Tavershams Limited offers an online auction platform via auctions.tavershams.com and through our iOS & Android mobile & tablet Apps.
Please go to auctions.tavershams.com or download our App to register.
Unless otherwise stated as In-Bond, all Lots will have UK Duty at the current rate included in the Hammer price.
Lots marked as [IB] are stored 'In Bond'.
Delivery is not included in the total payable to Tavershams Limited.
BUYERS MUST ENSURE THEY READ & ACCEPT, ALL TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE, BEFORE BIDDING.
The conditions set out below are the terms on which we contract, as auctioneers, with sellers and, as agent acting on behalf of sellers, with buyers. Buyers and sellers should read the conditions carefully. Buyers' attention is drawn in particular to clause 16 which limits our liability. For ease of reference, the conditions are divided into sections: Section A gives a background to some of the terms that are used in the Conditions generally; Section B is of particular relevance to Buyers; Section C to Sellers; and Section D to both sellers and buyers.
In the conditions set out below, some terms are used regularly that need explanation.
"Forgery" means a Lot constituting an imitation originally conceived and executed as a whole with a fraudulent intention to deceive as to authorship, origin, age, period, culture or source where the correct description as to such matters is not reflected by the description in the catalogue and which at the date of the auction had a value materially less than it would have had if it had been in accordance with the description in the catalogue. Accordingly, no Lot shall be capable of being a Forgery by reason of any damage and/or restoration work of any kind.
"The Insured Value" means the amount that Tavershams Limited in its absolute discretion from time to time shall consider to be the value for which a Lot should be covered by insurance (whether or not insurance is arranged by us).
"In Bond" means the wine is currently held in a bonded warehouse, which have not passed through UK customs, with no Duty and VAT paid on them. In Bond wines can be bought, sold and delivered to other Bonded warehouses but not delivered to a private address until the Duty and VAT have been paid (at the prevailing rates).
"Live Auction" is where the auction takes place at a pre-defined time and bids are taken in a live online environment.
"Timed Auction" is where the auction is online only. Bids can be placed anytime within an advertised two week period at any point until the specific Lots has ended.
As auctioneers, we act as agent for the Seller. Unless otherwise agreed sales of goods at our auctions result in contracts made between the Seller, through our agency, with the Buyer.
Prospective buyers are strongly advised to view any goods in which they are interested, before the auction takes place. Condition reports are usually available on request. We provide no guarantee to the Buyer other than in relation to Forgeries, as explained in clause 1 of these Conditions of Business.
Statements by us in the catalogue or condition report, or made orally or in writing elsewhere, regarding the authorship, origin, date, age, size, medium, attribution, genuineness, provenance, condition or estimated selling price of any Lot are merely statements of opinion, and are not to be relied on as statements of definitive fact. Catalogue illustrations are for guidance only, and should not be relied on either to determine the tone or colour of any item or to reveal imperfections. Estimates of the selling price should not be relied on as a statement that this price is either the price at which the Lot will sell or its value for any other purpose.
Many items are of an age or nature which precludes their being in perfect condition and some descriptions in the catalogue or given by way of condition report make reference to damage and/or re-conditioning. We provide this information for guidance only and the absence of such a reference does not imply that an item is free from defects nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of any others.
All purchases "as is" and no returns will be accepted.
Label images on the website and app are meant to be representative of the item only – they do not depict the actual lot for sale.
Buyers are responsible for satisfying themselves concerning the condition of the goods and the matters referred to in the catalogue description. All lots are offered for sale in the condition they are in at the time of the auction (whether or not Bidders are in attendance at the auction).
The purchaser's inability to import any item into his destination country as a result of Government economic sanctions or other restrictions shall not justify cancellation or rescission of the sale or any delay in payment. Please satisfy yourself before bidding as to whether a lot is subject to such import restrictions, or any other restrictions on importation or exportation.
Our sales take place online. We have full control over buyer registrations for the sale and we have the right, exercisable at our complete discretion, to refuse participation to any prospective buyer to an auction.
To bid during the auction Bidders will be required to register for a digital paddle prior to the auction. We strongly encourage new bidders to pre-register with us at least 48 hours prior to the auction. Please go to auctions.tavershams.com or download our App to register or contact info@tavershams.com to complete the pre-registration process.
Prospective buyers should be aware that we reserve the right to require buyers to undergo a credit check.
When making a bid, prospective buyers will be accepting personal liability, unless it has been agreed in writing, at the time of registration, that a bidder is acting as an agent on behalf of a third party acceptable to us.
If a prospective buyer gives us instructions to bid on his behalf, by using the form provided, we shall use reasonable efforts to do so, provided these instructions are received not later than 24 hours before the sale. If we receive absentee bids on a particular Lot for identical amounts, and at auction these bids are the highest bids for the Lot, it will be sold to the person whose bid was received first. Absentee bids are undertaken subject to other commitments at the time of the sale, and the conduct of the sale may be such that we are unable to bid as requested. Since this is undertaken as a free service to prospective buyers on the terms stated, we cannot accept liability for failure to make an absentee bid. Prospective buyers should therefore always attend personally if they wish to be certain of bidding.
If prospective buyers make arrangements with us not less than 24 hours before the sale, we shall use reasonable efforts to contact the bidders to enable them to participate in bidding by telephone, but in no circumstances will we be liable to either the Seller or any prospective buyer as a result of failure to do so.
At some auctions, a currency converter will be operated, based on the rates of exchange quoted to us by XE.com at opening on the date of the auction. Bidding will however take place in sterling. The currency converter is not always reliable, and errors may occur beyond our control either in the accuracy of the Lot number displayed on the converter, or the foreign currency equivalent of sterling bids. We shall not be liable to the Buyer for any loss suffered as a result of the Buyer following the currency converter rather than the sterling bidding.
At some auctions there will be a video screen. Mistakes may occur in its operation, and we cannot be liable to the Buyer regarding either the correspondence of the image to the Lot being sold or the quality of the image as a reproduction of the original.
The auctioneer has the right at his absolute discretion to refuse any bid to advance the bidding in such manner as he may decide, to withdraw or divide any Lot, to combine any two or more Lots, to withdraw any lot, and, in the case of error or dispute, to put an item up for bidding again. All aforementioned action can also be taken after the fall of the hammer.
Bidding increments are provided pre-defined within the app and auction website.
Consignors and their agents are strictly forbidden from bidding on their own property.
All bids and lots are subject to auctioneer's discretion.
Subject to the auctioneer's discretion, the striking of his hammer marks the acceptance of the highest bid and the conclusion of a contract for sale between the Seller and the Buyer.
Tavershams Limited offers an online auction platform via auctions.tavershams.com and through our iOS & Android mobile & tablet Apps. To bid during the auction, Bidders will be required to register for a digital paddle prior to the auction. We strongly encourage new bidders to pre-register with us at least 48 hours prior to the auction.
Please go to auctions.tavershams.com or download our App to register or contact info@tavershams.com to complete the pre-registration process.
Credit card verification will be required for account set up.
Authorise Tavershams Limited to charge the credit card given in full, including all fees, for items successfully purchased in the auction.
Confirm that you are authorised to provide these credit card details to Tavershams Limited.
In addition to the Hammer Price, the Buyer must pay us a 'Buyer's Premium' at a rate of 19.5% of the Hammer Price.
Value Added Tax is always payable on any additional fees, including the Buyers Premium and Auction Fees. It may also be payable on the Hammer Price, if the Lot has been marked with a sign to that effect in the catalogue. It may be refunded on proof of export from the United Kingdom to outside of the European Union.
Unless otherwise stated, all Lots will have UK Duty at the current rate included in the Hammer price.
Lots marked as (IB) are stored 'In Bond'.
Any Buyers residing in the EU and collecting from within the EU, bidding on 'In Bond' Lots will be liable to pay UK duty at the current rate + VAT to remove the lots from our bonded warehouse. We can arrange in bond storage for Lots, on request, via The Wine Tunnels Limited. Please contact Tavershams for further details on costs involved.
Buyers from Outside the EU will not be liable for UK Duty charges if exported outside of the European Union.
The Buyer must provide us with his or her name and permanent address and, if so requested, details of the bank from which payment will be made and then pay the full amount due (comprising the Hammer Price, the Buyer's premium and any applicable value added tax) within seven days after the date of the sale. This applies even if the Buyer wishes to export the lot and an export licence is (or may be) required. The Buyer will not acquire title to the Lot until all amounts due to us have been paid to us, even in circumstances where we have released the Lot to the Buyer.
Payment may be made in the following ways: by Bank Transfer, Credit or Debit card (Visa and Mastercard are accepted). Please note credit card payments will only be accepted for one full working day following the date of the auction and at a maximum single transaction of £10,000 per invoice.
Tavershams Limited is not able to notify successful bidders by telephone.
While Invoices are sent out by email after the auction we do not accept responsibility for notifying you of the result of your bid. Buyers are requested to contact us by telephone or in person as soon as possible after the sale to obtain details of the outcome of their bids to avoid incurring unnecessary charges. Successful bidders will pay the price of the final bid plus premium plus any applicable VAT.
All costs of delivery are not included in the total payable to Tavershams Limited.
Unless we specifically agree to the contrary, we shall retain items sold until all amounts due to us, or to any other associated company of Tavershams Limited, have been paid in full.
Delivery can be arranged on your behalf and will be invoiced separately on request for mainland UK addresses. Delivery will be invoiced at cost and with a minimum of £10 + VAT, per Lot.
Tavershams accepts no responsibility for any damages or breakages as a result of a third party shipper or courrier. Buyers will be sent a delivery disclaimer if you wish us to arrange delivery on your behalf.
Buyers can collect in person or arrange a courier or shipper to collect from our warehouse, we will require a minimum of 48 hours' notice.
Invoices are sent out by email after the sale day, but we do not accept responsibility for notifying you of your bid. Bidders are requested to contact us as soon as possible after the sale to check if they were successful, and to avoid incurring charges for late payment.
We shall use all reasonable efforts to take care when handling and packing a purchased Lot but remind the Buyer that after seven days or from the time of collection the Lot is entirely at the Buyer's risk.
All packing and handling is at the Buyer's risk. Tavershams Limited will not be liable for any acts or omissions of third party packers or shippers. We recommend that you contact a professional shipping company who will advise on collection and delivery and provide a quotation. If you require a quotation after the auction then you will need to provide the shipping company with the information from your Tavershams Limited invoice. All shipments should be unpacked and checked on delivery and any discrepancies notified immediately to the shipper in question.
to arrange a resale of the Lot, publicly or privately, and, if this results in a lower price being obtained, claim the balance from the Buyer together with any costs incurred in connection with the Buyer's failure to make payment.
Where purchases are not collected within seven days after the sale, whether or not payment has been made, we shall arrange storage at the Buyer's expense, and only release the items purchased after payment has been made in full of storage, removal, insurance and any other costs incurred, together with payment of all other amounts due to us.
It is the Buyer's sole responsibility to identify, obtain, and purchase any necessary export, import, or other permit for the lot. If the Buyer requests us to apply for a licence listed below on his behalf, we shall be entitled to recover from him our disbursements and out of pocket expenses in relation to such application, together with any relevant VAT. We will not be obliged to refund any interest or other expenses incurred by the Buyer where payment is made by the Buyer despite the fact that an export licence is required. Unless otherwise agreed by us in writing, the fact that the Buyer wishes to apply for an export licence does not affect his obligation to make payment within seven days nor our right to charge interest on late payment.
6. Tavershams Limited's Role as Agent.
Our sales at public auction are undertaken as agent, on behalf of the Seller. The contract for the sale of the Lot will be between the Seller and the Buyer.
We shall charge the Seller commission at a rate agreed between the Seller and Tavershams Limited. VAT at the appropriate rate will be charged on the commission.
(f) photography charges of £7.50 + VAT per Lot advertised online, and where previously agreed charges for the catalogue photography.
(h) all applicable Duty and VAT.
Tavershams Limited will on request provide advance estimates of such expenditure. The Seller is aware that Tavershams Limited will not have control of the level of such third party charging and the Seller is advised, if concerned, to make his/its own direct advance enquiries of, for example relevant insurance, customs and vat authorities.
(a) Unless we agree otherwise, the Lot will be automatically included as consigned or entrusted goods under Tavershams Limited Policy for the amount that we from time to time consider to be its appropriate value.
(b) We shall charge the Seller a fee for the inclusion of the Lot under our policy at the rate of 1.5% of the Hammer Price. If we arrange transport, we may charge the Seller an additional fee based on the value of the Lot and the particular circumstances of the requirements for the transport to maintain the benefit of the inclusion of the Lot under Tavershams Limited policy during such transport. Although we shall suggest carriers if specifically requested, we cannot accept any liability in this respect.
(c) The Lot will retain the benefit of inclusion under Tavershams Limited policy until the expiry of seven days after the sale. If the Lot has not been sold, it will be at the Seller's risk after that time.
If the Seller specifically instructs us not to insure the Lot, it will remain at the Seller's risk at all times until the Buyer has made payment in full. The Seller will indemnify us and our employees and agents, and the Buyer (where applicable) against any claim made against us or them in respect of the Lot, however that claim may arise. The Seller will also reimburse us and them on demand for any expenses we or they may incur as a result of such a claim, even if we or they are found to have been negligent and even where such reimbursement is required of a payment made without any legal liability being proved. The Seller must notify the Seller's insurers of the terms of this clause.
This clause sets out the basis on which we shall handle the Lot and which will govern the Seller's relationship with the Buyer. If that basis proves incorrect in any way, either we or the Buyer may take legal action against the Seller.
(c) the Seller has notified us in writing a minimum of two weeks prior to the date of Auction of any material alterations to the Lot of which the Seller is aware and of any concerns expressed by third parties in relation to the ownership, condition or provenance of the Lot. If any of (a), (b) and (c) above is incorrect, the Seller will indemnify us and/or the Buyer in full on demand against all claims, costs or expenses incurred by us or the Buyer as a result, whether arising in relation to the Lot or the proceeds of sale.
(a) We shall have complete discretion as to the way the Lot is described and illustrated in the catalogue or any condition report; the place and manner of sale; the decision as to which persons should be admitted to the auction, and as to which bids should be accepted; whether expert advice should be sought, and the combination or division of goods for sale.
(b) Any estimate given, orally or in writing, is a matter of opinion only and is not an assurance in relation to the price the Lot will eventually fetch.
(c) The Seller may not withdraw the Lot from sale without our consent. However, we reserve the right to withdraw the Lot from sale at any time if (i) we have any doubt as to its provenance or authenticity or as to the accuracy of the statements made in clause 6 (a), (b) or (c) above or (ii) there is any breach of these Conditions of Business or (iii) we believe it would be improper to include the Lot in the sale.
(d) If either we or the Seller withdraw the Lot, we shall charge the Seller a fee equal to 20% of the Reserve or, if no Reserve has been agreed at that time, 20% of the Insured Value, together with any applicable VAT and insurance and other expenses.
(a) The Lot will be sold subject to the Reserve, which cannot be above the low estimate as stated unless the Reserve is agreed to in a currency other than pounds sterling and the exchange rates fluctuate between the time the Reserve is agreed and the day of the sale. In this case, unless we agree otherwise, the Reserve shall be an amount equal to the pound sterling equivalent based on the closing exchange rate on the business day immediately preceding the sale. We shall in no circumstances be liable if bids are not received at the level of the Reserve. We shall however be entitled to sell the Lot below the Reserve. If we do so, we shall be obliged to account to the Seller as if the Hammer Price was equal to the Reserve.
(b) The Seller may not bid for the Lot nor employ any person to do so on the Seller's behalf, although we shall have the right to bid on the Seller's behalf up to the amount of the Reserve.
After the sale, we shall require payment in full from the Buyer, including payment of the Buyer's premium within seven days. Provided this has occurred, we shall remit to the Seller an amount equal to the Hammer Price less all charges due from the Seller, 34 days after the date of the sale, unless we have received notice that the Lot is a Forgery (as defined in Section A of these Conditions of Business). In the event of late payment by the Buyer (more than 34 days after the sale) we shall make such remittance to the Seller within seven days of that payment by the Buyer. If for any reason we make payment to the Seller of the amount due before payment by the Buyer, we shall acquire complete ownership of and title in the Lot, save only that in the event that we are obliged to accept the Lot back from the Buyer on the basis that it is a Forgery, the Seller will refund to us the proceeds of sale paid to the Seller.
Payment will be made in pounds sterling unless the Seller instructs otherwise in writing. If the Seller requires payment other than in sterling, we shall charge the Seller for any currency costs incurred. Sale proceeds will be calculated at the rate of exchange quoted to us by XE.com. prevailing on the day of the pay-out 34 days after the date of the auction.
If the Buyer fails to pay the full amount due within 34 days after the date of sale, we shall be entitled to agree special terms on the Seller's behalf for payment, storage and insurance, and to take any steps we consider necessary to collect the amount due from the Buyer. However, we shall not be obliged either to remit the price due to the Seller ourselves, nor to take any legal proceedings on the Seller's behalf. We shall discuss with the Seller the appropriate course of action to be taken to recover the purchase price from the Buyer.
If within three months of the date of the auction the Buyer satisfies us that the Lot is a Forgery (as defined in Clause 1 of these Conditions of Business), then (i) if the Buyer at that time has not yet paid the full amount due, we shall have the right to cancel the sale and/or (ii) if we have at that time paid the Seller the whole or part of the full amount due to the Seller, then the Seller must refund to us, on demand, the total amount paid. In the latter case we shall exercise a lien over any property of the Seller under our control as security for the amount due.
If any Lot is unsold, or is not included in a sale, or is withdrawn from sale for any reason, it must be collected from us within 30 days after we send the Seller a notice requiring the Seller to collect it. If any such Lot remains uncollected for a period exceeding 30 days, a storage charge of £1 per item per day will apply and an additional charge will be made for insurance. The Seller will not be entitled to collect the Lot until all outstanding charges are met.
If any such Lot is not collected within 90 days after the date of the sale or the date of the notice referred to above (whichever occurs first), it may be disposed of by us as we see fit, which may involve its removal to a third party warehouse at the Seller's expense and its sale by public auction on such terms as we consider appropriate, including those relating to estimates and reserves. We shall then account to the Seller for the proceeds of sale, having deducted all amounts due.
We shall have the right (on a non-exclusive basis) to photograph, video or otherwise produce an image of the Lot. All rights in such an image will belong to us, and we shall have the right to use it in whatever way we see fit.
The Seller will give all relevant information about his VAT status and that of the Lot to ensure that the correct information is printed in the catalogues. Once printed, the information cannot be changed. If we incur any unforeseen cost or expense as a result of the information being incorrect, the Seller will reimburse to us on demand the full amount incurred.
The Seller will give all relevant information about the lots Customs Duty status to ensure that the correct information is printed in the catalogues. Once printed, the information cannot be changed. If we incur any unforeseen cost or expense as a result of the information being incorrect, the Seller will reimburse to us on demand the full amount incurred.
(a) We have an obligation to refund the Buyer in the circumstances set out in clause 16. However, neither the Seller nor we, nor any of our employees or agents, are responsible for the correctness of any statement as to the authorship, origin, date, age, attribution, genuineness or provenance of any Lot nor for any other errors of description or for any faults or defects in any Lot. Neither the Seller, ourselves, our employees or agents, give any guarantee in respect of any Lot. Any warranty of any kind whatsoever is excluded by this clause.
(b) Without prejudice to Clause 16(a), any claim against Tavershams Limited Ltd or the Seller by a Bidder is limited to the Purchase Price with regard to that lot. Neither Tavershams Limited nor the Seller shall under any circumstances be liable for any consequential losses.
(iii) as soon as possible following return of the Lot, the Buyer must produce evidence satisfactory to us that the Lot is a Forgery and that he is able to transfer good title to us, free from any third party claims.
In no circumstances shall we be required to pay the Buyer any more than the amount paid by him for the Lot concerned and the Buyer shall have no claim for interest.
The benefit of this guarantee is not capable of being transferred, and is solely for the benefit of the person to whom the original invoice was made out by us in respect of the Lot when sold and who, since the sale, has remained the owner of the Lot without disposing of any interest in it to any third party.
We shall be entitled to rely on any scientific or other process to establish that the Lot is not a Forgery, whether or not such process was used or in use at the date of the auction.
The copyright in all images, illustrations and written material relating to a Lot is and shall remain at all times our property and shall not be used by the Buyer nor anyone else without our prior written consent. Where the vendor provides the text, photographs and illustrations for publication the vendor warrants that use is authorised by the copyright owner and indemnifies the Company against claims and costs arising from wrongful use.
Any notice given by Tavershams Limited under these Conditions is to be in writing and, if given by post, will be taken to have been received by the addressee on the second working day after posting or, if the addressee is overseas, on the fifth working day after posting.
If any part of these Conditions of Business is found by any court to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that part may be discounted and the rest of the conditions shall continue to be valid and enforceable to the fullest extent permitted by law.
These Conditions of Business are subject to English law, which shall apply to their construction as well as to their effect. For our benefit, the Seller and the Buyer submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
In connection with the management and operation of our business and the marketing and supply of services, or as required by law, we may ask clients to provide personal information about themselves or obtain information about clients from third parties (e.g., credit information). If clients provide Tavershams Limited with information that is defined by law as "sensitive", they agree that we may use it for the above purposes. Tavershams Limited will not use or process sensitive information for any other purpose without the client's express consent. If you would like further information, would like to make corrections to your information or would prefer not to receive details of future events, please contact us: +44(0)20 39 232323 or email us, info@tavershams.com. In order to fulfil the services clients have requested, Tavershams Limited may disclose information to third parties (e.g., shippers).
These Terms & Conditions were last updated on 13th February 2019 and supersede all previous versions.


text:
Q: UIViewController loading a UINavigationController modally from a viewController and a back button
Possible Duplicate:
How to show back button on the RootViewController of the UINavigationController?

I'm currently working on an app using storyboards (supporting IOS 5.1-6).  My rootViewController is a UIViewController.  When displaying new content I'm loading different UIViewControllers modally using segue's.  On one particular view I want to load a UINavigationController with a ToolBar at the bottom so I can go back to my UIViewController by tapping the back button.
I'm a bit confused because on the NavigationController I cannot dismiss the current NavigationController because of no back button.  If I add a back button I won't see it because the NavigationController is on the top of the stack?
Can someone point my in the right direction or provide some insight here on how to dismiss this NavigationController since it was called modally?
As always, thanks in advance for the help!
Thanks!

A: You need to add the UIBarButtonItem to the UINavigationController.  Because you're presenting the new view modally, it should be a "Done/Dismiss" button (dismisses the modal VC) rather than a "Back" button (pops the view back).
When you present the modal view controller initially, you can pass a dismiss block which will be called when you press the dismiss button that dismisses the view controller.
- (void)presentViewController:(UIViewController *)viewControllerToPresent animated:(BOOL)flag completion:(void (^)(void))completion
- (void)dismissViewControllerAnimated:(BOOL)flag completion:(void (^)(void))completion

The key distinction here is the back button vs the dismiss button concept.  This is explained in Apple's HIG documentation.
UIViewController Reference

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


We understand that no two jobs are the same, our production reflects this.
Thievery is a team of multi talented, passionate creatives, each bringing unique skills to the suite.
We produce high quality visual solutions inspired by our love of art and beauty. We thrive on a challenge and love nothing more than working directly with a client to achieve this.
If you're looking for video, photography or motion graphics get in touch!


The fish are biting several different baits fairly well. The underspin with a 3" swimbait, jerkbait, wobble head,,,,,etc. I do not mention the crankbait because the bottom slime is a nuisance in my area. The fish can be caught shallow or deep, but they seem to be grouped up. When you find them, you can get multiple bites in a very short distance. The WT was 49-52 this morning and I assume it warms up a few degrees in the afternoon on nice sunny days. For me, the jerkbait will produce but the quality is lacking. The fish pictured below weighed 5.13 and was caught this morning on a underspin.
still on the big girls I see , they are so FAT !!
Time to get out there for sure, nice fish and report.
The fish pictured below weighed 5.13 and was caught this morning on a underspin.
What a toad! Congrats on catching that big girl!
I fished the underspin this morning and had 12 keepers (10 LM, 1 SM, 1 K). The best 5 about 18 lbs. The Federation boys flew by me first thing this morning and I am sure the leader of that tournament will have a hefty bag for day one. WT 53-55. The LM have made a big move and the KVD bash should be great.
I fished the underspin this morning and just caught one fish, but at least it was a good one (5lbs). The lake is super busy so I just stayed in one small area. I know the fish are staging because I have seen them and now I also know they will ignore my offerings. The picture was taken in the bottom of the boat because there were a few other boats around me.
Nice fish! I'm surprised that someone didn't mug you and take that fish! I have never seen so many boats in my life, up here on the James!


This labor day weekend we learned that the US economy created no new jobs in August, resulting in a 2.2% drop in the stock market on Friday.
After looking at the data in historic perspective, I want to point out some of the dynamics taking place and give you a slightly more positive perspective.
Since May of 2009 when the recession hit hardest (we were at 9.4% unemployment), the US economy has started to transform. Education and health services jobs are up 4.2%, professional and business services jobs are up 2.8% (this is a leading indicator), leisure and hospitality jobs are up .4%, and government jobs are down 3.4%. Manufacturing and construction jobs have stabilized this month.
One of the biggest reasons for the continued downturn in jobs is the drop in government employment. During the last two years, the % of US employment which works for the government got as high as 17.5% (in June of 2010). This has now dropped back to 16.7%, which is ultimately a good thing. While the government stimulus certainly creates rapid employment, ultimately it crowds out private sector growth so in my mind the shift from government to private sector employment is a positive sign.
The data shown here points out how the US economy has changed.
Over the last two years we have shifted jobs toward health and education (aging of the country), professional and business services (growth in small business again), and away from construction and manufacturing. Manufacturing is starting to recover and real-estate is clearly still undergoing transformation. It is encouraged to hire reputable property valuers while entering the real- estate market during this time.
All our conversations with client have revolved around how to globalize, retain and recruit top talent, and drive greater levels of engagement in their teams. I believe most business leaders have simply taken a "wait and see" approach to the economy (after the debt limit fiasco in Washington) but are still planning for global growth.
Ultimately the biggest driver of US economy will be the transformation of skills and re-education of the workforce. Most companies we talk with today are "education and training" zealots – looking for people with the right skills now. Ultimately most companies understand that if they cannot find those skills in the market (and new sourcing tools are making this easier), they have to build them internally – hence the continued growth in L&D spending this year.


text:
Wednesday 14 September
What do Vladimir Putin's losses in Ukraine mean for his standing in Russia? Plus: clashes on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, the EU's plans for a European Media Freedom Act and the return of the annual Society of Women Artists exhibition.
Clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Fighting has broken out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in some of the worst clashes since 2020. We find out what is causing the tensions between the ex-Soviet nations.
Share chapter 1
News and comment from Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
Wednesday 1 February at 07:00 UK time
The Globalist - latest episodes
Monocle's US Editor, Christopher Lord, joins us from Seattle as Boeing delivers the last 747 that it will ever build. Plus: how did New Zealand set the inflation target rate for the world? And what can we learn from Barnes…
US slaps sanctions on a Chinese company for allegedly supplying satellite images to the Wagner Group. Plus: Russia's shifting focus after Western powers promise tanks for Ukraine, and Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg visits…
Friday 27 January
Today on the show, we unpack the ethical conundrum faced by Ukrainian journalists who must choose between professional duty and patriotism. Plus, India's Modi documentary ban, the latest Nordic news, and Walt Disney turns…
Thursday 26 January
The reaction in Germany to Olaf Scholz's decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Plus: classified documents are found at the home of Mike Pence, North Korea goes into lockdown and conceptual artist Marina Abramović on…
Wednesday 25 January
As Finland's foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, hints that the country might have to go it alone with its Nato application, we give you the latest from Helsinki. Plus: Lebanon's former prime minister faces charges over the…
We report on the EU's new sanctions against Iran. Plus: a look at South Africa's worsening energy crisis and controversial plans to hold joint naval drills with Russia and China, the latest fashion news, and this year's…
We report on new military support for Ukraine from western allies and on continuing protests in Peru. We also bring you the business news and, given the latest layoffs in the technology sector, ask, "Has the bubble burst…
Defence leaders from dozens of countries and Nato meet at Ramstein Air Base to discuss arming Ukraine. Plus: China's latest censorship crackdown and the ongoing political crisis in Lebanon.
Jacinda Ardern makes a surprise resignation announcement. Plus: Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky's public statements about the war in Ukraine, the latest culture news and the Tokyo baseball stadium that's under threat…
How does Russia plan to change its military strategy in Ukraine? Plus: the resignation of Vietnam's president, the latest art news and why a US county is still recounting ballots from the 2020 election.
We head to Davos for a special show from the World Economic Forum. Plus: Russia and Belarus begin joint military exercises, and what next for Iranian-UK relations after the execution of Alireza Akbari?
The latest on the conflict in Ukraine and the Russian assault on Soledar. Plus: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accuses Jair Bolsonaro's allies of aiding the attack on Congress in Brasília, Czech citizens vote on a new president…
What's on the agenda for today's meeting between the US president, Joe Biden, and Japan's prime minister, Fumio Kishida? Plus: voters in India's contested Kashmir region will soon be able to vote for the first time; the…
Russia claims control of Soledar but Ukraine remains silent. Meanwhile, is China pulling away from Russia and turning towards Europe? Plus: Pakistan receives a pledge of $9bn (€8.4bn) from the international community and…
Tensions mount in Iran over imminent executions. Plus: Calls grow in Peru for President Boluarte to resign; Australia's outback is hit by "a one-in-100-years flood"; political momentum grows towards reaching agreement on…
Monocle on Design590

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
in Media, Music News
Zendaya Releases Cover of John Legend's Red-Hot "All of Me"
by Brian Cantor Apr 10, 2014, 11:38 pm
Here is a song you will definitely want to put on "Replay."
Zendaya, known for her work on "Shake it Up" and a second place run on "Dancing with the Stars," has collaborated with Kurt Hugo Schneider and Max Schneider on a cover of John Legend's "All of Me."
Incorporated into a cinematic, yet low-key music video, the cover was released Thursday as part of a "surprise" the singer-actress teased on her Twitter account. While not an instant blockbuster–it has thus far garnered 7,023 views–it has received strong marks from her fans.
Strategic in nature, the video serves to keep Zendaya's musical profile intact as her debut single "Replay" falls from its peaks on the American sales and radio charts. It also associates her brand with what is arguably the hottest song in the country–one that could possibly overtake Pharrell's "Happy" for number one in the coming weeks.
The video follows:
all of mejohn legendkurt hugo schneidermax schneiderreplayzendaya
John Legend, Taylor Swift Perform "All of Me" During "1989 World Tour" Concert
Live "Happy," "All of Me" Recordings Up for Pop Solo Grammy
Hot 100: "All of Me" Stays #1, Iggy Azalea Hits New Peak, Jackson Arrives
"Ain't it Fun" Becomes Paramore's First Top 10, John Legend Tops Hot 100
John Legend Finally Does It; "All of Me" Hits #1 on Hot 100
in Music News, New Music
Pharrell Again Leads Hot 100, Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" Goes Top 10
More From: Media
One Direction Debuts "You & I" Video, Single Impacts Radio Next Week
Backstage Look: "Glee" Tackles STDs, Weight Gain in "Tested"
First Look: "Scandal" Finale Brings Election, Bomb Conclusion
First Look: It's "Opening Night" For Glee's "Funny Girl"
New Radio Songs: "Forever," "Ten Feet Tall," "GUY" Impact Top 40
Video: Sky Ferreira Performs Standout "I Blame Myself" on "Tonight Show"
Apr 5, 2014, 2:41 pm
Ratings: "The Americans'" Audience Falls to Another Series Low
"American Idol" Eliminates Malaya Watson, Only Two Girls Remain


text:
Q: Combining DML, Callouts and Triggers gives CalloutException When running unit tests, I'm currently getting:

System.CalloutException: You have uncommitted work pending. Please commit or rollback before calling out

The issue is that I have a trigger that runs a callout after account update. So I need to set the mock callout before anything would update the account. The current test works if I comment out the second custom object logic (i.e. the second line would cause the trigger to fire again). However, if I send update accounts two separate times, it throws the above error.
My current approach is the following:
static testMethod void testNow() {
    Test.startTest();
    Test.setMock(HttpCalloutMock.class, new ThisIsMyMockCallout());

    List<Account> testAccs = makeNewAccounts(1,10); // Makes list of 1 account
    insert testAccs; // This works without mock since it doesn't update acc

    List<CustomObject> customObjs = makeNewCustomObs(testAccs);
    insert customObjs; // This needs mock as it updates account due to relation

    List<CustomObjectA> customObjsA = newMakeCustomObsA(customObjs,testAccs);
    insert customObjsA; // This needs mock as it updates account due to relation
    Test.stopTest();
    // A bunch of assertEquals tests
}

Any help would be great!

A: It appears to me, the issue that you're having is because of where you've located Test.startTest() in your test method. As I understand your description, you're still creating test data at the beginning of your method.
static testMethod void testNow() {

    Test.setMock(HttpCalloutMock.class, new ThisIsMyMockCallout());

    List<Account> testAccs = makeNewAccounts(1,10); // Makes list of 1 account
    insert testAccs; // This works without mock since it doesn't update acc

    Test.startTest();
    List<CustomObject> customObjs = makeNewCustomObs(testAccs);
    insert customObjs; // This needs mock as it updates account due to relation

    List<CustomObjectA> customObjsA = newMakeCustomObsA(testAccs);
    insert customObjsA; // This needs mock as it updates account due to relation
    Test.stopTest();
    // A bunch of assertEquals tests
}

That having been said, it also appears that the last two lines, you reference need the mock because they update the relation and fire the trigger. Each would fire the trigger separately. If that's the case, you would presumably use two methods to cover the testing of your trigger; one for each of these. The first method would cover the insert of customOjbs and the 2nd method would cover the insert of customObsA.
The above assumes they don't need to be in the order you have them in your test method. If they do, then I believe you'd need to begin Test.startTest in your final test class after the insert of customObjs rather than before, using the mock as a response to it before the insert of the final list of records.


From Good ... to Great!
Business wasn't always the way. The current place of corporate leaders as the chief models for professional success in the eyes of college graduates (especially those from prestigious institutions) has not been a permanent fact of American society, but rather has developed over the last several decades. Even as recently as the 1950's people would sort of look at you funny when you told them you were going to go to business school. McKinsey visionary Marvin Bower is the perfect example. In Elizabeth Edersheim's biography of Bower, he talks about leaving the law firm Jones, Day, Reavis, & Pogue to go to the Harvard Business School, and everyone telling him he was throwing his career down the tubes. In reality, the ascendance of business success as the ultimate personal achievement in America probably started around the time of the Rockefellers, Carnegies and other great industrialists, but the point is that prestige has not always been associated with business. All one needs to do to understand alternative ways in which talented leaders have thought about personal success is look back to the heroes of the late 19th/early 20th centuries: Holmes, Darwin, James -- intellects, academics, practitioners. Promising students graduating from elite academic institutions aimed to be like these guys, not like the businessmen of their day.
But right now, I do believe success in business is the expectation placed upon graduates with exceptional academic credentials. This belief stems largely from personal experience, but also from a brief and unscientific survey of various alumni lists and University Career Services websites. Further, I believe that it is expectations -- and the subsequent lauding of 'achievements' in the field of business -- that send most students down this career path, rather than a burning desire for personal financial gain.
If we want to drive social change through the nonprofit sector over the coming decades, we must address this circumstance of society. We must show them that success in and dedication to work on issues of great social value is every bit as important as success in and dedication to work on issues of great economic value. We must show them that creating social value demands the same quantitative work, intellectual horsepower and organizational skill that today's most successful for-profit endeavors demand. And we must show them that challenges and rewards of working across communities here in America are every bit as profound as working across international borders. In short, we must consider nonprofit work an "achievement" by the standards of any other avocation. Nonprofit work is not charity; it is not service; and it is not simple alms-giving. It is a profession.
This does not, by any means, require that we bring "business values" to the social sector. Recently, management guru Jim Collins' published a socially-directed monograph based on his best-selling Good to Great. In that book, he says flat-out, "We must reject the idea -- well-intentioned, but dead wrong -- that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become 'more like a business.' Most businesses -- like most of anything else in life -- fall somewhere between mediocre and good."


Getting the best Hyundai replacement or aftermarket Car Body Parts is important to you and to us. We want you to be completely happy with your Car Body Parts purchase online.
You can buy Intake Manifold Plenum, Shift Boot, Reflector or Brake Light Switch from us knowing that you are getting the best quality in aftermarket replacement Hyundai Car Body Parts.
Looking for a local Hyundai Car Body Parts in the Island Grove, South Daytona Beach, Parq Terranova, Briggsdale others region? You do not need to shop anywhere else for Hyundai Car Body Parts bargains. You have found the right Car Body Parts store!
Are you concerned about your privacy? You will be secure when you are shopping with our certified Hyundai Car Body Parts online. We are strongly committed to protecting your privacy. All you need to do is find the Car Body Parts you are looking for in our Hyundai catalog and proceed to the checkout.


text:
Tag Archives: writer's life
According to Mark: Penelope Lively
"People, Diana had long ago realised, are what you are up against in life, especially those nearest and dearest to you."
Biographer Mark Lamming has taken the high road with his career. At Cambridge he considered an academic career, but he wanted to write. He knew he was not a novelist but that he wanted "to live by writing." So pushing aside the thoughts of a secure career and a pension, and aided by a "small income" from inherited money, he launched into a writing career as a biographer, essayist, and critic. When Penelope Lively's novel According to Mark opens Mark, now facing middle age, has established a modest, but respectable career, picking up work here and there. His collection of Somerset Maugham letters and his biography of Wilkie Collins have firmly established his career and now he's beginning a biography of Gilbert Strong, a mostly forgotten writer who produced "awful" novels, essays and biographies.
Working through the trustees of the Strong estate, Mark travels from London to Strong's home: Dean Close which now operates as a garden centre and is managed by Strong's literary executor, granddaughter, Carrie. Due to a somewhat chaotic childhood, Carrie finds solace in gardening, and she doesn't function well socially or with relationships—the exception to this being her relaxed relationship with her business partner, Bill.
Carrie is not a reader, and she has little interest in the Strong biography. She has only sketchy memories of her grandfather, and when Mark first meets Carrie, he finds her disconcerting; "there was a provoking passivity about her." Mark has spent the last 18 months studying every nook and cranny of Strong's life, and he expects Carrie to show at least some interest.
A clock loudly ticked. Mark picked up his mug and put it down again; the coffee was fairly undrinkable. An occupational hazard; one of Strong's former mistresses had given him food poisoning with take-away kebabs. He gazed at Carrie's odd, rather childish face, and looked away. Green eyes, with little brown flecks. "It must have been different here then, with this place in full swing. All those weekend parties. Cary and people. I dare say you sat on his knee."
"Whose knee?"
"Joyce Cary's."
"No," said Carrie.
"You could have done," said Mark, with faint irritation. "It's chronologically quite possible, and he was a friend of your grandfather's."
"Well, I didn't I'm afraid. Would you like some more coffee?"
"No," said Mark hastily.
"They had servants and all that then," Carried offered. "Him and Susan. Susan was the person her married after grandmother died."
Mark sighed. "Yes. Quite."
Carrie mentions two trunks of letters that are in the attic. Mark was unaware of this extra material and it means that his project will take much longer to complete. So he begins visiting Dean Close ostensibly to catalogue and read the letters but he finds himself drawn to Carrie. Mark's loyal wife, Diana, who works in an art gallery, sniffs there's something afoot. …
I enjoyed the book–especially the sections about Mark's life as a biographer and his quest to find the 'truth.' He doesn't realise that he's going through a crisis of sorts. He's spending his life writing about the lives of others–sacrificing to produce these books, and here he is devoting years to a writer who is forgotten–as he himself will be forgotten. Mark's relationship with his wife, Diana is interesting. They've made sacrifices to lead this life they've chosen together, and they complement each other. For this reader, the character of Carrie was slightly problematic and unrealistic. So not my favourite Lively but good.
Filed under Fiction, Lively, Penelope
Tagged as biographer, British fiction, writer's life
The Body of Jonah Boyd: David Leavitt
David Leavitt's The Body of Jonah Boyd is narrated by Judith "Denny" Denham, a secretary who's having an affair with her psychology professor boss, Dr. Ernest Wright. It's the 60s and the story is told in retrospect thirty years later by Denny, and while it's her story, it's also the story of the Wright family.
It's sticky enough that Denny is having an affair (one in a long series of affairs) with her married boss, but the entanglement doesn't stop there. Nancy Wright, Ernest's wife, "found" Denny at the hairdresser's and insists on inviting her home as a "four-hand partner" for the piano. The idea is that Denny is supposed to replace Nancy's former piano partner and best friend Anne. Denny accepts and so begins her relationship with the Wright family. Denny is frequently a guest at the Wrights' home, and her invitation to Thanksgiving is secured. On weekends, Ernest and Denny often scurry up to his office above the garage for some gropey sex, while Nancy and the Wright children: Mark, Daphne and Ben are in other parts of the house. Denny doesn't have a problem with all these complications and claims to keep her relationships with Nancy and Ernest cleanly separate, stating that "my friendship with Nancy was in certain crucial ways remote from my relationship with her husband." But is that true?
When Thanksgiving 1969 rolls around, the Wrights' oldest child, Mark is a draft dodger in Canada, and that's the Thanksgiving that Nancy's best friend, Anne and her second husband, Jonah Boyd come to visit.
Denny, whose role was to replace Anne at the piano, has heard so many nauseatingly positive things about Anne that the reality is a shock.
Anne was wearing a wool coat that had been torn near the pocket and then clumsily restitched, and she carried an enormous, shapeless handbag. She had shaggy red hair that was graying at the roots, nicotine-stained teeth, a thick middle. Also her eye makeup was smudged in a way that suggested she had been weeping.
All at once, a sensation of misplaced triumph welled up in me. This Anne was a far cry from the willowy creature Nancy had described. Certainly they could never have shared clothes! I admit, my rival's sordid demeanor–not to mention the expression of concern and disappointment that claimed Nancy's face as she gave Anne the once-over–sparked in me an unexpected confidence, and I shook Anne's hand heartily.
There are obvious marital problems between Jonah and Anne, and while Anne seethes and drinks too much, Jonah sets out to charm everyone. The fact that he succeeds so easily seems to bother Anne, and so she airs some of the marital dirty laundry. It's not a particularly pleasant evening–especially when, after Jonah gives a reading of his soon-to-be-published novel, teenager Ben insists on reading some of his angst-ridden poetry.
It's an evening to remember, and as Denny narrates the story we learn about the terrible things that subsequently happened to several of the people who attended Thanksgiving that evening. Years pass and then Denny runs into Ben again. …
Every story must begin somewhere and end somewhere. The author (or the narrator) takes a cookie cutter to life and offers readers just that piece. A large portion of Denny's time must have existed outside of the Wrights but it seems that they are the most important part of her life. And what a tangled relationship she has with this family. At times she seems to wish herself Nancy's daughter, and she admits "yearning" "to have been Daphne." But when you put that in the context of Denny's affair with Ernest, it seems rather incestuous–especially when there are a few times she sees her affair with Ernest as a sort of revenge against Nancy's slights. Then there is another time Denny admits that she's "besotted" with Nancy. The Wrights seem to have various "needs" for Nancy too, so the relationship between Nancy and the Wrights isn't a one-way street.
This was a reread. I was struck this time by Ernest's philosophy to life. Ernest believes that "what people get, most of the time, is what they want," and this philosophy seems to work itself into the later relationship between Danny and Ben. I wasn't as convinced by the character of Denny this time around. This is a young woman who has a series of affairs with married men, yet asks nothing from them. Given her feelings about various members of the Wright family, somehow she seems needy and not the cool I-need-my-space serial mistress type.
Filed under Fiction, Leavitt David
Tagged as american fiction, campus life, family relationships, psychologist, writer's life
Early Work: Andrew Martin
"Most of my friends were superficial and unpleasant."
I'm a sucker for certain literary themes: and the flailing writer/academic is a great favourite, so Andrew Martin's debut novel, Early Work, drew me in. Protagonist Peter Cunningham is supposedly working on a novel, but … it's not working out well.
The novel opens with Peter attending a party at the home of a "New Age-leaning woman named Anna whose family, through what specific brand of plunder I don't know, owned a gigantic house out in horse country."
Anna was magnificently curly-haired and just shy of troublingly thin, with a squished cherubic face that seemed to promise PG-13 secrets. She's grown up in the area and had recently moved back for somewhat mysterious reasons, possibly involving a now ex-boyfriend's arrest for dealing prescription drugs. She radiated the kind of positivity that suggested barely suppressed rage.
Anna's "family compound" has the look of a "nouveau hunting lodge," and Peter, who arrives solo as his long-term girlfriend, medical student Julia, is working, gets a good look at one of the guests through a kitchen window. The woman, Peter soon learns, is Leslie, and once they meet, an immediate banter flows:
Leslie grinned at me, the full-toothed thing, which, maybe, was the first tentative step into the abyss of the rest of my life, or whatever you want to call, it. Love.
Leslie is also a writer, and so the connections between Peter and Leslie are solidified. Peter disregards his current relationship and finds himself competing for Leslie's attention over the dinner table. Quite soon, it's clear that Peter's relationship with Julia is problematic. He doesn't care if she's "thinking about someone else," during sex, and while Peter considers that he's "intellectually compatible" with Julia, he admits that "neither of us quite expected not to" have sex with "anyone else for the rest of our lives."
Dig a little deeper and there are failed ambitions on all sides here. Julia writes poetry, but has plunged into a medical career. Peter met Julia in college, but then he later moved onto Yale and discovered that the PhD program was, for him, a horrible mistake. Deciding "novelists don't need PhDs. They don't need shit," he dropped out and moved to Virginia to join Julia who was attending med school. The plan was that Peter would write the Great Novel, so as a couple, they've become each other's complex excuses: his drop-out school war chest money supported Julia, and he will have the literary career Julia has turned away from. But as we all know, it's just not that easy to write a novel let alone sell it:
the book was really a handy metaphor for tinkering with hundreds of word documents that bore a vague thematic resemblance to each other, but would never cohere into the, what, saga of fire and ice that were they imagining.
So this is why we find Peter teaching at a women's correctional facility and chafing at his relationship with Julia.
I enjoyed parts of this novel and its take on career failures and failures in love. Peter's voice was sharp and witty but occasionally grating. The main problem was that I really disliked the foul-mouthed Leslie and failed to see her charm. She's a walking disaster (one of Woody Allen's Kamikaze Women), but then when was love ever logical? Beyond that, the ending was wobbly, and it was difficult to connect with the characters who are a fairly privileged, vacuous spoiled lot.
Filed under Fiction, Martin Andrew
Tagged as american fiction, writer's life
Life Sentences: Laura Lippman
Cassandra Fallows, soon to be 50 years-old, has two immensely popular, best-selling memoirs under her belt. The first, "My Father's Daughter," reveals her childhood, youth, and ends with the failure of her first marriage. The second book, "The Eternal Wife" tells how Cassandra's second marriage went down the toilet, flushed with innumerable extramarital affairs. So fast forward to Cassandra's third book: this one is fiction and it's not selling well. Everyone connected with Cassandra urges her to return to non-fiction as that seems to be her forte.
Cassandra happens to catch a news story which refers to a crime that occurred decades before involving Calliope Jenkins, Cassandra's former classmate, an afro-american woman whose baby disappeared. Since Calliope's first child was removed by Child Protective Services previously, the baby's disappearance, along with Calliope's history of drug use, takes on sinister overtones. Calliope refused to talk, and the baby was never found. Calliope served 7 years in prison and was subsequently released. Cassandra's next book begins to form in her head–not exactly "true crime" as she explains:
I don't know what I'm writing, but there's clearly a story there. She was one of us once. Not part of our gang, but a classmate. I want to figure out how the path deviates, how we end up in middle age, safe and snug, and she flounders so horribly.
So New York based Cassandra returns to her old stomping grounds, Baltimore, to uncover "the accidents of fate, the choices and temptations we faced." Soon Cassandra is contacting former classmates: Donna, Tisha and Fatima. To complicate matters Donna is now married to Tisha's brother who was Calliope's one-time lawyer. Cassandra also tries to talk to Calliope's first lawyer, the flinty Gloria, and Teena, the detective who worked on Calliope's case. People connected with the case were forever tainted by it and the buzz is:
That case, it's like a curse, isn't it? Like something you'd see in an old movie.
Memory, truth and perception lie at the heart of this novel. I've read several Lippman titles, and Life Sentences is the most impressive. Cassandra has 'bared all' in her memoirs, but those memoirs are written according to her perceptions. She may have written 'her story,' but when she includes other people as bit players, some are offended. According to Cassandra's childhood friend, Tisha, Cassandra "thought everything was about her. She's incapable of telling a story where she's not at the center."
While on one level, Life Sentences is about what happened to Calliope Jenkins' baby, it's really about the stories we tell–the stories we tell ourselves, our interpretations of events. Those stories can remain safely in our heads, but when we air them to other people, especially other people who may 'appear' in those stories, the 'truth' slides into parallel, yet deviating, narratives. At one point, for example Cassandra finds herself questioning whether or not a publisher truly doesn't remember meeting her (and turning down her first book) or whether he's just trying to save face.
Early in the book, a woman attends one of Cassandra's readings and asks why she gets to tell a story involving real people, and that is yet another issue that floats to the surface of this multi-layered novel: why should Cassandra tell Calliope's story? How can she possibly do that? There are many times when Cassandra tries to pull Calliope from the fog of her childhood memories, and it's clear that she did not know Calliope as other than a figure in the same room. Cassandra may have bared her own life to public exposure, but even then it's through a lens of her construction. Does she have the moral right to co-opt Calliope's story?
A middle-aged, twice divorced white Cassandra returning to her old stomping grounds and meeting her former Afro-American friends makes for fascinating reading. While Cassandra set out to tell Calliope's story–whatever that may be–she runs headlong into what happened to several other women who were connected to Calliope's case.
The solution to the mystery was the least satisfactory part of this otherwise interesting, highly readable book. The novel is populated with memorable characters including Calliope's first lawyer, "famously, riotously deliberately seedy," Gloria, former detective Teena, "if this was what pretty could become, what age could take away from you," now permanently damaged physically and mentally who still considers the Calliope Jenkins case her 'bête noire,' and Cassandra's philandering father, her "psychic tar pit," a man who shapes his infidelities into a palatable narrative and massive love story.
Ignore the cover. It does the book no favours.
(The book includes a note from the author in which she explains that the Calliope Jenkins case is loosely based on a real crime.)
TBR stack.
Tagged as american crime fiction, Baltimore, memory, perception, truth, writer's life
Difficult Women: David Plante
"You like difficult women, don't you?"
David Plante's non fiction book Difficult Women chronicles the author's relationships with three women: Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, and finally, Germaine Greer. What do these three women have in common? They are/were 'difficult,' according to the author, and by the time the book is finished, many questions are raised, not just about the relationships recorded in the book, but relationships in general. Why are we attracted to some people and not others? What do we seek in relationships? Why do we expect people to give us what we want when this so obviously won't happen?
It's 1975 when the author goes to a shabby, depressing hotel in South Kensington for a meeting with Jean Rhys. Jean Rhys is now elderly, over 80, in trouble with her taxes, and a heavy drinker (no surprise there). The author, David Plante, is there in a professional capacity and ends up helping piece together Jean Rhys's autobiography. It's not an easy job. Jean's mind wanders, she's cantankerous, and manipulative. Anyone who's read any of Jean Rhys's novels shouldn't be surprised to find the descriptions of an elderly Rhys depressing.
This section of the book raises ethical/moral questions. Jean Rhys is a wreck but should this be written about? But why not? The details of her dodgy make up seem cruel, but then again, are writers, esteemed or otherwise, sacrosanct?
As her hands were shaky, her make-up was hit-and-miss; there were patches of thick beige powder on her jaw and on the side of her nose, her lipstick was as much around her lips as on them, the marks of the eye pencil criss-crossed her lids, so I thought she might easily have jabbed it in her eyes. But the eyes were very clear and blue and strong, and the angles of her cheekbones sharp.
Jean Rhys, naturally, has many stories to tell, mostly between drinks. It's almost an entirely one-way relationship with Jean talking and the author listening. At one point he mentions his mother:
"How can you like listening to me talk on and on?"
I said, "I used to listen to my mother-"
The corner of her upper lip rose and her face took on the hardness of an old whore who, her eyes red with having wept for so long, suddenly decides to be hard. "Your mother?" she snapped. "I don't want to hear about your mother."
I shut up. I thought: What am I doing here, listening to her? Is it because she is a writer? I am not sure I have read all her books, not even sure I admire her greatly as a novelist. Is it because I want to know her so well that I will know her better than anyone else, or know at least secrets she has kept from everyone else, which I will always keep to myself? If so, why?
The relationship with Jean remains difficult. There are times when the author thinks about walking away, but he always returns but can never really pin down Jean's true opinions. He never infiltrates Jean's deeper, more intimate memories; she's locked in the past, but it's a version of the past which wavers under examination.
I think of how Hardy was protected by his wife, Florence, with a very specific presentation given to the world. After a certain age, mentally fragile people probably should stop giving interviews or limit access unless it's under some protective supervision. (Of course, some people shouldn't open their mouths in public, period, but that's a different story entirely.)
The second section concerns Sonia Orwell. If the section on Jean Rhys is sad, the section on Sonia Orwell is depressing. The author describes Sonia's tendency, as he sees it, to continually censure others–like some moral policeman. Sonia is a woman of very strong opinions, and over the course of the relationship, the author continually sees Sonia become involved in the problems of others–in a voyeuristic fashion, and when she becomes interested in someone, because of their problems, then she becomes a moral champion whose understanding cannot be matched.
She said, the hardness now, in her voice, "That's nothing to joke about. It's a very sad affair, a very very sad affair, and not to be treated frivolously."
"I"m sorry," I said.
My flowers in her hand, she said, "No one seems to understand what happens in human relationships, and the sadness of it all. It isn't anything to joke about. It really isn't."
Sonia also, according to the author, has the habit of picking a "victim" at her parties, "usually a male," and then this person is belittled every time he opens his mouth. Again the author seeks a deeper, more personal relationship but it isn't forthcoming. Sonia comes across as humourless, but the author persists in seeking out her company even though the results are mostly aversive.
The final, highly entertaining, section features Germaine Greer. The first view we have of Germaine Greer is not pleasant as she swears like a sailor at a toddler who isn't fingerpainting 'properly.' To be perfectly honest, I came to this section without much prior knowledge of this feminist icon, but I left feeling impressed. What a woman! Yes, probably too much, too competent, too capable, too intelligent, too demanding for any one man, but the force of life bubbling under the surface of Germaine's skin is evident. The author travels with Germaine Greer to Italy and later meets her in Tulsa, Oklahoma (of all places). In one scene, she chops up a testicle for her cats, in another she talks in Italian about shock absorbers, in another possesses all the technical terms to order up, in Italian, the "proper bricks" for a dovecot she designed. There's a term for the "renaissance man, " but what's the female version?
I recognized that she was always doing something other in her mind, and as intense as her concentration was in what she was doing, there was an air about her of considering, more intensely, something else. I had the vivid impression from her of, at some high level, trying to sort out, not her personal problems , but other people's problems.
Germaine clearly doesn't tolerate boors or fools, and milquetoasts had better steer clear. While the author does achieve a personal relationship with Germaine, it's not quite what he expected, and although these portraits are of three very different women, somehow they reflect back an image of the man who wrote them.
So one man's view of three women. I wonder what they thought of him? The best biographies offer multiple opinions from multiple relationships. Ask ten different people their opinions of anyone, and you'll get ten different answers. But here we have memoirs from a man who knew three incredible women. The book was apparently notorious in its day for its backstabbing betrayals. It's probably less astonishing now, thanks to the invasive times we live in, but it's still a fascinating read.
Filed under Non Fiction, Plante David
Tagged as New York Review Books, non-fiction, writer's life
Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
"A writer's all, Alice, is not taken up by the real world. There is something left over: enough for them to build these alternative, finite realities."
Fay Weldon's book Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen takes the epistolary form from the author to her niece, Alice. I knew with the glorious combo of Jane Austen and Fay Weldon, two authors (and women) I admire, I couldn't go wrong. And I was correct; this is delightful, humorous read, and yes while it's about Jane Austen, the book is about a lot more than that. Weldon gives us her take on what it means to be a writer, what is means to be a reader, as well as sundry tips to Alice, poor girl, who seems, seen through this one-sided correspondence, to be a bit overwhelmed by … life. And who better to set this young woman straight than her Aunt Fay?
The 16 letters from Aunt Fay (inspired by letters written by Austen to her niece) appear to have started with 18-year-old Alice having a crisis. She's at university and finds Jane Austen "boring, petty and irrelevant." Not only does Fay Weldon urge Alice to continue reading, separating entertainment from enlightenment, but argues for the importance of reading literature as perhaps the one thing that can save in us in this life. And thus begins a marvellous description of The City of Invention:
Those who founded it, who built it, house by house, are the novelists, the writers, the poets. And it is to this city that the readers come, to admire, to learn, to marvel and explore.
Let us look around the city: become acquainted with it, make it our eternal, our immortal home. Looming over everything, of course, heart of the City, is the great Castle Shakespeare. You see it whichever way you look. It rears its head into the clouds, reaching into the celestial sky, dominating everything around. It's a rather uneven building, frankly. Some complain it's shoddy, and carelessly constructed in parts, others grumble that Shakespeare never built it anyway, and a few say the whole thing ought to be pulled down to make way for the newer and more relevant, and this prime building site released for younger talent: but the Castle keeps standing through the centuries, and build as others may they can never achieve the same grandeur.
Fay Weldon argues that "books can be dangerous," and there's the example of Alice's mother who suffered "an overdose of Georgette Heyer" which led to her marriage to Alice's father. There's friction between Fay, her sister and brother-in-law, and disapproval of Aunt Fay's relationship with Alice seeps through the pages. Over the course of the letters, we see slivers of this disapproval as well as extremely witty glimpses of Alice's life as she converts her love affair with a married professor into writing a book.
Who reads Arnold Bennett now, or Sinclair Lewis? But perhaps soon, with any luck, they'll be rediscovered. 'How interesting,' people will say, pushing open the creaking doors. 'How remarkable! Don't you feel the atmosphere here? So familiar, so true: the amazing masquerading as the ordinary? Why haven't we been here for so long?' And Bennett, Lewis, or whoever, will be rediscovered, and the houses of his imagination be renovated, restored, and hinges oiled so that doors open easily, and the builder, the writer, takes his rightful place again in the great alternative hierarchy.
Using Jane Austen as an example, the author also discusses the importance of audience, and argues that while "the life and personality of writers" are not "particularly pertinent to their work," that writers cannot be separated from "the times" in which they live. Of course, Jane Austen is a wonderful example of that argument. Some of the letters contain some fascinating information about marriage and birth rates during Austen's lifetime, and just the few succinct statistics really hammer home societal expectations that Austen faced.
The letters also discuss the modern writer's life as compared to that of Austen. Whereas a modern, published writer may attend book readings and be prepared to "have your own view on everything" it wasn't so for Austen:
Jane Austen and her contemporaries, of course, did none of this. They saved their public and their private energies for writing. They were not sent in to bat by their publishers in the interest of increased sales, nor did they feel obliged to present themselves upon public platforms as living vindication of their right to make up stories which others are expected to read.
This book of letters is typical Fay Weldon fare: lots of energy, lots of opinions (and some of those opinions are most definitely and refreshingly not PC), and bucketloads of wit. This is a delightful read for fans of Austen, fans of Weldon or those who are considering writing, which is, as Weldon argues "not a profession, it is an activity, an essential amateur occupation. It is what you do when you are not living."
Filed under Non Fiction, Weldon, Fay
Tagged as epistolary, non-fiction, writer's life
Hotel du Lac: Anita Brookner
"Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything."
Edith Hope, an unmarried author of romantic novels has done something bad. Initially we don't know quite what 'it' is, but whatever happened may have something to do with the affair she conducted with a married man. Edith is packed off, by a somewhat domineering friend, to a Swiss Hotel, the Hotel du Lac which gives "a mild form of sanctuary." It's off-season in this grand, off-the beaten-track, old-fashioned hotel that accommodates to a certain type of guest catering to "the respected patrons of an earlier era of tourism."
It seems to be permanently reserved for women. And for a certain kind of woman. Cast-off or abandoned, paid to stay away, or to do harmless womanly things, like spending money on clothes.
As an author, Edith is a veteran people-watcher and she is intrigued by the guests. There's the very popular, elegant Mrs Pusey and her fleshy, robust daughter Jennifer, an aged comtessa who's been shuttled off to the hotel by a daughter-in-law who doesn't want her around, and then there's the very beautiful, languid Monica who has an eating disorder which she shares with her co-dependent dog, Kiki.
Edith watches Mrs Pusey "as if under hypnosis." Mrs Pusey is a favoured guest with the hotel management and whereas Monica sometimes acts badly, Mrs Pusey can be relied upon to behave graciously. Everything that Mrs Pusey does is an extravagant performance, from her entrance into the dining room, the tales of her tragic widowhood, to her drinking of tea. Since every performance needs an audience, Edith is co-opted by Mrs Pusey to listen to her "opinions, reminiscences, character readings or general views on life's little problems." The sole purpose for the Puseys to be in Switzerland seems to be shopping as "abroad was seen mainly as a repository for luxury goods," especially lingerie. They're always off buying knickers according to the refreshingly acidic Monica whose occasionally embarrassing displays are in welcome contrast to the affected manners of the Puseys and their self-loving, fawning mother-daughter routine.
Enter Mr. Neville… an attractive, comfortably well off, divorced man whose presence shakes up the hotel's female guests. It's perhaps no surprise that he zeros in on Monica first, but by the next morning, she's avoiding him. Assured and slightly sleazy, Mr Neville professes to have "the secret of contentment," and he advises Edith that "to assume your own centrality may mean an entirely new life."
Without a huge emotional investment, one can do whatever one pleases. One can take decisions, change one's mind, alter one's plans. There is none of the anxiety of waiting to see if that one other person has everlasting she desires, if she is discontented, upset, restless, bored. One can be as pleasant or as ruthless as one wants. If one is prepared to do the one thing one is drilled out of doing from earliest childhood–simply please oneself-there is no reason why one should ever be unhappy again.
Brookner's books don't quite seem to fit in the age in which they take place. I noticed this in Dolly, Undue Influence and Look at Me. All of these books concern single, genteel solitary women engaged in bookish professions. Occasionally some reference brings the reader to a recognition of the times, but it was so easy to imagine we were in the earlier world. Incidentally, Hotel du Lac reminded me of A Month by The Lake which is set in 1937.
In Hotel du Lac there's once again the theme that the writer's life and marriage/cohabitation don't mix (it also appeared in Look At Me). There's also the idea, touched upon in Look At Me and Undue Influence, that men like a certain kind of woman–these days we'd say 'high maintenance.' We only see echoes of Edith's married lover's wife, but even these tiny glimpses hint that she is one of Brookner's high maintenance women. Interesting that the high maintenance women land the men (and sometimes the life of ease) while Brookner's protagonists are left solo, wondering where they went wrong.
Once again, this is a Brookner novel I loved, and after reading the very melancholy Look At Me, I was ambushed by the book's humour. I wasn't quite sold by the ending (can't give away spoilers here, but I don't think that Edith would have even contemplated going down the same road twice–if you've read the book you'll know what I mean). But the rest of this wonderful book is perfect: Mrs Pusey and Monica are brilliant character studies. Monica's edginess and irritability is in perfect contrast to Mrs Pusey's saccharine perfection. Here's Monica without her enabler for once:
"But where is Kiki?"
Monica's face fell. "In disgrace. Locked in the bathroom. Well, you can't expect a little dog like that to behave as well as he would with his own things around him. And the Swiss hate dogs. That's what's wrong with them, if you ask me."
There's one wonderful scene in which Mrs Pusey describes her married life with an emphasis on how her late husband used to spoil her, and this gives Mrs Pusey plenty of opportunity to wax on about her wonderful life, her amazing self-sacrifice and her wonderful things while commenting on how good the local shops are:
She dabbed the corners of her mouth again. "Of course, I have everything delivered," she added.
Filed under Brookner Anita, Fiction
Tagged as 20th century British fiction, hotel, writer's life
The Death of the Author: Gilbert Adair
"Reader, I tell a lie."
Gilbert Adair's Love and Death on Long Island features a reclusive author who fell in love with an American heart-throb, and after enjoying this dark tale of obsession, I turned to Adair's The Death of the Author. This book also features another middle-aged, bachelor author, but this time it's Leopold Sfax, a man whose egomania exceeds even that of Giles De'Ath in Love and Death on Long Island. Giles De'Ath looks positively humble and congenial next to the malignant Leopold Sfax, a smug, celebrity professor who is enthroned at New Harbor, one of America's most prestigious Ivy League schools. Sfax is a philosopher, theorist and critic best known for The Theory–an approach to criticism which has dominated campuses across the country since the 80s. Sfax is "the most celebrated critic in the United States," and with The Theory applied to literature, "the Author was to find Himself declared well and truly dead."
I had demonstrated that it was for the text to 'write' its author rather than vice versa, the presence of a human sensibility somehow embedded with that language, within that text, had at last been understood for what it truly was: an absence, a void. The old and handy pedagogical dichotomies, the so-called binary oppositions that had once served to authenticate the truth and completeness of the Author's interior universe–identity and difference, nature and culture, self and society–had at last been reversed or dissolved.
The book opens with Sfax meeting Astrid, a "flickeringly brilliant if too conventionally focused" former graduate student, who tells him she plans to write his biography. Sfax, our first person narrator, is obviously not thrilled by the proposition and tells her that he will cooperate but that she will not 'get' him–that no one ever has. Perhaps that reaction isn't too surprising from a critical theorist, or is there something else afoot? Something far more sinister? How much of Sfax, paradoxically, lies in his theory?
I proposed that, again, in every text, there would fatally arrive what I called an aporia, a terminal impasse, a blank brick wall of impenetrability, an ultimatum of indetermination, when its self-contradictory meanings could no longer be permitted to coexist in harmony and its fundamental 'undecidability' would undermine for ever the reader's most fundamental suppositions.
Following the meeting with Astrid, Sfax begins to tell his own story, and yet even as the narrative of reinvention flows, holes appear in Sfax's past–his life in France during the Occupation, the disappearance of a friend, his decision to move to America with "its bright patchwork of opportunity, its whole candid candied hugeness," his humble beginnings in a book shop and his leap into academia with "the chance to no longer toil in some obscure store, handling other man's books the way a bank teller must handle other men's money."
That's as much of the plot as I'm going to discuss of this slim novel of 135 pages, but I will say that if you enjoy novels about campus life and academic skullduggery, you should try this novel. Obviously Gilbert Adair has fun here (referencing Barthes) with this tale of university competitiveness, backstabbing academics and the unassailable qualities of dominant theories that hold academic disciplines in thrall. Even Giles De'Ath from Love and Death on Long Island is mentioned here in a passing reference to being an advocate of the Theory.
Adair, who breaks through that fourth wall, has a marvellous way with words which trickles down through his insufferable, snotty narrator. Here's Sfax's great enemy in the department, a hapless, harmless fellow named Herbert Gillingwater:
a kind of Peter Pan in reverse, never known to have been young. Indeed, his mousy nicotine-stained moustache and frankly sepia beard impressed one as older even than he was, deeply unappetizing hand-me-downs from some ancient parent; and it was claimed of him, an old maid of a bachelor, that if the striation of the corduroy suits he wore in all weathers looked as raggedly corrugated as it did, it was that he would freshen it simply by plunging it every six months or so into a sinkful of boiling water and detergent.
Filed under Adair Gilbert, Fiction
Tagged as campus life, critical theory, Scottish fiction, university professor, writer's life
Love and Death on Long Island: Gilbert Adair
"With each day now came an intensification of my secret life."
Character is fate, as the saying goes, and yet how to explain the behaviour of a middle-aged British author, a recluse from the crass elements of modern culture, who goes off the rails with his obsessive infatuation with a youthful American heartthrob?
Giles De'Ath, a middle-aged widower, has penned four novels decades earlier, and he's earned "the ungrateful epithet of writer's writer." All four books, read mostly in France "shared the theme of sacrifice," but ultimately not one of the sacrifices "is shown to have been justified." In academic circles, various theories float regarding the meaning of De'Ath's work, and over time, the author, who has steadfastly turned from public life, "returned to fashion." De'Ath is writing again; this time it's a non-fiction book called The Gentrification of the Void which is about to be published. It's easy to call De'Ath a snob for eschewing modern values and tastes; he certainly looks down on most of the population and believes that the "stupidity of the world is rivalled only by its ugliness."
One day, circumstances lead to De'Ath walking along an unusual route. He takes shelter in a cinema, and enters the showing for the wrong film. It's a horrible, cheap third rate teen film called Hotpants College II. He's about to walk out in disgust when a shot of a young male actor catches his attention, and this is the beginning of Giles De'Ath's obsession with American heartthrob, Ronnie Bostock.
Soon, De'Ath can't think of anything else but Ronnie. He stalks London newsagents for imported fan mags, deeply ashamed of his purchases but unable to squash the need to buy anything he can that features Ronnie. Next he buys a television (after learning the hard way that he needs one to play VHS tapes), and then it's off to the video rental shop for Ronnie Bostock's meagre backlist: Tex Mex and Skid Marks
I would rerun these two precious tapes of mine until scarcely a heartbeat was struck that I failed to anticipate the instant before. A film viewed this many times, I discovered, however mediocre may appear its point of departure, must always end by acquiring unto itself a special kind of beauty, the beauty of things that are or have come to seem inevitable. Each negligent and certainly unrehearsed gesture, each fortuitous element have swum unsuspecting into the camera's ken–a face in the crowd, a fleeting, half-glimpsed landscape, some irrelevant, 'non-signifying' message just legible in a drugstore window or on an extra's teeshirt–would by the umpteenth viewing have been branded into the film's textures, its grain, its very pores, as though all along it had to be so and no other way, as though it were one of the cinema's vocations, and perhaps its most elevated vocation, thus to statufy spontaneity, to render the incidental indelible, to hold the random to account.
De'Ath, who considers himself "asexual" studies Ronnie Bostock rather as someone studies a foreign language. He intellectualizes his obsession and comes to the conclusion that, even through the somewhat questionable lens of the sycophantic fan mag, there's something pure and innocent about Ronnie when compared to the other actors of the same age range and status with their "haunched hips and shamelessly flaunted crotches."
After De'Ath reads some distressing news about Ronnie's future plans, De'Ath decides to travel to America to meet his idol. ….
The novel is written in the first person by De'Ath, and since this is a man who delights in being inaccessible (both literally and figuratively through his work), the narrator's voice reflects the pedantic De'Ath through labyrinthine sentences. Imagine De'Ath's voice as someone who prides himself in being apart from the common herd in a tribe of One. (I'm not going to detail the novel that De'Ath is trying to write but it shows how out-of-touch he is to even contemplate such an idea.)
We follow De'Ath's mordantly funny journey as he descends into obsessed fandom, slyly buying teen mags and disposing of the unwanted pages far from home. But De'Ath is never a figure of fun, for although he's obsessed, he only once loses control; his fixation is systematic and directed.
I loved De'Ath's perceptions of America. He's very much the outsider but looks at America rather as a killjoy looks at an amusement park–understanding the allure while denigrating its attractions:
The remainder of that same afternoon I spent at the town's hairdressing salon, where my hair was trimmed and my nails finely manicured by an obsequious little fusspot of a man who, with his own elaborately crimped and wavy locks, was the very image of a barber in a French farce; in the more expensive of its two men's shops in search of a 'stylish' silk tie that might set off to advantage the pale grey, slim-waisted suit I had not yet worn in Chesterfield as it had been bought and laid aside for exactly the present occasion; then in a chic and overwhelmingly fragrant flower shop–located, possibly as the result of someone's drolly irreverent sense of cause and effect, next door to the gun store-where I purchased a vast bouquet of white 'long-stemmed' white roses.
I thought I'd be writing a post about whether or not De'Ath benefited from the experience with Ronnie, but the novel is much deeper and darker than that, and I'm still mulling over the last few sentences.
There's a wonderful film made of this book, and that's what brought me to the novel.
Tagged as made into film, Scottish fiction, stalker, writer's life


Margaret Lesley (Johnstone) Hanson passed away peacefully at home surrounded by family and friends on February 29th, 2016, in Dallas, Texas, at the age of 68.
Maggie is survived by her husband, Perry Hanson, her daughters, Brooke McGough and Claire Hanson, her grandchildren, Jordan, Elijah and Juliet McGough, and her siblings Albert Johnstone and Anne (Johnstone) Wyer. She is preceded in death by her parents, Roisin Cooper Johnstone of Rathdrum, Wicklow, Ireland and Albert Johnstone of Pudsey, Yorkshire, England.
Maggie was born on October 2nd, 1947 in Pudsey, Yorkshire. She graduated as an SRN from the York Teaching Hospital NHS in 1965. After moving to the United States in 1970, she met Perry (an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments) and they married in 1972 in Dallas.
Maggie continued her career in nursing. She also liked to volunteer with the Dallas Heritage Society and was the chairman of Old City Park's annual Candlelight celebration in 1989. She was an active member in the local prayer group, Our Lady's Altar Society, and choir at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church. She spent the majority of her career in hospice health care advancing to Regional Vice President, Clinical Affairs. She retired in 2011 but continued to work part time. She loved her role as Gran Maggie and spoiled her three grandchildren.
She was loved by many and touched many lives. The number of visitors during her brief 4 month illness was testament to her impact on others. She will be greatly missed.
Maggie your beautiful red hair and always a smile. Loved working with you at Hospice. OH what a good time we had at the Hospice reunion at your house in Oct. so glad I was there. Will miss you I know you are pain free and joined loved ones.Heaven was waiting.
I'm so very sorry in your recent loss. Prayers to your family. Maggie will be greatly missed. Always loved visiting with her and sharing stories about our grandchildren. Always a beautiful smile on her face!!
Heartfelt sympathy to Perry, Brooke, Clair and your family. Maggie was a gentle person with a bright smile and warm heart. She was a best friend and we only have wonderful memories of our times together. Prayers, love and hugs to you.
God has you in His hands - I have you in my heart.


Today I had the distinct privilege of leading an activity in my son's class. Every parent has to do so at some point, so I took my fear of sticky little people who are not my own and put it aside to join them in doing something fun that would be "in my wheelhouse." I knew right away that I would do something involving quilting, but I wanted to do something that would involve them. Seeing the similarities between quilting and collage, I went the obvious route but instead of opting for paper pieces for them to play with, I gathered up leftover bits from old projects/quilts that I had stored hoping to maybe use for something else in the future – tons of 2 1/2 inch squares, leftover drunken path blocks and triangles, step-through pieces from past classes, all that jazz.
Originally, my plan was to divide them into groups of 4 and have them work together on 24 inch squares of craft paper. Then I remembered we're dealing with 4 year olds and it would probably work best if they each had their own block. And it did indeed work fabulously! The kids were broken up into their regular 3 tables and were each given a 12 inch square of craft paper. I went around and distributed the scraps as evenly as I could between the 3 groups. The kids were totally into the colors and prints. They were so excited by the mermaids and wizards and hedgehogs and spiders, oh my! They grabbed a bunch of scraps from the heaps at the center of their tables and glued them down onto their squares. It was interesting to see how some kids really planned their layouts while others just started gluing pieces down as they grabbed 'em. They all did such a great job!
After a snack while we waited for the squares to dry, we all gathered around to assemble the blocks into a "quilt top." As we taped the blocks together, I had sections of kids tape sections of the quilt. It was so awesome to see how they were all so eager to participate. Everyone got at least one piece of tape on the back of the "quilt." We talked about "many hands" and community, how all their individual blocks came together to form this whole piece, how they each put a little bit of themselves into this thing that represents them all, how they can still see their individual blocks but the blocks now play together as one whole piece as they play together as one group. It was pretty cool to see how they actually seemed to get it and appreciate it. Or at least, I think they got it. At the very worst, they would walk away thinking they had made some neat thing.