Many Australians dream of building their wealth with bricks and mortar.
And it's not a farfetched dream.
Property investment can increase your income, fund your retirement, and provide financial freedom. You can invest in property to generate cash flow, or you can choose to purchase, improve and on-sell a property.
Whatever your property goals may be, the most important step is laying a strong foundation by securing the right loan for you. As a Finance Broker, it's my job to make that happen.
Before we choose the right loan for you, it's important to look at the big picture of your property investment goals. Your goals may include capital growth, rental income, or negative gearing for tax purposes.
By discussing your goals, we can then implement finance strategies that will help you to achieve them. Depending on your goals, this may involve choosing different mortgage products, such as interest-only loans.
I aim to be a property investment Finance Broker with a difference. My difference is to provide you with personal and personalised support through every step of the property investment process – including after the loan is finalised.
Are you looking for a loan that will meet your property investment goals and strategy? I can find the right one for you. For personal, professional assistance with finding the right investment loan, contact me today or call me on (07) 3911 1190 so we can arrange a free consultation.


Perfect Diy Patio Table with Cooler for Re Purposed Pallet Secret Beer Cooler & Outdoor Coffee. . A photo about diy patio table with cooler for the inspiration for patio set.
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Now a days our world is developing very fast in the field of technology and inventions but the other fact of this development is now a day's everyone is busy in their own life no one have time for each other. everyone is busy in making money to make their life happy and easy. But we have to know this thing that we can't buy happiness from money. Because of their busy schedule couples don't have time for each other. and that is the major cause of divorce.
The major issue which creates distance between husband and wife is time. They actually don't have time to give each other and this can ruin everything and can bring this beautiful relation on the edge. Many times it had been seen this situation lets to divorce. I have and very effective and easy wazifa's to read and practise to solve divorce problem easily. wazifa for divorce problem solution might take some days but will give you assure resluts.
For this method we first need to know that what vashikaran actully means the real meaning of vashikaran is that vashikaran is a stong form of tantra mantra and black magic rituals. divorce problem splution vashikaran can use to control someones mind and heart. this method can also be used to solve divorce problem solutions.
Dua for divorce problem solution is a request to the allah tallah to solve your issues. But there is so many methods by which we can make divorce problem solution dua to convenience allah tallah to listen to your situation and give you relief from this situation and one more thing we all are the kids of that most powerful aaallah tallah and we cant do anything against him. but one more fact is that he is always their to listen to our problems so we have to just convince him to help us. divorce problem solution can be done by dua it is the direct way to request the god to solve our issues.
For any problem regarding divorce or husband wife love you can contact to me any time i willl give you free advise and tell YOU the methods to get your married life back to the track.


We learned back in elementary school that blue and green are calming, yellow is invigorating and red can stir up feelings of anger or excitement. Well, that's all true and that wisdom can come in very handy when you're choosing paint colours for your home.
THE BATHROOMS: They should be calming spaces to start and end each day, whether it's with a long, hot shower or a leisurely bath. Traditionally, homeowners choose spa-like colours like soft blue (PPG's Bit of Heaven) and seaglass green (PPG's Geyser) to give that feeling of peaceful relaxation, paired with lots of white for freshness. If cool tones aren't your thing, pick a cozy warm shade like cream (PPG's Golden Fleece) or tan (PPG's Spiced Vinegar).
THE KITCHEN: Everyone has a different vision for their kitchen so there isn't a one-size-fits-all formula for choosing the perfect colour. Some homeowners like the idea of a dramatic, spicy kitchen that warmly welcomes guests and brings in the colours of food - like rich oranges (PPG's Ginger Root) and greens (PPG's Light Sage). Others want a sleek, modern space without a lot of colour to distract from the textures - marble, stainless steel, or wood - and prefer to paint the walls white (PPG's Gypsum) or grey (PPG's Cracked Slate). Homeowners that spend a lot of time in the kitchen might want a monochromatic, calming look where the cabinets and tile flow smoothly into cream-coloured walls (PPG's Hearth).
THE BEDROOOMS: Choosing a paint colour for your bedroom can be one of the most difficult decisions because, really, anything can work - it's the place to express your personal style! You want to wake up to a space that makes you feel happy and ready to start your day. The first question to ask yourself is if you'd like a deep, bold wall colour or if you feel it would be "too much". We recommend picking your bedding first and then choosing your paint from there - whether it's the deep green leaves in the duvet pattern (PPG's Succulent Leaves) or the pale blossoms on the pillowcases (PPG's Only Oatmeal).
THE LIVING ROOM / DINING ROOM: Do you want this space to exude drama and opulence or are you going for a casual-and-friendly vibe? Large living rooms with lots of natural light can handle just about any colour - even daring choices like brown (PPG's Chestnut) or black (PPG's Black Magic) but small, dim spaces feel larger with a lighter tone (like PPG's Belgium Waffle). Think about what furniture, accessories and art you're introducing. Are they all fairly neutral and could benefit from a splash of bright colour on the walls (like PPG's Catalina) or are there so many bold colours and patterns that they'd look best against a neutral wall colour (like PPG's Fossil Stone)?
We know it can be overwhelming to flip through sample after sample, and that's why we're here to help! Let us know if we can assist you with your paint colour selection.


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Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees!
John Bennett | The facts are pretty clear: bee populations are in freefall. Perhaps there are multiple causes, but the only factor we can control and firmly take action on is the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.
Compensation for Gulf oil spill
Sean Mullen | Earlier this month BP announced that a settlement had been proposed between the company and those affected by the oil spill. Antonia Juhasz says that BP jumped the gun to mollify investors.
An open letter to B.C. NDP leadership candidates
Jerry West | The pre-eminent issue that must be dealt with now, ahead of all others, is the issue of environmental sustainability. What we need at this time are leaders brave enough to tackle this issue.
Black goo in the Gulf of Mexico
Naomi Klein | I got off the research vessel WeatherBird II mid way through the cruise in Pensacola, Florida. Five days later, an e-mail arrived from chief scientist David Hollander, subject line: "Yuck!"
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Naomi Klein | For the scientists aboard the research vessel WeatherBird II, the recasting of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch.
Auditor General says BC parks are at risk
Mordecai Briemberg | In late August, a report by the BC Auditor General confirmed what environmentalists have been saying for years. It found the government is not protectecting the ecological integrity of BC's parks.
Sustainability means consume less
Jerry West | I was going over some of the press releases from the provincial government recently when I found one from last April titled "Awards Honour Commitment To Sustainable Mining."
Let's bring balance back to our planet
Jerry West | The balance between organisms that has provided the ecosystem that maintains life as we know it, has been seriously disrupted.
Climate change and the limits of growth
Jerry West | Climate change is merely a symptom of a much bigger and more serious problem. The real problem is that human society has grossly over-reached its ability to sustain itself on the planet.
The struggle to protect Guelph's Old Growth Forest and thwart Guelph's newest and largest industrial development
LIMITS (Land Is More Important Than Sprawl) | Guelph's Old Growth forest is under threat of being surrounded by a 675-acre corporate industrial development. Community efforts to protect this land continue, and time is running out.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Park Inn by Radisson Budapest
Szekszárdi street 16-18 Budapest 1138 Hungary
The hotel is located in the quiet Angyalföld district of Budapest, a 10-minute walk from the Gyöngyösi utca Metro station
The Hungarian Parliament Building & St Stephen's Basilica can both be reached in under 35 minutes
You can hire a bike from the hotel for HUF 4500 (£12) per day -- great for exploring Heroes' Square & City Park
The hotel has a 24-hour gym
Lonely Planet describes Budapest as "a gem of a city", and adds, "architecturally, the city is a treasure trove". Located in the Angyalföld district in the north of the Pest side of the city, the Park Inn by Radisson Budapest is ideal for travellers who want to explore the city centre, with its mix of Gothic, Baroque and Classical buildings, but stay in a quieter area.
The hotel is a 10-minute walk from Gyöngyösi utca Metro station, so you can reach the city centre and iconic Budapest landmarks including the Hungarian Parliament Building and St Stephen's Basilica in under 35 minutes using the M3 line. You can also hire a bike, helmet and lights at the hotel for HUF4500 (£12) per day. Heroes' Square and the City Park are both within a 60-minute bike ride of the hotel.
The hotel has a restaurant, a 24-hour gym, a lounge and a bar. There's also a 24-hour kiosk where you can buy snacks and soft drinks.
Each of the 138 rooms has satellite television and air conditioning. Wi-Fi is free throughout.
Szekszárdi street 16-18
Shuttle service (fees apply)
Children and additional guests: Infant's cot/crib and extra bed available on request: free of charge for children aged 11 and under, 22€ for older children and adults. This includes breakfast. Supplements are not included automatically in the total price and will be charged directly by the hotel.
Pets: Pets are allowed on request and will be charged at 15€ per night on checkout.
Fees: A 4% city tax is included in the total price.
Additional details: Car Park is charged at 15€ per night.
Although the rates are published in euro, the hotel will accept payments in euro or Hungarian forint on checkout. However in case of prepaid rates, the hotel will charge your card in Hungarian forint based on the exchange rate of the transaction date.


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Possibly not what you expected for our "Christmas" concert, but this is a programme of wonderful music for Advent, just what you need to clear your head ready for the full-on Christmas experience.
The Dorian Singers' conquest of cyberspace continues. We now have a Facebook page! It's looking fairly bare at the moment, but I am hoping that we will be able to add event invitations, photographs and videos as we go. Find us at The Dorian Singers and join in!
Your first sight of the details for the Christmas Concert!
It will take place on Saturday 10th December, at 7.30 pm, at Trinity Methodist Church, Hamilton Road, Felixstowe. Ticket price to be confirmed.


Wishing on a Snowflake: Our snowflakes made it!
As far as today being the big anniversary, it's been going pretty well. Last year when my mom died, we planted a beautiful maple tree in our backyard in memory of her. Before she died, I told her we planned to do this and asked that she "meet" me there whenever I needed her. She of course agreed. The tree is still small but appears to be growing and has beautiful orange and red leaves all over the top. When we were at the nursery buying the tree, I came across a garden statue of an angel holding a baby. Since we live in Texas and my mom was buried in Utah, I knew this statue belonged under her special tree as a memorial I could visit since I wasn't near her grave. This morning, I went out and spent some time talking to her and letting her know I think about her every single day.
I know I keep saying it, but I'm positive she is near and can hear me. She's cheering us on throughout our journey, I can feel it in my soul.
I'm positive she's with you, too! That really is a wonderful idea about the tree.
What a great memorial to your Mom!
Also, I am so hopeful and happy for you that your embryos are all cold and snuggly there in Texas for you! I SO want this for you, and have everything crossed!!


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LastWords
Neo-Maternalism: Contemporary Artists' Approach to Motherhood
By Sharon L. Butler
Ever since the Abstract Expressionists held forth at the Cedar Tavern in the 1950s, the unwritten rule has been that making art is a consuming obsession that leaves no time or space for worldly responsibilities like childrearing. Before the AbExers, an artist like Gaugin left his wife and kids in Denmark to pursue painting in Paris, and later Tahiti. With artists—unlike, say, poets, novelists, or filmmakers—there's an expectation of an ascetic, blinkered life focused exclusively on making art. Artists with kids have often ignored them while spending all their time in the studio. In Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston, Guston's daughter Musa Meyer tells the heartbreaking story of a disengaged father who had little room in his life for her. So, why then, closing in on the final years of fertility, with scant investigation or evidence that the outcome would be salutary, did I stop using birth control in 1998 and let fate take its course? My decision was more intellectual than emotional. I reasoned that I was an artist. If I did get pregnant, wouldn't this primal experience strengthen and inform my work? If I didn't, then I wouldn't have any regrets. I rolled the dice, and three months later the pregnancy test was positive.
Catherine Opie, "Self-Portrait/Nursing" (2004). Chromogenic print. 40 x 32 inches.Edition 7/8. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director's Council and Executive Committee Members, 2005. © 2008 Catherine Opie. Courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, CA
Getting Past Denial
The iconic mid-century female artists I admire made different choices. Before the feminist movement, ambitious, pragmatic women like Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning rejected motherhood. Louise Nevelson and Grace Hartigan both had children, but ultimately left their upbringing to relatives so that they could turn their undivided attention to making art and tending their vocations. Having a serious career like their male counterparts meant denying their reproductive difference, and also eliminating any references from their work that might be construed as "feminine." Back then, telling a woman she "had balls" was a high compliment. In art schools, disparaging male professors made it clear that having a successful art career was nearly impossible for women, and that having children was not only a sign of bourgeois conformity, but an indication that they weren't serious about art. By rejecting and then condemning parenthood, artists themselves helped institutionalize the self-centered, hermetic behavior that is frequently construed as a sign of genius.
As the feminist movement blossomed in the 1970s, female artists gained exhibition opportunities and sexual freedom, but their political awakening only reinforced their disinclination to have children. At the same time, first-wave feminists like Judy Chicago recognized the importance of childbearing as a universal life experience that had been missing from male-dominated, Western art. From 1980 to 1985, Chicago worked on "The Birth Project," a series of images—made with the help of over 150 skilled craftswomen—in embroidery, needlepoint, crochet, macramé, quilting, drawing, and painting, that reflected her fascination with creation and the birth process. Nevertheless, she never had any children herself.
When I was contemplating whether or not to have a baby, my role models were not Krasner, de Kooning, or Chicago. Instead, I emulated painter Elizabeth Murray and photographer Sally Mann. These artists, rather than compartmentalizing their studio work from their domestic lives, elected to combine the two in groundbreaking ways. Murray had her first child, a son, in 1969, before her work was well known, and her daughters in the eighties when her life was financially more secure. It's clear from Murray's paintings that raising children, rather than diminishing her art-making capacity, inspired her. The paintings channel the screaming, fractured energy and frustration that come from being both an artist and a mother, but ultimately transcend specific circumstances to make a more universal statement about life's challenges and satisfactions that is neither masculine nor feminine.
Mann's emotionally fraught, and often controversial, photographs of her children, sometimes nude, proved that birth and childrearing do not automatically turn women into retrogressive panderers to small-minded conventions. The images of her children, both moving and disturbing, reference the staid genre of child portraiture but iconoclastically vault into uncharted and arguably forbidden territory.
From Acceptance to Integration
The parenting calculus has changed dramatically. With better childcare support systems in place and fathers who are more actively involved in caring for children, artists are more open to having kids. Often, to be sure, they wait until they've had some solo shows, gain gallery representation, and perhaps nail down a tenure-track teaching job. That's not to say that raising a family is now the unambiguous norm for female artists, or that it carries no costs, real or perceived. Plenty of artists still try to hide the fact that they're pregnant for as long as possible so that it has minimal impact on their exhibition opportunities. Inevitably there are those who wait too long to conceive, and then find that when the time for procreation is at last convenient, they are no longer fertile.
As Joe Amrhein, owner of Pierogi 2000 in Williamsburg, puts it, time flies when you're having fun in the studio. Many artists Amrhein knows who were biologically unable to have children have gone through the arduous and expensive process of adopting kids from other countries. Some artists are content with their choice not to breed; others look wistfully back at the missed opportunity. One forty-something childfree printmaker explained that while she and her photographer husband didn't actually decide not to have children, he was ambivalent, and not wanting to make the decision unilaterally, she let her time slip away.
Regardless of how artists procure their offspring, many keep the art making process rigidly separate from their childrearing responsibilities, and most seem to rely on committed fathers to handle their fair share of the workload. Lisa Sigal, whose work was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and who was profiled in the November issue of Art News, maintained her studio after the kids were born, and had her first solo show when the youngest was six. Even before Segal had a gallery, she and her husband, painter Byron Kim, split the childcare responsibility 50/50 so that they got equal time to work. When the kids were young and required so much attention that the 50/50 arrangement was inadequate, rather than taking them to daycare, they devised a babysitting cooperative with neighbors so that each set of parents took all the kids once a week and had the other days to themselves. I asked Sigal what advice she might give to an artist who is wondering whether to have a baby. "If she is interested in having a family, she should do it now," she said. "Don't sacrifice having a family for an elusive career that may or may not materialize."
Carolanna Parlato, who recently had a solo exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, says she waited until she was reasonably secure financially to have her daughter, but in retrospect wishes she had done so sooner. "I should have had my daughter in my twenties," she said. "If I had, then she'd be in college already." Parlato, who had her first solo show when her daughter was two, says she became more purposeful and focused in her work after she was born because her time was limited and her financial needs more urgent. Parlato, like Sigal, relied on friends, family, and neighbors for childcare in the early years.
On the subject of artists with children, dealers tend to fall into two diametric camps: those who have kids and think breeding is a "fantastic experience," and those who are childless, aren't really quite sure which of their artists are in fact mothers, and don't particularly care to discuss it. According to one gallerina, of the seventeen employees in the Chelsea gallery where she works—which is owned by a childfree woman—not a single one has kids. One or two of the artists might have been parents, but she wasn't sure. This evidence suggests that dealers without children aren't interested in the process of parenting, and may be less open-minded about artists who are. The upshot is that emerging artists who choose to breed can still be quietly ostracized by childfree galleries, but they'll be warmly welcomed in child-friendly ones.
The Mother Lode
The accepted wisdom among the first generation of feminist artists who disdained baby-making was that women who reproduce spend at least a year or two making idiosyncratic, excessively inward-looking "baby art" and then, if they are lucky, eventually get their wits about them and return to their previous, more serious work. It's a condescending view, perhaps, but to my mind more or less valid. Growing a baby from a seed is an inexorably life-altering, eye-opening, intense experience, and always will be. In the first stages, child-rearing is so existentially consuming and preoccupying that it cannot help but suffuse any artwork.
Substantively, baby art could often be too soft and sentimental for leading-edge galleries; it was not talked about and rarely shown in the old days. But there are many subtle and undetectable ways that having a baby can inform an artist's work beyond the cliché of tender studies of sleeping infants. When my daughter was an infant in 2000, I became obsessed with time. Although a painter, I was determined during that period to make labor-free art. I wanted the work to be as closely integrated with my other daily activities as possible, so I began collecting data about everyday life and creating myriad charts and graphs. My most overt baby art included looping videos that featured my daughter's daily routine in excruciatingly slow motion. This temporal sensibility, a direct outgrowth of my experience as a mother, still influences my art practice today.
Some contemporary artists, in fiercely honest work, apprehend the entire messy process of creation, birth, and childrearing as raw material for their art practice. Baby art thus often takes the form of site-specific installations and conceptual projects that recall Mary Kelly's seminal 139-piece Post-Partum Document. From 1973 to 1979, Kelly, one of the early feminists, employed quasi-scientific visual strategies to document her ongoing relationship with her newborn son. In a contemporary context, the complex processes and emotions involved in raising children could certainly provide rich material for practitioners of relational aesthetics with post-studio practices. Such artists' collaborative, expansive approach to their art, and their reluctance to embrace the hermeticism of previous generations, suggest that peak creativity and the embrace of worldly responsibility are no longer considered mutually exclusive. Raising a family and making art can, in fact, become one seamless activity. One day, an artist may turn a museum into a daycare center, or perhaps create a performance piece in which she invites her cohort for roller-skating play dates in the Guggenheim spiral.
Of course, it would be naïve to contend that nowadays reconciling motherhood and art making is always a smooth and effortless endeavor. But contemporary female artists are more determined than their predecessors to overcome barriers to harmonizing the two aspects of life rather than acquiesce to them. Emerging artist Jennifer Wroblewski, mother of a six-month-old, was originally discouraged when older female artists she knew intimated that her pregnancy would adversely affect her career. Rather than accept the projected consequences of professional indifference and potential dismissal, Wroblewski decided to curate an exhibition tentatively titled "Mother/Mother" that would explore ideas garnered from the process of parenting. With a couple of solo shows in the works and an A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship for support, Wroblewski hopes to turn what used to be seen as the "harbinger of the end of a woman's career" into a sanguine beginning. The show, which will feature work by Julie Heffernan, Monica Bock, Sharon Thomas, and Dana Lee, is scheduled for Fall 2009.
The most important factor in elevating the status of baby art is that over the past decade or so, artists, including women, are achieving phenomenal success at much younger ages. Many artists now already have considerable traction in the art world by the time they have kids. And when important female artists have babies, their baby art can't be dismissed by curators and furtively squirreled away in the flatfile. Catherine Opie's mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim illuminates this shift. In one photograph, Opie, overweight, naked, and tattooed, nurses her son Oliver. In another, Oliver poses atop a kitchen chair in a tutu. Jenny Saville, one of the renowned "Young British Artists" who ascended in the 1990s and now shows at the high-powered Saatchi and Gagosian galleries, has announced that her upcoming fall exhibition will comprise paintings based on photographs taken while she was giving birth. As the taboo fades, the capacity to bear children and raise a family are now recognized as a source of unplumbed, original material. We've come a long way, baby.
Sharon L. Butler
SHARON L. BUTLER is an artist and Associate Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. She blogs at Two Coats of Paint.
By Nancy Princenthal
JUL-AUG 2020 | ArTonic
Shocking but true: Artists Space, essential model for a generation of feisty, funky, youth-driven nonprofits, is nearly half a century old. More surprising still, initially it depended entirely on government support, at a time when both the governor of New York (Nelson Rockefeller) and the US president (Richard Nixon, newly re-elected) were Republicans. Promising to make up for a dearth of opportunity for young artists, Artists Space's founders rounded some up and offered them the chance to call the shots, all on the state's dime.
Out of (This) Time — Brief Notes from "Astrodoubt and the Quarantine Chronicles"
By Luca Buvoli
SEPT 2021 | Critics Page
I had just returned to New York from a month traveling in India, where I had enjoyed rediscovering, among other things, the power of narration in visual arts (in the carvings in Hindu temples, in miniature paintings, etc.) and of a mythology and conception of time outside the Newtonian one. This was a couple of weeks before Covid-19 arrived in the US and I was working on one of the 180 ideas/projects that comprise Space Doubt, a work conceived as a ten-year "expedition" started thanks to a collaboration that I developed with NASA scientists and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., exploring an idea enabling me to find the courage to use some dark humor about my aggressive and advanced cancer of a few years ago—luckily and hopefully cured—and cancer in general.
Tempo e Relazione (Time and Relation)*
By Paolo Fresu
A sudden suspension of my inhabitancy gave birth to new relationships between space and time in a spasmodic search for the luogo dell'anima (soul's space). Enclosed in our homes, the "walls of discovery" became unprecedented spaces where we saw objects that reminded us of ancient journeys into the world and moments lived in the past. We rediscovered music records that we had not listened to in a long time, and we consumed books that, perhaps, we had read thirty years ago, or that we had never even browsed through.
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
By Adriana Furlong
MARCH 2021 | ArtSeen
Throughout Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, we can see artists, some currently incarcerated, emerging from indeterminacy, indicating and reconfiguring an existence in constant threat of being snuffed out.
French Street Artist Dreams of New Starts in Brooklyn
By Alexis Buisson
Willamsburg's Poet Laureate: Yom Tov Ehrlich
By Michael Casper
A FIERCE Fight in the West Village
By Lucas Mann
Y-Act: Mexican-American Students Fight for Educational Equity
By Eleanor J. Bader
The Underground Economy
What Kind of New Deal?
By Richard Wells
Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive (1944)
By Theodore Hamm
When You Are Locked in the Trunk of a '69 Bonneville
By Emily DeVoti
Still Doing It: Coming to a Sex Shop Near You
By Michelle Memran
From Laos to Brooklyn: Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath in conversation with Williams Cole
Poland Here, and Poland Now
By Alan Lockwood
Andrzej Wajda: Poland and the Screens of History
Restoring the Republic, Bacevich's The Limits of Power
By Becky Ohlsen
Only the Beginning, Filkin's The Forever War
By Lester Pimentel
Dershowitz at War: The Case Against Israel's Enemies
By Abby Margulies
Superman from the South, Rodriguez's Che: A Graphic Biography
By Nisa Qazi
Memories of Great Books, Beam's A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books
By Ian Crouch
A Forgotten Man of the Resistence, Paulhan's On Poetry and Politics
By Jessica Loudis
Fair Play: Lilly Ledbetter's Story and Workplace Discrimination
By Alexis Clements
Terry Winters with Phong Bui, David Levi Strauss, and Peter Lamborn Wilson
Pipilotti Rist with Phong Bui
Cordy Ryman with Phong Bui
A Tribute to Lawrence Fane 1933–2OO8
By Marshall N. Price
Katia Santibañez New Work
Ad Reinhardt's Emblematic Drawings In Their Moment
By Joseph Masheck
John Altoon: Paintings and Works on Paper 1963-1968
By Craig Olson
By Litia Perta
Tibor Freund: Motion in Paintings
By Greg Lindquist
Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton
By Jeremy Sigler
Nasreen Mohamedi: The grid, unplugged
By John Yau
Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone
By Anne Byrd
Who's in Charge?
By Tessa DeCarlo
Ronald Bladen: Sculpture of the 1960s and 70s
By Ben La Rocco
Chuck Webster
By Shane McAdams
Bettina Sellmann: Taina . cosmogony . make your own paper dragon
By Cassandra Neyenesch
Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927–1937
By Valery Oisteanu
By Sherman Sam
Michelangelo, the Man and the Myth
By Brandt Junceau
José Parlá: Layered Days
By Joan Waltemath
Zhang Xiaogang
Rudy Burckhardt: New York, N. Why? 1937–1940
By Roger Van Voorhees
Lutz Bacher: ODO
By Liz Wing
Alfred Kubin: Drawings, 1897 – 1909
By Stephanie Buhmann
Cutting Realities: Gender Strategies in Art
By Kimberly Lamm
George Tooker: A Retrospective
By Maxwell Heller
Kazimira Rachfal: i'll go there, gladly
By Laura Hunt
Sa Suk-won
Divine Retribution
By Thomas Micchelli
Does Invidiousness Go With The Territory?
By Dore Ashton
Reply to Irving Sandler
By Michael Corris
Marc Estrin with Ben Mirov
FICTION: Nothing is Quite Forgotten Anywhere
By Mac Barrett
FICTION: Accidents Will Happen
By Oisin Curran
FICTION: The Art of Communication
By Meghan Roe
FICTION: On the Road Again?
By Erin Heath
Prose Roundup
By Jim Feast, Clinton Krute, Jim Feast, and Kevin Riordan
Poetry Roundup
By David Varno, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, and Roger Van Voorhees
The Biggest Weapon in Northern Uganda
By Peter Holslin
Punk, with Occasional Glockenspiel
By Matthew Ozga
Chad and Jeremy: State of the Reunion
By Dann Baker
Is New York the New Second City?
By Kurt Gottschalk
Brought to You by the Letter G
By Grant Moser
Just a Singer in a Rock 'n' Roll Band: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Cardinology (Lost Highway)
By Julie Kocsis
Mass Destruction at the Met: Dr. Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera
By Ellen Pearlman
Pina Bausch Returns to BAM with Bamboo Blues
By Emily Macel
Childhood Play as Wild as She Remembers
By Beatrice Barbareschi
Garth Fagan's Phone Tag, Thanks, and Things? No, Thanks.
By Dalia Ratnikas
Puzzlingly True
Dance Films Association's 37th Annual Dance on Camera Festival
By Mary Love Hodges
Epistolary Therapy: Sixty
By Simone Larson
One Human Being at a Time: A Visit to Elizabeth Streb's S.L.A.M.
By April Greene
By Sarahjane Blum
Tanned, Rested, Tormented, and Repressed
Hypnotized in Global Scenarios
By Lu Chen
By Mary Hanlon
By Camila de Onís
Apoorva Lakhia with David Wilentz
Melville, Assayas and a Box of Classics
By David N. Meyer
Kane in Babel: notes
By Elana Greenfield
A Planetoid of Self: Mac Wellman
By Barbara Cassidy
Rumble in Brooklyn: The Civilians' Brooklyn at Eye Level
By Aurin Squire
Sibyl Kempson and the Secret Life of Potatoes
By Amber Reed
Acting Strangely: A Light Lunch with My Brother
By Jed Lipinski
Danielle and the Dyer
By Mark Du Mez
The Only Mortal
By Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
from De la Bronx
By Greg Fuchs
from Clock, Deck, and Movement
By Rodrigo Toscano
By T. Motley


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JV-Relatives comes packed with the English language file by default. If you would like to translate the language files of JV-Relatives (recommended is frontend files), then you may please follow this article.
There are several providers and customers, who have shown interest and contributed with foreign language files for JV-Relatives. You may use them for JV-Relatives, or create one for your own language, if one for your language is not available, already.
Save the language files in UTF-8 format without BOM. You may use Notepad++ for this as well and set the appropriate encoding.


Burien City Councilmember Nancy Tosta is planning the third of her monthly Saturday morning Community Coffee and Chats at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 8, at Geno's Coffee Shop, located at 11620 Ambaum Blvd SW.
The first Coffee and Chat was held at Burien Press in January with a good turnout talking about arts, transportation, city services, etc. The second session was in February at the offices of Transform Burien with a lively discussion on social services, engaging the community, building neighborhood identities, clean-up, etc.


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PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE - SOUTH-
Skate park would honor brothers Grieving mother whose sons drowned raising money for Dormont facility
By Maria Sciullo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
There wasn't much Mary Pitcher wouldn't do for her four sons. When they played hockey at Keystone Oaks High School, she joined the club board and developed its Web site.
When someone needed a ride to BMX racing in South Park, she managed to get them there.
"Sometimes, I embarrassed my sons by always being around, but I didn't care," she said, laughing.
"I was a stay-at-home mom for about 10 years, and I'm so grateful now that I was."
It's been two months since her two youngest sons, Vince, 21, and Stephen, 19, accidentally drowned while on a camping trip in the Allegheny National Forest.
"The story is, they found them seven hours later, and the most significant thing was, they were still hugging each other," said Lauren Karabasz, a family friend who grew up near the Pitchers.
At the funeral, Mrs. Pitcher was met by two brothers, Collin and Cheech Sanders, who had attended St. Bernard Elementary School with her boys. The brothers had spent many days practicing on the wooden half-pipe in the back yard of the Sanders' home in Mt. Lebanon.
"The minute he walked in there and I hugged him, I said 'You know, Collin, we have to build a skate park,' and he said 'That would be awesome,' " said Mrs. Pitcher.
Skateboarding in public areas is a sore subject in many communities. Most ban the use of boards on sidewalks, in parking lots or down long stretches of concrete steps.
Miss Karabasz had to laugh when she considered how many times her brother, Ricky, and his friend, Vince, were reprimanded for skateboarding in public.
"They had been stopped many times by the police, thousands of times," said Miss Karabasz.
The idea of creating a skate park seemed a perfect way to honor the Pitchers' on-the-go sons.
"Having four boys, I learned that not everybody plays team sports. I had four very creative children and they needed a place to be individuals," said Mrs. Pitcher, who now lives in Scott and owns Antiques Exchange in Dormont.
She's done her homework, figuring it will eventually require around $250,000 to build an elaborate West Coast-style skate park in Dormont. The cost of hiring a professional designer will be around $6,000.
"I'm just sorry they're not here to see it happen," she said. "It would be spectacular for them to have a place like this."
A Web site -- www.pitcherpark.com -- details the proposed project. Mrs. Pitcher's group has approached the Dormont borough manager with tentative plans for perhaps constructing the facility on the Memorial Drive site of long-abandoned tennis courts.
Mrs. Pitcher said group members are exploring various fundraising opportunities. On a grand scale, they'll be sending a grant request to skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, whose foundation provides communities with up to $25,000 to establish skate parks.
"We're feverishly trying to get this in, but I want to do it right. I don't want it to be a rush job," Mrs. Pitcher said.
Last year, McDonald was awarded a Tony Hawk grant in the $10,000-$15,000 category.
Locally, two Pitcher Park events are planned in the coming weeks. First is a hair-cutting marathon at Hair Geometrics on Potomac Avenue. Cuts will be given for a $12 donation, and the Pizza Company is donating slices to be sold during the event from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"It's all a friendly thing," said owner Jenny Santorella. "In Dormont here, everybody knew these boys."
Joining her will be stylists Lyndsay Lewis-Ackaoui, Brittany DiPippa and Annie Hayes.
On Tuesday, the Dormont Veterans of Foreign Wars announced it will donate its community hall for a "spooktacular" costume event from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Oct. 24.
Vince had recently earned a degree from the Pittsburgh Technological Institute and was working at his first job, in computer-aided drafting. He'd just bought his first car, a Saab, and was living with his father, John, in Dormont.
"He was just figuring out what he wanted to do [in life]" said Miss Karabasz. "He loved his program at PTI."
In his honor, the school has agreed to help in the design and execution of the skate park.
Both men attended Keystone Oaks High School, and Steve was living with his mother in Scott. He was working full-time at a Rite Aid pharmacy and part-time as a valet at the Rhythm House in Bridgeville.
They were both big guys -- Vince, around 6-foot-3-inches, 225 pounds, his brother, 6-foot-3-inches, 165 pounds.
"I don't know how the heck the guys put those Size 13s on those skateboards," their mother said.
Two older brothers, Jonathan, 26, and Brady, 24, also are skateboard enthusiasts and are part of the fundraising for Pitcher Park.
"We're just trying to get the word out," said Miss Karabasz, 24. "I know it's going to be a long haul.
"A lot of people, especially those who don't have children, can't be bothered with a skate park,'' she said. "But these kids are the future of Dormont. I think it's great, what she [Mrs. Pitcher] is doing."
Maria Sciullo can be reached at msciullo@post-gazette.com or 412-851-1867. First published on September 11, 2008 at 6:10 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-pitcher/a-mothers-work-is-never-d_b_151479.html
It is an honor and a privledge on behalf of my sons, Vincent and Stephen, to have been asked to blog on the Huffington post!
This became possible through the combined efforts of Mike Cortese, Vicki Thomas, Neil Zevnik and Willow Bay.
One of those names may sound familiar, as Mike grew up in Dormont along with Katie and Dave! The other three names are people who chose to become involved....strangers who are now friends... who have joined with us to help us see this project through by getting our story to go national!
Vicki Thomas is from California, heavily involved with fundraising and giving to many charities including autism as she has a beautiful son with autism. She, among other things, is Pierce Brosnan's right hand woman .
Pierce Brosnan has donated many interesting autographed items that will soon be auctioned off for Pitcher Park on E Bay under the sellers name "Pitcher Park"
Neil Zevnick is my editor and also is a master chef who cooks for (among other famous people) the CEO of Disney and his Wife, Willow Bay and Elizabeth Taylor.
Willow Bay is the editor of the Living Section of the Huffington Post and she has very graciously allowed us this wonderful opportunity!
These people have hearts of gold!
From the entire Pitcher family and all of us involved...we wish to sincerely thank you all!!
TOGETHER WE WILL BUILD.....PITCHER PARK!
Mary Pitcher Posted December 21, 2008 | 08:27 AM (EST)
Pitcher Park: In Honor Of My Two Sons
On one of the most beautiful days of this past summer, July 15, 2008, I received the phone call that every Mother prays she never gets. I was told that two of my four sons had disappeared underwater at Kinzua Reservoir while on a camping trip with their Father, Uncle and two friends. While Vincent (21 years old) was fishing on the water's edge, Stephen (19 years old) jumped off the James Morrison Bridge and was injured. Vincent ripped off his clothes and swam out to save his brother. Both boys disappeared under water, and were not found until seven hours later. Vincent was still holding on to his little brother -- he would not let go, even in death.
The beginning of the tragedy was caught on Vincent's camera -- there is a video of Stephen falling from the bridge and hitting the water. You can hear Vincent screaming Stephen's name and then the camera drops to the ground. I cannot bring myself to watch it. All I know is Vincent sacrificed his life to try to save his brother. Although he didn't make it, what more can a Mother ask for, than to have instilled such loyalty and selflessness in her sons? I taught my sons to watch out for each other, and I know now I did my job well, as any one of my four sons would have done the same thing not only for each other but for anyone. Brady (age 24) was on his way to join his two brothers on their camping trip. He got there only to see his brothers' bodies being pulled out of the rescue boat. This is a sight that I and Jonathan (age 26) were spared but a sight that will be hard for everyone there to forget. Brotherly love is a very strong bond and I firmly believe that neither Vincent nor Stephen would have ever been the same if either one or the other would have made it and the other one didn't.
Vincent and Stephen were well-rounded, respectful, fun-loving, and very caring young men with such bright futures. When they died, a part of me died. You read and hear about stories like this on the news, but you never think anything like this could ever happen to you, but it did. All my life, I protected and nurtured my sons. I kept them busy and out of trouble by keeping them active, but I have to admit they kept me active too! With four sons, I had to quit my "regular" job to do my job right as a Mother. With very little money, it took a lot of imagination to keep them busy. We fished and camped, and they played every sport known to man. Yes, I hovered over them. I sure did. It was my job as a Mother to watch over them, talk to their friends, find out what was up, stay in tune with what was going on in their worlds, and try to mold them into good men to go out into the world. As all Mothers know, it sometimes feels like a thankless job, but thank God I did everything I did, because it is only for that reason I have no regrets. I was with them every step of the way and more importantly they were with me, and they always will be.
People say to me, "I don't know how you're doing it." They just look at me and start to cry. At times, I honestly can tell you I don't know what is getting me through this. I know now what it feels like when shock takes over your whole body and mind. I wondered how I was going to be able to stand at the funeral home with two caskets filled with the bodies of my babies. When I walked into the room I felt their spirits there. They told me they were sorry they had to leave me. Stephen apologized for jumping and Vince apologized for not being able to save Stephen. I felt a sense of immediate peace, somehow just by knowing they were together as they always were and not alone.
My sons touched thousands of people's lives in their short lifetimes. They had more true friends than I ever had in my entire life! At the funeral home, I didn't have to worry about passing out because I was being held up by hugging one person after another. Thousands of people filed through the funeral home and the grief of the entire community became very apparent. I found myself consoling them on my sons' behalf, and the consoling hasn't stopped as the community that these boys touched with their grace and joy continues to grieve. As their Mother, I knew I had to do something to help all the friends and families that my sons had touched and those people who have cared so deeply for my sons throughout the years.
Stephen and Vincent were very loving young men, and I knew they wouldn't want the community to feel so devastated over their loss. I felt compelled to bring all the grieving people together, to help us all heal by doing something good for our community in their honor. Vincent was an avid BMX biker and Stephen an enthusiastic skateboarder and rollerblader, and in our community there was never a place you could legally or safely bike, skateboard, or rollerblade. Since many of their friends and other young people in the area have a great passion for these sports, I decided to see if anyone might be interested in helping me build a professionally-designed skate park in our community.
The idea for "Pitcher Park" gave me a focus and purpose, and at first I thought I must just be acting on sheer nerves; but the outpouring of support has been amazing. Businesses, contractors, individuals within the community, and even total strangers are all joining together to help in this grass-roots effort to transform a tragic ending into a new beginning for the community that these two boys loved and that loved them back so much.
It seemed everyone had ideas and everyone knew someone who could do something or donate things we needed to get this off the ground. The enthusiasm from all was remarkable! So at a time when I felt so all alone, I soon realized I certainly wasn't at all. First, we had to do research on designing the skate park and investigate what materials we would need to make "Pitcher Park" a reality. Then we set out to see how we could start raising money by doing fundraisers, and try to make them "fun" in spite of the severe grief and sense of loss that was consuming us. I'm here to tell you, the entire community rose to the occasion in an amazing fashion.
Although they would be totally embarrassed by all this fuss about them, Stephen and Vincent knew that I would do something like this, and when I see these young adults and their parents and people we don't know all coming together...IT IS SO WONDERFUL! We had a "Hair Cut-a-Thon" with five beauticians who cut hundreds of heads of hair and raised over $3,000; the owner of the salon didn't even know my sons but she wanted to get involved to help. The American Legion donated a hall so we could have a "Spook-tacular" Halloween costume party where parents and their kids came together and sang karaoke, danced, and competed for prizes. Stephen's girlfriend Samantha stole the show when she showed up as a glow-in-the-dark angler fish, a unique and imaginative costume she made all by herself!
Then a local pool hall invited us to use their place to shoot pool and invited bands to play. We had never met the owners, but found out sadly, they too had lost a son, at 23, and felt compelled to help. 125 people came to hear three bands and play pool with their families and friends. Next up was bowling - a big favorite here, so the local lanes allowed us to have "All Night Bowling" and 180 night-owls came out to play. We ran out of lanes and food but people still flowed in the door just to be a part of this rowdy adventure.
To date we have raised almost $12,000 -- all by coming together and having fun, which is something my sons would have wanted for all of us. Just seeing parents and their children together doing something fun warms my heart, especially in light of the tragedy that struck my family. I see now how deeply important being together really is, because you just never know...
We have a long way to go financially, but there are many more "fun" fundraisers planned -- an alumni hockey game for which we are trying to get "Sid the Kid" on the ice or any other celebrity who would like to show off his skills; a huge Spaghetti Dinner at a wonderful youth-oriented Church; a St. Paddy's Day celebration for all to enjoy with my son Jonathan's newly formed Irish Band; and a Winter Pig Roast with sled riding and a bonfire. All these adventures are being planned by different people who are contacting me to put them together, everyone giving so selflessly of their time and effort and love to make our dream a reality.
"Pitcher Park" has given us all a goal to work towards together and a sense of hope, at a time when the world seems so dismal to many young people and their families. I'm not sure how to deal with the Holidays yet and I am still crying every day over of the loss of my sons, but it is because of them and the way they lived their lives that I must see this through for everyone who was touched by them. I don't want people to cry anymore when they see me. I want them to rally with me and see that despite it all that they too can make a difference. We can all work and have fun together to make "Pitcher Park " happen in honor of Vincent and Stephen, and help my community and my family to heal.
I invite you to visit our website, to celebrate my boys and share in our joy: Pitcher Park. And if you'd like to make a contribution, click here to view a list of some of our needs or here to donate by credit card.


Mozilla Japan, a new international affiliate of the Mozilla Foundation launches today. The new group is similar in purpose to the Mozilla Europe group that was founded earlier this year. Mozilla Japan aims to localise Mozilla products for the Japanese market, provide services to help organisations migrate to Mozilla and build the Japanese Mozilla community.
Mozilla Japan is backed by Ten Art-ni, the leading provider of open-source solutions in Japan. Chaired by President of the Tokyo University of Technology Hideo Aiso, the Board includes Keio University's Professor Hideyuki Tokuda, Ten Art-ni CEO Nobuo Kita, former Netscape Japan employee Satoko Takita and another Ten Art-ni worker, Motohiro Egota.
The Mozilla Foundation has a press release about Mozilla Japan. Mgz sent us a link to CNET News.com article about the new organisation, which fills space by noting that Mozilla is like Godzilla and Godzilla is Japanese.
... except that Godzilla isn't Japanese. "Mojira", anyone?
"And how does that explain Netscape's mascot, the green lizard, and Mozilla's mascot, the red dinosaur?"
Doh... Because Mozilla sounds like Godzilla?
That still doesn't mean the origin of the first half can't be Mosaic.
??????????? ???? ??????????? Firefox ????????????? ???? ????????? Thunderbird ????!
It was a shortening *used* because it did, in fact, make for something much like Godzilla. Also because the Gecko codename for the NS rendering engine suggested lizards.
I like how mozillazine fills space with a comment about another site filling space, and it fills the talkback thread.


Quiltville's Quips & Snips!!: The First Snow Day Sew Day of Autumn!
The First Snow Day Sew Day of Autumn!
But you can't fool mother nature!
However, we can point out that she is a bit confused at the moment!
It sure is pretty though, isn't it?
Everyone was geared up to be making Roll,Roll Cotton Boll from String Fling!
Assembling blocks with loads of pieces!
Which soon became everyone's favorites!
And others amazing in grey!
It was a colorful feast for the eyes!
The Iowa Contingency is a force to be reckoned with!
And I love that they brought me a shirt from Lou Ann's Quilt Garden in Oelwein so that I could join in on the quilt-gang fun, too!
The snow had stopped falling by the time we were packing up, but temps were hovering at 32 degrees so that snow was going nowhere.
I peeked out the window as soon as it was light this morning – Nope. It's still there. SIGH. I have this feeling it's going to be a very long long winter ahead!
On the upside – that leaves room for LOADS of Snow Day Sew Days!
Today – LAST workshop of this 6 workshop, 4 lecture run through Nebraska. Guild presentation tonight, and one more tomorrow morning and this big visit is in the books!
And it really has been such a fun trip. I've enjoyed meeting folks I hadn't met before, and reconnecting with those whom I've seen on previous quilt trips.
Thanks for making everything such a memorable experience, Nebraska peeps!
You can't start anywhere but right where you are! Just keep at it.
Let's make this Monday COUNT!
We had snow here as in Minnesota as well. Considering we had a snow fall less than 6 months ago, I just can't get all excited about it. Need to quilt more!
Oh no. I grew up in Iowa with snow. It's pretty but treacherous to drive in. Living on a farm made all chores more difficult but we had fun playing in it and snow sledding!!
No snow in Texas' but it's raining and a high of 43 for the next 2 days!!! It was almost 90 yesterday...my body can't adjust that fast!!!
No snow yet in NW Oregon, but we had our first freeze warnings. Winter is on its way.
We have a saying in Nebraska: "If you don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes." This week is forecasted to be beautiful dry, in the upper 50's fall weather. You never know what might happen this time of year:) Thanks for coming to NE. We loved having you, and you are welcome any time!!!
Live in Idaho, and yes we do get some snow in the winters... Always get so excited about the first one. It makes everything look new and beautiful. (And it's a perfect reason to stay in the sewing room and play all day he he he.) Before the snow is done in the spring we are all ready for it to go away. I love having 4 seasons.
Stumbling Upon St John's, Wytheville!
The Continuing Saga of the Traveling Catfish!
October '18 Quilty Box Gift-Away!
Antiquing for the Greatest Catch!
A Little Bit of ACME Fabric & Quilt Co!
The Nebraska Mega Show & Share!
Just Horsing Around–and a Winner!
In Search of the Lovely, and the Strange!
Virginia Bounding in Grand Island!
A Cathedral Stars Day to Play!
Tropical Twisting Away in the Rain!
A Day Full to Overflowing!
Across the Lake and Over the Mountain!


"The ROVLATIS is a truly remarkable piece of technology, and I am convinced it represents the next generation of underwater robotics. Significant savings in the time required to perform underwater tasks, along with the commensurate savings in operational costs, would be achieved should this technology become available for wide scale commercial and industrial use."
"OceanRINGS provides very accurate 2D & 3D visualisation of ROV & ship in real-time. Situation awareness is significantly improved with views from different View Points."
"ROV LATIS Control System is very effective and accurate."
"ROVLATIS is exceptional, cutting edge technology, and most likely the future of ROV piloting"
The Journal of Ocean Technology, Vol. 5, No. 3.
"I am impressed with level of automation and excellent visualisation showing ROV position relative to ship."


text:
198451 Benidorm,Costa Blanca,Lead Benidorm,Costa Blanca,news spain,newspaper,The Olive Press /g,">").replace(n,t.Em.replacer);return o="
Actors, TV channels and 30,000 social media users join search for…
Home Benidorm Benidorm reports busy holiday weekend thanks to domestic tourists on Spain's Costa...
Benidorm reports busy holiday weekend thanks to domestic tourists on Spain's Costa Blanca
One estimate suggests revenues were only down by up to 15 per cent over a year
Alex Trelinski
13 Oct, 2020 @ 20:30
OVER 46,000 people used Benidorm's beaches during the four-day October holiday weekend in a welcome boost to local tourism.
The official figures come for a period that took in Valencia Day and Monday's National Day.
Local hospitality association, Cobreca, estimated that revenues were only down between 10 to 15 per cent for their members compared to the same period in 2019.
The four days also brought high hotel occupancy rates for the roughly 30 per cent of Benidorm's hotels that remained open.
Hotel association, Hosbec, said that some of its members reported close to 100 per cent occupancy.
Benidorm mayor, Toni Perez, said: " Although the figures are way down compared to before the pandemic, the weekend confirmed that Benidorm is a top destination even in difficult times."
Struggling bars and restaurants also received a much-need fillip after being largely quiet since the end of the domestic tourist season in August.
President of local hospitality group Abreca, Javier del Castillor, said:
"It was a fantastic weekend and great to see so many more people, which was obvious from just looking at the beaches."
news spain
The Olive Press
Previous articleFamily of Lisa Brown's desperate plea for witnesses to reveal what happened to Scottish mum almost five years after she vanished from near Spain's Costa del Sol
Next articleBREAKING: Spain's Catalunya to close bars and restaurants for 15 days to fight COVID-19 spike
Alex worked for 30 years for the BBC as a presenter, producer and manager. He covered a variety of areas specialising in sport, news and politics. After moving to the Costa Blanca over a decade ago, he edited a newspaper for 5 years and worked on local radio.
AN artist who painted a dove and a slogan on top of dictator General Franco's tomb has been acquitted of desecration. Madrid's Provincial Court also...
Race through Spain's Costa Blanca televised in over 200 countries – will your town feature?
First Correos cashpoints (ATMs) arrive in Valencia – why Correos accounts are perfect for expats
Costa Blanca orange growers cry 'foul' as Spain's supermarkets squeeze them dry
Alicante boy uses female social media profiles in sex blackmail plot in Spain


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#Supply Chain Digital#Supply Chain#Price Increase#Rate Hik#Supply Chain
FedEx raises North American shipping prices
Talk about undercutting the competition.	Last month, it was revealed that United Parcel Service would raise its North American shipping rates by 6.9 pe...
Freddie Pierce
|Aug 8| 5 min read
Talk about undercutting the competition.
Last month, it was revealed that United Parcel Service would raise its North American shipping rates by 6.9 percent to help offset rising fuel costs. Now, FedEx is doing the same thing, albeit with a 6.8 percent general rate increase for North American freight shipments between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The rate hike will take effect later this year on Sept. 6.
FedEx Freight had raised its ground and home-delivery services by an average of 4.9 percent earlier this year, but the newest rate hike does not raise fuel surcharges at all. UPS made the same decision, and it's a curious one because most of the speculation surrounding the price increases has been swirling around the volatile petroleum market.
SEE OTHER TOP FEDEX STORIES IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN DIGITAL CONTENT NETWORK
Check out August's issue of Supply Chain Digital!
Revenue and margins continued to benefit from a surging demand, as FedEx's fourth-quarter earnings rose 33 percent. The shipping company's breadth of services around the globe make it an economic bellwether of sorts, which is good news with fears of a double-dip recession looming.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Moody's Investors Service raised its outlook on FedEx from "stable" to "positive," an indication that FedEx could be entering an economic uptick.
With a network of nearly 150,000 employees stationed around the world, FedEx is a global leader in air, ocean and ground transportation.


Debt consolidation is the process of using a single large loan to pay off multiple smaller debts. This allows the debtor to make a single regular payment, rather than several smaller ones. If the interest rate on the new loan is lower than that on the previous ones, this can save the debtor money on his or her monthly payments. If used wisely, debt consolidation can be a lifeline. However, if misused, consolidation can make bad debt even more difficult to manage. This article explains how (and when) to consolidate your debt.
Know when debt consolidation is (and isn't) appropriate. Debt consolidation can be a godsend to someone who's in dire financial straits. It can even be useful for someone who isn't in danger of financial catastrophe by allowing him or her to roll many debts into one convenient payment. Generally, for people in difficult financial situations, debt consolidation is appropriate when it allows a debtor to avoid bankruptcy by reducing his or her payments to reasonable levels. If you are able to secure a loan with a lower interest rate than your existing debts, debt consolidation may be a good choice for you.
However, if you're financially struggling and you're not able to secure a loan with lower interest, debt consolidation isn't a good idea, even if it makes your numerous monthly payments into one single, convenient one. This is especially true if you're considering using a commercial debt management service, as these usually come with their own associated fees.
While consolidating your debt can lower your monthly payments, it does not change the overall balance of your debt. In other words, you will still owe the same amount of money after you consolidate your debt as you did before - you'll just pay less in interest per month.
If your consolidating loan has a lower interest rate than the debts it replaces, this usually means it will have a longer repayment schedule. Because of this, it's possible to actually pay more money overall with a consolidated loan than without one.
Depending on how it's used, debt consolidation can damage your credit scores. Applying for any type of loan can cause a small, temporary dip in your credit scores, but if you use a consolidation loan to, for instance, pay off and close multiple credit card accounts, the damage can be more significant and longer-lasting, as this can max out your credit utilization.
Contact a bank or other lending institution. One way to consolidate your debt is to use a bank loan or a loan from another type of private lender. Loans come in two types - secured loans, which are tied to an asset like a house or car, and unsecured loans, which are not. Simple, direct personal loans, as described in this method, are unsecured loans. These types of loans are available through numerous banks and commercial lenders, but also "under the table" from family and friends. Your first step should be to contact prospective lenders and explain your situation.
Each lender you contact should be able you to tell you whether you're eligible for a loan, and, if so, should tell you the loan's interest rate. You will want a loan with as low of interest as possible - it must at least be lower than the rates on your current debts to be "worth it".
Realize that a bad credit score can limit your options. Your credit score is based on your financial history and is essentially a "grade" of your financial stability. Nearly all commercial lenders will perform a credit check before agreeing to give you a loan. If you have a history of bad financial decisions, you may be unable to obtain an unsecured personal loan from a commercial lender.
Borrow from family and friends cautiously. Getting an "under-the-table" loan from a friend or relative can be quicker and easier than getting a personal loan from a commercial lender, but it's far from risk-free. Being in debt to someone who's close to you can change your relationship with this person by creating a power dynamic that didn't previously exist. It can make interactions with this person tense or awkward, especially if you're having difficulty paying off the loan. Additionally, because informal loans are difficult or impossible to legally enforce, disputes over the loan can become long and messy. As a general rule, only turn to family and friends for loans as a last resort.
Agree to a low-interest loan and stick to its repayment schedule. Unsecured commercial loans often (but not always) have lower interest rates than credit cards, while the interest rate of a loan from a friend or family member is decided by that person. If you can get a low-interest loan that lowers the size of your monthly payments, take it. For instance, if you have multiple maxed-out credit cards, it's wise to consolidate the relatively high-interest credit card payments under one low-interest personal loan.
Once you've consolidated your debts under a new loan, it's imperative that you make all of your new loan's payments on-time. Late or missed payments can lead to legal action or bankruptcy.
Contact a bank, credit union, or lender. Secured loans are type of loan that uses a high-value piece of property (most commonly a house, but sometimes a car or another valuable piece of property) as collateral. In other words, if the loan can't be repaid, the lender is allowed to sell your property to raise money to repay the loan. Because the loan is attached to the value of the property, secured loans are a "safer bet" for the lender, which means they typically have relatively low interest rates compared to other types of loans. To see if you qualify for a secured loan, contact local lending institutions and the credit holders who hold the loans on your house, car, etc.
Don't overlook credit unions, as these can sometimes offer better rates than banks and other lending institutions.
Assess the equity of your property. Equity is the difference between the market value of a piece of property and the cost of all outstanding balances associated with the property. In a secured loan, the lender uses the equity of your property to insure the loan. Thus, to get a secured loan, your property must have a sufficient level of equity. The equity of your home, car, etc. increases as you make payments against the outstanding balance of the property or as the property appreciates. The greater your equity, the larger your secured loan can be and the more debt you can consolidate.
Determining any value that your home has gained through appreciation may require the services of a certified appraiser.
Make all payments on the secured loan. Though there are usually certain approval requirements for secured loans, these can be easier to meet than the requirements for other types of loans because your property serves as insurance for the loan. Don't let these low entry requirements entice you into a secured loan you can't reasonably expect to pay off, as the consequences for failing to pay back a secured loan can be dire - you may be left without a home or car. Be sure to make all payments on a secured loan on-time to avoid the loss of important or cherished property.
Many secured loans have a fixed period - for instance, ten years - for repayment of the loan. Some loans may offer extensions, while others may not.
Search for low-interest credit card options. Credit cards usually have relatively high interest rates even when compared to unsecured loans from banks. However, if you have good credit history, you may be eligible for exceptionally low-interest credit cards. If so, you can use this new credit card to pay off high-interest debts. To start, shop around for credit card offers that have low interest rates - you may want to look online or to contact credit card companies with whom you already have a good history.
As with the methods of consolidation above, you'll want an interest rate that's lower than the interest rates on your current debt.
Choose a credit card with a suitable credit limit. Credit cards have limits to the amount of money they allow you to spend. To effectively consolidate your debt, your new credit card should have a credit limit that's large enough to pay off all of your current debts. This way, after you do so, you'll only have to make one payment - the one on your new credit card.
Look for cards with 0% initial interest periods. Some credit cards offer an initial period during which interest payments and/or balance transfer fees are very low or are waived entirely. These cards are ideal if you are able to pay all (or nearly all) of your debt off during this low-interest period. If you can, sign up for one of these cards and pay off the balance prior to the expiration of the introductory period to save money that you would otherwise spend on interest.
Pay attention to the fine print of your credit card agreement - often, cards with initial 0% interest periods will immediately begin to incur high interest at the end of this period.
Choose a reputable, low-fee credit counselor. Though not a loan or credit extension, consumer credit counseling services allow individuals to pay all of their debts in one monthly payment at a lower interest rate than otherwise. Both nonprofit and for-profit services are available. Both (ostensibly) consolidate your debt into one payment by negotiating with your lenders on your behalf to secure a more forgiving repayment plan. However, some credit counseling agencies prey upon debt-stricken individuals by charging exorbitant fees for services that can be obtained for cheap or free elsewhere. Entering an arrangement with a predatory credit counselor can make a difficult financial situation even worse, so be cautious when picking a credit counseling service.
In the United States, the Department of Justice's Trustee Program provides a state-by-state list of government-approved credit counseling services.
Make regular payments to your credit counselor. Credit counselors negotiate with your debt holders to obtain a more forgiving repayment plan. When your debt has been consolidated in this way, you pay your credit counselor every month, rather than paying your creditors directly. Your credit counselor then distributes your money to your creditors according to the repayment plan that has been negotiated.
While this monthly payment is often lower than your previous debts required, often, the repayment schedule when using a credit counselor is longer than with traditional forms of debt, which means you may pay more money in the long run.
Be prepared for a negative mark on your credit history. Credit counseling may have a negative impact on your credit score because it signals to future creditors that you had difficulty managing your debt. However, the effects of credit counseling are still far better than those of bankruptcy, so entering into a debt management plan with a reputable credit counselor is almost always a smart choice if it allows you to avoid declaring bankruptcy.
Use credit counseling only when necessary. Individuals who are unable to obtain a loan any other way will benefit the most from consumer credit counseling services. Because of the long repayment schedules and various fees associated with credit counseling services, generally, the other options in this article are preferable to enrolling in a debt management plan from a credit counselor. Thus, be sure to pursue the other options first if they are within your means.
How does paying off debt negatively affect my credit score?
It doesn't. Lowering debt raises your score. As explained above, consolidating debt could conceivably lower your score slightly.
To consolidate debt, you'll need to take out a single, large loan to pay off your smaller debts, which can make paying off your debt easier and save you money on interest. However, avoid consolidating your debt if you're unable to get a loan with a lower interest rate. There are a variety of ways you can consolidate your debt, including taking out a personal loan, obtaining a secured loan, getting a new credit card, and working with a credit counselor. To learn how to get started consolidating your debt, read on!
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I suppose I was taking the greatest risk here as once the fine 0.13 dots were started, there was no stopping. I had no idea of what intensity this 'completed' picture would have done. As I started it, it filled me with dread in the fact I could be putting in so many hours and possibly produce something quite weak. However, the subtleties of the various shading created by the dots leaves a lasting impression and is very gentle on the eye. Its very simplicity of walking through pea soup fog and getting 'glimpses' of clearer weather ahead – or will it just darken up again?


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The Myth of Self-Service
by Brandon Caudle
Self-service: The phrase evokes deep emotion in customers and support personnel alike, though they perhaps occupy opposite ends of the spectrum. From the CIO who views self-service as a technology-enabling headcount reducer, to the harried service desk manager hoping for a call-volume miracle, self-service seems like a cure-all for many support woes. Analysts, on the other hand, hear the words "self-service" and see their jobs evaporating in a puff of smoke. Customers see self-service as something that's frustrating, hard to use, and doesn't solve their issues. Meanwhile, vendors struggle to understand how process and technology must serve each other to be successful. All of these add up to self-service being the least comprehensible and most maligned concept of the past twenty years. It's easy to see why self-service is often viewed as just another IT myth.
Self-service is probably the least comprehensible and most maligned concept of the past twenty years.
Take heart, service and support professionals! Self-service is possible—many companies have fully functional self-service programs, and practically everyone reading this has experienced great self-service. In this article, we'll look at three self-service myths to explain why they're so persistent and identify what successful self-service programs do today to overcome obstacles and provide seamless experiences for their customers.
Myth #1: Self-Service Is a Technology
We can hardly blame our executives for believing a tool can solve all of their customer, resource, and financial issues. After all, there are countless studies—which our vendor partners are all too happy to share—showing how specific self-service solutions have reduced Company A's call volume by 85 percent, and how Company B downsized their support center by X people after implementing a specific solution. As CIOs and CFOs have steadily felt increasing pressure to reduce costs, the siren song of packaged self-service solutions has proven hard to resist. Millions of dollars are spent annually on technologies that often fail to launch and are abandoned entirely within eighteen months of implementation. If that wasn't enough doom and gloom, the three-to-five year software lifecycle is an ever-present reminder that the "next best thing" is just around the corner.
By contrast, successful companies have dedicated time and effort on developing people and processes to meet self-service needs in a customer-focused manner. This requires a change in focus, from a "purely fix-it/highly technical staffing" mentality to a "knowledge helps everyone/technical plus ability to document and educate" resource mindset. This is often challenging, as finite resources require a conscious decision to endure short-term pain while employees and managers are trained and retrained to document everything, so that issues can be shifted left from engineers to the service desk, and from the service desk to the customer.
Unfortunately, this can often cause disruptions in SLAs, increased hold times for service desks, and increase mean times to resolution as organizations move methodically through the steps needed to identify, analyze, train, and teach both staff and customers to utilize new processes. This requires an increased level of communication within IT and with the customers, and often may require a temporary increase in headcount to handle additional workload while self-service is implemented and stabilized. A key component of this culture change is accepting that self-service isn't just a job for the service desk. Nor is it a job for just one team or individual, which leads us to the second myth.
Myth #2: Self-Service Is a One-Man Job
Self-service is often associated with knowledge management, and with the best intentions, organizations often dedicate a full-time resource to the self-service initiative, in the form of a knowledge manager. In this scenario, the knowledge manager is tasked with the Herculean task of analyzing, defining, creating, implementing, and reporting on self-service. But self-service isn't a project; it's an ongoing program that will need care and feeding in perpetuity. However, the stark reality is that many organizations are still stuck in the legacy mindset of thinking that self-service can be successfully implemented and run by a single person.
Organizations that have successfully implemented self-service have discovered that not only does the identification and creation of self-service material require involvement across the organization, but the adoption of self-service is greatest when there's buy-in and commitment from all levels of IT and the business. Naturally, the service desk is a key component of self-service. Analysts, who should understand the strategic importance of shift-left, should also understand that their jobs won't disappear but will instead evolve and change. Each analyst must be trained to look for opportunities, so that as each customer contacts the service desk, a decision can be made as to whether a given issue could be best resolved via self-service. For those scenarios that fit, the function of the analyst is to steer the customer toward the self-service option and sell the customer on the concept.
This paradigm shift requires a change to both training programs and hiring practices. Gone are the days when the service desk would hire "techies," who would grunt at the revenue-generators (customers), or even smiling, customer-focused individuals who could be molded into customer-focused support analysts. Today's service desks require a different set of skills: a solid foundation of technical and customer focus, with a talent for crafting self-service solutions and then teaching the customer to use those solution. In effect, analysts need the skills to work themselves out of a job. (Spoilers: There will always be work to do, and there will always be positions for effective people in every organization.)
Of course, of equal importance is the customer. All too often, self-service is created and implemented in a vacuum, with no customer input. These initiatives generally fail, no matter how well-intentioned or thought-out. Involving customers at the inception is not only a best practice, it's also a guaranteed way of ensuring success and building bridges between IT and the business. Countless organizations have used the old adage "If you build it, they will come" to justify their self-service implementations. But without customer input and feedback from the start, any self-service initiative is doomed.
On the other side of the service desk, engineers and technicians, who often have decades of experience between them, can provide the final ingredient in the self-service formula. While the industry has spent the last two decades struggling to bring second- and third-level work to the service desk, a largely unexplored area for improvement involves bypassing the service desk entirely and enabling the customer to approve and resolve issues that historically needed second- and third-level involvement. At first glance, this seems contrary to established processes. However, by automating scripts and permissions-based changes, customers can perform their own IT work by simply filling out a form and clicking a button that launches the correct program and does the work previously performed by security, server, or any number of other IT teams.
While this view may seem daunting, organizations often start self-service initiatives with a defined start and end point defined, which brings us to the third myth.
Without customer input and feedback from the start, any self-service initiative is doomed.
Myth #3: Self-Service Is a Project
The idea of self-service being a project, in and of itself, isn't a bad idea. The basic principles of project management are required—executive sponsorship, budget and leadership, defined goals and objectives, milestones and reporting—but there's a key difference: a self-service initiative will never end. As fast as categories (or issues) are shifted to a customer-resolvable state, more systems, applications, and changes in the environment will be introduced. For each new system, application, or change, IT will need to determine which resolutions can be handled by self-service. Then they'll need to be stepped through the process.
Recognizing that self-service is a long-term, ongoing initiative is the crucial difference between success and failure for many self-service programs. Coupled with proper executive oversight and reporting, the right expectations will ensure the company is moving in the right direction. With long-term expectations correctly set, all teams must be involved in training, goal-setting, and continuous improvement.
After the initial waves of success, it's often tempting to declare victory and scale down the team, thinking that more and more will shift left, requiring a fraction of the resources needed before. On the contrary, successful self-service initiatives build on their successes by continuing the process, often requiring more resources as the effort is replicated throughout the organization.
We launched this discussion by renouncing technology as the solution, but in truth, self-service isn't really an option without a tool. There is a plethora of self-service solutions on the market, with many features and options. Whether an organization uses an existing tool, looks for a new one, or develops a solution of their own, new processes, cultural shift, and customer involvement are key components. From the look and feel of a customer-facing system, to the issues selected as self-service candidates, the decisions you make will have lasting ramifications, and it's best to involve the customer in most, if not all, steps of the journey.
There's no one best practice for self-service, and organizations may approach an initiative in many different ways, using many different methodologies. Regardless of the framework and direction chosen, companies are implementing, improving, and evolving their self-service programs every day. There's a wealth of resources available. Pick and choose the methods that work for your company and culture.
Brandon Caudle is a seasoned service and support industry practitioner and consultant with more than twenty years of experience working in and with Fortune 500 companies. In past roles, he drove ITIL and knowledge initiatives across multiple companies and countries. Today, Brandon uses his expertise, skill set, and experience to assess, implement, and evolve solutions throughout the technical service and support industry.
Tag(s): self-service, support center, business of support, future of support, supportworld
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