Writing introductions and conclusions can be challenging, however, both are worth paying attention to. Each, if written properly, has the ability to greatly influence a paper.
Similar to how an introduction guides the reader into the body of an essay, good conclusions wrap up the information delivered in an essay and leave the reader with something to think about.
A conclusion for an essay is a last ditch effort to deliver a final statement. The closing statement allows the writer to reiterate the points that they have made in their paper, clearly elaborate on their thoughts, and demonstrate the value of their ideas. It is the final opportunity to make a lasting impression on the reader.
A good conclusion extends beyond the parameters of the assignment, it presents the reader with the information they need to see the broader picture, arrive at their own conclusions and possibly adopt a new manner of thinking. As a writer, when you conclude a paper, it is your goal to leave a positive impression with your audience. They should be glad to have read your paper.
Revisit the theme or points mentioned in the introduction.Using this strategy to begin a conclusion brings the audience full circle, prompting them to re-explore the statements or arguments made in the opening paragraph and tying in the closing remarks to create a new understanding or thought process. You might even choose to reference the opening statement by using specific key words or the same concepts or imagery that was shared in the introduction.
Conclusions are not summaries. Write a conclusion paragraphby including a brief summary of the main points explored in the paper, but do not just reiterate verbatim the things that were said. Instead, articulate to the reader how the points made and the supporting evidence and examples connect together.
Consider including insight or a quote from the research that you used to develop your thesis.
Offer some sort of call to action, a solution to your argument, or encourage the audience to seek additional information on their own. Doing this will not only encourage your reader to seek out more information, but it will also position them to apply the information that you have shared in a real world scenario or see the bigger picture.
Avoid the following to leave a positive impression on your audience and go out strong.
Beginning your conclusion with played-out and unnecessary phrases like "in conclusion," "in summation," "in summary," or "in closing." Granted, these phrases are often useful in speeches, they have no place in writing.
Stating your thesis for the very first time in your conclusion. Your thesis should be clearly expresses in the introduction.
Introducing new points, concepts or ideas in your conclusion.
Making any sort of appeals that are not in line with the overall tone of the paper.
Introducing new evidence or statistics that should have been in the body of the paper.
The "I know what I know and that's all there is to it" conclusion. In this kind of conclusion, the writer typically reiterates the thesis as quickly as possible. There is seldom anything added to push ideas or concepts further. More often than not, writers and students will use this kind of conclusion when they are at a loss for something more to say.
The "cunning detective" conclusion.Sometimes you will encounter a writer who will, for the very first time, state their thesis in the conclusion instead of at the beginning of a paper. You might think that it could add to the overall buildup of an argument to keep the reader in the dark until end of the paper and then surprise them with your main topic or idea. In reality, there is no 'wow factor' in doing things this way. An essay should not be akin to a British mystery novel, but rather an analytical discussion of your argument. The reader should be presented with the facts they will need early on.
The "surprise bag" conclusion.In this scenario, the writer will deliver ample amounts of 'extra' information that they may find interesting but were not able to integrate into the main paragraphs of the paper. It may seem difficult to omit information that was sourced after hours of in depth research and reading, but spouting random facts and tidbits of evidence into an otherwise articulate and well organized essay will only result in confusing anyone reading it.
The difference between a great conclusion and one that is just ok or not good at all is that great conclusions not only reinforce the key points of argument made in the thesis statement, but they also prompt the reader to do their own exploration – either in the form of their own research, by changing their viewpoints or by leaving them with something of significant value.


Wayne loves to photograph people. Whether he is shooting an estate wedding on Martha's Vineyard or an environmental portrait session, he loves to catch people at their best. When capturing the events of the day at a wedding, his friendly, unobtrusive style always draws raves from clients and wedding guests alike.


The White-throated Dipper was voted as Bird of the Year 2017 by BirdLife Switzerland. It is the only songbird that can swim and dive and is not afraid to fly through the middle of a waterfall. Their habitat is fast flowing, unaltered streams and rivers with some slower flowing sections. This makes it the perfect ambassador for the current BirdLife Switzerland campaign "Biodiversity in Residential Areas", which focuses on water this year.
Splash! The little brown bird with a white bib that was just standing on a stone in the middle of the river has now plunged into the water in a split second and disappeared. The observer involuntarily asks what the bird is doing under water, and when and where it will reappear. One thing, however, is clear: it must be the White-throated Dipper, the only songbird that likes to dive. BirdLife Switzerland has selected this fascinating bird as "Bird of the Year 2017".
A single dive by a dipper may last up to 15 seconds. Then they take a short breath and quickly dive again. This approximately 18 cm long bird is perfectly adapted to living in flowing rivers. Their food consists mainly of aquatic insect larvae such as those of caddisflies and stoneflies. Their plumage consists of a lot of fur-like downy feathers and is waterproof. In order to make its feathers waterproof, they regularly stroke their feathers with oil from the preening (uropygial) gland. This gland is located at the base of the tail, and is much larger in dippers than in other songbirds.
While diving, dippers close their nose and ears with a protective skin. Their eyes are designed so that they can see clearly both above and below water. Strong legs and claws enable the species to stand even in strong currents. They do not have webbing between the toes, but rather swim using their legs and wings for propulsion. In order to be able to dive better, dippers have less air in their bones than other songbirds [thus making them heavier].
The "Bird of the Year 2017" occurs [in Switzerland] on fast-flowing streams and rivers from the midlands up to 2500 m in the Alps. The rivers should be natural and unspoiled, and the water clean and rich in oxygen, thus providing sufficient populations of aquatic invertebrates as food for dippers. Only in winter when streams and rivers are frozen do they stray to lake shores.
This small bird is not very shy and tolerates people nearby. Nevertheless, quiet sections without too many disturbances are important, especially around nesting areas. You can already hear dippers singing at this time of year. During their courtship dance, both partners sing loudly. They build a dome-shaped nest made of moss and located in wall recesses, under bridges, or behind waterfalls. Females lay 5 to 6 white eggs as early as the beginning of March. The chicks hatch 16 days later and are fed for another 24 days in the nest. After leaving the nest, the fledglings are taken care of by the parents for another two weeks, after which they start looking for their own territory.
BirdLife Switzerland voted for the White-throated Dipper as "Bird of the Year 2017" because it is a perfect ambassador for natural water bodies in residential areas.
Dippers can be encouraged with, for example, nesting boxes under bridges [see links below], but also by restoring sections of waterways so that they and other animals have natural, disturbance-free areas available. For Christa Glauser, Deputy Managing Director of BirdLife Switzerland, it is clear: "It is definitely possible to plan streams and rivers in residential areas to meet the needs of both humans and nature." It is important to actively plan in a way that meets the needs of nature, and thus the "Bird of the Year 2017", while also providing places for recreation.
The BirdLife Switzerland website has links to numerous photos, posters, presentations, and videos in German, French, and Italian.
A Google image search for 'dipper nest' showed a number of different artificial nest box designs used by dippers, from plastic tubing to recycled car seats.
It's that time when blog authors and columnists list their top 10 stories from the past year. Here are some lists from my favorite wildlife conservation blogs.


text:
OPCC / Complaint Process
The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner's role in the police complaint process is to ensure that the complaint process is conducted with impartiality and fairness to both the complainant and the police officer.
Complaint Submitted
There are a variety of ways to submit your complaint to the OPCC: online, mail, email, in person, by phone or directly to the police department. Click here for more information on filing a complaint.
Inadmissible and Admissible
When the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) receives a complaint about police misconduct, we must determine whether or not it is an admissible complaint that should be forwarded for investigation.
For a complaint to be admissible it must contain the following three criteria:
an allegation of police misconduct as defined under section 77 of the Police Act;
be filed within one year of when the incident occurred; and
not be frivolous or vexatious.
The Police Complaint Commissioner may extend the time limit for making a complaint if the Police Complaint Commissioner considers that there are good reasons for doing so and it is not contrary to the public interest.
If the complaint is determined to be admissible, the complainant will receive a letter advising that their complaint is admissible and that the police department has been directed to investigate their complaint. The complaint investigation process will now commence. The police cannot investigate your complaint under the Police Act unless the OPCC has determined your complaint to be admissible.
If the complaint is determined to be inadmissible, the complainant will be informed by way of a letter which will explain our decision.
If the complaint contains allegations that concerns a department's services or policies, it would be processed under Division 5 of the Police Act. In that case, the complaint will be forwarded to the department's Police Board for processing.
Your complaint may be selected as suitable for Complaint Resolution. If this is the case, an Investigative Analyst from the OPCC will contact you to explain this process. The main goal of Complaint Resolution is to provide complainants and police officers an opportunity to engage in a process where they can share their perspectives and find common ground with the aim of coming to a resolution agreement between both parties.
A trained senior member of the department will be assigned to facilitate this resolution.
Approve CR and Reject CR Agreement
The OPCC reviews all Complaint Resolution agreements to ensure the resolution is meaningful and addresses the issues/concerns contained in the complaint. An OPCC analyst contacts all complainants to obtain their feedback on the CR process.
Investigation by Police
Once a complaint has been determined to be admissible by the OPCC, the OPCC will direct the department to conduct an investigation. The police department will assign a Professional Standards Investigator to conduct this investigation. An Investigative Analyst from the OPCC will be assigned to the file and provide independent civilian oversight of the investigation.
A Professional Standards Investigator will likely need to contact the Complainant to obtain further details and information about the complaint. The OPCC strongly encourages complainants to cooperate with the Professional Standards Investigator as it allows for a full and balanced investigation. If a complainant has any evidence or records that would assist in the investigation they are requested to provide it to the Professional Standards Investigator.
The Professional Standards Investigator must provide the OPCC with regular written reports on the progress of the investigation. Our office will provide you with a copy of these progress reports.
Throughout the course of the investigation, an OPCC Investigative Analyst will continuously review the investigation and the evidence and material gathered as it progresses. The Investigative Analyst may provide advice to the Professional Standards Investigator regarding the investigative steps taken. The Investigative Analyst will also be able to inform, advise and assist you with any procedural questions you may have about the complaint process.
Final Investigation Report
Unless there is an extension granted by the Police Complaint Commissioner, the investigation must be completed within six months of the date an investigation is initiated.
Once an investigation is complete, a Final Investigation Report is submitted to the OPCC and the Discipline Authority. A Discipline Authority is usually the Chief Constable of the police department the police officer is from. The Chief Constable may delegate these responsibilities to a senior officer in that department.
The OPCC will review the investigation to ensure that it is thorough, professional and complete. The OPCC can direct further investigative steps if necessary.
Decision of Discipline Authority
After receiving the Final Investigation Report, the Discipline Authority has 10 business days to issue their decision about whether the police officer committed misconduct. You will be provided a copy of the Discipline Authority's decision and the Final Investigation Report. Please ensure the OPCC and the police department has your up to date contact information so you can receive the report and decision.
Not Substantiated
Complainants may request a review of the file if you disagree with the Discipline Authority's decision to not substantiate an allegation of misconduct against the police officer. This request must be sent to our office in writing and must be done within 10 business days of receiving the Final Investigation Report and Discipline Authority decision.
The OPCC reviews all decisions made by a Discipline Authority even if a complainant does not send in a request to review the file.
Confirm Outcome
If the OPCC agrees with the finding of no misconduct, the complainant will receive a letter from our office explaining why a retired judge will not be appointed to review the matter.
Appoint Retired Judge
If the OPCC disagrees with the finding of no misconduct, the Police Complaint Commissioner can appoint a retired judge to review the matter.
Once a Discipline Authority makes a finding of an appearance of misconduct, the matter will go to either a Pre-Hearing Conference or a Discipline Proceeding.
Complainants are able to make written or oral submissions (or both) to the Discipline Authority about the complaint, the adequacy of the investigation and/or the disciplinary or corrective measures that are considered to be appropriate at this stage.
The Police Act states that measures that educate and correct the member's behaviour are to taken precedence unless it is unworkable or would bring the administration of police discipline into disrepute.
Prehearing Conferences and Discipline Proceedings are not open to the public.
Prehearing Conference
At a Prehearing Conference, a Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable or senior officer of the department will meet with the respondent police officer. A decision will be made about the appropriate disciplinary or corrective measure that should be imposed on the police officer. If no agreement can be reached, the matter will move to a Discipline Proceeding.
Discipline Proceeding
At a Discipline Proceeding the Discipline Authority will hear evidence from the respondent police officer, the Professional Standards Investigator and any approved witnesses (if requested by the respondent member). The Discipline Authority will then make a finding as to whether the allegation of misconduct is proven and if so, the appropriate disciplinary or corrective measures that are to be imposed.
Confirm Discipline
The OPCC must confirm all corrective or disciplinary measures. If the OPCC confirms the disciplinary/corrective measures imposed, the complainant will receive a letter advising of this decision.
If the OPCC rejects the corrective or disciplinary measures imposed following a Prehearing Conference the matter will move to a Discipline Proceeding. If the OPCC rejects the corrective or disciplinary measures following a Discipline Proceeding, the OPCC can appoint a retired judge to review the matter and determine the appropriate disciplinary/corrective measures.
Review on the Record and Public Hearing
The OPCC will review the Discipline Authority's decision. If the OPCC agrees with the decision, the complainant will receive a letter advising this decision.
If the OPCC disagrees with the findings of the Discipline Authority, the Police Complaint Commissioner can appoint a retired judge to conduct a paper review of the matter (Review on the Record) or call a Public Hearing into the matter.
Complainants and respondent police officers have a right to request the Police Complaint Commissioner appoint a retired judge to call a Review on the Record or Public Hearing. This request must be received within 20 business days of receiving the Discipline Authority's decision following the Discipline Proceeding.
The decision of the retired judge is final and conclusive.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
Gareth Prior
Poet and compulsive reader
Out of Everywhere 2
Twenty years ago, Reality Street published one of the most influential poetry anthologies of our time. Out of Everywhere showcased linguistically innovative poetry by women in the UK and North America, definitively blowing apart the myth that experimental poetry is the preserve of shouty men in pubs. The range and quality of poetry in the book was extraordinary, and it's as fresh today as it was in 1996 (to-date my copy has been to six countries across three continents, read on land, sea and air, and still retains the ability to surprise and startle). It has also influenced a generation of poets to push the boundaries of form and to believe in an audience for daring work. In short, it's a hard act to follow.
Fast-forward to 2015 and "linguistically innovative poetry by women" is a de facto synonym for "some of the best poetry being written today by anyone, anywhere". Poets like Andrea Brady and Emily Critchley use language like a wild magic to expose modernity in all its ambiguity, political horror, energy and confusion — and alongside which most of the annual haul of new poetry looks like bad amateur watercolour. Against this backdrop, and to mark the twentieth anniversary of the original anthology, Reality Street have asked Critchley to edit a sequel.
Let's get this out of the way early: Out of Everywhere 2 doesn't just live up to the legacy of its predecessor; it inhabits it, reimagines it and plays it back in multidimensional technicolour through the medium of dance while doing quadratic equations on a cocktail napkin. There's so much wonderful poetry in this book that I've had to ration myself to avoid burnout. Yes, that's hyperbole — but get hold of a copy and you'll see what I mean.
[Seriously, get hold of a copy. Stop reading this review, go the Reality Street website and buy this book for less than the price of a round of drinks in central London.]
There are 43 poets represented in just under 350 pages of poems, with a wonderful range and diversity of voices. Reading from Susana Gardner to Jennifer Moxley to Holly Pester exposes the ridiculousness of dividing contemporary poetry into "experimental" and "mainstream", as if the former were as uniform as the latter: this book contains multitudes.
Out of Everywhere 2 comes out well from the two challenges regularly hurled at anthologies: the choice of poets and the choice of poems. It's unhelpfully-easy to take issue with an editor's inclusions & exclusions (having spent the past two months being wowed by In the Square I was sorry not to see Laura Kilbride on the list — but everyone will have their own pet omissions and, frankly, so what?). Editors have to make choices, and in this case the selection of poets is truly first-rate: by definition every anthology will have regretful omissions; the real test (which many fail) is regretful inclusions, and this book has none.
Likewise the selection of extracts is brave and pays off. Experimental poetry — tending towards longer works and sequences more than the mainstream lyric — is notoriously difficult to anthologise well. Here e.g. Andrea Brady is represented by extracts from Wildfire (possibly the most significant English-language poetry book of the decade) and Mutability, rather than the more obviously anthology-friendly short poems of Cut from the Rushes. It works. Many of the titles in the book are preceded by an italicised from, but the extracts are so well-chosen that the wrenching from their original context never becomes obtrusive.
Although I found myself jumping first to the writers I already know and admire (Amy De'Ath, Critchley herself, Carrie Etter — whose own, excellent Infinite Difference is also an invaluable survey of experimental poetry by women — and many others), the real joy came from discovering writers and work for the first time. Jennifer Cooke's "Steel Girdered Her Musical" blew me away; Marianne Morris's "Solace Poem (after Parvin E'tesami)" is genuinely unsettling; Myung Mi Kim's "Lamenta" comes close to being a secular magic spell. And that's just the beginning: I already know that Out of Everywhere 2 is going to be a regular travelling companion; that, like its predecessor, it will continue to surprise and startle even when I've been reading it for years.
If you care about contemporary poetry; if you want to encounter work that challenges and dazzles and transmits its energy direct to the nervous system rather than by tedious exposition via the brain; if you love language; if you write poetry and have any ambition to write it better; if you've never written a line but love to read it; if you haven't read a poetry book since school; if you want to engage with the world rather than just passing through it — please, buy this book.
Out of Everywhere 2, ed. Emily Critchley, Reality Street, 2015
Out of Everywhere, ed. Maggie O'Sullivan, Reality Street, 1996
Infinite Difference, ed. Carrie Etter, Shearsman, 2010
This entry was posted in Reviews on October 18, 2015 by Gareth Prior.
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Close Readings
On the syllabus
Understanding Poetry


text:
Let's Start with the Trees
by Timea Sipos
Budapest, Summer 2016
I'm spending the summer in my hometown, which I've only ever known at an arm's distance. My parents and I lived here until I was six, and while they periodically sent me back to Hungary to spend the summers with relatives, I never visited Budapest for more than a few days at a time.
This is my first real experience here as an adult, and it is unlike anything I could have imagined. I'd of course seen the beautiful architecture, all the spires and churches and museums, and how the Danube snakes through them, splitting the city in two. But I never knew how much life there was here. All the castle-side beer festivals and the maze of ruin bars. When I'm not out at night exploring the town, I'm scouring the bookshelves of the many antiquariums and bookstores looking for a writer to translate.
I've just finished my first year as an MFA student of fiction in Las Vegas. I strongly identify as someone who doesn't "do poetry". As an angsty, melancholic pre-teen, I'd scribble lines of drivel I'd pretend were poetry, but I didn't dare show them to anyone. When I grew into an angsty, melancholic college student, I started writing stories about anonymous sex and what it's like to be a girl with two feet planted in two different cultures. With these, I was accepted to my MFA. I got there, I believe, by leaving poetry behind me, burying it in a box full of middle school love letters and one unopened cherry-flavored condom. And so, when it comes time to fulfill the translation requirement of my program, I know without having to think about it that I want to work with a Hungarian fiction writer. By the end of summer, I've accomplished what I've come here to do, yet I feel far from finished with this city. But summer cannot live on forever. I have to go back to my program. I must wait another year to return.
Returning to this city is like soothing a persistent rash. I relax into the Budapest summer, like into a beach hammock, but I can't pull the fear from my mind that come fall semester, I'll have to take a poetry workshop in Vegas. I'll have to write passable, readable poems so as not to lose face in front of my workshop peers, my friends.
I escape these thoughts by going out into the night, drinking at the ruin bars, dancing at the lesbian parties, and greeting the sun from the Buda Castle as it rises above the Parliament. On my rare nights in, I toss and turn, sweaty and restless, struggling through the books of Hungarian writers I've met at festivals and scrolling through Facebook interchangeably. It's on a night like this that I come across a simple, haunting poem a new Hungarian friend of mine has posted. I become victim to a strange and unusual feeling: I want to translate a poem.
I'm far from believing I have what it takes to do it justice. But I want so desperately to share it with my friends back home. For them to feel just a sliver of what rushed through me just now. I write to my friend to ask who wrote it. "It's Márton Simon, of course," she says. "Don't tell me you don't know him?!" I search his name on Facebook and find that he's friends with all twenty-some Hungarian writers I'm friends with. I've amassed these connections over the summer after introducing myself in my faltering Hungarian to writers at a book festival, then volunteering at a literary booth at a music festival, and then escorting these writer acquaintances on their book launches in the countryside. I ask Márton over Messenger if he'll let me translate the poem. I lead with the fact that I'm not a poet.
Márton is warm and grateful. He happily agrees to let me translate the poem. He asks for my email and sends along his two published collections. I start with the first of the two, Songs from the Mezzanine. In it, I find the poem that brought me to him (or him to me): "3:45 AM," and many stunning poems besides. There are those, like "3:45 AM," which are about love, mainly lost love, then there those about his late mother, and then there are ones that blend the two, that try to reckon the lost mother alongside the lost lover. And they all use simple, unassuming language. Economic and exact images. They capture Budapest in all her varying degrees of hot and cold. They make me, someone with the desert buried deep under her skin, curious about a Budapest winter. And, within a few hours, I experience something that someone who largely consumes fiction rarely tends to: I finish a book in one sitting. The hours have flown by beside my open bay window. The clock reads four AM.
A week later, Márton and I meet in person. When I walk up to him, he holds out his hand for me to shake it, but I automatically kiss him on each cheek. "Sorry," I say, blushing, "having spent time with your poems makes me feel like I already know you." He smiles. I call him Marci, like he's a friend, and he lets me. We go to his local bar. It's so close to his apartment that he can point to his bedroom window from where we sit outside smoking and drinking beer. I pull out my phone and tell him which five or six poems I've decided to translate. He listens patiently, letting me think aloud. "Sure, he says, "whatever you want." I get brave and start wondering what other liberties he might let me get away with. "Question," I say, "how come you titled that one '3:45 AM'?"
He shrugs. "What do you want it to be called?"
"Let's Start with the Trees," I say.
"If you think that sounds better, then let it be that."
In the end, I don't change the title. In fact, just shy of a year later, when I decide I want to translate the whole book, Songs from the Mezzanine eventually becomes Songs for 3:45 AM. Instead, I write a poem with the title I initially suggested, and it's the first poem I submit to my poetry workshop in Vegas a few months later. It goes like this:
The trees, that's good, yes,
let's start with the trees,
how they're always green here,
and how all that greenery,
it really takes it out of you.
Takes it out of me, at least. Yes, me.
I should just speak for myself.
You always did have a problem with that,
how I'd always speak for you.
But since you never had much to say
to begin with, I figured one of us should say something
some time. That's probably why you like the trees
so much, because they can't speak for you.
I agree they look ethereal in the wind.
Nearly all of them, all these trees you know
the names of, names you kept to yourself,
like so many things I could not talk out of you.
In the poem I keep coming back to,
the poet talks about his lover's lap,
how the smell of her lingers on his hand.
It's my favorite line, but not
because it reminds me of you.
You're not on my mind when I read it.
I don't think of how you'd wait for me inside
while I smoked, like she waits for him,
sleeping, tucked in a blanket
he laid over her in the cold.
I don't think about the bottle
balanced on your lap, your palm warm,
waiting for the depression
in the small of my back.
I wish I could say I'm not thinking
of you now, staring at these trees
I wish I knew the names of,
but don't, so I'll call them mine,
just so I can have something to call my own.
This isn't a love poem
like the one I keep coming back to,
you see. There's no love here,
only these trees, all their greenery.
Las Vegas, Fall 2017
As we lose progressively more hours of sunlight, I spend the days piecing together poems from my Budapest experiences and my nights listening to Marci perform his poems. I'm surprised by how much he has out there from his two collections, as well as interviews and slam poetry. Where his written poetry is deeply personal, his slams are irreverent and decidedly political. I've never heard someone tell Orbán and his party to fuck off in so many ways. He becomes who I go to for a laugh or a cry, depending on my mood. But his poetry readings are what I return to most. Some of the readings have live music to accompany them, so it's like listening to my favorite songs over and over again. So much so that I can hear his voice when I sit down at the page, both when I translate his poems and when I write my own. In lieu of my own poetic voice, I latch on to his. I pull it into English. The resistance is minimal. Soon, he falls into the habit of following me everywhere. His voice carries me into bed after I've spent hours with him on the page at night, and it wakes me in the morning, so that later, as I listen to his rooftop reading set to music during my cigarette breaks, it's his Hungarian that strikes me as foreign. That reading, in which "3:45 AM" is the first poem, goes like this.
I'm set to return to Budapest for the break, my first winter in the city since I was a child. I'm nervous about facing the subzero temperatures, but Marci's poems make me excited to discover the city all dressed up for winter. A friend of mine who has some understanding of the depth and breadth of my love for Budapest assures me that my love for the city will transcend my sensitivity to the climate. My mother buys me a bag of winter clothes just in case.
Budapest, Winter 2017-2018
I quickly learn that there are a number of Márton Simon poems one cannot understand until one understands fog. And I have never had a proper introduction to fog. Until now. The bridges swim in it. The rolling hills of Buda are no more than bobbing domes when wrapped up in it. It clogs the narrow streets of Pest I walk at night. I become a woman obsessed, possessed with fog. Here's what Marci has to say about it in his first collection:
Életünk napjai
Anyámra gondolok és tejport eszem,
csönd van, hétvége délelőtt. Te még alszol,
járkálok, az ablak mögött fehér fal, innen nézve ködnek tűnik,
rántottát tervezek, abban jó vagyok, tüzet keresek,
cigarettát – tejport eszem, szeretem a tejport. Ha
olívaolajjal csinálnám, jobb lenne? Mindegy.
Kilépek az erkélyre, üresen iszom a kávét,
rutin az egész, mint a tél. Vár a só, az olaj,
de felnézek és látom, tényleg köd lett a falból,
és mögötte ott áll az erdő a tegnap esti képről, amit
sokáig nézegettél, félbehagyva egy vitát, válasz
helyett szinte – nemigen értettem, látod, csak
álltam mögötted, néztem. Hideg a kő.
Egy eltévedt állat volt a képen, tejszerű, sűrű ködben, és
remélem, ha már az anyámat végleg, majd ezt is
elfelejtem egyszer. De most az van, hogy eljött,
itt áll az erkély előtt az erdő, és a tegnapi kép most készül.
Kávé és kitépett lapok a számban,
mindjárt leég a cigarettám, mindjárt csinálok reggelit,
szeretlek, de ez nem szerelmes vers, ez friss kenyér,
hagyma, olaj, tojás, rend. Ezt már egyszer álmodtam,
de nem, nem emlékszem, mi lesz. Valaki a füledbe súgja,
hogy baj van. Ez a tél. Az üres ízek ideje, a
homályé pontosabban, hogy hol, hol a szívem.
Season of Empty Tastes
I'm eating powdered milk and thinking about my mother.
A quiet, weekend morning, you're still sleeping,
I'm walking around. On the other side of the window,
there's a white wall, from here it looks like fog.
I'm planning scrambled eggs, I'm good at that.
I look for my lighter, cigarettes,
while eating powdered milk—I like powdered milk.
Would it taste better if I used olive oil? It doesn't matter.
I step onto the balcony, drinking my coffee black,
all routine, like winter itself.
The salt, the oil wait for me,
but when I look up, I see that the wall did become fog,
and behind it is the forest from last night's picture,
the one you stared at a long time, cutting our fight short,
practically in place of an answer—
I didn't understand, see, just stood behind you, watched.
The concrete below my feet is cold.
There was a lost animal on the picture, in the milk fog,
and I hope that, like my mother, I'll someday forget this, too. But right now,
the forest is in front of the balcony, last night's picture just developing.
Coffee and ripped pages in my mouth,
my cigarette almost done, I'm about to make breakfast,
I love you, but this isn't a love poem.
This is fresh bread, onions, oil, eggs, order.
I've dreamt this once before, but no,
I don't remember what happens from here. Somebody whispers
in your ear that there's a problem.
This is winter, the season of empty tastes,
of fog, to be precise, of where, where's my heart.
With Marci's American voice deeply implanted in my head, I sit down to re-translate the ten or so poems I have from his first collection. The shape of his melancholy recalls my own. The weight is familiar. Like a bowling ball. Once you pick it up, you never forget how heavy it is. The poems and the act of moving them into a new language keep me company through the long and lonely nights of Christmas and New Year's, until we meet to see just what it is I've done with his words.
The friends I made here last summer are kind enough to invite me into their homes, share their food, and offer me their couches. I'm at one such place when I see on Facebook one night that Marci will be performing in about an hour at a theater within walking distance of me. I don't have time to let him know I'm coming, but I have no qualms about going alone. In the time I've been here, I've attended readings at scores of coffee houses and bar basements, a bunker in the middle of Pest, and an underground library and leather workshop in Buda where the owner-bartender makes a home-cooked meal for all attendees who buy the latest issue of the magazine holding the event. I thought that festival- and residency-hopping in the countryside was cool, but because all the readings in the city were on break in the summer, I had no idea just what kind of literary lives these writers were leading every other season of the year.
I find the theater with some difficulty. I didn't expect it to be so big. I enter a room of roughly five hundred chairs, all filled. Marci's joined on stage by three other poets, one of whom is also a well-known rapper by the name Péter Závada. The next hour and a half are filled with a combination of poems and Q&A. Afterwards, I wait for the line of people getting their books signed by Marci to slowly shuffle out. When I walk up to him, he greets me like he'd been expecting to see me. He introduces me to his friends and family as his English translator, and a warm feeling bubbles up inside me. We've only had one publication so far. He's currently completing a Visegrad residency in Krakow, where he's writing poems for his new collection, what will later become Fox Wedding. He's just come home for this and a few other performances he could fit in. We agree to meet while we're both in town so we can go over some of my translations. I feel like I have no idea what to do with things like line breaks. That I have no business translating poetry, or writing it. No matter how strongly I feel drawn towards it.
This feeling mirrors in many ways how I feel about being in Hungary. I feel an inherent draw to the culture, my culture, the language, my language, the first language I ever spoke, the language I share with my blood, and yet I feel like I can't find my place in either. When I shiver on the street or when I trip up on conjugations, I wince. All of it screams "I don't belong here". But, like a lover far out of my league, I want her, desperately and hopelessly, no matter how often I feel she rejects me. I want to feel at home in this tongue, this city, this genre. I want to belong to Hungarian, to Budapest, to poetry.
Marci and I meet at a quaint café decorated with antiques and spend the next two hours poring over my translations line by line. I ask him to clarify phrases, images. I explain what will be lost in an American context, why a particular image can't be translated or won't have the same impact. Having written the collection over ten years ago, he stands far enough away from it to treat it objectively. Almost objectively. He winces at certain turns of phrase, and we rewrite these together. There are several poems we each decide, for one reason or another, not to include in the English translation. Restless in our seats, we move the session to his apartment. Many hours later—who knows how many?—we've still only made it through about half the poems I've translated.
We meet again a few days later. This time, I come prepared with pogácsa and a bottle of wine. We work late into the night again, the pogácsa, two bottles, and several packs of cigarettes long gone. We feel comfortable enough with each other now to sometimes outright argue the points we feel strongest about. At one frustrating point I tell him, "You know what? All this would be so much easier on me if you were a dead poet. Then I wouldn't have to convince you that I'm right." We burst out laughing. It's nice to feel like I can say anything to him, tease him like a brother, and he'll get that it's a joke.
Many hours pass again, and by the end of the session we're spent, like after a long run in windy weather. Then Marci remembers that I'd wanted to show him my poems. "They were written based on your writing anyway," I'd said back at the theater, "so it's only fitting that you'd look at them." Now though, in the privacy of his living room, I'm suddenly embarrassed to show them to him. He insists. I pull up the document, and as he takes the laptop, he reminds me that English isn't his native language, mirroring my own insecurity. Of course, his uncertainty turns out to be only in his head. Every comment of his is helpful. He shows me where I repeat myself, which of my images are strongest, which are throw-away poems, and which don't need any more work. I'm filled with gratitude.
All out of wine, Marci takes out a bottle of Polish vodka and chocolates to celebrate our hard work. We're showing each other rap artists we like to listen to when he pulls up the friend of his who'd been on stage with him during the interview. I'm astounded by the number of views this rap duo, Akkezdet Phiai, has. It occurs to me then to ask: "Wait, how many followers do you have?" Marci pulls his shoulders up, like he's trying to hide his head. He almost looks embarrassed. I look him up on Instagram: ten thousand followers. The country only has a population of nine million. "Oh my god," I laugh aloud, "I didn't know I was working with a Hungarian celebrity." I think back to my friend's "don't you know who he is?!" I think back to a verse from his second collection, Polaroids, that reads something like Mom, guess what, I'm famous now. It suddenly makes sense.
Las Vegas, Spring 2018
I go back to Vegas with a packet of poems I feel confident enough to show native speakers. I feel confident now that I understand what the poems are in Hungarian and who they want to be in English. I'm still lost when it comes to line breaks, however. My time spent working with Marci's poems and reading other contemporary Hungarian poets showed that Hungarians are more concerned with breaking for the sake of line length than the content of the line itself. "It's not something they give attention to like the American poets," a Hungarian poetry translation teacher of mine will tell me a few years later. My friend and poet Andy S. Nicholson and I meet at Crown & Anchor over Guinness and a basket of fries to discuss my translations. "What the hell are line breaks and how would you explain them to a fiction writer?" I beg. He, much like Marci had just a few months prior, takes me by the hand and guides me. I learn more than just where and how to break lines, something which will inform the rest of my translation and writing of poetry. He shows me how to economize the line, too, where and how to trim the fat so that the poems sing. And, perhaps most important to a young and insecure artist embarking on a new project, he tells me how much he enjoyed reading these translations and encourages me to keep going.
Marci has just won the Péter Horváth Fellowship, the most prestigious honor for a Hungarian writer under the age of 35. He's also been nominated as one of ten finalists of the Libri Literature Prize. This means that I return to Budapest to find his face plastered on billboards all over the city. One night, tipsy and contemplative as I wait for my metro to take me home after a reading, all eight feet of Marci is painted onto the wall before me. He smiles at me, and I back at him, like we're sharing a secret. Then it hits me: I'll never be able to make him as famous in America as he is in Hungary. I feel like I've already failed him.
Las Vegas, Winter 2018
I walk through McCarran Airport and open my eyes, for what feels like the first time, to the billboards of casinos, burlesque shows, and Cirque du Soleil performances to realize that even if I had all the resources to bring Márton Simon to the height of American literary fame, poetry will never be as highly revered in America as it is in Hungary. I learn to forgive myself this.
I move to Budapest. Finally. After all this time! I throw myself into life here. I steep myself in Budapest. In Hungarian literary life. I take all translation opportunities I'm offered so that I'm swimming in work. I take to bed the first poet who shows interest in me. I dive into him, his poetry. Pitch myself into his life. He knows Marci from way back. I tell him about my plans for Songs for 3:45 AM and the rest of Marci's collections, those that exist and those to come. He accuses me of being in love with Marci. I laugh. And even after he's long gone, even months after I've managed to unwind myself from his life, the idea stays with me. What I arrive at is this: translation is, in the best of cases, an act of love. And it should be. Who can think of a more loving act than giving yourself, your words, your artistic voice over to someone else's? Of doing everything in your power in service of someone else's work? It requires the kind of selflessness and sacrifice that is the trademark of the highest manifestation of love.
A dear translator and writer friend of mine, Rachael Daum, visits me from Serbia. We spend the weekend together hiking my favorite hills of Buda during the day, visiting the best dives at night. We set aside a few hours of our Sunday together to workshop a packet of each other's translations. Much like those times with Marci himself, the session turns into something like nine hours, as we move from teahouse to restaurant to bar. Rachael speaks with the same tenderness for her poet as I have when I speak of Marci, and I find the same care in her translations as I bring to mine. She's in love, too. In love with this work, in love with this act of translation, and it shows.
I couldn't possibly bring this same level of compassion to all my translations. Not as a freelancer trying to make rent, anyway. I don't have the emotional reservoir for it. After Rachael leaves, I find myself moving from coffee shop to coffee shop, hoping the change of scenery might bring some much-needed excitement to the work I'm slogging through. I'm looking to escape it when I find myself on Facebook searching events in my area and come across an Underground Slam Poetry Open Mic. I check to see which of my friends are attending. Only one name pops up: Péter Molnár.
I came across Péter's work as a result of Marci sharing his winning slam at the European Slam Championships. What sets Péter apart from most people in the literary scene, most people in general, is that in a former life he was a founding member of Hungary's once liberal but now ultra-right administration, Fidesz. Péter was close friends and college roommates with Viktor Orbán. In his winning slam, Péter addresses Viktor personally: "Viktor, rég látalak, long time no see, you're the prime minister now, I'm a slam poetry champion. We both represent Hungarians. Our community is a bit more democratic than your party. You've got power, too much. We've got words, countless words, and they reach even you. Régóta ismerlek, we go way back. Do you remember what I asked you one night in our dorm room before we went to sleep? 'What'll happen if we manage to build a democracy, but someone takes too much power again?' 'Not a chance,' you said. 'We'll be sure to safeguard our democracy.' 'But what if it happens anyway?' I asked. 'Whoever tries to take too much power for himself will have to contend with me,' you'd said."
Years later, Péter was one of the first to leave Parliament as the party began to veer to the right. He went on to teach human rights and freedom of speech, and eventually turned to slam poetry as a way to speak out against injustices. I met him not long after moving to Budapest after his performance at a literary festival event I attended with Marci and his girlfriend. We spent the night talking politics and poetry, alternating between Hungarian and English.
I reach out to Péter and ask if he's at the event, which has already started. "I'm co-hosting it!" he responds. "You should bring a poem," he adds. I tell him that all my work is in English. He says it won't be a problem. I don't believe him. I take a poem anyway, one of the ones that Marci looked over years ago now, and my name goes in the hat. When I get up on the stage, my whole body is vibrating. My foot pounds the stage as if I were playing drums. I'm afraid this tightly packed crowd of 200+ Hungarians won't understand the poem.
I'm totally wrong. They laugh where they're supposed to, groan where they're supposed, and erupt in such applause at the end that it makes my stomach bubble with joy. I take first place. Afterwards, when Péter congratulates me, he encourages that I start writing in Hungarian. "I think I'll write bilingual poems," I say. A month later, I go up on stage at Anker't with this poem.
A week later, I'm having dinner with Marci and his girlfriend at their place when Marci asks, "Did I see on the Hungarian Slam Poetry page that you won a slam open mic?" I can't help but laugh. Then, we get to work, putting finishing touches on the poems and deciding on which twenty-five we want to keep of the twenty-nine I've translated. We lay out all the printed poems on the floor, pull some out and put some back in, as if we're trading playing cards. Once we agree on the twenty-five, Marci starts shuffling them, feeling his way into the order. I suggest changes and alterations, where I see fit. It's very much a group effort. Even Marci's girlfriend's cat, János, wants to play a hand. Each time a paper is moved, he runs up and pounces, sometimes ripping into them with his claws. When I leave there that night, I clutch the stack of papers with the cat's claw marks to my chest and imagine how decades from now, when Marci will be dead and I will be an old woman, someone from the Petőfi Literary Museum will call me up and tell me they're curating an exhibit in Márton Simon's honor and ask whether I have anything to contribute, and the greatest artifact I'll have to offer will be these cat-clawed pages. A few months later, moving across the city for the third time, the reality of my nomadic life finally outweighs the fantasy: I throw the papers away.
Budapest, Fall 2020
I've been looking for a press to take Songs for 3:45 AM for the last year, but I've been looking especially hard since this past summer, when I announced to Marci over the phone: "Rain or shine, this is happening. I am going to publish this." Still, nothing but rejections. Or silence. Funny, I had thought that publishing a translated poetry chapbook would be more lucrative. Or easier, anyway. Then, on a magical fall day, The Offending Adam Press finds me. And they're looking specifically for a poetry chapbook in translation. I send them the manuscript, and weeks later, I get word that they love it. I cry on the bus heading down Rákoczi Boulevard for what I'm sure will not be the last time.
Meanwhile, I've started writing poems in Hungarian. Ones meant for the page, not the stage, now that the pandemic has effectively shut down the slam poetry scene in Budapest. I don't hear Marci's voice in my head anymore. It's like I've digested him fully. He'll continue to have an impact on my writing in some way, certainly, as all writers whom I've spent this much time with on the page do. But the effect is not so obvious anymore. This is not to say that I've found or established my own poetic voice either. I'm still not as independent in this sense with poetry as I am with fiction, where I have two feet firmly planted, my voice booming from my diaphragm. Rather, I guess you could say I've outgrown Marci and have moved on to other poets with whom I work, namely Kornélia Deres. Here is a taste of her:
Ballaszt
Egy kádban ébredek aznap éjjel.
Hátam mögött egy férfi, a víz felett
megtart. Ismerős a nappali világból,
de nem túlságosan. Elvétjük egymást.
Miért merek most
nekidőlni, milyen húrokat
penget az arctalan?
Előre figyelek. Mert egy másik épp víz alá csúszik.
Minden erőmmel fogom, de csak nem változik
csecsemővé. Meg kéne menteni ezt a pompás testet.
Foglak, egyetlen. Még meddig is?
A fiúkra jobban kell vigyázni. Gyöngék. Merülősek.
Kifogásokból diplomáztunk. De akárhonnan nézem,
ez egy kétemberes kád. Foglald el végre a helyed.
Arról már nem is beszélek, hogy így a kezed is
végig
a rossz irányból érzem.
I wake in a bathtub that night.
Behind my back is a man, holding me
above water. He's familiar from my daily life,
but not that much. We always just miss each other.
Why do I allow myself
to lean against him now,
what tunes does this faceless man play?
I face forward, because another is slipping underwater.
I hold him with all my strength, but he won't turn
into an infant. This splendid body should be saved.
I'm holding you, one and only. But for how long?
Boys need to be watched over more closely. They're weak. Sinking types.
We majored in excuses. But either way I look at it,
this is a two-person tub. Take your place, finally.
That's not even to speak of how, this way,
I feel your hand
from the wrong direction.
This habit of holding another poet's hand as a way of guiding me through a poem, as a child learning to walk grips her mother's strong fingers, feels especially necessary given that I'm writing in Hungarian. These poets are the hand leading me through the dark tunnel. As Hungarian is a language that was largely embedded in my mind as a child, I use it by instinct. I feel my way through that tunnel, and they redirect me when needed. It might always be this way as long as I write in Hungarian. It might always be this way as long as I write poetry, in fact. I've grown to accept this, as I've grown to accept that I won't ever speak my mother tongue the way I would had my parents decided to remain in Budapest all those years ago. These identities, poet and Hungarian, both bridge the other half of me, fiction writer and American. I'm learning, day by day, to embrace them all.
"3:45 AM" is forthcoming in the next issue of Trafika Europe
"Életünk napjai" appears in Dalok a magasföldszintről
Songs for 3:45 AM is forthcoming with The Offending Adam Press in spring of 2021
"Season of Empty Tastes" first appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation's issue called In a Winter City: Focus on Hungary and Ted Hughes
"Ballaszt" was published in Tempevölgy
"Ballast" appears in issue 54.3 of Denver Quarterly
Timea Sipos is a Hungarian-American writer, poet, and translator with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Juked, and elsewhere. Her translations appear in The Washington Square Review, The Offing, Asymptote, Two Lines, among others. She has received support from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and elsewhere. Learn more about the online translation workshops she offers at timea-sipos.com.
Essay, Hungarian, Hungary, Kornélia Deres, Márton Simon, Poetry, The Offending Adam
Katabatic Unearthings
Unknowing Translation


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Episode T13 - Eunus
Synopsis: A Syrian man from Apamea, enslaved on the island of Sicily, renames himself King Antiochus and launches the first large-scale slave rebellion against the Roman Republic.
"The Sicilians, through the enjoyment of a long peace, grew very rich, and brought up an abundance of slaves; who being driven in droves like so many herds of cattle from the different places where they were bred and brought up, were branded with certain marks burned on their bodies….their masters were very strict and severe with them, and took no care to provide either necessary food or clothing for them, so that most of them were forced to rob and steal to get these necessities; so that all places were full of slaughters and murders." - Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library, Book 34
"Then they made Eunus king, not for his valor or skill in warfare, but on account of his extraordinary tricks, and because he was made the leader and author of the defection…At length, putting a diadem upon his head and graced…
Episode T12 - Sar Matati
Synopsis: After Mithridates is struck down by an illness, his son Phraates II defends Parthian gains against the army of Antiochus VII. Forced to retreat to Hyrcania, Phraates sets events in motion that result in the deaths of both kings.
"On Antiochus (VII)'s approach, many eastern princes came to meet him, surrendering their persons and their thrones, with curses of the arrogance of the Parthians. The first encounter took place forthwith. Victorious in three battles, Antiochus seized Babylon and began to be dubbed 'the Great.' Thus, as all the peoples were defecting to him, the Parthians were left with nothing but the lands of their fathers." – Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, Book 38
"When word of (a revolt) came to Antiochus (VII), he advanced with the contingent which was wintering with him in order to assist those who were closest at hand, only to meet while on the march the king of the Parthians, against whom he put up a braver fight than did his f…
Episode T11 - Euergetes
Synopsis: Ongoing strife in Anatolia and Egypt allows Antiochus VII to campaign east against the Parthians. His early successes inspire hopes of a resurgent Seleucid Empire, hopes shattered by his unexpected death.
"In Asia, Attalos III as soon as he came to the throne began to manage affairs in a way quite different from all the former kings; for they, by their clemency and kindness to their subjects, reigned prosperously and happily themselves and were a blessing to the kingdom; but this prince being of a cruel and bloody disposition oppressed his subjects with many slaughters and grievous calamities." - Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library, Book 35
"Ptolemy Physcon, when he saw that his sister Cleopatra (II) was so great an enemy to him, and could not revenge himself otherwise upon her, contrived a most abominable piece of villainy for that purpose. For, imitating the cruelty of Medeia, he murdered her son, begotten by himself, in Cyprus; the son was called Memphites, and was s…
Episode S1 - Alexander in Bactria
"I am engaged in a land of a leonine and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel confronting my soldiers. You have brought only one Alexander into the world, but every mother in this land has brought an Alexander into the world." – Alexander the Great, in a letter written to his mother Olympias from Bactria
Synopsis: Five years of campaigning brought Alexander the Great to the doorstep of Bactria, but he'd spend much of the next three years - arguably the most difficult of his life - trying to control the region. In this first episode of an occasional series called "The Ancient World – Spotlight" I'm joined by historian and author Tristan Hughes to discuss the uprising of the Sogdian warlord Spitamenes, quite possibly Alexander's greatest foe, and the later revolts of Hellenic troops upon news of Alexander's death.
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_S1_Alexander_in_Bactria.mp3
Battles of the Ancients website ww…
Episode T10 - Sidetes
Synopsis: Cleopatra Thea marries Demetrius II's brother, Antiochus VII, becoming the simultaneous queen of two Seleucid kings. While Antiochus crushes Tryphon's revolt and recovers former Seleucid territories, Demetrius is defeated by Mithridates and imprisoned in distant Hyrcania.
"But as Antiochus, the brother of Demetrius (II) who was called Soter, was not admitted by any of the cities on account of Tryphon, Cleopatra sent to him, and invited him to marry her, and to take the kingdom. The reasons why she made this invitation were these: That her friends persuaded her to it, and that she was afraid for herself, in case some of the people of Seleucia (Pieria) should deliver up the city to Tryphon. As Antiochus was now come to Seleucia, and his forces increased every day, he marched to fight Tryphon; and having beaten him in battle, he ejected him out of Upper Syria into Phoenicia, and pursued him thither, and besieged him in Dora which was a fortress hard to be taken, whither he had …
Episode T9 - Tryphon
Synopsis: The Seleucid rebel Diodotus Tryphon uses Thea and Alexander Balas' young son, Antiochus VI, to capture most of Syria.Though paralyzed at home, Demetrius II embarks on a bold plan to challenge the conquests of Mithridates.
"Now there was a certain commander…whose name was Diodotus, who was also called Tryphon, who took notice of the ill-will the soldiers bore toward Demetrius, and went to (Iamblichus) the Arabian, who brought up Antiochus, the son of Alexander…and persuaded him to give him Antiochus, because he would make him king." – Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIII, Chapter 5
"And so cities in all districts rebelled against (Demetrius') rule; and to remove the stigma of indolence he decided to attack the Parthians." – Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, 36.1.7
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T9_Tryphon.mp3
Map of Syria c. 200 BC (courtesy of www.timemaps.com)
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Syria-200bc.png
Episode T8 - The City
Synopsis: The rediscovery of Ai Khanoum testified to the wealth and power of the Bactrian Kingdom.Mithridates' conquest of Babylonia is countered by an unlikely coalition.
"The cities of Bactria were Bactra, which they also call Zariaspa and through which flows a river of the same name that empties into the Oxus, plus the city of Darapsa, and others more. Among these was a city called Eucratideia, named after its ruler… (The Greeks) also controlled Sogdiana, which lies above and to the east of Bactria between the Oxus River – demarcating Bactrians from Sogdians – and the Jaxartes River, likewise separating the Sogdians from the nomads." – Strabo, Geography, 11.11.2
"These wise sayings of earlier men, the words of well-known men, are enshrined in the holy Pytho.There Clearchus copied them faithfully, and set them up here in the sanctuary of Kineas, blazing from afar.
As a child, be well-behaved.
As a youth, be self-controlled.
As an adult, be just.
As an elder, be wise.
As one dying, be witho…
Episode T7 - Blazing From Afar
Synopsis: On the eastern frontiers of the Seleucid Empire, Parthia, Bactria and the Indo-Greeks struggle for regional supremacy.The stalemate in Syria and murder of Eucratides advance the fortunes of Mithridates.
"At about the same time that Mithridates was beginning his rule in Parthia, Eucratides was beginning his in Bactria, both of them great men.But the fortunes of the Parthians prevailed, carrying them to the zenith of their power under this king." – Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, 41.6
"The Yavanas (Greeks) will command, the Kings will disappear. But ultimately the Yavanas, intoxicated with fighting, will not stay in Madhadesa (the Middle Country); there will be undoubtedly a civil war among them, arising in their own country (Bactria), there will be a terrible and ferocious war." – Gargi-Samhita, Yuga Purana, Chapter 7 http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T7_Blazing_From_Afar.mp3
I'm Very Excited
For a bunch of great reasons!First and foremost, I've just finished drafting Episode T10, which means I have four new episodes ready to produce.Finishing Episode T10 also gave me another piece of happy news, which is that I now believe I can reasonably estimate how long "The Ancient World – Thea" will run.At the moment, it's looking like four additional episodes (i.e., through Episode T14) will complete the story of Cleopatra Thea and also give some additional space for a quick synopsis taking us up through either Pompey's conquest or possibly even a bit farther (no spoilers!) But since I have a horrible track record estimating these things I'm giving myself some extra latitude, so we'll say that "The Ancient World – Thea" will wrap somewhere between Episodes T14 and T16.
Either way, I've decided for the moment to stop drafting new episodes and move into production mode, which means you'll be seeing Episode T7 appear over the next few weeks.I'm not giving a hard date quite yet (it depe…
Now that we're 6 episodes in, I wanted to give you an update on the new series and my plans for 2019.I'm planning to break "The Ancient World – Thea" into 6-episode "seasons" with breaks in between.Which is another way of saying that I'm going back on break for a while. You can expect the second season sometime this Summer and a third season before the end of the year.I don't really have a feeling yet for how long this series'll run – it might wrap in the third season or might take a fourth.I'm notoriously bad at predicting that kind of thing.
During the break I'm planning to dig into a few side-projects. So, for example, if anyone out there has experience in ancient-history-themed childrens' books hit me up on social media.Otherwise if you'd like to help out the show here's my humble ask: Find one friend who's into history and tell them about The Ancient World.Maybe even point them toward the first 6 episodes of "Thea" as a low-commitment introduction. If each of you could turn just o…
Episode T6 - Philometor
Synopsis: With Syria beset by regional enemies, three kings face off at the Battle of the Oenoparos River.The lone survivor, King Demetrius II, inaugurates his reign with the violent destruction of Antioch.
"And the king of Egypt gathered together a great host, like the sand that lieth upon the sea shore, and many ships, and went about through deceit to get Alexander's kingdom, and join it to his own…Wherefore he took his daughter from him, and gave her to Demetrius, and forsook Alexander, so that their hatred was openly known. Then Ptolemy entered into Antioch, where he set two crowns upon his head, the crown of Asia, and of Egypt." – 1 Maccabees, Chapter 11
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T6_Philometor.mp3
Episode T5 - Balas
Synopsis: Demetrius struggles to preserve his throne but ends up falling in battle.Alexander Balas begins his reign by marrying Ptolemy's daughter, Cleopatra Thea.While the sons of Demetrius remain a threat, the couple are also forced to confront the growing menace of Parthia.
"Then gathered king Alexander great forces, and camped over against Demetrius.And after the two kings had joined battle, Demetrius' host fled: but Alexander followed after him, and prevailed against them.And he continued the battle very sore until the sun went down: and that day was Demetrius slain." – 1 Maccabees
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T5_Balas.mp3
Episode T4 - Soter
Synopsis: Demetrius seizes the Syrian throne and stems immediate threats from Media and Judaea.But deposed officials and regional rulers conspire to engineer his downfall.
"When it became known that the Romans were ill disposed towards Demetrius, not only the other kings but even some of the satraps subject to him regarded his kingship with scant respect. Of these satraps the most outstanding was a certain Timarchus…By launching many accusations against Demetrius (he) persuaded the senate to enact (a decree making him king).Emboldened by this decree he raised an army of considerable size in Media; he also entered into alliance against Demetrius with Artaxias, the king of Armenia." – Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, Book XXXI
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T4_Soter.mp3
Episode T3 - Thea
Synopsis: Lysias attempts to exercise control through the young King Antiochus V, but a deadly incident with a Roman delegation gives hope to the captive Demetrius.Ptolemy Physcon challenges his brother Ptolemy VI for control of Egypt and Cyprus.
"They then went on board, and the pilot weighed anchor and started just as the day was breaking, having absolutely no idea of the real state of the case, but believing that he was conveying some soldiers from Menyllus to Ptolemy…It was not until the fourth day after his start that, Demetrius being looked for in vain, the truth was suspected.On the fifth the Senate was hastily summoned to consider the matter, when Demetrius had already cleared the Straits of Messina.The Senate gave up all idea of pursuit." – Polybius, The Histories, Book XXXI
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T3_Thea.mp3
Episode T2 - Megas
Synopsis: Antiochus the Great restores Seleucid fortunes, but his son Antiochus IV sews the seeds of the Empire's destruction.
"On (Antiochus IV), after reading the dispatch, saying that he desired to consult with his friends on the situation, Popilius did a thing which was looked upon as exceedingly overbearing and insolent. Happening to have a vine stick in his hand, he drew a circle round Antiochus with it, and ordered him to give his answer to the letter before he stepped out of that circumference." – Polybius, the Histories, Book XXIX
http://s407341505.onlinehome.us/Episode_T2_Megas.mp3


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Q: Azure .NET 4.5 support OK, I can't find a definitive answer on this online so I thought I'd ask the community on this one.
.NET 4.5 has gone RTM last week and were looking at upgrading our products to use it. Before we make this leap, I first need to check if this will impact any Azure deployments with our product (ASP.NET MVC stuff)
Does the latest production version of the Azure platform support .NET 4.5 in its web and worker roles yet?
I'm aware that the RC of the framework could be installed using a startup power shell script during the VM/role warm up but I don't want this burden on my application, I'm just looking to know of its safe to go live with .NET 4.5 and MVC 4 etc... in Azure's current state?

A: Microsoft announced today that Azure will now support .NET 4.5.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/azure-mobile-services-now-supports-windows-phone-8-announces-azure-store/

A: Even after downloading and installing the October 2012 updates (through the WebPI link on the page) that @Bart listed above, you may still have to delete your Azure Project and remake it-- that was the only thing that removed the "Windows Azure Cloud Service projects currently support roles that run on .NET Framework version 3.5 and 4. Please set the Target Framework property in the project settings for project" error for me.
Even when i changed the osFamily to "3" the error continued until i blew the Azure proj away.
I didnt get to try this as a fix, but i wonder if setting the schemaVersion in the .cscfg to  schemaVersion="2012-10.1.8" would've negated my need to blow it away.

A: The Azure SDK v1.8 (October 2012) is out for download:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35448
Supports: .NET 4.5, Windows Server 2012 and IIS 8.0:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff683673.aspx#BK_October2012
To use Windows Server 2012 which supports .NET 4.5, change osFamily="2" to osFamily="3" in your Azure role .cscfg file.
Edit: I updated my two sites last night to Windows Server 2012/.NET 4.5 and they work like a champ.  So, this is all the RTM/stable code just waiting for the announcement (maybe BUILD 2012?).  If you are using Windows Server 2012, you need to enable .NET 3.5 features for backward compatibility with .NET 2.0-.NET 3.5 apps/modules.
Edit2: Azure 4.5 support was announced yesterday at the BUILD 2012 conference :)  http://channel9.msdn.com

A: If you need to user .Net 4.5 on Azure, please go to the Azure UserVoice site and vote for it: http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34192-windows-azure-feature-voting/suggestions/2598170-iis8-and-asp-net-4-5-support-in-azure-platform

A: For Windows Azure Cloud Services (PaaS) the Windows Azure SDK supports only .net 4.0 yet. As .net 4.5 is just RTM, it will take some time for the Windows Azure SDK to support .net 4.5 however there is not timeline discussed anywhere and if there will be any info on this regard, it will be communication to Windows Azure website.
If your application must have .net 4.5, you can use Windows Azure Virtual Machine with Windows OS and install .net 4.5 and build/deploy/run MVC4 application as you choose.

A: Windows Azure Web Sites are apparently adding support for .Net 4.5 within a preview.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazurewebsitespreview/thread/3fab0f32-23c9-4122-9ece-8c3edbadde47

A: Microsoft just announced today that .NET 4.5 support is coming very soon for Azure and sent out upgrade guides for existing apps.
Seems the concern was that some of the .NET 4.0 changes and bug fixes that are rolled in .NET 4.5 can adversely affect existing web applications.  The e-mail implied that the upgrade was rolling out this weekend and asked people to upgrade to .NET 4.5 in Visual Studio 2012.

A: According to Scott Guthrie, as of October 25th, .NET 4.5 is supported on Windows Azure Web Sites
Windows Azure Cloud Services (Web and Worker Roles) will be supported "in the next few days" (presumably by the end of October 2012).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Shooting Down the ATF
Dealers get reprieve -- for now -- from proposed reporting requirement.
A last-minute maneuvers by Oklahoma Democrat, U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, has foiled the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' attempt to demand gun dealers in four Southwestern states report sales involving multiple semi-automatic rifles.
Boren's attached an amendment blocking the ATF's proposed reporting requirement to a bill to fund the government for the remainder of the current fiscal year. The bill -- with Boren's amendment -- passed by a vote of 277-149 on Feb. 18.
Boren said his amendment prevents the ATF from circumventing the will of Congress, and said the reporting requirement is unfair and unnecessary.
"It's critical to remember that with or without this program, ATF already has full access to records of every firearm," he said.
The reporting requirement would be triggered if a dealer sells, within five consecutive business days, two or more semiautomatic rifles greater than .22 caliber with detachable magazines. It would not prevent the sale of these types of weapons, nor prohibit bulk sales.
It would apply only to Border States California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas but, Boren said, the notice published in the Federal Register did not mention such a limitation.
He said the agency is likely to re-submit a similar proposal that would cover many of the most popular rifles owned by millions of Americans sometime soon.
Meanwhile, President Barak Obama's nominee to head the ATF, Andrew Traver, continues to be reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Traver, 47, has led the ATF in Illinois since 2004. He was nominated by Obama in November to head the federal agency. The National Rifle Association, which says Traver is "hostile to the Second Amendment," has urged Obama to withdraw the nomination.
Traver "has been deeply aligned with gun-control advocates and anti-gun activities," said NRA spokesman Chris Cox.
- Once again, the gun lobby escapes common-sense regulation;
- Boren secures amendment on gun sale reports;
- [House budget bill blocks ATF request for emergency anti-gun trafficking authority](http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/145283-house-budget-bill- blocks-atf-request-for-emergency-anti-gun-trafficking-authority);
- [ATF's New Proposed Gun Regulations for Border States Under Fire](http://www.suite101.com/content/atfs-new-proposed-gun-regulations-for-border- states-under-fire-a332931#ixzz1EuVhMfEc);
- [White House rejects ATF proposal for reporting of long-gun sales](http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_ee117cea-3405-11e0-8a44- 0017a4a78c22.html);
- [White House Says No to ATF's Emergency AK-47 Regulation Proposal](http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/02/10/white-house-says-emergency-ak- regulation-sought-benefit-mexico/#ixzz1EuW77IVo);
- [Traver material reveals anti-gun positions and troubling allies](http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/traver-material-reveals-anti-gun- positions-and-troubling-allies#ixzz1Eu79Aaa0);
- [Senate Judiciary Committee Posts Material On Andrew Traver](http://onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com/2011/02/senate-judiciary-committee- posts.html);
- NRA keeps up opposition to nominee to head ATF;
- [Nominee to lead ATF encounters resistance from NRA](http://www.joplinglobe.com/national/x740791920/Nominee-to-lead-ATF-encounters- resistance-from-NRA);


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Anti-Semitic images in a campaign mailer
by: Mark Davis
Posted: Oct 30, 2018 / 05:52 PM EDT / Updated: Oct 31, 2018 / 06:22 PM EDT
The Republican candidate in the 9th State Senate District is apologizing for a mailer that many people on both sides of the aisle found offensive.
The mailer from the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Ed Charamut arrived in mailboxes just
days after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. It includes an altered image of Democratic State Senate candidate Matt Lesser grinning and holding several hundred dollar bills.
(Photo: Mark Davis / WTNH)
Lesser, who's running for the State Senate seat that includes Rocky Hill, Cromwell, Newington and parts of Middletown and Wethersfield, was joined by leaders of multiple faiths Wednesday who condemned the mailer as targeting a Jewish candidate with anti-Semitic imagery.
"His mailer played on deeply disturbing images of anti-Semitism that have attacked the Jewish people for hundreds of years," said Lesser.
Matt Lesser (D) for State Senate District 9 pic.twitter.com/cIzLtyb9np— Mark Davis (@markdavisWTNH) October 31, 2018
Steve Ginsburg of the Anti Defamation League noted that the ADL traditionally does not speak
out in favor or against candidates. He added, "But in this situation, with the juxtaposition of money and a Jewish candidate in this mailer, that suggests an age-old anti-Semitic trope and so we had real concerns about it."
Ginsburg pic.twitter.com/hPtRuLMunc— Mark Davis (@markdavisWTNH) October 31, 2018
After originally defending the mailer, Charamut is now apologizing. He declined an on camera interview,
issuing a statement via e-mail, saying, in part;
"…it was never our intention for the mailer to be anything more than a reflection of Mr. Lesser's policy record. However, it is clear now that the imagery could be interpreted as anti-Semitic, and for that we deeply apologize."
After initially dismissing the criticism of the mailer, State Republican Party Chairman J.R. Romano has now said the mailer cannot be justified and should be recognized as offensive.
Weather / 38 mins ago


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Posted inGovernment, Public Health, Public Money
Where Were the Watchdogs in the Health Department Crisis?
by Paul Monies December 10, 2017 October 28, 2019
Updated Dec. 12
The cash crisis at the Oklahoma State Department of Health, which was years in the making, raises questions about which agencies and state officials could have caught the agency's reported financial mismanagement.
At first glance, state government appears to have the powers and expertise to detect financial irregularities occurring at the health department from 2011 to 2017.
The State Auditor and Inspector's Office does operational audits, performance audits and investigative audits on state agencies, cities, boards, councils and commissions. Many are aggressive and detailed.
The Office of Management and Enterprise Services, the state's finance office, employs budget analysts and a state comptroller who monitors "the state financial processes and systems to improve controls, compliance, reporting and efficiencies." It also authorizes transfers of cash by agencies, which must fill out forms and justify the actions. (Cash transfers involving federal funds are at issue in the investigation.)
The State Board of Health's finance committee oversees the department's budget decisions. It also has an Office of Accountability Systems that coordinates audits and investigations of complaints about breaches of "laws, rules, regulations, mismanagement, gross waste of funds" and more.
As it turns out, none of those entities caught or exposed mismanagement at the health department. None of their leaders have taken any blame, although the health board voted Tuesday to fire the director of the Office of Accountability Systems.
But the scandal could lead to changes in the oversight of financial practices at state agencies. Preston Doerflinger, who until recently headed OMES, said last month he believes there is "a need for a different level of visibility into agencies that receive federal funds."
The health department and OMES are under pressure from legislative leaders to disclose what went wrong and what should be fixed. The Legislature approved $30 million in additional funds to cover a budget gap resulting from the scandal. On Monday, legislators questioned three officials about the issues, including Doerflinger.
Here's how the oversight functions of several agencies relate to the financial mismanagement at the Health Department.
The Health Department found itself as much as $30 million short by late summer and tried to make up the difference by canceling contracts, getting money back from another agency and billing consolidated city-county health departments in Oklahoma City.
> Most of the department's top leadership resigned or were forced out in the wake of the crisis. Multiple investigations and audits are underway to search for answers.
> On Friday, the health department said it would eliminate 198 jobs by March, or almost 10 percent of the agency's work force. Among those, 37 were eliminated immediately, and the other 161 will come from reductions in classified positions under the state's merit protection system.
>Severance payments from the reductions will be paid out of a $30 million supplemental appropriation the Legislature made in November. That money was also used to meet payroll, close out accounts from prior budget years and pay back internal funds.
State Finance Agency
OMES collects budget information and monitors agency financial transactions. State law gives the finance office authority to stop transfers of money within an agency or cash transfers from agency accounts if they don't meet certain requirements.
Doerflinger has said the health department overextended its budgets and used restricted state and federal funds from other programs to make up shortfalls.
"The budgets that were presented to us were balanced budgets," he said in early November. "Monies were being moved from various funds – and in some cases, restricted funds – to be utilized for operations."
Doerflinger hasn't commented further or provided more details. Oklahoma Watch has made open-records requests for emails and other health-department documents, but none have been provided.
Doerflinger said the finance office was limited in tracking health-department funds because most of the agency's money came from federal programs. Federal funds often have specific, legally required uses and often are passed along to final recipients, although agencies may collect an administrative fee.
The health department had a total budget last year of $403 million; about $55 million of came from state appropriation. The issue was compounded by dual financial systems, with an antiquated internal financial system at the health department needing to be reconciled with the state's central accounting system.
In referring to the need for more "visibility," Doerflinger added, "That is another conversation we'll be having with the Legislature, with statute changes to allow someone within state government to have that heightened level of visibility into those agencies that receive various pots of money from different sources."
Agencies have to notify OMES if they want to move cash from their accounts to other agencies and if they deviate from their fiscal-year budget plans. The agency has budget analysts assigned by cabinet, so the same budget analyst responsible for the health department also gets financial information from the Department of Human Services, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and others.
Among the financial issues raised about the department were "borrows" against other state funds and federal funds, including those for various HIV/AIDS programs.
Agencies must seek permission from OMES to transfer money from one major budget category to another, said OMES spokeswoman Shelley Zumwalt. For example, the health department received rebate money from baby-formula manufacturers for their participation in the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. That rebate money would have to be moved from one fund category to another at the department.
Because the health department had its own financial system, OMES was limited in what it could examine in the way of internal transfers of non-state–appropriated money, such as federal funds, grants or fees, Zumwalt said. In effect, she said, OMES could track money related to the department's appropriation but relied on its internal financial statements for all other funding sources and transactions. The department has hundreds of internal accounts.
However, if the health department was moving money among federal and state accounts, including risking its ability to make payroll, it's unclear why that wouldn't have appeared in the transactions that OMES tracks.
State Auditor
Under state law, the state auditor has to be invited to perform a special investigative audit or a performance audit, which examines how well an agency is managing programs. Audits can be requested by an agency, the governor, the attorney general or citizen petition. House and Senate leaders also can jointly ask for audits.
It's been at least a decade since an agency-wide audit of the health department was conducted, according to the state auditor's website. Some federal programs run by the health department are audited, however, and financial-statement audits are done for county health departments run by the state health department.
"We audit the federal programs if they meet a particular threshold or if they need to be done as part of federal standards," State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones told Oklahoma Watch. "…If something is brought to our attention that is a fraud issue or a potential fraud issue or misstatement of finances, then we'll look at that. That's basically what happened on the health department. We were there on a federal program and they came to us and said, 'We've got other problems.' We notified OMES and said, 'There's a problem here. These folks may not be able to make payroll.'"
Previous leaders at the health department requested a special audit from Jones at the end of September. In November, that special audit was later reclassified as an investigative audit by Attorney General Mike Hunter. Doerflinger also plans to ask Jones' office to do a risk assessment of the department after the investigative audit is finished.
Jones' office expects to finish the audit by February, when the Legislature convenes its regular session, said Trey Davis, spokesman for the state auditor.
Separately, Jones' office does an annual "single audit" report, which covers all state agencies spending federal funds above a certain threshold. The threshold for major programs is about $21 million a year. Such programs are audited on a three-year, rotating schedule unless chronic problems have been discovered. Federal programs below the threshold are mostly audited by independent auditors.
At the health department, the single audit covers the WIC nutrition program – with pass-through money totaling $80 million per year – and some immunization programs at the agency.
In recent single audits, the health department was criticized for being months behind in reconciling the internal records of WIC funds. The 2016 audit found it hadn't properly recorded cash expenses related to immunization programs; the delays led to a missed dealing for filing an annual federal report. The agency said it would fix the problem by June.
"Those are issues that really could cause a problem if you're trying to keep track of how much money you have and where it's at," Jones said.
State Board of Health
The nine-member board is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, with each member serving nine-year terms. Eight board members are from different regions of the state, and one board member is at large.
The board has committees to monitor public health policy, finances and accountability, and ethics and audits.
In 2002, lawmakers set up the Office of Accountability Systems at the health department in the wake of a "ghost employee" scandal and a nursing home inspection bribery case involving a former acting health commissioner.
The Office of Accountability Systems reports directly to the Board of Health and investigates whistleblower complaints from agency employees, customers or members of the public.
By law, the Office of Accountability Systems keeps confidential "all actions and records relating to OAS complaints." The health board goes into executive session at its regular meetings to hear matters investigated by the office.
The office was headed by the health department's internal auditor, Jay Holland, who also reported to former Health Commissioner Terry Cline, who resigned in October. That dual line of reporting has raised questions over how whistleblower complaints are handled.
The board of health voted Tuesday to fire Holland, more than a month after he was placed on administrative leave.
In a statement at Tuesday's meeting, board chair Martha Burger said Holland's firing was necessary to restore confidence in the office and ensure that employees could file complaints and share their concerns without fear of retaliation.
The board has not responded to interview requests and left the meeting without taking questions from the media.
"The best I can tell you as to the delineation of duties between OAS and the internal auditor positions occupied by Mr. Holland is that those issues are something that the current leadership is looking into," health department spokesman Tony Sellars said in an email Friday.
Earlier this year, the board clarified the responsibilities of the Office of Accountability Systems to align separate board and departmental policies dealing with how it handles complaints. It's unclear when the board was first alerted to the financial problems at the health department.
Although not part of the auditing process, the Legislature approved health-department budgets every year since the cash transfers at issue began in 2011.
The House appropriations committee typically holds hearings at which they question agency leaders about overall spending and revenue. But lawmakers rarely dig into specific spending on programs.
Scrutiny may increase to a degree.
Earlier this year, the Legislature formed the Agency Performance and Accountability Commission, which held its first meeting on Thursday. The 10-member commission is charged with bringing a private-sector perspective to state agencies and can contract with the state auditor or outside auditors to do performance audits of the 20 largest appropriated agencies at least once every four years. It can issue recommendations to agencies and the Legislature.
"In general, the purpose of this commission is for all of us collectively to bring our private-sector experience to the table to assist in the process of getting state agencies more efficient," said Tulsa businessman Bob Sullivan, the commission's chairman. "This is key: It's a performance audit. It's not a financial audit. It's not a forensic audit."
Tagged: legislature, Oklahoma State Department of Health, public health


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Did you know Google finally figured out a solution for people who keep sending photos in emails
Have you ever received photos in your emails and the manual work following that seems excruciating? Google has a solution for you.
Google creates some of its apps to work in harmony to give you a much better experience. An example of such would be Gmail and Google drive, as Gmail lets you directly access your drive. To add to the list of conjunctions, Google has now decided to incorporate several links between Google photos and Gmail as well. Well, after the recent bomb regarding the closure of unlimited storage of Google Photos, this was quite delightful news.
What Google has in stock for you this time is that you can now save pictures to both the applications - Google photos as well as Google drive. However, the outcome of the service isn't as thoroughgoing as expected, which did not surprise us at all. As with all tech applications, the subject in question has its ups and downs but what we're all curious about is whether those pros will manage to outweigh the cons.
Now, you can easily move pictures from Gmail to Google photos without any complexities as you have been doing for a while with Google drive. The only prime necessity is having access to this feature and once you do, it is indeed a piece of cake!
If you're saving the thumbnail directly from the email, just hover above it and you'll be presented with a Photos icon accompanying the Drive feature. Simply save and Viola! Google also kept the full-screen option the same as before as the option to save to Photos is right on the top alongside the Drive icon on the overflow menu.
The reason behind giving access to Photos when you already have the Drive feature, as Google indicates, is because many people do not have access to drive. Even if they do, they find it a hassle to then save pictures from there for further use. This resulted in a few discontent murmurs and Google just had to fix even the slightest concerns. As a result, this feature was created and indeed people are hushed and happy.
Now that we've discussed all the good, here's a little bad too that prevents the feature from being considered 'perfect'. Firstly, the feature only serves Desktop users for now and there's no telling if we'll get to bless our mobiles with it as well. This was evident through their recent post confirming the availability of this feature. The second feature that caused many disgruntled mutters is that the feature does not support all kinds of formats. As you guessed, only JPEG files are supported to date.
For mobile users, it's quite saddening to inform you that you would still have to take the manual route until there's any further news which we hope will be soon.
Google indeed played up with this one and users are more than happy. The feature is going to be implemented starting today and has a roll-out of 15 days which seems like a long time since we can't wait to try it out.