In analyzing Franz Kafka's "Investigations of a Dog," Sacvan Bercovitch explains that the dog's reading of the world is governed by his context. He says, "Kafka's story is a great parable of interpretation as mystification--facts marshalled endlessly to bulid up contexts whose effect, if not intent is to conceal or explain away" and reveals "the limitations of cultural critique."1 When we try to construct and explain our world, we are hindered by the contexts we find ourselves in. Our thought hinges on many factors that we cannot escape.
The need for a rethinking of scholarly methodology may not be apparent at first--after all, Kafka's dog seems to get by (albeit with certain crises). However, we need to recognize the complications involved in relying too heavily on existing paradigms and methodologies. Paradigms and methodologies can be very effective tools to use, but they always pose the danger that they will use us. These intellectual foundations can tend to limit the flexibility of our thinking, and hinder the development of new ideas because we can become governed by a type of thinking and search only for the answers to those specific questions. Several stories elucidate these problems.
The first of these examples comes from Marco Polo's misidentification of the rhinoceros as a unicorn. On his trip to China, Marco Polo was looking for unicorns. When he came across an animal he had never seen or heard of before--a rhinoceros--he assumed the animal was a unicorn, because it roughly fit his conception of what a unicorn should look like by having a horn on its head. It was easier for Marco Polo to make his discovery fit the world he believed in than it was for him to reconceptualize the contents of his world. Umberto Eco explains, "He was unable to speak about the unknown but could only refer to what he already knew and expected to meet."2 Marco Polo was bound by his objectives--he believed he could only have found what he was looking for. In this example we see paradigm as a dictator of thought, rather than as an enabler.
Eco adds, "We cannot say Marco Polo lied."3 The concern here is not the correctness or wrongness of Marco Polo's thinking; in his world-view, he was right. We must note, instead, the limitations of relying on the consensus construct of research and accumulation of data. Marco Polo could have seen that the rhino did not fit descriptions of the unicorn. He could have employed a knowledge of his immediate context to see a flaw in his conception of the world. Had he done so, his reports back to the West would have been markedly different. The reports would not necessarily have been more accurate (Marco Polo had updated the descriptions of the unicorn), but they would have opened the door to different types of mental explorations and allowed the development of more complex constructions of the world.
Thomas Kuhn reports our second example in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.4 He describes an psychology experiment in which test subjects tried to identify playing cards. Some of the cards had been given the wrong color. For example, the six of spades was red and the four of hearts was black. The test subjects could usually identify the cards quickly, but did not notice the changed colors, and many of the people felt very uncomfortable looking at the unusual cards. The subjects were often unwilling or unable to realize the switch. Even though they could identify the suit, they could not understand what the card actually was. The experiment reveals a danger of sticking to stringently to current consensus paradigms. When we see something that does not fit our pre-existing notions of the world, we tend to try to fit that something into our beliefs, rather than opening a new conception. Kuhn describes much scientific research in a way that we can apply to most modes of research: "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into conceptual boxes supplied by professional education."5 There are inherent limitations in this straining, reductive sort of knowledge gathering.
Eco describes these informing conceptions as "background books," and suggests that we know "in advance what we are on the verge of discovering."6 We carry with us a sort of programming--established through cultural, professional, and other means--that predisposes us to certain discoveries. More important, this programming can be highly influential in determining our interpretations of discoveries. Most people, I believe, accept that they have this programming in them, but they seldom act on the consciousness of that knowledge.
1Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America. New York: Rutledge, 1993, p. 3.
2Eco, Umberto. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 55.
4For a description of the experiment see Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 62-65.


Each question has a short listening file with 4 words. Three words are the same because they are part of a group. One word is different.
Find the different word. There is no spelling in this question. Click the correct answer.
Lock is different. It's not a living thing. That's an easy question. You can see the words. Now try listening to the sounds and finding the answers.
Listen to the 4 words.
Click the WORD SOUNDS LESSON button below.


Creating a new architectural landmark as part of the wider regeneration of Manchester's Southern Gateway.
Welcoming visitors to the North's premier city, Arundel Street will deliver the comprehensive regeneration of a prominent site in Manchester's Castlefield Conservation Area. Working in harmony with the industrial heritage of the area, the inspiring design will create a new architectural landmark, improving the visual journey from Manchester's inner ring road into the city centre.
Designed by renowned Manchester architects SimpsonHaugh (Beetham Tower, First Street, Urbis), the proposed scheme is situated on the site of the former DOT Motorcycle building and will create a high quality mixed-use space comprising more than 380 apartments, a roof garden and commercial and leisure spaces.
Our ambition is that this will breathe life into an underutilised site whilst retaining the key character features in respect of the adjoining conservation area.


I'll be giving an in depth review of this baby soon, but I am excited about a couple of things with this unit- one is the Dual Selfie camera with a 20MP main camera and an 8MP 120° wide angle, perfect for #Selfie and #Wefie. Because the only thing better than selfies... Are wefies that capture picture perfect moments with your friends and family.
I'm pretty impressed with the selfie options of this one. Asus is definitely fully loaded!
And reading the specs, I'm pretty sure I'll be testing out not just the selfie capabilites of this thing but also how it runs with the "heavy" games.
So watch out for my upcoming review on this, cause from what I'm exploring with Asus, there's a whole other beautiful world for selfie addicts out there.


text:
RACEE - 2015 (Volume 4 - Issue 03)
Meso Scale Hydrological Modeling for Kedarnath Flood, Uttarakhand
Dilip Kumar Jha, R K Paswan, S K Dubey, 2015, Meso Scale Hydrological Modeling for Kedarnath Flood, Uttarakhand, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY (IJERT) RACEE – 2015 (Volume 4 – Issue 03),
Authors : Dilip Kumar Jha, R K Paswan, S K Dubey
Volume & Issue : RACEE – 2015 (Volume 4 – Issue 03)
Dilip Kumar Jha, R K Paswan, S K Dubey
CED, G B Pant Engineering College, Pauri-Garhwal, Uttarakhand
Abstract- The modeling of hydrological processes in meso-scale basins (approximately 101-103 km2; Blöschl, 1996) have become a topic of interest for hydrologists and water resources engineers in the recent past. In meso-scale basins, processes from smaller scales combine in a complex way to produce an integrated response. Heterogeneity in soil, vegetative cover, land use, etc. is present across this scale, making understanding these hydrological processes difficult. Therefore, identifying basin wide areas with the same dominating runoff generation processes is currently a major challenge in runoff generation process research in meso-scale. As this scale is crucial for water management issues, addressing several societal demands, the meso-scale studies are mainly intended for integrated water resource management and long term impact of land-use and climate change over the hydrological response at the catchment scale.
Moreover, the linkage of a distributed hydrologic model with the spatial data handling capabilities of digital elevation models (DEMs) and Geographical Information System (GIS) offer advantages associated with the full utilization of spatially distributed data to analyze hydrologic processes.
The present study attempts to predict the catchment response to extreme floods caused by concentrated monsoon over a geographic domain. For that an extreme flood event occurred in the state of Uttarakhand, India in the year of 2013 have been selected for study. The flood was caused by concentrated cloud burst in Kedarnath in Chamoli district in June, 2013. For the hilly terrains in the upstream of river, physically-based semi- distributed TOPMODEL has been applied.
Keywords: Meso, basin, flood, GIS, TOPMODEL
The mesoscale hydrologic model is a spatially explicit distributed hydrologic model that uses grid cells as a primary hydrologic unit, and accounts for the following processes: canopy interception, snow accumulation and melting, soil moisture dynamics, infiltration and surface runoff, evapotranspiration, subsurface storage and discharge generation, deep percolation and baseflow and discharge attenuation and flood routing. The model is driven by hourly or daily meteorological forcings (e.g., precipitation, temperature), and it utilizes observable basin physical characteristics (e.g., soil textural, vegetation, and geological properties) to infer the spatial variability of the required parameters. To date, the model has been successfully applied and tested in more than 300 Pan EU basins, as well as India, and USA, ranging in size from 4 to 550,000 km2 at spatial resolutions (or grid size) varied between 1 km and 100 km. Shown below is the model performance for stream flow simulations over the EU basins.
Uhlenbrook et al. (2004) described the objectives of meso- scale (101-103 km2) modelling as three folds. Firstly, understanding the distributed runoff generation process is a prerequisite and the selected model must capture it. Secondly, the significant variability of atmospheric forces and runoff concentration in the spatial and temporal domain is needed to be included in the model chosen. Lastly, attention should be given to address several water management issues like societal demands as meso-scale modelling can handle it to the appropriate scale. The watershed studied here consists of rivers Alakhnanda and Bhagirathi. Figure 1.1 shows the study area with its location in the Indian map. The total basin area sums up to 1,465 km2. The total watershed was subdivided into 16 sub-basins with area varying from at minimum 121 km2 to at maximum 682 km2. Out of all the sub-basins 10 sub-basins are selected for TOPMODEL simulation and 06 sub-basins are selected for RISE simulation. The models to be used for simulation are selected based upon the land use pattern derived from NDVI product of SPOT VEGETATION sensor imageries and topography from DEM. Rice agriculture dominated areas and plain terrain areas are selected for RISE simulation.
Figure 1.1: Bhagirathi River Basin
In order to reduce the effects of topography and solar illumination on the observed radiance two spectral indices are used in the profile instead of band reflectances. The spectral indices are Normalized Difference Vegetation Index [NDVI
= (NIR RED)/( NIR + RED)] and Normalized Difference Wetness Index [NDWI = (MIR NIR)/( MIR
+ NIR)] (Gao 1996) respectively. The obtained profiles are joined with smooth curves, considering expected changes in the indices. Figure 1.2 shows the estimated profiles of the indices along with rainfall hyetograph, soil wetness conditions and presence of vegetation
Figure 1.2: The Map shows the input data for the ArcSWAT: Slope data
Figure 1.3: NDVI and NDWI profiles for soil wetness regions during monsoon season
In order to carry out correlation analysis, the TI map was georeferenced with the prepared image stacks. With the help of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modules, thiessen polygons of 28 rainfall gauging stations spreading all over India were generated to calculate total monsoonal rainfall depth of each watershed. Watersheds statistics including watershed area, area covered by TI range and total rainfall depth were extracted and aggregated into river basin scale.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
In order to evaluate mapped wetness regions, hydrological simulation results reported from a distributed hydrological model study were considered. The study, based on the SCS- Curve Number method and remotely sensed data, is found to have predicted well clustered wetness regions in the the Ganga basin (Zade et al. 2005). Out of the predicted wetness regions by this model, four regions were chosen to get the temporal profile of the indices.
Comparison with Topographic Index (TI) distribution Brief description of Topographic index
Topography defines the effects of gravity on the movement of surface and subsurface runoff in a watershed, and,
therefore influences many aspects of the hydrologic system. It is parameterized as the statistical distribution of the Topographic Index TI = ln (a / tan ), where ln is the Naperian logarithm, a is the upslope area per unit contour length, and tan is the surface slope gradient. The topographic index has been proven to be an important hydrologic modelling component because it reflects the spatial distribution of soil moisture, surface saturation, and runoff generation processes (Beven and Kirkby 1979).
Figure 1.4 shows a set of imageries including the FCC [False Colour Composite; red = NIR, green = B3 (red) and blue = B3 (red)] , TI distribution, normal total monsoonal rainfall and retrieved wetness regions for selected three years in and around the Naye River Basin, India. All images are overlaid along with the river. From the maps of wetness regions, it can be clearly observed that the wetness regions were formed mainly in the upstream of the river due to favourable topography and in the downstream due to coastal plain environment. In figure 1.5 it can be seen that area covered by TI range between 6 and 8 are well matching with the monsoonal wetness regions. However, yearly variations of the wetness regions are observed and are also expected due to annual variation of monsoonal rainfall. Average area of the wetness regions in the selected years is found to be in clse agreement with the area covered by the selected TI range. A scatter plot showing fractional area of the wetness regions and TI ranges of 41 watersheds in the Naye River is shown in Figure 1.5. Interestingly, a good correlation between them is found up to total rainfall depth of around 1400 mm.
Monsoonal soil wetness regions in Naye River Basins
To understand spatial distribution of the wetness region, yearly area fraction of wetness regions of all watersheds were extracted for all the three years i.e. 1999, 2000 and 2001. This shows yearly variation of the fractions for Naye River Basins.
FCC IMAGE (2001) SOIL WETNESS REGIONS (2001) WETNESS FRACTION =
FCC IMAGE (2000) WETNESS REGIONS
(2000) WETNESS FRACTION =
Therefore, even through parts of watersheds area are covered by high range of TI index indicating prone to wetness, but for lack of sufficient rainfall depth, the regions are found to be dry.
(1999) 30
TI range (%)
WETNESS FRACTION = 25
21.31 % 20
R2 = 0.6479
Rainfall in mm
TOPOGRAPHIC INDEX (TI) MAP
NORMAL MONSOONAL
RAINFALL MAP (THIESSEN POLYGON)
Wetness regions (%)
Figure 1.5: Relationship between fractional watershed area covered by the obtained wetness regions and that by the TI range in 41 watersheds of the River Mahanadi for year 1999
Figure 1.5 FCC and monsoonal wetness area in years a) 2001,
b) 2000, c) 1999; d) TI and e) Normal rainfall in and around the Naye River Basin, India with river network basins. A suitable range of TI values have been found out for each river basin by comparing spatial distribution of TI and soil wetness region pattern. In case of the Naye, Mahanadi, Godavari and Narmada Rivers, area fractions of wetness regions and TI range are found to be in close agreement. In these basins, the average normal monsoonal rainfalls are more than 900 mm. The major exception occurs in the Brahmaputra River Basin where temporal and spatial pattern of monsoon storm events are different than that of the other river basins. It is expected that the expected temporal profile of the indices of the monsoonal wetness regions may not represent the same in this basin.
Figure 1.6: Temporal profile of NDVI and NDWI of the soil wetness regions located in the Naye River basins
This table shows the fraction of monsoonal wetness regions in major Indian River basins, in comparison with corresponding area covered by TI range and
total monsoonal rainfall
Estimated soil wetness regions (%)
Average % of 3 years
Suitable Range of TI
% of basin area covered by TI range
Total normal monsoonal rainfall (mm)
Naye
This chapter has demonstrated a mapping approach by which the retrieval of monsoonal soil wetness region can be feasible using high temporal satellite data in optical range. The derived soil wetness regions are found to have a significant correlation with the topographic index range and total rainfall depth which are the prime control factors in their formation. From correlation analysis, a significant proportion of the mapped wetness is observed in naye river basins .Therefore, the wetness region can be used for calibration and validation of Meso-scale hydrological models in these river basins.
J. G. Arnold, D. N. Moriasi, P. W. Gassman, K. C. Abbaspour, M. J. White, R. Srinivasan, C. Santhi, R.D. Harmel, A. van Griensven, M.
W. Van Liew, N. Kannan and M.K. Jha, 2012. Swat: Model Use, Calibration, And Validation Transactions of the (ASABE) American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, Vol. 55(4): 1491- 1508, ISSN 2151-0032.
J. G. Arnold, R. Srinivasan, R. S. Muttiah and J. R. Williams, 1998. Large area hydrologic modeling and assessment Part I: Model development. J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc. 34(1):7389.
D. K. Borah and M. Bera , 2002. Modeling the Big Ditch Watershed in Illinois and Studying Scaling Effects on Water and Sediment Discharges, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan.
D. K. Borah and, M. Bera, 2003. Watershed-scale hydrologic and nonpoint- source pollution models: Review of mathematical bases. Trans. ASAE 46(6):1553-1566.
V. T. Chow, D. R. Maidment and L. W. Mays, 1998. Applied Hydrology, McGraw-Hill International Editions Civil Engineering Series, New York.
D. Khare, R. Singh and R. Shukla, 2014. Hydrological Modelling Of Barinallah Watershed Using Arc-Swat Model, International Journal of Geology, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Vol. 4 (1) pp. 224-235, ISSN: 2277-2081 (Online).
D. N. Moriasi, J. G. Arnold, M. W. Van Liew, R. L. Binger, R. D. Harmel, and T. Veith, 2007. Model evaluation guidelines for systematic
quantification of accuracy in watershed simulations. Trans. ASABE 50(3): 885-900.
J. E. Nash and J. V. Sutcliffe, 1970. River flow forecasting through conceptual models: Part I. A discussion of principles. J. Hydrol. 10(3):282-290.
S. L. Neitsch, J. G. Arnold, J. R. Kiniry, R. Srinivasan and J. R. Williams, 2002. Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) User's Manual, Version 2000. Blackland Research Center, Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service: Temple, TX, USA.
H. Noor, M. Vafakhah, M. Taheriyoun and M. Moghadasi, 2014. Hydrology modelling in Taleghan mountainous watershed using SWAT. Journal of Water and Land Development. No. 20 p. 1118.
T. Taffese and B. Zemadim, 2014. Hydrological modeling of a catchment using SWAT model in the upper Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopia E3 Journal of Environmental Research and Management Vol. 5(5). pp. 87-91.
J. V. Tyagi, S. P. Rai, N. Qazi and M. P. Singh, 2014. Assessment of discharge and sediment transport from different forest cover types in lower Himalaya using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), International Journal of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering ,Vol. 6(1), pp. 49-66.
Valdiya, K. S. (1985) Accelerated erosion and landslide prone zones in the Central Himalayan region. In: Environmental Regeneration in Himalaya (ed. by J. S. Singh). The Central Himalayan Environmental Association, Nainital, 12-5.
Singh G., Ram Babu, Narain P., Bhushan L. S. & Abrol, I. P. (1990) Soil erosion rates of India. In: Proc. Int. Symp. On Water Erosion, Sedimentation and Resources Conservation (Dehradun, India), 32-38.
Srivastava, R.N., and Ahmad, A., 1979, Geology and structure of the Alaknanda valley, Garhwal Himalaya: Himalayan Geology, v. 9, pp. 225 254.
Landslide dammed lakes in the Alaknanda basin, Lesser Himalaya: causes and implications. Current Science, v. 93(4), pp. 568 574.
Chakrapani, G.J. and R.K. Saini (2009). Temporal and spatial variations in water discharge and sediment load in the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi Rivers in Himalaya, India. Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 35 (2009) 545553.
Abbas, N and Subramanian, V. (1984), Erosion and Sediment transport in the Ganges River Basin , India, Journal of Hydrology, 69, 173-182.
Jain, S.K. (2008). Impact of retreat of Gangotri glacier on the flow of Ganga River. Current Science, 95(8), 10121014
Improving Engineering Properties of Clayey Soil with Addition of Cement and Coir Fiber
Experimental Electromechanical Module (MOSE) for Flood Control in Venice

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
declare module LazyJS {

	interface LazyStatic {
		(value:string):StringLikeSequence;
		(value:any[]):ArrayLikeSequence;
		(value:Object):ObjectLikeSequence;
		(value:ArrayLike):ArrayLikeSequence;

		strict():LazyStatic;

		generate(generatorFn:GeneratorCallback, length?:number):GeneratedSequence;

		range(to:number):GeneratedSequence;
		range(from:number, to:number, step?:number):GeneratedSequence;

		repeat(value:any, count?:number):GeneratedSequence;

		on(eventType:string):Sequence;

		readFile(path:string):StringLikeSequence;
		makeHttpRequest(path:string):StringLikeSequence;
	}

	interface ArrayLike {
		length:number;
	}

	interface Callback {
		():void;
	}

	interface ErrorCallback {
		(error:any):void;
	}

	interface ValueCallback {
		(value:any):void;
	}

	interface GetKeyCallback {
		(value:any):string;
	}

	interface TestCallback {
		(value:any):boolean;
	}

	interface MapCallback {
		(value:any):any;
	}

	interface MapStringCallback {
		(value:string):string;
	}

	interface NumberCallback {
		(value:any):number;
	}

	interface MemoCallback {
		(memo:any, value:any):any;
	}

	interface GeneratorCallback {
		(index:number):any;
	}

	// - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

	interface Iterator {
		new(sequence:Sequence):Iterator;
		current():any;
		moveNext():boolean;
	}

	interface GeneratedSequence extends Sequence {
		new(generatorFn:GeneratorCallback, length:number):GeneratedSequence;
		length():number;
	}

	interface AsyncSequence extends SequenceBase {
		each(callback:ValueCallback):AsyncHandle;
	}

	interface AsyncHandle {
		cancel():void;
		onComplete(callback:Callback):void;
		onError(callback:ErrorCallback):void;
	}

	// - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

	module Sequence {
		function define(methodName:string[], overrides:Object):Function;
	}

	interface Sequence extends SequenceBase {
		each(eachFn:ValueCallback):Sequence;
	}

	interface SequenceBase extends SequenceBaser {
		first():any;
		first(count:number):Sequence;
		indexOf(value:any, startIndex?:number):Sequence;

		last():any;
		last(count:number):Sequence;
		lastIndexOf(value:any):Sequence;

		reverse():Sequence;
	}

	interface SequenceBaser {
		// TODO improve define() (needs ugly overload)
		async(interval:number):AsyncSequence;
		chunk(size:number):Sequence;
		compact():Sequence;
		concat(var_args:any[]):Sequence;
		consecutive(length:number):Sequence;
		contains(value:any):boolean;
		countBy(propertyName:string):Sequence;
		countBy(keyFn:GetKeyCallback):Sequence;
		dropWhile(predicateFn:TestCallback):Sequence;
		every(predicateFn:TestCallback):boolean;
		filter(predicateFn:TestCallback):Sequence;
		find(predicateFn:TestCallback):Sequence;
		findWhere(properties:Object):Sequence;

		flatten():Sequence;
		groupBy(keyFn:GetKeyCallback):ObjectLikeSequence;
		initial(count?:number):Sequence;
		intersection(var_args:any[]):Sequence;
		invoke(methodName:string):Sequence;
		isEmpty():boolean;
		join(delimiter?:string):string;
		map(mapFn:MapCallback):Sequence;
		max(valueFn?:NumberCallback):any;
		min(valueFn?:NumberCallback):any;
		pluck(propertyName:string):Sequence;
		reduce(aggregatorFn:MemoCallback, memo?:any):any;
		reduceRight(aggregatorFn:MemoCallback, memo:any):any;
		reject(predicateFn:TestCallback):Sequence;
		rest(count?:number):Sequence;
		shuffle():Sequence;
		some(predicateFn?:TestCallback):boolean;
		sortBy(sortFn:NumberCallback):Sequence;
		sortedIndex(value:any):Sequence;
		sum(valueFn?:NumberCallback):Sequence;
		takeWhile(predicateFn:TestCallback):Sequence;
		union(var_args:any[]):Sequence;
		uniq():Sequence;
		where(properties:Object):Sequence;
		without(var_args:any[]):Sequence;
		zip(var_args:any[]):Sequence;

		toArray():any[];
		toObject():Object;
	}

	// - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

	module ArrayLikeSequence {
		function define(methodName:string[], overrides:Object):Function;
	}

	interface ArrayLikeSequence extends Sequence {
		// define()X;
		concat():ArrayLikeSequence;
		first(count?:number):ArrayLikeSequence;
		get(index:number):any;
		length():number;
		map(mapFn:MapCallback):ArrayLikeSequence;
		pop():ArrayLikeSequence;
		rest(count?:number):ArrayLikeSequence;
		reverse():ArrayLikeSequence;
		shift():ArrayLikeSequence;
		slice(begin:number, end?:number):ArrayLikeSequence;
	}

	// - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

	module ObjectLikeSequence {
		function define(methodName:string[], overrides:Object):Function;
	}

	interface ObjectLikeSequence extends Sequence {
		assign(other:Object):ObjectLikeSequence;
		// throws error
		//async():X;
		defaults(defaults:Object):ObjectLikeSequence;
		functions():Sequence;
		get(property:string):ObjectLikeSequence;
		invert():ObjectLikeSequence;
		keys():Sequence;
		omit(properties:string[]):ObjectLikeSequence;
		pairs():Sequence;
		pick(properties:string[]):ObjectLikeSequence;
		toArray():any[];
		toObject():Object;
		values():Sequence;
	}

	// - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

	module StringLikeSequence {
		function define(methodName:string[], overrides:Object):Function;
	}

	interface StringLikeSequence extends SequenceBaser {
		charAt(index:number):string;
		charCodeAt(index:number):number;
		contains(value:string):boolean;
		endsWith(suffix:string):boolean;

		first():string;
		first(count:number):StringLikeSequence;

		indexOf(substring:string, startIndex?:number):number;

		last():string;
		last(count:number):StringLikeSequence;

		lastIndexOf(substring:string, startIndex?:number):number;
		mapString(mapFn:MapStringCallback):StringLikeSequence;
		match(pattern:RegExp):StringLikeSequence;
		reverse():StringLikeSequence;

		split(delimiter:string):Sequence;
		split(delimiter:RegExp):Sequence;

		startsWith(prefix:string):boolean;
		substring(start:number, stop?:number):StringLikeSequence;
		toLowerCase():StringLikeSequence;
		toUpperCase():StringLikeSequence;
	}
}

declare var Lazy:LazyJS.LazyStatic;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Baripada: Former BJP MLA from Jashipur assembly constituency Bhanu Charan Naik passed away at Khiching in Mayurbhanj district today, family sources said.
Naik is survived by his wife, two sons and two daughters.
He was suffering from high blood pressure and acute diabetis, family sources said.
Naik was elected to Odisha Assembly as BJP nominee in the year 2000 in the 12th assembly poll.
He had also served as the mine foreman in SAIL and opted for voluntary retirement service to join politics.
His last rites was performed at his native village today. Jashipur MLA Mangal Singh Mudi and several BJP functionaries attended his funeral.


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Q: How do you give access permissions to another drive in the local machine on a web browser? I have an html page where a user can see view their course certificates when they click on "View Certificate", am using PHP for backend.  The certificates are stored in the D drive because of more storage capacity. When the link is clicked I get the message "Access forbidden!  You don't have permission to access the requested object. It is either read-protected or not readable by the server."
The URL does show the path to the certificate "site.org/courses/certificate/file:/D:/courses/uploads/5fcffcb32e2201.64085268.pdf" - it just doesn't load the certificate because of the lack of permissions.
So how do I grant permissions for the web server to access that folder on a different drive?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Fyffe, Alabama is the 10,213th largest city in the United States as of 2017.
Fyffe, Alabama is a town.
Fyffe, Alabama is currently 6.9% smaller than it was in 1990, the year of its peak recorded population.
Fyffe, Alabama is growing somewhat quickly. It is growing faster than 70% of similarly sized cities since 2000.


Watch restoration and case repair involves a lot of time and experience, but this is only if you need your watch to look like new, otherwise many jewelers can do a so called 50/50 job. Finding the right place for watch restoration and case repairs can be difficult. Don't leave your cherished timepiece with just anyone. We encourage customers to conduct intensive research before leaving their timepieces for polishing or cleaning with anyone.
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Jio is just 15 months old and it has already turned profitable inspite of offering free data and low-priced tariff plans.
By Mohul Ghosh On Jan 20, 2018
Reliance Industries declared their financial and operational performance for the third quarter of 2017-18, and there is some huge cheer for Reliance Jio within that.
For the first time ever, Reliance Jio has churned out a profit, and this is indeed a very significant development.
Against revenues of Rs 6,879 crore in Q3FY18, Jio has reported a net profit of Rs 504 crore, which is more than what any other telecom operator in India has achieved!
This revenue is 12% higher than last quarter when they reported a net loss of Rs 271 crore.
Besides, Jio has reported a net rise of 15.8% in subscribers base, which is again a substantial gain compared to other telcos.
While announcing their financial results, Mukesh Ambani, chairman and MD of RIL, said,
"I would like to thank all our customers for partnering with us in this revolution which has made India a global digital powerhouse. I congratulate all our employees and partners for the strong performance. Jio's strong financial result reflects the fundamental strength of the business, significant efficiencies and right strategic initiatives. Jio has demonstrated that it can sustain its strong financial performance,"
Overall, Reliance Industries posted a profit of Rs 8,454 crore, which is 5% more than last year's Q3, when they reported a profit of Rs 8,022 crore. RIL's standalone revenues increased to Rs 75,913 crore from Rs 66,607 crore in the same period, which is a rise of 14%, year on year.
Reliance Industries' main profits came from their flagship ventures which are refining, petrochemicals and oil & gas; however, Jio's tiny profit of Rs 504 crore is significant in several ways.
We will now share 5 interesting highlights from their financial results, which proves that Jio is now way ahead of the curve, and on the way to becoming a formidable force to reckon with:
1 #1 Jio Turns Profitable In Just 15 Months
2 #2 Jio Beats Airtel In Profits
3 #3: Jio's ARPU Is More Than Airtel's
4 #4 Jio Users Consume More Data Than Airtel
5 #5: Jio Users Consume More Voice Minutes Than Airtel
#1 Jio Turns Profitable In Just 15 Months
Jio started their commercial venture in September 2016 and had reported their financial health from July-September quarter, despite offering free services. They started charging for their services from April 2017 onwards. Hence, for the first time in the history of Indian telecom, a company posted profit within 15 months of their commercial launch; and if we consider April as their first month of paid services, then within 9 months!
This is unprecedented, and investors all over India are actually pleasantly surprised.
#2 Jio Beats Airtel In Profits
Now, Airtel is a 22-year old behemoth, hailed as India's largest telecom operator in terms of users and infrastructure. Jio is a mere 15-month-old newbie. Still, in terms of profits for Q3 of 2017-18, Jio has beaten Airtel; and this is a fact which will haunt Airtel for a long, long time.
Compared to Jio's Rs 504 crore profit, Airtel has posted Rs 306 crore profit, and this shows and expresses so many things.
#3: Jio's ARPU Is More Than Airtel's
Jio has posted Average Revenue Per User or ARPU of Rs 154, which is again an industry high – In the same quarter, Airtel posted ARPU of Rs 123, which is 15% less than what they achieved a year ago.
Now, there is a business strategy of Jio behind that: If we observe closely, then we will find that the maximum number of users on Jio network are in the range of Rs 309/399 tariff package; which despite projecting themselves as 'free' and 'cheap', is a commendable job.
Such high ARPU within 15 months of operations means that they are doing something right.
#4 Jio Users Consume More Data Than Airtel
In the 3rd quarter of 2017-18, Jio users consumed a total of 431,00,00 million MB of data which is way, way higher than Airtel's total consumption of data, which was 110,58,39 million MB data.
Jio's total data consumption has increased by 14% compared to last quarter, whereas Airtel's has decreased.
At the same time, average data usage per user in Jio's network was 9600 MB, which is again way higher than Airtel, where an average consumer consumed 5349 MB of data.
#5: Jio Users Consume More Voice Minutes Than Airtel
On an average, a Jio user talked for 694 minutes in the Q3 of 2017-18, which is more than Airtel's average per user which was 575 minutes.
Overall, Jio added a total of 21.5 million (net) new users in their network, which makes their total subscriber base as 160.1 million at the end of December 2017.
Besides, Jio's monthly churn rate is 1.4%, which is lowest in the industry.
The industry is now keenly awaiting Airtel and Vodafone-Idea's next move now.
Meanwhile, congratulations to Jio!
4G VoLTEairtelarpuIndian-telecomJioJio Turns ProfitableReliance JioReliance-Industries
Govt. Makes GPS, Panic Button Mandatory In All Public Transport Vehicles!
OnePlus Launches Lava Red OnePlus 5T; Mumbai Store Opening Today!
25,000 New Mobile Towers Will Be Installed In 500 Days: Govt Allocated Rs 26,000…
Reliance Jio Kickstarts 5G Trials Across These 4 Indian Cities: 1Gbps+ Speeds, USPs…
These 22 Indian Cities Will get Jio 5G Network After August; Rollout Across 1000…
Airtel Will Launch 5G Services This Month; Jio Expected To Launch 5G On Aug 15!
Adani Group Will Launch Telecom Services; Will Challenge Jio, Airtel!
Jio Attracts 16.8 Lakh New Users In 30 Days, Airtel Adds 8 Lakh New Users | Vodafone…


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Kostnice Ossuary
Kostnice Ossuary © Tscherno
The Kostnice Ossuary, also known as the Sedlec Ossuary or the Church of Bones, is a unique experience for intrepid travellers. The medieval Gothic chapel is decorated with the remains of about 40,000 human skeletons, including an immense chandelier. While it is considered macabre by some, the skeletons belonged to people who wished to be buried in the Ossuary, which they considered a holy place. According to the display, they were all victims of the plague.
The famous chandelier contains at least one example of every bone in the human body and, despite its somewhat gruesome building material, is a truly impressive work of art. There are other sculptures and decorations pieced together intricately with bones and the effect is remarkably artistic. Having said that, the Ossuary is a sacred place and the atmosphere is one of worship and peace. The effect of death turned into art is, indeed, a fascinating example of religious devotion and faith as well as a unique work of art. It's worth reading up on the history of the ossuary and the area before visiting the chapel as the experience is greatly enriched by some background knowledge.
Website: www.sedlecossuary.com


Les Claypool was the latest guest on comedian Bill Burr's podcast and revealed that Primus might be opening for Slayer on their final run.
During their chat, the bassist reminisced about having class with Metallica's Kirk Hammett.
Claypool also shared a story about how his dad found his stash of weed and ended up calling the cops over it. The cop on duty happened to be a friend of his dads and came over to intimidate him and to teach him a lesson. Claypool admitted that the weed was sold to him by none other than Hammett.
Here are the dates for Slayers upcoming tour with Lamb of God, Amon Amarth and Cannibal Corpse. Hopefully, Primus does end up joining the trek!


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Mrs. Schrödinger's Breast: Poems by Quinton Hallett, reviewed by Alan Contreras
Uttered Chaos, 2015, 74 pages, $10
Available via Amazon
Mrs. Schrödinger's Breast is one of the most complex and carefully layered collections of poetry that most of us will ever read. I wondered, when I saw the title, whether this was a feminist restatement of Woody Allen being chased over the cinematic hills by a forty-foot mega-mammary. Hallett has a spiky sense of humor (in previous collections she asked Joan of Arc "what's at stake" and had scientist Rosalind Franklin refer to DNA Nobelists Crick and Watson as "that base pair"), but I could not see her devoting poetic energy to such a project.
I then speculated whether Hallett, a noted gold-panner of human subtlety, had found some connection with physicist Erwin Schrödinger, whose hypothetical Cat that can be assumed simultaneously dead and alive has become well-known. Yes, it's that Mrs. S., one Anny, apparently a woman of social vigor and marital flexibility. The poet's connective tissue, set forth with glowing clarity in a short, moving "Afterword," was her own potential cancer. This collection is built around potential: that which may or not be. A more macabre or less serious poet might have called the collection Cat Scan.
What Hallett has done is build a triple helix of her own experience, the life of Anny, and the theories of Erwin. This allows her to use the device of Erwin Schrödinger's uncertain Cat, particularly for the many poems that are part of the main themes. We not only follow the unique circumstance of waiting for news of a biopsy in "Deadlock," but we find frequent visions in these poems – sometimes in the path, sometimes in the mirror – of alternatives: things that may or may not happen, or exist.
Let's look at "Deadlock" in its entirety.
Pre –
Under a tarnished sky, one moss-freighted limb
hunkers like a pathologist over the road to the lab
A petri dish is tonged from its stack
a left breast, unpowdered, awaits its probe
The pet cat wandered off a week earlier,
climbed into a box at the neighbor's
Post –
The pathologist swivels her microscope
dice are in mid-roll, coin's in the air
Results = Pending
Crest and trough
holding heavy the simultaneous upshots
The marked breast is carried to bed,
patted down under the press of blankets
The old cat's dreamt alive
Regardless of outcome, every passage underneath
the laden maple will be a new snag in the chest
What weight on two words and a symbol: Results = Pending. These words are the mirror image of the Cat That (Is/Not) Dead, reflected inside the poet's body. Results = Pending carries the weight of the potential of cancer on a yin-yang fulcrum – an equals sign, less than a word but in this poem so much more – in the center of the poem. The discerning eye might add a flickering arrow pointing each way.
This is poetic art at the highest level. It is the considered benchwork of a master crafter. Like a maker of swords, she adds how many layers? How many folds? How much flex here, and there? How many directions or outcomes? What will cause the balance to shift one way or another? I can't help but think of James Merrill's masterpiece "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace," in which … the sword that, never falling, kills … hangs over the bed of his friend, the Dutch poet Hans Lodeizen, whose pending death everyone in the room notionally denies.
How many of these poems are really about the mammiform protuberance in question? The answer – the uniquely suitable and beautifully surprising answer – is: it depends. It depends on the reader, in some cases. We find what we wish to find or are capable of finding. I may find something you do not, and vice versa. Hallett has always been a master of experience-oriented, multi-layered human life, both daily and profound. Here, we have at least two stories running simultaneously through a sizable, varied, and robust assemblage of poetry. Included is a series of poetic miniatures that refer more or less expressly to the titular breast, as well as some larger works.
There are other poems in this collection that allow us to sense that the Cat of Destiny is/isn't in the room. Here is one of the Anny poems that do not have individual titles as they form a sort of bubbling rivulet flowing through the collection:
Anny Schrödinger has adventures
in marital architecture with Erwin and Hilde.
She/they are jealous or not jealous.
An affair or no affair? Without seeing the lover as lover,
there is no possibility of betrayal.
And another:
Mrs. Schrödinger's breast has no standard cup size.
Is the cup half full or half empty?
Handful or sweaterful, a more fitting gauge.
To measure or contain is an insult
if volume is ever to be increased or diminished.
This particular poem recalls the late Hannah Wilson's poem "The White Sweater" about a long-gone sweater that once may have overemphasized teenage breasts, but now, if replaced, might fit again because those breasts have been removed. Wilson, a friend of Hallett's, was my high school English teacher forty-odd years ago: a circle quietly closes.
There is more to this collection than Anny Schrödinger or allusions to her husband's invisible feline. When I first read through it, I thought perhaps all of the Schrödinger material should be in one section and all of the unrelated poems in another. Yet what, after all, does "unrelated" mean? We see many connections; some we may not see.
A few of the poems have a somewhat more casual feel to them, but a couple that seem a little too light at first develop a Merwinesque tone on careful re-reading. In these more delicate poems, there is someone in the whispering gallery; the ferns move in the breath of no wind. The collection includes poems written in a variety of layouts – I'm not sure "forms" is quite the right word in this context.
The collection begins with "Self-Portrait as a Bruise," a poem that is not really part of the core "story" of the collection (or is it?), but which is such a precise, tightly wound coil of meaning that I will close with its last six lines here. (You'll have to buy the book for the full experience.) This poem is one of Hallett's all-time best, a garnet mine of meanings and ideas compressed into a single work.
Thumb-print or thunderhead,
my longing will never be taken
for love, though it is similar
in the way it uses quiet fury
to aggravate intention
and pools with me in one place far too long.
Quinton Hallett has always found good stories about us, as people, to share via her poetry. That's true of many poets. Few take such care in folding their word-layers to make swords worthy of the title craft master. Such work is revealed to us in Mrs. Schrödinger's Breast. Did I see St. Julian of Norwich, patron saint of cats, leaning down from her stained glass to have a closer read? Maybe. Felis ex Machina.
Also by Quinton Hallett: Refuge from Flux (2010), Shiver, Quench, Slake (2004) and Quarry (1992).
Reviewers Bio
Alan Contreras is author of the poetry collections Night Crossing and Firewand. His collection In the Time of the Queen will appear in 2018. He is co-editor of Birds of Oregon (OSU Press 2003), author of Afield: Forty Years of Birding The American West (OSU Press 2009), Northwest Birds in Winter (OSU Press 1997), State Authorization of Colleges and Universities and other titles. He is editing a collection of essays about Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and will soon begin work on a history of Oregon ornithology. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon and lives in Eugene.
Broadfork Farm by Tricia Knoll, reviewed by Wallace Kaufman
ISBN-13 978-0-9980999-4-1
The Poetry Box
2017, 73 pp, $12.00
On her web site, www.triciaknoll.com, Tricia Knoll speaks of herself in the third person. She is a tree hugging . . . Master Gardener who routinely talks to crows who ignore her. She also calls herself an eco-poet. In the opening line of "The Klickitats," the first selection in Broadfork Farm, she says, I'm a farmsitter, once or twice a year, a few weeks. The farm is across the river from Mt. Hood and about 20 miles north near the village of Trout Lake. And there you have the setting and the character who inhabits these pieces.
In "Buddha Nestled in White and Pink Sweet Peas on the Fencepost at Broadfork Gate,"
Knoll says of the Broadfork Farm,
The farm is not for everyman.
In the old house, there's no white sugar,
no microwave and when the first money
slapped down for land, no tractor, just a U-bar
digging fork with as many tines
as a March hare has fancies and that
was how it would be.
Those lines, like most of the selections in this volume, are the kind of free verse that could as well be prose. Expect no prosody here except for the thoughts and images broken into lines with no discernable aesthetic or logic. Perhaps read aloud by the author, the breaks would be justified by the reading; but this is a book, not a recording.
Two of Knoll's pieces are written in traditional prose paragraphs, "Gloucestershire Old Spots" about visiting kids who are fascinated by pigs and "An Uncommon Prayer for the Farm," which is more like a spoken hymn to the life and death, hardships and rewards of farm life than it is a prayer in any familiar sense.
What distinguishes these meditations about farm life and nature from so much contemporary "poetry" is their directness. Knoll does not struggle for novel metaphors. She doesn't try to pass off obscurity as mysticism or intellect. She is almost always immediately intelligible. A reader can even learn a few lessons about animal husbandry and gardening.
The 37 poems in the 50 pages of text and photos are vignettes of farm life and surrounding nature. The photographs are nice companions to the writing, but not particularly good compositions or well reproduced. Together they capture the author's love of the area and of this small organic farm that nourishes her body and soul.
Readers who know Knoll's political writing – main line feminism and anti-Trump – won't find it here. She writes in "Left with the Care,"
The banty rooster's strident call
is light years from grinding war, spinning news,
suspicions of sects and warring politicians.
Broadfork Farm is her retreat from all that. Or, as she concludes in "An Uncommon Prayer for the Farm," it is Repair of gratitude.
Urban readers will find here a usually gentle window into a certain kind of rural life. It may inspire the desire to get "back to the land" that inspires so many Woofers and some refugees from high stress jobs.
Reviewer bio.
Newport writer Wallace Kaufman has written several books, including Coming Out of the Woods (Perseus Books), a memoir of 22 years in a North Carolina forest. He is an award-winning science writer who has published poetry in the US and England in magazines that include Encounter, Agenda, Carcanet, Oxford Today, and Carolina Quarterly. His fiction has appeared in Sewanee Review, Encounter, Redbook, Mademoiselle, and North American Review. His latest book is FOXP5: A Genomic Mystery Novel (Springer International, 2016) co-authored with astrobiologist and biomolecular engineer David Deamer. He recently taught Poetry for Everyone at Oregon Coast Community College.
Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems by Pepper Trail, reviewed by Alan Contreras
Painted Thrush Press, 2015, 65 pages, $12
Available via Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Cascade-Siskiyou-Poems-Pepper-Trail/dp/150848435X
The Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon and northern California are what writers of stories of the west, both historic and fictional, call "rough country." It is in fact about as rough as anyone might ask for in the lower 48 states, particularly in the steep tangled chasms of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness at the western end of the complex. The whole region has in recent years become a land in transition as its history of winter snows is now matched by summer fires of brutal proportions.
This is the home range, if you will, of Pepper Trail, a forensic biologist and one of the nation's experts on the identification of feathers. It is this country of a thousand borders, this land of stony pockets, hard-faced shrubbery, and random defensive trees, that he inhabits with such poems as "The Border," which ends with the stanza:
In this world of solid things
Of wood and stone, rough ground
And green enduring leaves
My fingers reach, reach past the real
Forever seek the border
Crossed, again and again
But never found.
Like every poem in this highly local collection, "The Border" is linked to a specific site, Soda Mountain. The entire collection was written on-site and there is a definite sense of immediate experience and hands-on knowledge in most of them.
The great poet of human experience J. D. McClatchy once wrote that the natural world is an "uncongenial" source for poetic inspiration. Setting aside the fact that nature is, as Gary Snyder put it, home, not a foreign place, I can't help but doubt whether congeniality makes for the best poetic experience. This collection stands for the primacy of what is rooted in the ground, as does the work of Pattiann Rogers, Mary Oliver, Loren Eiseley, and others.
Some poets assemble poems with some structural similarity in order to create the theme of a collection. Trail has instead gathered poems with a commonality of place, so we go from a set of seasonal haiku to longer ruminations on winter survival, human passage, the movements of deer. The genuineness of the poet's connection to place is obvious in "Haiku – Winter," which perfectly describes the way kinglets move through the forest:
A drift of kinglets
Passes, leaves behind only
Sound of falling snow.
This is knowledge gained from the forest, not read in a book somewhere. There are few birds in the montane forest in winter – there are few human observers, either. There is also in this collection a profound sense of the seasons, necessary for the haiku and densely informative in other poems as well, such as "The Berry Woods":
How secret and alive, the berry-woods
All song stilled, the boasting season done
Nothing to be heard but murmurs and calls
Bursts of flutter, birds lost within the leaves
Swallowing the pin-cherries, bright as rubies
The Oregon grapes, hard and full of spice
The manzanitas, their little apples sweet
Today, the world balances dark and light
The agitations of spring long past
Summer's full schedule forgotten
This autumn work is simply gathering
Feasting, growing fat beneath the feathers
Preparing to fly before the cold
Before winter opens its empty hands.
Let's unpack this characteristic Trail poem and see what's in it. First, it is profoundly regional in the sense that the presence of Oregon grape and manzanita in the same place breathes of the collision-space of the moister climate of the coastal northwest with the more sere shrub-forests of California. Then it is about as seasonal as a poem can be, clearly written on or near the autumnal equinox (set forth where it should be, halfway through the poem). We digest (pardon the expression) an evocatively restated outline of recent seasons.
Then the poem, which has to this point been an amiable, detail-rich meander on a ridgeline filled with fruit-nibbling birds, ends with the oxygen-sucking hammer fall of what winter really means in the high country: death. This bold tonal shift in the last line changes the meaning of every previous word: all this cheerful chewing is not a casual avian picnic. It is a desperate bid for continued life by way of energy-hungry migration.
There is some variation in craft and weight among these poems, but the best among them are very good indeed. A review should not reveal all the goodies, of course, as readers should read the real thing, but I'll mention "False Hellebore," "To a Young Lizard," and "Late Riders" as among the most fully realized and thoroughly carved of the collection.
The lizard poem is a reptilian cognate of "The Berry Woods," but more tightly focused and directive throughout, as though Trail is urging the lizard to get into a safe hole pretty quickly. False hellebore and "real" hellebore get a mutual apology and a taxonomic dusting-off in what is perhaps the best poem in the collection. "Late Riders" is one of the last poems in the book and is, in truth, the natural closer for the collection because the sun descends and the human observers, having seen all the day permits, feel their way home in darkness. Yet, the concluding poem, "Juniper Years," makes its own claim, concluding:
Time enough to accomplish our own perfection
To grow, to express in the shape of our lives
The beauty of our afflictions
The worth of all the time there is.
I am told that Pepper Trail was named the official poet laureate of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in 2013. And why not?
Riddle, Fish Hook, Thorn, Key by Kelly Terwilliger, reviewed by Anita Sullivan
Riddle, Fish Hook, Thorn, Key by Kelly Terwilliger
Airlie Press, Portland, OR
Reviewed by Anita Sullivan
When you pick up a copy of this remarkable book, stop! Look at the cover – really look at it. Across the bottom rests a narrow strip of seashore in vivid blues, whites and browns. Above that, sky takes up the rest of the space. The ratio of sky to seashore is 5 to 1, which may resonate slightly in your vision as a very satisfying relationship. Yet the placidity of this image is interrupted near the top of the page by an odd little island with some old-fashioned people on it who seem to have no idea their small piece of ground has been detached from its own world and inserted into another one. Two distinct realities inhabiting a single place. Already, you might feel the center of your forehead humming with anticipation.
Then you read the title words: Riddle, Fish Hook, Thorn, Key. And the humming grows louder. If you squint a little and move the words around in your mind, you may recognize them as similar to an Anglo-Saxon kenning – an ancient word puzzle where certain words can be mixed and matched in ways that allow them to strike sparks off one another and reveal hidden meanings. For example:
king dragon
hall cave
The king is a hall-dragon.
The dragon is a cave-king.
The hall is the king's cave.
The cave is the dragon's hall.
Such simple word-sets formed the underlying structure of Anglo-Saxon riddles. Although the four words in Terwilliger's title don't fall neatly into this particular pattern, I feel them making a close quadrille with one another: A riddle can be a key, a fish-hook can be a thorn; a riddle can hook you, a key can pierce your heart. Thorn and Fish Hook stand between Riddle and its Key.
Throughout the book, true to the cover's promise, these and other words shape-shift into one another in ways that are always surprising, but always completely appropriate to the underlying pattern the original magic formula has ordained.
The opening section, "Air" is also about water, about breathing and folding, taking in and letting out, jumping into. Entire poems breathe in as one thing, breathe out as another as when one sound shifts in a word/and summons another.
In "Handkerchief" the poet remembers a father, who sneezed and carried/this crumpled peony in his pocket.
Folding her father's handkerchiefs, warm from the dryer, clinging together/like pages of a fragile book, she goes back to the flower image as she folds
halving and halving. What if I'd just kept going?
Blossoms unblooming, reversing
to a single point
with everything inside them.
In "Night Song" she feels her way into the longing of the owl's call:
Not sorrow, but the overflow
of wanting to live, to break open
all those feathers into night …
The second section, "Body," intensifies the theme of falling apart and coming back together to live again (which recalls the ancient enactment of death by dismemberment and burial as a rite of spiritual renewal).
The first poem begins big – imagining how a whale might die at sea:
turning softly within
to something like cream, until
the skin splits, the rest
falls away.
The poet then brings the whale body onto shore.
What then, strange coat. . . .
A hill of skin
enough to hide a house.
But the poem does not end there: a man rides down the beach on a horse; a group of people stand around the carcass, waiting for him. Where is the whale? Here on the sand, yes, but at the same time forever out at sea:
bones still falling.
I'm sure of it. Slipped from the skin
they descend through the sea's green rooms …
Later in the section, in "Gift Horse," the horse itself is now dead on the beach, like an old sail blown in.
The poet, looking at the horse, feels herself changing into an animal: I begin to wear fur. I feel hairs on my skin,/between my teeth, in every breath.
Half animal now, she reaches into the horse's mouth, and behind the tongue/ that isn't there, something jiggles./Riddle, fish hook, thorn, key –
Two more observations about this amazingly coherent and luminous book:
First, at the core of all the poems, whether there are people in them or not, is a steadfast and palpable love. The poet's father is sometimes directly present, as are her two sons, and once they have been introduced, you realize they are, in some sense, inhabiting every poem. "Beyond Swans" begins
My friend once ate a swan,
the only thing she was ashamed to admit
she'd gladly do again.
And the poem, after immersing itself fully into the magnificence of this bird as cloud god, with its intimacy of weight, slips easily into a memory of the poet being tenderly carried as a sleeping child, up from the beach at night by her father,
He climbed up and over the rocks,
and my body felt loose and safe.
After which, turning back to the swan, she says
This is how I'd carry her
the one-who-ate-a-swan, who probably
never will again, whose burdens now
have changed their shapes, as burdens do.
Second, in my own reading of poetry, I especially look out for how much distance a poet is able to maintain between what she is trying to say, and what she actually ends up saying. If this distance is too close, the poem may feel "controlled," and tend to be merely descriptive or informational. If the distance is too wide, the poem risks veering off into blind alleys of personal symbols or getting trapped in a kind of feedback loop of seductive images or sounds that have detached themselves from actual experience. In Riddle, Fish Hook, Thorn, Key, I believe Kelly Terwilliger has managed – partly due perhaps to her long experience as a professional storyteller – to maintain a perfect distance, thus allowing The Mystery to be doing its essential work to keep the poems honest, beautiful, and strange.
Anita Sullivan is a poet and essayist who has been part of Oregon's literary community for 35 years. Information about her work can be found at www.anitasullivan.org
No Acute Distress by Jennifer Richter, reviewed by Tiah Lindner Raphael
No Acute Distress by Jennifer Richter
ISBN-13 #978-0809334827
Author website: www.jenniferrichterpoet.com
Reviewed by Tiah Lindner Raphael
From Disease to Ease: Transforming Pain into Resilience
Jennifer Richter's second full-length collection, No Acute Distress, was published in 2016 by Southern Illinois University Press as part of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Editor's Selection. Following her first collection, Threshold, which won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Open Competition, No Acute Distress centers around family, un/health, chronic disease, and the way in which these forces shape identity. The collection follows a single speaker in an arc of transformation, looking for the universal through the lens of intensely personal – and physical – experiences.
Structurally, the book is divided into sections – "Family History," "Admission," "Examination," "Complications," "Release" – mirroring the inpatient intake and treatment process. Medical terminology is explored in all its surrealism from the title itself to PICC lines, from visual pain scales to a list that highlights the bizarre naming of pharmaceuticals:
I've tried Depakote, Sinequan,
Zomig, Xanax, Toradol: fuck you. Fuck
your side effects, your scripts fanned out then dealt
to me for years. And Midrin, Flexeril,
Vicodin, Axert, Celebrex, Frova
that hooked me – what the fuck?
– "Eighteen Seconds"
Throughout the collection, the body is alternately cataloged with clinical efficiency or given the extreme tenderness of an intimate or caregiver, treating language-lovers to a subtle lexicon that includes femurs, veins, spines, and the wild labor of birth. In the long poem "Eighteen Seconds," Richter writes, My body's dragging like a plastic sack /of batteries: they're dead or not, can't tell.
Indeed, the body plays such a central role in No Acute Distress because Richter uses it as both a vehicle for action and agency and as a limiting force: Lately I feel my body's felt docked, as in: all aboard ("I'm Used to Feeling Like I'm Moving Even When I'm Still"). The plurality of strength and weakness, vulnerability and ferocity, is particularly noticeable in Richter's poems about children. For example in "My Daughter Brings Home Bones," she writes about the bright future of a young daughter on the cusp:
In this next decade, she'll go: head off like
today, take into her arms all she's curious about. Her line of bones
makes an arrow; sun lights them like a sign.
In contrast, in "My Boy, My Body: When I Type I Always Mix Them Up," Richter describes a sick child and the pain of parental guilt.
The surgeon finally
emerges with photos: the shadowed terrain inside my son like a
moonscape if the moon were smooth. He slides a pen from his
pocket. I fidget like I'm starved. With the tip he traces exactly
where my body, when I made Luke's, made it wrong.
The further one gets into No Acute Distress, the more one notes the role of pain, in both its physical and emotional manifestations. In these poems, Richter asks difficult questions about the nature of pain, how it shapes the individual and whether or not that pain brings people closer in shared experience or pushes them toward isolation. In "My Own Blood," the speaker discusses her mother's ill health, Our pain's the same, behind one eye. She knows /some studies trace mine back to her.
As she explores the experience of disease, one's own and that of others, Richter creates a collection permeated with a specific sense of unease, even in times of relative wellness: I'm fine if you mean satisfactory ("Eighteen Seconds"). However, by the final section of the collection, "Release," the tone of the poems changes towards one of transformation. In the poem "Imagine," the speaker mourns what has been lost in her journey:
Children's mouths sigh open in the dark. They're not surprised:
The healer touched me, and it worked. They've seen magicians –
Beneath the sheet that's pulled away, something's always gone.
However, in the next poem, "Synesthesia: The Way I See It," the speaker shows herself to be in a place of more peaceful acceptance: I'm better now;/Still trying to make sense of everything. By the final poem, "No Joke," Richter's speaker reflects on her transformation and pauses in a state of gratitude: Even the quality of the light is new. I've come so far.
Readers, too, will find themselves grateful for the experience of sitting with Richter's rich poems. Illness is a universal experience and, shaped by Richter's deft hand, one that gives readers a way into the most complex questions about body, being, and selfhood.
Tiah Lindner Raphael is an obsessive gardener and writer living in Portland, Oregon. A frequent volunteer with the journal VoiceCatcher: a journal of women's voices and visions, her poems have most recently appeared in Cloudbank, Pretty Owl Poetry and Spoon River Poetry Review.


Have a Medicare Supplement? Learn what your yearly exam costs!
For most of the above, you won't need to worry about out-of-pocket costs, because Original Medicare's Part B has you covered. However, if you happen to need more frequent testing than outlined above, it is consider a diagnostic exam, and you could be charged the Part B deductible, copays, excess charges and coinsurance.
This happens more often than you think. For example, if your doctor wants you to have your cholesterol checked every year, then you would have to pay those fees 4 out of 5 years.
The good news: The majority of Medigap plans pay all of your Part B coinsurance and copays*. However, only Medigap Plan F will cover your Part B excess charges and your part B deductible. So, if you end up need diagnostic testing, with Plan F you should have no out of pocket expenses.
If you have Medicare and Medigap, call your doctor and set up your annual exam. If you don't have Medigap yet, call one of our Senior65 licensed independent insurance agents at 800-930-7956.
With the exception of foreign travel emergency, if Medicare does not cover it, then neither will Medigap. You should contact your plan/agent to clarify how that works. If you are currently working with us, please give us a call.
Without my realizing it my doctor conducted my annual wellness visit three days shy of a calendar year. Medicare denied the bill and the doctor billed me for the higher non-Medicare cost. Was I negligent? Or is this the physician's mistake I shouldn't have to pay for?
We're sorry to read that. It is probably best if you contact Medicare directly with this issue.
I was given a "wellness exam" by my doctor when I turned 65. I asked the nurses doing it before they started if this would be covered by medicare and they said yes it would be. 9 months later I get a bill for $161 stating that the initial exam was not covered. I have Medicare Part B and Part F. Should I have to pay this bill? I told them up front that I was not going to take it if it was not covered.
I have medigap plan N. I understand I will pay $20 deductible for a doctor visit. Is this also true if it is a wellness visit?
There should be no charge for wellness.
My cholesterol is high! 245. I have to get it tested each year. I turn 65 in September. So, I'll have to pay out of pocket for my cholesterol testing each year unless Medicare pays? That seems unfair! Are they trying to kill us?!
We totally understand your concern. If you need more frequent lipid testing, Medigap has you covered. All Medigap plans pay all or part of your copays and coinsurance, and if you're concerned about covering your Part B deductible you should enroll in Medigap Plan C and F. To learn more about how Medigap covers your out of pocket costs call one of our Senior65 licensed independent insurance agents at 800-930-7956.