text:
SOUND SEEKERS: Music among the trees — local musician hosts concerts in a treehouse for charity
POSTED June 7, 2012 1:57 pm
Sound Seekers by Fateema Sayani is published weekly at OttawaMagazine.com. Read Fateema Sayani's culture column in Ottawa Magazine and follow her on Twitter @fateemasayani.
Photo of Jesse Stewart by Tony Fouhse.
Crabbing about Ottawa's lack of live show space is kind of a municipal sport. You hear it from the rawkers, many of who are still frowning about the closing of beloved hovel Bumpers, and from classical types lamenting the city's lack of a decent downtown concert hall.
The entrepreneurial and enthusiastic respond to this dearth by hosting shows in non-traditional venues. I've seen gigs in brunch pubs, churches, at that stage behind Parliament Hill, in Centretown apartments, at house concerts, and in that big, empty space beside the Hurdman Transitway Station.
Add a new venue to that list: A Nepean treehouse. It's a fancy jobbie that was handcrafted from $3,000 worth of cedar by Jesse Stewart, a music professor at Carleton University. He started building it in his backyard two summers ago for his son and daughter, now aged 11 and eight.
"When I was building the treehouse, a thought kept coming back to me: There are kids in this world who don't have a roof over their head, clean water, or food," he says. "Could I use the treehouse, in however modest a way, to improve childrens' lives?"
He decided to start hosting intimate 30-60 minute concerts in the treehouse. Stewart will play hand percussion instruments for a maximum of three people in exchange for a donation to a children's charity.
Interested concert-goers can go to www.treehouseconcerts.ca and contact Stewart to arrange a workable time. No money changes hands. Rather, it's an honour system. You give to the charity via its website or via mail and let Stewart know the name of the charity and the amount given. Stewart keeps track of the amounts so that he can assess how effective the concert concept is as a fundraiser.
"There is no minimum donation required," Stewart says, "But my hope is that people will see this as an opportunity to contribute above and beyond what they are already giving."
The treehouse sits about 12 feet up in a silver maple that is about 40 years old. It's an eight-by-eight-foot space with 10-foot ceilings. You get there by climbing a steep set of stairs to a landing, then you climb a vertical ladder and enter through a hatch in the floor.
Stewart has made a name outside of academia. His recording with Stretch Orchestra received a 2012 Juno award for Instrumental Album of the Year. He's also writing a book called Jazz Plus. Each chapter explores jazz in relation to another genre, including hip-hop and country.
Rolf Klausener, singer-songwriter with The Acorn, and a regular on the Ottawa music and resto scene, hosts a reveal party with business partner Marlene Power, she of the nature-based educators Carp Ridge Forest Preschool, on Thursday, June 7 at Babylon (9 p.m., admission by donation).
They are unveiling the concept and lineup of the Arboretum Festival, to take place Sept. 15 at the old Ottawa Jailhouse and in the Arts Court yard. The announcement takes place at 9:45 p.m. There will be an Art Is In grilled-cheese sandwich bar, along with featured beers by Beau's and Kichesippi breweries, with music by DJs Adam Saikaley, Jose Palacios, and Pawel Skorupski. Organizers will also announce a series of fundraising events leading up to the September festival, including pop-up dinners and keg parties. For more info, see www.arboretumfestival.com.


text:
Bronto, Raleigh-Durham
Bronto Featured in Triangle Business Journal
September 9, 2008 Joe Colopy
Bronto was featured in this week's Triangle Business Journal (TBJ). The TBJ used an old picture of Chaz and me from a couple years ago. Fortunately, I am proudly wearing my Bronto belt buckle.
The article is fairly short and speaks broadly about our growth.
You can read the full article on their website or inline below:
Durham's Bronto Software Takes Off
DURHAM – Bronto Software, the company named for a dinosaur, is looking to expand its stomping grounds.
The Durham company is set this month to start work that will triple its space on the American Tobacco campus to 13,000 square feet by the beginning of the year, says CEO Joe Colopy. Bronto currently employs 45, up from 29 at the start of the year, and Colopy anticipates adding more workers.
Colopy says Bronto's expansion comes as more retailers turn to e-mail as a way to communicate with customers. He says Bronto also is getting new business from companies that had been doing their e-mail marketing in-house.
Colopy says Bronto will reach $6 million in revenue this year, and he projects that the company will reach $10 million next year.
"E-mail marketing is not just e-mail," Colopy says. "It's real marketing."
Corporate interest in e-mail marketing has picked up over the past five years, says Heidi Hennink-Kaminski, professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She says companies use e-mail marketing to try to learn about customer preferences – a goal similar to the one businesses have had with traditional mail marketing campaigns. But with e-mail, Hennink-Kaminski says, feedback comes much faster.
Colopy started working on what would become Bronto's software in 2000. He and company co-founder Chaz Felix both worked at Red Hat before starting Bronto in 2002. The company has taken no outside funding, though Colopy says he receives inquiries from venture capitalists.
Colopy says that in the early part of the decade, e-mail marketing was just sending e-mail messages to lists. But the industry has moved toward providing messages targeted to particular individuals.
Bronto's software allows a retailer to measure e-mail campaigns so the content and the frequency of the messages can be adjusted. Message content also can be tailored to customer interests.
E-mail marketing is getting harder because spam filters block a lot of messages, says David Buffaloe, president of M-pact Marketing in Raleigh. Even if a message does get through, Buffaloe says, it must contend with dozens of others filling customer inboxes. M-pact works with clients to formulate their messages but does not offer e-mail marketing software.
Buffaloe says the value of software such as Bronto's is its analytical power. Being able to measure how many messages get opened and whether users clicked on items in the message can help a company further refine its marketing efforts.
"Every time you do an e-mail campaign, you want to learn from it," he says.
Bronto has not been trouble-free. A software upgrade in 2006 turned up numerous bugs. The company worked to fix the problems and offered the service to customers free for a month.
Bronto now claims 800 customers. Clients include the Duke University Alumni Association and seafood company Gorton's. Waterloo, Wis.-based Trek Bicycle has used Bronto for two years. Web Marketing Manager Casey Kohner says Bronto helped Trek move from blasting e-mails to sending targeted messages. Kohner says the software allows Trek to segment messages, so the entire customer list doesn't get the same message.
"Frequency is determined by what we know about them and how specific they want the information to be," Kohner says.
Hennink-Kaminski does not see e-mail marketing replacing traditional advertising. Print and broadcast advertising helps build brand identity, she says. E-mail marketing gives more specific information to customers who want it. "I think you need both parts of the equation," she says.
My Story on Drew Adam's "The Price" Podcast
"You can be definitive without being abrupt."
MBA@UNC Commencement
Bronto Reunion … Oh, What a Night!
Propensity for Action

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
package org.apache.lucene.codecs.compressing;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.zip.DataFormatException;
import java.util.zip.Deflater;
import java.util.zip.Inflater;

import org.apache.lucene.index.CorruptIndexException;
import org.apache.lucene.store.DataInput;
import org.apache.lucene.store.DataOutput;
import org.apache.lucene.util.ArrayUtil;
import org.apache.lucene.util.BytesRef;

/**
 * A compression mode. Tells how much effort should be spent on compression and
 * decompression of stored fields.
 * @lucene.experimental
 */
public abstract class CompressionMode {

  /**
   * A compression mode that trades compression ratio for speed. Although the
   * compression ratio might remain high, compression and decompression are
   * very fast. Use this mode with indices that have a high update rate but
   * should be able to load documents from disk quickly.
   */
  public static final CompressionMode FAST = new CompressionMode() {

    @Override
    public Compressor newCompressor() {
      return new LZ4FastCompressor();
    }

    @Override
    public Decompressor newDecompressor() {
      return LZ4_DECOMPRESSOR;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
      return "FAST";
    }

  };

  /**
   * A compression mode that trades speed for compression ratio. Although
   * compression and decompression might be slow, this compression mode should
   * provide a good compression ratio. This mode might be interesting if/when
   * your index size is much bigger than your OS cache.
   */
  public static final CompressionMode HIGH_COMPRESSION = new CompressionMode() {

    @Override
    public Compressor newCompressor() {
      // notes:
      // 3 is the highest level that doesn't have lazy match evaluation
      // 6 is the default, higher than that is just a waste of cpu
      return new DeflateCompressor(6);
    }

    @Override
    public Decompressor newDecompressor() {
      return new DeflateDecompressor();
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
      return "HIGH_COMPRESSION";
    }

  };

  /**
   * This compression mode is similar to {@link #FAST} but it spends more time
   * compressing in order to improve the compression ratio. This compression
   * mode is best used with indices that have a low update rate but should be
   * able to load documents from disk quickly.
   */
  public static final CompressionMode FAST_DECOMPRESSION = new CompressionMode() {

    @Override
    public Compressor newCompressor() {
      return new LZ4HighCompressor();
    }

    @Override
    public Decompressor newDecompressor() {
      return LZ4_DECOMPRESSOR;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
      return "FAST_DECOMPRESSION";
    }

  };

  /** Sole constructor. */
  protected CompressionMode() {}

  /**
   * Create a new {@link Compressor} instance.
   */
  public abstract Compressor newCompressor();

  /**
   * Create a new {@link Decompressor} instance.
   */
  public abstract Decompressor newDecompressor();

  private static final Decompressor LZ4_DECOMPRESSOR = new Decompressor() {

    @Override
    public void decompress(DataInput in, int originalLength, int offset, int length, BytesRef bytes) throws IOException {
      assert offset + length <= originalLength;
      // add 7 padding bytes, this is not necessary but can help decompression run faster
      if (bytes.bytes.length < originalLength + 7) {
        bytes.bytes = new byte[ArrayUtil.oversize(originalLength + 7, 1)];
      }
      final int decompressedLength = LZ4.decompress(in, offset + length, bytes.bytes, 0);
      if (decompressedLength > originalLength) {
        throw new CorruptIndexException("Corrupted: lengths mismatch: " + decompressedLength + " > " + originalLength, in);
      }
      bytes.offset = offset;
      bytes.length = length;
    }

    @Override
    public Decompressor clone() {
      return this;
    }

  };

  private static final class LZ4FastCompressor extends Compressor {

    private final LZ4.HashTable ht;

    LZ4FastCompressor() {
      ht = new LZ4.HashTable();
    }

    @Override
    public void compress(byte[] bytes, int off, int len, DataOutput out)
        throws IOException {
      LZ4.compress(bytes, off, len, out, ht);
    }

  }

  private static final class LZ4HighCompressor extends Compressor {

    private final LZ4.HCHashTable ht;

    LZ4HighCompressor() {
      ht = new LZ4.HCHashTable();
    }

    @Override
    public void compress(byte[] bytes, int off, int len, DataOutput out)
        throws IOException {
      LZ4.compressHC(bytes, off, len, out, ht);
    }

  }

  private static final class DeflateDecompressor extends Decompressor {

    final Inflater decompressor;
    byte[] compressed;

    DeflateDecompressor() {
      decompressor = new Inflater(true);
      compressed = new byte[0];
    }

    @Override
    public void decompress(DataInput in, int originalLength, int offset, int length, BytesRef bytes) throws IOException {
      assert offset + length <= originalLength;
      if (length == 0) {
        bytes.length = 0;
        return;
      }
      final int compressedLength = in.readVInt();
      // pad with extra "dummy byte": see javadocs for using Inflater(true)
      // we do it for compliance, but it's unnecessary for years in zlib.
      final int paddedLength = compressedLength + 1;
      compressed = ArrayUtil.grow(compressed, paddedLength);
      in.readBytes(compressed, 0, compressedLength);
      compressed[compressedLength] = 0; // explicitly set dummy byte to 0

      decompressor.reset();
      // extra "dummy byte"
      decompressor.setInput(compressed, 0, paddedLength);

      bytes.offset = bytes.length = 0;
      bytes.bytes = ArrayUtil.grow(bytes.bytes, originalLength);
      try {
        bytes.length = decompressor.inflate(bytes.bytes, bytes.length, originalLength);
      } catch (DataFormatException e) {
        throw new IOException(e);
      }
      if (!decompressor.finished()) {
        throw new CorruptIndexException("Invalid decoder state: needsInput=" + decompressor.needsInput()
                                                            + ", needsDict=" + decompressor.needsDictionary(), in);
      }
      if (bytes.length != originalLength) {
        throw new CorruptIndexException("Lengths mismatch: " + bytes.length + " != " + originalLength, in);
      }
      bytes.offset = offset;
      bytes.length = length;
    }

    @Override
    public Decompressor clone() {
      return new DeflateDecompressor();
    }

  }

  private static class DeflateCompressor extends Compressor {

    final Deflater compressor;
    byte[] compressed;

    DeflateCompressor(int level) {
      compressor = new Deflater(level, true);
      compressed = new byte[64];
    }

    @Override
    public void compress(byte[] bytes, int off, int len, DataOutput out) throws IOException {
      compressor.reset();
      compressor.setInput(bytes, off, len);
      compressor.finish();

      if (compressor.needsInput()) {
        // no output
        assert len == 0 : len;
        out.writeVInt(0);
        return;
      }

      int totalCount = 0;
      for (;;) {
        final int count = compressor.deflate(compressed, totalCount, compressed.length - totalCount);
        totalCount += count;
        assert totalCount <= compressed.length;
        if (compressor.finished()) {
          break;
        } else {
          compressed = ArrayUtil.grow(compressed);
        }
      }

      out.writeVInt(totalCount);
      out.writeBytes(compressed, totalCount);
    }

  }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


STUDENTS CAN LEARN FROM ONE ANOTHER. SOMETIMES IT IS EASIER TO LEARN FROM A PEER THAN IT IS FROM THE TEACHER! THIS ACTIVITY IS ABOUT SHARING WELLBEING STRATEGIES WITH ONE ANOTHER AND LEARNING HOW OTHERS LOOK AFTER THEIR MENTAL HEALTH.
EQUIPMENT: SMALL BUTCHERS PAPER X 1 SHEET FOR EACH STUDENT, STICKY TAPE, MARKERS X 1 FOR EACH STUDENT (NOT PERMANENT), A CLEAR OPEN SPACE WHERE STUDENTS CAN WALK AROUND.
EXPLAIN TO EACH STUDENT THAT IT IS IMPORTANT TO LEARN STRATEGIES AND SKILLS TO COPE WITH ADVERSITY. WHILE IT IS NORMAL TO GO THROUGH UPS AND DOWNS EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES OR STRATEGIES THEY USE TO LIFT THEIR MOOD. EXPLAIN TO STUDENTS THAT THIS ACTIVITY IS ABOUT LEARNING SOME NEW WAYS TO STAY POSITIVE IN DIFFICULT TIMES.
ASK STUDENTS TO HELP EACH OTHER TO TAPE A PIECE OF BUTCHERS PAPER TO THEIR BACKS, THIS I THEIR CAPE (EVERY STUDENT NEEDS A CAPE). GIVE EACH STUDENT A MARKER.
EXPLAIN TO STUDENTS THAT ONCE THEY HAVE FINISHED THEIR CONVERSATION THEY NEED TO TAKE IT IN TURNS TO WRITE ONE COPING STRATEGY OR ONE THING ONE ACTIVITY THEIR PARTNER DOES TO STAY HAPPY ON THEIR CAPE.
ONCE THIS IS DONE STUDENTS CAN WALK AROUND AND FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO TALK TO AND REPEAT THE PROCESS. STUDENTS SHOULD TRY TO WRITE SOMETHING NEW ON THE BACK OF THEIR PARTNER'S CAPE. FOR EXAMPLE IF THE PERSON THEY ARE TALKING TO ALREADY HAS "LISTEN TO MUSIC" WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF THEIR CAPE THEY WILL NEED TO ASK THEIR PARTNER WHAT ELSE THEY DO.
ONCE EVERYONE HAS TWO OR THREE THINGS WRITTEN ON THEIR CAPES THEY CAN TAKE THEM OFF AND VOLUNTEER TO SHARE THEM WITH THE CLASS.


text:
Six horses removed from property in Charleston County
by: Jan-Michael Pugh
Posted: Feb 12, 2019 / 09:35 PM EST / Updated: Feb 13, 2019 / 08:32 AM EST
MEGGETT, S.C. (WCBD) – On February 12, 2019, six horses are on their way to new homes after their owner voluntarily surrendered them to the Charleston Animal Society for proper care.
The horses were transported from the 4500 block of Flounder Lake Drive in Meggett, SC to the Charleston Animal Society for rescue, where they will be cared for and attended to until they can be adopted.
The news release stated that the voluntary surrender came after numerous calls and complaints from neighbors about the condition of several horses, leading to an impending court order. One horse was soon re-homed, while another six horses were voluntarily transferred to the Charleston Animal Society before deputies intervened with their court ordered transfer.
Each of the six horses received a health check-up and veterinary certificate at the end of January, clearing them for transport, the press release stated.
One of the horses is a Shackelford pony, which was originally adopted from North Carolina. Plans are in the works to return the pony to that rescue if possible. One of the horses is a stallion that will be gelded in the near future.
"The bottom line is we are resolving this situation in the best interest of all of the animals involved," said Sgt. David Willis, supervisor over the Animal Control Unit of the Charleston County Sheriff's Office. "This particular owner was overwhelmed by the number of animals she had and this will help her with animals she continues to care for."
The owner was allowed to keep four horses and several other animals, which were all in good condition.
"The Animal Society started 145 years ago rescuing horses and has continued working in partnership with law enforcement during crises to care for these wonderful animals," said Charleston Animal Society President and CEO Joe Elmore.
Berkeley County News / 1 min ago


text:
Spoiled Rotten Boutique and Contemporary Gallery
All CategoriesMichael Godard Art Page Romero Britto Loudmouth Golf Clothes Tokidoki Skateboard Art
Home > All Artists > Misc Famous Artists > Gathering Flowers by Susan Patricia
Gathering Flowers by Susan Patricia
Item# gathering-flowers
Framing: Rolled in a Tube - You Frame ItFramed, Matted in Glass (+300)
BRING HOME THE BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL ARTWORK OF SUSAN PATRICIA! Susan Patricia uses her extensive international travels to find inspiration for the vibrant, tropical scenes that she paints. "Gathering Flowers" is a limited edition serigraph on paper, numbered and hand signed by Susan Patricia. Includes Certificate of Authenticity! Measures approx. 28" x 34" (with border), 26" x 32" (image). Listprice: $795.00
Born in Los Angeles, California, Susan Patricia showed artistic talent from a very early age. Recognizing this, her parents enrolled her in art classes when she was only in kindergarten. After completing high school, Susan Patricia earned a degree in Technical Illustration from the Los Angeles Trade Technical College before studying computer graphics, surface pattern design, and photography at the Otis Parson School of Design and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Over these years, Susan Patricia developed a unique style of artistry. Discovering silk painting while vacationing in Playa Blanca, Mexico, she began applying her background in technical illustration to this medium. Soon, she was hired by Club Med in Playa Blanca to teach her skills to others while experimenting with the techniques of silk painting and refining her own style. Particularly fascinated by the vibrant, bold, and shimmering hues of the French dyes using in silk painting, she creates precise, Realist paintings of tropical scenes and vibrant underwater life. She travels around Europe, Central America, and the South Pacific to find inspiration for her art. She currently divides her time between Southern California and Hawaii.
These travels have also afforded Susan Patricia the opportunity to exhibit her artwork in galleries around the world, including the United States, Europe, Mexico, Hawaii, Guam, and Japan. She has been remarkably well-received and her work has been commissioned by major international companies such as Hawaiian Airlines, Architectural Digest, and Hyatt Regency Hotels, in addition to greeting cards, calendars, and puzzles. Susan Patricia's original work and fine art reproductions can be found all around the world.
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But, people generally prefer a live dealer over random number generators. These games can be played at the tables in a casino. Some of the examples of the Casino Gaming apps are sist ar nūju, and rulete.


text:
Christian rock icon's widow enlists Hollywood to tell the musician's story. `No Compromise' is a love story between a man and a woman (Keith and Melody Green) and between a man and his Creator.
On May 21, 2010 By Jeff FenskeIn Freedom
Keith (then) &
Melody (today)
From: Daily News
Christian rock icon's widow enlists Hollywood to tell the musician's story
Nearly 30 years after Christian-rock pioneer Keith Green died in a plane crash, his widow and a Hollywood producer have teamed up to bring his story to the big screen in the hope of introducing a new generation to his music.
One of several Christian rock musicians who lived in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s, Keith and his wife, Melody, wrote numerous hit songs, but also formed a seven-home community in Woodland Hills where they cared for people in need.
"The stuff he did was breaking all the rules," said Melody, now an author, composer and speaker who leads Last Days Ministries out of Kansas City, Mo.
"He showed up in flip-flops, blue jeans and suspenders and really kind of revolutionized the music industry by giving away his music for free, loving God, really loving people and telling Christians, `Hey, we've got to do what we say we believe."'
Melody Green is working with producer Mike Leahy to make a movie version of her book "No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green." …
They hope to start shooting later this year, and release the film in 2011.
"It's just the kind of story that we want to put on film because it's important, compelling and challenging," Leahy said. "`No Compromise' is a love story between a man and a woman and between a man and his creator." …
Entire Article Here
Video: The Keith Green Story
1-Minute Tribute to the Awesome Keith Green
[music video] Keith Green – Make My Life a Prayer to You
[music video] Keith Green's Non-OSAS Song "The Sheep and the Goats" — "My friends, the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to this scripture, is what they did and didn't do!"
[music video] Keith Green – Asleep in the Light (Live 1982 & LP)
Pastor Chuck Baldwin: Breakup of the U.S. is Inevitable. Short of another Great Awakening, nothing can stop it. And given the spiritual deadness of most American churches these days…
President James Buchanan 1860 (4 months before the Civil War): A Proclamation for a Day of HUMILIATION, Fasting, & Prayer — "Let us, then, with deep contrition and penitent sorrow, UNITE in HUMBLING OURSELVES before the Most High, in CONFESSING OUR INDIVIDUAL and NATIONAL SINS…"


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omg, I am now coveting the wild woman cardigan. great pick!


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text:
5 simple steps to creating a reading nook
Carve out your own reading retreat just about anywhere with these easy ideas from the pros.
How to stay motivated to read every day in 2023
By Sarah Lemire
Jenna Bush Hager has helmed a book club since 2019. Speaking to TODAY.com, she shared how she gets all of her reading done — and one tip involves a technology-free reading nook, or a space designated especially for reading. Now, it's one of her favorite places to read (her very favorite being an airplane).
When you think of the perfect place to curl up with a good book, where is it? If you're like many book lovers, you probably imagine a window seat overlooking the ocean or snuggled up under a blanket by a fire as snowflakes fall from the sky.
That's nice and all, but the reality is that squeezing in a few chapters of your favorite novel is more likely to occur somewhere between responding to work emails and finishing up the dishes – if there's any time at all.
Life's busy and if you're hoping to jump back on the reading bandwagon, finding the motivation is as easy as joining a book club (naturally we suggest Read With Jenna) and keeping your reading streak alive by committing to a few pages each and every day.
It also helps to have a designated reading space or reading nook to inspire you.
While it might not necessarily be in a seaside villa or ski chalet, you can still create a place in your home (regardless of how big or small your space is) just right for you and your books.
To help, TODAY.com asked the experts for ideas on how to make a reading retreat and, good news, using these five simple steps, creating your own personal book haven is easier than you think.
Designate a comfy spot
Pick a comfortable, relaxed spot in your home. Catherine Falls Commercial / Getty Images
There are a lot of benefits of reading. Among them? Living longer, less stress and being a better conversationalist for starters.
"Reading has actually been connected to meditation in terms of the way that our brain processes our environment and our physiological state," Zoe Shaw, Psy.D., licensed psychotherapist and author of "A Year of Self-Care: Daily Practices and Inspiration for Caring for Yourself," tells TODAY.com.
To help enhance that reading-inspired Zen, it's important your reading nook is located somewhere in your home where you feel relaxed, even if it's just a quiet corner in the living room.
"The most important thing is that people realize it does not need to be that really perfect little window seat or that paneled library fireside," Julia Mack, interior designer at Julia Mack Design, tells TODAY.com.
"It really just takes a comfortable chair. It's not something that should feel like it requires a major amount of design. It just requires a little bit of effort," Mack says.
If your living space is limited, Mack recommends making your bed your "book nook," then adding a few large pillows to help prop up your back.
"I like the idea of sitting on top of a bed that is nicely made and sitting up against some cushions," she says. "That is a perfectly acceptable version of a reading nook."
Shed a little light on the subject
Make sure your book nook is well-lit.Aleksandra Zlatkovic / Getty Images
Once you've settled on a place for your reading retreat, make sure it's got ample light.
"Definitely task lighting," Rashida Banks, designer and content creator, tells TODAY.com. She suggests a floor lamp or wall-mounted sconce with a pull-out arm to help illuminate the pages.
A window works just fine, too, according to Banks, who says given the choice, she'd choose to have a reading nook in a corner of the house by a window, if possible.
"It's nice to look off into the outside, especially if the outside is scenic," she explains.
Mack agrees that being near a window makes for a good reading nook, but with one caveat.
"If it's during the day and you're reading a hardbound, traditional book, it's nice to have some sunlight and be near a window," says Mack. "But if it's at night and you're on an e-book, it's also great to have the space feel cozy and comfy."
Curl up with one of these RWJ books
This 2023 Read With Jenna pick will take you back
Jenna Bush Hager's favorite mystery novels
Best books to read this winter
Add a table or nightstand
An end or side table is ideal for drinks and other items.Kathrin Ziegler / Getty Images
Depending on your space, Mack recommends incorporating small table or flat surface nearby to set things down on.
"It's just really a comfortable feeling when you have a side table, something to put down a glass of water, cup of tea or you're reading glasses," she says.
Banks also recommends incorporating a table into your reading retreat if possible.
"I would put a small table on the side because, if you're like me, I love lattes, tea lattes, coffee lattes, or if it's summertime, maybe some homemade lemonade.you Then, have a place to set your drink down," Banks says.
Along with a table, having someplace to store your book (or books!) is also helpful.
"I have some clients that are absolutely dedicated readers and they don't want to part with the books that they've read," Mack explains. "It's a feeling of accomplishment. They like to go back and reread their books. They like to be surrounded by them."
If you don't have space for a bookshelf, you've still got options.
"People are collecting books," says Banks. "So, even having a basket next to your chair where you can store your book when you're not reading it and come back to it when you are."
Make your reading nook cozy
A cozy blanket and pillows help make your reading space extra cozy.Oleg Breslavtsev / Getty Images
Along with covering the basics, creating a reading nook that's inviting goes a long way in ensuring that you'll actually use it.
Simple ways to enhance your space include picking out special throw pillows for the spot, adding photographs or art and customizing it to suit your personal taste.
And, of course, it needs to be comfy.
"You definitely need a blanket," says Banks. "For the wintertime you do a knitted blanket, in the summertime you can do a linen blanket."
Ideally, according to Mack, your book nook shouldn't be where where you work.
"As people get busier and busier and as your home and office seem to merge, it's nice to have a designated spot where you can sit down with a nice, juicy fictional book and just jump right in and not feel like you're working in your living space or living in your working space," she says.
Add an element of fire
A candle or fire adds warmth to a reading nook.Alexandr Kolesnikov / Getty Images
Finally, when it comes to reading nooks, it's hard not to imagine stretching out on a luxurious chaise lounge in front of a roaring fire with champagne and crumpets served by the staff.
While reading your favorite novel at the "Downton Abbey" manor certainly would be nice, chances are pretty good, you'll need to improvise.
If you've got a fireplace in your home, then creating a book nook nearby is ideal. "I think a fiery aspect sets the mood for coziness," Banks says. "I think about campfires and how stories are told around them."
No fireplace? Not to worry. Any element of fire works whether you burn a candle, put on the a cracklin' fireplace on YouTube or try the "crackling fireplace" setting of a white noise machine.
"Having some element of fire sets the tone and opens up our imagination as we're reading," says Banks.
Sarah Lemire
Sarah Lemire is a lifestyle reporter at TODAY.com with more than a decade of experience writing across an array of channels including home, health, holidays, personal finance, shopping, food, fashion, travel and weddings. An avid traveler, foodie, helicopter parent and couch film critic, Sarah is originally from Minneapolis and has spent the last two decades unsuccessfully trying to figure out the difference between a hoagie and a sub.


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Bird of the Year 2014: best performances in a supporting role
Happy New Year, everybody.
Keen followers of the Bird of the Year Awards will notice a change in the categories this year. Butterflies and moths receive a disproportionate amount of my insecty attention, so I think it makes sense to split them out into their own category. Realistically, I could just split all invertebrates into 'butterflies and moths' and 'other', but I think it's good to sit back at the end of the year and try to think of an interesting spider or slug or sea urchin or something.
Best Plant
I went on a lovely holiday in Portugal in the spring, and I mainly chose the timing for the flowers. Everyone goes to the Mediterranean at the wrong time of year. It may not be as hot at the end of April as it is in August, but the whole countryside is full of flowers and birdsong.
So I was walking along the Atlantic coast of Portugal, and the cliffs were covered in drifts of rockroses — pale yellow, strong yellow, white, pink — but there was also French lavender, thrift, big Spanish broom, little compact mounds of broom with pale yellow flowers, maybe eight or nine different orchids, wild gladioli, amazing vivid blue pimpernels. And sometimes I'd put my backpack down and get a great waft of wild thyme.
But I have to pick one. Among the various orchids, I was pleased to find these plants of a tongue orchid which is normally burgundy red:
But perhaps perversely, I'm not going to pick a flower; my plant of the year is the cork oak:
The numbers on the bark are to keep track of when each tree's bark was last harvested. The combination of the dark naked trunks and greyish bark sleeves is rather charming, I think.
Best Butterfly or Moth
I made an effort to tick off a few more British butterfly species this year, and had four life firsts. But they were very much butterflies for the connoisseur; by which I mean they look… unspectacular. The names give you some idea: Essex Skipper, Small Blue, Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper. The Small Blue is indeed remarkably small, but it's not very blue; the Essex Skipper is distinguished from the Small Skipper by the colour of the undersides of the antennae; and the other two skippers are grizzled and dingy.
I also saw green hairstreak for the first time in Britain, which is a genuinely pretty butterfly, with iridescent green underwings; but I have seen them before in France. And a few attractive moths, like Clouded Buff, and this Buff Ermine, seen here on the classic habitat of a railway station toilet door:
But the winner is again from Portugal, a kind of butterfly I have wanted to see for years because it's an exotic-looking European species not found in the UK: a Festoon. To be exact, this is a Spanish Festoon:
It's rather a worn specimen, and it's a terrible picture taken with my phone through my binoculars, but it's my butterfly of the year.
Best Insect (other)
The most exciting non-lepidopteran insects I saw this year in the UK were ruby-tailed wasp (so shiny!) and velvet ant (actually a furry wingless wasp, dontcha know). Although the most photogenic might be this dor beetle:
But I also saw some good beetles in Portugal, like this spotty hairy chafer which I think is probably Oxythyrea funesta (but usually when I think I've identified an insect and I consult an entomologist, they tell me I would need to check its genitalia under a microscope to be sure):
And there was this grotesque mammoth which, I learned later, is an oil beetle:
But I'm going for this spiky beetle as my best insect (other) for 2014. According to the coleopterist I consulted on Twitter, it's probably Sepidium bidentatum:
Best Invertebrate (other)
So I was walking along in Portugal and thought oh, what's that pink flower the bumblebee is feeding on…
As it turns out, the bumblebee was not the one doing the feeding. That is a pink crab spider, possibly Thomisus onustus.
But my invertebrate of the year is the wasp spider Argiope bruennichi. These have been spreading rapidly across the south of England in the last ten years, helped by a combination of global warming and, I learn from Google, new-found genetic diversity after global warming allowed previously isolated populations to interbreed. It may be a sign of the coming apocalypse, but it's a handsome beastie which I've been trying to see for a couple of years:
Best Reptile
I saw a grass snake trying to eat a frog in the woods at Bookham Common. I did take a couple of pictures of snake belly in thick grass, but they're not worth sharing.
Best Fish
No, I've got nothing.
Best Amphibian
I've seen the usual common frogs and toads — lots of tadpoles in the pond this year — but nothing notable.
Best Mammal
An Egyptian Mongoose in Portugal. I just googled this to check, and apparently it was always assumed that these were an introduced species in Iberia — because of a lack of fossil evidence and the distance from the nearest wild African populations — but there are fossils in North Africa, and recent genetic testing suggests the Iberian mongooses are the descendants of some of those North African animals that presumably crossed over at Gibraltar in the Pleistocene, when there was no sea there.
Either way, it was a neat surprise; I didn't know they were there.
Best Ecosystem
Obviously the Portuguese cliff-tops were great, the pine scrub was a delight, but my choice is the steppes of Alentejo, where I went with a hired bird guide for a great days birdwatching. I imagine in summer they are baked dry, but when I was there it was gently rolling green fields with flowers forming great hazy patches of colour. I only took a couple of pictures and they don't do it justice, but here's one I took through a telescope, admittedly with the saturation punched up a bit, that gives you some idea.
There are actually some birds in that picture, which is why I took it; but they can wait for the main Bird of the Year 2014 post.
Post published:9 January 2015
Post category:Nature
This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind – Photosketch – Gizmodo
Cool toy: 'PhotoSketch is an internet-based program that can take the rough, labeled sketch on the left and automagically turn it into the naff montage on the right.'
(del.icio.us tags: cool geeky photography )
Spider Silk | American Museum of Natural History
'A spectacular and extremely rare textile, woven from golden-colored silk thread produced by more than one million spiders in Madagascar … measuring 11 feet by 4 feet, took four years to make using a painstaking technique developed more than 100 years ago.
This unique textile was created drawing on the legacy of a French missionary, Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar in the 1880s and 1890s…. Previously, the only known spider-silk textile of note was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and it was subsequently lost.'
(del.icio.us tags: silk weaving textiles spiders Madagascar )
Post published:6 October 2009
Post category:Daily Links
BibliOdyssey: Monograph of Spiders
''Monographie der Spinnen' was the first ever German monograph on spiders and one of the earliest publications anywhere devoted solely to spiders.'
(del.icio.us tags: illustration spiders C19th )


You can use a simple, gentle facial exercise to stimulate circulation in your cheeks and make the skin look more radiant and more full. No extra fat or skin will actually develop, but your narrow cheeks may look chubbier if you practice this exercise daily.Sit tall. Sit in a chair with your back straight. Pull down the shoulder blades and relax your shoulders overall, making sure that there is as little tension as possible in that area of your body. Your chest should be outward and open. Open your mouth lightly. Imagine that you are carrying a normal conversation with someone at low to moderate volume. Open your mouth to the position you might usually have during such conversations. At this point, you must also curl both your lower and upper lip inward so that they cover your front row of teeth. Simultaneously, you should pull the corners of your mouth back, bringing them as close to the molar teeth as possible. Both corners should be pulled back in the same direction and to the same level or vertical position of your face. Your chin should move forward slightly, as well.Hold the face you have just made for a full 30 seconds. You should feel the muscles in your cheeks and mouth stretch. Release slowly to a normal resting face when done.
Work gently, making little pinches up and down both cheekbones. Small pinches likes this may not make your cheeks plumper, but this practice can give your skin a naturally blush, making your cheeks look brighter as a result. Brighter cheeks look plumper to the naked eye than pale ones do.
Use a facial lotion or moisturizing cream on your cheeks after every shower and every time you wash your face. Let it dry naturally and do not rinse it off. If possible, look for an emollient cream. These creams are specially formulated to soothe the skin, so your cheeks will be moisturized and any chapping or damage they have gone through can also be remedied.Even if you shower in the morning, it is a good idea to apply more moisturizing cream at night just before going to bed.
Apples contain many nutrients and vitamins that benefit your skin, so eating them and applying them topically can work wonders. This fruit contains antioxidants, as well as vitamins A, B, and C, and all of these elements can help prevent tissue damage and wrinkles. Apples also contain collagen and elastin, which keep your skin looking soft and plump. Red Delicious and Granny Smith apples are your best choices, followed by Braeburn apples.Cut one whole apple into chunks and use a potato masher or handheld blender too mash it into a sauce like consistency. Apply this apply mush to your cheeks using gentle, circular strokes. Leave it on for 15 to 30 minutes before rinsing with warm water. Repeat daily.
Another way to make use of the benefits of apple is by making a special apple drink. Combine three slices of apple with three baby carrots and 1/2 cup (125 ml) lemon juice. Blend until mixed evenly. Drink this juice every morning until you notice results.The potassium in carrots can help prevent the skin from becoming dry, and this vegetable also has anti inflammatory properties that can revitalize and tone the skin. Carrots also provide more antioxidants and more of vitamins A and C.Lemon juice provides your skin with additional doses of vitamins A, B, and C, as well as other antioxidants.
Apply aloe vera gel directly to your cheeks, rubbing it into the skin using gentle, circular motions. Do this roughly 30 to 60 minutes before you shower. Repeat daily.Alternatively, you could drink one 8 oz (250 ml) glass of aloe vera juice each morning until you notice results. Make sure that you drink food grade juice only.Aloe vera reduces inflammation and promotes increased elasticity of the skin.
This combination should be used on a nightly basis, just before bed. Both glycerin and rose water have properties that can benefit and nourish the skin of your cheeks.Glycerin keeps the skin hydrated and can regulate the rate at which skin cells shed. Rose water can help calm irritated skin and hydrate dry skin. It also has mild antiseptic properties, so it can keep the skin on your cheeks looking clean and healthy without drying it out or agitating it.
Your skin naturally produces its own oils, and these natural oils can keep your skin looking moist, fresh, and healthy. Cheeks with skin that have a healthy glow naturally look chubbier. If your body does not get the oil it needs, however, your skin will suffer, and your cheeks will look narrower.Get oil into your diet. Cook with a healthy, beneficial oil, like olive oil. You could also eat healthy nuts on a regular basis.If you decide to apply oil topically, you can do so by gently massaging a healthy oil into the skin of your cheeks after washing and exfoliating your face. Use an oil like coconut oil, olive oil, almond oil, or avocado oil.
Namely, you should avoid smoking and drinking since both activities cause your skin to lose elasticity. As skin loses elasticity, it becomes less flexible and takes on a sharper appearance, which will only make your cheeks look more narrow. You should also avoid any product or food containing turmeric powder. Many claim that this spice makes the skin look dry. Put sunscreen on your face to protect the skin from harmful ultraviolet rays. Sun related damage can dry out the skin, making your cheeks look gaunt and leathery.


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Q: CRM pop-up Silverlight application in new browser window issue I have developed a silverlight application that is launched from a CRM form. The form has a field and in the OnChange event of the field, it calls window.open to open a HTML web resource:
window.open(serverUrl + "")...
The HTML web resource contains an iframe that embeds the silverlight control.
The silverlight control has a "Save Data" button that saves data back to the CRM form. This all works fine on my development PC, however, on other PC, the data are not saved back to CRM.
I put debugging messages and the Xrm object is null. In the silverlight code, I am accessing the Xrm object by:
HtmlPage.Window.Eval("document.parentWindow.opener.Xrm") as ScriptObject;
This works on my development PC but doesn't work on other PC, does anyone know why this is happening? Is this a permission or browser settings issue?
I also tried to run "document.parentWindow.opener.Xrm" in IE developer tool's script window on the other PC while the silverlight control is open, and i can see the DOM object ok??
Regards,
Jerry

A: It seems i have to get the Xrm object in silverlight directly for it to work in IE9:
window = HtmlPage.Window.Eval("document.parentWindow.opener.Xrm") as ScriptObject;
This doesn't seem to work in IE9, only works in IE8:
window = HtmlPage.Window.Eval("document.parentWindow.opener") as ScriptObject;
xrmObject = window.GetProperty("Xrm") as ScriptObject;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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After Growing up in Foster Care, Virginia Man Adopts Three Children
(Instagram/iambarryfarmer)
Being a single parent is one of the toughest challenges imaginable. So when one Virginia man willingly decided to adopt not one, but three sons, it made headlines for all the right reasons.
It all began when Barry Farmer was placed into in Kinship Care – a form of foster care allowing family members to raise a child. Farmer's grandmother became his legal guardian as he shared in an Instagram post, including a photo from his first Christmas living in her home.
Please know, children in Kinship Care could possibly carry the same feelings of loss as an adoptee. This my first Christmas living with my Grandmother. I was still getting to know her since we didn't have a relationship prior to me moving in. Check out the MC Hammer doll lol. This was my new normal, my new beginning, stability. My Grandmother didn't have a lot to give me but it was more than what I ever had up until that point. I was fed, well groomed, my own room and loved. I may not have had what other children around me had growing up, but I did have a CHANCE. Because I realize not everyone gets a CHANCE. Anyone that tries to tell you that you don't need to be grateful for a CHANCE to heal, only want you to suffer in their misery, I refuse to do that. I choose to react to my present so that my future can be peaceful. THIS PICTURE BRINGS ME PEACE. To my fellow KinshipCare/FosterCare/Adoptees, I hope you find your peace. Foster Parents and Adoptive Parents I hope the children in your care find their peace.
A post shared by The Barry Farmer Morning Show (@iambarryfarmer) on Apr 14, 2019 at 3:55pm PDT
"My Grandmother didn't have a lot to give me but it was more than what I ever had up until that point. I was fed, well groomed, my own room and loved. I may not have had what other children around me had growing up, but I did have a CHANCE."
So at just 21 years-old, Barry Farmer decided to give back, receiving his foster care license and taking in then 8-year-old, Jaxon. What was originally a temporary placement eventually became permanent, when Jaxon asked if Farmer would become his "forever father" after the two had formed a special bond.
Two years later, wanting to give Jaxon a bigger family that included a sibling, farmer adopted 11-year-old Xavier. Less than a year later, the family added 4-year-old Jeremiah to their brood. Originally another temporary placement meant to give his former foster family some time off, the young boy eventually became an official Farmer in 2016. "Jeremiah's plans to return home had changed during that time," Farmer explained to PEOPLE magazine, "and that's when my two older boys and I decided to welcome him into our home permanently."
While parenthood has obviously come with some challenges and surprises, Farmer is still as passionate about being a dad as he was on day one. "Fatherhood has been everything I imagine it to be because I'm the father I wish I had growing up. I'm involved, I'm there when my boys go to sleep and when they wake up," he says.
It has truly been a privilege to be a father. So many take this title for granted while I Cherish every moment.
A post shared by The Barry Farmer Morning Show (@iambarryfarmer) on Jun 16, 2019 at 5:21am PDT
Beyond the immense feeling of joy it gives him, Farmer also says it's a small way to honor his grandmother and her sacrifice. "Becoming a foster parent was like a tribute to my grandmother because I could never pay her back, but I was definitely able to pay it forward."
Although his home now feels more like a frat house, Farmer said he wouldn't have it any other way. "They are loving, strong-willed and, at times, extremely thoughtful," Farmer says. "My sons have a lot of potential to make a positive impact on this world, I just hope they realize it and act on it."
While having a stable place to call home is important, it's the emotional bonds that Farmer says matter most. "They need your understanding, your compassion, and your guidance."
Farmer encourages others to explore foster care and adoption. "This is about the hundreds of thousands of children who need permanent homes and closure on their traumatic past and how we need hundreds of thousands of individuals to step forward and help them," he says.
To learn more about foster care, visit the resources page on ChildWelfare.gov.


So cute! These animal foam cut outs are so adorable! They will absolutely melt your heart! Soft to the touch. We have a wide variety of animal prints - cheetahs, cows, giraffes, hippos, lions, kualas, monkeys, pandas, tigers and zebra. . Perfect for your animal and zoo themes and projects.
Cheetah - L = 3.75" | W = 3"
Cow - L = 4.25" | W = 3"
Giraffe - L = 5.25" | W = 3.5"
Hippo - L = 4.5" | W = 4"
Lion - L = 4.5" | W = 3"
Kuala - L = 3.75" | W = 2.75"
Monkey - L = 4" | W = 4"
Panda - L = 4" | W = 3"
Tiger - L = 3.75" | W = 3.25"
Zebra - L = 4.5" | W = 3.25"


I had the pleasure of reviewing this album. At first, I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. This isn't something I would usually listen to. She has a beautiful voice though. Reminds me of Patsy Cline. My favorite song on the album was Pretty Paper, while my moms was Sentimental Journey, as it reminded her of her mother. Her album, Sentimental Journey, which released on January 29th, is a collection of classic covers. On Sentimental Journey, the multi-talented actress and singer brings her stellar voice to songs popularized by some of the most beloved artists of the last century.
Emmy's 12-song 'passion project' is an emotional musical journey, with each song representing a month in the year.


Texas, with its warm climate and beautiful scenery, has a wide range of real estate opportunities, whether you plan to invest or find your next home. There are many different types of real estate, depending upon where in Texas you look. By understanding the areas, you'll have a better understanding of what kinds of homes and architecture are available.
Houston is a bustling city, housing more than 2.1 million people in less than 600 square miles. Skyscrapers are the ornaments of the city, with beautiful examples of architecture seen in buildings like the JPMorgan Chase Building and the Bank of America Center. Real estate opportunities for residential homes abound, with beautiful architecture styles. Just a few include Victorian, a highly decorative style, Craftsman, a more modern and traditional look, and Colonial Revival, a beautiful and stately look that is reminiscent of the 1890's. Texas real estate in this area is pricey, but great deals can be found by researching and watching foreclosure lists.
Austin, the capital city of Texas, is home to just fewer than 800,000 people and one of the most historical cities in the state. Within the city, visitors will see a host of stone buildings that follow Roman building guides, as well as skyscrapers that became popular in the 1900's. Residential architecture styles include beautiful Victorians and cozy bungalows. The architecture in Austin is also heavily influenced by Spanish and European styles.
San Antonio, with more than 1.3 million residents, is home to the Alamo as well as many beautiful architectural styles. Those who are seeking Texas real estate opportunities in San Antonio will find a huge Spanish influence. Hidden among Spanish-style homes are French and Neo-Classical influences as well as a great deal of modern architecture. The San Antonio skyline is a beautiful blend of old and new buildings that combines to create the unique San Antonio feel. This is a beautiful place to live as well as to invest in real estate.
Dallas is the third largest city in Texas, and one of the most beautiful cities to live in. Dallas offers a wide variety of real estate opportunities as well. Most homes listed in Dallas are single-family homes on lots, thought there are a variety of architectural styles. These vary throughout the different districts, but it's easy to find Victorian, Neo-Classical, postmodernist architecture, as well as strong Spanish and European influences. While certain districts and neighborhoods are definitely pricier than others, most of Dallas' real estate can be considered expensive. Finding foreclosures or looking on the outskirts of town is a great way to find more affordable Texas real estate.
While these cities are gorgeous cities to invest in Texas real estate, there are many smaller towns that offer great investment opportunities and wonderful places to live. From the weather to the friendly individuals to the beautiful and diverse architecture styles, Texas is a great place to buy and sell real estate.
The Lone Star State has a lot of homes and a lot of land, and finding a good real estate agent is extremely important for any property purchase. The differences in Texas real estate are as big as the state itself: landscape, climate, and housing styles change from city to city. Having some help and navigation in this large terrain is ideal to finding the right home.
A real estate agent has studied and understands the business of property buying and selling. They understand the Texas real estate in which they work because they live there themselves. Agents are knowledgeable about property searching, price range, home value, inspections, negotiations, market activity, and every single piece of paper that needs to be signed before and after owning or selling a home. A good real estate agent will take all of this knowledge and apply it to their buyer's needs, helping to make the confusing and sometimes difficult process just a little bit easier.
A Texas real estate agent will have many more resources available to them than simply what can be found in the newspaper or on the Internet. While these are excellent places to look or advertise for homes and property, knowing other real estate agents in the area, information on Texas real estate land value, or certain permit restrictions in a given area is an invaluable asset that will save buyers and sellers time, research, and headaches. Agents are usually able to make showing appointments on their client's behalf and attend these viewings with them. Having an agent means quicker access to lockboxes, and absent homeowners tend to feel better letting strangers in their home with an agent present.
Real estate agents are also good for helping buyers and sellers work within the price range that they can afford. Working within a reasonable price range will narrow down the housing search for buyers and keep the selling cost competitive for sellers. A real estate agent will be able to explain and advise the client in safer purchasing options. They will also make clients aware of all the costs, not just the numbers that appear next to the paper listing. There are closing costs, inspection costs and fees, potential repair costs, gated community costs if applicable, and escrow costs. Financial guidance in Texas real estate is an important part of an agent's service to their client.
Once that house or property has been found, it is time for the real estate agent to begin the negotiations in your favor. Agents will negotiate everything from termite inspection payments to closing costs, and they will do it with their client's best interests in mind. If problems with the buyer or seller arise, the agent is there to step in on the client's behalf and attempt to work out the problem. Many times this can happen between two real estate agents over the phone, and the homeowners and homebuyers never have to speak a word to each other. A good real estate agent will keep their client well informed as these occur and progress.
It is important to have a real estate agent when buying or selling in Texas because they can help the process go smoother and catch any problems that the client might otherwise miss. A real estate agent is a friend in the world of real estate, someone who understands the lingo, numbers, and negotiations that will get the best deal.


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(954) 832-0885|Odelia@OGoldbergLaw.com
Oops We Did It Again – We're Expecting….
Yet ANOTHER attorney to join our firm!! We're so fortunate and honored to welcome Mr. Jeffrey Homer as an of counsel attorney to the Law Offices of Odelia Goldberg. Mr. Homer has been practicing law since 1976 and received his B.A. Degree from the University of Illinois and his Juris Doctor Degree from the University [...]
June 14th, 2019|Uncategorized|
We're Expecting….
Another attorney to join our firm! LOL, I couldn't resist. We're fortunate and honored to welcome Mr. Michael Abrams as an of counsel attorney to the Law Offices of Odelia Goldberg. Mr. Abrams has been practicing law since 1974. He has been admitted to the bar in both FLORIDA and the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. He [...]
April 29th, 2019|Uncategorized|
Blackbeard's Blockchain
If this story is reminiscent of Pirate treasures buried in the Caribbean in the 17th Century, that's because it is. The booty, in this case, cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based assets, is hidden through private keys that act as password-like secrets granting their owners access. There's even a term, "cold storage," that refers to this method of securing virtual [...]
March 1st, 2019|Financial, Uncategorized|
We've Moved!!!
Our office has expanded and we moved to our brand new location! Come visit us at 33 NE 2nd Street, Suite 100 in Fort Lauderdale.
August 14th, 2015|Uncategorized|
Florida Law
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President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell and Nobel Laureate, Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov of The University of Manchester addressed a group of specially selected business leaders at UK China Business Forum in Shanghai.
Prime Minister Theresa May (left) speaking at the China-UK Business Forum, and President and Vice Chancellor of The University of Manchester, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell (inset).
Dame Nancy and Sir Kostya shared the stage with two of China's highest-profile business people – Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group and Li Shufu, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co Ltd and Volvo Cars, as well as Theresa May and Liam Fox.
Speaking at the event, the Prime Minister said: "I'm proud to have brought many inspirational women in my business delegation.
"Women like Nancy Rothwell, who spoke to you earlier and whose university, Manchester, has excellent links with Wuhan, the first stop on my visit, as well as across China."
Dame Nancy and Sir Kostya were chosen as part of the current delegation in recognition of Manchester's position as a global leader in research and innovation for example in the development of advanced materials, such as graphene, in business studies and in health innovation. It also recognises the longstanding role that Manchester and its university play in UK-China relations.
There are more than 4,800 Chinese students studying in Manchester and the University has had a centre in Shanghai since 2008 with more than 1,000 Global MBA students studying in China since it opened.
This relationship was cemented when President Xi visited The University of Manchester and its National Graphene Institute in 2015, where he met Dame Nancy, Sir Andre Geim and Sir Kostya and saw some of the latest developments and applications for the 2D material graphene.
During the current trip Dame Nancy has visited Manchester's twin city, Wuhan, alongside the Prime Minister and attended the new UK CEO Council in Beijing which took place in the Great Hall of the People. Dame Nancy is a member of the Council alongside about 20 other UK and 20 Chinese CEOs of major businesses.
This marks a new stage in the Manchester's relationship with China and follows the recent establishment of the University's Manchester-China Institute, which was supported by a £5m donation from businessman, philanthropist and honorary graduate, Dr Lee Kai Hung.
The Institute is tasked with improving mutual understanding in UK-China relations, and the donation will also establish a new Chinese culture gallery at the Manchester Museum.
Dame Nancy commented: "Manchester has a vibrant Chinese cultural and business community and the country's links with the University are growing all of the time.
"It was therefore an honour to be chosen by the Prime Minister for this delegation, to join the UK-China CEO forum and to have the opportunity to speak to fellow universities and some of China's major businesses about ways in which we can work together to solve some of the world's most pressing issues."


Discography of American Historical Recordings, s.v. "Sebastián Yradier (composer)," accessed April 24, 2019, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/40203/Yradier_Sebastin_composer.
Sebastián Yradier (composer). (2019). In Discography of American Historical Recordings. Retrieved April 24, 2019, from https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/40203/Yradier_Sebastin_composer.
"Sebastián Yradier (composer)." Discography of American Historical Recordings. UC Santa Barbara Library, 2019. Web. 24 April 2019.


text:
Q: How do I create a set of options to choose how many posts per page and what page to view on a blog This seems to be the simplest thing in the world to do, yet I'm failing, probably because of math. Anyhow, my situation is this:
In my programming in PHP course I've assigned myself to do a blog with all the normal bells and whistles. I've come a short way but have already run into a problem which I'm sure has been solved at least a dozen times, but my Google mojo fails to find me a solution.
So here is what I want to do: I want to have a number of links on the page which lets the user choose the number of blog posts shown on each page along with links changing which page the user is on.
Here is the page I'm working on, it's in Swedish but you get the idea, the links are at the bottom: http://lamp.skola.skelleftea.se/~matste/elever/christian_l/blag/index.php
And this is the code that I have written this far which fails to give the wanted result:
$antal = $_GET[antal];
if (!isset($antal)){
    $antal = 1;
}

$sida = $_GET[sida];
if (!isset($sida)){
     $sida = 0;
}

/*Some HTML markup here*/

$start = ($sida * $antal);
$stop = ($sida * $antal) + $antal;
$sql = "SELECT * FROM `posts` ORDER BY `number` DESC LIMIT {$start},{$stop}";
$posts = mysql_query($sql);

/*The code that shows the fetched posts*/

$antalsVal = array(1, 3, 5, 10);
echo '

';
foreach ($antalsVal as $val){
    echo '  '. $val. ' 	';
}
echo '
: Inlägg per sida
';

$sidoVal = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
echo '

Sida: 	';
foreach ($sidoVal as $val){
    echo '  '. $val. ' 	';
}
echo '

';

/*Some ending markup*/

A: This is untested.  It might not be correct But try this.
If $sida is not set, set it to 1.
Let $start = ($sida * $antal) - $antal
Let $stop = $sida * $antal


text:
IMF: Debt, Vaccines, Food, Poor Struggle
Countries Struggling with High Debts, Food Prices and Vaccine Access, Says IMF
Jubilee USA Statement on IMF Head "Curtain-Raiser" Speech
Washington DC – Ahead of IMF and G20 meetings, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva delivered a "curtain-raiser" speech focused on debt, vaccines and pandemic response at Bocconi University.
Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network and a United Nations finance expert who monitored IMF meetings since 2010, releases the following statement on the Georgieva speech and upcoming meetings:
"High debts, soaring food prices and lack of vaccines are the greatest threats facing developing countries.
"Too many countries cannot combat the pandemic because they aren't bringing in enough revenue and are struggling to pay their debts.
"Georgieva is concerned about food prices. They've gone up by 30 percent. Vulnerable people are losing access to vaccines.
"Georgieva's speech highlights the growing concerns with developing countries not getting enough vaccines.
"We are counting economic losses in the trillions if developing countries can't access vaccines.
"Countries struggling with too much debt and lack of access to vaccines will come back to haunt all of us. All countries can face further economic shocks and new virus variants."
Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 US organizations and 750 faith communities working with 50 Jubilee global partners. Jubilee USA builds an economy that serves, protects and promotes the participation of the most vulnerable. Jubilee USA wins critical global financial reforms and won more than $130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world's poorest people. www.jubileeusa.org
Available for interview: Eric LeCompte, Executive Director
Contact: Olivia Engling, Communications and Operations Manager
[email protected] / (202) 709-7696


Learn about LabSolutions Insight Software for LC-MS/MS and GC/MS. Offering powerful data mining and analytics capabilities, along with intuitive operation and a new advanced peak detection algorithm, this software allows analysts to analyze data more conveniently and more efficiently in fields such as clinical toxicology, forensics, and food safety.
Latest Videos by Shimadzu Scientific Instruments Inc.


Submission guidelines and site updated.
Our general guidelines have been updated to better reflect where Green Gecko is now as a publishing company. We've also made a few updates to the Passion for Cats and Passion for Dogs projects page. If you have a moment, please check them out.
We also updated the contact us page.
Please feel free to let us know of any other changes you'd like to see.
Finally, many of our projects only need a few more stories so please submit!
Submit in standard manuscript format. Follow this link to learn more about Standard manuscript format.
The first stories I read are ones that include your name, story title, email and *WORD COUNT on the title page.
When your story is finished, open a grammar book and do a line by line. Editing takes time. Trust us, we know. However taking the time increases your chances of acceptance exponentially, and not just at Green Gecko.
Most of our books are Passion for "something". If the main character feels indifferent toward the topic of the book at the end your story, then it's not right for the Passion for series.
First person is a hard sell, more so in books that contain both fiction and non-ficiton.
Present tense is a hard sell.
First person present tense has to be that much more awesome than it's competition.


IT managers at Merrill Lynch & Co. are weighing a multimillion-dollar project to deploy intelligent switches that could virtualize the brokerage's storage-area networks and give its technology staffers central control of the data stored on the SANs.
Having completed the buildout of a second major data center last June, Merrill Lynch is now in the planning stages of the storage-consolidation move, said Mike Myrick, director of managed storage at the New York-based company. The project still needs to be approved by corporate executives, he added. But the idea is to add a layer of abstraction that creates one logical storage fabric, with numerous virtual SANs dedicated to individual business units.
That would let the business units share storage resources, "but not have one SAN that's impacting all the other SANs," Myrick said. In addition, storage administrators could make changes to one of the logical zones in the SAN infrastructure without affecting the performance and reliability of the others, he said.
Colin Gibson, who's in charge of infrastructure and data services at Merrill Lynch, said the storage pooling enabled by the virtualization plan could also help ensure that the company's disk arrays aren't sitting idly if users don't need the full capacity assigned to them. "We run at a high utilization rate now, but we could run even higher," Gibson said. "We want to consistently be at 90 percent. That's a good number to be at, because it doesn't allow assets on the floor to remain unused."
Myrick and Gibson said plans for the SAN virtualization project likely will be solidified by year's end. They declined to comment on the expected cost, other than to say it would run into the millions of dollars.
Data security concerns will be a high priority, they noted. Merrill Lynch currently has 500TB of storage capacity spread across 16 SANs at several data centers in the New York/New Jersey region. Once the SANs can share data through the switches, business units will have to be restricted from seeing one another's data. "We'll be very selective with the (data) we're putting across the virtual SAN," Myrick said.
Merrill Lynch is "far ahead" of most users in addressing SAN consolidation, said Steve Duplessie, an analyst at Enterprise Storage Group Inc. in Milford, Mass. But, he added, many large companies are running into the same problems that Merrill Lynch is -- the number of SANs they have installed is growing out of control, and performance and resource utilization rates are taking a hit.
"Twenty years ago, you had the same problem with LANs," Duplessie said. "You had all these little workgroup LANs that needed to be combined." Now, he added, IT managers "need one big SAN that they can manage as microscopically as they can, as opposed to a bunch of little SANs."
Merrill Lynch primarily uses director-class storage switches made by Brocade Communications Systems Inc., and Myrick said he would like to stick with the San Jose-based vendor. But Brocade has yet to build an intelligent switch that supports data routing between servers on different SANs. That's one reason Merrill Lynch is biding its time, Myrick said. Funding issues are another.
"We're really looking to vendors to supply us with solutions that will be reliable, fault-tolerant and resilient and will work on the scale we need them to work," Myrick said.
Merrill Lynch is also exploring the idea of deploying information life-cycle management tools. Ultimately, Myrick said he would like to be able to have systems fail-over between the company's two main data centers so that both can function as disaster recovery sites.


Here are all the photos we have tagged with Severn View. If you have one, why not upload it?
An old Pavilion sign still situated in the Brightside Group car park in March 2019.
The former amenity building at Severn View in March 2019, now home to Brightside Group.
Travelodge Bristol Severn View M48 in March 2019.
The BP filling station at Severn View in March 2019.
The games arcade at Severn View in March 2019, tucked away just inside the main entrance.
The WHSmith store at Severn View in March 2019.
Severn View in March 2019.
An unusual sign at the entrance to the services.
The Ecotricity electric vehicle charging points at Severn View.
The Travelodge motel (with extra added ambulances) at Severn View.
The Costa Express machine in the forecourt at Severn View.
The BP branded forecourt at Severn View.
The BP branded HGV forecourt at Severn View.
The Air1 AdBlue tank at Severn View.
The Costa Coffee outlet at Severn View.
The Burger King outlet at Severn View.
The WHSmith store at Severn View.
The unusually unbranded games arcade at Severn View.
The entrance at Severn View.
The so-called 'Dog Walking Area' at Severn View.


A man is being treated for severe smoke inhalation following a kitchen fire near Swansea.
Mid and West Wales Fire Service were called to Robert Davies Court, Pontarddulais, at about 1420 GMT on Sunday.
The casualty was given oxygen before being taken to hospital.
A fire service spokesperson said crews used breathing apparatus while tackling the blaze. The cause of the fire is not yet known.


text:
Q: Where did my rep come from? So not more than 10 minutes ago I had 964 rep:

I then signed up for programmers.stackexchange.
Within this process I may have linked another openid to my account (is there a way to see all associated openids?)
Then I returned to stackoverflow to find I had gained 100 rep:

Nothing has changed on my history, and it wasn't from having another account go over 200 because none of my accounts have gone over 200 in nearly a year.
My activity feed doesn't shed any light on the situation, so my question is:
Where did the rep come from?
Not that I'm complaining or anything....

A: It's because you signed up for another StackExchange site. When you have > 200 rep, the first time you join another SE site and associate the two accounts together, you get +100 rep to both accounts.
You had over 200 rep already on SO, so when you joined Programmers, you got the bonus instantly.
Each account can only ever get the bonus once, so if you sign up for Puzzles & Code Golf, your PCG account will start at 101, but your SO account won't get another bonus since you already have the +100 for joining Programmers.
Edit: Is it possible your SO, SU, and Meta accounts didn't know about each other yet? Maybe you had those accounts, but they weren't associated with each other across Stack Exchange. You only get the bonus when you link your accounts together on both sites, so if you've had those other accounts since before that feature got implemented, it might not have happened automatically.


The Critical Orchestra / Kritisches Orchester® unites members of well-known orchestras, who gather on a voluntary basis to offer young junior conductors a globally unique teaching situation. It is the musicians themselves who give the feedback and suggestions to the conductors during the rehearsal phase. The young talents thus benefit from the experience of the musicians from orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden, Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, NDR-Elbphilharmonie-Orchester, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Niedersächsisches Staatsopernorchester, Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and others.
This workshop that has been internationally advertised for interactive conducting goes back to an idea suggested by Klaus Harnisch, a former project manager of the Dirigentenforum (the Conductors' Forum). The Critical Orchestra / Kritisches Orchester® was founded in 2002 by Christhard Gössling as an event of the Hanns Eisler Music Academy in Berlin. Since 2016, the Dirigentenforum has been cooperating with the academy to implement this project.
The workshop is to be held in three rounds. Only the participants who prove themselves in the rehearsals will reach the next round. This way, the three finalists will gradually gain precious rehearsal time with this unique orchestra.
Among the participants of past directors' workshops were Patrick Lange, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Michał Dworzynski, David Afkham and Kristiina Poska.
The project is supported by the German government's Commissioner for Culture and Media and the DOV orchestra association of Germany.


text:
By Rafia Zakaria
How Links Between Museum Boards and Political Donations Show the Rot that Afflicts US Democracy
Artist Andrea Fraser's 2016 in Museums, Money and Politics lifts the lid on US museum board members and political funding
The theme of this year's Met Gala was 'Heavenly Bodies' and, predictably, there were plenty of them on the red carpet. Dressed in the showily outrageous gowns that are de rigeur at the event, they swivelled and smiled. Rihanna was the bejewelled Pope and rapper Cardi B was adjudged among the best dressed. Gussied up as they were, few of these stars of the Gala were the actual powers-that-be behind America's most renowned museum.
What of the other stars, those with the USD$10 million or more required to be considered for the Board of the Met, for instance (with entry to the boards of other high-profile US arts institutions also requiring donations that often run into the millions)? Artist Andrea Fraser tells their story in her latest book 2016 in Museums, Money and Politics (MIT Press, 2018). Fraser, who has a history of making social, analytical interventions in her artistic practice (a 60-minute video of her performance work Untitled [2003] documents a sexual encounter with a collector who paid USD$20,000 to 'make an artwork'), produces here the sort of statistical revelations that an America, lulled to the depredations of the very wealthy, tries hard to avoid. Ordered alphabetically, 2016 in Museums, Money and Politics lists, museum by museum, the constitution of public boards and the puffed and coiffed people on them. Next to their names are records of the 'other' checks they wrote: the ones that went to political campaigns.
Temple of Dendur at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; photograph: Erwin Verbruggen
The kicker is in that 'other': a record of 36,000 political contributions linked to 2,411 individuals who serve on the boards of the United States's most influential cultural institutions. As Fraser told me over Skype this month: 'the boards of most US museums are self-perpetuating. Existing members nominate new members, who are often social acquaintances and business associates. Through this process, boards become closed circles that almost never reflect the full range and diversity of organizational stake-holders.'
None of this would be of note were it not for the fact that the institutions, over whom they presumably exert great influence with their donations, are public institutions seemingly committed to inclusion and diversity and all the good things noted on their mission statements. It's more than hypocrisy that is the problem: 'In a democracy,' Fraser tells me, 'the nonprofit sector has been long considered the backbone of civil society, an independent 'third-sector' that serves as a check on both the state and the market. Participation in the governance of nonprofit organizations and associations has been seen as the training ground for participation in democratic institutions and government. What my research has shown, however, is that we have very much the same elite controlling the for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors.'
Official portrait of Steven Mnuchin, United States Secretary of the Treasury. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
They are a slimy bunch: Rebekah Mercer, the Republican mega-donor who backed Trump and invested in Cambridge Analytica, sits on the board of New York's Museum of Natural History; Steve Mnuchin served on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's board until he joined Trump's Finance Committee. The two branches of the Sackler Family, the heirs of brothers Mortimer and Raymond, which own Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Oxycontin, have museum wings named after them in New York and London, as do members of the Koch family, longtime supporters of right-wing causes. Of course there are many museums, including the powerful Art Institute of Chicago, which have largely left-leaning boards – but that doesn't make them more accountable to the public they purport to serve.
American democracy has morphed into a stunted plutocracy. With the wealthy ensconced on the boards of for-profit corporations, funding political campaigns for public office as well as non-profit boards of public institutions, the rest of us are reduced from citizens with power to mere onlookers. Like gawkers at the Met red carpet, we watch, we wave and we hope to catch the attentions of the truly important, knowing all the while that we are shut out, bystanders rather than participants in the governance of these institutions. None of the public, Fraser emphasized in our conversation, have any actual say in the aesthetic or substantive direction of the museums in their country and community.
Andrea Fraser talks to Radio Web MACBA, 2016. Courtesy: MACBA and Wikimedia Commons; photograph: Gemma Planell
Artists, too, are neutered. Fraser worries that knowledge of the donors, the politics and most of all the power they wield over institutions, inevitably risks self-censorship. Artists, like the rest of us, are dependent on the 'donor class,' its benevolence and its whims. They manifest themselves in myriad ways; Fraser notes in her book how the Doris Fisher Foundation, for instance, entered into a 100-year agreement with the San Francisco Museum of Art that decrees that at any time, 75% of the art displayed on its walls must be from the Fisher collection. SF MOMA is a public institution, but what the public may want is entirely irrelevant to the museum game, the walls, the art, the curators and the artists, all secondary to the billionaires on the board.
It is not only the analytical revelations in the book that are stirring. Going through the tables of numbers, the amounts of contributions, the percentages, the red and blue dots that connect wealth to political power, feels very much like trawling through the innards of a deeply diseased organism. Here is the rot that afflicts American democracy: public institutions as a convenient front for laundering dirty profits, converting ill-gotten gains to the sort of permissible art that can be lauded for its predictable rebellions, its solid investment value.
Metropolitan Museum of Art with obelisk, 5th Ave. & 81st St., New York City, 1914. Courtesy: Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons; photograph: Irving Underhill
2016 in Museums, Money and Politics is a risky book, and Fraser admits it. 'Nothing may be more infuriating or hurtful, than having one's good intentions questioned, above all by those one aims to help,' she writes. Fraser is, like all other artists, dependent on the very system she is exposing, using the thin insulation provided to her in her role as an academic at UCLA to say what has not yet been said. But contained within 2016 in Museums, Money and Politics is the statistical scaffolding of America's decline, the number and figures via which cultural production is enslaved in the service of what Fraser describes to me as a 'fundamentally entrepreneurial, meritocratic ideology.' Labouring at its engines are all the rest of us, a bitter and pointless donee class, voting for our wealthy overlords, marvelling at their millions, all the while complicit in our own impending irrelevance. Numbers, Andrea Fraser shows us, do not lie; museums often do.
Main image: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; photograph: Kai Pilger
Rafia Zakaria
Rafia Zakaria is the author of The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (Beacon, 2015) and Veil (Bloomsbury, 2017). She is a columnist for Dawn in Pakistan. She writes regularly for the Guardian, The Baffler, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many other publications.
The Metropolitan Museum
Art & Politics
The New Normal: How Hollywood Depicted the Decade of Extreme Weather
Was This Decade Not Scary Enough? Horror Film and Television Nostalgia Defined the 2010s
How Grindr Changed Gay Life Forever
The 2010s in Memes
Did the Power of Curators Wane in the 2010s?
The Decade Everything Was Fictionalized
How WeWork Built 'The Sensation of a Workplace'


Every day we need to soak in His Word, let it resonate in our souls and settle deep into a Sabbath rest of the heart. May the reminder of His promises be a balm to you as we seek Him first in each of our journeys. Join me at the beginning of the week for a reminder to take a soul stop in the power of His Word and be rejuvenated for the week ahead.
I have been reading the story of a desperate woman, recently, soaking up truth as I contemplate grace through it. I can see the parallel of her life with mine in some ways. Desperation looks the same no matter what the circumstances. And there have been times I have felt desperate.
The narratives in scripture tell us more than history, they reveal humanity and how God met them where they were, how they received Him. They were faith-dwellers hungry for more of God, broken souls who met grace and came away changed.
When we are wandering in our desperate moments, the grace God pours out quenches our thirsty souls.
The 4th chapter of John tells us about a woman, a well, and a Savior who asked for water. It is a story about grace and redemption and love meeting the lonely. It is a story we all could be a part of because although the details of our lives are not the same, the feelings are probably familiar.
The woman in the story was desperate to be known, to be seen, to be loved, whether or not she would admit it. God always knows our needs before we know them ourselves, and our need always necessitates God's grace.
Grace has a way of finding us in less than popular situations. Perhaps that is what makes grace so amazing.
Jesus made a journey to a town that was supposed to be avoided. He sent his disciples off to find food, leaving him alone at a well in the heat of the day. Because He knew that he had an appointment to keep.
Jesus had a mission of redemption. He had a purpose to reach those who were destined to abide, to reach the unreachable and the unloved so they would know the lengths the Father would go to find them.
Check this truth: Jesus traveled through a parcel of forbidden existence to meet with a woman who He would reveal His identity as Savior to. He will travel to your well of desperation to meet with you and reveal His identity as Savior to you, also.
Only God will step outside of the boundary lines of man's rules to meet with the broken, rejected, and lonely soul. He purposes to bring all the lost back into the fold and He sees the detour that it requires as necessary.
In his commentary on John 4, Matthew Henry said that "Moderate men are wondered at." He was pointing out that Jesus treated this woman different than she expected. She was considered a forsaken woman, barren, empty and unworthy. She marveled at Christ's request for water, that He even spoke to her. I wondered as I read, if His words were the only kindness she may have known. His purposeful pause at Jacob's well was an opportunity for love and redemption to take place. She had some reservations but Jesus challenged her intellect and engaged both her mind and her soul with His words.
The audacious way He met her in her isolation spoke to her in that space that had been left untouched. She left the well in haste to tell the others what she found. She was immediately changed with the realization that the man who asked her for water was the Messiah they had been waiting for.
I am always amazed at the way God chooses to meet us in our living. He shows us that grace is a gift, the kind that seals our soul and establishes our destiny.
The reality was, she was thirsty, too. She questioned Him, reacted in her limited understanding, and even boldly confronted Him. She wanted the water that would quench her thirst…but she didn't understand. Christ took the occasion to teach her Divine things. He converted her by showing her Truth. Through grace He shed light on the veil that covered her understanding, and opened, perhaps for the first time, a new door of freedom and an awareness that the Living Water is His Spirit in us.
These parched places in our soul can only be quenched by the presence of God.
I realized how alike we were. I am desperate for grace, too. I am like this woman who comes to the well tired and heavy with burdens that I can't seem to forget and a history that keeps replaying in my mind. Those things that steal grace and rob peace and remind me that I mess up more than I get it right.
She asked for water, but needed His Truth. He was offering grace, but it wasn't until He identified Himself that restoration finally came.
Christ confessed His identity to her and she believed Him. It was His most revealing conversation recorded up to this point in scripture, and the first time He acknowledged his identity. He hadn't even spoken these words to His disciples, but His impartial acceptance was the sprinkling her barren soul required to awaken the unknown longing for a drink of heaven.
When grace melts us at our well of emptiness, our brokenness is redeemed, our stories are rewritten, and our testimony brings others the same freedom. And friends, she was more than changed. She became an evangelist to the community that rejected her. She became a broker of grace for all those who abused her. She became a well-spring of hope for all those who were desperate like her.
She spilled life with her testimony because she met, I Am, and believed.
What if we come to the well looking for more of God? If we thirst for God, knowing He will provide more than abundantly, His Salvation will always satisfy us fully.
It makes us bold, in the walk by faith not by sight kind of boldness so that we not only share the good news… we pour it out, like the unending life-giving water it is.
Praying for His fullness for you this week.
Moments of Hope, #DreamTogether, Unite, Cheerleaders of Faith, Tell His Story, Coffee For Your Heart, Three Word Wednesday, Thought Provoking Thursday, Grace n Truth, #Chasing Community, Fresh Market Friday, Faith n Friends Blog Hop, Missional Women, Dance with Jesus, Glimpses with Barbie, Give Me Grace.
Beautiful images of grace, here. It's my word of the year. I love how just one word can touch our souls for 365 days …and beyond. Happy Tuesday, from the #DreamTogether linkup.
That story is so powerful. You did a beautiful job of applying it to our lives. God is so good!
I feel that I can't ever hear enough about grace. It's still so incredible to me. Thanks for sharing!
I thought this post was thorough, wonderfully thought through; thank you for some food for meditation!
How much I can relate to that woman at the well. Desperation hidden under a guise of normal is all too easy. Grateful God sees us in those places and knows exactly how to reach us. Thank you so much for your encouraging words!
Yes, He was probably her only experience with kindness. How sad to go through life not being loved or affirmed!
What a beautiful reminder of the gospel. God is so good.
I am so loving how God works in our lives and connects us together with like minded people. I cannot tell you how valuable this post was to me. I was reading the same exact verses in scripture this week and love a fresh, but similar perspective. Thank you for sharing. God is so full of Grace.
Grace…we have been given so much of it. What a beautiful blessing. Thanks for sharing your wonderful post on Grace and Truth.


text:
Listings for More 4 on Saturday, January 25 2020
08:55 Food Unwrapped Jimmy explores new ways to get crabs to come out of their shell. Kate finds out how to get children to eat their greens. And Matt investigates how gummy sweets are made. (S6 Ep9/10)
09:30 A Place in the Sun: Winter Sun Glenda and Tina from Dorset are looking for the perfect holiday home in Portugal's western Algarve where they can spend time walking their dog Lady and enjoying the rich local history.
10:30 A Place in the Sun: Winter Sun Bev Cameron has multiple sclerosis, but finds a warm climate helps hugely with her symptoms, so she wants to buy a property near Paphos in Cyprus. Laura Hamilton shows her five for £90,000.
11:30 A Place in the Sun: Winter Sun Reality TV star and choreographer Louie Spence and husband Leto Fernandez dream of owning a holiday home in Spain's Almería Province. Laura Hamilton shows them five fantastic properties.
12:35 Location, Location, Location Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer take on an epic challenge, property-hunting in east London, where places can sell in days, often at open viewings, and for well over the asking price.
13:35 Location, Location, Location Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer search the Midlands for dream homes. An expectant couple are keen on the Stratford-upon-Avon area, and a married couple want to buy in Northamptonshire.
14:40 Come Dine with Me Hastings and Rye. Nursery owner Louise hosts first with a Thai evening. But there's a power cut, and one of her guests is a self-appointed Thai food expert... (Ep1/5)
15:10 Come Dine with Me Hastings and Rye. Horse-mad Emily hosts. There's a new guest, Irish crooner Dec, who was in the Bachelors in the 1960s. But food snob Gary's not impressed with Emily's comfort food. (Ep2/5)
15:40 Come Dine with Me Hastings and Rye. Flamboyant mature student Gary's fun-filled evening features fancy dress, diabolical dancing, fits of giggles and some tactless table manners. (Ep3/5)
16:15 Come Dine with Me Hastings and Rye. Former pop star Dec plans some musical surprises and a simple seaside menu, on a night that features revelations, celebrity stories and a peculiar pudding. (Ep4/5)
16:50 Come Dine with Me Hastings and Rye. Beauty therapist Chiara throws an Italian dinner party. But crooner Dec compares his host to a Page Three glamour girl, and Gary's in a fluster when he woos Emily. (Ep5/5)
17:20 Four in a Bed Four more sets of B&B owners compete, kicking off in Tyne and Wear at Tynemouth 61, owned by hospitality veteran Stephen Minns, who grew up believing he was born with blue blood.
17:50 Four in a Bed Unlikely double act Steve and bar manager Callum welcome their rivals to The Black Horse Inn in Kirby Fleetham, North Yorkshire. But there's a fuss over fluff and whiffy bathroom woes.
18:25 Four in a Bed B&B beginner Enid prides herself on offering clean rooms at good prices at The Shores Hotel in Blackpool. But Lottie and Lil are surprised that the view from their window is of a dead bird.
18:55 Four in a Bed The final visit of the week is to Hilltop Hideaways in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, where cousins-in-law Lottie and Lil Ellis are on a mission to put the glamorous in glamping.
19:25 Four in a Bed It's the final day of the competition and the B&B owners are meeting to find out what they've been paid and to settle some scores. After a heated debate, the winner is announced.
20:00 David Jason's Great British... ...Inventions Brand new series - Sir David Jason finds out about the Penny Farthing as he looks at the British inventors who played a vital part in the evolution of the wheel. (Ep1/4)
21:00 Holocaust: Night Will Fall The extraordinary story of the Allied forces who filmed the terrible scenes in the Nazi concentration camps, and Sidney Bernstein's attempt to produce a documentary of what they found.
22:20 24 Hours in A&E Seventy-one year old Jeremy arrives at St George's in an air ambulance after crashing his bicycle at speed, and café worker Amy comes to the rescue of complete stranger James. (S18 Ep6)
23:25 24 Hours in A&E Brooke, who's 12, has gone into respiratory arrest after having a severe asthma attack. Howard has burns from trying to put out an explosion in his shed. (S18 Ep7)
00:30 Emergency Helicopter Medics Brand new series: John is trapped in his car after a head-on collision on the A1. Heli-medics fly to one of Britain's remotest roads to help at a motorbike accident. (S3 Ep11)
02:35 Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA Gordon Ramsay visits Long Beach, California, to save a failing Italian family restaurant that opened in 1958 and is now under the misguided leadership of the eldest son, Nino. (S6 Ep9/16)