Performers: instrumental musicians & anyone who wants to contribute.
This afternoon. Low-key, but it still makes for a logistically challenged day.
5th graders have been working on spatial relationships in Te Ve Orez, a dance from Israel.
chairs need to be set up for staff & parents, who may show up because there was a phone notification that went out last night to invite them.
I wonder what else will occur to me as the day unfolds? I guess I'd best go find out.
5. Tahiti is an island in the Society Islands. The Society Islands is one of five groups of islands in French Polynesia. French Polynesia is the name of the country and Tahiti is the centre of administration with Papeete as the capital.
Please respond to sammybond@email.com for additional educational material.
now a resident of Foster City, California since 2007.
Hope it went really well, and that you were low-key even though the logistics raised their pitch a bit!
Wow! Clearly, I had only a snippet of incorrect information and didn't even know it. Had I even known I needed better information, it would have taken me awhile to find this much. Instead of even having to look, it came to me. Thank you for happening by my blog, and many thanks for sending this gift of information! I stand happily corrected.
It all went fine! At the end, I threw in one last dance that everyone could do sitting down. It was great fun, and by the time we finished, it was almost time to go home, so I was done for the day, except for putting my classroom (stage) back together again for tomorrow.
a low-key kind of year, I think. This year, I am often questioning the performance aspect of the work I do with kids. While I think performance is essential to the learning process, I am questioning what that performance needs to actually 'look' like, and which aspect of learning is being celebrated. With 800 students at our large K-8 school, it is mind boggling to plan large performances at assemblies (student audience) or evenings (family, adult audiences). I have tried more of an "informance" model this year, with classes coming in to see other classes' work, and also at family events (PTA supported) in which families are already planning to attend (i.e. multicultural night). A few grade levels share a few songs. And while I believe in the importance of this work, I still find myself questioning myself (I always do that!)…. is it enough? Should all ages be involved? Should the performance be themeatic or just a display of lessons learned in class? What do the parents want? What do the teachers expect? It goes on and on.
And then I realize… I do my job, I do it well, and that is enough. The performance is the icing on the cake, the celebration of student learning and progress. And whatever it looks like, it is good. I keep telling myself that, and soon I am going to start believing it.
Great questions, and even better answers for yourself! The small performances/small audiences approach is a really good one. I only had 3 groups performing yesterday, and I felt a little regretful about all the kids in the audience that wished they had something ready… But the pieces I put on stage were ready with minimal rehearsal, so I lost very little instructional time. I liked that part, cause I have so little instructional time!


text:
Emergency Home Reconstruction-Emma A.
Emma A. and her son live in the border village of Nerkin Karmir Aghbyur. On the morning of July 12, the Azeri's launched a cross border attack on the Berd area of Armenia's Tavush Region utilizing attack drones, tanks and other heavy artillery. Although the Azeris ultimately lost control of strategic military posts to the Armenian defense forces, a considerable amount of damage was inflicted upon the villages of Nerkin Karmir Aghbyur, Aygepar, Movses and Chinari.
In response to this assault, The Paros Foundation immediately committed to improving these villagers' homes well beyond the damage sustained during this recent shelling. Work has already started in rebuilding Emma's home, thanks to the on-going generosity and sponsorship of Jean-Marie Atamian and his family, who have adopted this important border village and made major investments in its infrastructure since 2012. In the words of Mr. Atamian: " No one should underestimate our resolve standing with our villages; for every house the enemy destroys, we will built 10 new homes." Other residential projects in the neighboring border village of Aygepar, along with immediate reconstruction of its kindergarten, will be addressed with funds raised from the Emergency Reconstruction Fund.
A large caliber mortar landed a few feet from Emma's home. Its explosion left a crater in her yard, destroyed her garden including several fruit trees, and structurally damaged her home. The reconstruction of her home will include rebuilding the support structure for her home and balcony, replacing the roof and windows, running a proper heating system throughout the home, building a new bathroom (replacing the family's outhouse) and completing a full interior renovation.
Nerkin Karmir Aghbyur is an important border village with a population of approximately 1,100 residents in the Berd area of Armenia's Tavush Region. This community remains under constant risk of sniper fire and renewed armed conflict. NKA was the single most damaged Armenian village during the Azeri conflict in the 1990's. The economy of the village and the livelihood of many of its residents have suffered due to these difficult and dangerous conditions. In particular, 70% of their fertile land is unusable because of frequent sniper attacks. Nerkin Karmir Aghbyur is a beneficiary village of the Paros Foundation's Prosperity on the Border Initiative. With major financial support of Jean-Marie Atamian and his family over the last eight years, much of the village's infrastructure has been completely rebuilt and improved including, but not limited to, its large secondary school, expanded kindergarten, medical center, emergency services building and water distribution system. In addition, several families have benefited from agribusiness and animal husbandry projects. Having funded the rebuilding of NKA's infrastructure, the Atamian family is now focusing its attention on the reconstruction of severely damaged houses to provide decent and safe homes for deserving families in the village. In the last year alone, three houses were rebuilt, and two additional homes are currently under construction now.
Emma A. and her son's home was severely damaged by a mortar that landed a few feet from her home.
Structural damage to Emma's home needs to be corrected as the first step in her complete home reconstruction.
Scraptnal from an Azeri mortar, and the pressure from the explosion, has partially collapsed the balcony and support beams from her home.
An Azeri mortar struct a few feet from Emma A's home, which seriously damaged her home and garden.
The Paros Foundation team quickly arrived on site and assessed the damage caused to Emma's home by Azerbaijan's attack.
A large caliber Azeri mortar landed a few feet from Emma's home. Its explosion left a crater in her yard, destroyed her garden including several fruit trees, and left her home with serious structural damage.
In the short term, Emma's home will be completely reconstructed giving her and her son (and his future family) a fresh start. The reconstruction of this home will benefit the local economy and a minimum of four workers will work on this home.
In the long term, the benefit of repairing homes damaged by the conflict is significant from both the village standpoint and a mental standpoint.
Sponsors of this important project will be listed on The Paros Foundation website and in all press related to this important project. Visits to this home site can be arranged for sponsors when in Armenia.
Mr. & Dr. Jean-Marie & Lori Atamian
New York, NY October 22, 2021
Mr. & Mrs. Michael & Patricia Starzer
In Honor Of Jean-Marie & Lori Atamian July 29, 2021
New York, NY July 8, 2021
Work to rebuild Emma and her son Vartan's home is moving along well. Emma is happy with the progress being made. When Vartan is not serving as a soldier guarding the border near his home in Nerkin Karmir Aghbyur, he lends his support to the crew working to rebuild.
Because of the attack in Artsakh by Azerbaijan, the village is on high alert and work has stopped on Emma's home. Her son, Vartan, is at his border post.
The crew is back to work and working to complete the work on the exterior of Emma's home prior to winter. With the new heating system installed, work will continue inside as the work outside is completed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Aided by developing techniques and hi-tech equipment, we are able to manufacture and export a wide gamut of Push Pull Ratchet Screw Jack. This finds their applications in electrical, marine, construction, textile and cement industry. It is widely appreciated for its quality, durability, excellent finish, flawless performance, and longer functional life. Under the observation of our team, this is manufactured using high quality materials. Besides, this Push Pull Ratchet Screw Jack is widely preferred due to its smooth transition and light weight structure.
Push Pull Ratchet Screw Jack is a tool used for lifting the medium to heavy equipments in plenty of industries from motor and automation industry to the construction and packaging industry. In order to have proper jacking in the close quarters, the jack makes use of double level sockets. It is a level based equipment that employs the ratchet technique for raising up cargo up to a certain level. Depending upon the type of requirement, the spring links can be easily adjusted in the vended Push Pull Ratchet Screw Jack. Moreover, the turnnion bearings are replaceable for easy maintenance.


text:
Q: Cannot convert value of type 'String' to expected argument type '_?' So I'm struggling with Swift generics. I'm trying to create an instance of a struct that is defined in a different module. The struct has a generic type for it's property.
Module code:
public struct MyModuleResponse<T> {
    let payload: T?
}

Main target code:
@import MyModule
....
let payload = "Something"
let result = MyModuleResponse(payload: payload)

This results in the error:

Cannot convert the value of type 'String' to expected argument type '_?'

If I declare an indentical version of the struct in the main target:
public struct MyOwnResponse<T> {
    let payload: T?
}

let payload = "Something"
let result = MyOwnResponse(payload: payload)

No error and builds as expected.
My setup:

*

*Xcode 10.0

*Swift 4.2

Example project can be found here: https://github.com/cameroncooke/generics
Any one that can help me understand what is going on here would be really apreciated.
Also would be useful to know what Swift means by type _, what does _ represent. The error message is very ambigous and doesn't really give any clues.

A: As Dávid said payload variable must me Optional.
Swift initializer default protection level is internal. You need to set protection level for MyModuleResponse initializer to public.
public init(payload: T?) {
    self.payload = payload
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
We make cement and through it we touch lives of millions of people every day. From the house you live in, the roads you to drive on, to the bridges you cross, we strive to deliver unparalleled quality through our customised products and value added solutions.
The Shree Philosophy
Excellence Awarded
We are one of India's top three cement producers with an installed cement production capacity of 43.4 MTPA and power generation Capacity of 752 Mega Watts including renewable energy sources. With 5 brands, spread across multiple product variants and customised packing solutions, our products meet the requirements of multiple customer segments.
Home Builder's Guide
Plant Locations
Our processes and policies are adapted and consistently improved to minimise environmental impact and create inclusive growth. We are focussed on minimising ground water withdrawal, use renewable sources of energy, replace fossil fuels with alternate fuel resources, reuse and recycle to minimise waste and uplift the community.
Stakeholder Guides
We are recognised in the industry for pioneering solutions that later become a norm. We Our primary focus is on achieving energy efficiency, lowering cost of construction, reducing our environmental footprint, creating customised solutions for customers, and meeting high standards of aesthetics, health, comfort, and well-being.
We are a Nifty 50 company that has delivered steady returns on the invested capital, progressively augmenting shareholder value. We leverage operational excellence, innovative business practices and transparency in action to create sustained value and deliver consistently high internal rate of returns to our shareholders.
Reports and Financials
Corporate Video & Presentation
Online Investor Support
Our days are fast paced, packing in much more than the average. Happenings that get compounded to create milestones. Tune in to this space to stay updated about the company's coverage in the press, importance stories and updates, brand updates, buzz on social media and fun trivia about the company.
We Are Shree
Trust, bias to action, spirit of innovation, continuous improvement and believing in collective wins is what differentiates us from the world. We are our own competition, we create new records and improve them as routine. Here we celebrate all wins, and give credit where it is due. Mentor and handhold where needed while giving people the freedom to perform.
Uninterrupted supply of Medical Oxygen
Our oxygen plants are running at 100% capacity to ensure uninterrupted supply of Medical oxygen. We also imported oxygen concentrators which are now in use
In 2020, humanity was introduced to an unseen enemy - the SARS CoV-2 or the Novel Corona Virus. Something that had originated in an unknown city in one country soon engulfed the world and brought life to a standstill. It was not something anyone had ever seen or experienced, each one of us was unprepared and improvising on the go. We saw collective wisdom and unforeseen solidarity, when entire humanity decided to stay in, to control the spread of the virus. And control we did. By the end of 2020, India had a vaccine and seemed to have won the virus, and was being talked about in the world for its meticulous handling of the situation. Little did we know that there was a second wave waiting in the folds, and it hurts to stay that it is stronger than ever, the new mutant is faster than ever and we are still as vulnerable as can be.
Covid-19 especially the new mutant is severely transmissible, because of which the number of cases have been multiplying at a rate faster than what the country's medical infrastructure can handle.
The novel corona virus moves down the respiratory tract – mouth, nose throat and lungs. In more advanced stages it could lead to inflammation of lungs and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome making it tough to breathe. These patients need oxygen support and acute cases might have to be put on ventilator.
India now is reporting the highest spike rates reported in any country ever and statisticians say that we have not reached the peak yet. Central and State Governments, Private bodies, Volunteers and the country's Medical Staff have been stretched thin, and the most severe of them all is the ever mounting demand for Medical Oxygen and its continued shortage.
These are unprecedented times that call for unprecedented actions. Shree Cement has Oxygen Plants in its units in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka, which used to function on demand, on normal days, seldom at 100% capacity. Since, the last ten months, Shree Cement Units have been running all its Oxygen Plants to 100% capacity to support the Medical infrastructure of the country. Till now the company has refilled 45,000+ oxygen cylinders and supplied to various hospitals in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Karnataka. This number is as per the last count. The management team and the CSR team has been consistently liaising with state administration and government units to ensure uninterrupted supply of oxygen from all of its units.
Taking a step further the company has imported 70 Oxygen concentrators which were handed over to the Govt. of Rajasthan and have been installed in the Covid Care Center in Bilwa, Jaipur.
In the last year, Shree Cement donated Truenat Testing Machines for Covid-19 to the district administration of Aurangabad, Rohtas, Gaya, Jehanabad and Arwal in Bihar. At present, the company is working with the state and district administration in Bihar towards further strengthening of the health infrastructure.
In Pali district, in Rajasthan, Shree Cement built a ward for Covid – 19 patients, fixed electrical units and supplied Medical equipment specifically for Covid-19 patients which is in use at present. This is in addition to the continuous supply of PPE kits, thermal scanners, thermometers and smaller equipment which the company has maintained since the onset of Covid-19.
The CSR teams of all units have also been working in the villages adjoining the plant areas, spreading awareness related to Covid-19, providing medical support, ambulance services, transport, sanitiser and masks, grocery packets etc. As masks became a necessity, the team mobilised women of neighbouring villages, who had been trained earlier to stitch masks. Since April 2020, women have been stitching masks. Raw material for the masks is supplied by the company and the company pays them for each mask that they stitch. These masks are used for donation to various causes while generating a source of income for many families in these hard times.
We are witnessing unprecedented times, tough times and while everyone is trying their best, it doesn't seem enough, but human resilience and solidarity has triumphed battles that none of us could have ever imagined. And we believe that, the current situation, as tragic as it may be, can be won over, can be overcome, if we all stand together. At Shree Cement we have always believed that we are a part of the whole and we will thrive only if we are together. The entire Shree family and management team is committed towards this cause, and will continue to do our bit till we win over Covid as a nation. Together, we will overcome.


text:
memfysadvert
memfys hospital Enugu
War crimes: French govt. arrests CAR militia leader for ICC
AFRICAN PARLIAMENTARY NEWS December 13, 2018 FEATURED, GLOBAL, LEADERSHIP, NEWS, POLITICS, REGIONAL, TRENDING
Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, finally arrested
(dpa/NAN) French authorities have arrested a high-level militia leader wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The ICC confirmed the arrest of Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona on Wednesday. An arrest warrant was issued on Dec. 7.
He is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity as the leader of a group known as Anti-Balaka between December 2013 and December 2014.
Anti-Balaka is a Christian group that exists predominantly as a counter-movement to the majority Muslim Seleka armed group.
Anti-Balaka is suspected of having carried out "a widespread and systemic attack" against "the Muslim civilian population and anyone perceived to support the Seleka" between September 2013 and December 2014, the ICC said.
As the senior leader of Anti-Balaka, Ngaissona is accused of "murder and attempted murder, torture, cruel treatment, mutilation, intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population," among other charges.
Another leader of the militia, Alfred Yekatom, was also recently handed over to the court.
The government in the unstable nation referred the case to the ICC in May 2014.
About AFRICAN PARLIAMENTARY NEWS
African Parliamentary News is a medium for dissemination of accurate, reliable and unbaised news, commentaries and opinions on socio-economic issues that affect Africans and positively affect the political discourse under the umbrella of "One Africa, One Voice".
By AFRICAN PARLIAMENTARY NEWS on December 13, 2018
Labels: FEATURED, GLOBAL, LEADERSHIP, NEWS, POLITICS, REGIONAL, TRENDING
Disclaimer: Comment expressed do not reflect the opinion of African Parliamentary News
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AU Summit to hold 15-19 February 2023
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PAP – PRC Retreat: Reflections on Dr. Naledi Pandor's keynote speech
Opinion by Olu. Ibekwe In her keynote address at a recent Pan-African Parliament (PAP) – Permanent Representatives (PRC) Retreat on "The R...
PAP Bureau resolves to set up fact-finding Mission to assess sanction-related food security in Africa
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PAP and PRC pledge enhanced synergies to achieve continental agenda
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Dakar 2 Summit on Feeding Africa kicks off in Senegal
A high-level three-day Summit holding under the theme "Feeding Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience kicked off on Wednesday in Dakar, Sen...
PAP Bureau meets with AU Commissioner for Trade
Members of the Bureau of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) who are currently at the African Union (AU) Headquarters in Addis Ababa in prepara...
Pan-African Parliament to hold Retreat with the PRC
By Olu. Ibekwe The Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) of the African Union (AU) are scheduled ...
PAP-EP Inter-Parliamentary Meeting gets underway in Brussels
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Nigeria's longest serving teacher bags African Education Ambassador Award
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And people will benefit a hundredfold.
And people will return to the family ties.
And thieves and robbers will disappear.
These three, though, are superficial, and not enough.
Behave simply and hold on to purity.
Lessen selfishness and restrain desires.
Abandon knowledge and your worries are over.


text:
Ignore, refrain from forwarding scare rumors – PNP
THE Philippine National Police yesterday asked anew the public to ignore and refrain from forwarding to others scare rumors regarding terror attacks since the act is punishable under the law and does not help the country which is still reeling from the effects of the Sulu Cathedral bombing which killed 22 and injured at least 100 others.
The PNP leadership headed by Director General Oscar D. Albayalde said that scare messages being spread through text messages, mails and digital social networks should be automatically discarded and not shared by their recipients.
In many cases, bomb hoax that have forced the suspension of classes in schools and universities have been traced to some students. There were also incidents of bomb hoax traced to disgruntled company employees or aggrieved customers of some commercial establishments.
Under Presidential Decree 1727, the malicious dissemination of false information of the willful making of any threat concerning bombs, explosives or any similar device or means of destruction carries the maximum jail term of five years or a fine of not more than P40,000, said PNP spokesman Senior Superintendent Bernard M. Banac.
National Capital Region Police Office chief Director Guillermo Lorenzo T. Eleazar assured that Metro Manila and those at the countryside that shopping malls and hotels in the metropolis are safe amid bomb hoax which have been circulated in the aftermath of the January 27 Jolo bombing.
Eleazar told the Journal Group that Filipinos and foreign and local tourists should not fear going to shopping malls and hotels since adequate security measures are already in place in these areas long before.
He also dismissed as a 'mere hoax' text messages that warned of an alleged plot to bomb a big shopping mall in the metropolis if they will fail to pay US$15 million. The text message, it turned out has been circulated at least two years ago.
Eleazar, however, said that although there is no real terror threat in the metropolis, they need all the help they can get from a vigilant citizenry whom he asked to report to the nearest police station any suspicious-looking movements of persons and unattended packages and most importantly, to completely refrain from circulating bomb hoax similar to the one circulated two years ago. Eleazar asked the public to ignore a viral bomb scare triggered by a text released by a certain "Kyla Avonahceh". After they examined the elements of the alleged message by the BCD SM ADMIN, the message sent allegedly by SM officers was obviously too casual and carefree in the face of a very serious and extremely scary threat.


Currently Radarr does not recognise ISO files, or BDMV/TS_VIDEO structures. I realize these create slightly more complication in determining codecs, but it would be nice to see this handled correctly.
Voted +1. This is really necessary. Sure you can convert to mkv but for 3D movies, ISO or Blu-ray structure is must.
+1 i got much ISO of blueray disk ripped.
Essential as 3D iso lose their functionality if converted to mp4/mkv.
+1 iso & BDMV/TS_VIDEO is essential for those that like proper 3d releases.
bumping this... sad the devs are ignoring this. I'm not sure why they dont care to support these decades old standards.


& Best Quality, Fast Service with Better Functionality.
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As we start as a company we have created many websites before as well as providing our best supports.
After facing all different situations we became the good service provider and maintain our Dignity on base on customers reviews.
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Customer Service was very helpful and quick response time! Adding a second box for me quickly and effectively. Would highly recommend.
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If so, this guide can help you. While chemotherapy helps treat cancer, it can also cause other things to happen in your body called side effects. Some of these problems affect the mouth and could cause you to delay or stop treatment.
This booklet will tell you ways to help prevent mouth problems so you'll get the most from your cancer treatment.
To help prevent serious problems, see a dentist at least 2 weeks before starting chemotherapy.
It's important for your dentist and cancer doctor to talk to each other about your cancer treatment. Be sure to give your dentist your cancer doctor's phone number.
You need to see the dentist at least 2 weeks before chemotherapy begins. If you have already started chemotherapy and didn't go to a dentist, see one as soon as possible.


text:
{ "item_title" : "The Rage of Dragons", "item_author" : [" Evan Winter "], "item_description" : "Game of Thrones meets Gladiator in this blockbuster debut epic fantasy about a world caught in an eternal war, and the young man who will become his people's only hope for survival.Winner of the Reddit/Fantasy Award for Best Debut Fantasy NovelThe Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for almost two hundred years. The lucky ones are born gifted. One in every two thousand women has the power to call down dragons. One in every hundred men is able to magically transform himself into a bigger, stronger, faster killing machine.Everyone else is fodder, destined to fight and die in the endless war.Young, gift-less Tau knows all this, but he has a plan of escape. He's going to get himself injured, get out early, and settle down to marriage, children, and land. Only, he doesn't get the chance.Those closest to him are brutally murdered, and his grief swiftly turns to anger. Fixated on revenge, Tau dedicates himself to an unthinkable path. He'll become the greatest swordsman to ever live, a man willing to die a hundred thousand times for the chance to kill the three who betrayed him.The Rage of Dragons launches a stunning and powerful debut epic fantasy series that readers are already calling the best fantasy book in years.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/31/648/976/031648976X_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.00", "online_price" : "28.00", "our_price" : "28.00", "club_price" : "28.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }
The Rage of Dragons
by Evan Winter
Audio CD - Unabridged
15 copies from $15.99
Game of Thrones meets Gladiator in this blockbuster debut epic fantasy about a world caught in an eternal war, and the young man who will become his people's only hope for survival.
Winner of the Reddit/Fantasy Award for Best Debut Fantasy Novel
The Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for almost two hundred years. The lucky ones are born gifted. One in every two thousand women has the power to call down dragons. One in every hundred men is able to magically transform himself into a bigger, stronger, faster killing machine.
Everyone else is fodder, destined to fight and die in the endless war.
Young, gift-less Tau knows all this, but he has a plan of escape. He's going to get himself injured, get out early, and settle down to marriage, children, and land. Only, he doesn't get the chance.
Those closest to him are brutally murdered, and his grief swiftly turns to anger. Fixated on revenge, Tau dedicates himself to an unthinkable path. He'll become the greatest swordsman to ever live, a man willing to die a hundred thousand times for the chance to kill the three who betrayed him.
The Rage of Dragons launches a stunning and powerful debut epic fantasy series that readers are already calling "the best fantasy book in years."
Publisher: Orbit
Publish Date: July 2019


"How do you manage an employee who doesn't like you?" That's the great question I received recently from ChangeYourTeam member Julie. I'll share my answer in the form of some dos and don'ts, but I'd love for you to pitch in with your two cents in the comments.
Assess whether the negative feelings are affecting the person's work. If not, it might not be worth doing anything about the relationship at all.
Make sure you've positioned the person to succeed. Have you provided clear and reasonable expectations, support and coaching, and the resources they need to do their job? Don't assume…ask! Listen openly for feedback that would help you be a better manager.
Find other people who can fulfill your need to be liked. It's important not to let one person's opinion detract from your self-esteem.
Be overly harsh or critical of the person. It's not part of their job description to like you so stick to evaluating them objectively. Use feedback from others to round out your performance reviews.
Start being more lenient on the person to try to win their affection. That will cause others to lose respect for you.
Change who you are or pretend to be someone you're not. That will feel forced and will detract from an authentic relationship. Even if it works with the person who doesn't like you, it could backfire with other people.
Be passive-aggressive or involve other members of the team in your relationship issues. Sarcasm or comments under your breath are a big no-no. Take the high road.
Worry too much about it. You're not going to be friends with everyone who works for you. And remember, sometimes our feelings for someone change as we get a little more distance from the situation. Who knows, you might end up being the boss that person credits with changing their career!
There is a pretty wide range of emotions your employee might have toward you; from minor dislike to major disdain. If it's just a distaste for your style (or your jokes, wardrobe, choice of meeting snacks), you might not need to do anything. If it's outright hatred and your relationship is forever soured, you need to find another spot for the person. But if there is something wrong with the relationship that's worth fixing, try these dos and don'ts and see if the relationship improves.
What did I miss? Add your dos and don'ts in the comments.
I have been newly hired as a Supervisor of Operations. I am learning all aspects of this company from the ground up starting with customer services being trained by one of my subordinates who is the Customer Service Lead. This 28-30 year old is exceptional in her job function, assertive, confident; no problems with her performance. However, when I first started I spent my first week with her training and observed her curtness to other CSRs when they would ask for direction. Beginning of following week while I was in a brief meeting with our mutual manager, my manager asked me if I noticed anything about this Lead CSR's behavior towards another CSR,(apparently a complaint was made). I expressed that I had witnessed the brief demeaning reply by the Lead CSR to the CSR. The Manager asked me to explain what I witnessed. My manager then stated that the Lead CAR is very immature and she needs to find a way to curb the Lead CSRS curtess as she is a valued employee.
Above stated, this Lead CSR has demonstrated blatant disrespect for me several times over my brief 3 weeks of employment. Ignoring me is the most prominent. I clearly understand that I am hired as a salaried employee with a higher income then the Lead CSR, and this could be her issue since she maintains more knowledge than me about the company overall.
My dilemma is whether or not to mention this to my Manager and or Human Resources. I have not said a word of this to anyone. However, I cannot have this continue as it will negatively affect how I am perceived by the remaining 16 CSRs.
Usually, rudeness like you describe is a symptom of someone's own insecurity. I always start with the assumption that condescending behavior is a sign of weakness, rather than of strength. You already mentioned that the person has far more experience than you, so tap into that experience. Try to build a relationship with the person. Earn the right to give her some feedback about how her interactions with the CSRs are hurting her brand. Help her see the opportunity to be the go-to person on the team.
Can your team make decisions?


Term 2 will commence the week of 19th February.
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text:
Yes, Virginia, You Can Try a Former President
That's William W. Belknap in the photo. And his story has much to say about whether it's constitutional to impeach Trump now that he has left office? The short answer is: Yep.
To begin with, the House of Representatives *impeached* him before he left office. It's only the required Senate trial that's taking place after he's left office.
As for *trying* him after he has left office, there's historical precedent for impeaching and trying a federal official after they have left office. You've got an uphill climb if you want to argue that trying Trump is unconstitutional. You certainly cannot say, as the GOP has done, that it's unconstitutional on its face.
On January 15 the Congressional Research Service (CRS) produced a report entitled "The Impeachment and Trial of a Former President," that explores the history of impeachment in the United States, and notes that federal officials have been impeached after they have left office. In other words, it has been regarded as constitutional.
The CRS is a public policy research institute created by Congress in 1914. Like the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accountability Office, it works directly for Members of Congress on a bipartisan basis.
The report points out that federal officials have been impeached and tried after they have left office.
The most notable case involved the impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876, essentially on grounds of rampant corruption. Here's what the U.S. Senate Historical Office says about it:
On March 2, 1876, just minutes before the House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on articles of impeachment, Belknap raced to the White House, handed Grant his resignation, and burst into tears.
This failed to stop the House. Later that day, members voted unanimously to send the Senate five articles of impeachment, charging Belknap with "criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain."
The Senate convened its trial in early April, with Belknap present, after agreeing that it retained impeachment jurisdiction over former government officials. During May, the Senate heard more than 40 witnesses, as House managers argued that Belknap should not be allowed to escape from justice simply by resigning his office.
On August 1, 1876, the Senate rendered a majority vote against Belknap on all five articles. As each vote fell short of the necessary two-thirds, however, he won acquittal.
Republicans undoubtedly know about this precedent. They rely on the fact that the American public does not know about it.
Posted by Mark Grimsley at 5:06 AM No comments:
Sounding Taps for Military History--Again
Yet another lament for the supposed demise of academic military history has appeared, this time from the pen of the distinguished military historian Max Hastings. These op-eds appear every few years, apparently oblivious to the ones that preceded it and the pushback they received from military historians like myself. My own commentary focused mainly on an op-ed by John J. Miller in National Review Online September 2006. Since it appears to have disappeared from the Internet, I reprint it here.
EDUCATION 2006 [September 26, 2006]
Sounding Taps
Why military history is being retired
JOHN J. MILLER
A decade ago, best-selling author Stephen Ambrose donated $250,000 to the University of Wisconsin, his alma mater, to endow a professorship in American military history. A few months later, he gave another $250,000. Until his death in 2002, he badgered friends and others to contribute additional funds. Today, more than $1 million sits in a special university account for the Ambrose-Heseltine Chair in American History, named after its main benefactor and the long-dead professor who trained him.
The chair remains vacant, however, and Wisconsin is not currently trying to fill it. "We won't search for a candidate this school year," says John Cooper, a history professor. "But we're committed to doing it eventually." The ostensible reason for the delay is that the university wants to raise even more money, so that it can attract a top-notch senior scholar. There may be another factor as well: Wisconsin doesn't actually want a military historian on its faculty. It hasn't had one since 1992, when Edward M. Coffman retired. "His survey course on U.S. military history used to overflow with students," says Richard Zeitlin, one of Coffman's former graduate teaching assistants. "It was one of the most popular courses on campus." Since Coffman left, however, it has been taught only a couple of times, and never by a member of the permanent faculty.
One of these years, perhaps Wisconsin really will get around to hiring a professor for the Ambrose-Heseltine chair — but right now, for all intents and purposes, military history in Madison is dead. It's dead at many other top colleges and universities as well. Where it isn't dead and buried, it's either dying or under siege. Although military history remains incredibly popular among students who fill lecture halls to learn about Saratoga and Iwo Jima and among readers who buy piles of books on Gettysburg and D-Day, on campus it's making a last stand against the shock troops of political correctness. "Pretty soon, it may become virtually impossible to find military-history professors who study war with the aim of understanding why one side won and the other side lost," says Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who taught at West Point for ten years. That's bad news not only for those with direct ties to this academic sub-discipline, but also for Americans generally, who may find that their collective understanding of past military operations falls short of what the war-torn present demands.
The very first histories ever written were military histories. Herodotus described the Greek wars with Persia, and Thucydides chronicled the Peloponnesian War. "It will be enough for me," wrote Thucydides nearly 25 centuries ago, "if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future." The Marine Corps certainly thinks Thucydides is useful: He appears on a recommended-reading list for officers. One of the most important lessons he teaches is that war is an aspect of human existence that can't be wished away, no matter how hard the lotus-eaters try.
A DYING BREED
Although the keenest students of military history have often been soldiers, the subject isn't only for them. "I don't believe it is possible to treat military history as something entirely apart from the general national history," said Theodore Roosevelt to the American Historical Association in 1912. For most students, that's how military history was taught — as a key part of a larger narrative. After the Second World War, however, the field boomed as veterans streamed into higher education as both students and professors. A general increase in the size of faculties allowed for new approaches, and the onset of the Cold War kept everybody's mind focused on the problem of armed conflict.
Posted by Mark Grimsley at 12:47 PM No comments:
Caught in the Cross Fire: A Visit to Lynndie England's Hometown
The following is a re-printed post I published twelve years ago, back when this blog was in its infancy and entitled Interrogating the Project of Military History. The post was originally entitled "Drive-by Journalism," but since Rush Limbaugh long ago adopted "the drive-bys" as an epithet for mainstream media journalists, I felt obliged to change it. This is one instance, though, when the term seems entirely appropriate.
June 7 [2004] - The Society for Military History had its annual meeting on May 20-23 in Bethesda, Maryland. The Iraq war hung heavily over the whole affair, partly because the war hangs heavily over the whole country, but mostly because the conference organizers looked deliberately toward the strategic policy-making community. Bethesda, after all, is cheek by jowl next to Washington, DC.
Between one thing and another, I had not attended an SMH meeting since 1997. I went this year strictly out of a sense of professional obligation. I wasn't looking forward to it. (I wound up having a far better experience than I expected, but that's for a future entry.)
Consequently I took my sweet time getting there, stopping off at the National Road/Zane Grey Museum in eastern Ohio, then at a nearby antique store. I stuck with the Interstate until I reached Washington, Pennsylvania, at which point I decided I'd take US 40--the old National Road--down to Fort Necessity National Battlefield. I'd never been there before. It's the most poorly-chosen military position I have ever seen. I had read about it, but jeez. You look at it--a tiny stockade in a marshy meadow, too close to the woods and with a constricted field of fire--and you can't believe the guy who selected it wound up winning the war for American independence.
I didn't think beforehand about the route I'd take after visiting Fort Necessity, but it turns out that US 40 dumps you onto I-68 a few miles west of Cumberland, Maryland, which, it suddenly occurred to me, was only a few miles from Fort Ashby, West Virginia, home town of Lynndie England. These days everybody knows Pvt. England by sight if not by name: she's the female MP pointing at the genitals of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib with one hand while giving a "thumbs up" with the other. Even after a day of dawdling down the highway, I was in no hurry to reach Bethesda, so I found the exit to West Virginia's State Route 28 and drove the thirteen miles to Fort Ashby, population 1354. [1380 per the 2010 census]
The community, about a mile square, spreads out from the single major intersection--Washington Street and Green Street-- which sports a solitary traffic light. It has a gas station, a convenience store, a Dairy Queen clone, but no McDonald's (whether a town has a McDonald's is my rough-and-ready way of determining if it's a real town or merely a wide spot in the road). After the prisoner abuse story broke in late April, a flurry of journalists showed up to evaluate Fort Ashby on the theory this would tell us something about Lynndie England, who had immediately become the poster child for all things nasty at Abu Ghraib. Since the easy thing was to portray Fort Ashby as if it were so far removed from civilization that its residents had to pipe in daylight, that's the way the media tended to portray it. And yes, there are a few double-wide trailers and maybe the odd junker on blocks in the front yard. Mostly, though, the houses looked like this one:
The house looks remarkably like the split-levels in my own subdivision, except that the shrubs are better pruned.
My plan was to find a diner or, preferably, a bar where I could nurse a drink while eavesdropping on the local conversation. Initially I was disappointed: nothing suitable caught my eye. I was about to leave Fort Ashby when I belatedly realized that at the southwest corner of the main intersection stood a ramshackle building that looked as if it might be a bar and--yep--turned out to be just that. According to a newspaper article I found this morning on LEXIS-NEXIS, the place is called the Corner Club Saloon. But since almost nothing in the article resembled anything I saw, I give no assurances the name is correct.
I was wearing Dockers, a button-down shirt, and a sport jacket: much too dressed up for the Corner Club Saloon. But nobody called me a dude, challenged me to explain what I was doing there, or offered to rearrange my face. Instead the bartender served me one of those low-carb Michelob Ultras and said, in response to my question, that yes, he sold quite a few of them. The guys to my right continued to shoot pool. The women to my left continued an urgent discussion of something that very obviously had nothing at all to do with Iraq, Abu Ghraib, or Lynndie England.
As the minutes ticked by and I reflected with each new sip that $1.75 spent on a Michelob Ultra was $1.75 utterly wasted, I hoped against hope that a) the television above the bar from which CNN Headline News silently flickered would yield an image of the prisoner abuse scandal and, ideally, Lynndie England; and b) somebody in the bar would see it and comment on it. No such luck. But there was something homey and comfortable about the Corner Club Saloon. After a while I didn't give a hoot about my original mission. Instead I got another beer, looked over the menu, and ordered some chicken tenders for supper.
About the time that the chicken tenders arrived, the woman at my left turned to me and asked, in a neighborly sort of way that was neither challenge nor come-on, who I was. It was just her way of including me in the group. I gave her my name and said I was passing through on my way to Washington, DC. We must have chatted for five or ten minutes before she asked, inevitably, what had brought me to Fort Ashby. Any story I made up would sound so obviously made up as to be insulting, so I said, "Well, to tell you the truth, it was originally because I knew this was Lynndie England's hometown. But I don't want to speak of rope in the house of the hanged, so we don't need to talk about that."
It turned out that my new friend, whom I'll call Kitty, did in fact want to talk about that--or, more precisely, about the town's recent experience with the media. In fact, she wanted everyone within earshot to talk about it. "Hey, do you know why he's here? It's that Lynndie England story."
Retired Colonel Peter Mansoor, Lifelong Republican, Will Vote for Hillary Clinton
My friend and colleague Pete Mansoor, a retired Army colonel, has just completed a series of interviews with CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets. Pete is a life-long Republican. In all of of these interviews he goes on record to state that not only does he regard Donald Trump as unacceptable as a commander in chief, he will vote instead for Hillary Clinton.
Pete's qualifications as a military analyst could hardly be stronger.
Pete isn't simply a retired colonel, he graduated first in class at West Point, commanded a brigade in Iraq, served as the founding director of the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There he helped to edit FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, published in 2006, which was used to reshape the conduct of the Iraq War.
In the fall of 2006 he served on the so-called "Council of Colonels," a task force of senior officers created by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that reexamined the strategy for the war in Iraq.
The capstone of his 30-year career was as Gen. David Petraeus' executive officer in Iraq during the 2007-2008 Surge.
Pete, a fellow in the Council of Foreign Relations, currently holds the Raymond E. Mason Professor Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University, where his duties divide equally between service to Ohio State's Mershon Center for International Security Studies and teaching in OSU's Department of History.
He is the author of three books, two of which--Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's Experience in Iraq and Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War--recount his experiences in the Iraq War.
With all these qualifications--as well as Pete's quick, sharp mind and ability to present his views lucidly, forcefully, and concisely-it's no wonder that he's a much sought after figure for media interviews.
He is also one of 100 national security analysts who came out in opposition to the Trump candidacy in March.
As I can attest from numerous discussions with him, Pete is a die-hard Republican with a formidable ability to articulate the Republican political philosophy. When he decided that he had to reject the GOP presidential nominee in favor of Hillary Clinton, hell did not exactly freeze over, but a skin of ice had definitely formed.
Here is Pete's interview with Chris Hayes's All In on MSNBC. He has made similar statements on other venues, notably CNN's Anderson Cooper 360:
Why Military History Sucked
Recently a graduate student sent an email telling me that my online essay "Why Military History Sucks" was on her reading list but that she couldn't find it on the Internet. (My university some time ago discontinued the faculty web pages where the essay originally reposed.) It seemed to me that the easiest way to provide her with it was to re-publish the essay as a blog post.
The title I have given the post--placing the provocative verb in the past tense--is done pointedly. The essay originated twenty years ago. In those two decades military history has greatly matured as a field. Many of the points in my critique no longer apply; certainly not to the same extent. I'm especially pleased that the sense of persecution that the essay rebukes is no longer a common sentiment within the field.
With that said, here's the essay in its original form:
Why Military History Sucks
In November 1996, H-CIVWAR featured a number of posts from individuals frustrated by a belief that military historians were the victims of a kind of blind prejudice on the part of non-military historians. This was my response.
I've read with interest the views of those who think that military history suffers from a bad rep in the groves of academe. I agree that prejudices such as those described exist. But I also believe that we military historians have done much to perpetuate our own marginalization within the academy. Since others have made the case for a political bias against military history, let me make the case for an adverse judgment based on the real shortcomings of military history.
To begin with, those who compare us with women's history, ethnic history, and so on, overlook the fact that such fields have created categories of historical analysis that command the attention of historians in other fields. No one any longer would argue that gender relations have not powerfully shaped human affairs; historians of gender have created sophisticated conceptual tools by which to understand those relations. The fact that the more mediocre scholars dress up commonsense ideas in the language of gender, or construct pseudosophisticated towers of Babel, should not blind us to the fact that the best gender history is imaginative and illuminating. Few human activities are more completely dominated by gender than warfare--it is a preeminently masculine activity--yet how many military historians have ever read the work of Cynthia Enloe or Jean Bethke Elshtain, each of whom has dealt explicitly with women and war; to say nothing of gender historians who do not look at war directly? If we fail to engage with them, why should we expect them to engage with us?
Much more damaging is the fact that we military historians have yet to create a category of historical analysis with anything like the interpretive power of gender, race, or class. You can sneer at the "holy trinity" but you can't deny that these things fundamentally shape our lives and have been doing so--with the possible exception of race--for many centuries.
We military historians can point out again and again that much historical change occurs violently, but that's not enough. Any rube can see that such is the case. But what can military historians tell other historians that they can't figure out on their own? Why exactly do we need experts in the subject? And what exactly is our subject? Most military historians think our subject is the history of "war," but war is an inherently politicized concept. Indeed, most of our intellectual definitions are borrowed from diplomatic, government, and professional military authorities. We haven't examined our field afresh. Women's historians sometimes seem morbidly absorbed with theory. We're not nearly theoretical enough. Even if we ultimately fail to create a "coercive variable" in history that is as powerful a tool as the trinity, we can at least systematically explore the sources of social power and show how military affairs relates to them.
I think it's nuts to assert that the rest of the historical community isn't interested in the military dimension of human affairs. Political historians, social historians, cultural historians have generated enough work on this subject to choke a horse. Indeed, I would argue that the best military history is usually done by people who were not trained as military specialists. And the fact that they do do it should suggest not only their interest in military affairs but also the fact that they have to do it--that when they pose a historical question related to military affairs, too often no military historian ever thought of the question before or thought it was worth exploring. We were too busy writing about our subject in a way that did not connect with the concerns of non-military historians.
I would argue that we are not good military historians even on our own terms. At a minimum, military historians ought to be historians of warfare. Too often, we're really historians of specific wars. At a minimum, military historians ought to have a working knowledge of non-western military history. Instead few of us do, including myself. In fact, I am scandalously ignorant of non-western history and the only reason I'm not ashamed to admit it is that I know most of you are in the same boat. How much comparative military history gets written? Not much.
I will add one final observation, based on a number of years spent observing my peers. The best military historians are among the best historians around. They possess a wide knowledge base; they are conversant with--and sincerely interested in--nonmilitary history as well as their own specialty; they have thought deeply about their intellectual assumptions and search diligently for appropriate conceptual frameworks to inform their work. But too many military historians are as prejudiced against nonmilitary historians as they claim nonmilitary historians are prejudiced against them. They dismiss new trends in history as a lot of P.C. fadmongering. They don't engage with, for example, the new cultural history and find it wanting. They ignore it--and then complain when cultural historians ignore them.
You want to get hired by a history department? Learn to talk about something besides military history. Learn what other historians care about, and show them how an understanding of the military dimension can illuminate the issue. Don't expect that just because a lot of students are interested in military history that that should be a credible reason to have military historians on the faculty. A lot of students are interested in beer, too; it doesn't mean we have to offer courses in the subject. Given a choice between creating a faculty position for world history or one for military history, I would choose the former--the military history enthusiasts in the student body can get their fix from A&E, the History Channel, and the bulging military history section of the local bookstore.
But if a person trained in military history applied for the job who could show me credibly that she or he knew more about world history than the rival candidates, and that their expertise in military history strengthened their ability to understand and teach world history, I would hire them. And so would many historians. When it comes to military history, most nonmilitary historians are not antipathetic toward the subject, just skeptical. In effect, they're from Missouri: we are going to have to show them.
Cross-posted from Sibling Rivalry
By Scott Grimsley
Honoring Our Dead With Taking Chance
As anyone who knows him can attest, my brother Mark loves movies. His DVD collection is, to say the least, extensive, and he is actually a true scholar of films. He has published numerous movie reviews about World War Two movies that I have really enjoyed for their insights and examination of deeper themes contained in the films. Interestingly he is also passionate about films concerning Jesus, and has taught several studies privately on the subject.
I read his blog entry this morning and saw his comments on the movie Taking Chance. I had never seen the movie and was intrigued by its premise and how he had used it to instruct his daughter Chloe on the meaning of Memorial Day. (Chloe, by the way, is adopting her father's appreciation for classic film: on one visit she wanted me to watch Singing In the Rain with her as opposed to the more conventional Disney or Pixar offerings my kids grew up with). Fortunately I had access to Taking Chance on one of my internet subscription services, and so I watched it.
The film is incredibly moving and really had no message except it told the tale of how the body of a fallen soldier was treated with respect and dignity throughout his journey from the combat zone to burial in his Wyoming hometown. I admit I cried like a baby watching it. I was reminded of the famous quote attributed to Joseph Stalin "the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic". Sometimes, unless we know the deceased personally, we fail to acknowledge the real human impact of war, and that is another valuable reminder of the film. I understood the conflict experienced by Kevin Bacon's character as well, about whether his service as a staff officer working basically a military job on civilian work schedule allowed him to claim the title of a "real" Marine compared to the obvious sacrifice of those who are actually fighting. I am a Desert Storm era veteran who did not go to Desert Storm. I spent that time assisting in refresher training of reservists recalled to active duty to backfill units in Germany, but still was the beneficiary of the outpouring of public affection for the military during that conflict, and sometimes felt like an impostor.
However the point I want to make is about the diversity of backgrounds of the people honoring Chance Phelps, the fallen Marine, and his escort officer, LTC Michael Strobl. Throughout the film, spontaneous gestures of respect take place, ranging from the complimentary upgrade of the outbound flight to first class Strobl receives at the airline ticket counter, to the stewardess who wordlessly hands Strobl a crucifix on the plane, to a baggage handler getting bedding for Strobl to sleep on so he can stay with Phelps' body during an overnight layover, to finally an impromptu funeral procession that forms as Phelps' body is driven 5 hours from the airport to his home. This is where I see hope for us as a nation. There are points that divide us, sure, but there are also those where all of us as Americans can agree. Honoring those who have died in the defense of our freedom is definitely one.
So, thanks to my brother, I feel I celebrated Memorial Day with a proper attitude of respect and remembrance. Despite the gulf of what often seems to divide us, and our very real differences, there is common ground. This is what we can build on.
Posted by Mark Grimsley at 4:47 PM No comments:
The Impact of "Taking Chance"
Today is Memorial Day. Two years ago I took my daughter Chloe to a Memorial Day parade and tried to give her some idea of what it was about, but as she was just 2 1/2 years old I naturally had limited success. So last evening we sat down together and watched "Taking Chance." It's a 2009 HBO film based on the true story of Marine Lt Col Michael Strobel's experience escorting the remains of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps from Dover Air Force Base to his parents' home in rural Wyoming. Here's the trailer:
I'd seen the film before, enough to know that it was perfectly suitable for a 4 1/2 year old to watch. It contains no violence and (with one brief exception) no profanity. Chloe asked a number of questions, and periodically we'd pause the DVD while I answered them. One of them had to do with the term "service"; as in "Thank you for your service." Chloe had previously encountered the term only in the context of food service, so I had to explain the larger meaning of "service," what it means "to serve," and so on. Particularly what it means to serve in the military and, by extension, to serve one's country.
Whenever I get a little choked up about something, Chloe interprets it as sadness, and has continued to do so despite my efforts to explain that such shows of emotion often do not signify sadness. Several times during the film she turned to me and said, "Don't be sad."
The movie had an impact on someone made of sterner stuff than myself. Early in the Obama administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates conducted a review of the Defense Department's policy of barring media access to the military mortuary facility at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The media cried foul, with some charging that the policy was a politically-motivated effort to hide the human cost of war from the American public. But the military services and a number of groups representing the families of fallen soldiers considered it almost sacrilegious to allow cameras to film the flag-draped coffins returning from overseas. Gates ultimately decided to modify the policy so as to allow press coverage as long as a grieving family did not object.
In his memoirs, Gates wrote:
In the case of my decision on Dover, an HBO movie, Taking Chance, released in February [2009], had an important impact. The story follows a Marine lieutenant colonel (played by Kevin Bacon) as he escorts the remains of Marine Lance Corporal Chance Phelps from Dover to his hometown in Wyoming, ordinary Americans making gestures of respect all along the way. After seeing the film, I was resolved that we should publicly honor as many of our fallen warriors as possible, beginning at Dover. -- Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York, 2014), 307.
(For more information on the film, see the "Taking Chance" web site on HBO.)
Enduring the Unendurable: Japan's Longest Day
Reprinted with permission of World War II magazine
At noon on August 15, 1945, millions across Japan craned their ears to radios, listening in amazement to their emperor's voice, reproduced on a 78-rpm phonograph record. Hirohito gravely read an imperial edict announcing that his government had acceded to the Allies' demand that the Japanese military surrender unconditionally. In and of itself, this was a stunning moment. Most commoners had never heard an emperor speak. Hirohito delivered his remarks in a classical form of Japanese difficult for most of his countrymen to follow. He never used the words "defeat" or "surrender," so many listeners did not grasp the meaning of his address. As previously authorized, an announcer afterward drove home the god-king's stunning point. For the first time in its 2,500-year history, Japan had met defeat.
Twenty-two years later Toho Studio—which had won fans among American moviegoers with its Godzilla franchise—released Japan's Longest Day, an account of the 24 hours that led to Hirohito's radio broadcast. Directed by Kihachi Okamoto, a veteran of the Pacific War whose 40 films include many with World War II themes, Japan's Longest Day—like The Longest Day, its 1962 Hollywood namesake—featured an all-star cast memorably led by Toshiro Mifune, Japan's John Wayne. The film, closely based on fact, became Japan's second highest grossing film of 1967, inspiring Toho to make other movies about the Japanese military during the Second World War. Japan's Longest Day, little known in the United States, was almost unobtainable until 2006, when Wilmington, North Carolina, video distributor AnimEigo (animeigo.com) released an excellent DVD transfer.
The title refers to the gripping sequence of events between noon August 14, when Hirohito importuned his cabinet to end the war, and noon August 15, when Gyokuon-hōsō, "the Jewel Voice Broadcast," signified the end of the Japanese empire.
In a 21-minute documentary-style open, Okamoto portrays the cabinet struggling to answer Potsdam Declaration demands for unconditional surrender, with the only alternative "prompt and utter destruction." The cabinet splits. A pro-peace faction centers on Prime Minister Baron Kantaro Suzuki (Chishu Ryu). The diehards' strongest voice is Japan's war minister, General Korechika Anami (Mifune). Reluctant at best to accept surrender, Anami argues that the Potsdam Declaration does not offer adequate assurance that the Allies will permit the emperor to the keep the throne, The Cabinet, he insists, must force the Allies to be clear on this point. "Because if that is not the case," the general tells the Cabinet, fist on the hilt of his long sword, "we must fight to the last man."
Unable to decide even with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in radioactive cinders and the Soviets invading Manchuria, the cabinet finally meets with the emperor to seek resolution. Suzuki and Anami each make their cases. As Hirohito (Hakuo Matsumoto) rises to respond, Okamoto superimposes a clock, then the film's title. The documentary structure falls away and Japan's Longest Day plays out as a drama inter-cutting the cabinet and emperor in their final deliberations, the push to record and broadcast the surrender edict, and hardcore militarists plotting to keep the speech from reaching the Japanese people.
"It is impossible to continue to prosecute this war," Hirohito tells the cabinet, voice halting as he tries to control his emotions. "No matter what happens to me . . . my people . . . save my people. I can no longer endure letting them suffer any longer." Kihachi photographs this scene carefully, not revealing Hirohito's face. Besides showing deference to the emperor, still on the throne at the time of the film's release, this framing focuses our attention on Anami's reaction to his sacred leader's declaration. When the rest of the cabinet is bursting into tears, the dry-eyed Anami, who knows of the would-be coup, wears an expression of austere resignation. His heart is with the hard-core militarists, but to join the resistance would be to defy his emperor, and he is too much the man of tradition to do so.
Over the next two hours, characters race one another and time. The cabinet wrangles over the language of the edict the emperor will sign and record for broadcast. A cadre of staff-level officers deduces what is underway and plots a coup d'état. Commanders at two key air bases, Atsugi and Kodama, vow to fight on by sending kamikazes against an American fleet off the coast. Anami, after sternly instructing his staff to obey the emperor's will, goes into foreboding seclusion.
Okamoto's juxtapositions can be startling. Civilians, including many schoolchildren, throng an airfield to sing an anthem of support for pilots preparing to fly to their deaths. The song continues as the perspective cuts to officials placing the finished edict before the emperor, who signs it. The recording session takes place; the emperor's men hide the disk at the Imperial Household Agency. The plotters invoke the impending kamikaze attacks as they plead with General Takeshi Mori (Shogo Shimada), commander of the Imperial Guard Division, to join their coup. Rebuffed, the conspirators murder Mori, forge orders in his name, and transmit them to the empire's remaining forces. Imperial Guard detachments surround the palace and ransack the royal household looking for Hirohito's surrender recording.
The coup begins to fall apart. The guardsmen cannot find the record. The forged orders' origins come to light. General Shizuichi Tanaka (Kenjiro Ishiyama), commander of the Eastern District Army, arrives at the palace to stop the plot for good. In counterpoint, Anami, alone but for two young subordinates, resolutely prepares to commit seppuku—self-disembowelment. He tells his companions, who are there to witness his suicide, that they must help to rebuild Japan. "Each and every Japanese must stand by their station, live on, and work earnestly," Anami urges the pair. "In no other way can the nation be rebuilt."
Anami kills himself. Separately, so do the plotters, whose bodies are on screen as we hear the announcer's voice introducing the emperor's recording. Japan's Longest Day ends not with an outright rejection of militarism—70 years on, Japan has yet to come to terms with what its aggression wrought—but with the suggestion that for a new Japan to rise the old Japan had to die.
War is Rude: Mrs. Miniver
Mrs. Miniver tells the story of life in the U.K. 1939-1941 experienced, as the opening crawl explains, by an "average English middle class family"—which just happens to be able to afford servants and a spacious residence whose lawn extends to a dock on the Thames River. Shot in Hollywood starting on November 11, 1941, and released in June 1942, the MGM film became that year's highest grossing picture and garnered six Academy awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actress (Greer Garson in the title role), and Best Supporting Actress (Teresa Wright). Its appeal has endured; the American Film Institute ranks the film 40th on its list of "America's most inspiring movies."
Based on Jan Struther's 1940 bestseller Mrs. Miniver, a compendium of anecdotal British newspaper columns, the movie has only tenuous ties to the book, whose arc barely reaches the war's outbreak. Working with six screenwriters, director Wyler extended Struther's timeline to incorporate Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain.
At the outset, Kay Miniver (Garson), husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon), and eldest son Vin (Richard Ney) are—as that crawl puts it—among England's "happy, careless people . . . in that happy, easy-going England that was so soon to be fighting desperately for her way of life and for life itself." Even when war breaks out the Minivers' comfortable lives change little, though Vin does become an RAF fighter pilot. Reality intrudes only when Clem sails his motorboat to join a flotilla that—offscreen—rescues the British army from Dunkirk.
While Clem is busy across the Channel, a downed German pilot (Helmut Dantine) finds his way into the Miniver home. The screenwriters, responding to Americans' increasing admiration for England, reworked this sequence several times. In a draft predating Pearl Harbor, Clem is present; the German, wounded and frightened, yields to Kay's entreaty to give himself up and get medical attention. But in a post-December 7 version, Clem is absent, the German has a pistol, and Kay clearly in peril. And the finished film portrays the flyer as a fanatic. He holds Kay at gunpoint, demanding food he wolfs down like a wild animal before fainting from blood loss. Barely rattled, she takes away the pistol and phones the police. When the pilot revives, too weak to be dangerous, Kay sympathetically tends him. He'll soon be "wonderfully looked after in a hospital," she says. "The war won't last forever."
Mrs. Miniver's trademark benevolence enrages the German. "We will bomb your cities," he storms. "Rotterdam we destroy in two hours. Thirty thousand in two hours. And we will do the same here!" This is unspeakably rude (as well as inaccurate, since the Rotterdam bombings claimed only 884 people) and Mrs. Miniver slaps the brute. No sooner have the bobbies collected their prisoner than Clem chugs up to the Miniver dock. His Dunkirk circuit has battered his boat. Nonetheless he behaves much as a man just back from a particularly grueling business trip. Clem greets his family, falls asleep, and upon waking ten hours later asks if news of the Dunkirk evacuation is in the papers. It is, Kay says.
"Thank heavens," Clem replies. "I shan't have to tell you about it." And he doesn't.
Neither does Mrs. Miniver mention her adventure, until the household cook interrupts to announce that she has no ham for Mr. Miniver's breakfast, explaining to Mrs. Miniver: "You gave it all to that German pilot." Not a problem, Mrs. Miniver replies; Mr. Miniver likes bacon, too. Naturally Clem asks what German pilot, and in a playful scene Kay treats the episode in an elaborately coy manner that is utterly typical of the film.
Come what may, the Minivers' lives remain idyllic. Yes, there are air raids, but the family hunkers in its Anderson shelter and Clem talks about how much he likes Alice in Wonderland. Vin weds the lovely Carol Beldon (Teresa Wright), adding another Mrs. Miniver to the household—and not incidentally a status dimension to the film. Carol's grandmother is Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty), a local aristocrat who frequently sniffs about the "middle classes" in a successful bid by the filmmakers to make the unpretentious but well-to-do Minivers more sympathetic to egalitarian American moviegoers. In the same vein, the film generally conveys that in wartime England class distinctions do not matter. Even Lady Beldon unbends; at the annual village floral competition—which by tradition she always wins—the grand dame permits a kindly stationmaster's entry, dubbed the "Mrs. Miniver rose," to claim first prize.
Tragedy invades only near the conclusion. Just hours after the floral show an air raid claims several villagers, including the stationmaster and Vin's new bride, Carol. At a memorial service in a heavily damaged church, the Vicar (Henry Wilcoxon) delivers a powerful sermon. In the October 1941 shooting script, his homily was the 91st Psalm, which presents the Almighty as a refuge and a fortress. But after Pearl Harbor, a stirring peroration was inserted just after the scripture passage, composed by Wyler and Wilcoxon just hours before the scene was filmed. In it, the Vicar laments the dead innocents, declaring that theirs is a war in which everyone must share the burden of freedom's struggle against tyranny. "This is the people's war," he concludes. "It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it, then! Fight it with all that is in us! And may God defend the right." The camera holds on Mr. and Mrs. Miniver, resolute and dry-eyed, as the congregation sings "Onward, Christian Soldiers." It then pans upward toward a gaping hole in the church roof. The camera then dollies toward it, enlarging the hole so that the audience gets the full effect when a squadron of Spitfires passes overhead, flying toward the foe.
The film works because strong performances—especially Garson's—redeem preposterous characters, and the Vicar's concluding oration has enduring power. However, Mrs. Miniver presents war more as a case of dreadful manners than as something truly fearful: a sanitized way to promote American solidarity with Britain without hinting at how horrible that "people's war" would be.
American Iliad: The Sword of General Lee
Millions of American love the Civil War. Last summer I began work on "American Iliad," a new regular column in The Civil War Monitor that examines one of the major reasons that they do. Some episodes from the conflict are so compelling that readers know them by heart. These episodes transcend mere history because human beings are story-telling creatures who make sense of the world through stories. They have an out-sized importance because they reveal what we want to believe, not just about the nature of the war, but also about the nature of life. Just as the ancient Greeks conveyed profound truths about the human condition through myth, so too does our national myth, the American Iliad. Each column explores a classic story from this myth and discusses the reason it continues to exert such a powerful grip on our imagination.
Here's the inaugural column, published in The Civil War Monitor 6/3 (Fall 2015):28-29, 72. Republished with permission.
Coined by the popular historian Otto Eisenschiml in 1947, the term "American Iliad" brilliantly captures the essence of so many Americans' passion for the Civil War. A man once told me, in complete seriousness, that the story of the war was his religion. And while a conflict that killed over 2 percent of our country's population may not be the best thing to construct an entire worldview around, it is probably not the worst thing, either. Abraham Lincoln's magnanimity, Ulysses S. Grant's perseverance in the face of all obstacles, and Robert E. Lee's grace in defeat all provide strong life lessons. Although it is plainly exceptional to regard the Civil War a religion, it is obvious that the Civil War routinely functions as a national myth, a way to understand ourselves as Americans. And like the classic mythologies of old, it contains timeless wisdom of what it means to be a human being. Homer's Iliad tells us much about war, but it also tells us much about life. The American Iliad does the same thing.
Foundational to the American Iliad is the conviction that the conflict was not a struggle between darkness and light, freedom and tyranny, but rather between two sides, equally gallant, committed to different but morally equivalent visions of the American republic, and therefore caught up in a tragedy larger than themselves, "a war of brothers."
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels, arguably one of the most influential modern re-tellings of this Iliad, Michael Shaara has Confederate general James Longstreet muse, "The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side." Robert E. Lee provides the most prominent example of a soldier forced to make this choice. With the exception of Lincoln, Lee is perhaps the foremost protagonist in the American Iliad's pantheon. In mythic terms he is the ideal man, the perfect warrior, the flawless gentleman—"the Christlike Lee," as historian Kenneth Stampp once put it. On the eve of the war he is a full colonel, so obviously gifted that Lincoln offers him command of the armies that must extinguish the rebellion should war break out. Lee declines. Despite a lifetime's service to the United States—and despite telling his siblings that "I recognize no necessity for this [rebellion]"—he feels honor-bound to resign from the U.S. Army when Virginia, his homeland, secedes. "Save in defense of my native State," he says, "I have no desire ever again to draw my sword." But of course he must defend his native state. Thus it is the protection of hearth and home, not the abstract principle of states' rights and certainly not the preservation of slavery, which governs his decision. "I did only what my duty demanded," he would write in 1868. "I could have taken no other course without dishonor. And if it all were to be done over again, I should act in precisely the same manner." Historian Alan Nolan once questioned whether Lee's fateful choice to draw his sword against the United States was as ethical as the great captain maintained. But the American Iliad is emphatic that it was indeed Lee's only path.
Lee's decision provides the opening of the American Iliad, for, like Homer's Iliad, this Iliad begins with the war underway. It is the first iconic episode, by which I mean an episode that Civil War buffs know by heart. A typical buff can take you step by step through the three days of Gettysburg but generally knows far less detail about the origins of the conflict. Instead they have rather vague ideas that the South left the Union in defense of states' rights against a government that embodied centralized political power, or that the war pitted the agrarian South against the industrial North; or even that it was a cultural clash between a supposedly Celtic South against a supposedly Anglo North. These explanations are nearly always asserted, not argued. They function simply to push the sordid political details (particularly the defense of slavery) out of the picture and just get on with the almost purely military story, for the American Iliad is all about generals, soldiers, and battles. The war, in mythic terms, is not "a continuation of politics," to use the famous definition of war espoused by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. It's not a continuation of anything. It's just there.
And thus Lee is helplessly in the grip of something that resembles a natural disaster more than a human-created event. The war forces upon him a choice that is no choice at all, for his honor and integrity require that he serve the Confederacy. And in mythic imagination, Lee's decision symbolizes the honor and integrity of every one of the 800,000 southern men who take up arms not from any political ideology, but rather because they must protect their families, their neighbors, their homeland.


Inappropriate calls to the police's 101 non-emergency number are contributing to delays in the service.
In the last 12 months, the average time taken to answer 101 calls at Norfolk Constabulary has increased by over a minute to 2mins 45secs - up from a long-term average of 1min 40secs.
But only a third of calls to 101 require a response, police have said.
Chief Constable Simon Bailey told the police accountability forum on Thursday the 101 number is too often used by people who should be going to their council or health service.
"We are having to deal with the overspill from other public sectors that are not able to cope with the demand being put in their direction," he said.
It comes at a time when the force has seen a 16pc to 17pc rise in 999 calls, with 1,000 extra Grade A response emergency calls last year.
Chief Inspector Sonia Humphreys said the THRIVE risk assessment system, introduced in 2015, has put a focus on prioritising callers most at risk.
"Within the last three years we have implemented a process to ensure we have the most robust risk assessment," she said. "We want to prioritise those calls and respond to them accordingly.
"If we have someone who is a vulnerable adult or a domestic violence incident, they will be pushed further up the process.
Mr Bailey added: "Our police officers are having to deal with greater demands and more complex cases. While it is taking longer to answer the phone we are applying that greater harm risk mnemonic correctly so those people that are vulnerable are getting the best possible service from us.
"We are putting a lot into channel shift trying to encourage people to go to the right channel in the first place. A significant amount of our work is that which has nothing to do with us.
Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk Lorne Green has suggested billing NHS trusts or the ambulance service when police are tasked to ferry patients to hospital.
He told the police accountability forum that given the force is running a £1.6m budget deficit, some income could be recouped.
In September 2016, Norfolk Police launched its Make the Right Call campaign to prevent inappropriate 999 calls.
Around a quarter of calls coming into the control room were not appropriate for an emergency response.
At the time, head of the contact and control room, Superintendent Malcolm Cooke said: "Non-emergency or inappropriate calls tie up our phone lines and can prevent callers with genuine emergencies from getting through – at worst they can put other people's lives at risk.
"People should only call 999 if there is a direct and immediate threat to life or property or if a crime is in progress.
Common calls included issues around noise nuisance, animal and utility call-outs, and highways matters.


COLOMBO, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka signed two multi-million dollar contracts with Chinese firms for a port upgrade project on Thursday in the middle of a political hiatus that has raised doubts over the legitimacy of the government and the legality of the deals.
The debt-saddled island has long been a target of Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure scheme to connect China with countries cross Asia and beyond, while regional power India has also been vying for deals to counter China's influence.
Foreign countries have yet to recognise the new government and Wickremesinghe's party has said any decisions by Rajapaksa's cabinet are illegal.
An official at the state-run Sri Lanka Ports Authority told Reuters it signed two contracts with Chinese firms worth over $50 million on Thursday after the deals were approved by Rajapaksa's disputed cabinet last week.
One of Rajapaksa's cabinet ministers, speaking on condition of anonymity, also confirmed the deals had been approved by the cabinet, while documents seen by Reuters showed the deals were set to be rubber-stamped at the meeting.
The contracts are a $32 million project to enhance the deep berth capacity of state-run Jaya Container Terminal (JCT) in Colombo with China Harbour Engineering Company, and another one worth $25.7 million for the purchase of three cranes from JCT Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd for the same project. , according to the ports authority official.
The ports authority official said the tenders for the deals had been advertised in state-owned newspapers, as is the norm in Sri Lanka, and that they were sent to a cabinet-appointment procurement panel months ago.
India, which accounts for around 80 percent of Colombo's trans-shipment business, has raised concerns over increasing Chinese projects in Colombo.
New Delhi had been pushing Sri Lanka for the award of an estimated $1 billion contract for a second foreign-operated container terminal in Colombo.
But that deal was the subject of an argument between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe just before his ouster, in which Sirisena reportedly said the country couldn't give any more of its assets to foreigners.


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An Intimate Acoustic Evening with Parachute | Mr. Smalls | 9.21.17
By Alan D. Welding on September 25, 2017 • ( 1 Comment )
Abigail McNatt
Acoustic sets are honestly the greatest kinds of sets. Sure it is great to dance and scream along to your favorite songs, but there is something so raw and real about your favorite band performing their music stripped down and unplugged. That's what Parachute's current tour is all about.
On the first half of the tour, ending in Pittsburgh, they brought along Johnny Balik. Balik is from Toronto, Canada and his music is categorized as pop/R&B/soul. This was the first I had heard of him and damn am I glad I did. HIGHLY recommend checking him out. His voice is pure and raw and real and fantastic. He does what I like to call, sing-rap where he minorly sings a rap and it just flows so well. He played some originals as well as a cover or so, in his half hour set. The ladies loved him. Now, being that it was an acoustic show, there were chairs set up in aisles. So girls weren't freaking out, especially being that he was playing acoustic as well. But they did woo and wow him throughout the set and created a long line afterwards when he stood by the merch table to meet fans. I was not a part of that group, but I certainly did enjoy his set, so much. He opened his mouth during the first song and I was like, "damn he is good." It was his last stop on the tour and he definitely gave it his all, so bravo.
Half an hour after Balik's set, Parachute came on. The setup was much different than their last tour when I saw them last year. They had a keyboard on stage right, a stool and mic in the middle, and a drum set stage left. Members Kit French (vocals, sax, and keyboard), Will Anderson (lead vocals, guitar, piano), and Johnny Stubblefield (drums) made their way to their spots on stage. It felt just as surreal to me as it did the first time I got to see and shoot them. I got so caught up in the show itself as well as taking photos that I forgot to write down the set list. They changed it from show to show too. During their set though they played music from all of their albums. They included a couple songs from their newly released album, "Wide Awake", such as 'Jennie' and 'Lonely With Me'. As per usual, Will likes to talk and being an acoustic show like this, there was plenty of time for that. Will talked about his wife, Courtney a bit and their different writing styles and being in Pittsburgh, he talked about his love and obsession with Heinz Ketchup and how he wrote them a letter and they sent him back a bunch of packets. Another story he likes to tell at shows is about the ever so popular, 'Forever and Always'. That song is so sad. So sad that it needs a disclaimer attached to it. But as he says every show, it's not real. He made it up. He told the crowd about how an old man came up to him after their set one time and he said he was sorry, but Will didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't real. After that little anecdote, they played the song and the crowd sang along. They played some oldies as well, such as 'She Is Love' and 'All That I Am'. Parachute also inserted a cover of 'Issues' by Julia Michaels in there. One fan screamed she was so excited they started to play it. Normally, that wouldn't phase anyone but again, it was an acoustic show. They played my favorite, 'Kiss Me Slowly' and I was just on Cloud 9. From their 2013 release "Overnight", they played the likes of 'Drive You Home' and 'Didn't See It Coming'. They ended their set, ironically, with one of their longer songs, 'Philadelphia'. Fans, like myself, were captivated by the band the entire night and didn't want it to end. That is the kind of show they put on, acoustic or full set. Their music really makes you feel things you may or may not have felt before and it is an awesome thing to be able to sing along to them. I have been a fans of theirs for some time now and it only seems to get stronger the more music they release and the more shows I attend.
Their tour continues on the west coast so if you will be out there anytime soon, I suggest grabbing a ticket (they're ridiculously cheap) and grab your friend or significant other, or even treat yourself to a show. You will be just as hypnotized as all of us were last night.
All photos ©2017 Abigail McNatt
Categories: Pictorial, Pittsburgh Event, Pittsburgh Premiere
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ROGER WATERS VISUALLY AND AUDIBLY STUNS PITTSBURGH WITH THE US + THEM TOUR
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On Monday, October 22nd 2018, at approximately 3 AM, the RCMP detachment in Chemawawin was broken into. The suspects gained entry by smashing through a front window. Several items were stolen from the building. Four male youths and one adult male have been arrested and charged.
Anyone with information about the break-in or the location of the stolen items is asked to call the Easterville RCMP Detachment at (204) 329-2004.


I glanced at her card on my way home. Her name was Jolene – and she was an art therapist -- whatever the hellthat meant.
The only time I ever heard of that name was in a movie I had seen years ago.The actress who played Jolene was maybe semi-attractive and pretty flat-chested.
I could stop looking. No other woman could come close. Ladies and gentlemen -- I have an important announcement. My search is over: We have a winner!