text:
by Barry Hannah
Last Updated on May 6, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 1454
Download Yonder Stands Your Orphan Study Guide
The law could not touch him because his bordello was spread in myriad chambers throughout the suburbs and even underpasses in giant, newish sport utility vehicles with flattened rear seats, good mattresses, sunroof s tinted by creamy smoke and fine stereo systems, the aphrodisiacs of new-car smell and White Diamond mist working side by side.
It is only the realization that he is sharing with another man the affections of his woman, Dee Allison, that sends Mortimer spinning off his Mississippi axis and out of control. When Mortimer finds out about Frank Booth, Dee Allison's other lover, he takes a stiletto knife and he rams it into Booth's left side. "This was the side of the liver . . . . The liver brought quick death. He did not expect it to go in so smoothly. Booth, he thought, was suddenly a cadaver." But here, Mortimer is dead wrong. Booth "withdrew the knife from his side and rammed it back to its owner, . . . straight through his root and went then into one testicle." Not since Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) has a wound of this sort taken on such symbolic weight. Now Man Mortimer is put in a position where he, too, is forced to face down his own essential self. Instead, Mortimer turns away from this mirror and turns his attentions, his bloodlust for vengeance, on the citizens who call Eagle Lake, Mississippi, their home. Now a man newly maimed, Mortimer's mission "to get people to face the music of their essential selves" begins to take shape.
The characters in Yonder Stands Your Orphan are on a "common run back and forth from ruin." Hannah places Mortimer at the center of this universe, the sun of this crooked cosmos, yet it is the planets that spin around Mortimer—that is, the other principal players (and there are plenty to keep track of)—that make this novel more than just the story about the disintegration of one man's kingdom. Hannah is a master at offering readers a vivid sense of each character's personal life history, as if they are secretly looking through someone's photo album, or better yet a video documentary that the characters themselves never even knew was being filmed. Listen, for instance, to what Hannah says about Ulrich, a peripheral character at best,
A bombardier out of England and over Germany for the Eighth Air Force, and a puttering aeronaut ever since, a tinkering veteran (though his only personal flight had been without an engine, some fifty yards during Hurricane Camille in 1969), he had thought science his whole life. But recently he had erupted in mourning over man's treatment of animals. And without gratitude to them either, a holocaust without a ceremony!
The local sheriff is summed up: "Besides acting in local theater, the sheriff rode a Norton motorcycle. The people of the county were not clear on what man they had. He was handsome and very verbal. These things were measured against him."
To Hannah's way of thinking, no bit of information is too minor or even too trivial to pass along to the reader, and the technique works. The characters rise up off the page as creatures fully realized. However, in a review published in The New York Times Book Review, Hannah's methods were criticized, claiming that "you never get the feeling that these people exist in relation to one another. Nothing feels integrated. A character arrives, stays for a few pages, then exits, and you forget about him until his next appearance." It is true that characters almost haphazardly appear and then disappear, with sometimes chapter-long stretches passing before they are brought back to figure in to the novel's dramatic action. The claim that basic relationships fail to exist between these characters is a short-sighted failure on the part of the reviewer to examine exactly what is the common link between the people who bring Hannah's Mississippi so richly to life.
Hannah's shipwrecked Mississippi is more of an emotional landscape than it is a physical one divided into counties. The state of Mississippi itself—that geographical place that exists also on a map—is not common ground enough to serve as this bridge. What connects the characters to and with each other is Man Mortimer himself, a man who, even though he is wounded (both physically and emotionally) and even though he is not a native son to Eagle Lake, does move (and dangerously so) through this landscape and through the lives and minds of Eagle Lake and its inhabitants, men and women who like to gather at the end of the Eagle Lake pier to share snippets of small-town gossip and to pass judgment on those who pass by the viewfinder that is the pier itself.
Like all eleven of Barry Hannah's previous books, the main character always is language itself. The way that a story is told, the acoustics of the sentence, the voice—these are the elements that make Hannah's fiction uniquely his own. Hannah allows the words themselves to preside over the composition of his books: not plot, not even the narrative action (of which there is always an abundance in his work). What is quintessential to understanding and appreciating the work of Barry Hannah is knowing that one is reading a writer who subverts narrative and the "what" in a novel in favor of voice and the "how" that is always lurking behind a novel's narrative situation.
Hannah says of his methods of narratology: "I approach my work with humility and supplication, begging for that without which nothing budges, nothing moves: voice. You might have a swell tale that might bring in and hold folks of some intelligence around a campfire for thirty minutes or upwards to two hours, but you will have only junk if you don't find the voice—inevitable, urgent, necessary. . . ." Hannah later confesses: "I have never had any interest in form, structure, or technique." What makes Hannah even more of a force is that not only does he find the voice—which is always lingually juiced—he also spins a wild and swell tale that is structured much like a piece of freeform jazz, with its wild riffs and off-the-beaten-path solos that at times make the listener wonder, where is this man going? How is he ever going to make it back to where it all started? These are questions that the reader will likely and understandably ask during the experience of reading Yonder Stands Your Orphan. Hannah's narrative arc is more vertical than it is horizontal, the pace of the action siding on the slow side, with the cadences of his sentences—rhythms that are both baroque and biblical—serving as the engine torque that moves the narrative into forward drive. Some words of advice to the reader who is coming brand new to the world of Barry Hannah: Drive with both hands on the wheel, and with both eyes fixed straight ahead, and be on the lookout for the unexpected to dart out of the dark road that Hannah likes to travel, a world that is itself an orphan from middle America, a world that is defined by the never-before.
Barry Hannah is, like fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, a difficult writer, a writer whose books cannot be reduced down to a one-sentence synopsis, a writer of books whose plot is oftentimes hard to pin down or even follow during an initial reading. It is during a follow-up reading that the events in Yonder Stands Your Orphan begin to make sense and relationships between characters coalesce and fall into place. As the novel works toward its violent end, as heads literally begin to roll and bodies are hanged and crucified, the reader is left alone to fend for themselves, and all that can be said here at the end is what one of the peripheral characters says when asked, "What were you doing while all this was going on?" His response mirrors the role of the reader: "All I can brag to is I was around, in a corner or under a stage or in the projector room or the broom closet, and sometimes I held the scareder little ones on my lap." When Mortimer's own mother is murdered near the novel's end, Mortimer's transformation into a state of orphanage is complete. Here at this end, there is a feeling of newfound relief on Mortimer's part, a sense that he is ready, at long last, to be left alone with himself.
Sources for Further Study
Booklist 97 (June 1, 2001): 1841.
Library Journal 126 (June 1, 2001): 216.
Publishers Weekly 248 (June 25, 2001): 51.
The Washington Post Book World, August 19, 2001, p. 6.
Testimony of Pilot
Water Liars
Hey Jack!
Bats out of Hell
Return to Return


Preheat oven to 350*. In a lg bowl mix together amaranth flour, almond meal, stevia, protein powder, baking powder, and baking soda. In a sm bowl blend butter, orange zest, eggs, and water. Slowly blend the wet mixture into the dry mixture till smooth. Then Fold in cranberries and chopped nuts. Coat loaf pan with butter and pour in batter. Bake for 55-60 mins. Let cool for 20 mins and enjoy!


text:
Moderator elections in beta sites?
Per my previous question, it seems like the beta phase of sites is continuing much longer than previously. Currently, pro-temp moderators are nominated when a site is only a few weeks old, when the site is still very new and unshaped. They continue until they are unable to moderate, or the site graduates to a full site. The problem that I'm seeing is that there are now sites that have been in beta for over a year, which is a time period sufficient that many changes can be made in a persons life, that the community has started to take ownership already, and as a whole, seems to be ready to start taking at least some ownership.
So, the question is, should we allow elections for beta sites that have crossed over some considerable amount of time, perhaps 6 months or something around that mark?
discussion status-planned election beta-phase stackexchange-2.0
Jon Ericson♦
PearsonArtPhotoPearsonArtPhoto
Parenting is about to have the first ever pro tempore election. If it goes well, we'll finally be able to start completing this request. – Jon Ericson♦ Apr 5 '18 at 22:06
@JonEricson Now that it's finalized that new sites get their moderators elected, can you please give this a status-completed tag? – Sonic the Anonymous WizHog May 21 at 1:24
The problem that I'm seeing is that there are now sites that have been in beta for over a year, which is a time period sufficient that many changes can be made in a persons life, that the community has started to take ownership already, and as a whole, seems to be ready to start taking at least some ownership.
Why not just appoint new moderators if something has changed so that the original person is unable or unwilling to continue serving?
Jeff has said before that we don't want to hold moderator elections unless we can be reasonably certain that they'll be successful—meaning plenty of nominees, plenty of voters, etc. If all of those things are in place, then the site is probably ready to graduate out of beta, and then moderator elections can/will be held as scheduled.
You note that the community seems to be ready to take some ownership, but don't forget that community members with the necessary privileges can already share in the work of improving their site. Many features are available to them, such as the /review tab, the ability to edit questions and answers, moderator flags, and the Meta site. You don't have to be a moderator to make a difference!
Cody GrayCody Gray
I don't follow. How is appointing new moderators by fiat any better than asking for nominations, even if they are relatively few? – ire_and_curses Aug 17 '11 at 15:40
@ire_and_curses: See the middle paragraph. We don't want to hold elections until we're reasonably sure that they'll be successful. Appointing moderators doesn't require community votes so a poor (or no) turnout is not a problem. – Cody Gray Aug 17 '11 at 15:41
@CodyGray How is no turnout for a self nominating position not a problem? If no one wants the job, you have a problem election or appointing. – James Jenkins Jun 9 '17 at 17:12
I noticed two new thoughtful answers to this question and, by coincidence, the community team discussed this very issue yesterday. I'm not writing on behalf of the team, but rather summarizing my thoughts after our discussion.
Initially the idea was that a beta site would graduate (or be folded) after 90 days or so. In that scenario, appointing moderators pro tempore was not a particularly consequential task. If a CM happened to make a bad choice, the mistake could be corrected a few months later by an election. These days, that first moderator appointment can be of great consequence as "temporary" moderators might serve for years. Appointed moderators are almost always winners in the first election after graduation because there's a powerful incumbent effect.
Meanwhile, finding qualified and willing moderators for sites that have long been in beta turns out to be an ongoing task for the community team. I think we do a pretty good job, but it's a heavy responsibility. I'd much prefer each site's community pick their leadership than me. That said, it's very uncomfortable to think about running elections on sites with few eligible voters. Even assuming we require moderators to be reelected upon graduation, a moderator might serve for years. The more nominees and voters we have, the more likely an election will result a well-qualified moderator team.
Yearly, as-needed moderator elections
One idea that some of us on the community team considered is holding regularly scheduled elections. After the first election, incumbent moderators would have the option to continue in the position without facing reelection. But if one or more moderators decide to step down, we'd run an election to replace them. Meanwhile, if the moderator team needs extra help, we could run an election to add a member to the team. (Also, both situations could be handled at the same time.) If there is neither a need for an additional nor a replacement moderator, the election wouldn't be run.
It might not be immediately clear how this will help with the "too few people having too great an influence" problem. It turns out the most common reason we replace moderators is that they stop moderating. There are all sorts of reasons people become inactive: new job, new family responsibility, sickness, lost interest in the site/topic, and just life in general. When that happens today, we need to reach out to figure out whether a new moderator is needed. If we ran yearly elections, moderators who are no longer interested or able to do the job will just not reup and thereby trigger a replacement election.
Elections are not (yet) automated
Unfortunately, running an election is somewhat time consuming. On the front end:
A CM contacts the moderator team to find out who might be stepping down and how many slots the election could be. (This would be automated by surveying the moderator team a month or so before the scheduled election.)
Grace Note prepares a meta post asking for questions to be asked of nominees a week or so before the start of the election.
Grace Note published the nominee questionnaire at the start of the election with the most upvoted questions.
When people nominate themselves, the community team watches for joke nominations and nominees who are ineligible. We also watch for heated comments on nomination statements.
When the nomination phase ends, we make sure there's at least one more nominee than available slots. (If there are too few nominees, we extend the nomination period.)
After the election ends:
I use OpaVote to determine the winner(s).
I post an announcement on meta with the results and thank any moderators who are stepping down.
I do the actual steps to install and remove moderators.
Just about all of this could be automated. But it isn't exactly the most pressing issue for me since my steps take maybe half an hour a week. I'm not sure how much longer Grace Note's steps take or if I'm missing any steps. In any case, we couldn't keep up if all 166 sites were to have elections. So I'm going to take some time today and next week to write up a specification for automating elections. Without that piece, we can't really consider running elections on beta sites.
hairboat♦
Jon Ericson♦Jon Ericson
I hope you'll also give some thought to gathering community feedback as I described in this post. In particular, that could help moderators self-evaluate, which might prompt some to step down since they know you can easily replace them. – Monica Cellio♦ Apr 9 '17 at 2:46
I wonder whether the questionnaire is helpful or (slightly) detrimental for a beta-site election. On the one hand, more information is good. On the other, they're work to administer and might be daunting to the people you'd want to step up. Maybe the nomination post, chat room, and encouragement to the community to ask any questions they like on meta are enough? – Monica Cellio♦ Apr 9 '17 at 2:49
There's another technical limitation in place as well - there are a number of assumptions about elections only occurring on graduated sites... mostly around badges that are awarded for moderator tenure (but possibly in other places?). That'll need to be rethought if we were to go ahead with elections on beta sites. – Adam Lear♦ Apr 13 '17 at 17:25
@AdamLear Constable badge on Pets says "Served as a pro-tem moderator for at least 1 year or through site graduation" I would not expect elections sooner then one year on non-graduated sites. If you get the diamond at public beta, you should have the Constable badge at Beta elections. – James Jenkins Apr 13 '17 at 17:47
@JamesJenkins It's not just that. The other badge (uh.. Sheriff?) makes assumptions about the site state in its SQL query, if I recall correctly. (It's also possible to be appointed a pro tem at any point in that year, but that's no different from how things work now, since a site could graduate at any time, really.) This isn't unsolvable, but more a reminder for Jon to run things by the devs before the community team makes the decision to start running elections on beta sites. :) – Adam Lear♦ Apr 13 '17 at 17:49
@AdamLear: I've been thinking way to do this is in stages: make sure election automation works, start doing yearly elections on graduated sites, run elections on long-running betas, etc. The badge problem is one I had thought of, but I bet there are other problems lurking. I'm also not sure if we should make the Constable badge a "moderator during beta" or "appointed moderator" thing. I can see the argument both ways. – Jon Ericson♦ Apr 13 '17 at 18:29
Would that mean that moderators were no longer for life, if there were annual elections on graduated sites? (Not that I want to speculate or anything, but that seems a natural concequence) – Journeyman Geek♦ Apr 13 '17 at 23:40
@JourneymanGeek: Not necessarily. If a moderator continues to opt in, they can continue to serve. The main difference is that folks will need to do something to continue serving instead of serving until either we check with an absentee moderator or they resign. – Jon Ericson♦ Apr 14 '17 at 0:45
A large part of why a site has not graduated is they need a higher level of participation. Coincidentally, the criteria for holding an election is also achieving a high level of participation. So the two events (graduation and election) track together rather tightly.
Having said that, we keep in constant communication with moderators. If a moderator feels they need a break, we can (and have) appointed additional moderators to help with the workload.
Part of the beta cycle is to allow time for the community to take complete control of the site; To become self governing. Elections can and do go badly when the site is not ready. While that self-governance is still taking shape, it simply is not advisable to hold a half-baked election cycle.
This is a five year old question, with 5 year old answers. At the time those answers made good sense. I wonder if they still do.
With the changes and clarifications in the difference between success and graduation beta sites are living longer then they did 5 years ago. They are successful with well defined scope but just have not graduated.
Voting is an important part of community engagement. By denying moderator elections to sites that are successful with well defined scopes and strong communities, we are disenfranchising the community.
There are beta sites all along the continuum some are definitely not ready for community moderator elections, but others very well may be.
I propose that around the 3 year in beta anniversary, the community asks itself if it is ready for moderator elections. If not, the community voted for the status quo. If they do want elections, they hold them. In either case we are giving each community the opportunity to make the decision.
I, too, have noticed this issue on some sites. Moderators are chosen early in beta and, two or three years down the line, the team is unchanged, most of the community wasn't even around then, and some of the people whose straw-poll votes were factored into SE's decisions are long gone. Sometimes everybody's happy and the team should just keep doing what they're doing. Other times, community members feel disappointed that this was all decided in week 3 and others will never get a chance because ObscureTopic.SE just isn't going to graduate this decade. Even though the moderators are doing good jobs (well, as a moderator on a long-running beta, I like to think so :-) ), to community members it can be disappointing even when there's nothing actually wrong. (I've written elsewhere about cases where the moderation team might need some changes.)
I've been thinking that, starting around the 2-year mark, we should give a beta community the opportunity to rotate one moderator per year if there have been no other mod changes in that year. (If somebody stepped down and was replaced, or the team was expanded, there's already been a change.) If the community wants a change (determination of this TBD), the moderator team and SE would decide whether to expand the team or replace somebody. If they decide to replace, the moderator team would decide among themselves who should step down.1 SE would choose another moderator, ideally by making a nomination post like they do for the initial group. The whole point is community participation, after all, but the decision remains SE's as with any other beta-mod appointment.
Limiting this to one change per year ensures continuity while bringing in new perspective and energy (and community engagement leading up to that appointment).
This would be an option, not a requirement; if the community is happy (measurement of happiness TBD), then don't change anything. If the community wants a change, do this. Ask again a year later. Either way, I hope moderators who are stepping down won't feel bad about it; they knew that beta moderation isn't forever, they can come back later, and they'll be senior, experienced users who can help the site to continue to grow.
1 On the teams I've been part of, this conversation would not be drama-prone; beta mods know going in that appointments aren't forever and are meant to be for a couple years, and they could choose to "draw straws" if they don't want to have a deeper discussion. SE can modify this process on a case-by-case basis if a particular site seems prone to explode over this somehow.
the moderator team would decide among themselves who should step down sounds like a good way of setting bad blood and generating drama, especially in cases where there isn't an obvious choice of who should step down (e.g. due to inactivity). – Martin Tournoij Apr 8 '17 at 22:06
@Carpetsmoker I've moderated three beta sites, and on all three the team has good working relationships. From what I see in the moderators' shared chat room, I think that's the norm rather than the exception. (Pro-tem moderators, being appointed rather than elected, can be removed by SE if there's a problem.) I think if a CM had come to any of my beta sites and said "we need to make room for some new blood", we would have had a productive conversation and somebody would have stepped out. – Monica Cellio♦ Apr 9 '17 at 2:42
On the other hand, I've seen long-term beta mods harm sites but not badly enough for SE to remove them; having a way to force a conversation every now and then would be good. (That's really the point of the post I linked to. I'd still like to see, and receive, community feedback on beta moderators.) – Monica Cellio♦ Apr 9 '17 at 2:43
Oh, I agree that some beta sites could use a "shake-up" in the mod team, for exactly the reason you describe. But what if none of the mods want to leave, or what if there's one "under-performing" mod who doesn't agree with that? I suspect that at least in some of the cases this will result in a lot of drama and, in the end, feelings of resentment. I also think that even "under-performing" mods deserve recognition for volunteering for a job that's not always fun; ... – Martin Tournoij Apr 10 '17 at 12:46
... and just "ousting" them in some sort of reality game show style sounds like what we call "stench for thanks" in Dutch. I'm pretty sure we can come up with a better system to solve this problem. – Martin Tournoij Apr 10 '17 at 12:46
@Carpetsmoker I'm certainly not looking to create drama. When you sign up to be a beta mod you know it's temporary; on one of my sites it was barely more than a year. Probably nobody expects to be signing up for a 4-5 year job at the start, but some communities are slow to grow and that's ok. This isn't meant to be adversarial; the first step (and one that I know happens even without what we're talking about here) is conversation with a CM and the mods to check in and see how people are feeling. If everyone adamantly wants to stay, it'd be up to SE to figure out what to do next. – Monica Cellio♦ Apr 10 '17 at 16:34
I understand you're not looking to create drama, but I suspect that your proposal will create it nonetheless :-) There's a huge difference between "you're a temporary mod and then we'll run elections for all mod positions", and "you're a temporary mod and you can be ousted at any point in time because we want to shake things up". No matter how you wrap it, some people are gonna take that personal (they shouldn't, but they will). – Martin Tournoij Apr 10 '17 at 17:05
should we allow elections for beta sites that have crossed over some considerable amount of time, perhaps 6 months or something around that mark?
Elections are tied to beta specifically because there is no point in holding moderator elections for a site that is still in its formative stage.
While it would be nice if every site was well defined after a set period of time, we have to recognize that each site is unique, and the community that forms around it will decide, ultimately, what it will be.
The beta time is set aside for those changes to occur, in addition to the normal questions of viability.
Pro-tem moderators know their terms are limited. They don't know how long they'll serve, but they understand that they are only in place until the site becomes stable enough to be released from beta.
Elected moderators, however, currently have unlimited terms.
Electing a moderator prior to release from beta leaves us with a problem in that the moderator may have a different idea for what the site should be than what the community has chosen after their election. Pro-tem moderators wield a significant amount of power in forming that community, which is why they are carefully chosen by Stack Exchange. Once the community is put in power of selecting its own moderators, though, it is expected that they will choose the moderators that will continue to enforce the community's mandate as to what the site is.
During beta, the community is not complete.
Therefore, moderator elections are not held until after beta release.
Adam Davis
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged discussion status-planned election beta-phase stackexchange-2.0 .
How to request Moderator elections in a Beta site?
Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites
Let's disallow moderator nominations from people who've been suspended in the past year
Help me opine about a new election system
Are Stack Exchange 2.0 sites remaining in beta for too long?
Moderator elections on sites that are 30+ days out of beta (election schedule list)
Experimenting with Pro Tempore elections
Replace graduation with an incremental process
Who do we ask if we want another moderator added during our beta?
Build and strengthen the Stack Exchange community with "crossover questions" between sites
Let's set better expectations for how long beta lasts
Design-Independent Graduation is on for early September!
Net Neutrality and Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange
Let's break up with "Graduation" and remove a bunch of "Beta" labels

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


And after a break from writing for a couple of weeks to spend time with family and friends, I'm back and excited to be writing again especially when its about my trip to Denmark. On our first night in Aarhus, we asked our concierge (we were staying at the Radisson Blu) for some dinner recommendations that would be serving Danish cuisine. He mentioned a recently opened restaurant called Mof so we decided to hit it up and so happy we did. It was a quaint little place with a maximum of 10 tables, owned by a couple – the wife was our host for the night. The dinner started with a heavily grainy loaf of bread. The menu changes daily and tonight there were only three of each appetizer, main and dessert options. The appetizers looked so good that I asked for the veal tartare as my main. I normally don't go for tartare (something about the texture) but it was recommended by the server and was delicious and salty. Tasted great with the lightly dressed frisee. But the best part of the meal was the dessert. My mom used to bake apples for dessert when I was a kid and this dessert totally brought me back to those memories. The baked plums were soft but still held its form (not mushy) and the licorice ice cream was devine! I hate licorice (well, black licorice candy) and this did not taste like that at all, it was subtle in flavour and surprisingly not too sweet. Definitely the highlight of the meal!
Grainy loaf of bread to start.
My appetizer to start – dried ham.
Fried hake with barley, bell peppers and tomatoes.
The custom vegetarian dish – a barley risotto.
My main dish – veal tartare.
Veal tartar with pickled mushrooms and lots of frisee.
Baked plums with licorice ice cream and raspberries.


text:
Aderus är ett släkte av skalbaggar som beskrevs av John Obadiah Westwood 1829. Aderus ingår i familjen ögonbaggar.

Kladogram enligt Catalogue of Life och Dyntaxa:

Källor

Externa länkar

Ögonbaggar
Aderus

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A coal agricultural merchants lorry driver and the child of Albert Cowell (a transport driver heavy worker) and Fanny Austen, William Cowell, the first cousin once-removed on the mother's side of Nigel Horne, was born in Upper Stourmouth, Kent, England on 8 Jun 19091,2,3,4,5 and was married twice, to Florence Studham (c. Aug 1931 in Thanet, Kent, England) and Doris Gambrill (c. Aug 1953 in Thanet)6. He had 3 children, all with Florence Studham: Frances M, William Albert John and Helen.
During his life, he was living at his birthplace on 2 Apr 19117; at 2 Mill Row, Birchington, Kent on 29 Sep 19392; and at Mill Row, Birchington, Kent in 1941.
He died in Oct/nov/dec 1997 in Thanet4.


text:
Why an Executive President in a democracy…
KUNGWENGWE STAR CHARLES
In 1969 the then Vice President of Botswana and then President of that country as from 1980-1998, the late Sir Kitumile Masire, locked horns with the local political elephant bull, Chief Bathoen of the Bangwaketse, who had just resigned as Chief to contest in the Kanye Constituency.
Sadly, the Vice President suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the former Chief .This fate could also befall the sitting President, it was observed. As a result, in 1972 there was a Constitutional amendment in the country, an amendment that repealed the requirement that a sitting President had to have a seat as an Elected or Specially Elected Member of the National Assembly. The Incumbent has thus become an ex-officio member of the National Assembly. Since then the President is not required to contest in National elections as an individual but is, instead, elected by Parliament.
Against that background it is not uncommon that the Incumbent would emerge from a party that commands the majority in the National Assembly. This is not difficult to understand given the partisan nature of African politics; we normally consider a 'team' and not the prospective candidate's personal attributes. And the tenure in office of the President is connected to that of Parliament. The electoral process of the President is tied up to that of Members of Parliament. The above political arrangement is referred to as a Parliamentary System of Democracy.
As noted above (the Masire issue),it does not always follow that if one is supported by members of the National Assembly one is automatically the darling of the populace. Members of Parliament are, impliedly voting on behalf of the country and that is highly undemocratic. It is because of this flaw that President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, who is the least educated President in the world, for example, assumed the reins of power. In a Presidential Democracy, on the other hand, the show is run differently. Typical examples of such systems include the U.S, Malawi, Zambia and Kenya.
In these countries the President and MPs are elected separately. Indeed situations oftentimes occur when people cast votes in favor of a particular political party and do not vote that party's leader into office. In the case of Zimbabwe the practice used to be Parliamentary elections every five years while Presidential ones were conducted every seven years. The new Constitutional arrangement is that the elections for the President, Members of Parliament and Councillors are now held concurrently and these are called Harmonized elections. The electorate chooses these prospective leaders at the same time.
Because the President has been directly elected by the people, the approach is very democratic. As such, he ought to be an all-powerful one. He thus becomes both head of both State and Government, Commander –in–Chief of the armed forces ;has appointing powers ;is immune to from prosecution ;has powers to :pardon criminals ; declare a state of emergency ,war and peace ;enter into treaties and agreements with other countries on behalf of the state, among his many powers. All these powers are enshrined in the countries' constitutions. The Leader is regarded the embodiment of the Constitution and must uphold it.
If he, however, acts ultra vires this document, he can also be taken to task by Parliament. Another safety valve against abuse of office is that there are functions which he must act either in consultation with or after consultation with other functionaries such as Cabinet ,the Judicial Service Commission ,the Public Service Commission etc(Read an article on the functions of Parliament that is on line).All these powers are a way of enabling or encouraging our leader to :perform his duties without the fear of 'punishment' and also make swift decisions in emergency cases ,among other grounds of justification. Having said all that, a President who has been directly elected by the people has lots of legitimacy in the eyes of the people and must be a towering giant above those selectively chosen by the August House in Parliamentary systems.
Privatization War in Botswana: Rally against Crony Capitalism
Another alternative economic model is possible
Bokani Lisa Motsu
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." Carl Sagan
Corruption is a heavy price to pay. The clean ones pay and suffer at the mercy of people who cannot have enough. They always want to eat and eat so selfishly like a bunch of ugly masked shrews. I hope God forgives me for ridiculing his creatures, but that mammal is so greedy. But corruption is not the new kid on the block, because it has always been everywhere.
This of course begs the question, why that is so? The common answer was and still is – abuse and misuse of power by those in power and weak institutions, disempowered to control the leaders. In 1996, the then President of The World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn named the 'C-Word' for the first time during an annual meeting of the Bretton Woods Institutions. A global fight against corruption started. Transparency International began its work. Internal and external audits mushroomed; commissions of inquiry followed and ever convoluted public tender procedures have become a bureaucratic nightmare to the private sector, trying to fight red tape.
The result is sobering corruption today is worse than it was 25 years ago. There is no denying that strong institutions help, but how does it come that in the annual Transparency International Ranking the same group of countries tend to be on the top while another group of countries, many African among them, tend to be on the bottom? Before one jumps to simple and seductive conclusions let us step back a moment.
Wolfensohn called corruption a cancer that destroys economies like a cancer destroys a body. A cancer is, simplified, good cells in a body gone bad, taking control of more and more good cells until the entire body is contaminated and eventually dies. So, let us look at the good cells of society first: they are family ties, clan and tribe affiliation, group cohesion, loyalty, empathy, reciprocity.
Most ordinary people like the reader of these lines or myself would claim to share such values. Once we ordinary people must make decisions, these good cells kick in: why should I hire a Mrs. Unknown, if I can hire my niece whose strengths and weaknesses I know? If I hire the niece, she will owe me and support my objectives.
Why should I purchase office furniture from that unknown company if I know that my friend's business has good quality stuff? If I buy from him, he will make an extra effort to deliver his best and provide quality after sales service? So, why go through a convoluted tender process with uncertain outcome? In the unlikely case my friend does not perform as expected, I have many informal means to make him deliver, rather than going through a lengthy legal proceeding?
This sounds like common sense and natural and our private lives do work mostly that way and mostly quite well.
The problem is scale. Scale of power, scale of potential gains, scale of temptations, scale of risk. And who among us could throw the first stone were we in positions of power and claim not to succumb to the temptations of scale? Like in a body, cancer cells start growing out of proportion.
So, before we call out for new leaders – experience shows they are rarely better than the old ones – we need to look at ourselves first. But how easy is that? If I were the niece who gets the job through nepotism, why should I be overly critical? If I got a big furniture contract from a friend, why should I spill the beans? What right do I have to assume that, if I were a president or a minister or a corporate chief procurement officer I would not be tempted?
This is where we need to learn. What is useful, quick, efficient, and effective within a family or within a clan or a small community can become counterproductive and costly and destructive at larger corporate or national scale. Our empathy with small scale reciprocity easily permeates into complacency and complicity with large scale corruption and into an acquiescence with weak institutions to control it.
Our institutions can only be as strong as we wish them to be.
I was probably around ten years old and have always been that keen enthusiastic child that also liked to sing the favourite line of, 'the world will become a better place.' I would literally stand in front of a mirror and use my mom's torch as a mic and sing along Michael Jackson's hit song, 'We are the world.'
Despite my horrible voice, I still believed in the message. Few years later, my annoyance towards the world's corrupt system wonders whether I was just too naïve. Few years later and I am still in doubt so as to whether I should go on blabbing that same old boring line. 'The world is going to be a better place.' The question is, when?
The answer is – as always: now.
This is pessimistic if not fatalistic – I challenge Sagan's outlook with a paraphrased adage of unknown origin: Some people can be bamboozled all of the time, all people can be bamboozled some of the time, but never will all people be bamboozled all of the time.
We, the people are the only ones who can heal society from the cancer of corruption. We need to understand the temptation of scale and address it. We need to stop seeing ourselves just a victim of a disease that sleeps in all of us. We need to give power to the institutions that we have put in place to control corruption: parliaments, separation of power, the press, the ballot box. And sometimes we need to say as a niece – no, I do not want that job as a favour, I want it because I have proven to be better than other contenders.
It is going to be a struggle, because it will mean sacrifices, but sacrifices that we have chosen, not those imposed on us.
Let us start today.
*Bokani Lisa Motsu is a student at University of Botswana
Parliament, the second arm of State through its parliamentary committees are one of Botswana's most powerful mechanisms to ensure that government is held accountable at all times. The Accounting Officers are mostly Permanent Secretaries across government Ministries and Chief Executive Officers, Director Generals, Managing Directors of parastatals, state owned enterprises and Civil Society.
So parliament plays its oversight authority via the legislators sitting on a parliamentary committee and Accounting Officers sitting in the hot chair. When left with no proper checks and balances, the Executive is prone to abuse the arrangement and so systematic oversight of the executive is usually carried out by parliamentary committees. They track the work of various government departments and ministries, and conduct scrutiny into important aspects of their policy, direction and administration.
It is not rocket science that effective oversight requires that committees be totally independent and able to set their own agendas and have the power to summon ministers and top civil servants to appear and answer questions. Naturally, Accounting Officers are the highest ranking officials in the government hierarchy apart from cabinet Ministers and as such wield much power and influence in the performance of government. To illustrate further, government performance is largely owed to the strategic and policy direction of top technocrats in various Ministries.
It is disheartening to point out that the recent parliament committees — as has been the case all over the years — has laid bare the incompetency, inadequacy and ineptitude of people bestowed with great responsibilities in public offices. To say that they are ineffective and inefficient sounds as an understatement. Some appear useless and hopeless when it comes to running the government despite the huge responsibility they possess.
If we were uncertain about the degree at which the Accounting Officers are incompetent, the ongoing parliament committees provide a glaring answer. It is not an exaggeration to say that ordinary people on the streets have been held ransom by these technocrats who enjoy their air conditioned offices and relish being chauffeured around in luxurious BX SUV's while the rest of the citizenry continue to suffer. Because of such high life the Accounting Officers seem to have, with time, they have gotten out of touch with the people they are supposed to serve.
An example; when appearing before the recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Office of the President Permanent Secretary, Thuso Ramodimoosi, looked reluctant to admit misuse of public funds. Although it is clear funds were misused, he looked unbothered when committee members grilled him over the P80 million Orapa House building that has since morphed into a white elephant for close to 10 successive years. To him, it seems it did not matter much and PAC members were worried for nothing.
On a separate day, another Accounting officer, Director of Public Service Management (DPSM), Naledi Mosalakatane, was not shy to reveal to PAC upon cross-examination that there exist more than 6 000 vacancies in government. Whatever reasons she gave as an excuse, they were not convincing and the committee looked sceptical too. She was faltering and seemed not to have a sense of urgency over the matter no matter how critical it is to the populace.
Botswana's unemployment rate hoovers around 18 percent in a country where majority of the population is the youth, and the most affected by unemployment. It is still unclear why DPSM could underplay such a critical matter that may threaten the peace and stability of the country.
Accounting Officers clearly appear out of touch with the reality out there – if the PAC examinations are anything to go by.
Ideally the DPSM Director could be dropping the vacancy post digits while sourcing funds and setting timelines for the spaces to be filled as a matter of urgency so that the citizens get employed to feed their families and get out of unemployment and poverty ravaging the country.
The country should thank parliamentary committees such as PAC to expose these abnormalities and the behaviour of our leaders when in public office. How can a full Accounting Officer downplay the magnitude of the landless problem in Botswana and fail to come with direct solutions tailor made to provide Batswana with the land they desperately need?
Land is a life and death matter for some citizens, as we would know.
When Bonolo Khumotaka, the Accounting Officer in the Ministry of Land Management, Water and Sanitation Services, whom as a top official probably with a lucrative pay too appears to be lacking sense of urgency as she is failing on her key mandate of working around the clock to award the citizens with land especially those who need it most like the marginalised. If government purports they need P94 billion to service land to address the land crisis what is plan B for government? Are we going to accept it the way it is?
Government should wake up from its slumber and intervene to avoid the 30 years unnecessary waiting period in State land and 13 years in Tribal land. Accounting Officers are custodians of government policy, they should ensure it is effective and serve its purpose. What we have been doing over the years, has proved that it is not effective, and clearly there is a need for change of direction.
THABO MAJOLA
His Excellency Dr Mokgweetsi EK Masisi, the President of the Republic of Botswana found it appropriate to invoke Section 17 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Botswana, using the powers vested in him to declare a State of Public Emergency starting from the 2nd April 2020 at midnight.
The constitutional provision under Section 17 (2b) only provided that such a declaration could be up to a maximum of 21 days. His Excellency further invoked Section 93 (1) to convene an extra- ordinary meeting of Parliament to have the opportunity to consult members of parliament on measures that have been put in place to address the spread and transmission of the virus. At this meeting Members of Parliament passed a resolution on the legal instruments and regulations governing the period of the state of emergency, and extended its duration by six (6) months.
The passing of the State of Emergency is considered as a very crucial step in fighting the near apocalyptic potential of the Novel COVID-19 virus. One of the interesting initiatives that was developed and extended to the business community was a 3-month wage subsidy that came with a condition that no businesses would retrench for the duration of the State of Public Emergency. This has potentially saved many people's jobs as most companies would have been extremely quick to reduce expenses by downsizing. Self-preservation as some would call it.
Most organisations would have tried to reduce costs by letting go of people, retreated and tried their best to live long enough to fight another day. In my view there is silver lining that we need to look at and consider. The fact that organisations are not allowed to retrench has forced certain companies to look at the people with a long-term view.
Most leaders have probably had to wonder how they are going to ensure that their people are resilient. Do they have team members who innovate and add value to the organisation during these testing times? Do they even have resilient people or are they just waiting for the inevitable end? Can they really train people and make them resilient? How can your team members be part of your recovery plan? What can they do to avoid losing the capabilities they need to operate meaningfully for the duration of the State of Public Emergency and beyond?
The above questions have forced companies to reimagine the future of work. The truth is that no organisation can operate to its full potential without resilient people. In the normal business cycle, new teams come on board; new business streams open, operations or production sites launch or close; new markets develop, and technology is introduced. All of this provides fresh opportunities – and risks.
The best analogy I have seen of people-focused resilience planning reframes employees as your organisation's immune system, ready and prepared to anticipate risks and ensure they can tackle challenges, fend off illness and bounce back more quickly. So, how do you supercharge your organizational immune system to become resilient?
COVID-19 has helped many organisations realize they were not as prepared as they believed themselves to be. Now is the time to take stock and reset for the future. All the strategies and plans prior to COVID-19 arriving in Botswana need to be thrown out of the window and you need to develop a new plan today. There is no room for tweaking or reframing. Botswana has been disrupted and we need to accept and embrace the change. What we initially anticipated as a disease that would take a short term is turning out to be something we are going to have to live with for a much longer time. It is going to be a marathon and therefore businesses need to have a plan to complete this marathon.
Start planning. Planning for change can help reduce employee stress, anxiety, and overall fear, boosting the confidence of staff and stakeholders. Think about conducting and then regularly refreshing a strategic business impact analysis, look at your employee engagement scores, dig into your customer metrics and explore the way people work alongside your behaviours and culture. This research will help to identify what you really want to protect, the risks that you need to plan for and what you need to survive during disruption. Don't forget to ask your team members for their input. In many cases they are closest to critical business areas and already have ideas to make processes and systems more robust.
Revisit your organisational purpose. Purpose, values and principles are powerful tools. By putting your organisation's purpose and values front and center, you provide clear decision-making guidelines for yourself and your organisation. There are very tough and interesting decisions to make which have to be made fast; so having guiding principles on which the business believes in will help and assist all decision makers with sanity checking the choices that are in front of them. One noticeable characteristic of companies that adapt well during change is that they have a strong sense of identity. Leaders and employees have a shared sense of purpose and a common performance culture; they know what the company stands for beyond shareholder value and how to get things done right.
Revisit your purpose and values. Understand if they have been internalised and are proving useful. If so, find ways to increase their use. If not, adapt them as necessities, to help inspire and guide people while immunizing yourself against future disruption. Design your employee experience. The most resilient, adaptive and high performing companies are made up of people who know each other, like each other, and support each other.
Adaptability requires us to teach other, speak up and discuss problems, and have a collective sense of belonging. Listening to your team members is a powerful and disruptive thing to do. It has the potential to transform the way you manage your organisation. Enlisting employees to help shape employee experience, motivates better performance, increases employee retention and helps you spot issues and risks sooner. More importantly, it gives employees a voice so you can get active and constructive suggestions to make your business more robust by adopting an inclusive approach.
Leaders need to show they care. If you want to build resilience, you must build on a basis of trust. And this means leaders should listen, care, and respond. It's time to build the entire business model around trust and empathy. Many of the employees will be working under extreme pressure due to the looming question around what will happen when companies have to retrench. As a leader of a company transparency and open communication are the most critical aspects that need to be illustrated.
Take your team member into confidence because if you do have to go through the dreaded excise of retrenchment you have to remember that those people the company retains will judge you based on the process you follow. If you illustrate that the business or organization has no regard for loyalty and commitment, they will never commit to the long-term plans of the organisation which will leave you worse off in the end. Its an absolutely delicate balance but it must all be done in good faith. Hopefully, your organization will avoid this!
This is the best time to revisit your identify and train your people to encourage qualities that build strong, empathetic leadership; self-awareness and control, communication, kindness and psychological safety. Resilience is the glue that binds functional silos and integrates partners, improves communications, helps you prepare, listen and understand. Most importantly, people-focused resilience helps individuals and teams to think collectively and with empathy – helping you respond and recover faster.
Article written by Thabo Majola, a brand communications expert with a wealth of experience in the field and is Managing Director of Incepta Communications.


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From No Minutes to High Scorer
By Net Income Jan 12, 2012, 9:21am EST
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It wasn't that long ago that Jordan Farmar was the Nets' forgotten man. Avery Johnson declared him out of the rotation on New Years Eve, saying, "It's just an unfortunate that everybody can't play. But since this is a season of a lot of games in a short period of time everybody has to stay ready. It's the way it is."
Well, that's not the way it is now. With the Nets in need of a quick-hitting shooter, Farmar is back. In fact, he was high scorer against the Nuggets, almost single-handedly bringing the Nets back with five three pointers and 26 points total. Over the last five, Farmar is averaging 12.4 points in 21 minutes, shooting 52.5% overall and 50.0% on three's. For the season, he's shooting a team-best 45.5% from deep.
Jordan Farmar Player Profile - ESPN


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Úvodní stránka » RECORDS » RECORDS III » Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson — Acoustic Rarities (6 October 2017)
Richard Thompson — Acoustic Rarities (6 Oct. 2017)
•→√•→ Acoustic Classics, a collection of newly recorded Richard Thompson songs, features 14 tracks culled from four decades in music.
•→√•→ The founder member of Fairport Convention, and part of a duo with his wife Linda — until his piety after a conversion to Sufism got the better of her — Richard Thompson is one of the best guitarists in Britain. He is capable of appropriating any style while still sounding like nobody else. That skill is put to good effect on an album of old favourites presented with nothing more than acoustic guitar and voice.
Birth name: Richard John Thompson
Born: 3 April 1949, Notting Hill Gate, London, England
Genre: Folk rock, electric folk
Album released: 6 October 2017
Recorded: Rumiville Studio, Texas
Record Label: Beeswing Records/Proper Records
01. What If (unreleased) 3:38
02. They Tore The Hippodrome Down (unreleased) 4:33
03. Seven Brothers (covered by Blair Dunlop) 3:37
04. Rainbow Over The Hill (covered by the Albion Band) 2:28
05. Never Again (released in 1975 on Richard & Linda Thompson album Hokey Pokey) 2:36
06. I Must Have A March (unreleased) 3:25
07. I'll Take All My Sorrows To The Sea (from the orchestral song suite Interviews With Ghosts) 2:28
08. Poor Ditching Boy (released in 1972 on Richard Thompson album Henry The Human Fly) 3:11
09. Alexander Graham Bell (unreleased) 3:10
10. Sloth (released in 1970 on Fairport Convention album Full House) 5:27
11. Push And Shove (unreleased) 3:17
12. End Of The Rainbow (released in 1974 on Richard & Linda Thompson album I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight) 3:47
13. Poor Will And The Jolly Hangman (released in 1970 on Fairport Convention album Full House) 4:32
14. She Played Right Into My Hands (unreleased) 2:34
by Peter Shaw •→ 25 September, 2017
•→√•→ In which Richard Thompson treats us to some top songs from his bottom drawer, and rescues some more familiar material from his recycle bin ...
•→√•→ Conceived as an album to sell at acoustic gigs, it came as something of a surprise that 2014's Acoustic Classics — Richard's recordings home alone with Pro Tools — scored a top 20 hit in the UK and charted elsewhere across the globe. But it shouldn't be a shock that a world~class guitarist and songwriter showcasing some of his very best material should find a bigger market than at the merchandise stall.
•→√•→ So, after a couple of brilliant new studio albums, this year Richard Thompson treats us to not only another volume of Acoustic Classics, but also this Acoustic Rarities album too.
•→√•→ It would be churlish to challenge what defines a 'classic' and a 'rarity' as Thompson's quality control is so high. So, we just have to accept that a Heart Needs A Home from Hokey Pokey is a 'classic' but the same album's Never Again is a 'rarity'.
•→√•→ …there is some more familiar material in this 14~song collection. A couple of Full House Fairport~era are presented in new acoustic arrangements. Poor Will and The Jolly Hangman, a Cropredy favourite, while missing a blistering electric guitar solo, is still a chilling song. Another Thompson/Swarbrick co~credit and Cropredy classic is Sloth, which miraculously manages to clock~in at five~and~a~half minutes, less than half its usual duration. Again, it offers a fresh perspective on this sparse, brutal~but~beautiful song.
•→√•→ Alongside the bleak Never Again, we have two more gems from Richard's early post~Fairport albums. Thompson was disappointed with his vocals on his first solo album, Henry The Human Fly. But many decades on the road have hones his vocal chords into an outstanding instrument and a perfect accompaniment to his astonishing guitar playing. So The Poor Ditching Boy is much more assured here than on the '72 original, with some fine accordion and mandolin.
•→√•→ The End of the Rainbow needs no introduction (definitely not to Elvis Costello) and Richard performs a wiser and more world~experienced reading of this anti~lullaby. Just as in 1973 when the song was recorded, tycoons and barrow boys are still robbing us…
•→√•→ At the other end of the horizon is Rainbow Over the Hill — suitably separated from the other rainbow by seven tracks — this song offers a much more optimistic appraisal of that meteorological phenomenon. Written around 1972, Richard Thompson offered a demo of this song to Ashley Hutchings, and it was recorded as part of The Albion Band's sessions for the classic 1978 album Rise Up Like The Sun. However, that Linda Thompson~vocal version only showed up as a bonus track on the CD reissue in 1992. Now, at long last, we get an official Richard Thompson cut. It's a little more melancholic than the rousing Albion alternative. But it's still a rare positive against~all~odds Thompson song, sentiments reminiscent of the more famous I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (which may explain why Richard Thompson never featured this in his repertoire until now).
•→√•→ In a bit of folky synchronicity, 40 years later Richard donated a song to Ashley's son Blair Dunlop for his 2012 debut album Blight & Blossom. But Seven Brothers stands in startling contrast to Rainbow Over the Hill, it's about as morose and morbid as you can get, even by Thompson's exacting standards. It's the story of seven 'brothers' waiting by a roadside, each of whom encounters a 'stranger' and suffers an agonising death. It's stark and chilling, a welcome return to Thompson evoking an ancient folk idiom. That he can 'give away' a song of this standard is a testament to his continued brilliance — lesser singer~songwriters would put out a record of fillers just to accompany a composition of such quality.
•→√•→ Another relatively familiar (and again contrasting) song is Alexander Graham Bell, which he has been performing solo and with Danny Thompson for more than a decade. Richard often lightens the mood with a 'novelty' tune or two at gigs. While definitely not a throwaway, the song is an amusing paean to the Scottish~born scientist, inventor, engineer mostly known for his patenting of the first telephone. But, as Thompson's jaunty and witty song expounds, there is a lot more to Alexander Graham Bell than just pioneering telephonics.
•→√•→ You would have to have seen the Richard Thompson Band in 1989 to have heard Push and Shove before. It's a sweet little Thompson rock'n'roller, a skewed love song where agony uncle Richard advises that 'You gotta push and shove if you wanna be loved.' Thompson's driving guitar work recalls early Who, and he adds a few Beatlesque 'woos' into the mix to add to the British Invasion vibe. It's another stunning vocal and guitar performance and, again, surprising that it didn't end up on an album contemporaneous to its composition. But when you realise that album would have been Rumor and Sigh, it's more understandable — it's not like Thompson was short of killer material for that release.
•→√•→ Another track that has been given a public airing is I'll Take All My Sorrows To The Sea, but by an even more obscure path. Back in 2012, Richard was invited to perform a chamber orchestral song suite for a couple of concerts with the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra. For this collaboration, Richard chose to adapt a series of 'transcripts' of interviews with ghosts (real or imagined) into a three~song cycle. Richard introduced Sorrows to the Sea as being about, '…the ghost of a young girl who haunts the ocean where her lover was drowned.' It's a suitably creepy and unsettling listen, the song works without the backing, but it's a shame that the full cycle with the Idyllwild orchestra isn't available as Richard's vocal performance is frankly astounding.
•→√•→ The other four songs are bonafide obscurities, never released or recorded by others. The collection opens with What If, a typical Thompson character study of someone cruelly disregarded by another. The song comes across as an internal monologue rebuffing the person who slighted the narrator as (hilariously) a 'fat man in a thong.' It's a bold and uncompromising opener to the album, with Richard showcasing some unexpected falsetto backing vocals on the chorus, alongside his trademark guitar histrionics.
•→√•→ Following is They Tore The Hippodrome Down, the performance of this song at Cropredy this year was rewarded with cheers and applause usually reserves for a Thompson classic. Because, frankly, even on first listening that's what it is. The song occupies the same musical landscape as Al Bowlly's In Heaven and Sweetheart On The Barricade — think Duke Ellington or Charlie Mingus. Sentimental but never saccharine, Thompson gives voice to an older gent who's lost not just his wife and friends but whose whole way of life has disappeared over the decades. The fact that the central image of the title is an evocative enough metaphor on its own is a testament to Richard Thompson's power as a craftsman of songs. Perhaps he'll re~record it for Acoustic Classics III — it deserves a place amongst the very best of Richard's repertoire.
•→√•→ …once again, we are taken on another musical journey with I Must Have A March, which sounds like Thompson's take on Brecht and Weill. It's the missing link between Fairport Convention and the Divine Comedy.
•→√•→ Richard has a little subcategory of waltz time songs including She Never Could Resist a Winding Road, Saving the Good Stuff For You, Miss Patsy, How Will I Ever Be Simple Again and, unsurprisingly, Waltzing's for Dreamers. Now added to that list is She Played Right Into My Hands, which closes the album. The triple meter suitably echoes the subject of the song, the singer describing his relationship with a girl who believes she is in command, but in reality, it's he who is dancing rings around her. It's an admirably constructed ditty, but not only is it like an early version of Saving the Good Stuff, it also feels a little slight in comparison to some of the towering familiar and impressive lesser known songs here.
•→√•→ In comparison to Acoustic Classics volumes one and two, this is a more uneven collection, skipping around genres and tone from one track to the next. But for a long~term Thompson fan, it is more rewarding — offering an opportunity to see the scope of his multiple talents. As well as giving us new takes on familiar songs, we get to hear Richard Thompson's own versions of songs performed by others, and a few minor gems are balanced out by some fantastic new (to us anyway) material. •→√•→ http://www.folkradio.co.uk/
Website: http://www.richardthompson-music.com/acoustic-classics-ii/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RthompsonMusic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RichardThompsonMusic


to delegate her child rearing tasks.
and I remember the Ivory soap smell.
and carried dripping into bed.
in the country. It lacked most amenities.
It was really a summer cottage with pretentions.
We had one bathroom without a tub.
that wasn't as warm as in the city.
so the trees outside could see everything.
to the bedroom with a door after my sisters left.


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Biden calls Club Q owners on Thanksgiving to offer condolences
President Joe Biden offered condolences to Club Q owners Nic Grzecka and Matthew Haynes.
Author: Wilson Beese (9NEWS), Associated Press
Published: 8:34 AM MST November 25, 2022
Updated: 8:49 AM MST November 25, 2022
President Joe Biden offered his condolences to the owners of Club Q in Colorado Springs during a Thanksgiving call after the deadly shooting that left 5 dead at the LGBTQ+ nightclub last weekend.
During the phone call with Nic Grzecka and Matthew Haynes, the president and first lady Jill Biden "reiterated support for the vibrant and strong Club Q family and commitment to fighting back against hate and gun violence," according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
The Bidens also thanked Grzecka and Haynes "for their incredible contributions they have made and will continue to make to Colorado Springs and the LGBTQ community there."
Nic Grzecka, right, co-owner of Club Q, hugs a supporter after a 25-foot historic pride flag was unfurled to cover the exterior of City Hall to mark the weekend mass shooting at the gay nightclub Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. The flag, known as Section 93 of the Sea to Sea Flag, is on loan for two weeks to Colorado Springs from the Sacred Cloth Project. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Grzecka said he thinks the shooting that killed five people and left 18 others injured is a reflection of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment that has evolved from prejudice to incitement.
His voice was tinged with exhaustion as he spoke with The Associated Press on Wednesday night in some of his first comments since Saturday night's attack at Club Q, a venue Grzecka helped build into an enclave that sustained the LGBTQ+ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs.
Grzecka said he believes the targeting of a drag queen event is connected to the art form being cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the "sexualization" or "grooming" of children.
Even though general acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community has grown, this new dynamic has fostered a dangerous climate, he said.
"It's different to walk down the street holding my boyfriend's hand and getting spit at (as opposed to) a politician relating a drag queen to a groomer of their children," Grzecka said. "I would rather be spit on in the street than the hate get as bad as where we are today."
Nic Grzecka, right, co-owner of Club Q, is consoled by a supporter of the gay bar after a 25-foot historic pride flag was displayed on the exterior of city hall to mark the weekend mass shooting Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. The flag, known as Section 93 of the Sea to Sea Flag, is on laan for two weeks to Colorado Springs from the Sacred Cloth Project. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Earlier this year, Florida's Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill barring teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with younger students. A month later, references to "pedophiles" and "grooming" in relation to LGBTQ+ people rose 400%, according to a Human Rights Campaign report.
"Lying about our community, and making them into something they are not, creates a different type of hate," Grzecka said.
Grzecka, who started mopping floors and bartending at Club Q in 2003 a year after it opened, said he hopes to channel his grief and anger into rebuilding the support system for Colorado Springs' LGBTQ+ community that only Club Q had provided.
Club Q opened after the only other gay bar in Colorado Springs at that time shuttered, Grzecka said, describing that era as an evolution of gay bars.
RELATED: After Club Q shooting, friends, family gather on Thanksgiving to heal, find support
Decades ago, dingy, hole-in-the-wall venues were meant largely for finding a hookup or date. But once the internet offered anonymous ways to find love online, the bars transitioned into well-lit, clean, non-smoking spaces to hang out with friends, and Club Q was at the vanguard of that transition, Grzecka said.
Once he became co-owner in 2014, Grzecka helped mold Club Q into not merely a nightlife venue but a community center — a platform to create a "chosen family" for LGBTQ+ people, especially for those estranged from their birth family. Drag queen bingo nights, "Friendsgiving" and Christmas dinners and birthday celebrations became staples of Club Q which was open 365 days a year.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Grzecka and other community leaders hope to fill the gaping hole left by the desecration of Club Q.
"When that system goes away, you realize how much more the bar was really providing," said Justin Burns, an organizer with Pikes Peak Pride. "Those that may or may not have been a part of the Club Q family, where do they go?"
Mourning the victims of the Club Q nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs
Bouquets of flowers sit on a corner near the site of a mass shooting at a gay bar Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
13-year-old dog, Howie Travis, sniffs flowers placed near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. Police say a 22-year-old gunman opened fire at the gay nightclub, Club Q, killing several people and leaving multiple people injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons. (Geneva Heffernan / Associated Press)
Nelly Brusnell signs a cross on the chest of Ivanna Brusnell after placing flowers near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a fatal shooting occurred late Saturday night. Police say a 22-year-old gunman opened fire at the gay nightclub, Club Q, killing several people and leaving multiple people injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Fred Ramirez, Trinity Ramirez, Tim Bates, and Malissa Ramirez grieve near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Crystal and Ella Mondragon place flowers at a makeshift memorial near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022 where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. (AP PhotoGeneva Heffernan)
Joshua Thurman, who was in Club Q during Saturday's night fatal shooting, talks Sunday, Nov. 20,. 2022, about what happened when the shooter entered the club on North Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. "I lost friends. I'm not ok," Thurman said. (Christian Murdock/The Gazette via AP)
Michael Robert Travis performs taps while his husband, Michael Travis, films on his phone near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. Police say a 22-year-old gunman opened fire at the gay nightclub, Club Q, killing at least five people and leaving multiple people injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Tim Bates, Erric Ramirez, Malissa Ramirez, Trinity Ramirez, and Fred Ramirez deliver flowers near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. Police say a 22-year-old gunman opened fire at a gay nightclub, Club Q, killing at least five people and leaving multiple people injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Kate Eustice of Willow Creek Wellness sets up a flower stand near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. A 22-year-old gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub, killing at least five people and leaving multiple others injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons and arrested by police who were on the scene within minutes, authorities said Sunday. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Community members grieve near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. A 22-year-old gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub, killing at least five people and leaving multiple others injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons and arrested by police who were on the scene within minutes, authorities said Sunday. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Catherine Wiggs grieves near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. A 22-year-old gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub, killing at least five people and leaving multiple others injured before he was subdued by "heroic" patrons and arrested by police who were on the scene within minutes, authorities said Sunday. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Elijah Newcomb of Colorado Springs lays flowers near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022 where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Flowers and a sign reading "love over hate" lay near a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022 where a shooting occurred late Saturday night. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
Jaleesa Irizarry
A memorial grows outside Club Q on Sunday morning.
Sarah Noonen stood alone outside the Colorado State Capitol Sunday with this silent plea after the shooting at Club Q. "I just wanted to do SOMETHING," Noonen said. "We're just people trying to exist."
Denver Broncos staff members and fans observe a moment of silence for victims of an attack in a Colorado Springs, Colo., gay nightclub late Saturday before an NFL football game between the Broncos and the Las Vegas Raiders in Denver, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)
KUSA
Mourners gather for a vigil for the victims of the nightclub shooting at Club Q on Sunday at All Souls Unitarian Church in Colorado Springs.
Anne Rivera, left, of Colorado Springs, Colo., consoles her spouse, Jez, while they visit a makeshift tribute on a corner near the site of a mass shooting at a gay bar Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
An unidentified man consoles Renee Behr of Colorado Springs, Colo., after she placed a bouquet of flowers on a makeshift tribute near the site of a mass shooting at a gay bar Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Anne and Jen Rivera, far right, hug each other near the display of flowers placed on a corner near the site of a mass shooting at a gay bar Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Bouquets of flowers sit on a corner near the site of a mass shooting at a gay bar Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. The man suspected of killing five people and injuring others at a gay bar in Colorado Springs is facing murder and hate crime charges, according to online court records obtained Monday. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Burns said the shooting pulled back a curtain on a broader lack of resources for LGBTQ+ adults in Colorado Springs. Burns, Grzecka and others are working with national organizations to do an assessment of the community's needs as they develop a blueprint to offer a robust support network.
Grzecka is looking to rebuild the "loving culture" and necessary support to "make sure that this tragedy is turned into the best thing it can be for the city."
That started on Thursday night, when Club Q's 10th anniversary Friendsgiving was held at the non-denominational Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church. Survivors, community members, friends and family shared donated meals under strings of lights near rainbow balloon towers.
Organized by the LGBTQ+ group United Court of Pikes Peak Empire, the dinner's bright atmosphere felt resilient. People smiled, squeezed each other in hugs and told stories from the podium about those who lost their lives.
"Everybody needs community," Grzecka said.
Earlier that day at the memorial, a trickle of people walked slowly along the wall of flowers and vigil candles that had burnt out.
"I hope you dance," someone wrote to victim Ashley Paugh on one of five white crosses fixed with wooden hearts inscribed with the names of those who had died and bearing notes scribbled by mourners.
On a concrete barrier a message was scrawled, "Please hear our calls. Protect us, our home."
RELATED: 5 victims who were killed in LGBTQ+ nightclub shooting remembered
The victims who died in the shooting were identified as the following:
Daniel Aston (he/him)
Kelly Loving (she/her)
Ashley Paugh (she/her)
Derrick Rump (he/him)
Raymond Green Vance (he/him)
Credit: CSPD
[Top L to R] Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh. [Bottom L to R] Derrick Rump, Raymond Green Vance.
People pay respects at Club Q memorial
Emergency room doctor reflects on treating Club Q shooting victims
Victims of Club Q shooting honored at state Capitol vigil
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Q: Java - Should ActionListeners, KeyListeners, Etc, Always Be Declared In Inner Classes? In all the Java source code examples I have looked at the listeners have always been declared in inner classes.
Why - what is the reason for coding the classes like this instead of having the listener(s) in their own seperate *.java file \ class?
Would having seperate classes for the listeners be considered a bad design?
If it's not a bad design \ sackable offence could someone please post a short example demonstrating how to implement this?
Thank for reading.
Edit\Update - 10.8.2010:
Thanks to all who took the time to reply. Lots of insightful points to consider.
Having read all the answers I think that unless there is a very good reason for doing otherwise it is better and easier to declare listeners as inner classes.
Apologies for not coming back to this question sooner, but I don't always have as much time for coding as I'd like :-(
Happy coding.

A: Good reasons for using inner classes:

*

*Avoids adding extra top-level classes to your package namespace

*Keeps the code locally encapsulated (e.g. within the component that requires the event handling behaviour)

*static inner classes work well when they do not need to access fields of the enclosing class

Possible reasons for using top level classes:

*

*You have a special type of listener that you expect to be used by external packages or forms part of your API (e.g. in the Java class library itself)

*The listener is used in many places, and is not logically specific to any one of many possible enclosing classes

In short: inner classes are usually preferred, but if you have good reasons then it can be perfectly sensible to create top level classes instead.

A: No, I don't think they should always be inner classes.  It implies that the UI itself always knows how to make the best choice of listener.
Another way to look at it might be that Listeners are injected into the UI.  Maybe they're provided by the Controller, which instantiates the UI and tells it how to react to UI events.
I think this is more of a dependency injection view of the world.  There may be important advantages to it.

A: This answer discusses the trade offs of the different ways.
The basic answer is that the GUI code in a program is usually pretty intertwined and not usually shareable between programs.  Doing inner classes (especially if you adopt the way I suggest in the linked answer above) lets you structure the GUI code so that it is maintainable while accepting that the GUI is highly coupled.

A: If you've seen them in examples its probably to make it seem easier. Most will probably tell you to just take your current class and implement the listener. Which one looks easier: Creating 2 classes in 2 files, using a nested listener inside of a main class, or just having your main class as the listener? (Hint: Its not the first one)
I'm lazy and just have a main class implement the ActionListener interface. This of course only works on very simple GUIs. For larger projects you should separate them.
As for keeping the Listener in a separate class, ask yourself: Do other classes need to use this? Classes should be in their own file ONLY if others need to use them. And sharing Listeners isn't exactly the best idea unless you have some weird layout where buttons do the same thing but are arranged differently by each class.
In short: keep them nested or implemented, not separate, unless necessary. A necessary case however would be few and far between

A: You certainly could have the listener implemented in a separate class file in a separate .java file.  Java 1.1 introduced the anonymous class and inner class idea along with awt event redesign years ago.  The reason is that many times, the listeners that you write need to update and/or read fields from the class that contains the objects where events are generated.  It is cumbersome to referense these fields from a non inner/anonymous class.
Once you use anonymous classes more, you will see that it does make things simpler to write and maintain later.  Modern IDE's will even generate most of the code for you anyway.  For example, key in these two lines in IntelliJ IDEA and press ctrl-shift-space.  IntellJ will insert an anonymous class that impmlements all methods of the interface specified by addActionListener().
JButton jb = new JButton("ok");
jb.addActionListener(new

A: An inner class is local to the current class, which is fine in case those do not need to be used elsewhere.  In an example in a book it gives the class a name which makes it possible to refer to it easily from prose.
The typical usage for listeners is that they are only used in a single place and for that purpose the anonymous inner classes are perfect.  For interfaces with a lot of method (like MouseListeners) there is usually a corresponding adapter with empty implementations of everything which can then be overridden as needed.  See MouseAdapter.

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Stream Smino's Debut Album 'Blkswn'
Peter A. Berry
Zero Fatigue
Smino puts on for his hometown of St. Louis in a major way with blkswn, his soulful, deeply-funk-inspired debut album he just dropped today (March 14). Not so coincidentally, his project's release date also reflects St. Louis' area code, 314.
Last year, XXL profiled the "Anita" performer for their The Break series, and the St. Louis artist detailed his family's rich musical background, some of which you can probably say influenced the sound of blkswn.
"My granddaddy is a bass player; he's in the Blues Hall of Fame. My daddy plays keys, my mother sings, my big cousin, she toured the world singing," Smino explained.
He continued, "So I just kind of like, shit man, I might as well do music then. I started recording and really making and getting my music down at 13. I was really every day with it by the time I was 13. What made me want to do music was I just saw how happy everyone in my family was doing it. What made me want to take it to another level was like [seeing them] so good at it. There were people that were real good at it that [my family] was better than and they making money. Let me just try to really stay on it and I wanted a different way to live."
You can hear Smino's addition to his family's legacy of musical excellence and the rap game as a whole by streaming blkswn on Apple Music or downloading it on iTunes. You can also stream the project below, on SoundCloud.
Smino's blkswn Tracklist
1. "Wild Irish Roses"
2. "Maraca"
3. "Glass Flows"
4. "Flea Flicka"
5. "Spitshine"
6. "Netflix and D'usse"
7. "Anita"
8. "Lobby Kall"
9. "Edgar Allan Poe'd Up"
10. "Father Son Holy Smoke"
11. "B Role"
12. "blkoscars"
13. "blkswn"
14. "Long Run"
15. "Innamission"
16. "Silk Pillows"
17. "Ricky Millions"
18. "Amphetamine"
20 of Your Favorite Rappers Naming Their Favorite Rappers
Filed Under: Bangers, Smino
Categories: Music, New Music, News


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