text:
Textiles and Tapestries...
Abstract and Acknowledgements...
I. Exploring Weavings of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices through Self-Study Research...
II. Inspiring New Methods, Frameworks, and Collaborations through Self-Study Research ...
III. Forming New Understandings from Self-Study Research...
CoverAbstract and AcknowledgementsIntroductionI. Exploring Weavings of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices through Self-Study ResearchTapestries of TeachingStrengthening the Fabric, Untangling the KnotsWeaving the Personal and Professional Threads of My Communication Pedagogy to Envision New Ways of Thinking and KnowingStriving to Sustain OurselvesKnit 1, Purl 1A Journey Toward Course Assessment as a Relational Practice in Mathematics MethodsPraxis, Pedagogy, and the Life of Being Exploring New Ways of Knowing as Ex-AdministratorsA Self-Study of Aligning Pedagogy with Technology in Online Course DesignSelf-Study and the ApparatusSuper Model...You Better Work Navigating Stranger ThingsVisibility in Virtual SpaceReflecting on Supporting the Development of Reflexivity in Pre-Service TeachersWeaving the Tapestry of my Academic Identity in Three PanelsExploring the Power of Metaphors to Build the Boat through Self-StudyS-STEP in Comparative and International EducationShared Learning, Different ContextsExploring IntersectionalityAn Ethic of Care and Shifting Self-Study ResearchThe Legacy of a MurderRe-connecting to the Classroom Teacher Within UsPulling at Loose ThreadsLooking Back, Looking Forward Identity Theft on the Way to an Administrative RoleRetrospective Self-StudyII. Inspiring New Methods, Frameworks, and Collaborations through Self-Study Research Envisioning Writing as a Way of Knowing in Self-StudyEnvisaging New Ways of Knowing for Social ChangeCritical CollaborationTriggered by the Kavanaugh HearingsPedagogical TapestriesWeaving Self-Studies through Journaling"We're Completely the Same Kind of Lunatic"Serving Metropolis"Well, It's Also about Me and My History"Narrative Metissage'Substituting' Becomes a New Way of KnowingCartography of Leadership in Teacher EducationDelving Deep into the Society of Your MindStrength in NumbersTalking Back to Teacher Education and Other (So Called) Helping ProfessionsUsing Autobiographical Self-Study Methods to Expand New Ways of Knowing Collaborative WritingTelling is not Teaching, Listening is not LearningEnvisioning New Meanings through Found PoetryEnvisioning New Ways of KnowingMore-than Critical FriendshipUnravelling in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) EnvironmentIII. Forming New Understandings from Self-Study ResearchIntroducing New Practices in a Teacher Education ClassroomExploring the Contribution of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practice to the Conversation on Research on Teacher EducationThe Self You Have to Live WithA Closer LookTeaching Across Time and SpaceWeaving English-Language Learner Instruction into a Differentiation CurriculumEnacting a Personal Pedagogy of Facilitating Professional Learning for TeachersQueering my PraxisRe-Envisioning Early Childhood Mathematics Education Weaving Formal Teacher Education with Non-Formal Environmental EducationWeaving Threads of CareA Self-Study: Facilitating an Early Childhood Critical Literacy Junk Art Club with Preservice TeachersBreaking Out of Well-Worn GroovesWeaving Our StrengthsTeacher Educators' Embodied Resilience in Responding to Race-Based Critical Incidents in Social Justice EducationCharacteristics of Critical Friendship that Transform Professional IdentityDialogue Practices in Teacher Education ClassroomsDigitally InclinedStitching Together our Personal and Professional SelvesWilling to Turn to The BodyWeaving Discussions with QuestioningTensions of Learning on the JobUneasy is the Teacher EducatorLearning to Productively Struggle with Self-Study through Feedback and Failed AttemptsPulling on the Threads of Our Teaching PracticesAppendicesAuthor AffiliationsList of AuthorsList of Keywords
Teacher Educators' Embodied Resilience in Responding to Race-Based Critical Incidents in Social Justice Education
Elizabeth Grassi & Elizabeth Dorman
Keywords: Contemplative Practice, Critical Emotional Literacy, White Fragility
As white, female professors who teach courses on inequities in public education, we are often confronted with critical incidents in which students or peers of color question or critique our teachings, curriculum, or interactions. Our training as white academics has conditioned us to respond on a purely intellectual level, citing theoretical frameworks to explain or defend our actions. Although as contemporary educators we strive to develop our social-emotional competence and model it for students, bringing emotions into critical incidents is often frowned upon as "not belonging in the academy" (Winans, 2012). Yet, responses that stay purely cognitive are unsatisfactory, and oftentimes harmful to our students and peers of color, who may have visceral, emotional reactions to the impact of our actions (Winans, 2012). Even though our intentions feel neutral, benign, or even wholesome to us (Oluo, 2018), these intentions may not match the impact of our actions.
As Matias and Mackey (2016) argue, "If one is not emotionally-prepared to undertake antiracist teaching practices, then it stands to reason s/he will not be emotionally secure enough to engage in long-term racial justice in her/his teaching" (p. 36). This quote refers to prospective teachers; however, the argument applies to professors as well, especially those who claim to be committed to social justice.
As seen in the literature, emotions live not just in our minds and hearts but in our bodies. As Forgasz, Berry, and McDonough (2014) note, "our embodied emotions are both physical responses to and experiencing producers of our experience of the world…we can arrive at a kind of self-knowledge and self-understanding from the internal vantage point of bodily response" (pp. 82-83). Embodiment practices can not only help us access this self-knowledge and self-understanding but can help us build resilience to stay present with the emotions as they arise in critical incidents.
Our students and peers of color look to us to hold space and bring emotional responses to issues of deep oppression and racism. As Winans (2012) states in her argument for an embodied critical literacy, "Emotions play an important role in all teaching and learning settings: what we learn is bound up with the embodied experience of how we learn. Yet the significance of emotions in learning is particularly evident in classes that engage critically with difference, power, and privilege" (p. 151).
But an emotional response requires an "embodied resilience," an ability to turn toward the difficult and truly acknowledge and feel the impact of the students' or peers' responses, without first resorting to patterns of intellect and academic background to lessen the impact and reject feelings of inadequacy, shame, or guilt (DiAngelo, 2011). "Whites have not had to build the cognitive or affective skills or develop the stamina that would allow for constructive engagement across racial divides" (DiAngelo, 2011, p. 57).
Drawing from the contemplative practices of "sitting with difficult emotions" and "turning toward difficulty" (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Nhat Hanh, 2011; Williams, Teasdale, Segal, & Kabat-Zinn, 2010), and the critical emotional literacy practices used "to explore how emotions connect embodied learning experiences to social structures and belief systems, past and present," (Winans, 2012, p. 151), we expand upon the intellectual framework of "white fragility" (DiAngelo, 2011) and "white privilege" (Kendall, 2013) to propose a practice of embodied resilience. Using embodied resilience, white professors develop skills to respond to critical incidents with both intellect and emotions. If interactions around race and privilege are kept at the cognitive level, white educators will not build resilience for the inevitable emotional pain and discomfort that accompanies this work (DiAngelo, 2011; Winans, 2012).
Contemplative literature and critical emotional literacy practices would argue that any work around critical incidents involves both the intellectual thoughts and the emotional feelings (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Nhat Hanh, 2011; Williams et al., 2010, Winans, 2012). By focusing on one and not the other, we miss opportunities for true growth away from causing unintentional harm, for gaining resilience for facing the difficult, and we may possibly encourage a continuation of white fragility.
In this self-study, two white, female experienced U.S. teacher educators analyze critical incidents in which our responses were not adequate and did not exhibit "embodied resilience." We outline two of these critical incidents in case study format, describe our initial responses, and utilize self-study methodology and contemplative practices to discuss and analyze the case studies and connect them to current literature. Through the critical friends process, including the active use of contemplative practices in all meetings, we developed a framework of "embodied resilience" for responding to future critical incidents.
Aims/Objectives
Research questions:
What have we learned from critical incidents that illuminate our conditioned blind spots as white professors?
How might we use contemplative practices to develop an embodied resilience to appropriately respond to moments of tension/critical incidents involving race and privilege that arise as part of our social justice efforts?
This chapter incorporates the traditional self-study elements codified by LaBoskey (2004):
Self-initiated and improvement aimed: This self-study was initiated by the professors involved in the case studies as a way to examine our reactions to critical incidents, explore the connection of our reactions to literature, and discuss more appropriate ways to engage.
Interactive: We met weekly for a year to discuss the critical incidents recorded in journal entries and explore their relationship to current literature.
Multiple qualitative methods and trustworthiness:
Frequent journaling about critical incidents involving social justice issues.
Weekly critical friends discussion around the journal entries, the critical incidents, and related literature.
Weekly collaborative qualitative analysis of journal entries.
We read and reread the journal entries numerous times, looking for patterns or trends in topics that emerged across entries. These patterns were then coded and further categorized into recurrent themes (Spindler & Spindler, 1997; Spradley, 1980).
During the journal entry analysis, we employed a contemplative approach to self-study. Rather than becoming defensive, or turning away from the results of our analyses, we used contemplative practices to sit with the discomfort of the critical incidents, our initial responses, and their connection to current literature on race and privilege. Furthermore, this project reflects what Garbett, Ovens, and Thomas (2018) acknowledge: "Self-study researchers walk a fine line in having their research acknowledge the personal, contextual, and emotional nature of their work to strive for personal growth while also making important contributions to the wider research community" (p. 309).
We extracted two critical incidents from the journal entries and critical friends discussions and created Case Study #1 and #2. These cases illustrate critical incidents where we did not use our contemplative practices or exhibit an embodied resilience and, as a result, were unable to see our conditioned blind spots as white professors. The analysis illustrates our use of self-study methodology to find patterns within the critical incidents, to discuss the connection of these patterns to current literature, and to reflect on how contemplative practices would have helped us engage more appropriately and authentically with the students in each incident.
I am a white, female professor and I teach a course on the "isms" in public education—racism, transphobia, classism, sexism, etc. A few weeks in, the students of color from the class came to visit me in my office. They told me that they were tired of the "white people being coddled" in my course and that I needed to "teach for us [the students of color]."
My initial reaction was panic and guilt: "Oh no," I thought, "I'm not a good teacher. I thought I knew how to teach difficult topics to a diverse audience. This is my 'expertise!'" Rather than sit with these feelings and thoughts until they passed, my panic led me to "make sure I was okay." I first reached out to a friend of color. I relayed the situation in such a manner that the friend felt compelled to "comfort" me, assuring me that, "the students of color feel comfortable with you, that is why they are reaching out to you." I then reached out to another friend of color, and left a message in such a manner that they felt compelled to likewise comfort me, assuring me that, "You are doing a great job. The students would never come to you if they did not feel comfortable with you."
It was only after I was "comforted" that I felt I could reexamine the curriculum. I decided to begin the next class with a video of DiAngelo discussing "white fragility" (the moves white people make to avoid the discomfort of discussions around race and privilege). I hoped this video would prepare the white students for more critical class content. But, it was during the watching of this video that I realized that I had engaged fully in a white fragility move described by DiAngelo: a request of my colleagues of color to comfort me in my discomfort around a critical race incident. I did not have the resilience to truly listen to the students, to accept the critique, and to change my course for the better. I wanted comfort, to know I was "okay," and was unwilling to engage.
On the first day of class in a course on equity and diversity for prospective educators, a student of color stayed after class to tell me that they felt triggered by a prompt I had used in an interactive partner activity. I clarified to students before the activity that they were "in charge of the level of self-disclosure in this exercise," and that they were not being forced to discuss anything that felt too uncomfortable for them; passing was a viable option. The particular prompt that troubled them was, "Describe a time when one of the elements of your identity appeared to hold you back, either in your educational experience or in other areas of your life" (School Reform Initiative, n.d). I had never received negative feedback around this prompt previously, so I was confused. I expressed regret about the impact on them and invited them to come to my office to talk.
In our discussion, I learned some of their personal histories with trauma and the ongoing effects of historical trauma experienced by students of color. They said that even just thinking about responding to this prompt had caused them pain. I expressed to them again how sad I felt that an aspect of my curriculum had caused them harm. We discussed some potential modifications and differentiated ways that they could engage with the content that would hopefully reduce the possibility of inducing harm. They agreed to stay in communication with me about how things were going for them.
A few weeks passed without them turning in any assignments, although they appeared fairly engaged in class and regularly shared their insightful perspectives orally. We met in my office again, on my invitation, because I was concerned about their lack of work submission and apparent lack of reading and preparation before class. After some time of having what felt (to me) like a conversation that did not have a clear point, I told them I was still confused about what they were asking. They paused, looked at me very directly, and said, "What will you give me for my pain?"
I was stunned by this question. I looked at them with a completely blank, bewildered look on my face, my jaw gaping open. Eventually, I asked, "Can you help me understand what you mean? I just truly am confused and do not know what you are seeking." They tried to explain themself, and yet my bafflement continued. Eventually, I asked if they would write down their request to help me understand. They wrote, "What will you give me for my pain? Because class participation is not graded, I don't feel like my pain is being valued."
As I asked them to elaborate, they indicated, "Just from having read the titles of the assigned case studies and articles, and the prompts, I've done the emotional preparation for class. There's a deficit perspective coming from you to say I am showing up to class unprepared. I've done a lot more emotional prep than the white students who just have to read and answer prompts…I already know all about generalizations, deficit perspectives, and funds of knowledge [topics we had addressed in-class activities and assignments thus far] just from living my life." They continued to express their frustration: "I can tell you're a hard grader...Class won't be the same if I don't contribute orally. So I need this to be part of my grade...I want it on paper...The value of my input needs to be in a number. I need a grade for giving my oral input in class…" They then asked to be excused from all of their other late assignments, because they had personally lived these topics.
I kept repeating that I wanted to honor their pain, and at the same time, I needed to see evidence of their ability to synthesize multiple texts in writing. I also kept explaining to them that I had stopped giving grades/points for participation years ago because I felt like it was disadvantaging students from certain cultural backgrounds and was encouraging students to talk just to "get credit." I also shared that part of my disorientation was generated from never having had a student come to me with this kind of request. "I am just trying to wrap my brain around this," I said repeatedly.
Eventually, they suggested writing a substantial piece of poetry based on their responses to course topics to replace some of the other written assignments. I agreed, and we negotiated specifics about having the poetry "count" for some of their missing work. However, they kept asking to be completely excused for a few of the assignments, stating, "Class will not be the same [for others] if I do not contribute. So I need this to be part of my grade. I want this on paper. I don't want to take the hit in my grade for being so late." This back-and-forth went on for a while, with them insisting I needed to excuse them from the assignments in question because of their consistent, insightful oral contributions in class. I could feel myself getting irritated, frustrated, and defensive about their requests.
A tipping point in our conversation occurred shortly after I named these feelings of irritation, when they announced, "I've done enough emotional labor, and I'm not getting the response I want, so I'm going to remove myself. Thank you for your time." And they walked out of my office.
After they left, I realized that instead of feeling steady and open to critique, I felt triggered. I was attached to a particular view and teaching philosophy that says, "Advanced-level students should operate in a certain way: do the assigned reading, writing, and other preparation; be willing to participate orally without the need to 'get something' (like a grade or credit) in exchange; and not push me so hard when I set a clear boundary." I was attached to my identity as a "good" teacher, with particular beliefs and practices, including my identity as "one of the 'good' white people." These viewpoints resulted in feeling like my authenticity as a teacher and person was being assaulted through the interactions with this student.
Case Study Analysis: Connection to Current Literature
We started by looking at the patterns in the case study data and connecting these to current literature. Drawing from DiAngelo's (2011) work on white fragility, an analysis of both cases illustrates "white fragility avoidance patterns" in our reaction to the students' critiques. As DiAngelo (2011) writes, "…when an educational program [or student]...directly addresses racism and the privileging of whites, common white responses include anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance" (p. 55). We both experienced emotional incapacitation when the "people of color talk[ed] directly about their racial perspectives (challenge to white racial codes)" (DiAngelo, 2011, p. 57). In Case #1, rather than owning the situation and having the resilience to sit with the discomfort of the situation and truly listen to the students, the professor immediately called upon her colleagues to "help educate her," to "coddle her and make her feel okay about her missteps," and to invoke her "white expectations for racial comfort" (DiAngelo, 2011, p. 55).
In Case #2, the professor reports that she "couldn't even talk to anyone about this" because she "did not have the words for it." This was a form of a "freeze" response—a typical expression of white fragility in the inability to understand or accept criticism from a person of color. The professor reached out to several trusted critical friends to relate the experience and try to get some perspective. She asked their advice on what she should do, and how she should respond. But upon reflection, the professor reports, "Although I felt like I was trying to make sense of what happened, my reaching out was really an attempt to feel 'validated' in my views and actions, and to seek reassurance that my intentions were wholesome and that I was not a 'bad person,'" another indication of white fragility. DiAngelo (2016) cautions that the good/bad binary keeps us stuck, keeps us from learning as we engage in waking up as racialized beings.
Further analysis and discussion in our critical friends group revealed a connection to the literature on white supremacy. In Case #2, in particular, the professor struggles with a conflict between how she has been enculturated by higher education to teach and grade, and what the student was asking for. But what if these conditioned philosophies and practices of teaching are disempowering to students of color? What if students of color, who have often lived the scenarios we present in class to "enlighten" students to social justice issues, feel tired of having to expend emotional labor to share their experiences and educate others about their reality? Critical friend group discussions and readings helped the professor in Case #2 realize that she needed to stop trying to be "right" (DiAngelo, 2016) and just turn towards understanding. Racial harm can be caused in so many different ways, even (or especially by) the most well-intentioned people who deliberately aim to work for social justice.
Through critical friend discussions and collaborative literature reviews, the professor in Case #2 also realized that her inability to sit with the painful and difficult critiques she was receiving resulted in a harmful interaction. She tried to acknowledge her impact on the student directly, but she did not do this authentically. Rather than feel her emotions around the critique and requests, and be present with the student, she subconsciously worked to show that her own viewpoint was "right." Through discussions in the critical friends group, she realized that her expressions of "sadness" or "regret" were just words to pacify the student, without any true feeling of emotions behind them. She was feeling regret about "her curriculum as inadequate and harmful," rather than attuning to the pain of the student through mindful, authentic listening, and sincerely acknowledging the impact. The student felt the professor's inauthenticity and responded accordingly. The professor did not allow space for emotion and empathy to be felt when the student was telling her about their pain. She may have used "appropriate" words, but the student could not "feel the professor" and therefore could not trust the professor or feel safe with her (Blackwell, 2019; Manning, 2019).
Next Steps Based on Analysis of Critical Incidents
Students of color look to us to hold space and bring embodied emotional responses to issues of deep oppression and racism. We realized from patterns in the journal entries and critical friends discussions that we were not adequately bringing embodied responses to these critical incidents. We needed to develop an ability to turn toward the difficulties and truly acknowledge and feel the impact on the students, without first resorting to patterns of avoidance, academic knowledge, theory, and "rightness."
We both are regular practitioners of contemplative practices and often engage in the practice of "sitting with uncomfortable emotions" (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Neff, 2015; Nhat Hanh, 2011). As critical friends, we made a concerted effort during the analysis and discussions of the journal entries to sit with the emotions, explore them, and recognize, embody, and embrace the fact that we had engaged in white fragility and white supremacy moves. We noticed where and how the emotions occurred in our body, and recognized that these emotions were integral to making change. We continued open and vulnerable discussions as critical friends. We read widely and talked about our own racism and whiteness.
In our attempts to address our white fragility and white privilege, we developed the concept of "embodied resilience practices"—sitting with discomfort, rather than masking discomfort through avoidance or intellectual theory—as one small step toward addressing these issues. Using embodied resilience, we now try to listen mindfully and authentically to student and peer critiques, noting the physical feelings of emotional discomfort as they arise, and realizing that these reactions reflect our white fragility—a fragility we do not need to act on. We try to notice and acknowledge our emotions in interactions with others, rather than continue to mask any feelings through theoretical frameworks. We use an embodied emotional approach when reflecting on our pedagogy, to try to better notice the impact of our teachings, rather than continue in the ignorance of white privilege and unintentionally cause harm.
We are continuing our self-study to analyze the impacts of embodied resilience in our interactions. While we have found these strategies effective, they are just a small step toward attempting to reduce harm. We would like to acknowledge that, as white professors, addressing white fragility, white privilege, and white supremacy culture is a lifelong journey.
Conclusions/Implications
Oluo (2018) states that people who choose to engage in critical conversations "will screw this up royally, more than once. It's going to happen, and you should have these conversations anyway" (p. 45). For us as white professors, this work is a lifelong journey. It takes making mistakes repeatedly, being willing to be vulnerable to the feelings generated from that (without getting stuck in shame), reflecting, and being willing to tolerate racial discomfort to increase our ability to stay engaged in racial conversations and interactions (Oluo, 2018). We have been socialized into and conditioned by white supremacy culture, and we need to be willing to be vulnerable about making mistakes, and not be attached to our identity as "one of the good white people" or "social justice educators," both of which encourage the ego to be involved, and foster a stance of white fragility (DiAngelo, 2011, 2016). But being open to criticism and vulnerable to mistakes requires a resilience that is cultivated by contemplative practices, in which we embody and embrace the emotions that accompany openness and vulnerability, without trying to change or run away from them. As long as white academics attempt to push away emotions and approach difficult incidents from an intellectual and theoretical stance, white fragility will continue to be evoked, students and/or peers will not be thoroughly or authentically heard, and unconscious harm will potentially occur.
This chapter is our attempt to be transparent and vulnerable, and provide the reader with our own examples that exemplify the all-too-common moves that white academics make to protect their whiteness and its fragility. It is also our attempt to provide readers with contemplative responses that have helped us to build embodied resilience. These contemplative practices allow us to embrace the vulnerable, to not fear the human emotions that accompany our journey toward learning, to listen deeply to critiques from those who are most impacted by our teaching, and to embrace our lack of knowledge when it comes to addressing oppression, much of which we, as white educators, have not experienced, and cannot fully grasp.
Blackwell, K. (2019). Race and the body: Why somatic practices are essential for racial justice.The Arrow Journal, 6(1), 10-24. https://edtechbooks.org/-tMBj
DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54-70.
DiAngelo, R. (2016). What does it mean to be white? Developing white racial literacy (2nd ed.). Peter Lang.
Forgasz, R., Berry, A., & McDonough, S. (2014). Embodied approaches to S-STEP research into teacher educator emotion. In D. Garbett & A. Ovens (Eds.), Changing practices for changing times: Past, present and future possibilities for self-study research (Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices) (pp. 82–84). University of Auckland Press.
Garbett, D., Ovens, A., & Thomas, L. (2018). Biculturalism 101: A self-study exploring culturally responsive practice. Studying Teacher Education, 14(3), 308-319.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Vivir con plenitud las crisis. Kairós.
Kendall, F. (2013). Understanding white privilege. Routledge.
LaBoskey, V. K. (2004). The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (Vol. 1, pp. 817-869). Kluwer.
Manning, R. (2019). Session 6 presentation. In Social change: Supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion (online course). Nonviolent Communication Academy.
Matias, C. E. & Mackey, J. (2016). Breakin' down whiteness in antiracist teaching: Introducing critical whiteness pedagogy. Urban Review, 48, 32-50.
Neff, K. (2015). Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. William Morrow.
Nhat Hanh, T. (2011). La ira. Oniro.
Oluo, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. Seal Press.
School Reform Initiative (n.d.). The paseo or circles of identity. https://edtechbooks.org/-mxHx
Spindler, G., & Spindler, L. (1997). Cultural process and ethnography: An anthropological perspective. In G. Spindler (Ed.), Education and cultural process: Anthropological approaches (pp. 56-76). Waveland Press.
Spradley, J. (1980). Participant observation. Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
Williams, M., Teasdale, J., Segal, Z., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (2010). Vencer la depresión. Planeta.
Winans, A. E. (2012). Cultivating critical emotional literacy: Cognitive and contemplative approaches to engaging difference. College English, 75(2), 150-170.
? Grassi (2020). Teacher Educators' Embodied Resilience in Responding to Race-Based Critical Incidents in Social Justice Education. In C. Edge, A. Cameron-Standerford, & B. Bergh, Textiles and Tapestries: Self-Study for Envisioning New Ways of Knowing. EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/textiles_tapestries_self_study/teacher_educators


hey man, good to see that the mac BU guys have such a strong sense of community, been browsing around on the blogs.
i'll be honest i've had an alterior motive, but i was wondering if a new mac msn will be out ever, obviously mac represents a tiny percentage (less than 3%) of the computing market worldwide.. and is not gonna be a big earner, and for a product like messenger obviously less half of those mac users worldwide will use MSN.. so it obviously wont be a priority.
mac BU aparently is very secretive but there is a guy by the name of RJT spreading rumours on a site http://www.messengerformac.com and he's got the attention of 24,000 people.. and it just seems like a scam to me, with no articles on the net anywhere except those originating from RJT, i just want to put the 24,000 peoples minds at rest by getting some facts, but of course everything is very secretive, so i understand if you cannot/don't want to comment for whatever reason.


Mike Ashley, of Sports Direct, outside the company's Shirebrook headquarters at the 2016 annual general meeting.
Sparks flew at the annual general meeting of Sports Direct yesterday as majority shareholder Mike Ashley was quizzed by shareholders and trade unionists about 'serious shortcomings' in working practices admitted by the firm.
Mike Ashley was in combative mood as trade Union UNITE used the opportunity to ask him about controversial working practices.
The meeting was open to the public for the first time at the company's Shirebrook headquarters also heard that embattled chairman Keith Hellawell had offered to resign.
The company came under fire earlier this year after investigations by the Chad and others discovered discrepancies in low wages, and follows numerous allegations that workers toil under 'Dickensian' practices.
The meeting heard serious shortcomings had been identified in a report on working practices in the warehouse which the board "deeply regretted and apologised for".
Casual retail staff are now to be offered guaranteed hours instead of their current zero hours contracts.
Use of Zero hours contracts will be kept under review to ensure 'balance and fairness'.
The company will now offer directly engaged casual retail workers the option to chose zero hours or a permanent contract with a minimum number of 12 hours guaranteed.
The board was to run a test scheme aiming to transfer 10 picking staff a month from the agencies to Sports Direct.
Steve Turner of the UNITE union said he welcomed the company's change of direction, though the union was asking for a fully independent report rather than the one commissioned by the firm.
He questioned what the rationale was for the 12-hour permanent contract offer.
He said the employment agencies used by Sport Direct who employed some 4,000 of the workforce were at the heart of the 'abuses' at the firm.
He added: "They should be directly employed by Sports Direct on a permanent contract.
He pointed out that if the company took on 10 people a month it would take 28 years for the full amount of staff to be transferred over.
"You say I want to set on ten to get the headline 28 years - I said I was staring with ten.
"I could have started with 100 and got it wrong.
In terms of the 12 hour contract he said; "Why can't you accept it is 12 hours plus instead of I'm trying to take hours off them.
"I made a commitment to make a difference. I'm trying.
"It is probably your fault we are in this mess because we can't talk to you.
He added: "I made a commitment to make a difference - don't pull me down when I am trying . I accept I have made some errors.
The only people who will suffer are the people at Sports Direct.
"You would have that lot (the media) have us having a punch up in some silly cartoon.


Si vous avez quelques minutes devant vous, venez vous perdre sur ce site magnifique, une des plus belles réalisations qu'il m'ait été donné de voir sur internet.
Le reste du site ne présentera que peud 'intérêt pour un non turcophone, mais je vous en prie faites un tour sur ce site exceptionnel!!!!!!!!!!!
Fransa, Ya Sev Ya Terket!!!!!
En francais : la France soit tu l'aimes soit tu la quittes.
Il est rigolo Sarkozy parfois. En France on ne rigole que parce qu'il vient de piquer le slogan du MPF de De Villiers, ou de le paraphraser minablement c'est selon, avec son beau "si certains n'aiment pas la France, qu'ils ne se gênent pas pour la quitter". La ou je m'insurge, c'est quand je vois Philippe de Villiers hurler au scandale et au viol de copyright. Mais de qui se moque-t-on???
Et il faut croire que ce sera un slogan de campagne pour la présidentielle francaise. J'éspère juste que quelqu'un aura la bonne idee de relever le fait que Sarkozy puise son inspiration a la fois dans le bon fascisme à la francaise bien de chez nous, mais aussi dans le fascisme etranger ET musulman. Si ça c'est pas de l'ouverture internationale!! Je rêve de le voir tenter de séduire la diaspora armenienne avec ca !
Petite absence sur ce blog due à un ras le bol général devant la dégradation de la situation au Kurdistan Turc...toutes mes excuses!
Apparemment ca c'est légèrement calmé, les émeutes sont terminées et le seul attentat ces derniers jours à eu lieu à Izmir (sans victimes). Le moins qu'on puisse dire en tous cas c'est que la statégie de chaos du PKK que j'ai cru bon de dénoncer sur kurdishmedia a atteint ses objectifs...voyez plutot!
Recep Tayip Erdogan est menacé par Devlet Bahçeli du MHP (extrême droite nationaliste) qui lui dit qu'il "sent le souffle du loup gris dans sa nuque" (berk, j'imagine l'haleine), et tente un virement à droit à coup de déclarations belliqueuses, bombage de tourse et autres hérissements de moustaches menaçant pour les Kurdes.
50 membres et dirigeants du DTP sont en prison...ca sent les élections anticipées tout çà!
L'armée turque vient d'annoncer (reuters) que 40 000 hommes supplémentaires étaient envoyés dans le "Sud-Est" à Hakkari afin de contrer les infiltrations de plus en plus nombreuses de PKK. Ce qui est très drole c'est que l'Officier qui fait cette déclaration annonce que "le PKK essaie d'envoyer près de la moitié de leur 4900 guerrileros en Irak Nord (Kurdistan Sud) attaquer les villes turques".
La ca devient très très fort. L'armée sait donc à 100 soldats près combien le PKK compte de troupes. Admettons: ca fait des années qu'ils parlent de 5000 membres, et ils ont bien du en dégommer une centaine ces derniers mois, simple arithmétique. Beaucoup plus fort, l'armée turque semble informée en temps réel des mouvements de troupes du PKK et des intentions de leurs dirigeants.
Non vraiment bravo! Je suis content que le PKK ait "repris la lutte" parce que la démocratisation n'allait pas assez vite! Vraiment, j'ai bon espoir que ca aille beaucoup mieux maintenant!!!
This article is not intended as a response to Thomas Jezequel's "PKK: strategy of chaos", but instead to provide readers with a balanced view of the situation in Northern Kurdistan.
The recent unrest in Diyarbakir, known as Amed to the Kurdish people, among other cities in the Kurdistan region of Turkey began when a large crowd of mourners refused to disperse after the funeral ceremonies of four of fourteen Kurdish guerilla fighters. The guerillas were killed on March 25th during a large Turkish military operation in the city of Mus. Since then, riots in Diyarbakir, Batman and other neighboring cities have led to the destruction of private and government properties, and a battle between Kurdish protestors hurling rocks and firebombs at Turkish police, and police firing aimless rounds at the crowds. The Turkish security forces continue to respond with violence, and as well as over 400 people have been injured in the events and eight people killed. Clearly, this kind of civil unrest does not gratify Turkish government officials in Ankara who are seeking EU membership for Turkey. However, with the use of the Turkish media and other sources at their will, the government has very easily turned these events into a blame-game and way to target elected Kurdish politicians in Turkey.
Recent events in Kurdistan have been fairly positive for the democratic progress of the legitimate Kurdish parties operating in Turkey's government. Just prior to the unrest, Osman Baydemir, elected mayor of Diyarbakir, made a visit to the United States seeking help for the development of his city. The democratic progress and increasing support that Baydemir has been able to achieve has further agitated government officials in Ankara, as well as Turkish military heads, who are beginning to feel threatened by Baydemir's pro-Kurdish stance after he made a public statement declaring that he will "continue to use Kurdish." Baydemir was implying to peoples' right to freedom of speech with this statement following a letter he sent to the Danish government asking them not to shut ROJ-TV down; a Kurdish satellite station suspected by the Turkish government to be funded by the outlawed Kurdish-separatist group, the PKK.
Despite the legitimacy of Osman Baydemir and the DTP, which includes membership of over thirty other Kurdish mayors in Turkey, Turkish officials and the media will stop at nothing to end their success. An investigation about the letter sent to the Danish government is already underway. And now, with focus on the violent unrest in Diyarbakir, it is unclear whether Turkish military objectives have gone as far as to physically harm the Kurdish mayor. These assumptions may be extreme but it was as equally as inordinate to learn that Osman Baydemir was harassed by the Turkish Special Team (anti-terror unit) while trying to make a public statement of peace to calm the agitated protestors. Some reports have claimed that Baydemir's vehicle was attacked by the Turkish Special Team causing injury to his chauffeur. However, no one should be surprised by the actions of the Turkish military since it is still unclear how connected the democratic-seeking government and warmonger-military actually is, despite their claims.
Turkey has clearly incorporated a strategy of chaos, and not peace, in reaction to the recent protests. In response to the recent violence in Diyarbakir and the surrounding cities, the Turkish government has praised the security forces' handling of the riots. This is despite the security forces' negligent acts of shooting aimless rounds of bullets, which have resulted in the murders of two children in the midst of the protests. The Prime Minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, has gone even further by stating "The security forces will intervene against the pawns of terrorism, no matter if they are children or women." This is opposite of Baydemir's statement of peace.
The Turkish government has become extremely impatient with the PKK and the military has consequently ordered several key strikes against PKK camps. The killing of guerillas in a resistance combat should be expected. However, one must consider the facts that the recent operation was planned during the month of the Kurdish holiday, Newroz. Similar tactics were used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish rebels in Iraq as means of psychological damage. The Kurdish people are inclined to mourn at a time of the year when they should be celebrating. In addition, during the funeral of the guerilla fighters, the Turkish police attacked the crowds causing further agitation and unrest in the city. Local sources have claimed that the police have also blocked the emergency units in the hospitals for preventing the treatment of the injured protesters or have detained them under beatings prior to the completion of their treatments.
Certainly, all people will be blamed, whether partly or wholly responsible, whenever violence is used a method of making a point. One will question why there were children in the midst of a violent protest. However, the State must be required to respond to violence with peaceful tactics, rather than ones that provoke more chaos. Peaceful tactics are clearly something the Turkish security has proved they are incapable of in the past, or in the current events taking place in Kurdistan. Kurdish politicians should be very cautious of the Turkish government's strategy and how these events will be used to tarnish the careers of Baydemir and other members of the DTP. Turkish prosecutors have already been ordered to begin building cases against the elected Kurdish officials despite the lack of proof of their affiliation with the protests. The lack of proof however should not be taken for granted, as many prosecutors have successfully issued the "separatist card" in Turkish courts as a means of evidence. The Turkish State must do a lot more in regards to their democratic reform if they wish to obtain EU membership. Allowing a language to be spoken that was previously outlawed, but barring it's use from political institutions still, is not the democratic progress that will easily please Kurds in the country. The 60% unemployment rate, the homeless as a result of wrongful displacements, the limited educational institutions, and many other problems that need attention in the impoverished southeast Kurdish region of Turkey (Northern Kurdistan) are most important to the Kurdish people.
The only bold responses made by the Turkish government in regards to these issues have consisted of more violence and more political strategy in Kurdistan. One must ask whether the Turkish government has praised its security forces for maintaining peace, or if they praised them for carrying out a mini-war against the people of Diyarbakir and Batman.
Goran Sadjadi is an active member and President of the Kurdish American Youth Organization.
It has been obvious, since January 2004 and the clash between Osman Öcalan and Murat Karayilan, that the warmonger wing of the PKK had taken control of the party.
Increasing fights in 2005, targeted murders against members of the PWD, and blind bomb attacks in Kurdistan and in Western Turkey were a sign that the democratization of Turkey was not welcomed by the new leadership of PKK. TAK, who claimed the attacks against foreign tourists in Cesme and Kuşadası is said to be an "uncontrollable group" operating independently from the PKK. Funnily enough, it would probably be the first Kurdish group to achieve this: in the past every attempt to build a independent group or party, in Kurdistan, Turkey or Europe, was mercilessly crushed. There can only be one voice of the Kurds, and this voice is Öcalan's. The idea of a TAK conducting bomb attacks against the will of PKK is thus hard to believe.
In everywhere of Turkey, the bombs will explode, the assassinations and sabotage actions will happen. We will not recognize any rule. Everything and everywhere are targets for us. We concentrate on the target, attack the target with revengeful spirit and we destroy it. We are calling about tourism.
It is one of the most important source which feet the dirty and special war, so it is one of the first targets that we will attack. We warn the foreign and native tourist to not go to the tourist areas in Turkey. We are not responsible for who will die in the actions that will happen in those areas. Turkey is not secure country and never will be. Because we are a people which have a risk of destruction and we are in a war.
In their last attack in Friday march 31st, the "target" of high importance on which they concentrated was apparently a rubbish bin in the Fatih Area of Istanbul. The vengeance's victim was a simit sellor. Who knows if he was not Kurd? What exactly is the death of tourists or innocent civilians supposed to give to Kurds? Anti-Kurdish propaganda in Turkish press, justification of repressive policies, and undermining of the democratic reforms, genuinely or not realized since November 2002 in Turkey. Yes genuinely or not. Denouncing every progress realized by Turkey on the road to European accession as "cosmetic" and "hypocritical" is hard to understand. As if it was preferable to live under a convinced fascist regime than under an hypocritical democracy…of course, Turkey is reforming on European pressure and against the will of Kemalist fossils and every improvement is a harsh fight between government and military, intellectuals and civil servants, but the fact is that things changed and should keep changing.
But what would PKK gain from peace and democracy? This is the impossible equation of this party: it can only be important in a context of terror and chaos. Who can seriously believe that the new leadership decided to resume fighting because "democratization" was to slow, as if ambushes and bomb attacks had ever contributed to democracy in any country? The truth seems to be that a Kurd with a little new hope in the future tends to forget that he is first and foremost supposed to die for Apo. Numerous Guerilas fled PKK after Öcalan treason in 1999, some choosing to serve a few years in Turkish jail instead of staying in camps in South Kurdistan.
If every right of Kurds are respected by Turkey, PKK role is over. It becomes a useless archaic party, unable to recruit and trying to prevent its last guerrillas to try to come back to a normal life. Every mention to democracy or human rights by PKK is an insult, as proved the execution of Kani Yilmaz. As a Kurd you just have no right to disagree with the line of the party.
What is Murat Karayilan saying in his March 27 declaration?
For years, the Turkish State has attacked the liberation struggle in different ways, notably by trying to find an alternative to its leadership. This was especially directed against Mr Abdullah Öcalan.
Translation: Turkish Bastards! They keep trying to find a solution outside PKK!
It is actually far from being true! Turkish State has always been very happy that PKK was the "only voice of Kurds", it was too easy to gather the public opinion against the methods of this party and justifying every human right abuse, every act of torture, "unexplained disappearance" and unlawful execution by the struggle against "separatist terrorism".
Let's be honest: the emergence of a democratic Kurdish party, as HADEP was trying to be in its time would have been a catastrophe, for PKK like for the warmongers in Turkish Deep State: Anti EU and PKK have a common interest: war and oppression are for them a key to power, power they don't want to lose. PKK stopped fighting in 1999 in the middle of one of the harshest period of repression against Kurds. The Ecevit government during 1999, ruling with MHP fascists was respecting the best tradition of Turkish fascism, negationism and fake belief that the Kurdish problem was only one of terrorism. PKK did not fight THIS Turkey in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002. What did they do? They tried to recover from the stunning "my mother is a Turk, long live Atatürk" issued by Öcalan at his trial, denounced the Dersim Guerrila which wanted to keep on fighting, organised contradictory congresses, executed opponents…but didn't fight against Turkey.
Now nobody in Kurdistan can hid his support to Mr Öcalan. Especially in Turkey, every Kurd has the right to say that he or she sees in Öcalan his leader and his political will. There is no need to hide what millions of people showed publicly.
Translation is easy! Just change "has the right" by "must" and "no need to hide" by "would better show". PKK lost a lot of support among Kurds. Why did the rioters in Diyarbakir burn some (Kurdish) shops? Because these shops refused to close at the order of the PKK. So, lucky Kurds from north Kurdistan, you know what you will face if you do not genuinely show your support to Öcalan. PKK felt the Kurdish people slip from its hand, it is time to go back to business.
Do we really need to translate there: PKK will not allow the Kurdish Question to be resolved without PKK. Better war, oppression, death, than a democratic society without PKK. Should we still think that PKK is fighting for Kurdistan? It is not for a long time fighting for independence anymore. It pretends to fight for Öcalan but in reality only use his name to justify its action. It is only fighting for itself, for keeping his grip on the society.
The riots happening in Kurdistan for a few days are a huge blow for Kurds.
They take place a few weeks after an historical Kurdish conference in Istanbul, immediately dubbed as "cosmetic" by PKK. They give weapons to the worse fascists among the Turkish military, in a context where they as well feel that they are losing their power. The "flag incident" last year gave a pretext to Turkish press to start a chauvinistic nationalist campaign against Kurds, after the burning of a Turkish flag by a few kids in Diyarbakir for Newroz 2005. The most ridiculous thing maybe is that the rioters are officially protesting against the death of PKK guerrilla in clashes with Turkish Army. As if you could chose to make war to a country and expect it not to retaliate: of course, in a war, people get killed. TAK's bomb attack in Istanbul on Friday March 31st was supposed to be a "reprisal" for the killing of 14 PKK members. Courageous enough: the army kills some guerrillas; let's kill some civilians as retaliation.
PKK strategy looks like they want a "palestinalisation" of the conflict: bloody riots, bomb attacks against civilian targets for "reprisal", and kids killed in protests, immediately given the rank of martyrs. This is exactly what North Kurdistan needs: Repression, violence, a new state of emergency and new Shehids.
How sad is it that the only hope can come from Turkish State! Will they be clever enough to avoid a blind repression, will they keep on their reforms now that PKK is trying to prove them how wrong they were to reform… Fifteen years ago, the same riots in Cizre provoked the death of more than one hundred people: the methods seem to have changed, but for how long will the response of the State be so relatively "moderate" compared to its usual standards?
DTP position is courageous: Osman Baydemir called for peace and asked the rioters to go home. He should be denounced as a "fascist traitor" or a "Turkish agent" very soon.


text:
Q: Parse multipart/form-data from body as string on AWS Lambda I'm glad to see AWS now supports multipart/form-data on AWS Lambda, but now that the raw data is in my lambda function how do I process it?
I see multiparty is a good multipart library in Node for multipart processing, but its constructor expects a request, not a raw string.
The input message I am receiving on my Lambda function (after the body mapping template has been applied) is:
{ "rawBody": "--ce0741b2-93d4-4865-a7d6-20ca51fe2689\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"Content-Type\"\r\n\r\nmultipart/mixed; boundary=\"------------020601070403020003080006\"\r\n--ce0741b2-93d4-4865-a7d6-20ca51fe2689\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"Date\"\r\n\r\nFri, 26 Apr 2013 11:50:29 -0700\r\n--ce0741b2-93d4-4865-a7d6-20ca51fe2689\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"From\"\r\n\r\nBob <bob@mg.mydomain.io>\r\n--ce0741b2-93d4-4865-a7d6-20ca51fe2689\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"In-Reply-To\"\r...

etc and some file data.
The body mapping template I'm using is
{
  "rawBody" : "$util.escapeJavaScript($input.body).replaceAll("\\'", "'")"
}

How can I parse this data to acecss the fields and files posted to my Lambda function?

A: busboy doesn't work for me in the "file" case. It didn't throw an exception so I couldn't handle exception in lambda at all.
I'm using aws-lambda-multipart-parser lib wasn't hard like so. It just parses data from event.body and returns data as Buffer or text.
Usage:
const multipart = require('aws-lambda-multipart-parser');

const result = multipart.parse(event, spotText) // spotText === true response file will be Buffer and spotText === false: String

Response data:
{
    "file": {
        "type": "file",
        "filename": "lorem.txt",
        "contentType": "text/plain",
        "content": {
            "type": "Buffer",
            "data": [ ... byte array ... ]
        } or String
    },
    "field": "value"
}

A: Building on @AvnerSo :s answer, here's a simpler version of a function that gets the request body and headers as parameters and returns a promise of an object containing the form fields and values (skipping files):
const parseForm = (body, headers) => new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  const contentType = headers['Content-Type'] || headers['content-type'];
  const bb = new busboy({ headers: { 'content-type': contentType }});

  var data = {};

  bb.on('field', (fieldname, val) => {
    data[fieldname] = val;
  }).on('finish', () => {
    resolve(data);
  }).on('error', err => {
    reject(err);
  });

  bb.end(body);
});

A: This worked for me - using busboy
credits owed to Parse multipart/form-data from Buffer in Node.js which I copied most of this from.
const busboy = require('busboy');

const headers = {
  'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': '*',
  'Access-Control-Allow-Methods': 'OPTIONS, POST',
  'Access-Control-Allow-Headers': 'Content-Type'
};

function handler(event, context) {
  var contentType = event.headers['Content-Type'] || event.headers['content-type'];
  var bb = new busboy({ headers: { 'content-type': contentType }});

  bb.on('file', function (fieldname, file, filename, encoding, mimetype) {
    console.log('File [%s]: filename=%j; encoding=%j; mimetype=%j', fieldname, filename, encoding, mimetype);

    file
    .on('data', data => console.log('File [%s] got %d bytes', fieldname, data.length))
    .on('end', () => console.log('File [%s] Finished', fieldname));
  })
  .on('field', (fieldname, val) =>console.log('Field [%s]: value: %j', fieldname, val))
  .on('finish', () => {
    console.log('Done parsing form!');
    context.succeed({ statusCode: 200, body: 'all done', headers });
  })
  .on('error', err => {
    console.log('failed', err);
    context.fail({ statusCode: 500, body: err, headers });
  });

  bb.end(event.body);
}

module.exports = { handler };

A: If you want to get a ready to use object, here is the function I use. It returns a promise of it and handle errors:
import Busboy from 'busboy';
import YError from 'yerror';
import getRawBody from 'raw-body';

const getBody = (content, headers) =>
    new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      const filePromises = [];
      const data = {};
      const parser = new Busboy({
        headers,
        },
      });

      parser.on('field', (name, value) => {
        data[name] = value;
      });
      parser.on('file', (name, file, filename, encoding, mimetype) => {
        data[name] = {
          filename,
          encoding,
          mimetype,
        };
        filePromises.push(
          getRawBody(file).then(rawFile => (data[name].content = rawFile))
        );
      });
      parser.on('error', err => reject(YError.wrap(err)));
      parser.on('finish', () =>
        resolve(Promise.all(filePromises).then(() => data))
      );
      parser.write(content);
      parser.end();
    })

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Tiger Moon Resort is a mile from Ranthambhore National Park. Cottages with gently sloped roofs give you all the modern amenities you need.
The restaurant offers Indian, continental, and Chinese fare.
Tiger moon resort giver you all the excitement and exhilaration of holidaying in the heart of the Indian wildlife. Right where all the action is. In the lap of Nature at its most raw. Where the law of the jungle prevails.
Predators prowl the wild pathways. Birds shriek in the skies and reptiles slither across the earth. It is into this wild that Indian Adventures offers you ringside seats to the ultimate show.
Tiger Moon resort, situated on the edge of the Ranthambor National Park amidst the Aravali hills in Rajasthan, is the ideal resort if you want to hit the tiger trail.
Rustic Rajasthan in the lap of luxury, cosy cottages with gently sloping tiled roofs give you all the modern amenities you need. Complete with swimming pool. Dining hall serving Indian, Continental and Chinese cuisine.
The Jungle Bar is where you unwind after an exciting day. A large swimming pool awaits you to cool yourselves. There are 32 well appointed rooms.
The resort restaurant serves Indian, Continental and Chinese cuisine delicacies.
The resort bar serves both Indian and imported spirits.
Folk music and dance for night entertainment on request from the visiting groups.
To and fro transport from Delhi, Sawai Madhopur or Jaipur can be arranged on extra charges.
Visit to the Ranthambore fort and sightseeing to other nearby places.
By Air : The nearest airport is at Jaipur, which is 180 km away.
By Train : Sawai Madhopur is easily accessible by train from Jaipur and other metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Complimentary private transfers can be arranged from the Sawai Madhopur railway station to the resort. The drive takes about 15 minutes.
By Road : The resort can be accessed by road from Jaipur, Delhi and Agra.


Hannes Thor Smárason co-founded WuXi NextCODE along with Dr. Jeff Gulcher and served as its CEO until March of 2018. He has been a longtime advisor to deCODE genetics and its venture investors Polaris Venture Partners and ARCH Venture Partners and contributed to the strategy that culminated in the $415 million sale of deCODE genetics to Amgen. Mr. Smárason previously served as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Business and Finance at the company (1997-2004) during which time deCODE genetics achieved worldwide recognition as the global leader in analyzing and understanding the human genome. During his tenure Mr. Smárason led the first IPO by an Icelandic company in the U.S., structured and negotiated alliances with pharmaceutical companies and led the strategic acquisition of a drug discovery company. Prior to joining deCODE genetics he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company serving Fortune 100 clients in the finance, healthcare and hospitality sectors. He also served as the Chairman and CEO of Icelandair and its parent company FL Group in the mid- to late- 2000's.
Mr. Smárason has served on boards across a variety of sectors related to investment and advisory activity and is active across a range of charitable organizations.
He received his master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he also earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.
© 2013-2019 Hannes Smárason. All rights reserved.


text:
NORTH CAROLINA COALITION for ALTERNATIVES to the DEATH PENALTY
fighting for justice, fighting for life
Coalition Staff + Board
WHY END
THE DEATH PENALTY?
Voices of Victims' Families
Laws have Changed, but Sentences Remain Unexamined
Unfair Trials, Bad Lawyering & Improper Evidence
Failure to Deter Crime
High Cost of Death
Declining Support
Arbitrary Use
ART FROM THE INSIDE
Resentenced to Life: Why justice matters, even for my guilty clients
by Kristin Collins | posted in: Arbitrary Use, Guest Posts, Intellectual Disabilities, Latest News, Mental Disabilities, Why We Care | 0
A November 2018 case in Buncombe County perfectly illustrated the problems with N.C.'s decades-old death sentences. By today's laws and standards of justice, most of the people on death row simply shouldn't be there. Buncombe DA Todd Williams recognized that when he agreed that James Morgan, who has been on death row since 1999, never got the fair trial to which the Constitution entitles him and likely wouldn't be sentenced to death if he were retried today. Williams remedied the injustice by agreeing that Morgan should be resentenced to life in prison without parole. Here, one of Morgan's defense attorneys reflects on what this action means for her client and for justice.
Jimmy Morgan at his court hearing last week.
By Elizabeth Hambourger
On Friday, Jimmy Morgan was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. And for this he was grateful. The prospect of a lifetime behind bars might not sound like anything to be thankful for, but Jimmy has spent the past 19 years on North Carolina's death row.
In the years I've represented Jimmy, he has often expressed his regret for the crime that resulted in his death sentence. Jimmy was using crack one night in Asheville with Patrina King. The two got into an argument over money, and Jimmy lost his temper and killed Patrina, stabbing her multiple times with a broken beer bottle. With Jimmy's acceptance of responsibility for this terrible act came knowledge that he would never again live in the free world.
Legally, there was a strong argument that even though Jimmy was guilty, he should never have been sentenced to death. The jury that sentenced him didn't know that this impulsive crime was in part the product of several traumatic brain injuries, which began in childhood. Jimmy fell out of a moving car at the age of nine. Following the accident, family members noticed a distinct change in his behavior and personality. Later in life, he was hit in the head with a baseball bat and, in a separate incident, a wall-mounted television fell on him from above.
The lawyers who represented Jimmy at trial were given neither the time nor the resources to investigate the impact of Jimmy's injuries. When a neuropsychologist finally tested Jimmy, years after he'd been sentenced to death, the results showed that he ranks in the bottom 1st or 2nd percentile in several critical areas of brain functioning. The doctor concluded that Jimmy's brain damage left him unable to make reasoned decisions or control his impulses on the night he killed Patrina King.
CDPL Attorney Elizabeth Hambourger
It's apparent when you meet Jimmy that his brain damage has lasted a lifetime. Although he is now 63 years old, Jimmy's defining feature is his childlike exuberance, expressed with large physical movements and animated facial expressions. In the middle of a conversation, he'll suddenly break into a tune from The Music Man.
He often speaks and writes in spontaneous rhyme. One of the first times I met Jimmy, he made up an on-the-spot rap about my wristwatch. He plays an energetic air guitar, composes and performs his own hymns for death row worship services, keeps a running tally of the thousands of three-point shots he's made on the prison basketball court, and likes to entertain people by flipping his cap from his foot to the top of his head.
Jimmy lacks a "filter," for good and for bad. The dual faces of this impulsiveness are a tragic illustration of the truism that our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses.
Over the many years Jimmy's case lingered in the courts, other lawyers and I argued that the jury should have been told about Jimmy's brain damage, and if they'd known, they wouldn't have given him a death sentence. But multiple courts rejected our argument.
Then last year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a new case that reaffirmed a criminal defendant's right to a neuropsychological evaluation. When my co-counsel Mark Kleinschmidt and I brought that case to the attention of Buncombe County District Attorney Todd Williams, he agreed that it entitled Jimmy to a new sentencing hearing. What's more, Williams realized that if Jimmy were retried now, he would never receive a death sentence. No Buncombe jury has sentenced anyone to death since 2000.
Williams agreed that the proper sentence for Jimmy is life without possibility of parole. This means Jimmy will never get out of prison, but the appeals in his case will finally come to an end. He will move into general population, where he might be able to work a prison job and enjoy a few small privileges – like contact visits that will allow him to finally hold his granddaughter.
At the resentencing hearing Friday, Patrina King's family spoke to Jimmy and the court. They spoke eloquently of their continuing anger, and of their attempts to forgive even in the face of so much pain.
Jimmy asked me to read his statement of apology:
Thank you for this opportunity to apologize to the King Family. I am very sorry for my actions that took the life of Patrina. I know many people loved her. Every day, I think about it. I do a lot of praying. I understand that I will be spending the rest of my life in prison. I can see the degree of hurt I have caused the King Family and my own family. I love my family and I appreciate their love and support. I'm sorry.
And then, still shackled, he was led out of the Asheville courtroom, not by any means a free man, but free of the death sentence that had been hanging over his head for nearly twenty years.
An execution's aftermath: "I watched him die 15 years ago, and I still talk to him sometimes"
by Kristin Collins | posted in: Guest Posts, Latest News, Stories from Death Row, Why We Care | 0
Attorney Gretchen Engel holding a painting by her executed client, Quentin Jones
By Gretchen M. Engel
I watched him die 15 years ago, and I still talk to him sometimes. I talked to him a lot in the weeks after he was killed and thought maybe I was going a little crazy. And then I thought, it's probably normal to go a little crazy when you see somebody killed 10 feet in front of you, somebody you knew really well and cared about and tried so hard to save.
I'm talking about my client, Quentin Jones, who was executed at 2 a.m. on August 22, 2003. Quentin was 18, homeless, and addicted to drugs in 1987, when he robbed a convenience store with an Uzi 9mm pistol. The store camera caught most of the crime on tape. You can't see Quentin shooting Edward Peebles, who had stopped in for coffee after playing music with his friends, but you can hear it. Like Quentin, Peebles had a young daughter. During Quentin's capital sentencing hearing, the two toddlers played together in the back of the courtroom.
At the execution, Peebles' daughter sat behind me, softly crying. Her grandfather, Peebles' father, sat next to me in a three-piece blue-striped suit. We were so tightly packed in our row of plastic chairs that his left leg was firmly pressed against my right. On my other side were Quentin's uncle and younger brother. While Quentin lay on the gurney waiting to be poisoned, his brother signed to him. As children, they'd learned sign language because they had a cousin who couldn't hear. Quentin mouthed his love for us and an apology to Peebles' family.
On left: A 1999 photo of Quentin, which was part of his clemency petition. On right: A portrait of Quentin by former death row prisoner Jamie Cheek, drawn in response to Quentin's execution.
This wasn't new. Quentin confessed and pled guilty. He told the police and the jury he was sorry. In my meetings with him, he frequently and consistently expressed his regret and sorrow for the deep pain he'd caused the Peebles family. He never tried to evade responsibility for what he did.
Quentin also had extraordinary insight about his life and compassion for those who failed him: a mother who struggled with drug addiction and a father who faced his own demons, cycling from homelessness to more than a dozen involuntary commitments at Dorothea Dix hospital. Quentin was the oldest son and, to help his family, he turned to the crack-infested streets of Baltimore, joined a gang, and entered the drug trade.
Despite a diagnosis of PTSD rooted in his experience of childhood trauma, Quentin grew up during 16 years on death row. He never finished high school, but in prison he read and studied. Quentin had a quick mind and he was thoughtful. He wrote poetry and embraced spirituality, becoming a devout Muslim. He maintained relationships with his family, despite distance and poverty that made it difficult for them to visit. He was a supportive and bright light in the life of his pen pal, an English woman raising a child with autism. A psychologist was so touched by his work with Quentin that he came to the prison the day of the execution to say goodbye, and ended up staying through to the bitter end. Every lawyer who ever represented Quentin urged the governor to commute the death sentence.
Over the nine years I represented Quentin, I came to know his family, and they were at the prison all day and into the night of the execution. On that terrible day, the worst moment was telling Quentin's family that the governor had denied clemency, there was nothing left, their son and brother would be killed in 90 minutes. His younger sister let out a howl that I can still hear now. She sounded like an animal dying in a trap.
A social worker and I then went to give Quentin the news. When we told him, and started sobbing, he gathered us into his arms and comforted us. Quentin was so much more than the worst thing he'd done. I often wondered, as I have with other clients, what he might have accomplished if someone had taken the time to see his potential as a child and to rescue him from the violence that surrounded him.
In the face of horrible crimes, we often ask, how could someone do this? After defending men and women facing the death penalty for close to three decades, I can tell you how: Allow children to grow up in poverty, incarcerate their fathers, deprive their mothers of mental health care and drug treatment, confine them in dangerous and violent neighborhoods, send them to underfunded and overcrowded schools, and permit school suspensions and juvenile arrests to limit their opportunities.
In the weeks after the execution, I thought of little else. I painstakingly retraced and second-guessed every decision I'd made in Quentin's case. I talked to him while walking my dog.
I wished so much then and still wish now that I'd been able to convey Quentin's humanity to the judges who ruled in his case and the governor who decided against commutation. Perhaps they, and the jurors who sentenced Quentin to death, thought they were rooting out evil, teaching a lesson, meting out justice. What I saw was another killing that perpetuated a cycle of violence and trauma that continues to play out in many lives, including mine.
Gretchen M. Engel is the executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation and has represented death row prisoners for more than 25 years.
A life condemned: Remembering my client who died on death row
Terry Ball at the end of his life
I'm a capital defense lawyer. At any given time, I represent a dozen or more men and women who are either on death row or charged with first-degree murder. Death is an inescapable part of my work, but that's been true this year more than most. In January, my client Ricky "Coolie" Gray was executed in Virginia. And although North Carolina has not executed anyone in over a decade, those confined to our death row are beginning to die of old age and sickness. In October, my client Terry Ball died of natural causes at Central Prison. Much has been written about Coolie's life. Terry, by contrast, slipped away with barely a mention after living on death row for almost 25 years. I believe his life is worth remembering, and that his story, like all my clients' stories, hold keys to understanding the origins of crime and our shared humanity with people labeled the worst of the worst.
Terry grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. His parents lost their first-born child in a farming accident, but they did their loving best for Terry and his sister. Terry's problems seem to have begun at age 10, when he was hit by a car and spent eight weeks in the hospital. The head trauma he suffered permanently changed him. His grades fell and he became defiant with his parents. However, the severity of his brain injury was not fully diagnosed at the time.
Perhaps it was because of this brain damage that Terry made the fateful decision to run away from home at 13. He was in love with a girl named Kim and their parents didn't approve of the relationship, so Terry and Kim ran off together to Cincinnati. A man named Jerry Wood approached the pair at a bus station and offered them a place to stay. Terry and Kim gratefully accepted, having no idea that Wood was not only a career criminal but a serial rapist of runaway and neglected boys. Wood was at that very moment wanted by police for felony assault.
Elizabeth Hambourger
Wood quickly put Kim on a bus back home but forced Terry to remain with him for the next month, raping him repeatedly, keeping him high on drugs, and forcing him to steal. Eventually Terry managed to escape. But when he returned home, he was treated not as a victim but a delinquent and placed in a juvenile detention center as punishment for running away.
Terry's parents and the mental health workers at the detention center seemed unable to confront the reality that Terry had been raped. Because of the stigma and misinformation surrounding homosexuality in the 1970s, they worried that he was gay instead of treating him as a victim of sexual assault. One psychiatrist wrote: "When he was away from home, he traveled all over the country with a 32-year-old male. This association raised the question of possible homosexuality; Terry denies this… The parents… at the present time appear to be concerned in case the label of homosexual will be applied to Terry." Terry never received any treatment or even recognition of the trauma he'd been through, and Jerry Wood was never prosecuted for it. Today, Wood is serving a 45-year sentence in Pennsylvania for the rapes of two other children.
Without treatment, Terry turned to drug use, a trick he'd learned from Jerry Wood to dull his pain, shame, and rage. He enlisted, but was discharged from the Navy because of addiction and then committed several violent drug-motivated robberies. He served prison terms for beating a woman with a hammer and slitting a young man's throat. By some stroke of luck, both victims survived.
In 1990, released from prison and living in Washington, N.C., Terry discovered crack cocaine. He checked himself into three treatment centers in three years, desperate to kick his addiction. During one of those stints, he met his wife Sherry. He joined Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous and held down a maintenance job. He also began attending a local church pastored by Tony Krantz.
Krantz lived in Washington with his wife, Laura, and two school-aged children. Terry confided in Tony and Laura about his addiction, and they tried to help. Tony took him fishing. But one night in June 1993, Terry relapsed. He binged on crack and pills until he ran out. Then, desperate for money to buy more, he went to the Krantz home.
It was 4:30 a.m. when Tony Krantz found Terry at his front door. Terry said he wanted to talk and Tony poured him a Dr. Pepper at the kitchen table. Suddenly, Terry attacked him with a knife. Seriously injured, Tony managed to call 911 before running for help. In the meantime, Tony's wife Laura had come downstairs. Terry stabbed her 17 times before running out of the house. Laura bled to death with her children beside her.
Terry was sentenced to death just seven months later. This was the mid-90s, when North Carolina juries were handing out dozens of death sentences a year. Like many people tried during those years, Terry's story of childhood trauma and brain damage was barely told at trial. If his trial were today, this mitigating evidence would have been thoroughly presented and likely would have persuaded a jury to sentence him to life without parole instead of death.
Terry lived on death row for 24 years. His case churned ever-so-slowly through the appeals process, hitting one delay after another. His mother and sister died and Terry's health deteriorated. For the last few years he was confined to a wheelchair in constant pain. He was only 59 when he died. It was a hard life, but I am grateful he passed away in his cell, near the other condemned men who had become his family, rather than spending his final days in the miserable solitary confinement of the Central Prison hospital.
Terry Ball caused a lot of pain in his life, and he also experienced more than his share. The same is certainly true of Coolie and most of the thousands of men and women still on our nation's death rows. This is who we sentence to death: the most damaged, the most abused; traumatized children who grow into adults without learning how to cope with their fear and anger. The death penalty says these lives have no value. I disagree.
Why North Carolina's death penalty is not for the "worst of the worst"
by Kristin Collins | posted in: Arbitrary Use, Crime Lab, Declining Use, False Evidence, Guest Posts, INNOCENCE, Innocence, Latest News, National News | 0
Reposted from the blog of N.C. Policy Watch
The justice system said Henry McCollum was the "worst of the worst." He turned out to be innocent.
Since Arkansas shocked the world by trying to execute eight people in 10 days just to beat the expiration date on its lethal drugs, there has been more talk about the death penalty in North Carolina.
Most recently, WUNC's Rusty Jacobs did a piece on where the death penalty stands, almost 11 years after North Carolina's last execution. It revealed serious concerns about executing innocent people, and explained why it's far more expensive to execute than to sentence people to life in prison.
However, one concept goes unchallenged in many stories about the death penalty: The naïve idea that the death penalty is used only in those rare, "worst of the worst" cases. Having spent my entire career up-close with North Carolina's capital punishment system, I can tell you that's not how it truly works.
First, let's look at the 147 people on death row in North Carolina. More than three-quarters of them were sentenced more than 15 years ago, during an era in which North Carolina had one of the highest death-sentencing rates in the nation — even higher than Texas and Florida. Far from using the death penalty only in a handful of the most shocking crimes, execution was pursued Wild West-style in nearly every first-degree murder case.
During those years, we had a law unlike any other in the nation, which required prosecutors to seek the death penalty in every first-degree murder case with an aggravating factor. And, of course, the law is written so broadly that an aggravating factor can be found in almost any intentional killing.
Prosecutors were required to push for execution without regard to mitigating factors, or evidence that pointed to possible innocence. Even they thought this was a terrible idea, and they recommended the law be changed.
The General Assembly ended this requirement in 2001, but by then, death row had swollen to more than 200 people, more than 100 of whom remain there today. All of them were tried without the benefit of reforms intended to ensure fairness and prevent the conviction of innocent people.
There was, for example, no requirement that confessions be recorded. In many cases, the state presented unreliable forensic testing and "junk" science, and defendants were sentenced to death by juries selected in a racially-discriminatory fashion. Some of them, like Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, were innocent. Most would never have received death sentences under today's laws. These are the people who would be first in line if our execution chamber were to crank up.
Next, consider how the death penalty is used today. Do prosecutors use their discretion to carefully cherry-pick death penalty cases? Absolutely not.
In reality, our justice system runs on pleas. Prosecutors use the death penalty as leverage, to persuade reluctant defendants to plead guilty and accept life sentences.
It works like this: The vast majority of murders are initially charged capitally, and pleas are negotiated from there. The theory is that a defendant facing the threat of execution is more likely to accept whatever deal the state offers. Pursuing the death penalty even when the prosecutor thinks the case is not execution-worthy makes a mockery of justice.
Defendants who refuse a deal are often our most vulnerable clients: those who are mentally impaired, those who least trust their lawyers, or those who are innocent and refuse to plead guilty. People who refuse plea deals represent the vast majority of people who are tried capitally in North Carolina today.
This means a defendant's chance of facing the death penalty depends less on the crime than on a willingness to accept a life sentence without a trial. Often, several defendants are involved in a crime. Some accept a deal and get a life sentence, while another — maybe not even the most culpable — ends up on trial for his life.
Juries can see that the people who go to trial are not the "worst of the worst." Look at the two capital trials in North Carolina this year. Both defendants were offered pleas but insisted on going to trial.
The first trial, in Wake County, ended with a verdict of life imprisonment. This marked eight times in a row that a Wake jury has chosen life over death. In the second, just this month, a Robeson County jury not only rejected a death sentence but refused even to convict the defendant of first-degree murder. He was found guilty of second-degree murder.
Prosecutors might tell you they need the death penalty to punish the "worst of the worst." But in practice, our state spends millions to pursue death sentences that are arbitrary and unnecessary, and uses the threat of death as a negotiation tactic — sometimes putting innocent lives on the line.
Gretchen Engel is the Executive Director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
the more you know about a defendant, the less likely you are to support his or her execution; the more you know about the criminal justice system, the less likely you are to support anyone's execution
© [2018] [NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty] - WordPress Theme by Kadence Themes

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Toledo's last swordmakers refuse to give up on their ancient craft
Famed since Roman times, the Spanish city's artisans are all but extinct. But a reprieve is at hand from the TV and film industry
Orders from TV and film productions are likely to keep Spanish swordmaker Tony Arellano in business.
Ashifa Kassam in Madrid
@ashifa_k
Tue 24 Aug 2021 00.00 EDT
Last modified on Thu 26 Aug 2021 04.13 EDT
Its sturdy presence has threaded through more than 2,000 years of history, fuelled by fans that were said to have ranged from the Carthaginian general Hannibal to Roman legions.
These days, however, the longstanding tradition of swordmaking in the Spanish city of Toledo has dwindled to just two artisan swordmakers – the last living link to a tradition that stretches back millennia.
"Swordmaking is deeply connected to the city," said Antonio Arellano of Artesania Arellanos. "If we were to lose it, it would be a tremendous loss for the city."
As the reputation of Toledo's swords swelled centuries ago, so did the fortunes of the city. The industry transformed the city's narrow, winding streets, dotting them with hundreds of blacksmiths who turned Toledo into one of the world's pre-eminent centres for swordmaking.
Coming from a long line of ironworkers, Arellano began crafting swords 30 years ago. The tradition had already been through several overhauls as swords were eschewed for munitions. No longer were clients made up of nobles and swordsmen looking for the best blade money could buy; instead, the market centred on tourists eager to take home a piece of famed Toledo steel.
The Arellanos come from generations of ironworkers.
Even so, the sword's place in history was enough to secure the continuity of the craft. "When I started, Toledo was a hotbed for swordmaking – all of the historical centre and the periphery were full of workshops," said Arellano, who at 69 is the last master swordsmith in Toledo.
In recent years, however, the number of local swordmakers has begun to decline as they found themselves in competition with mass-produced swords, the bulk of them made thousands of miles away in Asian countries. Arellano's handmade swords, which can take up to six weeks to create, were largely spared.
What was left of the sector was slashed by the pandemic. "It was a big blow," said Arellano. As global travel came to a halt, the crowds of tourists that had long thronged through the city's steep streets disappeared. "I've lived through lots of tough moments and we've always come through, but this feels more serious."
The alarm bells began to sound earlier this year in Toledo after Mariano Zamorano, the city's other master swordsmith, announced his retirement at the age of 70, after the owner of the building where his workshop was located decided to sell the property.
Zamorano's family stepped in, taking over the storied family business with the aim of setting up a new workshop in the city in the autumn. "The process continues," said Santiago Encinas of Espadas Mariano Zamorano.
The artisanal methods of swordmaking are time-consuming and costly; steel is heated in an open flame before being stretched, shaped then hammered and polished. On average it takes 15 to 20 hours to complete a sword in this way, costing an average of €400 to €500, said Encinas.
He brushed off reports of the tradition's demise. "It's true that it is a product that doesn't have as much demand and, as there is less demand, it's only logical that there isn't space for everyone," he said. "We're the ones that are here now, but we're not going to be the last ones."
His confidence was echoed by Arellano, whose son is planning to take over the business when he retires. In his case reprieve has come from an unexpected source; the revived interest in history has prompted a cascade of orders from TV series and theatre productions seeking to create historically accurate sets.
Most recently, Arellano signed a deal with a theme park that depicts historical events, where his son will forge and craft swords in front of a live audience.
The interest hints at what will ultimately keep the tradition of Toledo's swordmaking alive, said Encinas. "It's a symbol, it will always be a symbol. It is a tool of history that people find very attractive."


Pelicans' Anthony Davis|!!| watches from the bench next to teammates|!!| including E'Twaun Moore|!!| left|!!| during the closing minutes of the team's 123-101 loss to the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series Saturday|!!| April 28.
Everybody has them. They're unavoidable in life, much like your co-worker who says the same thing over and over again each day.
"What's up? The sky," and other modern-day hits like that. So it goes.
It was just a short time ago that everything was looking up on the local sports scene but, lo and behold, there's Larry from Accounting to bring you down to earth again. So, Pelicans, Privateers and Green Wave fret not. We all have bad days and the good thing is that every bad day can be overcome, and if it can't, at least we still have Jazz Fest.
Bad days can be left in the past. Unfortunately, so can the good vibes generated by a first round sweep. The New Orleans Pelicans found that out pretty quickly after having their teeth kicked in by the Golden State Warriors, 123-101. And, as the old cliché goes, the game wasn't even that close.
There's losing a game then there is giving up 76 points in the first half. Not unlike paying seven dollars for a can of lukewarm Miller Lite, that just puts a bad taste in one's mouth. Miller Lite after Miller Lite dropped just like the threes the Warriors' Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant hit from deep. The Pelicans' Jrue Holiday couldn't get the ball into the basket, going 4-for-14 on the night, Rajon Rondo did almost pick up a double double (8 rebounds, 11 assists) but it was all for naught. The Pelicans' main act, Anthony Davis, looked decidedly mortal, even while going for 21 points and 10 rebounds. What it boils down to is, just like you don't go into the festival port-o-lets at the end of the day, a team can't give up 76 points in a half and expect to win. Ever.
The Pelicans try to get their groove back tonight at Oracle Arena against the Golden State Warriors. Tip off is 9:30 p.m.
I like meat pies. Even before I knew what they were I loved them. How could you not? Just look at the word – meatpie. Meat. Pie.
Anyway, the Privateers (19-27) were living the life of Meat Pie just a few weeks ago when they seemingly turned the corner on the season, fought back to .500 and were poised to make a move on the Southland Conference.
Now the Privateers are just soggy old potato salad without any seasoning.
How quickly the second half of the season has unraveled. Since the Privateers' last series win over a dreadful Lamar University, the club has gone into a 3-11 tailspin that included getting swept by McNeese State and dropping a series to Incarnate Word, both at Maestri Field. Sure, the Privateers did pick up a quality win over the #20 Texas Longhorns along the way but most real playoff contenders don't self-destruct in this fashion while heading into the final stretch.
But, hey, it's not all Rod Stewart. Excuse me, I meant to say bad. There is still hope.
Even with the April swan dive down the standings, UNO still has a clear path to the Southland Conference playoffs – catch Nicholls State. The top seven spots are essentially clinched. Sure, with nine games to go in conference, a LOT can happen but that would likely entail a collapse by a solid Northwestern State club and I don't see that happening. So, there is likely only one spot up for grabs and that is being fought between the Privateers and Colonels.
Luckily for UNO, they only trail Nicholls State by one game AND play the Colonels in a three-game series. However, before all that, the Privateers will have to go on the road this weekend and battle Houston Baptist.
Evidently Willie Nelson has a son that played at Jazz Fest this past weekend. His name is something-or-another and my buddy really wanted to check him out. Unfortunately for Son of William, we ran into the Dirty Dozen Brass Band getting down on stage, thus delaying our arrival and missing our chance to see Mr. Bill Nelson's progeny. Of course, yours truly saved the day by making some Little Willie jokes.
Anyway, this Green Wave baseball team (21-24) continues to miss its chance to make a statement. Right when the team had the opportunity this weekend at UConn to make some pundits sit up and take notice, the team came out flat in the rubber match and lost the series. To make matters worse, Tulane was coming off the team's most dominant pitching performance of the season, a Keagan Gillies' complete game gem.
This team won't miss the conference playoffs but, at this point, they'll have to win the tournament to get into the NCAA regionals. Tulane is ranked 82 in the RPI, a figure that gets you nowhere fast but their schedule is actually still intriguing in that department. The Green Wave still have tonight's game at Southern Miss (RPI – 33) and series versus East Carolina (RPI – 17) and Central Florida (RPI – 41) left on the schedule. Point being, that's a ton of opportunity to boost a team's RPI but can Tulane take advantage? We'll see.
I would like to take this moment to say I do not apologize for making fun of Rod Stewart. Thank you! Look for me at Jazz Fest this Sunday. I'll be the guy wearing shades.
Sounds like the New Orleans Saints (0-0) spent the weekend drafting a bunch of backups. Sweet. I guess I'll go ahead and cancel next year's Super Bowl coverage. Just kidding, folks.
First, take a chill pill, New Orleans. It's May, my man, and every team is undefeated.
I do worry about trading away next year's first round pick and not getting a quarterback to develop but, again, it's May and all I'm thinking about is watching Jack White this weekend. Who Dat?