Carving patterns into the leather is a skill saddle maker Nancy Martiny first learned as a teenager, while watching her father tool leather.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Christopher Cruise.
FAITH LAPIDUS: And I'm Faith Lapidus. Some jobs require little or no creativity. Other jobs are all about creativity. This week on our program, we meet two Americans who put their imaginations to work in very different ways. One is a saddle maker. The other is a poet.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Nancy Martiny has worked with horses all her life. She learned riding and roping when she grew up on a cattle ranch.
NANCY MARTINY: "From whenever I was a little kid I was always doing what the men did. And then as I got older and rodeoed and into producing rodeos, I've always worked with men."
Ms. Martiny started making western saddles for fun as a hobby. Now, she has a waiting list. People have to wait up to three years to buy one of her saddles.
NANCY MARTINY: "I've had people ask me that they think you have to be big and strong and tough to build saddles, and you don't. You have to have a sharp knife."
FAITH LAPIDUS: A sharp knife is just a tool. A good saddle maker also has to have an artistic sense for carving and shaping designs into leather.
NANCY MARTINY: "Like here, at the start, I'll hit it pretty hard and then I want that to look like there's some contour to that petal."
She cuts the leather into complex patterns of flowers and leaves. This is a skill she first learned as a teenager. She watched her father tool leather.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: She began by making things like belts and purses. Then she met one of the best saddle makers around, Dale Harwood. He made her a saddle tree. A tree is the form for a saddle that all the leather gets attached to.
Nancy Martiny had tooled saddles before. But she had never made one herself. She worked on the leather design at home. Then she would go to Dale Harwood's shop for advice.
That notebook became her best tool.
NANCY MARTINY: "I got my nerve up and I started on a kid's saddle and [I would] look at my notebook. And when I'd get in a real wreck I'd call Dale, and when he had time he'd help me and I'd get through. Well, I got them saddles built, and then somebody would say 'Hey, why don't you build me a saddle?'"
FAITH LAPIDUS: That was how Nancy Martiny got into the saddle making business twenty years ago. People usually learn about her from others. She does not have a shop. She lives and works in the Pahsimeroi Valley near May, Idaho. She lives on a ranch that has been in her husband's family for one hundred twenty years.
The ranch has a barn where she keeps her own saddle and the ones she has made for her family. She says most of her customers are ranchers and cowboys and cowgirls who live in the area.
Many of Nancy Martiny's saddles are simple. Others, such as the one in this picture, have complex flower designs.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Some of her saddles have silver and detailed flower designs. But many others are more simple.
NANCY MARTINY: "I want a plain saddle to be considered beautiful as well as a full-flowered saddle, so if someone says, 'Oh, your work is beautiful,' I want that to mean all of the work. I hope that's what it means. That's what would be my goal."
Nancy Martiny also makes other leather goods, including purses. She may work with cowboys, but she says that does not mean she cannot make something more feminine once in a while.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Pinsky was born in nineteen forty. He grew up in New Jersey, in the working-class town of Long Branch near the Atlantic coast. He found happiness playing jazz in the high school band. That experience also led him to find happiness in poetry.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Mr. Pinsky says jazz and poetry are similar.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Pinksy says poetry is also like dance -- an art form where the medium is the human body itself.
ROBERT PINSKY: "And that makes it very intimate on that human scale. It's my advice for people who have, alas, somehow learned that poetry is difficult or think they've learned that they don't have a taste for it, say it aloud. You feel what it's like to say it with your breath and your tongue and your voice box. And, all that. And along with that intimacy, there is something social about it.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Mr. Pinsky has a doctorate from Stanford University. He taught at Wellesley College and the University of California, Berkeley, before coming to Boston University. He is a professor in the creative writing program.
His books include poetry collections, criticism and translations. His honors include awards for his nineteen ninety-four translation of Dante's "Inferno" from Italian.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: In nineteen ninety-seven, the librarian of Congress named Robert Pinsky as poet laureate of the United States. Mr. Pinsky is the only laureate to have been reappointed twice. He served as the nation's official poet until the year two thousand.
The position at the Library of Congress has existed under different names since the nineteen thirties. The current poet laureate is W.S. Merwin.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Pinsky is proud that something he started called the Favorite Poem Project is still popular. That project invites everyday people to introduce a poem that is meaningful to them, and then read it on video.
The videos can be found online at favoritepoem.org.
In one video, a United States Marine officer named Steve Conteaguero reads a poem. He reads "Politics" by William Butler Yeats, who died in nineteen thirty-nine.
That has read and thought.
Of war and war's alarms.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: A new collection of selected poems by Robert Pinsky will be published in April. Here he is reading part of a poem first published in nineteen ninety-nine. The poem is called "Samurai Song."
FAITH LAPIDUS: Our program was written and produced by Brianna Blake, with reporting by Sadie Babits and Adam Phillips. I'm Faith Lapidus.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. You can find transcripts and MP3s of our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. We'll post a link to favoritepoem.org and show you pictures of Nancy Martiny and her saddles. You can also stay in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.


The CCSBT has very strict monitoring rules which mean that every individual Southern Bluefin Tuna has its own unique tag and number which allow the fished to be tracked from catching to market (see CCSBT website). This means that there is no threat to the stock from illegal catch.
It is correct that some organisations still have not changed their classification of Southern Bluefin Tuna as still subject to overfishing, and therefore possibly not sustainable. This delay is because the major CCSBT scientific decisions are relatively recent. The first review by these organisations was in December 2012 – and it concluded that the Southern Bluefin Tuna catch was now sustainable.
There was no criticism of the decisions of the CCSBT Scientific Committee by the ENGO's which track the status of SBT. These ENGO's include HSI, WWF and TRAFFIC. These ENGO's and the Australian industry want to be very cautious – but we also agree that the scientific recommendations must be respected.


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E-commerce pioneers in Nigeria are struggling to prove the market's viability
Taking stock.
Image: Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
When Nigeria's tech ecosystem started to form nearly a decade ago, e-commerce seemed to be the go-to tech idea for a startup.
Perhaps, more than anything else at the time, it captured the idea of an online business serving customers through technology. But recent trends suggest that reality was not rooted in economics and may now be going out of fashion.
In a high profile case last year, Konga, one of Nigeria's pioneer e-commerce companies was sold—likely at a loss for its investors—after failing to match expectations despite pulling in over $70 million in investment since it was founded in 2012. Signs of Konga's struggles first appeared in late 2017, when it slashed its staff strength by 60%.
But Konga's struggles didn't happen in isolation as more players in the e-commerce and online marketplace space have faltered over the past 18 months. OLX, a popular classifieds platform backed by Naspers—Africa's most valuable company, Efritin, an e-commerce platform for used goods, DealDey, an online discounts platform and Careers24, an online jobs marketplace also backed by Naspers, have either scaled back operations significantly or shut down entirely.
"E-commerce did not come up in Nigeria because there was an opportunity, it came up became it was hot globally."
Indeed, this week, Olumide Olusanya, CEO of PayMente, parent company of Gloo.ng, an online supermarket, announced the company has pivoted away from e-commerce. Olusanya says the move is down to a lack of long-term faith in the e-commerce model after running Gloo.ng for six years. Sticking with the e-commerce model, Olusanya tells Quartz, was "going to be a big challenge" down the line given the reality of a small addressable middle class market and continued logistical issues. The point about market size is linked to Nigeria's wider economic struggles over the past three years.
Beyond that, the actual size of the portion of the middle class that has enough disposable income and is sufficiently tech savvy to adopt online shopping does not appear large enough to sustain businesses looking to serve them.
Konga's sale triggered questions over the viability of e-commerce in Nigeria.
Emeka Okoye, a Lagos-based tech veteran focused on the semantic Web and data, says the problems e-commerce companies currently face were always hiding in plain sight and were likely missed by those caught up in the wave.
"E-commerce did not come up in Nigeria because there was an opportunity, it came up became it was hot globally," he says. "Fundamentally, that was wrong because e-commerce ventures did not build their businesses in Nigeria based on social behavior."
"If you're serious about scale, you have to adopt a continent-wide strategy to ensure survival."
With local buying habits that predominantly favor—and fuel—offline retail and a preference for cash payments—as riding hailing giant, Uber found out, Nigerian e-commerce companies were faced with engineering a major cultural shift in customers' behavior rather than taking advantage of one. "We don't have the [market] numbers and we don't have the social behavior so e-commerce is not sustainable yet," Okoye says. "The issues they [e-commerce companies] have encountered didn't just pop up, they have always been there," he adds.
One way to possibly achieve success despite the lingering challenges according to Tomi Davies, a prominent angel investor in Nigerian tech startups, is to think beyond national borders. "If you're serious about scale, you have to adopt a continent-wide strategy to ensure survival," he says.
Essentially, with major urban cities across Africa home to pockets of the continent's middle class, e-commerce companies might have a better chance to grow a big enough customer base in several markets rather than sticking to a single one. "It's like trying to run a mobile network in just one city. It's not that you won't get customers, it's that the economics won't work," Davies says.
But even a continent-wide strategy is not exactly a guarantee of success.
Jumia, the Rocket Internet-owned brand which houses Africa-focused startups across classifieds, food delivery, real estate, job listings, payments, logistics, hotel and flight bookings, operates a continental model that's yet to pay off. Sustained investment in infrastructure, staff and marketing has seen the company's annual losses steadily widen, reaching €120 million ($140 million) in 2017.
As e-commerce readiness indicators across the continent broadly appear to be improving, Jumia is looking to play the long game. However, it has deep pockets having raised over $700 million in funding and so has much more cash to burn than almost any other e-commerce business in Africa can hope to match.
While the outlook of Nigerian e-commerce companies can be limited by factors like the size of the addressable market and logistics, they have largely failed in earning the one factor they can control: trust.
"In Nigeria, the e-commerce companies treat estimated delivery dates like a suggestion."
Poor customer service and questionable return policies have seen trust deficit largely worsen among Nigerian customers. "With respect to the effort put it in by [e-commerce] founders, I don't think the businesses place enough emphasis on trust and ensuring customers get value," says Odunayo Eweniyi, co-founder of Piggybank, the Nigerian savings app. "I order things from abroad constantly and they almost always arrive before the estimated delivery date but in Nigeria, they treat estimated delivery dates like a suggestion."
The trust deficit, some industry insiders suggest, means that among the already small addressable market, potential customers are far more at ease shopping from international e-commerce platforms than local alternatives. There's already some anecdotal evidence that despite the supposed limitations of Nigeria's e-savvy market, consumers who are keen on buying things online often choose to buy from international giants like Amazon or Alibaba especially as they now offer direct delivery to Nigeria. Amazon and Alibaba, alongside Jumia, are also the most visited e-commerce websites in Nigeria, web rankings show.
The uncertainty around receiving orders satisfactorily also means that e-commerce companies are often used as soundboards for prices with customers then choosing to buy offline instead.
One way e-commerce companies have tried to fix trust-based problems like early-day online payment failures and customers' preference to touch and feel items before purchase was to offer a "pay on delivery" option. But even that has been fraught with pitfalls, forcing e-commerce businesses to drop it.
As e-commerce companies continue to struggle, Okoye insists success can only be thought of with a long-term view. "We live in a trust-challenged environment and that's a very big problem which will not change overnight," he says.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Nobu, the world-renowned Japanese restaurant at Dubai's iconic Atlantis, The Palm, invites guests to a very special 'Omakase' (chef's choice) dinner hosted by Chef Nobu Matsuhisa. Taking place on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th September for AED 595 per person, the 'Life of Nobu' dinner will offer Japanese cuisine aficionados the rare chance to enjoy iconic Nobu dishes as well as exotic creations prepared by the celebrity chef.
With Nobu Dubai's 10-year anniversary around the corner, it's the perfect excuse to celebrate the evolution and success of the restaurant and its founder, Chef Nobu Matsuhisa. The 'Omakase' menu will take diners on a journey, offering much-loved dishes and a selection of Chef Nobu's favourites. Each dish will have a personal story behind it, offering an exclusive sneak peek into Chef Nobu's life, from the famed black cod miso yuzu, which is served more than 20,000 times every year, to tender Japanese beef on hoba leaf. Diners will also be invited to try the likes of sea urchin with tempura, avocado tacos with caviar and sashimi 'four ways' as part of the nine-course menu as well as mochi ice cream and a chocolate bento box with sake ice cream for the sweetest of finales.
Nobu Dubai is consistently voted one of the top Japanese restaurants in the food-obsessed city of Dubai, and Chef Nobu's unique fusion of Japanese and Peruvian flavours can be found at 33 outlets across the globe. Guests can visit Atlantis, The Palm branch and experience the likes of a chu toro black sesame special from the sushi bar, beef dry miso and seabass with a yuzu white chocolate sauce, lobster hobayaki, beef anticucho den miso, truffle rice, and tofu and shiitake gyoza.
With more events set to be announced each week, keep updated on social media @AtlantisThePalm or visit www.atlantisthepalm.com.
The internationally renowned restaurant by Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, located in The Avenues at Atlantis, The Palm is one of Dubai's top destinations when it comes to Japanese cuisine. Fusing a cutting-edge Japanese style with Arabian and Peruvian influences, Nobu Dubai is regarded as serving some of the best sushi and sashimi in the world with 364,000 pieces being sold every year in the Dubai restaurant alone. Incorporating Nobu's signature dishes from the legendary Black Cod seared and served with sweet miso sauce to the Yellowtail topped with thin slices of jalapeno, the Nobu experience is also complemented by a sushi bar and a stunning Japanese garden. A thriving bar also adds to the experience, offering perfected signature cocktails and is home to one of Dubai's most popular ladies night, taking place every Monday.


13. Were the Spanish Entitled to Take Aboriginal Lands?
Why, as described in the previous unit, did Francisco de Vitoria feel compelled to uphold the indigenous people of the Americas as property owners? Because if they could not own property, then the Spanish could simply help themselves to what they wanted without resort to conscience, since you can't steal what no one owns. Because denying the indigenous people of the Americas the right to own property amounted to the legalization of theft.
Why did Vitoria find it necessary to assert that these people could govern themselves? Because if they were not capable of governing themselves, then the Spanish, in asserting their right to rule the people the people they were in the process of conquering, were merely taking over what needed doing, like an adult moving in and assuming guardianship of a gang of orphan children. They could claim that they were bringing law to a lawless land. The fact that the Spanish conquests brought war, death, disease, disorder, mass slavery, institutionalized brutality and tyranny, was and is, of course, forgotten or ignored.
The arguments that Vitoria rejected in the first part of his Aboriginal rights discourses were arguments that the indigenous people of the Americas were so fundamentally inferior to Europeans as to be subhuman. Some of the arguments that Vitoria addressed in the second part of his discourse asserted essentially that Europeans and European institutions, and the people representing these institutions, were so superior to the people in the Americas that the people of the Americas had no choice but to submit to their will.
At first glance the idea that the Spanish King might have authority over the whole world might seem a naïve and fanciful assertion by unsophisticated early modern thinkers. However, it is not very far, in fact, from the position taken by British and Canadian courts of the present day. The British doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, for instance, places no limits on the reach of British law. Thus Britain's bare assertion in 1843 of sovereignty over British Columbia has been deemed sufficient in Canadian courts to establish British sovereignty over British Columbia at that time, despite the fact that British presence in that territory in that era was nominal at best.
In 1532, however, Vitoria could find no way to support this assertion, stating that there was no basis in law or statute for upholding such a point of view. And even if it were accepted that Charles V – then King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor – had lordship over the whole world as alleged, this lordship, Vitoria pointed out, would extend to jurisdiction over, not ownership of, the lands in question. This is because kings govern the lands they rule, but they do not own them.
And an Indian had no property rights a White government was bound to respect, according to a well established principle of Canadian and British law.
Well, if the King is not king over all, then perhaps the Pope was emperor over all, and could grant these rights to the king.
What was being questioned was of course the 1493 Papal bull "Inter Cetera," which purported to grant all the lands in the Americas to Spain and Portugal. Was this grant valid? Could Spain rely on it to justify appropriating lands in the Americas? Vitoria didn't think so.
Then what about the right of discovery? No, said Vitoria, citing ancient Roman law – Justinian's Institutes – which had come to be accepted as fundamental European law. According to Justinian's Institutes, any unclaimed, waste or unoccupied land, could be claimed by its first discoverer. But the land in the Americas was occupied and already had owners, so this doctrine did not and could not apply. If the right of discovery applied to occupied lands, argued Vitoria, then the people of the Americas would have as much right to claim lands in Europe as Europeans had to claim lands in the Americas.
Again, what seems like a naïve assertion in respect to the doctrine of discovery has a modern parallel in British/Canadian/United States law where the doctrine of discovery lives on. The doctrine in the modern form states that the first European country to "discover" a territory controlled by an indigenous population, gets to keep that territory – like a game of tag, a "tag-you're-it" doctrine for a game where only Europeans are allowed to win.
And indigenous populations are only permitted to lose.
And, given this established doctrine, none of these clever and sophisticated lawyers and jurists has to even pause to consider how anybody can "discover" territories that are already occupied.
All of which demonstrates to me that in terms of sophisticated thinking, many of those who today deny Aboriginal rights are simply showing themselves a long way behind the times.
Almost 500 years, in fact.
 Delgamuukw v. The Queen, p. ix.
 Quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me, p. 150.
~ by fathertheo on November 24, 2008.


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Dec. 14, 2016 11:50 am
Moven laid off a dozen staffers from its Radnor office
The moves comes as the company doubles down on the enterprise side of things. CEO Brett King said the Philly office will remain.
About The Philadelphia Inquirer View Open Positions
The NYC-based company is pivoting to B2B.
(Screenshot via YouTube)
We heard New York-based venture-backed fintech company Moven laid off at least a dozen staffers from its two-year-old Radnor office last week, including CTO Bob Savino, who led the local office.
"Yes, that's the approximate number," CEO and cofounder Brett King confirmed in a phone conversation with Technical.ly on Tuesday. "This is a restructure around the enterprise business."
The move comes one month after recruiter Mark Constan (who was also laid off) said the company was hiring for 20 open positions.
The exec also confirmed the former CTO was among those let go last week. We reached out to Savino to get his take, but he declined to comment. He was the reason the company opened an office in the Philly region.
"Bob did a great job for us." King said. "He got us to a point where he should be proud of. We just needed to look at some slightly different skills moving forward. A core of his team will stay, so his legacy lives on."
Savino was replaced by Kumar Ampani, an ex-Chariot Solutions engineer and one of Savino's early hires at the Radnor office.
Hiring Philly tech companies, take note: Those affected in the layoffs included data analysts, an office manager and at least one UX designer and one recruiter.
Cofounder and president Alex Sion, based in New York, also left the company last month to lead mobile banking at JPMorgan Chase. He did not respond to a request for comment.
On Sion's move, King said to the American Banker, "[T]he business is fairly mature now. We've been going from that early stage to a growth company and it requires some different skills."
King declined to offer the company's headcount post-layoffs, hinting at some upcoming offshore hires and deals with financial institutions outside of the U.S over the next three to six months. For the time being, though, the company's Radnor presence stays put.
"There are no plans to close the Philly office, we continue to be very bullish on Radnor," King said.
The business-to-consumer platform, which lets users manage their money in a mobile-first environment, will remain active. The company just wont be growing it as aggressively.
Last we checked, the company was 60-strong and on a push to hire another 20, as per recruiter Constan, who left eMoney Advisor for Moven in September. Forty of those staffers were Radnor-based, according to Savino at the time he penned that guest post for us. We put Moven on our October list of 12 fintech companies worth keeping an eye on. We didn't think a round of layoffs would be our next update.
"We're just making a lot more profit out of the enterprise business," King explained. "The revenue is stronger. And we have an obligation to our shareholders."
Per King's own words, the upcoming deals stand a chance to carry the company through the B2B transition. He did, however, point out the new model requires Moven to have a different team structure, with more staffers working remotely or out of client sites. So it remains to be seen if the company will ever regain the same Philly footprint.
Companies: Moven
People: Robert Savino
The City is hosting a 'Hire Hahnemann' job fair for soon-to-be-displaced employees
How Macquarie blends tech-fueled financial services with global opportunity
Join the team behind a reimagined approach to consumer finances
A new research center at Wharton wants to make a fintech hub out of Philly
Tech execs: Here's how you can make layoffs a less traumatic experience


"Facebook (including Messenger) remains the most popular social platform among Americans 12-24 years old, with 21% saying they use Facebook most. Snapchat is second with 26%, far outpacing Instagram at 17%.
Only time will tell if Snapchat's popularity is a constantly ascending staircase or a bubble just waiting to burst. Seeing as it only appeals to the younger generation, whereas Facebook is still appealing to all ages, I'd side with the latter (Don't bring this up to me in 2032 when Snapchat is running the world).
This has less to do with brands suddenly discovering Facebook and Twitter, and more to do with different avenues through which people can be reached and engaged with. We're beyond link and image posts. On Facebook, for example, you can create videos, versatile Canvas ads, 360 videos, and video slideshows. It's all indicative of a new availability of advertising to pounce on and use to distinguish your brand.
In another survey by PointVisible, they found that over the next 12 months 39% of B2C and B2B content marketers plan to increase their spending, while only 2% planned to decrease it. 42% said spending will likely remain the same.
Since we're on the topic of more spending, we can distinguish where that spending is going towards.
There's a perception that users are just overexposed to traditional advertisements and inundated by how ubiquitous it is. Think about it. There's no escape, unless you completely disconnect from technology.
New approaches need to be taken to reach out to users without overwhelming and irritating them to the point of exhaustion, and studies have been conducted to find them.
Are you starting to pick up on this trend of more? There's going to be more of everything digital marketing-wise in 2017 and further on.
As mentioned before, there's a need for newness from our advertising efforts. It's become a life component that's unavoidable and needs readjusting, in order to provide users with a memorable experience once again. Just like with any technology, if there's a newer, more efficient, more convenient, and more stimulating competitor, users will gravitate to that.
E-Newsletters are an excellent way of developing an audience without investing too much money and investing too many hours. But they have to be done right, because an E-Newsletter could be composed for nothing if its design isn't engaging enough or if its content isn't interesting enough.
It has to appeal to your audience, which you can find and add to your email list through lead generation ads and visits to your website asking for their email, with content that provides value. You want your newsletter to be informative, feature headlines that grab your attention, and be laden with designs and appealing images that keep the reader interested and their eyes darting from end-to-end of the email.
Basically, why go through the process of loading up your desktop or laptop when you have a computer within your pocket? It's all about convenience. Just give me the information and stimulation I need at the moment, without me having to get up and get it.
Life just keeps getting easier in terms of instant gratification. It's probably why "mobile will account for 72% of US digital ad spend by 2019″ since that's where all the eyes are, as indicated by studies, mobile vs. desktop usage, and, you know, just looking around you at any given time while you're in public.
Go ahead and try it next time. When you're out in the city, and hopefully not peering into your phone, look around and notice how many people are buried in their phones. Then you'll realize just how important mobile optimization is. You're potentially missing out on the sales or awareness you could be generating when those users aren't home and need a distraction.
Think we're missing out on a trend? Drop us a message on our Facebook or call us!


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Julie Held
About Julie Held
I grew up in Southern California in the country on a dairy farm. love to sing. love art. love people. love seasons. love my family. love music.
Dreaming Out Loud is the debut of country music...sometimes you need to Dream Out Loud and go for it!
I believe music is not just words with a tune but a melody for every season of life.
View EPK
Follow Julie Held on
www.julieheldmusic....


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Losing It
Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton after a fourth quarter fumble during Super Bowl 50.
It was an ugly game. Most of the scoring came courtesy of the defense. Quarterbacks of both teams were sacked repeatedly, and both suffered humiliating fumbles that led to turnovers. The winning Broncos may simply have been the luckier team--or perhaps better at exploiting Carolina's errors, and at recovering from their own.
So this was not a passing game. Despite that, the quarterbacks were still at the center of the pageantry, the hoopla, and ultimately, both the credit and the blame. Peyton Manning, at 39 well past his prime, was overjoyed to claim his second championship ring. Cam Newton, a 26-year-old whose best days have not yet come, was so shattered at losing that he was caught on camera with his head in his hands, weeping uncontrollably.
I'm not a big football fan, though it always grabs me when I glimpse it at the sports bar where Amy and I shoot pool. There is something hypnotic about this brutal sport that turns exceptional athletes into limping pensioners before they've even reached middle age. The relatively small number of games compared to basketball and baseball (necessitated by its inherent violence and players' need of recovery time) make the stakes of winning and losing much higher. In baseball, it can take seven games spread over a week to determine the world champion. In football, there is just one. It doesn't matter that it's an honor just to be competing in the Super Bowl: winning is everything.
So of course a young man, barely an adult, felt those stakes far more deeply than his elder rival. At 26, everything is heightened: break up with your girlfriend, lose your job, flunk a class in grad school, have your car break down, all of it feels like the end of your world. And these are things everyone goes through. Imagine what it must be like to lose the biggest game in the world at 26.
I remember 26 a bit too well. I remember how deeply I took perceived slights, how important it was to me to be taken seriously, how terrified I was of losing the love I'd found. I'd left teaching after just a year to enter seminary, traveling to an alien place that was not, I came to realize, a good place for me. I was completely out of my element in Dallas, Texas, a small town boy in a big city that was faster, meaner, and far more conservative than anything I'd experienced in the Pacific Northwest.
My self-esteem was low, and now I was studying subjects I'd had little preparation for. Academic theology is built on philosophy, and I'd never had time for anything as cerebral as that. All my college and graduate classes had been aimed at practical matters: how to teach a child to play an instrument, how to modify a choir's vowels to arrive at the right timbre for a particular piece, how to turn a piano piece into an orchestration for concert band. There were a few dips into the theory of aesthetics, but nothing to prepare me for the language of soteriology, hermeneutics, or any of the other philosophical disciplines I was expected to have under my belt. For all that, I did well without realizing it: I skipped an awards ceremony at the end of my first year assuming I had no reason to be there, and thus missed out on being honored as one of the top students in my class. Low grades shattered me, breaking up with my first girlfriend was devastating, and losing a church choir directing job almost did me in.
Half a lifetime later, I can look back on that callow 26-year-old and marvel at his innocence, his tenderness, his utter lack of perspective. I know that $300/month choir job was not right for him. I know (and he knew, really--he just didn't know how to initiate the breakup) that first girlfriend wasn't right for him, either. And I know those low grades, which were still passing grades, were subjective and had no real effect on him receiving his degree. All those apocalyptic experiences were, in the end, just life happening to him.
That's what I'd like to tell Cam Newton, too. No, you don't have a Super Bowl ring to wear. And yes, it's the second time you've lost. And you're right, you may not get the chance to be in that game again. This may very well have been your last chance at being a world champion. So yes, it feels very much like the end of the world, and I completely understand why you couldn't keep those tears under wraps as the game ground to its conclusion. You'd literally taken a beating from the game's first minutes right up to its bruising conclusion, as time and again the Bronco defense threw you to the ground. I could see it in your face every time a pass didn't connect, or you had to give up possession altogether. This game was no fun. Nobody was having fun. In fact, "game" wasn't the right word for what was happening on that field: it was an ordeal to watch it, let alone to have to play it.
So I'm cutting Cam Newton some slack. If I was 26, and losing the Super Bowl, I'd be bawling, too. Not at 54--I've been through enough failures and defeats that it takes a lot to wrench a tear from these withered ducts--but I'll bet even mercurial Cam Newton tones down by the time he's my age.
So let the poor man alone.
Cam Newton failure losing middle age Super Bowl 50
Over-Engagement
Originalism Isn't Just about the Constitution
Why Is This Even an Issue?
Cat Fancy
They're Both Right
Heroes Regurgitated


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I remember when I was a nipper, game shows just seemed like pure, unadulterated fun, with lots of great prizes for everyone. However, as I got older, and more cynical, I realized that they weren't quite as caring and sharing as I first thought. Audience participation using premium rate phone numbers tended to pay for all the prizes 17 times over, and/or the contestants were deliberately chosen out of a stock of the most retarded people they could find, just to keep winnings down.
For example, the crystal maze. This was a game show in which contestants went around a strange world, and tried to complete timed challenges in exchange for crystals. Each crystal was worth 5 seconds in the crystal dome, and if they were still in the challenge room when the timer ran out, they got locked in. The price of freedom was one crystal. At the end of game, the players all went into the crystal dome and tried to collect as many gold tokens as they could. If they got more than a certain number, they won a prize.
Sounds great, doesn't it. They have Richard O'Brien from the Rocky Horror picture show hosting it. Cool beans. Except that the contestants were so utterly dumb that in my time of watching it, I never saw anyone win a prize. Watching 6 idiots jumping around inside a dome for 10 seconds and then win nothing every week got a bit depressing, truth be told. The sets weren't very expensive. O'Brien's fee probably wasn't a great deal, so the producers were laughing. Cheap TV at it's very best. I remember one episode of classic British comedy The Mary Whitehouse Experience including a rather fine parody along the lines of:
Richard O'Brien: Hello Team. Shall we play another game?
Team: Yes!
Richard O'Brien: What kind of game? An incredibly easy game?
Richard O'Brien: Ok, this is the Making a cup of tea game. You have 2 and a half minutes, starting from now.
Witless team member: [Enters room]
Witless team member: I don't know what to do!
Other team member: Try putting the cup inside the teapot!
Witless team member: Ummmm, ur….
And so it went on.
Another great parody of the Crystal maze was done by Adam and Joe from the Adam and Joe show, another fantastic late night cult UK comedy. Find it here.
So, I'd like to hear about fuckwitted game shows from other countries. What were the classic best and the worst ones from your country?
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text: Renamed Orica Ltd in 1998 following the local buyout of the shares of the British parent company, Imperial Chemical Industries ANZ (ICI) was formed in the 1928 consolidation of the Australian and New Zealand interests of the British companies Nobel Australia Ltd, Brunner Mond, United Alkali and British Dyestuffs Corporation. Nobel had earlier bought out the family explosives company of James Scott & Co. founded at Deer Park in 1874. Another arm, British Australia Lead Manufacturers, later to become Balm Paints and Dulux, was formed in 1918. Paint manufacturing is now consolidated at Clayton and general chemical production at Yarraville.


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Home Uncategorized 'We're growing as a program' – Season is over for Lakeside, but...
'We're growing as a program' – Season is over for Lakeside, but the program is just getting started
A magical season for Lakeside has come to an end following a 35-6 loss to General Trass in the first round of the state playoffs on Friday night in Lake Providence.
"The field conditions were the worst I've ever been a part of," Lakeside head coach Jason McClendon said. "It affected both teams. We were playing in the Mud Bowl."
The Warriors high-flying offense was stymied by the wet, muddy conditions, but McClendon said the game came down to the Warriors' inability to finish drives.
"We had the ball in the red zone a few times and didn't finish," McClendon said. "We were driving fine, but didn't finish. It was bad execution on our part."
Zachaeus Sumlin scored a 75-yard touchdown to cut the lead to 15-6 late in the third quarter, but that was all the scoring that Lakeside could muster.
The Warriors trailed by only seven points at halftime, but even then, McClendon felt his team should have been up.
"They had a fumbled snap on their first possession that gave us the ball at their six-yard line," McClendon said. "We didn't get any points out of that situation. Three plays that went nowhere and then a field goal that bounced off the goal post. It was one of those nights."
The story of the game was the conditions on the field. McClendon admits that both teams had to deal with the mud, but it certainly made it difficult on the Warriors.
"When the game was over, I didn't see any grass on the field. It was all mud. Our kids were caked in it," McClendon said. "They fumbled the ball a lot, but they were still able to break a few big plays."
One particular play came in the fourth quarter with the game still in the balance.
"It was a third down play they threw over the top," McClendon said. "It tipped off of our safety's hand and into their receiver in stride."
Despite the loss, this season was a record-setting accomplishment for Lakeside football.
"It's not the way you want to end the season," McClendon said. "I hate it for the seniors, that's not how you want to go out. But that's life, you don't get everything you want.
"We've come a long way in two years. For our seniors, it didn't end the right way, but they laid the foundation to make Lakeside football relevant again. They were real leaders this season."
Lakeside has now made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time in school history. The Warriors have only made the playoffs six times in school history.
"Those guys rowed the boat for this program and laid a foundation for the future," McClendon said. "We're not where we wanted to be but, we're growing as a program."
Running back Jacquez Lott finished the regular season as one of the top five best runners in the state according to rushing yards.
Travion Sanders set school records for receiving and touchdown catches.
Quarterback Jordan Preuett ended the season as one of the top throwers in class 2A.
"Our coaching staff wanted to say thank you to all the kids who set the tone for the younger classes," McClendon said. "Those kids who are coming up into our program from middle school now have something they can look up to. That's because of the work our seniors put in these last two years."
Though the season ended poorly for the Warriors, there is no doubt that McClendon and his team have turned things around at Lakeside.
"Lakeside football was a joke. Now there is a pulse in this program," McClendon said. "People have to respect us a little bit."


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La gara dei 400 metri stile libero femminili degli Europei 2012 si è svolta il 27 maggio 2012 e vi hanno partecipato 26 atlete. Le batterie si sono svolte al mattino e la finale nel pomeriggio dello stesso giorno.

Podio

Record
Prima della manifestazione il record del mondo (RM), il record europeo (EU) e il record dei campionati (RC) erano i seguenti.

Risultati

Batterie

Finale

Collegamenti esterni
 Omegatiming.com
 Omegatiming.com

400 stile libero F

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A Strategic Rebrand and Redesigned Sales Collateral Give a Data Center Company a Competitive Edge.
Evolve is a medium sized Houston-based data center solutions provider that is comprised of several sub-brands—each of which was using a different logo. Together, the company can expertly service all phases of the data center lifecycle. In the past, Evolve's business had come from word-of-mouth or repeat business. As such, the majority of the market was unaware of their expertise and capabilities. This lack of awareness caused the company to be incorrectly perceived as small by potential customers. To that point, a number of key perception issues needed to be addressed in order to position Evolve in its rightful place amongst competitors.
S.O. Creative did a deep dig to get a true understanding of what made our client's business tick, their target audiences and their growth objectives. From there we developed a brand strategy with a unique market position that differentiates Evolve from the competition. We refined the primary messages to better communicate the company's brand promise and core offerings such as 'expertise for the lifecycle of your data center', 'mission critical expertise and proven protection' and 'all-seeing, all-knowing data center solution'.
To overcome the perception of Evolve as a small company, S.O. CREATIVE enhanced the visual impact of the company to unify their sub-brands and give them a bold new look of strength and power. We streamlined the logos to all feature the same iconic red 'e' used in the corporate logo and typeface to ensure visual cohesion.
To better illustrate the true range of their services and build on the core message of 'expertise for the lifecycle of your data center', we developed a data center lifecycle service chart. This enabled clients to quickly see that Evolve can fulfill a range of specific needs or handle an entire comprehensive project from end-to-end.
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Leonardo da Vinci's resume
Limited edition of 62 copies typeset by hand, numbered and letterpress printed. The first modern curriculum vitae, written by Leonardo da Vinci to the Duke in Milan, proves to be a document of rare effectiveness.
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Limited print run of 85 numbered copies typeset by hand and letterpress-printed on pure cotton cream-colored Umbria paper, made in Fabriano (of which 20 copies not for sale, marked with alphabet letters, were printed for the Ambrosiana Library).
The number of movable types handled for the typesetting of this book, makes it an exceptional endeavor in contemporary fine printing.
Printed on very fine paper and sewn by hand, this collector's edition is a sophisticated gift meant to last over time and designed to give the best reading experience possible.
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In this letter (Foglio 1082 r, Codice Atlantico, Ambrosiana Library), Leonardo lists its military, architectural and artistic competences, thus masterfully titillating the Duke's aspirations. He got the job, ça va sans dire.
In particular, the first 7 point are devoted to military skills, as Leonardo intends to leverage on Ludovico's geo-political ambitions, by showing his ability to build war machines and thwart any adversary fortification.
A volume in 4to format (22x35 cm) of 52 pages typeset by hand in 16 point original Caslon types, cast in the copper matrices struck by the original 18th-century punches handcut by William Caslon in London in 1720.
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Preface by Mons. Marco Ballarini, Prefetto della Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Introduction by Mons. Marco Navoni, Dottore della Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
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Voces Bolivianas: Bolivian Election 2.0
Posted 6 December 2009 20:27 GMT
Read this post in Español
As the Bolivian voters go for polls for a general election today (6 December 2009), a number of Bolivian netizens are using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook to share other perspectives of the election. Although the international mainstream media coverage on Bolivian elections is limited, there are plenty of coverage in Spanish thanks to these citizen journalists' efforts. Some members of Voces Bolivianas, the Rising Voices grantee from El Alto, Bolivia, are also taking part in this citizen media coverage.
Cristina Quisbert at Bolivia Indigena provides a background:
In 1825 Bolivia was created. Throughout the history it has developed many choices. However, 2009 will be a very important year for the state. This December 6, for the first time the Bolivians abroad can vote. It also expects a large turnout of voters in rural and urban areas.
According to the National Electoral Court, unlike other elections, the results may be known more quickly.
And this time around there is another revolutionary change. Hugo Miranda reports about the initiative of the Bolivian internet users:
With many people in the country, we decided to cover the election tomorrow and although certainly there is a winner, it remains an interesting exercise to cover what will happen tomorrow.
The proposal is to go beyond what has been done so far, namely organizing and attempting to media coverage of not only citizens but also from traditional media, using the advantages that the web gives us in those days.
We opened a site in which we are all somehow working together:
http://elecciones2.0bolivia.com/
And he has instructions how the netizens can take part in the coverage through Facebook, Twitter, Google Friend Connect, Radio Television, Google Wave, newspapers, blogs and many more tools:
If you're on facebook, just ask yourself a fan of Bolivia 2.0 Elections page. Once you do that you can post pictures, video or text. All this information will appear in elecciones2.0bolivia.com site
If you're on twitter, so you just bring in photos, video, text using the hashtag: # 6dBol. All this information will appear in elecciones2.0bolivia.com site
If you're not on twitter or Facebook account, but you want to participate, we will have a chat conversations within elecciones2.0bolivia.com so you can also contribute with links to publications or text.
If you want to send SMS, and you do not have the option to connect, no matter, you only need to send your message to the number 703377881, signing your name or nickname. All this information will appear in elecciones2.0bolivia.com site.
Cheer up, participates. Let us use technology to meet Bolivia's general elections this 6 December!
Our Twitter is: @elecciones20
Facebook: Elections 2.0
Official page: Elecciones 2.0bolivia.com
Technorati Tags: Bolivia 6dbol + election +
Mail: contacto@elecciones2.0bolivia.com
Check out the Elecciones 2.0 Bolivia site for the latest info on the elections.
Image by Eddysan from Twitpic – Elecciones 2.0 Bolivia en Facebook
Mario Duran was interviewed by the Re-Visto magazine on the impact of citizen journalism during elections in Bolivia. Here are some excerpts:
What are the plans by the bloggers and citizen journalists in Bolivia?
We intend to use Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, flickr, youtube, twitter and facebook used by citizens to show the other faces of the election.
How important do you think these activities of "citizens" are to public opinion in Bolivia?
Occasionally members of the community using the web 2.0 comes out in the media, and Hugo Miranda as one of the blogger that capitalizes its activity, as Nicomedes Flores, who suffers from blindness and uses free software for browsing the web, as Voces Bolivianas (Bolivian Voices), dedicated to digital literacy for people of lesser means. In these times, public opinion turns his attention to us, but we have not yet learned to place items on the public agenda as the promotion of accessibility to the Internet, using free software and others. However, this situation may change, with each of these activities (eg citizens' coverage) is evangelized and extends the number of users, the day that will mark your calendar.
Do you think citizen journalists can help an objective coverage in your country?
Ever told you the difference between the citizen journalist and the journalist is that the citizen journalist who writes as he does with the emotion of the moment and that journalists should reflect on the information. Therefore, the citizen journalist takes the photo of the moment, the objectivity and then leaving, but they are learning …
(machine translation)
Mario Duran is live-blogging today's elections. He has also set up a live streaming video. He shares some learning which can help the citizen journalists in reporting the news of the elections properly.
Voting in El Alto. Image Courtesy Alberto Medrano
Alberto S. Medrano Flores at El Alto Noticias writes about the initiatives of El Alto netizens:
Undoubtedly in these elections several Digital Communities will report what happened in the 9 provinces and precisely in the city of El Alto can not be excluded, so the blogs Letras Alteñas, Mi ciudad de El Alto, El Alto Blogs Bolivia and news portal EABOLIVIA are disseminating to everyone what is happening in Bolivia.
You can see in the El Alto Noticias site that the first pictures and reports are appearing.
Translations from Spanish were done by Google Translate.
Voces Bolivianas
http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/12/06/voces-bolivianas-eleccion-boliviana-2-0/
Pingback: Rising Voices » Voces Bolivianas: Ushahidi Platform For Election Reporting
[…] During the Bolivian general elections on December 6, 2009 a number of Bolivian netizens used Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook to share their perspectives of the election. Members of Voces Bolivianas (Bolivian Voices), the Rising Voices grantee from El Alto, Bolivia, joined other Bolivian netizens for Elecciones Bolivia 2.0 citizen media coverage and we reported that. […]
4 April 2010, 12:37 pm


This Fast & Easy Raspberry Homemade Ice Cream is the perfect, refreshing summer dessert. It's smooth, creamy and packed with delicious freeze-dried raspberries.
The secret to making this recipe what it is, is using freeze-dried raspberries. Not only do they provide more flavor in every bite and are more convenient, but there is a major cost difference between using fresh raspberries and freeze-dried. Initially, the cost is greater for one container of freeze-dried raspberries, but it's an investment that will pay off in just a few recipes.
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When making this ice cream, I simply chopped up 1 cup of freeze dried raspberries and gently stirred them into the ice cream mixture. I didn't rehydrate them, but in most other recipes I would. To do this you will add 1 part fruit to 3 parts water. The raspberries will absorb the liquid and resemble fresh raspberries once again. Super quick and easy.
You guys, this is what ice cream dreams are made of. Once you get into it, there's no looking back. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Place 1 cup of the frozen raspberries, water, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir in the rest of the frozen raspberries, lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
Pour the raspberry mixture into a blender and blend until smooth. Let cool completely.
Pour the heavy whipping cream into a stand mixer or bowl. Mix for about 5 minutes or until stiff peaks form.
Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a silicone spatula to fold in the sweetened condensed milk.
Once it is completely mixed together, chop up the freeze-dried raspberries and gently stir into the ice cream mixture.
Pour the base into a bread loaf pan.
Pour in raspberry swirl and freeze overnight. Enjoy!
Hi this looks amazing!! Can it be subbed with other fruit?
Thank you! Yes it totally can be!


Atravesada is part of Teatro Paraguas annual Poesía Viva living poetry series. It explores the physical and political U.S.-Mexico border and also the Borderlands of the Self. Woven with corridos and other music of the frontera (the borderlands), Atravesada has plenty of humor but also offers an unflinching portrait of the border as una herida abierta.
Atravesada first explores la frontera as a literal place: from voice to voice, it ranges from a powerful mother, a wall of barbed lies, a sleeping beauty. The geographic traversing soon turns inward, and explores the varied linguistic experiences of those who have crossed the border. In Learning English, a coffee klatch of women struggle to express themselves in a foreign tongue; Refugee Ship speaks of a woman orphaned from [her] Spanish name. Sotos Spanish and Moras Legal Alien are clever portraits of growing up bilingual and bicultural.
Next is the physical, U.S.-Mexico border. Here are the stories of the maqui girls who work in the dangerous borderland factories, la migras raids on fields and cars, a woman demanding justice for those without papers.
Atravesada continues with the powerful and uplifting theme of Love in the Borderlands and Love as a Borderland. This border can connect two people, as in Gaspar de Albas tongue-in-cheek Making Tortillas, or can fail to span the void in Cervantes Para un Revolucionario. Cisneros You Bring Out the Mexican in Me is an irreverent, delightful tour-de-force.
Paired with romantic love is familial love, and the show ends with these voices. Dont Give In, Chicanita, Anzaldúa begs; and after stories of scrubbing dishes and dancing folklórico and playing baseball, we know she wont.
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Before the Italians arrived, Taylor street had been named for the pre-Civil War general, Zachary Taylor, elected to the presidency in 1848 and who died in office in 1850 from gastroenteritis, supposedly from eating too much ice cream and cherries on a hot day. In volatile political times with slavery at the top of the agenda, Taylor's political "murder" became an item of popular speculation. Food and crime–a fitting legacy for the "foreign colony" later settling on Taylor Street.
The Taylor Street neighborhood was known as "Little Italy." Though other Italian settlements were located in the Chicago area, none emerged with the size, prominence, and persistence of Taylor Street. The Jews, for instance, after the initial years of settlement moved further west. The Italians remained and prospered in food businesses and cuisine. Taylor Street became a primary location of groceries, meat markets, bakeries, restaurants, and vendors in food services, a number of them persisting for generations.
The Federal construction of the I94 Interstate highway in the 1950s and the fruition of Richard J. Daley's urban renewal plans in the early 1960s with the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago as a centerpiece ultimately redrew the street and residential map of the area.
Southern Italians as an "alien" group in the U.S., commonly traveled back and forth to the old country. They appeared to resist the nationalist push of the "Americanization" agenda, and unsurprisingly received a hostile welcome. In low-brow caricature and denigrating jokes about their stupidity, Italians were mocked for their "swarthy" appearance, "Catholic" superstitions, "padrone" labor evils, exploitative streets trades, patriarchy and gender discriminatory family relations, lack of a work ethic, and profound ignorance of the role of technologies in modern urban life. Local crime and crime families ("The Black Hand") identified with Taylor Street attracted both academic and broader public scrutiny.
Case in point, the perspective on neighborhood Italians from Hull-House residents who presumed a mantle as the anchor of civilization in the West Side district. Jane Addams characterized the South Italians as a "primitive people" and simple "peasants," naive patronage supporters of the Nineteenth Ward Boss. For children coming from a former peasant's life picking olives and oranges, it was but a step to criminality by thieving coal, vegetables, and fire wood from local vendors.
The Padrone, an Italian word for boss or manager, was a patriarchal figure in a system of temporary contract labor. A middleman the Padrone was a labor broker matching unskilled mostly urban immigrants with temporary jobs in areas of a labor shortage, including picking field crops, manual labor in mining and construction, and digging canals.
The Padrone's clients included women and young children, primarily Italians and Greeks. Ideally he served two functions. As a facilitator assisting uninformed immigrants ignorant of the capital-intensive American labor system. And as a benefactor and counselor to his dependent patrons, providing a range of services including the costs of transportation and lodging, sending money home, writing letters, and producing documents.


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Japanese car manufacturer Toyota has officially unveiled the facelifted Camry sedan at the 2014 Moscow International Motor Show. The updated sedan gets a visual makeover and a new engine lineup along with an added feature list.
The 2015 Camry facelift gets a newly styled front fascia with stand out massive lower grille, which looks identical to the one found on the facelifted Corolla. The thinner upper chromed grille is complemented by newly designed LED-infused headlamps. Also visible are the massive air intake and rectangular fog lights with chrome surrounds.
The rear profile of the sedan has re-sculpted bumper and a sleek looking chrome strip running across the width. Its flared wheel arches have been fitted to newly designed alloys.
Inside the cabin, the Camry facelift gets a new backlit instrument panel and a 4.2-inch color TFT-display placed in the center. It also gets restyled multi-functional steering wheel while the centre console features a new 6.1-inch or 7.0-inch screen for the new multimedia system. On feature front, this model gets wireless mobile charger, automatic beams, heated rear seats, advanced infotainment system and others.
The company has added a new base 2.0-litre 4-cylinder petrol engine that produces 150bhp of top power. Mated to a six-speed automatic transmission gearbox, this engine sprints to 0-100kmph in just 10.4 seconds. The other engines remain unchanged- a 181bhp, 2.5-litre inline 4-cylinder and 249bhp, 3.5-litre V6 petrol engine.


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David Sands | Tuesday, December 03, 2019
La Casa Guadalupana is making Spanish-focused adult ed a reality in Southwest Detroit
Sister Marie Benzing helped launch a popular local youth tutoring program; inspired by that example, Our Lady of Guadalupe's Father Marie-Elie Haby became interested in exploring how to bring educational resources to the community.David Lewinski
Dr. Lourdes Torres-Monaghan began her involvement as an instructor and was asked by the organization's board to step into her new role after the previous director announced they were leaving.David Lewinski
La Casa Guadalupana offers Adult Basic Education (ABE) and General Education Diploma (GED) classes four days a week. Both are taught in Spanish, as more than 50 percent of the population in the surrounding community there are Hispanic. David Lewinski
Terry Blundell leads class at La Casa Guadalupana.David Lewinski
Child care is offered for student parents of La Casa Guadalupana.David Lewinski
Several days a week, Jessica Bravo makes a trip to a two-story red brick building on Central Street in Southwest Detroit to attend a series of classes that are helping her turn a new corner in her life.
Originally from Mexico, the 35-year-old mother now makes her home in the Motor City. Although she never graduated high school, Bravo is working to change that by attending a local school called La Casa Guadalupana. Located on the second floor of that red brick building on Central, it offers Spanish language instruction for adults. And for Bravo, who doesn't speak fluent English, that's a blessing.
"This is a dream come true, me coming here. I get a lot of support," she says. "It's a very beautiful experience. Everybody here is very respectful."
Right now, Bravo has enrolled in social studies and math classes at La Casa, courses that will help her earn a high school equivalency certificate. For her, the classes represent more than just the means to attain a long-held personal goal or improve her employment opportunities.
"One of my kids wants to graduate from high school. The other one doesn't care," she says. "I want to be an example so that they can have a better life."
Launched five years ago, La Casa Guadalupana offers Adult Basic Education (ABE) and General Education Diploma (GED) classes four days a week. Both are taught in Spanish, as more than 50 percent of the population in the surrounding community there are Hispanic. ABE and GED courses take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 6 to 8 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Terry Blundell leads class at La Casa Guadalupana.
The school also teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) courses for those who wish to improve their English for employment purposes or to pursue opportunities in higher education. During the afternoon, tutoring is also available to help school-age children with homework with the goal of improving math and reading skills. Beyond that, the school also hosts a variety of workshops and presentations on topics like women's health, immigration, domestic violence, nutrition, finances, and employment protection.
"Our classes are very student-centered, each one learns at their own pace," says Dr. Lourdes Torres-Monaghan, La Casa's director. "Teachers help students understand and acquire knowledge from their mistakes. Each person has their own life experience and uses it to make connections with the academic topics they are covering."
Building La Casa
Now an independent nonprofit, the school began its existence as a project of the Catholic Church's Our Lady of Guadalupe parish, which serves Southwest Detroit's Hispanic community.
In 2014, the Rev. Marie-Elie Haby, then the pastor of the parish, began laying the groundwork for the program with the assistance of Sister Marie Benzing, a nun with the Sisters of St. Joseph and retired teacher with more than 45 years of experience with elementary and middle school students. Three years prior, Benzing helped launch a local tutoring program called El Centro de San Jose that had proven to be quite popular with local youth; inspired by that example, the pastor became interested in exploring other ways to bring educational resources to the community.
"The pastor and I had talked many times about wanting to do something for adults we knew had not had the opportunity to complete their education," says Benzing. "So he established La Casa Guadalupana as a nonprofit, and I applied to my congregation and they gave us some money (to help start the school)."
They selected the grounds of a shuttered former Catholic school to be the site of the new school, and after some renovation work, La Casa Guadalupana opened its doors in March of 2015. It was decided that the coursework would be in Spanish, so students could focus on learning skills without having to stress out about what the teacher was saying. The curriculum and materials for the program were obtained through the Mexican Consulate.
Sister Marie Benzing helped launch a popular local youth tutoring program; inspired by that example, Our Lady of Guadalupe's Father Marie-Elie Haby became interested in exploring how to bring educational resources to the community.
To start things off, a director and four teachers were hired to teach ABE (which covers skills for grades 1-6 and 7-9) and GED exam prep courses. Sixty students enrolled for the first session of classes, which then took place just three days a week. That September, classes were expanded to four days a week, morning and evening options were made available, English classes were added, and child care was made available for student parents. In 2017, the Centro de San José tutoring program merged with La Casa's programming.
Over time, interest in the school has snowballed. The school's current enrollment now stands at 200 students. In addition to that, respectable numbers of people enrolled in the programs have gone on to complete their courses of study. From 2016 to 2019, 31 students have graduated via the Mexican Consulate with GED certifications and during the same period, 56 have earned ABE certifications. "We've been blessed," says Benzing.
"We have families that have been with our programs for five or six years. It is so satisfying for me to work here and to help support them in any way possible and to see how they progress."
Common paths, shared goals
Although the students at La Casa are by and large Hispanic, there's still quite a bit of diversity among them.
"You will hear English and every variation of Spanish because we have students with heritage from all regions of Latin America," says Dr. Torres-Monaghan.
That said, nearly all of the ABE and GED students come from similar paths.
"As children, they lived in rural areas, far from the nearest public school or their parents did seasonal work so that they did not stay in the same school for very long," she says. "They might have started school, even done well at it, but life events prevented them from completing their education."
Regardless of their backgrounds most of La Casa's students are dedicated to making better lives for themselves and their families.
Keisla Cuebas was born in Puerto Rico and came to Detroit when she was 5 years old. She dropped out of high school at 16 years old, when she had her first son. Like Bravo, she's enrolled in Math and Social Studies classes and working towards a GED certificate.
"It means a lot," she says. "I'm really progressing with math. I can help my kids with their homework, which I couldn't do before and I want to do bigger things for myself."
Educational horizons
Despite the success of La Casa Guadalupana, the school is not without its challenges. The increase in enrollment has required an increase in staff. There are now 16 part-time employees, but it's been difficult to find bilingual instructors in the area. This issue has been partially remedied with a volunteer crew made up of retired teachers and college students from Wayne State and the University of Detroit-Mercy.
There's also been a high turnover with directors – four since the program began. Dr. Torres-Monaghan, who previously taught at Marygrove College, began her involvement as an instructor and was asked by the organization's board to step into her new role after the previous director announced they were leaving.
Related to the staffing situation is the ever-present demand for financing. Even though La Casa runs on a shoestring budget, it still requires around $100,000 a year to keep the operation afloat. Although the parish's current pastor, the Rev. Adalberto Espinoza, is supportive of the school, La Casa is now an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit and must raise its funding through grants.
"We feel like we've been really blessed with people who are interested in our program who help to support us," says Benzing, adding, "but we continue to look for partnerships and ways to grow the program."
So even as it grows in interest and enrollment, La Casa faces an uncertain future. With that in mind, the school is preoccupied with finding a sustainable path forward so it can continue offering valuable educational resources to the community.
"We'd like to have a stronger financial base, so we know we have a future. It's important for our students," says Benzing. "If we weren't here, many would probably drop out of their educational efforts."
The series is supported by the New Economy Initiative, a project of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan that's working to create an inclusive, innovative regional culture.
Detroit Innovation, Education


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Paul Lamsens has more than 30 years of experience in supporting companies and has developed an extensive network of contacts.
He has a Master's of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a post-graduate degree in Business.


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The IUF's Private Equity Buyout Watch
« April 2008 | Main | June 2008 »
Lion Capital Picks Up Russia's Biggest Vodka Maker
Buyout fund Lion Capital has followed its August 2007 USD 500 million purchase of Russian juice drinks company Nidan Soki with the acquisition of a majority stake in the Russian Alcohol Group, the country's largest producer of vodka and ready-to-drink (RTD) alcoholic beverages. Russian Alcohol's Green Mark vodka is the largest brand by volume in Russia and one of the top 5 global brands.
Russian Alcohol's other brands include premium vodka Zhuravli. 2008 sales have been projected at ca. USD 500 million, with five production plants, 3,500 employees and a well-developed distribution network. Participating in the deal with Lion Capital were Goldman Sachs and Central European Distribution Corporation (CEDC), the Polish multi-brand vodka maker which also operates an extensive import/export distribution network in Poland and Russia, and Goldman Sachs. CEDC put up USD 156.5 million and arranged debt financing for thhe USD 600 million deal.
The acquisition forms part of growing transnational penetration (including private equity) of the regional beverages market. In April, Coca-Cola Hellenic purchased Russia's drink-maker Aquavision, whose brands also include Botaniq juice. PepsiCo last year paid USD 542 million for Ukraine's fruit juice company Sandora.
Lion Capital bought out the UK cereal maker Weetabix for GBP 640 million in November 2003, picked up Orangina (together with Blackstone), the former European beverages division of Cadbury Schweppes, in February, 2006 and in August of that year bought Kettle Foods, the market leader in both the US and the UK for organic potato chips. Last year, Lion Capital defeated a T&G organizing effort at Kettle Chips by employing the notorious US union-busters Burke Group.
Posted on May 26, 2008 02:35 PM | Permalink
Socialist Group in European Parliament Links Financial Crisis to Soaring Food Prices
The Socialist Group in the European Parliament has highlighted the crucial role of financial markets in stimulating the hyperinflation of global food prices and called for urgent action by regulatory authorities. The group tabled three amendments to a motion on EU action to deal with food price inflation.
"The food crisis is closely linked to the financial crisis", said Hannes Swoboda, vice-president of the Group. "It is outrageous that some banks are inviting their clients to speculate on rising food prices. One of our amendments calls for a Europe-wide ban on such speculation. We also want the European Commission to examine the powers of national supervisory bodies to ensure that they can guarantee stable and secure markets and that speculation does not violate the right to food."
More information and a link to the text of the motion are available here.
New SEIU Report on Sovereign Wealth Funds Highlights Need for New Regulation
The SEIU has released a new report on Sovereign Wealth Funds to highlight glaring gaps in the rules for assessing foreign investments in U.S. companies, which continue to depend principally on voluntary disclosure. As the report points out, these regulations were largely designed to address foreign entities taking a direct ownership interest in domestic assets, and therefore faile to address the indirect ownership structures that characterize private equity.
The report is available online at www.behindthebuyouts.org.
Posted on May 6, 2008 06:08 AM | Permalink
Sovereign Wealth Funds and Private Equity
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) – state-owned, state-run investment entities– have begun to generate controversy and debate as they have recently emerged as significant global financial players. SWFs have recently taken large stakes in public stock exchanges, major manufacturing, service and infrastructure transnationals, and thrown a lifeline to private equity funds searching for "permanent money". This introductory briefing was prepared for the IUF Executive Committee, which met in Geneva April 17-18, 2008.
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) – state-owned, state-run investment entities– have begun to generate controversy and debate as they have recently emerged as significant global financial players. The debate has largely focused on SWFs derived from central bank foreign exchange reserves (e.g. Singapore, China) or earnings from non-renewable natural resources, chiefly oil and gas (the Middle East), as distinct from government-owned pension reserve funds (such as Norway's state pension fund). Fed by rapid increases in commodity prices and in foreign reserves resulting from growing global trade imbalances, the SWFs (some of which are decades old) have begun to shift their investment strategy away from bonds and small, diversified stakes in public equities into both high-profile big stakes in listed equities and into "alternative assets", chiefly private equity.
The recent infusion of SWF money into major global investment banks in the wake of the sub-prime crisis has highlighted their new role as "mainstream" financial actors. Concern about SWFs has to date been largely expressed in terms of threats to national ownership of politically or economically "strategic industries", loosely and variously defined as ranging from infrastructure (e.g. US ports) to the French food TNC Danone; loss of control over supplies of raw materials; heightened potential for international financial instability, as major investors acquire/divest assets with no regulation or transparency; and the potential subordination of corporate governance to questionable, even hostile political agendas.
SWFs have recently taken large stakes in public stock exchanges, major manufacturing, service and infrastructure transnationals, and thrown a lifeline to private equity funds searching for "permanent money". In addition to the Chinese SWF stake in Blackstone, for example, two Abu Dhabi government investment entities have taken large stakes in Apollo and Carlyle. The funds have also been operating aggressive buyout operations of their own.
Estimates of the size, portfolio composition and investment strategies of the SWFs vary enormously, highlighting the total lack of transparency at the heart of their operations. Estimates for the assets under management of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, for example, the largest SWF, range from USD 500 billion to 875 billion; for the Singapore Investment Corporation from USD 100 billion to 330 billion. Estimates of their portfolio composition are simply guesses.
The OECD estimates the total current global SWF wealth at ca. USD 2.4 trillion. This compares with some USD 1.6 trillion attributed to global hedge funds, though this figure is also a guess.
Comparison with the assets under management by private financial corporations is instructive. According to the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), whose most recent ranking of the top 50 financial TNCs dates from 2004, each of the top 10 had assets under management of well over USD 1 trillion (e.g. UBS 1.73, Citigroup 1.48 trillion, etc.), dwarfing even the largest SWF.
Morgan Stanley has predicted that by 2015, foreign reserve-based funds like those of China and Singapore will have caught up with today's leading commodity-based funds, and that both classes will dispose of assets on the order of USD 6 trillion. This again is a guess based on fragile suppositions.
All available evidence, however, points to a general and pronounced shift of SWF investment into equity and into "alternative assets" – hedge funds, private equity and real estate. Apart from sensitive political issues, these investments bear directly on employment, and require direct engagement by unions.
The transparency/governance issues raised by SWF investments are similar to those raised by private equity and hedge fund investments. TUAC has sensibly proposed that from this point of view SWFs not be treated separately from other unregulated pools of global financial capital in proposals for greater regulation.
For unions organizing workers in companies in which SWFs threaten to acquire significant or total control, the issues are also similar to those confronting unions faced with a hedge fund incursion or private equity takeover: gaining access to information about investment/employment plans before and under the acquisition, maintaining continuity of employment conditions/union rights and recognition, establishing employer responsibility and accessibility and securing long-term investment in the future of the company.
The failed bid for UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's by the Qatar Investment Authority, which ultimately floundered when pension fund trustees insisted on the buyer meeting stringent pension fund reserve requirements, can serve as a positive example of successful union action in this situation.
Global Credit Crisis? Record 2008 Fund Raising for PE Firms
Despite the global credit crisis, private equity firms have raised record amounts of cash so far this year - and that cash will be seeking outlets.
According to the monthly Private Equity International (PEI), buyout funds globally are currently sitting on USD 1 trillion in uninvested capital, much of it from employee pension funds. Buyout funds raised USD 82 billion in the first quarter of 2008 - an increase of 28% over the record first quarter of 2007. Warburg Pincus has closed a USD 15 billion buyout fund, exceeding its target by over 3 billion; Apax Partners and Goldman Sachs have closed funds worth 18.2 and 15 billiion USD, respectively.
This year's second annual PEI ranking of the 50 largest buyout funds, based on funds raised over the past 5 years, shows an aggregate USD 810 billion in funds raised, a considerable increase over the total USD 551 billion contained in the 2007 rankings. Leverage that by a conservative multiple of 3, for example, and workers arer confronted with over USD 2.4 in concentrated buyout power.
The 2008 rankings show 11 new funds on the list, while 11 have disappeared from the league. All but one of the firms (Carlyle, which remains number 1) changed position with respect to the previous year's rankings. Here is the list - the number at the end indicates the 2007 ranking. Click here for the executive summary of the full report.
Top 50 Buyout Funds Ranked - 2008
1 The Carlyle Group Washington DC $52 billion 1
2 Goldman Sachs Principal Investment Area New York $49.05 billion 3
3 TPG Fort Worth (Texas) $48.75 billion 5
4 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts New York $39.67 billion 2
5 CVC Capital Partners London $36.84 billion 10
6 Apollo Management New York $32.82 billion 12
7 Bain Capital Boston $31.71 billion 8
8 Permira London $25.43 billion 6
9 Apax Partners London $25.23 billion 7
10 The Blackstone Group New York $23.3 billion 4
11 Warburg Pincus New York $23 billion 14
12 3i Group London $22.98 billion 13
13 Advent International Boston $18.32 billion 43
14 Terra Firma Capital Partners London $17 billion 15
15 American Capital Bethesda (Maryland) $17 billion 23
16 Providence Equity Partners Providence (Rhode Island) $16.36 billion 9
17 Silver Lake Menlo Park (California) $15.6 billion 19
18 Cerberus Capital Management New York $14.9 billion 34
19 AIG Investments New York $14.22 billion N/A
20 Fortress Investment Group New York $14.0 billion 27
21 General Atlantic Greenwich (Connecticut) $13.3 billion 18
22 PAI partners Paris $12.98 billion 35
23 First Reserve Corporation Greenwich (Connecticut) $12.82 billion 22
24 EQT Partners Stockholm $12.47 billion 21
25 Hellman & Friedman San Francisco $12 billion 16
26 Cinven London $11.93 billion 11
27 Bridgepoint London $11.7 billion 36
28 Clayton, Dubilier & Rice New York $11.38 billion 47
29 Teachers' Private Capital Toronto $10.69 billion 20
30 Charterhouse Capital Partners London $10.52 billion 24
31 Lehman Brothers Private Equity New York $10.22 billion 25
32 Thomas H. Lee Partners Boston $10.1 billion 30
33 BC Partners London $9.26 billion 29
34 AXA Private Equity Paris $9.24 billion N/A
35 NGP Energy Capital Management Irving (Texas) $8.84 billion N/A
36 Oaktree Capital Management Los Angeles $8.4 billion 49
37 Marfin Investment Group Athens $8.15 billion N/A
38 Sun Capital Partners Boca Raton (Florida) $8 billion 28
39 Doughty Hanson & Co. London $7.44 billion 37
40 JC Flowers & Co. New York $7 billion N/A
41 TA Associates Boston $6.83 billion 39
42 Eurazeo Paris $6.75 billion N/A
43 New Mountain Capital New York $6.69 billion N/A
44 MatlinPatterson New York $6.67 billion N/A
45 WL Ross & Co. New York $6.65 billion N/A
46 EnCap Investments Houston $6.58 billion N/A
47 Madison Dearborn Partners Chicago $6.5 billion 32
48 Barclays Private Equity London $6.43 billion N/A
49 Onex Toronto $6.17 billion 33
50 Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe New York $5.88 billion 42
Posted on May 5, 2008 05:43 PM | Permalink


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