. We never know how much time we have left, so how we spend it matters. The people we love and who love us are not forever and should be enjoyed, cared for, and cherished now.
I have no idea if there really is anything beyond the horizon of death. The afterlife may all be a big nothing. Much of the ancient world thought so. Hades, Sheol, and Abzu are all places of shadows where all the dead go regardless of virtue or wickedness; all exist in eternal darkness cut off from the living and the gods. These places seem to me not very far removed from the state of oblivion. They may be simply poetic metaphors for extinction. The Egyptians with their elaborate afterlife were the exception, not the rule in the ancient world. If the afterlife is all a big nothing, then there won't be any conscious entity left to know it, or to regret it. Still, I treasure the hope that extinction is not our ultimate destiny.
Even so, as a friend of mine said, "It doesn't matter if you believe in God or not; you don't want to lie on your death bed knowing you're an asshole." Somehow in some way we are accountable for our lives and how we spend them. God's mercy is infinite, and his justice is perfect.
If there is a Heaven, then I don't believe that anyone pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps to get in it. Heaven is the free gift of God to all of us. No one earns their way into it. No one "deserves" to go to heaven or is "worthy" of it. It's not an apotheosis. We're not heroes winning admission to Olympus and immortality. I've never believed golden harps and clouds. I don't believe in any celestial brothel as some believe. I don't believe in any warriors' Valhalla either. I don't believe in anything like that changeless realm of disembodied light that Dante described. I believe that if there is a Heaven, then it is a place where we will indeed live again; live in every sense of that word. If we go there, we go there because God wants us to be there, not because we earned it or won the lottery. Heaven is like the return of the Prodigal; no matter what reason or where or for how long we wandered, Our Parents are always there waiting and are so happy that we've come back. Heaven is like the Wedding at Cana; joy like the best wine anyone has ever tasted, and more of it than all the guests can possibly drink. Heaven is the Bosom of Abraham where everyone belongs and is welcome. In Heaven, no one is lonely and no one is without. As Mahalia Jackson described Heaven "It's always 'Howdy! Howdy!' and never 'good bye.'"
I've never believed in hell, at least that traditional concept of it as an eternal torture chamber created by God to punish the wicked. Demagogues, tyrants, oligarchs, and fanatics use the fires of hell to frighten their subjects into an infantile submission. Salvation became a protection racket, a way of staying out of hell instead of embarking on a journey to meet God. Hell was always a little too useful for keeping people in line. Hell becomes an empty threat when people lose their fear of it, and salvation becomes an empty promise. And yet, I believe in free will. The problem with universalism and its very attractive idea that everyone will ultimately see salvation is that it negates free will. Should someone who doesn't want it see salvation? Slave and master, victim and predator automatically together in the same heaven with no reckoning is not justice. Perhaps Hell is something that we make for ourselves with great skill and industry. We go there willingly, even eagerly, and it locks from the inside. We find our bliss in our own darkness and isolation cutting ourselves off from our neighbors and from God. We put ourselves there and it is up to us to come out. I could see that for some, leaving would be too much to ask. One thing that always struck me about Dante's Inferno; as I recall, none of the damned asks to leave. None of them ever say "get me out of here" to Dante and Virgil no matter how terrible their suffering.
Posted by Counterlight at Friday, November 30, 2018 No comments:
Posted by Counterlight at Sunday, November 18, 2018 No comments:
The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month
The First World War ended a century ago today.
The Belgian countryside near Ypres, 1917
Plaster casts of injured soldiers.
Plaster casts of injured soldiers in the Museé de l'Armee in Paris.
I wrote a post about The Great War four years ago for the centennial of its beginning.
Natural Blue
The color blue begins with the sky. The nitrogen and oxygen that make up much of the atmosphere absorb the long light waves of red and scatter and reflect back the short light waves of blue. We live at the bottom of a sea of blue air. Sunlight that comes through that air at mid day is very cool and bluish in color.
At sunrise and sunset, sunlight passes over the surface of the earth at a tangent and through much more atmosphere. The air does the opposite at this time of day absorbing the short light waves of blue and reflecting back the long waves of red.
The same effect is true of water, especially over tropical seas.
The combination of air and water make ours a blue world.
And yet, blue remains an exceptional color in the natural world of life and minerals. Warm colors of reds, browns, umbers, and ochers dominate the colors of the land. The colors of life are primarily greens, reds, and browns.
Chicory blossoms
A day flower
Texas bluebonnets
Texas bluebonnets in a field
Blue morning glories
Colorado Columbine
Cornflowers
Eastern bluebirds
Mountain bluebird
Blue grosbeak
Cerulean warbler
Blue Hyacinth Macaw
Siamese fighting fish
Blue Morpho Butterfly
Star Sapphire, the "Star of India" in the American Museum of Natural History in New York
Blue Diamond, the Hope Diamond
Blue Tanzanite
Blue Spinel
Egyptian Blue
The Egyptians made the first synthetic color, a blue that the Romans later called Egyptian Blue. The ingredients were simple, but the process of making it was demanding and difficult. The Egyptians used chalk or limestone together with a blue mineral such as malachite or azurite, and sand. These were melted together at very high temperatures. Not only temperature, but the amount of oxygen used in the firing determined the resulting color from deep dark ultramarine blues to bright almost greenish turquoise colors. Making this pigment required great skill.
The Egyptians loved blue associating it with the sky and the waters of the Nile.
An Egyptian faience hippopotamus, "William," from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, circa 1961 to 1878 BCE
An ushabti
Wall tiles from the tomb of Pharaoh Zoser at Saqqara, circa 2630 - 2611 BCE
For many centuries, ultramarine blue was the most expensive and sought after pigment in the world. Throughout much of history, artists made ultramarine blue out of lapis lazuli mined from Sar-e-Sang in the Hindu Kush mountains in what is now Afghanistan near the famous Buddhist site of Bamiyan along the Silk Road. Merchants transported lapis on the backs of camels and donkeys along the silk road to sea ports in Syria. From there, ships carried the mineral to Venice. Ultramarine blue made from this lapis lazuli came from over ("ultra-") the sea ("-marine).
Not only was ultramarine blue made from very costly lapis lazuli imported from Central Asia, but it was extremely difficult to make. Lapis lazuli contains numerous mineral impurities from calcite to pyrite. Grinding up lapis lazuli makes a disappointing grey. Cenino Cennini in his famous 14th century artists' handbook describes a lengthy process of refinement involving mixing wax, linseed oil, and mastic into the powder, soaking it in an alkaline lye solution, and pressing it repeatedly to extract the bright blue lazulite from the matrix of mineral impurities.
The material and the process were so expensive and demanding that artists required an initial down payment from patrons in order to afford the pigment.
Enrico Scrovegni, among the richest bankers in Europe in the early 14th century, contracted the artist Giotto to make liberal use of extremely expensive ultramarine blue in the Arena Chapel in Padua. Giotto used gallons of it, applied a secco, over dry plaster so that it would not chemically react with wet plaster. Banker that he was, Enrico Scrovegni wanted to impress God and the neighbors with how much money he could afford to set on fire for this project.
By the 19th century, industrialism created new and brilliant colors that could be sold cheaply. In 1824, a French industrial society put out an award of 6000 francs for the first person to come up with a cheap synthetic way of producing ultramarine blue. In 1828, two people claimed the prize, a German chemist Gmelin who claimed to have invented a synthetic process earlier, and French chemist Jean Baptiste Guimet. Guimet walked away with the prize money and the patent rights to a process of extracting the color from coal tar. Not only was the new ultramarine blue cheap to make in large quantities, but it was more uniform in quality than the old ultramarine made from lapis lazuli.
Some artists were not impressed. They argued that the new industrial synthetic lacked the depth of the old blue precisely because it was so uniform. The new synthetic color became known as French ultramarine blue to distinguish it from the older "true" ultramarine blue.
I've never tried to make the pigment, but I did try once to make my own ultramarine blue oil paint from powdered pigment. The pigment that I bought was definitely the "French" kind and reeked of coal tar. I ground the pigment as fine as I could, mixed it with linseed oil, and put it in a paint tube. The paint dried out in the tube within an hour. Ultramarine blue remains a frustrating pigment to mix for one's self. I just buy tubes of it at the art supply store now, and thank God that I live in the 21st century.
The search for a good ultramarine blue continued into the 20th century. The artist Yves Klein became obsessed with the color. Like many artists, Klein noticed that the dry blue pigment lost its original intensity when it was mixed with linseed oil and other ingredients to make it into paint. He collaborated with Edouard Adam, an art supplier to find a suitable medium that would not diminish the brilliance of the original pigment. In 1960, Klein patented what he called International Klein Blue (IKB). Above is a painting by Klein made with the new blue, L'accord bleu from 1960.
The Blue of the Virgin Mary
As early as the 12th century, the Church hierarchy decreed that the color associated with the Virgin Mary would be the color of Heaven, blue; and not just any blue, but the purest and most expensive of blues, ultramarine. The growing and burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary created a lasting demand for her image.
In the beginning, a light safe and chemically stable ultramarine blue pigment remained elusive to Western panel painters working in egg tempera on gessoed panels. Over time, the colors in panels from the 13th and early 14th centuries frequently decayed into a greenish black as in the example above; an otherwise very fine late 13th century painting by the Badi a Isola Master.
A fine and beautifully preserved triptych by Duccio, 14th century
The Wilton Diptych famous for the brilliance of its blues; made for King Richard II who appears with his patron saints Edmund the Martyr, Edward the Confessor, and John the Baptist in the panel on the left.
Nardo di Cione, Triptych, 1360
The Frankfurt Paradise Garden from the 14th century
Detail from the Frankfurt Paradise Garden
Stefan Lochner, Virgin and Child in a Rose Garden, 15th century
Fra Angelico, The Coronation of the Virgin Mary, early 15th century
Rogier Van Der Weyden, detail from the Columba Altarpiece
Gerard David, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, late 15th century
Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Meadow, late 15th century
Raphael, The Alba Madonna, 1510
Titian, The Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and John the Baptist, 16th century
Sassoferrato, The Virgin Mary, 17th century
Guido Reni, The Assumption of the Virgin Mary, 17th century
I'm not a fan of Guido's work, but the brilliant luscious colors are hard to resist.
Cobalt blue made from an oxide of cobalt has been used for centuries to color ceramics and glass first in China, and then in the West as early as the 12th century.
Cobalt blue the artist's pigment appeared in 1802 - 1807 in France, created as an alumina based pigment by Louis Jacques Thenard.
Ming dynasty blue and white porcelain jar, 15th century
Staffordshire "Willow" pattern porcelain plate, 19th century
Sevres porcelain plate, 1780
Royal Copenhagen porcelain tureen, 20th century
Iznik ware tiles from the Rustem Pasha Mosque, Istanbul, 16th century
Iznik tile work from the Mehmet Sokollu Mosque, Istanbul, 16th century
Tile work in the dome of the Mosque of the Shah, Isfahan, Iran, 17th century
Cobalt blue Empoli glass floor decanter, 1960s
Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere window, Chartres Cathedral, late 12th century.
The South Rose Window, Chartres Cathedral, 13th century
The Berlin paint manufacturer Johann Jacob Diesbach made Prussian Blue, the first modern synthetic pigment by accident around 1704 to 1706. He tried to make his signature brilliant lake red when something went wrong with the mixture that turned first pink, then violet, and then a deep dark blue. Diesbach suspected his materials supplier, a chemist and pharmacist named Johann Konrad Dippel sold him some adulterated potash. It turned out that the potash contained animal oil that transformed what was supposed to be a brilliant scarlet into ferrocyanide, or Prussian blue.
Dippel began making and selling the color as a cheap substitute for ultramarine blue that had no green in it unlike smalt, azurite, and other inexpensive blues of the time, and had great tinting strength to stand up to being mixed with other colors.
The most notable use of Prussian blue was not in oil paint, but in colored inks by the great Ukiyo-e print makers of the early 19th century, in particular Hokusai and Hiroshige who made the color famous.
Stable light fast blue colors were very scarce in Japan, so these print makers turned to imported Prussian blue inks from the West.
Hokusai, Waves
Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the most famous of all Japanese prints
Hiroshige, The Eagle
Hiroshige, The Whirlpool
Cerulean Blue
The Swiss chemist Albrecht Höpfner first made Cerulean blue pigment in 1789, but it did not become widely available to artists as oil paint until the 1870s.
The French call the color bleu celeste, in English it is sometimes known as "sky blue."
Claude Monet was among the first artists to take advantage of the new broad range of inexpensive brilliant colors created by industrialism. Cerulean blue forms the basis for the brilliant light filled skies in his paintings.
Claude Monet, The Four Trees (Poplars by the Canal, Evening Effect), 1891
He used those brilliant colors to make paintings based on the optical science of the day. He created a new palette of bright colors based on the spectrum as first described by Newton.
Cerulean is the "heavenly" blue. It colors the houses of Brahmans in the city of Rajasthan in India.
The flag of the United Nations adopted in December, 1946. The architect Donal McLaughlin of New York designed the symbol, a projection of the entire earth from the north pole showing all of the continents. The committee responsible for designing the flag chose cerulean blue for the color, a blue that was as far away as possible from the brilliant red so favored by the ideological tyrants of the Second World War. Cerulean is the color of the same sky seen by all of humankind.
Artists' Blue
Hans Holbeing, Lady with a Squirrel and Starling, 16th century. The blue in the background is made from azurite.
Ogata Korin, Blue Irises, 18th century
James Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Gold, The Old Battersea Bridge, 1872 - 1875
Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889
Picasso, La Vie, 1901
Henri Matisse, The Blue Window, 1913
Henri Matisse, Blue Nude II, cut out, 1952
Joan Miro, Blue II, 1961
Mark Rothko, No. 27, 1954
Barnett Newmann, Cathedra, 1951
Richard Diebenkorn, from the Ocean Park series, 1960s.
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Curve V, 1972
Paul Jenkins, Blue Ligeance, 1961
Morris Louis, Blue Veil, 1958
Helen Frankenthaler, Blue Reach, 1974
Posted by Counterlight at Sunday, November 04, 2018 2 comments:
The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleve...


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Home»Kids Encyclopedia»World Atlas»Japan: World Encyclopedia for Students and Children
Japan: World Encyclopedia for Students and Children
Kids4Fun November 27, 2017	World Atlas Leave a comment 2,719 Views
System of government: Constitutional Monarchy
Capital: Tokyo
Location: Island nation in the Pacific; the Japanese archipelago is separated from the Asian mainland by the Sea of Japan; it includes the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the Ryukyu group, Tsushima, Bonin, Izu and Volcano Islands, as well as numerous smaller islands
Area: 373,313 sq km
National composition: Japanese (99%), Ainu (original inhabitants)
Religions: Buddhism and Shintoism
Official language: Japanese
Currency: Yen = 100 sen
Administrative divisions: 47 prefectures
Other major cities: Yokohoma, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Sapporo, Kobe; altogether, Japan has 10 cities with more than a million inhabitants, and more than 150 with populations exceeding 100,000
Highest elevation: Fuji-san (3,776 m) on the island of Honshu
Chief rivers: Shinano (0n Honshu), Ishikari (Hokkaido), Tone (Honshu)
Largest lake: Biwa (Honshu)
Climate: Monsoon type, temperature in the north and subtropical in the south; the climate is strongly affected by ocean currents
The islands of Japan are mostly mountainous. They contain more than 50 active volcanoes and earthquakes are common. The largest lowland is the Kwanto Plain around the capital Tokyo. The mostly short rivers have ample volumes and hydroelectric projects have been constructed on the upper courses of many of them. Forests cover about 65 per cent of the country. Japan has coniferous forests, which merge to the south into evergreen broad leaf forests. The flora and fauna are rich and Japan is the home of the badger, bear, fox, Japanese macaque, otter, raccoon dog, wolf and other animals.
Arable land covers only about 16 per cent of the total area but, because of intensive farming and the use of machinery, yields are high. And, in certain parts of the country, climatic conditions permit two harvests a year. The leading crop is rice, followed by barley, soya beans, sweet potatoes, tea and wheat. Horticulture is also important. Cattle, pigs and poultry are reared on many farms and sericulture and fishing employed 12 per cent of the work-force, although they contributed only 4 per cent of the gross domestic product in 1982. On the other hand, industry employed 39 per cent of the work-force and accounted for 42 per cent of the gross domestic product.
Today Japan is one of the world's most industrialized countries, with the high per capita gross national product of US $10,080 in 1981. Japanese industry is characterized by efficient organization, a high degree of mechanization and automation, and a highly skilled and dedicated work-force. The country is the world's leading manufacturer of automobiles, motor cycles and television sets and it is also a major shipbuilder. Japanese chemicals, electronics, optics and textiles are world famous. There are also large timber, pulp and paper industries, together with food-processing, ceramic and building material industries. However, Japan has few natural resources apart from some coal, copper, limestone, mercury, oil and natural gas and a few other minerals.
In many respects, Japanese transport is a symbol of the country's advanced technology. There is a dense system of excellent roads and motorways, and a highly efficient system of railways, including some lines operating high speed express trains. Japan has countless tunnels, bridges and causeways to negotiate the many natural obstacles. Japan's merchant fleet is the world's second largest. The largest seaport is Yokohama, while the busiest airport at Tokyo handles hundreds of flights a day.
A steel works in Kobe
A television transmitter in Tokyo
Hokkaido is the northernmost of Japanese islands
Irrigated terraced rice fields
The entrance to a Shinto temple
The memorial to the victims of the atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima in 1943
The torii gate of camphor laurel wood at the Itsuku shima shrine
The sacred Mount Fuji
Tokyo and Osaka are connected by high speed trains
The Great Amida Kamakura popularity known as the Great Buddha
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Guru Gobind Singh Famous Quotes for Students
Guru Gobind Singh Famous Quotes for Students: Guru Gobind Singh ji (Friday, January 5, 1661, …

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text:
Corporate & Incentive Travel/
Small Meetings and Executive Retreats
Small Meetings and Executive RetreatsMay 1, 2014
That Spark Genuine Connections Among Attendees By Gabi Logan
That Spark Genuine Connections Among Attendees
Enjoying the Matrix Communications Inc. reception at Sandals LaSource Grenada are (l to r) Karie Timion, Mark and Jocelyn Hechtl, John and Carolyn Mirviss, Brian and Lisa Finnvik, Craig and Suzanne Nordstrom, Dan Galbraith, Mary Jo McGowan, Charlie and Lori Eicher, Ann and Tom Pearson, Tammy Peterson and Jim Peterson, Steve and Kareen Ferry, Mike and Paulette Parrott, Frank Millo, Susan and Kevin Peters, Peter McAllister, Lori Robbins, Mike Ellis, Shannon and Jason Cardwell. Credit: Matrix Communications Inc.
At last, it seems the meeting industry can breathe a collective sigh of relief. After years of worrying whether the economy would take another dip or how things would play out for the industry, The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) in early April significantly increased its forecast for the year, driven in large part by healthy corporate profits, rising management confidence and increased job development — a continued positive sign for the U.S. economy.
GBTA's outlook for group travel was revised to increase 7 percent in 2014 to $126 billion — up from the 6.5 percent growth GBTA predicted last quarter.
While corporate meetings in many industries have remained relatively healthy throughout the recession, small meetings and executive retreats have increasingly come under scrutiny. Because they affect fewer people — and thus can be seen to have less valuable results for the expenditure — and can be perceived as "splashy" spending that only benefits upper management, many small meetings face the prospect of being replaced by lesser digital versions or phased out.
Always an inventive group, planners have responded to these challenges by showing why small meetings and executive retreats serve a crucial role for corporations. Planners today are engineering the intangible: intimate meetings that spark genuine connections among attendees.
Unique Venues and Unusual Spaces Help Planners Create Connections
As technology has become ever more integrated into meetings, and the recession has made budget and ROI come into focus more than ever, many fear that meetings — particularly small, face-to-face meetings — are in danger of losing out in the digital revolution. According to Meeting Professionals International's Outlook 2014, 54 percent of meeting professionals are using digital or hybrid meetings.
But corporate planners — and their companies — still believe in the significance of face-to-face interaction. MPI's study, based on a survey of meeting planners around the globe conducted by Association Insights, reports that only 3 percent of meeting planners are using virtual and hybrid to completely replace face-to-face meetings.
One of the key ways planners are continuing to demonstrate the value of in-person interaction is by putting extra effort into fostering attendee interaction through the specific spaces they're choosing for their meetings. "I deal with investor meetings, executive retreats, strategy summits, board meetings and dinners, and corporate golf and tennis tournaments here and have in the past for other small- and medium-sized businesses that I've worked for, and I've found that companies are going more towards smaller venues," explains Christine M. Eggert, CAP, MCT, executive assistant and office supervisor at Ewing, New Jersey-based Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc.
"I find that small venues are great because they provide us with personal attention in a private setting. It's very important for our people to maximize interaction among attendees. I see better interaction when it's a relaxed setting," she says. "For instance, when I'm looking out of town, I don't look for a conference room but rather a hotel suite living room, because there is more comfort there but there is still catering capability and the same quality of audio-visual capability. When I am booking a meeting that's local, I insist that I go to the site before booking to check it out and make sure it has the meeting space we're looking for but it's also intimate."
Increasingly, venues are responding to planners' need for intimate spaces that foster interaction by renovation or restricting their venues to create unique spaces. In an interview in the MPI report, Darren Temple of the MPI Dallas Fort Worth Chapter and chief sales officer for the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau explains that the CVB is planning to reconfigure their ballroom space to accommodate these requests for smaller meeting and multi-use spaces.
"It's about unique spaces for people to collaborate. We think that's what meeting planners are requesting. There's an emphasis on education and ways to collaborate. Sometimes that takes place in very small environments," Temple says in the report.
Hilton Worldwide also has already responded to this need by launching a small-meeting-specific planning tool in November of last year as part of their Connect online meeting-planning portal. Called "Meetings Simplified," the tool highlights properties that offer packages for 25 or few attendees with Wi-Fi, flip charts and beverages automatically included, and options for meals and guest rooms.
Planners and Hotel Staff Work More Closely Together
As the meeting planning business picks up and expands, hotels have been reacting to the increase in demand as basic economics dictates, raising prices when they can't increase supply. But while planners around the U.S have been struggling to find space for many of their events, small and executive meetings are experiencing an interesting inverse of that: increased hotel availability and attention as venues look to cater to this market share.
Matrix Communications Marketing Director Karie Timion with Francine Stewart of Sandals La Source Granada.
Associated Luxury Hotels International (ALHI) has responded to this need on the part of small meeting planners by creating the U-200 Gems Collection — a new specialty segment of their portfolio that highlights more than 20 member hotels with 200 rooms or fewer. "These gems can provide a wonderful, secluded atmosphere for your group, which can be particularly appealing if you have a very tight-knit group, one that requires privacy or total confidentiality, or one that wishes to utilize the property's beautiful public spaces for private functions," says David Gabri, president and CEO of ALHI in a statement on the new collection. "These hotels and resorts also enable smaller groups to be the main program at their property, which can have its benefits too."
For planners looking to engineer an event that fosters interaction and breeds connection, buy-in from hotel staff is a key piece of the puzzle. "Besides booking early to make sure you get the space you want, I think having a terrific rapport with the site is one of the most important parts of planning small meetings, because if they know you're organized and detailed oriented, they're more likely to bend over backward," explains Eggert.
Karie Timion, marketing director at Plymouth, Minnesota-based Matrix Communications Inc., agrees. "The success of our Grenada trip began far before we arrived with the talented assistance of Antonecia Sweeting, Sandals group events coordinator, and Francine Stewart, Sandals resort sales manager. Antonecia worked with me remotely prior to our trip to ensure our group was registered accurately and our group celebration dinner was planned down to the last detail.
"In general, we have found the Sandals brand focuses on complete customer satisfaction, and it aligns perfectly with what our organization looks for in a resort and destination." — Karie Timion
"On the property, I began working with Francine Stewart, and I knew from the moment I met her that our group was in very good hands. She took care of our group with grace and excellence that made our entire party feel like we were the only guests she had to attend to on the entire island. Francine went above and beyond to always make herself available to assist during the entire stay to ensure our group was completely satisfied," adds Timion.
"In general, we have found the Sandals brand focuses on complete customer satisfaction, and it aligns perfectly with what our organization looks for in a resort and destination," says Timion. "You can always rely on Sandals as they focus on the ultimate experience for their guests."
When hotel staff treats your attendees as if they are special guests, they feel increased connection to the location, event and each other. Carol A. Monaco, executive assistant of Netherlands-headquartered Damco Distribution Services Inc., has experienced this during her company's executive retreat at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. "We're a company that provides service to clients, so we know how important that is, and we want people to come back to us." Monaco, who is located in Damco's Madison, New Jersey, office, explains, "One thing that stood out for us during our executive retreat at The Broadmoor was definitely their customer service. The moment you check in to when you're having breakfast to when people are just walking by, people who work at the hotel greet you by name."
"One thing that stood out for us during our executive retreat at The Broadmoor was definitely their customer service. The moment you check in to when you're having breakfast to when people are just walking by, people who work at the hotel greet you by name."
— Carol A. Monaco
Like Eggert and Timion, Monaco has found that securing a connection with hotel staff early on in the planning process goes a long way to ensure an intimate event that goes off with a hitch. "We originally went last November to speak to the folks that would handle our account, and they were wonderful," Monaco explains. "We went back in January, and there wasn't anything that wasn't covered. They work with you, and they will do anything they can to make sure you are completely happy. The food, the facilities, the cleanliness, and we had quite a few things that we did offsite that they arranged for us and all went perfectly."
Activities That Create Unexpected Connections
Planners have long understood the value of giving meeting attendees an experience they couldn't have anywhere else as a way to bond them, but today, one of the best ways to do so is to tie your activities to your location.
The days of flying in top singers, bands or comedy headliners are gone, and not just because of budget. When you provide attendees with an activity or experience you could only have in the location you're in, it provides an extra element of exclusivity that also ties in to the rest of the meeting and reinforces the memory of the event for attendees.
Timion has planned incentive trips for her company's "President's Club" for 13 years, and this year, she found a way to make the flight home into an experience attendees won't soon forget. On the way back from Grenada, the flight scheduled necessitated that her group have a long layover in Miami. Rather than have attendees pass the time in the airport, she arranged an excursion into Miami's most exciting neighborhood for the afternoon. "The group ventured out to South Beach to check out the local fare on the way home. It turned a long travel day into yet one more day of vacation in the sun," she says.
When Monaco held her executive retreat at The Broadmoor, the hotel delivered everything she could have hoped for as far as the meeting was concerned, but it was the activities the hotel helped her organize that really stayed with attendees. "All our meetings were at the hotel, and they had the Cheyenne Lodge located on their premise, a seven-minute drive up a mountain," she explains. "We went up with provided vans for dinner one evening, and a local woman who raises wolves as her pets brought them into the lodge during dinner. We did it to surprise my boss because it was his birthday. They were very sweet, and there were a couple (of pets) that were there for an hour. People were petting them, and it was a very surprising experience."
The Broadmoor's 6,300-sf Cheyenne Lodge, adjacent to the Mountain golf course, offers both indoor and outdoor event and conference space.
"One night we had dinner offsite at the Olympic Training Center (in Colorado Springs)," she continues. "The chef from The Broadmoor came and cooked for us and three Olympic gymnasts performed for us. They don't just let anyone have dinner there. We were able to go because The Broadmoor has a relationship."
Relying on the relationships of the venue and their staff allows planners to create an experience for attendees that highlights parts of the meeting location planners might not know about otherwise. "For our incentive, we had 30 attendees, basically the employee who had been awarded the trip and their guests," says Timion. "Sandals LaSource Grenada had just opened December 2013, and the property was incredible from the room configurations, amenities, décor, waterfalls, pools, which were all over-the-top gorgeous."
But rather than stick with beach and pool time, she followed the hotel's recommendations to integrate an exploration of Grenada, including St. Georges, the capital of the Grenada, known for its market square where locals shop for fresh fruit and fish. "We had a sunset cruise along the coast of Grenada organized by Island Routes, the Sandals excursion desk, and a trip to St. Georges to experience the local market and restaurants," she says.
How Do You Decide When to Go Digital?
Deciding who travels and when is a decision that ultimately comes down to senior management, but it appears that more and more meetings are taking place across city, state and country lines.
MPI's Outlook 2014 reports that 30 percent of respondents are using digital or hybrid components to integrate onsite and remote meeting elements. "Videoconferencing has become more widely used, and we're using conference calling more," says Eggert. "If we're so busy in one area of the country, we can't be everywhere, so we might meet individuals in New York, but then need to 'meet' individuals in San Francisco in another hour."
"Most meetings can be WebEx, and most of mine are," agrees Danell Smith-Wright, senior executive assistant, meeting planner, at Hillsboro, Oregon-based Grass Valley USA LLC. "Not board meetings, obviously. We have 100 percent attendance for those, though I suppose if one of the members had to be teleconferenced in you could, but that would be on an emergency basis.
"The CEO makes the call on whether a meeting should be face-to-face or digital, sometimes based on information I don't have, but there is always a specific reason for a face-to-face meeting. In my experience, it's been because he wants to impart some critical information to the leadership team to do with acquisitions, layoffs, reorganization or information that he needs to share and would like to share that face-to-face."
"But with our technological tools, we're able to not necessarily have face-to-face meetings or need them that often," she explains. "I'm located in Northern California, and so we're always looking at what kind of tools we can use to have cost savings and increase efficiency.
"Leadership team members don't need to fly across the country to have a meeting, we can use tools like WebEx and even Skype once in a while, to have digital face-to-face meetings and be just as effective. We use other technology to share documentation, like DropBox, then everyone has the documents and we jump on, and we're all set, says Smith-Wright."
The MPI study also found that 24 percent of meeting planners are using digital or hybrid tools to enhance face-to-face meetings. Increased incorporation of technology into small meetings often has more to do with ease than need, however. While planners once risked wasting valuable meeting time making sure everyone was properly connected to a video conference or online PowerPoint presentation, the mainstreaming of digital meeting technologies — along with lower prices that are easier to fit into budgets — has made it more of a no-brainer to incorporate a digital element into meetings.
"I find that now technology is easier and more affordable," Eggert explains. "Recently we got involved with Office 365, and I personally ran a workshop recently that used Microsoft Lync. The whole webinar, including video, PowerPoint and audio, ran online from the beginning, and it was a cinch. It's extremely affordable, just $2 or $5 per month per user. Now you don't necessarily have to purchase GoToMeeting because you can do it so much more affordably now."
Small Meetings, Strong Results
While you may keep seeing sensational headlines touting that digital is killing face-to-face meetings or that small meetings are getting the budget axe, planners' experiences, hotel programs and raw data still speak to the contrary.
Companies, particularly upper management, continue to see the value in small meetings for connecting employees for meaningful results, strategizing and delivering key information, while planners work more closely than ever with venues to create intimate meetings in unique spaces that make successful small meetings practically a guaranteed result. C&IT
Corporate & Incentive Travel Magazine


Since joining us in 2013, Philip has worked alongside our corporate partners, on a wide variety of transactions.
Background: Trained with Freeth Cartwright in Nottingham, qualifying into their corporate department, where he gained a solid grounding in handling transactions for clients of all sizes.
In practice: Philip is an enthusiastic and professional lawyer working on the full range of corporate transactional and related company law matters.
In his own words: "Since joining Roxburgh Milkins in 2013 I've worked on a wide range of matters for clients both large and small – refinancing and minor reorganisations, stock market flotations and placings, multi-million pound share sales, friendly company mergers and buy-outs and private equity backed business purchases. I'm given a lot of responsibility and I think that works in our clients' best interests."
In his spare time: Having recently become a father, when not at his desk, He is most likely to be at home trying to restore order to the madness of having a young family. Gone (temporarily?!) are Saturdays spent in the stands of various lower league football grounds or underneath the bonnets of old cars. You might still catch Philip, though, at the top of a ladder with that dangerous combination of too much confidence and too little expertise.


text:
Q: How can I access Controls in VisualWebPart1.cs from UserControl.ascx I make a Webpart and want to use the controls from the VisualWebpart1UserControl.ascx in the VisualWebpart1.cs. Is this possible?
I wrote following code in the VisualWebpart1.cs:
VisualWebPart1UserControl control = (VisualWebPart1UserControl)Page.LoadControl(_ascxPath);
        control.WebPart = this;
        Controls.Add(control);

I want to manipulate the controls like Label1 in the VisualWebpart.cs, which are created in the VisualWebpart1UserControl.ascx.
How can I do this?

A: If you expose the control as a member of VisualWebPart1UserControl you can access it via the control's object. Something like this:
In VisualWebPart1UserControl.ascx.cs:
public Label Label1;

In VisualWebPart1.cs:
VisualWebPart1UserControl control = (VisualWebPart1UserControl)Page.LoadControl(_ascxPath);
if (control != null)
{
    control.Label1.Text = "Change the text";
    control.WebPart = this;
}
Controls.Add(control);

A: You can use control.FindControl("labelId") to access the control...
You will need to type cast it to Label and set properties..
Alternative solution! :)
UPDATE:
Once the label is found, cast it to Label class as below:
Label lblMyLabel = control.FindControl("labelId") as Label;
then lblMyLabel.Text = "your text";

A: Yup this is easy and very explainable ;):
in your createchildcontrol do the following:
    private UserControl control;

    protected override void CreateChildControls()
    {
        try
        {

            base.CreateChildControls();

            //call the ascx and load it into a new usercontrol so you can use it
            control = (UserControl)Page.LoadControl(@"/_controltemplates/yourascxtofindgoeshere.ascx");

            //create a button and get the control from the usercontrol (btnSave is the button id in the ascx)
            Button btnSave = (Button)this.control.FindControl("btnSave");
            //If you have a textbox you can do the same
            TextBox txtName = (TextBox)this.control.FindControl("txtName");
            //now you have created the button that is inherited from the ascx you can give it a click event ;) and do what you want in there
            btnSave.Click += new EventHandler(btnSave_Click);

            //add the user control to the visualwebpart controls list so its visible
            Controls.Add(control);

        }
        catch (HttpException ex)
        {
            this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br />An unexpected error occurred loading Web Part. " + ex.Message));
        }
    }

    void btnSave_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       //do what you want in here ;)
    }

The above code is just an example of how a visual webpart works. I have shown you how to get the ascx into the visualwebpart, then create new controls that inherit the ascx controls. Now you have created these new controls you can do what you like ;)
hope it helps :)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
NG Firewall Appliances Ease Bank's Network Security Needs
Bank of New Glarus and Sugar River Banks
Industry: Financial Services
Average Network Size: 60 users
"After some research, I decided that Untangle was the most attractive appliance available today."
The Bank of New Glarus and Sugar River Banks in New Glarus, Wisconsin was founded in 1893 with $12,000 in opening capital. An independent bank providing financial guidance and solutions, the Bank honors its hometown heritage by providing exceptional customer service to the people and communities it serves.
IT veteran Jeff Armstrong has spent the last six years of his eighteen year career in financial services IT. When he joined the Bank, he immediately began looking at the infrastructure in place to serve the six area locations.
Multiple Sites, Multiple Headaches
After evaluating the Bank's network, Jeff quickly realized that he needed to decrease costs while optimizing bandwidth usage. Site-to-site VPN needed to be robust, redundant and managed. Finally, he knew he needed to control access to web content and protect desktops from viruses, phishing and other malware and exploits.
A Solution that Just Works
Jeff learned about Untangle's NG Firewall from a former colleague who was already a fan. He looked at both NG Firewall's software-only and appliance solutions. Though Jeff has the expertise to configure his own hardware, he chose an NG Firewall appliance for its ease of use. "I like the minimal work up front to install the appliance in my network," said Jeff. "The two NG Firewall appliances we've purchased so far have saved me time and money – and will continue to do so."
"I needed a solution that will decrease the complexity of managing the network for my team," said Jeff. "I can't be everywhere at once. I wanted my team to be able to learn quickly, self-serve, and not have to deal with learning a command line interface." Jeff continued, "NG Firewall is a point-and-click solution that has made my day-to-day tasks easier. My team has been able to work on the NG Firewall without needing me every time."
"The pair of NG Firewall appliances have paid for themselves many times over," said Jeff. "The devices are running flawlessly. I'm very happy with my decision."
SEE MORE CASE STUDIES


My friend would like her 7yr old daughter to go to swimming lessons and dance lessons in Korat.
Anyone got any knowledge or ideas of any such activities in the area?
This refers to Udon not Korat.
The swimming lessons we got covered as my two swim like fish but dance, no where in Udon, can I find a dancing instructor.
Mind you I havent asked my friend Marmite yet.
Last edited by superman; 05-11-2012 at 07:34 AM.
Thanks superman... Your search skills are naturally better than mine... Will give them a ring.
My ole lady says every Isaan kid knows how to swim... They learn it from the family. Then it hit me!!!! All my kids know how to swim.
I took care of them when they were with me... Never crossed my mind???
I can give dance lessons but I live in Buriram!


LUXURIOUS home on your very own private Ski Lake. Offering breathtaking lakefront views, impeccable landscaping 16 acres of Syrah Grapes all on 40 acres of privacy. Private electric gate entry, 5000sft shop with 680sft apartment, 2nd 4 bed 3 bath home, boathouse w/dock/patio/hydraulic lift for boats & work room. Bottle your own wine, jet ski or paddleboard on your privately owned lake, fish for catfish. Relax and enjoy. MUST SEE LUXURY PROPERTY!


Blog about Belarus written by two blond-blue-eyed girls who view the country with foreign eyes.
We want to celebrate together with our readers the Belarusian uniqueness!
Check out more fun and interesting stuff about Belarus on our newest travel platform HiFive Belarus!
Meet the authors of Heta Belarus Dzietka: two blue-eyed blondes, who, thanks to their unique perspective, are able to see Belarus from both a local and a foreigner's point of view. Check out their story.
Heta Belarus Dzietka are the illustrated blogs about the amazingness of our beloved country, Belarus. The phrase literally means "that's Belarus, babe!" because at times, that is the only reasonable explanation.
Be the first to know about (and get!) the good stuff! Subscribe to our newsletter.


The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is offering scholarship opportunities in Germany for international students for a range of postgraduate courses at German Universities which aim at providing academically educated young professionals from developing countries with further specialized studies.
The German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD (German: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) is the largest German support organization in the field of international academic co-operation.
The scholarships are available for pursuing the Masters programme in all field of study.
The scholarship is hosted by Germany.
For courses in German: DSH 2 or TestDaF 4; at time of application German skills at completed level A2 are required. In addition, German language courses at level A2 or B1 are highly recommended.
My name is Alemayehu Fekadu from Ethiopia i need to join freescholarship in unversity underegraduate level of Automotive Engineering so if you want give a chance to free scholarship please contact to me.Thank you!
in International Agribusiness and Rural Development.
Hello dear sir/madam, I am from Ethiopia and I want to a scholarship to pursue my master program which related to nature-based conservation (Range management and Eco-tourism). Therefore, please show me the way how can I get a free scholarship.


Root canals are often needed when deep tooth decay reaches the nerve of the tooth.
If left untreated, this decay can result in an abscess (a swollen, pus-filled sac) at the root of your tooth.
Not only does this create excruciating pain in your tooth, but it can also push the tooth upwards so it becomes loose. The most effective way to repair teeth with deep cavities is with root canal therapy.
Our Grandville dentists have the necessary experience to save your smile and prevent tooth loss. Our family dentists will first drill a hole through the top of your tooth so she can access the inside of the tooth. The infected tooth pulp will then be removed and flushed out.
To fill the hole left by the root canal procedure, our dentist will fill it with a special material called gutta-percha and cap the tooth with a filling. Often a root canal crown is needed to restore the strength and structure of the tooth.
Sarah Palmer DDS and Amy Harmon DDS are able to save infected teeth through root canal treatments. If you have a severe toothache and suspect you need root canal therapy, call our Grandville dentist office at (616) 534-0080.


Citroen C1, Peugeot 107, 108 & Toyota Aygo Owners Club. (Discount code for CityBugStore: C1OC) • View topic - How long have you owned your car?
Post subject: Re: How long have you owned your car?
I have decided to keep mine until either its wheels fall apart, or a worthy hybrid or electric car hits the market. I'm not interesting in buying a new car to get more LEDs and electronic gadgets.
My Smart cost me £ 5000 when it was 7.5 years old with 15280 miles. In June 2020 when the latest model of Smart Fortwo the C453 is 6 years old I hope to buy a used low mileage one for around £ 6000 to £ 7000.
Hope to get at least £ 1500 for my current Smart which will have about 21000 miles on it by then which means £ 4500 to £ 5500 for the new car after selling my old one.
I do want the latest electronic gizmos etc that comes with a newer car and I feel 5 years ownership of a used car is long enough. Of course it all depends what's available at the time and where from a 2 to 3 year old car will cost considerably more.
For example there's a used 2016 Smart Fortwo C453 automatic with 6500 miles for sale at £ 8995 at the moment from a dealer here in Jersey, the main dealer tend to want £ 9995 for similar.
I'd be ideally looking at something from 2014 to 2015 to fit within my budget and I hope there are more available in June 2020 when I'm in the market.
I bought my C1 in 2009 as a 1 year old (the previous owner needed to have the latest number plate...) so I've now owned it for over 9 years and have no plans to change it as it's only done 45000 miles and is still 100% reliable and cheap to maintain - apart from regular servicing costs I've only had to have the clutch replaced.
Wise words mate, , ok we got a newer 108 in the family last year nice car and big improvement on the 107, but I still intend on keeping our 107, cos still a cheap car to run and actually a more fun drive. The 108 has bit more tech unfortunately required by car law makers and car tech arms race, but it going cost more to fix if it goes wrong than our 107.


text:
Beyond Words Live French Literature Festival
Institut français has announced the line-up of author events and films screenings for the 2018 Beyond Words Live French Literature Festival. The line-up features French writers joined by British and European authors.
Atiq Rahimi, Marie Darrieussecq, Laurent Gaudé, Eimear McBride, Claire-Louise Bennett, and Esther Kinsky are among the 40 writers, translators, actors, musicians and journalists taking part in 30 events ranging from talks and panel discussions to performances and films.
Opening the festival on 14 May, a series of events with writers and journalists Eric Hazan, Lauren Elkin, Mitch Abidor and Paul Mason will commemorate the May '68 Paris uprisings.
Hugely popular in France, prize-winning writers Marie Darrieussecq (Medicis Prize), Laurent Gaudé (Goncourt Prize), Atiq Rahimi (Goncourt Prize and English PEN award), Miguel Bonnefoy (Prix du Jeune Ecrivain) will be making exceptional London appearances to talk about their recently translated novels (Being Here is Everything, Hell's Gate, The Patience Stone, Black Sugar).
Throughout the festival, Women Writers and Rebel Ladies will be strongly represented: graphic novelists Pénélope Bagieu, Bryan and Mary Talbot will take part in a live drawing event around their books, Brazen and The Red Virgin on 15 May. On 21 May, singerFishbach will read extracts from Vernon Subutex, shortlisted for the2018 Man Booker International Prize, and perform songs inspired by Despentes' world.
Special tributes will be paid to Gaston Leroux, on the occasion of his 150 birthday, and to the late Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens who published the likes of Georges Perec, Emmanuel Carrère and Marguerite Duras. The works of Marcel Proust and Roland Bartheswill also be celebrated.
There will be book signing sessions throughout the festival as well as a staged reading of Ian Soliane's Bamako-Paris on 18 May and film adaptations including screenings of See You Up There (Pierre Lemaître), The Red Collar (Jean-Christophe Rufin) and Based on a True Story (Delphine de Vigan).
Further events with festival guests will take place in 6 other locations across the country: Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol, Bath, Oxford and Liverpool.
The Institut français is pleased to announce the second edition of Beyond Words: a week-long Festival of French Literature, featuring a great line-up of French writers joined by British and European authors.
Throughout the festival, Women Writers and Rebel Ladies will be strongly represented: graphic novelists Pénélope Bagieu, Bryan and Mary Talbot will take part in a live drawing event around their books, Brazen and The Red Virgin on 15 May. On 21 May, singer Fishbach will read extracts from Vernon Subutex, shortlisted for the2018 Man Booker International Prize, and perform songs inspired by Despentes' world.
Venue: Institut français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT – Info & bookings: www.beyondwordslitfest.co.uk
In May 1968, Parisian students marched down the street in protests that quickly spread throughout France. The country came to a near standstill. This exhibition of works by late French photographer Philippe Gras tells the story of May '68, fifty years after the event. Juliette Desplat from the National Archives will give an introduction to the exhibition on 14 May.
Free access to the exhibition during La Médiathèque opening hours until 19 May
MAY MADE ME: MITCHELL ABIDOR & PAUL MASON
The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative and influential, changing European politics to this day. Mitchell Abidor, author of May Made Me(Pluto), will be discussing their legacy with Guardian journalist Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism. A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane).
6.15pm, in English £7, conc. £5
Related / Latest Publication:
Mitchell Abidor, May Made Me (Pluto, May 2018)
Paul Mason, Postcapitalism. A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane, June 2016)
A WALK THROUGH PARIS: ERIC HAZAN & LAUREN ELKIN
In A Walk Through Paris (Verso) essayist and publisher Eric Hazan takes us through the radical history of Paris, city of the May 1968 uprising, but also of Robespierre, the Commune and Jean-Paul Sartre. Drawing on his own life story and experiences during the Sixties, Eric Hazan will be in conversation with Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse. Women Walk the City.
7.15pm, in English and French £7, conc. £5
Eric Hazan, A Walk Through Paris, translated by David Fernbach (Verso, March 2018) Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse. Women Walk the City (Vintage, July 2017)
REDOUBTABLE
dir. Michel Hazanavicius, 2017, 107 mins
Paris 1967. Jean-Luc Godard, the most renowned filmmaker of his generation, is shooting La Chinoise with the woman he loves, Anne Wiazemsky. Happy, in love, magnetic, they marry. But the film's reception unleashes in Jean-Luc a profound self-examination amplified by the events of May '68.
8.30pm, in French with English subtitles £7
TUESDAY 15 MAY
TRANSLATING FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE WRITING
Journalist and critic Boyd Tonkin, whose 100 Best Novels in Translation is forthcoming in June (Galileo), will kick off this inaugural event for the translation strand of the festival with a conversation with Lucie Campos (head of the Book Office at the Institut français) about French and Francophone titles old and new. Followed by a selection of pitches by emerging translators about the French language books they are most excited about this year, discussed by translator Ros Schwartz and editor Ellie Steel.
5pm, in English £5
REBEL LADIES WHO ROCKED THE WORLD: PÉNÉLOPE BAGIEU, BRYAN & MARY TALBOT, IKO CHÉRIE
Talk and Live Drawing
Pénélope Bagieu's graphic novel Brazen (Penguin) presents a series of portraits of 30 incredible women such as Josephine Baker, Peggy Guggenheim or Tove Jansson. Penelope will be discussing these rebel ladies with Mary and Bryan Talbot, who revisit the life of anarchist and Communarde Louise Michel in the graphic novel The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia (Jonathan Cape).
They will be joined by DJ and singer Iko Chérie for some Little Trouble Girls sets.
Pénélope Bagieu, Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked The World, translated by Montana Kane (Ebury, March 2018)
Mary & Bryan Talbot, Sally Heathcote, Suffragette (Jonathan Cape, May 2014)
Mary & Bryan Talbot, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia (Jonathan Cape, May 2016)
EUROPEAN LITERARY SALON: CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT, ESTHER KINSKY & JAKUTA ALIKA V AZOVIC
Talk
French writer Jakuta Alikavazovic (L'Olivier), British writer Claire-Louise Bennett(Fitzcarraldo), German writer Esther Kinsky (Fitzcarraldo) and Music & Literature editor (and former Man Booker International judge) Daniel Medin will be discussing non-narrative fiction in European writing today and the importance of translation in a salon style event including readings and conversations.
6.45pm, in English, French and German £7, conc. £5
Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond (Fitzcarraldo, October 2015)
Jakuta Alikavazovic, L'Avancée de la nuit (Editions de l'Olivier, August 2017) Esther Kinksy, River, translated by Iain Galbraith (Fitzcarraldo, January 2018) —
Laurent Gaudé won the Goncourt prize in 2004 for The House of Scorta. His latest novel Hell's Gate (Gallic, tr. Emily Boyce) is a thrilling story of love, loss, revenge and redemption in Naples and beyond, in which Gaudé questions the power of origins, death and family ties. In the presence of translator Adriana Hunter.
Laurent Gaudé, Death of an Ancient King, translated by Adriana Hunter (4th Estate, 2004) Laurent Gaudé, Hell's Gate, translated by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken (Gallic, April 2017)
THE PHANTOM ON FILM
Celebrating Gaston Leroux's 150th birthday, Dr Cormac Newark (Guildhall School of Music &
Drama), Dr Annette Davison (University of Edinburgh) and Dr John Snelson (Royal Opera House) will explore the very many ways opera's most famous off-shoot, The Phantom of the Opera, has inspired and infiltrated cultures around the world, offering a rich subject for re-interpretation in media ranging from ballet to musical theatre.
8pm, in English
£7, conc. £5
Double bill Talk + Screening of The Phantom of Paradise: £15, £13 conc. & members
Related / Latest Publication: Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, translated by Mireille Ribière (Penguin Classics, April 2012)
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
dir. Brian de Palma, 1974, 92 mins
Composer Winslow Leach hides his wounded face beneath a sinister silver mask and writes his music for the woman he loves. Betrayed by evil producer Swan, he decides to haunt his rock palace, the Paradise. Brian de Palma's rock opera is a flamboyant horror comedy loosely adapted from Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.
The screening will be preceded by an introduction by Dr Annette Davison (University of Edinburgh)
8.50pm, in English
£9, conc. £7
Double bill: talk + screening The Phantom on Film: £15, £13 conc. & members
WEDNESDAY 16 MAY
MIGUEL BONNEFOY & DANIEL HAHN
A new voice in literary fiction, Franco-Venezuelan author Miguel Bonnefoy made a breakthrough with his debut Octavio's Journey. Compared to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, his second novel Black Sugar (Gallic) tells the tale of a family's changing fortunes in Venezuela over the course of the 20th century. Chaired by Daniel Hahn.
6pm, in English and French £7, conc. £5
Related / Latest Publication: Miguel Bonnefoy, Black Sugar, translated by Emily Boyce (Gallic, March 2018)
WRITING FOR FREEDOM: PEN WRITER ATIQ RAHIMI
Writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi left Afghanistan for France in the 1980s, where he spent 18 years in exile. He won the 2008 Goncourt Prize for The Patience Stone (Penguin), his first book to be written directly in French, as a way to escape the "involuntary self-censorship" he feels when writing in Persian. The novel portrays a young woman's attempt to keep her husband alive as she rages against men, war, culture, God. Atiq Rahimi has since continued to write about language, political violence, historical belonging and migration. In partnership with English PEN who have supported the English editions of Patience Stoneand A Curse on Dostoevsky.
6pm, in English £7, conc. £5
Related / Latest Publication: Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone, translated by Polly McLean (Vintage, January 2011)
ROLAND BARTHES: TELEVISION DEGREE ZERO
dir. Terry Braun, 1992, 120 mins
Television Degree Zero was a special edition of BBC's The Late Show (1990): a pithy deconstruction of the legacy of one of France's most influential intellectuals, Roland Barthes, whose essay The Death of the Author first appeared in France in 1968. The screening is preceded by a selection of interview clips with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, as part of Radical Broadcasters Theory On TV.
The screening will be preceded by an introduction by Film Critic Brian Dillon
6.30pm, in English and French with English subtitles £7, conc. £5
Related / Latest Publication: Tiphaine Samoyault, Barthes. A Biography, translated by Andrew Brown (Polity Press, January 2017)
In Being Here Is Everything (Semiotext(e)) Marie Darrieussecq traces the short, obscure, and prolific life of the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), who despite being a woman became one of her generation's preeminent artists. In this exceptional London appearance, Marie Darrieussecq will also be talking about her other books, including Pig Tales (Faber).
Chaired by Lisa Allardice.
Marie Darrieussecq, Pig Tales, translated by Linda Coverdale (Faber&Faber, June 2003)
Marie Darrieussecq, Being Here is Everything, translated by Penny Hueston (Semiotext(e), April 2018)
PUBLISHING À LA FRANÇAISE: FRÉDÉRIC BOYER, ATIQ RAHIMI & MARIE DARRIEUSSECQ
Talk and Screening
Talented French publisher and film director Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, founder of POL, died in January 2018. In a series of pop-up readings introduced by writer and translator Frédéric Boyer, two of Paul's authors, Goncourt prize winner Atiq Rahimi and Medicis prize winner Marie Darrieussecq, will be joined by guests Catriona Seth, Adrian Rifkin, Christopher MacLehose, Dominic Glynn and Stefan Tobler will read from some of the best books he published: Georges Perec, Marguerite Duras, Jean-Louis Schefer, Olivier Cadiot, Emmanuelle Pagano, Emmanuel Carrère… Followed by an exceptional screening, in French, of Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens' film Editeur.
Marie Darrieussecq, Pig Tales, translated by Linda Coverdale (Faber&Faber, June 2003)
Marie Darrieussecq, Being Here is Everything, translated by Penny Hueston (Semiotext(e), April 2018) Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone, translated by Polly McLean (Vintage, January 2011)
THE RED COLLAR
dir. Jean Becker, 2018, 83 mins
Adapted from The Red Collar by Prix Goncourt winner Jean-Christophe Rufin, Jean Becker's WW1 drama tells the story of a war hero, held prisoner in an abandoned barracks under the crushing heat of summer, and awaiting his interrogation by a corrupt judge to the sound of his mangy dog barking night and day.
8.40pm, in French with English subtitles £11, conc. £9
Jean-Christophe Rufin, The Red Collar, translated by Adriana Hunter (Europa Editions, July 2015)
Jean-Christophe Rufin, The Santiago Pilgrimage: Walking the Immortal Way, translated by Malcolm Imrie (MacLehose Press, April 2017)
THURSDAY 17 MAY
NOÉMI LEFEBVRE, EIMEAR MCBRIDE & FRESH FRENCH VOICES
Noémi Lefebvre's Blue Self-Portrait (Les Fugitives) is a novel of angst and high farce, caught between contrary impulses to remember and to ignore. She will be in conversation with Baileys Prize for Women's fiction winner Eimear McBride, whose latest novel is The Lesser Bohemians (Faber). Chaired by translator Sophie Lewis.
Following this dialogue, Noemi will be joined by two up and coming writers from Editions
Verticales: Pierre Senges, known for his radio adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet, as well as for his quirky, poetic Lichtenberg Fragments (Dalkey Archive), and Quebec-born Hélène Frédérick. Conversations with the writers will be accompanied by a series of readings on realism, literary debt and new forms of writing, introduced by Emmanuel Bouju (IUF) and Jeanne Guyon (Verticales).
Noémi Lefebvre, Blue Self-Portrait, translated by Sophie Lewis (Les Fugitives, June 2017)
Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians (Faber&Faber, September 2016)
Hélène Frédérick, Forêt Contraire (Verticales, February 2014)
Pierre Senges, Antonio de Guevara, The Major Refutation, translated by Jacob Siefring (Contra Mundum Press, December 2016)
Pierre Senges, Fragments of Lichtenberg, translated by Gregory Flanders (Dalkey Archive Press, January 2017)
SEE YOU UP THERE
dir. Albert Dupontel, 2017, 115 mins
Winner of 5 Cesar Awards, Albert Dupontel's crime epic is an adaptation from Pierre Lemaître's Goncourt winning novel, Au revoir là-haut. In November 1918, Edouard Pericourt, a gifted artist, saves the life of Albert Maillard, a humble bookkeeper. The two men have nothing in common apart from their experience of war and their hatred for Lieutenant Pradelle. Introduced by translator Frank Wynne.
Related / Latest Publication: Pierre Lemaître, The Great Swindle, translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press, November 2016)
BAMAKO-PARIS
Ibou, a Malian stowaway hanging on to the landing gear of an Airbus A320 heading for Paris, is talking to us about his future, his hopes, the mad idea that germinated in his mind. The idea of hanging on to a landing gear. The monologue is intersected by the post-mortem of his own body, sixteen hours later, the corpse lying on the autopsy table in a room of the Paris Forensic Medical Institute. A burning topic of our time, handled with a solemnity that doesn't dismiss humour.
Staged reading of Ian Soliane's play Bamako-Paris (translated by Felicity Davidson) as part of the Institut français' Cross-Channel Theatre programme, directed by Kimberley Sykes, with Clifford Samuel as Ibou.
PROUST IN JUST ONE HOUR
In a special live performance, Véronique Aubouy heroically attempts to sum up the whole story of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time for her audience in just an hour. Fascinated by this extraordinary novel, one of France's favourite books of all time, Véronique is able to bring to stage the complex world and characters's of this intricate plot: whether you have read the book or not, prepare to spend an hour exploring its world. Introduced by Christopher Prendergast (King's College Cambridge).
Véronique Aubouy, Mathieu Riboulet, A la lecture (Grasset, September 2014)
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Volume 1: The Way by Swann's, translated by Lydia Davis, edited by Christopher Prendergast (Penguin, October 2003)
dir. Kaouther Ben Hania, 2017, 100 mins
During a student party, Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, meets the mysterious Youssef and leaves with him. A long night begins, during which she'll have to fight for her rights and her dignity in the hands of a gang of dirty cops. Tunisian author and director Kaouther Ben Hania depicts an edifying portrait of her country poisoned by corruption and male chauvinism.
8.30pm, in Arabic with English subtitles £12, conc. £10
Related / Latest Publication: Meriem Ben Mohamed, La Belle et la Meute (Michel Lafon, October 2017) –
SATURDAY 19 MAY
CAFÉ PHILO
Led by Christian Michel, this special edition of the Café Philo will be the occasion to discuss the legacy of May 68 and its commemorations today, starting with the question: "Was the May 68 movement elitist, anti- populist and anti-democratic?"
10.30pm, in English £2
dir. Roman Polanski, 2017, 110 mins
Adapted from Delphine de Vigan's award-winning novel by Roman Polanski and Olivier Assayas, Based on a True Story blurs the line between reality and fiction. Overwhelmed by the success of her latest novel, Delphine can't find the strength to write. She gradually realises that the smart and intuitive Elle is not exactly the good friend she claims to be.
8.30pm, in French with English subtitles £12, conc. £10
Related / Latest Publication: Delphine de Vigan, Based on a True Story, translated by George Miller (Bloomsbury, September 2017)
SUNDAY 20 MAY
LES DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT
dir. François Truffaut, 1971, 132 mins
Ten years after Jules et Jim, Truffaut turned his attention back to the love triangle and another novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. This time the setting is a Welsh coastal resort, and the protagonists a young French writer and two English sisters. One of Truffaut's most personal and romantic films.
2pm, in French with English subtitles £9, conc. £7
Related / Latest Publication: Henri-Pierre Roché, Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent (Gallimard, April 1956)
MONDAY 21 MAY 2018
CLOSING EVENT: FISHBACH AND VERNON SUBUTEX
Music and Readings
An exceptional Music Rendez-Vous with singer Fishbach, combining literary and musical variations around Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes (MacLehose). Awarded a Victoire de la musique in 2017, Fishbach will be on the cast of the new TV adaptation of the book. She will read extracts from Vernon Subutex and will perform songs inspired by Despentes' world.
Related / Latest Publication: Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex 1, translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press, June 2017)
Author EuroButNotTrashPosted on May 2, 2018 Categories European Fiction, EventsTags Beyond Words Live French Literature Festival, Institut français
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text:
Executive Success: Indigenous touch for technology
By TMG Webmaster TMG National News
As a kid growing up, Stephen Keung's Dad told him to become a doctor.
Keung trained as an accountant instead, but today he is helping improve the wellbeing of communities most at risk of poor health.
The 59-year-old chief executive of the Waipareira Trust's Whanau Tahi health software company says that for his father, who was out digging drains every day, a lack of role models meant becoming a doctor was the only aspirational career he knew.
"That said, I don't think that we felt we couldn't do something, it's just that we never saw it." Mangere-raised Keung skipped the University of Auckland in favour of study in the United States, staying on to work as an accountant at one of the big global firms in San Francisco.
Those connections are proving invaluable as Whanau Tahi expands into the US market.
Begun six years ago, Whanau Tahi aimed to provide the technology backbone to support the delivery of health and social services to the Waipareira community under the Government's Whanau Ora programme.
Waipareira Trust boss John Tamihere had looked for an off-the-shelf option, but after finding nothing suitable, brought in IT contractors to build it from scratch.
Tamihere gave Keung a call to help roll out Whanau Tahi.
The connection between the two goes back more than 25 years, when Waipareira was a client of Keung's at accounting firm PwC. Keung had recently returned from the United States, having decided to come home after the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the San Francisco area in 1989.
"That literally did shake me after working seven or eight years there in the Bay Area and I just thought 'what am I doing here?'."
The pair's career paths diverged later in the 1990s but the launch of Whanau Tahi brought them back together again. "So I'm not such a fresh face," says Keung.
His job at Whanau Tahi was to ensure the investment in organisational know-how and technology - now managed in-house - was scaled up and commercialised.
"There was a growing sense that something needed to be done, certainly in the Maori community, to get better outcomes.
"[Whanau Tahi] was built with a view that it would support Whanau Ora, but when you look at it from a broader perspective it was really a statement about where the world was going in this particular area where there needed to be a better, more effective way of delivering services to under-served and vulnerable communities.
"People cannot continue to be serviced in the same old way with funding coming on a siloed basis and essentially just kicking the can down the road."
The strategy was always to start indigenous, where there was an over-representation of those needing social and health support, but on a global scale, says Keung.
TMG Webmaster
TMG is proud to be a values based company. We work hard to uphold our values not only among ourselves as team members but with our clients, third parties, and the wider public. Our unique set of values were chosen with deliberation, and reflect who we are and where we are coming from.
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Former Ireland captain Willie John McBride believes the success of British and Irish Lions in their recent tour of New Zealand has saved the team from a doubtful future.
With the 2019 World Cup around the corner and the global calendar to follow, questions have been raised on the future Lions tours and on a possible reduction in length of such series.
However, Warren Gatland's men made a splendid comeback after losing the first Test against All Blacks 30-15 as they went on to beat the hosts 21-24 in the second Test in Wellington before drawing the third Test at Eden Park 15-15.
McBride, who was part of five Lions tours in 1962, 1966, 1968, 1971 and 1974 lauded the achievement of the team in New Zealand and is confident that the concept will be preserved for future.
"It's a tremendous achievement and, quite honestly, I think it has shocked a few people," said McBride told BBC Radio 5 Live's Sportsweek programme.
"A lot of people had written them off before they left because they didn't really have enough time to put the team together. They have done a remarkable job.
"I think that this has, in many ways, saved the Lions.
"The concept is really unique and has gone now for well over 100 years. It would be dreadful in this professional era if it was ever messed around with."
The recently concluded tour of New Zealand was spanned over six weeks and had 10 games in it. When McBride represented Lions during the 1971 tour, they featured in 26 games that also had four Tests over New Zealand.
McBride urged for longer tours in future that will help Lions adapt to the conditions and more importantly gel with the team-mates, who are from four different rugby unions.
"The one thing I feel sorry about is that the tour is actually too short. There are some tremendous players on this tour and they really haven't had the time to gel together.
"Rugby is about a team. It's probably the biggest team game you could possibly play. I think they have done remarkably well to put the team together that they did."


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Allure Dental Center welcomes all new, returning and out of town guests. We do our very best job to accommodate patients from the Bay Area as well as those coming to us from out of town for their smile makeover.
As some of the best and most highly recognized female dentists in Northern California, we bring an expert yet feminine touch to the art of cosmetic dental care in our region. We're considered by our peers and patients alike to be some of the top dentists in our field.
Being your dentist doesn't mean we treat you the same as the rest of our patients. Instead, we want to build lasting personal relationship with you for the rest of your life. Our office is our home, and you are our family!
We've invested in some of the best technologies, including a Spectra Caries Detection Aid, dental lasers, digital x-ray equipment and high grade cosmetic dental materials. You'll even notice many amenities such as massage chairs and overhead LCD TVs during your appointment!
What if going to the dentist could feel like a trip to the spa? At Allure Dental Center, that is exactly the patient experience we create. When you arrive, we invite you to enjoy our beverage corner, featuring water, juices, hot cocoa and coffee. Help yourself to a warm Otis Spunkmeyer cookie, fresh baked right in our office.
During your appointment, we pamper you with moist towel service – warm and scented. Eye masks and warm blankets are available for your comfort and gentle relaxation. Our comfortable electronic massage chairs provide neck and back massage, if you so desire. For your viewing pleasure, we offer private-viewing movies on personal video goggles.
For the deepest relaxation, we encourage you to request the NuCalm natural relaxation device. NuCalm counteracts adrenaline and stimulates the relaxation response, using headphones to lull you into a relaxed state that is further enhanced with a cozy, light-blocking mask.
While our office performs the highest quality of dental care, our spa-like amenities provide a distinct experience unlike a typical dentist's office. You may be surprised at how relaxed you may feel after your appointment!
For over 18 years, our dentists have served the greater Mountain View communities with some of the best dentistry in the bay area. Call today for an appointment - same and next day scheduling is available!


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As soon as we laid eyes on these beautiful, colourful, handwoven rugs from Peru, we just knew we had to have them. Made from 100% wool and in an amazing array of colours and patterns, they have all been lovingly crafted in the traditional style by Peruvian artisan weavers.
The rug weaving tradition is age-old and very special and there's something wonderful about knowing each one has been specially crafted. As such, no two rugs are the same. We love them, and think they're the perfect addition for Spring.
Available now on our website.
Springtime is full of hope — the days are longer, the mood is lighter, the air is fresher, and it feels like there are endless possibilities for fresh starts.
After a Spring clean there is nothing like lighting candles to purify the air or allowing the aromas of a natural reed diffuser made with essential oils to fill your home. Spring is definitely in the air with the Charlotte Harley range of floral scents - soothing Lavender, seductive Neroli and delicate Rose Geranium are intoxicatingly fresh and inspired by nature.
Using only natural ingredients, each candle is lovingly hand poured with soy wax and essential oils with a burn time of up to 50 hours. Each reed diffusers lasts for up to 3 months and is mixed with a plant based solvent to diffuse the natural oils beautifully in any room. Whether you want to be relaxed, soothed or energised, there is a scent to suit any mood.
They also make great gifts whatever the oaccasion, so you may need to buy two of each!
It may not look like it outside right now, but spring and lighter evenings are coming and the warmer weather will be upon us before we even know it. To help us make the transition the Sue Ryder online shop has launched a range of stylish, low-maintenance rattan-style furniture perfect for outdoor entertaining.
You might have devoted these last few colder months to sorting out your indoor space, giving your rooms the Marie Kondo treatment and maybe investing in a few new pieces. But what about the garden? It is the extra room in the house, after all. If your outdoor furnishings are looking tired or weatherworn, it's time to up your garden game.
Sue Ryder is back this season with its range of rattan-style garden furniture, from seating options to full dining suites. Crafted from hardy polyethylene but with the look of natural rattan, and complete with shower-resistant upholstery, these pieces channel a sleek, contemporary aesthetic, while being able to will survive the inevitable summer downpour.
A new set of garden furniture doesn't have to cost the earth either. Just like all the other home and garden products available through the Sue Ryder online shop, the rattan-style pieces here come in at prices lower than you'd expect.
And to add to the feel-good factor, proceeds from sales support Sue Ryder's palliative, neurological and bereavement care.
This beautifully crafted tête-a-tête garden seat turns any garden patio into a contemporary alfresco area. Perfect for enjoying a glass of Prosecco with a companion on a summer's evening.
Featuring four chairs and a height-adjustable table with glass top, this dining set works equally well for hosting a soirée as it does a quiet family dinner.
If you're looking to make a serious style statement this summer, look no further. Our sofa set brings a bit of Ibiza to your back garden and is just the ticket for enjoying a drink in the sun. With its modular format, this sofa can be configured to suit gardens of all sizes and shapes.