text:
Staff Board
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Lauren Morando Rhim
Co-Founder & Senior Fellow
Paul T. O'Neill
Wendy Brehm
Local Policy Manager
Jennifer Coco
Laura Jean Gilloux
Policy Specialist
Simone Hall
Rachel Hastings
Lauren Krempecki
Stephanie Lancet
Managing Director of Programs
Megan Ohlssen
Development & Outreach Manager
Tracey Saunders
Senior Director of Policy
Wendy Tucker
Sumeyra Ekin
Patrick Martha
Morando Rhim is Executive Director and Co-Founder of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools. A researcher, consultant, and advocate, she has spent the last 25 years striving to identify strategies to create and sustain high quality public schools for all students. She has published extensively about school reform and regularly consults with federal, state and local policy leaders as well as practitioners.
She provides strategic vision and oversees a variety of research, advocacy, coalition building, and field-based projects for NCSECS. Morando Rhim's recent work includes conducting secondary analyses of the federal Civil Rights Data Collection, leading case studies of charter schools demonstrating exemplary growth for students with disabilities, and creating a national network of charter management organization special education coordinators. As the founder of LMR Consulting, she specialized in pressing education reform issues pertaining to school turnaround, charter schools, special education, and state and district support for school improvement. She was formerly a Senior Consultant at Public Impact where she conducted her own work and led project teams to produce research, evaluation, and technical assistance, and provide direct support to clients. As a faculty Research Associate at the University of Maryland, she conducted both research and external consulting and evaluations. While at UMD, Rhim directed Project Intersect, a four year, federally funded study of special education in charter schools and was a consultant to three other related initiatives: Project SEARCH, SPEDTACS, and the TA Customizer.
Rhim is committed to community service at the local level, having served on either her locally elected school board or a charter school board for the last eight years. A graduate of the University of Vermont, she holds a Masters from The George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Leadership from the University of Maryland.
Paul is an education attorney, professor and author with extensive experience in guiding education organizations through challenges and growth. He advises schools, authorizers, networks, non-profits, government agencies and philanthropies on the rules and complexities that apply to educational organizations as well as on effective board governance.
Paul's professional experience spans the education sector. He served for several years as General Counsel of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute (CSI), one of the nation's leading charter school authorizing offices. After this public service, he went into private practice in the boutique national education law firm of Brustein & Manasevit. He moved on to hold positions of Senior Vice President, Chief Regulatory Officer, head education lawyer and Senior Fellow for EdisonLearning, the national school management and services organization. Notably, Paul led Edison's efforts to engage in the post-Katrina revitalization of public schooling in New Orleans. He is a former Associate Director of the Newgrange School and Educational Outreach Center in New Jersey, which serves individuals with learning disabilities, and a former litigator in the New York offices of Dewey Ballantine LLP and Willkie, Farr & Gallagher. On the academic side, Paul serves on the adjunct faculty of Columbia University's Teachers College, where he teaches courses on education law and policy, including Designing Charter Schools, and Special Education Law & Policy. In 2011, he was honored to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College for achievement within 10 years of graduation.
He is a frequent guest lecturer at other universities on a range of education reform topics and is the author of several books and numerous scholarly and professional articles. His books include the Charter School Law Deskbook (Lexis Nexis Publishers), soon to be in its 3rd Edition, and the No Child Left Behind Compliance Manual (LRP Publications), currently in its 2nd Edition.
Paul is committed to community service; he helped found charter schools in the South Bronx and New Orleans and is currently Chair of a charter school on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He served for several years as Chair of the Education & Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, as well as on the Professional Advisory Board of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and on the board of the Learning Disabilities Association of New York City. A graduate of Oberlin College, Paul earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and his M.Ed. from Teachers College.
Wendy works cross-functionally at the Center to support a wide range of projects. Prior to joining the Center, Wendy worked in several administrative and project-based roles doing research collection and analysis, database management, and contract writing. She also taught Government and Communications courses to undergraduate students at Career Technical Institute in Washington, D.C. Wendy holds a bachelor's degree in jurisprudence with a minor in philosophy from the University of Baltimore and is currently completing her master's degree in justice, law and criminology at American University.
Jennifer is an attorney and advocate passionate about education law and policy and achieving equity for kids. In the course of her career, Jennifer has consistently advocated for systemic change to improve outcomes for vulnerable children, particularly within the areas of special education, ending the school to prison pipeline, and English learner programs. Prior to joining the Center, Jennifer was the founding Director of Policy and Advocacy at New Pathways New Orleans and an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She is proud to have achieved systemic change for New Orleans students with disabilities in federal court and through local policy reform and to have served as the first elected Chairwoman of the Louisiana Advisory Council on Student Behavior and Discipline. Jennifer currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Children's Bureau of New Orleans, a local organization that provides community-based mental health services. Jennifer received her law degree from the DePaul University College of Law and her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Laura Jean leads the Center's operational efforts to ensure smooth business practices and organizational efficiency. Prior to joining NCSECS, Laura Jean spent over eight years providing strategic event planning support for annual giving and capital campaign efforts in higher education. She was an integral part of the planning team that launched Dartmouth College's $3 billion Call to Lead Campaign, its largest fundraising effort to date. LJ has a B.A. in English from the University of Missouri and a Masters of Liberal Arts from Dartmouth College where her studies focused on Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry. She is happy to have found a home at NCSECS as Operations Manager, supporting colleagues who challenge and inspire her.
As an integral member of the Center's policy team, Simone monitors and analyzes legislative and regulatory developments at multiple levels of government related to students with disabilities in charter schools. Prior to joining the Center, Simone worked in the policy shop of a small business advocacy organization in Washington, DC. In this role, she helped build the organization's federal and state policy agendas. Before that, she worked in her university's Office for Students with Disabilities as a Notetaker and aided students in their classes by taking notes that provided them with helpful study tools. Simone received her bachelor's degree in Communications and Political Science from Florida Atlantic University and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Public Policy (MPP) at the George Washington University.
Rachel works to ensure the Center's research, programs, and policy priorities reach as many people as possible. Prior to joining the Center, she worked in communications at Dartmouth College, with a focus on connecting and engaging alumni and volunteers. She started her career in publishing in Boston. Rachel holds a bachelor's in English from Bates College and a master's in globalization studies at Dartmouth.
Prior to her work with the Center, Lauren provided training and support in the area of special education and school-based Medicaid billing, as well as state-level student data collection. She has also worked as a project manager for a large district implementation of a special education management system, as a special education liaison and teacher in the School District of Philadelphia, and as a paraprofessional in New Jersey. She holds a Bachelor's of Science in Elementary and Special Education from Temple University.
Stephanie supports the Center's qualitative research and field-level projects that bring the organization to work with schools, districts, and key stakeholders across the country. During her time with The Center, her areas of interest have centered around the intersection of inclusion, equity, and diversity. Stephanie spent several years in the field of higher education prior to joining The Center, last working in student support services at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She received her bachelor's degree in Economics and Philosophy from Boston College, and her master's degree in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University with a research focus on the impact of mental health on learning.
Megan works to close the opportunity gaps and disrupt the status quo in education. With a vision of equity and inclusion, she focuses on the multiple identities of students and educators to dismantle the silo of special education. Megan was a special education teacher and leader in both district and charter schools in Brooklyn. Prior to joining the NCSECS team, she was the Director of the NYC Special Education Collaborative where she supported schools in building inclusive educational environments that ensured access and equity for all. As an undergraduate student at Lewis & Clark College she studied psychology and sociology. She then moved to Brooklyn to join the NYC Teaching Fellows where she earned her Masters in Education and Special Education from Brooklyn College.
Tracey is a non-profit professional who has spent her career focusing on volunteer management, development and education. Tracey received her bachelor's degree in Women's Studies and Sociology from the University of New Hampshire, and a certificate in Non-Profit Management from Marlboro College in Brattleboro, VT. Prior to joining the Center's team, Tracey spent several years managing high-profile donor and alumni events at both Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire. She is passionate about community outreach and advocating for youth and continues to be be actively engaged with several local non-profit boards, including the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (CHaD).
Wendy is an attorney, advocate and education policy expert. She has extensive experience as a trial lawyer, first as an assistant public defender and later in private practice. In 2005, inspired by her own daughter's journey as a student with a disability, Wendy began representing families of students with disabilities in special education matters. She has worked extensively at the state and local level in Nashville, Tennessee to advocate for education policies, especially those that benefit students with disabilities. She has held leadership roles in several non-profit organizations focused on education and special education issues, including serving as the founding board chair of Nashville's Diverse Learners Cooperative.
Sumeyra is a member of the Programs team, where she supports research and data analysis efforts. Prior to joining the Center, Sumeyra had research-based roles where she used both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to design and implement projects and analyze data. While working for the Fuchs Research Group at Vanderbilt University, Sumeyra worked with elementary school students in Nashville to help improve their reading comprehension skills. She also worked as a high school social studies teache, which gave her insight into the problems students face, including differing learning strengths aand challenges, family income, and language background. Sumeyra received her bachelor's degree in International & Global Studies and History from Brandeis University and her master's degree in Education from Peabody College, Vanderbilt University.
Patrick supports the Center's organizational efforts and works to optimize and maintain organizational effiencies and good business practices. Prior to joining the Center, Pat taught for nearly a decade, working in China at the Chengdu Foreign Languages School and most recently at the Storm King School in New York's Hudson valley for six years. As both an English and Chinese Language Teacher, Patrick worked across multiple departments and also served as department head for foreign languages. In addition, he also coached the cross country team and worked as the dorm head. Patrick holds a BA from Dartmouth College, where he majored in English and Religion, as well as a Master's in Education and teacher certification in English from the Upper Valley Educators Institute..
Robin Lake
Board Vice Chair
Robert Garda
Cliff Chuang
Renita Thukral
Mashea Ashton
William Bethke
Sam Drazin
Alex Medler
Marty Mittnacht
Jon Rosenberg
Robin Lake is Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington, and is nationally recognized for her research and analysis of U.S. public school system reforms, including charter schools and charter management organizations, innovation and scale, portfolio school districts, school turnaround efforts, and performance-based accountability systems.
Ms. Lake has authored numerous studies and provided expert technical assistance reports on charter schools. She is the editor of Unique Schools Serving Unique Students: Charter Schools and Children with Special Needs (CRPE, 2010) and editor of the annual report, Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools. She co-authored, with Paul Hill, Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education (Brookings 2002).
She has provided invited testimonies to the U.S. House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee as well as various state legislatures, presents regularly at conferences and summits around the United States, and serves as an advisor to various organizations, including the Journal of School Choice, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and the National Charter School Resource Center.
Professor Garda teaches contracts, commercial transactions, international commercial transactions, employment discrimination, legal methods, and scholarly writing. He is the author of numerous articles and reports on education law. His recent articles appear in the North Carolina Law Review, Florida Law Review and Journal of Law & Education. His legal scholarship covers a variety of topics including: the rights of disabled students, affirmative action, integration in K-12 education, special education spending and legal issues surrounding charter schools. His current projects concern: introducing outcome accountability into special education law, the impact of monied interests on education legislation and the changing purposes of education as recognized by the Supreme Court and embodied in recent legislation.
Professor Garda was the past national Chair of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Education Law and currently serves on its Executive Committee. He also serves as a member of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Board of Directors for the Louisiana Mental Health Advocacy Services. He has worked on projects with the Louisiana Bar Foundation and Louisiana Appleseed. He also works with national and local public interest groups on education and disability issues and is a frequent commentator in the Louisiana media on education issues. He was awarded the 2010 Good Apple Award from the Appleseed Network and the 2009 Gillis Long Poverty Law Center Public Service Award for his public service. He was also voted the Favorite Professor of the Year in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010.
Professor Garda joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2002. Prior to entering academia he graduated from Duke University Law School where he served as Articles Editor on the Duke Law Journal. After externing for Justice Zimmerman of the Utah Supreme Court, Professor Gardabecame a partner at the Salt Lake City firm of Fabian & Clendenin focusing primarily in the areas of education law, commercial litigation, and employment law.
Cliff Chuang currently serves as Senior Associate Commissioner for Educational Options at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. He is responsible for supporting and overseeing the wide range of educational options available to Massachusetts families, including charter, virtual, and other redesigned school models; career technical education; adult basic education; early learning; and out-of-school time programs. He also oversees the Department's student and family support initiatives and the state's problem resolution system to ensure educational equity. The Department has been recognized as a national leader for charter school and career/vocational technical educational quality, and in the way leaders partner with the field in research and support initiatives. He serves on the board of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools and the national advisory board of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Cliff previously served as the director of charter schools for the New York State Education Department. He started his career teaching secondary mathematics and science in Boston, in both district and charter school settings. He holds a A.B. in mathematics from Harvard University, and a M.Ed. in Secondary Mathematics Teaching from Boston College.
In addition to being a partner at Civil Rights Solutions, Renita Thukral serves as the Sr. National Legal Advisor at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. In these roles, she leads and grows a national network of charter school attorneys known as "The Alliance of Public Charter School Attorneys"; provides technical assistance and training to charter school operators, authorizers, attorneys and advocates seeking to improve school-level civil rights policies and practices; addresses fiscal equity and labor issues confronting charter schools; provides litigation and strategic assistance to state partners considering litigation; and supports charter school advocates and operators seeking to improve their regulatory and authorizing environments.
Prior to this work, she served as the Policy Director at the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools and the Director of Policy and Advocacy at New Schools for New Orleans. Renita earned her B.A. from Stanford University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She taught junior high school math in Los Altos, California, before attending law school, and she served as a public defender for over six years in New York City before joining the charter school community.
Mashea Ashton is the Founder and CEO of Digital Pioneers Academy, a new charter school proposed for Washington, DC in Fall 2018. Mashea recently returned back to the Washington, DC area after spending the last 20 years implementing and scaling the best practices in urban education across the country, after starting her career as a special education teacher in Williamsburg, Va and Washington, DC. Mostly recently, Mashea served as the CEO of the Newark Charter School Fund, where she oversaw a $48 million initiative to support the quality growth of charter schools. Under Mashea's leadership, Newark's charter sector grew from 8% to an estimated 30% of the children in Newark's public schools in 2016, while being ranked the second highest performing charter sector in the country, according to Stanford University's 2015 CREDO study. Mashea has previously served as the executive director for the New York Program and senior advisor for charter school policy for New Leaders for New Schools. Mashea has also served as the executive director for Charter Schools for the New York City Department of Education, and the national director of recruitment and selection for the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). Mashea is the Vice- chair of the board of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and serves on the boards of St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School, National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, National Charter School Resource Center, and Eagle Academy Foundation Advisory Board. She has been honored as the New Jersey Charter Champion for Advocacy by the New Jersey Charter Schools Association, the First Lady of Charter Schools by Marion P. Thomas Charter School, the Shirley Chisholm Trailblazer by SHE Wins LLC, a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow by the Aspen Institute, and as an Education Award recipient from Leadership Newark. Mashea is a frequent speaker and panelist for charter school and education reform advocacy organizations around the country. Mashea has a M.Ed. in special education with an emphasis on learning disabilities and emotional disturbance, and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and elementary education from the College of William and Mary. She and her husband Kendrick are the proud parents of twins who are in kindergarten.
William Bethke is a founding partner of Kutz & Bethke, LLC, and Cottonwood Charter Consulting LLC. Bill has practiced as a civil rights attorney, labor arbitrator and education law attorney, principally in Colorado, since 1978. He has represented and provided strategic guidance to charter schools since 1994, participating in the founding of multiple charters. Bill was a founder of Rocky Mountain Deaf School and Global Village Academy, where his granddaughter attends the Mandarin immersion program. Bill has been instrumental in the development of charter school law in Colorado, whether through administrative appeals, litigation, shaping regulation, contract negotiation, or influencing legislation. Bill helped draft the Charter School Collaborative Act, which creates one public form for Colorado multi-school networks; the Emergency Powers Act, which directs certain charter disputes to the State Commissioner of Education; and the statute authorizing charters to create public preschools, among others. In 2013, Kutz & Bethke represented 65 Colorado charters or networks. Bill originated a course in Disability Law at the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver, which he taught from 1995 to 2005. He is the past president of the governing boards of the Colorado League of Charter Schools and Aspen Center for Autism. He serves on the advisory board of the Alliance of Public Charter School Attorneys, and the governing board of the New America Schools, a Colorado school network serving young adult immigrants. Bill is a 1975 graduate of Colorado State University and 1978 graduate of the Yale Law School.
Sam Drazin is a former elementary educator and the Founder/Executive Director of Changing Perspectives, a national non profit organization which provides disability awareness programs in schools. Sam consults with schools around inclusion and positive climate and culture. He continues to be amazed by the positive impact that disability awareness initiatives are having on students and educators around the country. Sam has been featured in the Washington Post and is active in the educational sector by presenting at educational conferences and serves on a number of boards.
Alex Medler has been a national expert on charter school policy since the opening days of the movement, analyzing the first laws in 1992. He leads the Tri-State Alliance to Improve District-Led Charter Authorizing, which helps school districts in California, Colorado, and Florida strengthen their charter authorizing practices. As part of this work he directs the Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers. He previously led the National Charter School Resource Center and directed policy, research, and technical assistance initiatives for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). He also served on NACSA's Board of Directors from 2007 to 2009.
Additionally, Alex chaired the board of the state-wide charter authorizer in Colorado; directed research and policy development for the Colorado Children's Campaign; led national activities for the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program; and directed charter school and school choice work for the Education Commission of the States.
Alex earned his Ph.D. (political science) from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a B.A. (politics) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two children.
Marcia (Marty) Mittnacht, currently retired, comes to the Board with many years of experience in special education. Marty was with the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1989 to 2016 working in special education throughout. Marty retired with the title of Associate Commissioner for Special Education and all that is implied by the title occurred during her 27 years at the Department: Regulation writing and rewriting; working with charter schools, private schools, vocational schools and special education specific schools; policy and interagency work; grant and funding development activities; and more. Marty also has served on several other Boards: The National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE); The Massachusetts Association of Private Special Education Schools (MAAPS); and the Massachusetts Coalition on the Status of Women (A Cambridge City Board). Marty enjoys policy discussion and believes strongly in equity for underserved populations.
Jon Rosenberg is an experienced social sector leader, education program developer, and civil rights lawyer, who currently serves as President and CEO of the Hebrew Charter School Center. He has previously served as CEO of Repair the World (a service-learning organization), Executive Director of Roads to Success (a career and college readiness program) and ROADS Charter High Schools, and in senior staff roles at Edison Schools Inc., The Children's Aid Society, and the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Jon began his legal career as a public defender at The Legal Aid Society. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Jon lives in Montclair, NJ, with his wife and children. He is an active volunteer in the Montclair School District (where he co-chaired the district's race/economic integration taskforce), and serves on the board of Ascend Learning (a Brooklyn-based charter school organization). He is a past-chair of the New York City Bar Association's Committee on Education and the Law, and has taught courses on Children and the Law and Education Law at Columbia Law School and Teachers College.


So I'm back on the wagon, both with the blog and with the work. I'm not making promises anymore about how often I'll post here – I'm trying to do my best to surrender to the wack-a-day rhythm that is my life, and just go with it. It's nice finally to be working on something that isn't a secret; something I can show to the interwebs!
I started this quilt in 2007, I think, or even 2006. Most of the fabrics came from Kaimuki Dry Goods in Hawaii. I visited in January of 2006, and bought half a suitcase of stuff with a vague plan in mind and not much more. I spent months staring at the fabrics before I finally worked up the courage to cut into them, and then made a small amount of progress before my brother and sister-in-law announced their engagement. I very carefully labeled all the pieces and put them away in a box so I could tackle the wedding quilt that would take two years to finish. When that was all over, I hadn't exactly forgotten about this beauty, but I didn't have any more quilt in me.
Since I have mentally declared 2013 as "The Year of Wrapping Up Loose Ends," it was with satisfaction but some trepidation that I pulled that box off the shelf a few weeks ago. I've made several more quilts in the intervening years, and gotten much better at making the seams line up and the corners pointy. I was worried that I'd look at the old blocks and hate them. Luckily, I have declared the previous work "good enough" and thrown myself back into it, with an even clearer idea of what I want the finished product to look like.
Making a full-sized quilt with a cat around is harder than making a quilt without the cat. Inara loves to help with any project, but I'm having a hard time convincing her that the hot iron is not something she wants to smell and that I really just did wash all that fabric and would like to keep the cat hair content to a minimum. When we can declare a truce, she likes to hang out behind the machine, blessedly out of the way, and snooze. I've built four more blocks in the last three weeks, and progress in continuing apace.
Ok, yeah, I know. I've been gone a long time. A REALLY long time. Like, 6 months long.
In my defense, I did throw a wedding. A really lovely wedding. And I worked 60 hours a week all summer long, right up until a week before said wedding. And then we went on a really well-deserved vacation.
And then I came back home and teched another show. I'm just now beginning to resurface.
There's been so much happening this year that it's been hard to have time to do it and write about it. I realize that not writing will never make me a Famous Blogger, and it's not going to get me invited to fancy parties or to give motivational speeches. I'm hoping to get my groove back in the coming weeks. The husband (still getting used to that!) is a great inspiration – he's now running a blog of his own. It's a cool project based on a box of postcards we found in an antique shop in New Orleans – Postcards to Joe. R spends a lot of time wandering down the "Wikipedia hole," exploring all kinds of topics and getting to know this Joe guy in the process.
I spend more time than is strictly good for me surfing Pinterest during shows, and it seems like all the pictures link back to "Happy Housewife" blogs, where pretty women with very white teeth explain how you can clean your oven for three cents using baking soda and a toothbrush, all while home-schooling your five kids and cooking wholesome organic meals from the veggies you grew and canned yourself. Whilst I realized that this is a form of masochistic torture, I can't look away. It's captivating. It's all Martha Stewart-y. Thank God for the Yarn Harlot, who adds a little much-needed perspective. It's nice to know that there are other women on the internet who accidentally wear their underwear inside out and consider the dining room clean if at least one person can eat at the table. Of course, she's a jet-setting Famous Blogger, but a girl can dream, can't she?


In numerous methods and activities, the key to healing and also any success related to other forms of spiritual experience are based on the signal being a pulsed one. If the signal is likely to reach the brain it, in other words, has to be a pulsed signal.
The pulsating brain: A review of experimental and clinical studies of intracranial pulsatility. Wagshul ME, Eide PK, Madsen JR. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Department of Radiology, Bronx, NY 10461, USA. mark.wagshul@einstein.yu.edu.
The maintenance of adequate blood flow to the brain is critical for normal brain function; cerebral blood flow, its regulation and the effect of alteration in this flow with disease have been studied extensively and are very well understood.
This flow is not steady, however; the systolic increase in blood pressure over the cardiac cycle causes regular variations in blood flow into and throughout the brain that are synchronous with the heart beat.
Because the brain is contained within the fixed skull, these pulsations in flow and pressure are in turn transferred into brain tissue and all of the fluids contained therein including cerebrospinal fluid.
While intracranial pulsatility has not been a primary focus of the clinical community, considerable data have accrued over the last sixty years and new applications are emerging to this day.
Investigators have found it a useful marker in certain diseases, particularly in hydrocephalus and traumatic brain injury where large changes in intracranial pressure and in the biomechanical properties of the brain can lead to significant changes in pressure and flow pulsatility.
In this work, we review the history of intracranial pulsatility beginning with its discovery and early characterization, consider the specific technologies such as transcranial Doppler and phase contrast MRI used to assess various aspects of brain pulsations, and examine the experimental and clinical studies which have used pulsatility to better understand brain function in health and with disease.


text:
Q: How to implement efficient C++ runtime statistics I would like to know if there is a good way to monitor my application internals, ideally in the form of an existing library.
My application is heavily multithreaded, and uses a messaging system to communicate in-between threads and to the external world. My goal is to monitor what kind of messages are sent, at which frequency, etc.
There could also be other statistics in a more general way, like how many threads are spawned every minute, how much new/delete are called, or more specific aspects of the application; you name it.
What would be awesome is something like the "internal pages" you have for Google Chrome, like net or chrome://tracing , but in a command line fashion.
If there is a library that's generic enough to accomodate for the specificities of my app, that would be great.
Otherwise I'm prepared to implement a small class that would do the job, but I don't know where to start. I think the most important thing is that the code shouldn't interfere too much, so that performances are not impacted.
Do you guys have some pointers on this matter?
Edit: my application runs on Linux, in an embedded environment, sadly not supported by Valgrind :(

A: I would recommend that in your code, you maintain counters that get incremented. The counters can be static class members or globals. If you use a class to define your counter, you can have the constructor register your counter with a single repository along with a name. Then, you can query and reset your counters by consulting the repository.
struct Counter {
    unsigned long c_;
    unsigned long operator++ () { return ++c_; }
    operator unsigned long () const { return c_; }
    void reset () { unsigned long c = c_; ATOMIC_DECREMENT(c_, c); }
    Counter (std::string name);
};

struct CounterAtomic : public Counter {
    unsigned long operator++ () { return ATOMIC_INCREMENT(c_, 1); }
    CounterAtomic (std::string name) : Counter(name) {}
};

ATOMIC_INCREMENT would be a platform specific mechanism to increment the counter atomically. GCC provides a built-in __sync_add_and_fetch for this purpose. ATOMIC_DECREMENT is similar, with GCC built-in __sync_sub_and_fetch.
struct CounterRepository {
    typedef std::map<std::string, Counter *> MapType;
    mutable Mutex lock_;
    MapType map_;
    void add (std::string n, Counter &c) {
        ScopedLock<Mutex> sl(lock_);
        if (map_.find(n) != map_.end()) throw n;
        map_[n] = &c;
    }
    Counter & get (std::string n) const {
        ScopedLock<Mutex> sl(lock_);
        MapType::const_iterator i = map_.find(n);
        if (i == map_.end()) throw n;
        return *(i->second);
    }
};

CounterRepository counterRepository;

Counter::Counter (std::string name) {
    counterRepository.add(name, *this);
}

If you know the same counter will be incremented by more than one thread, then use CounterAtomic. For counters that are specific to a thread, just use Counter.

A: I gather you are trying to implement the gathering of run-time statistics -- things like how many bytes you sent, how long you've been running, and how many times the user has activated a particular function.
Typically, in order to compile run-time statistics such as these from a variety of sources (like worker threads), I would have each source (thread) increment its own, local counters of the most fundamental data but not perform any lengthy math or analysis on that data yet.
Then back in the main thread (or wherever you want these stats analyzed & displayed), I send a RequestProgress type message to each of the worker threads.  In response, the worker threads will gather up all the fundamental data and perhaps perform some simple analysis.  This data, along with the results of the basic analysis, are sent back to the requesting (main) thread in a ProgressReport message.  The main thread then aggregates all this data, does additional (perhaps costly) analysis, formatting and display to the user or logging.
The main thread sends this RequestProgress message either on user request (like when they press the S key), or on a timed interval.  If a timed interval is what I'm going for, I'll typically implement another new "heartbeat" thread.  All this thread does is Sleep() for a specified time, then send a Heartbeat message to the main thread.  The main thread in turn acts on this Heartbeat message by sending RequestProgress messages to every worker thread the statistics are to be gathered from.
The act of gathering statistics seems like it should be fairly straightforward.  So why such a complex mechanism?  The answer is two-fold.
First, the worker threads have a job to do, and computing usage statistics isn't it.  Trying to refactor these threads to take on a second responsibility orthoganal to their main purpose is a little like trying to jam a square peg in to a round hole.  They weren't built to do that, so the code will resist being written.
Second, the computation of run-time statistics can be costly if you try to do too much, too often.  Suppose for example you have a worker thread that send multicast data on the network, and you want to gather throughput data.  How many bytes, over how long a time period, and an average of how many bytes per second.  You could have the worker thread compute all this on the fly itself, but it's a lot of work and that CPU time is better spent by the worker thread doing what it's supposed to be doing -- sending multicast data.  If instead you simply incremented a counter for how many bytes you've sent every time you send a message, the counting has minimal impact on the performance of the thread.  Then in response to the occasional RequestProgress message you can figure out the start & stop times, and send just that along to let the main thread do all the divison etc.

A: Use shared memory (POSIX, System V, mmap or whatever you have available).  Put a fixed length array of volatile unsigned 32- or 64-bit integers (i.e. the largest you can atomically increment on your platform) in there by casting the raw block of memory to your array definition.  Note that the volatile doesn't get you atomicity; it prevents compiler optimizations that might trash your stats values.  Use intrinsics like gcc's __sync_add_and_fetch() or the newer C++11 atomic<> types.
You can then write a small program that attaches to the same block of shared memory and can print out one or all stats.  This small stats reader program and you main program would have to share a common header file that enforced the position of each stat in the array.
The obvious drawback here is that you're stuck with a fixed number of counters. But it's hard to beat, performance-wise.  The impact is the atomic increment of an integer at various points in your program.

A: In embedded systems, a common technique is to reserve a block of memory for a "log" and treat it like a circular queue.  Write some code that can read this block of memory; which will help take "snapshots" during run-time.
Search the web for "debug logging".  Should turn up some source you could use to play with.  Most shops I've been at usually roll their own.
Should you have extra non-volatile memory, you could reserve an area and write to that.  This would also include files if your system is large enough to support a file system.
Worst case, write data out to a debug (serial) port.
For actual, real-time, measurements, we usually use an oscilloscope connected to a GPIO or test point and output pulses to the GPIO / Test point.

A: Have a look at valgrind/callgrind.
It can be used for profiling, which is what I understand you are looking for. I do not think it works at runtime though, but it can generate after your process finnished.

A: That's a good answer, @John Dibling! I had a system quite similar to this. However, my "stat" thread was querying workers 10 times per second and it affected performance of the worker threads as each time the "stat" thread asks for a data, there's a critical section accessing this data (counters, etc.) and it means that the worker thread is blocked for the time this data is being retrieved. It turned out, that under heavy load of worker threads, this 10Hz stat querying affected overall performance of the workers.
So I switched to a slightly different stat reporting model - instead of actively querying worker threads from the main threads, I now have worker threads to report their basic stat counters to their exclusive statistics repos, which can be queried by the main thread at any time with no direct impact on the workers.

A: If you are on C++11 you could use std::atomic<>
#include <atomic>

class GlobalStatistics {
public:

    static GlobalStatistics &get() {
        static GlobalStatistics instance;
        return instance;
    }

    void incrTotalBytesProcessed(unsigned int incrBy) {
        totalBytesProcessed += incrBy;
    }

    long long getTotalBytesProcessed() const { return totalBytesProcessed; }

private:

    std::atomic_llong totalBytesProcessed;

    GlobalStatistics() { }
    GlobalStatistics(const GlobalStatistics &) = delete;
    void operator=(const GlobalStatistics &) = delete;
};

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Moles grow to a length of around 15cm. and weigh approximately 100 to 150 grams and are found in most of lowland Britain, they are active all year round. They have a lifespan of up to 3 years.
The mole is rarely seen, spending most of its time underground in soil. Their favourite food is earthworms.
Moles are very active animals, working both day and night, and only stopping for short periods of rest, you can see where the mole is tunnelling, because every few metres they rise to the surface with a heap of freshly excavated soil.
The placing of purpose built traps is the most effective form of Mole control. The traps are checked daily minimising animal distress. Once caught the Mole is removed and disposed of sympathetically and humanely.


text:
Q: how to read the header txt by procedure in oracle 11g when executing a procedure to read a file the system ignores the first line, how do I solve it?

A: You are a little scant on details, but options:
1) If you are using external tables, use the SKIP clause
2) If you are using SQL Load, use the SKIP clause
3) If you are using APEX, tick the "Has Headers" box on upload
4) If you are using UTL_FILE then do UTL_FILE.GET_LINE to get the first line and discard.
5) If you are reading a CLOB, look for chr(10) and/or chr(13) to find the end of the first line using DBMS_LOB.INSTR
We can't provide much more than that because your question is so vague ...


text:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<class name="DynamicFont" inherits="Font" version="4.0">
	<brief_description>
		DynamicFont renders vector font files at runtime.
	</brief_description>
	<description>
		DynamicFont renders vector font files (such as TTF or OTF) dynamically at runtime instead of using a prerendered texture atlas like [BitmapFont]. This trades the faster loading time of [BitmapFont]s for the ability to change font parameters like size and spacing during runtime. [DynamicFontData] is used for referencing the font file paths. DynamicFont also supports defining one or more fallback fonts, which will be used when displaying a character not supported by the main font.
		DynamicFont uses the [url=https://www.freetype.org/]FreeType[/url] library for rasterization.
		[codeblock]
		var dynamic_font = DynamicFont.new()
		dynamic_font.font_data = load("res://BarlowCondensed-Bold.ttf")
		dynamic_font.size = 64
		$"Label".set("custom_fonts/font", dynamic_font)
		[/codeblock]
		[b]Note:[/b] DynamicFont doesn't support features such as kerning, right-to-left typesetting, ligatures, text shaping, variable fonts and optional font features yet. If you wish to "bake" an optional font feature into a TTF font file, you can use [url=https://fontforge.org/]FontForge[/url] to do so. In FontForge, use [b]File > Generate Fonts[/b], click [b]Options[/b], choose the desired features then generate the font.
	</description>
	<tutorials>
	</tutorials>
	<methods>
		<method name="add_fallback">
			<return type="void">
			</return>
			<argument index="0" name="data" type="DynamicFontData">
			</argument>
			<description>
				Adds a fallback font.
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="get_available_chars" qualifiers="const">
			<return type="String">
			</return>
			<description>
				Returns a string containing all the characters available in the main and all the fallback fonts.
				If a given character is included in more than one font, it appears only once in the returned string.
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="get_fallback" qualifiers="const">
			<return type="DynamicFontData">
			</return>
			<argument index="0" name="idx" type="int">
			</argument>
			<description>
				Returns the fallback font at index [code]idx[/code].
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="get_fallback_count" qualifiers="const">
			<return type="int">
			</return>
			<description>
				Returns the number of fallback fonts.
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="get_spacing" qualifiers="const">
			<return type="int">
			</return>
			<argument index="0" name="type" type="int">
			</argument>
			<description>
				Returns the spacing for the given [code]type[/code] (see [enum SpacingType]).
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="remove_fallback">
			<return type="void">
			</return>
			<argument index="0" name="idx" type="int">
			</argument>
			<description>
				Removes the fallback font at index [code]idx[/code].
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="set_fallback">
			<return type="void">
			</return>
			<argument index="0" name="idx" type="int">
			</argument>
			<argument index="1" name="data" type="DynamicFontData">
			</argument>
			<description>
				Sets the fallback font at index [code]idx[/code].
			</description>
		</method>
		<method name="set_spacing">
			<return type="void">
			</return>
			<argument index="0" name="type" type="int">
			</argument>
			<argument index="1" name="value" type="int">
			</argument>
			<description>
				Sets the spacing for [code]type[/code] (see [enum SpacingType]) to [code]value[/code] in pixels (not relative to the font size).
			</description>
		</method>
	</methods>
	<members>
		<member name="extra_spacing_bottom" type="int" setter="set_spacing" getter="get_spacing" default="0">
			Extra spacing at the bottom in pixels.
		</member>
		<member name="extra_spacing_char" type="int" setter="set_spacing" getter="get_spacing" default="0">
			Extra character spacing in pixels.
		</member>
		<member name="extra_spacing_space" type="int" setter="set_spacing" getter="get_spacing" default="0">
			Extra space spacing in pixels.
		</member>
		<member name="extra_spacing_top" type="int" setter="set_spacing" getter="get_spacing" default="0">
			Extra spacing at the top in pixels.
		</member>
		<member name="font_data" type="DynamicFontData" setter="set_font_data" getter="get_font_data">
			The font data.
		</member>
		<member name="outline_color" type="Color" setter="set_outline_color" getter="get_outline_color" default="Color( 1, 1, 1, 1 )">
			The font outline's color.
			[b]Note:[/b] It's recommended to leave this at the default value so that you can adjust it in individual controls. For example, if the outline is made black here, it won't be possible to change its color using a Label's font outline modulate theme item.
		</member>
		<member name="outline_size" type="int" setter="set_outline_size" getter="get_outline_size" default="0">
			The font outline's thickness in pixels (not relative to the font size).
		</member>
		<member name="size" type="int" setter="set_size" getter="get_size" default="16">
			The font size in pixels.
		</member>
	</members>
	<constants>
		<constant name="SPACING_TOP" value="0" enum="SpacingType">
			Spacing at the top.
		</constant>
		<constant name="SPACING_BOTTOM" value="1" enum="SpacingType">
			Spacing at the bottom.
		</constant>
		<constant name="SPACING_CHAR" value="2" enum="SpacingType">
			Character spacing.
		</constant>
		<constant name="SPACING_SPACE" value="3" enum="SpacingType">
			Space spacing.
		</constant>
	</constants>
</class>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


non disclosure agreement template simple employee one way confidentiality templat.
confidentiality agreement template free elegant employee form best of uk f.
sample employee data confidential agreement free confidentiality template australia templates example t.
gallery of simple employment contract template free unique employee confidentiality agreement new australia contrac.
non disclosure agreement template accountability medical confidentiality employee free confidentia.
free non disclosure agreement template employee templates samples forms lab confidentiality.
staff non disclosure agreement template employee confidentiality templates free sample ideas australia templat.
free non disclosure agreement template employee confidential world congress confidentiality te.
inspirational form templates top medicaid employee confidentiality agreement template free australia new medical sa.
new business confidentiality agreement template non disclosure employee free uk elegant 9 employe.
employee confidentiality agreement template non disclosure templates free sample australia em.
human resources confidentiality agreement template sample generic breach of letter templates simple employee non disclosure.
confidentiality agreement free template download with employee non disclosure.
confidentiality agreement form template lovely medical templates free sample employee uk inspi.
work agreement template free scope of employee confidentiality uk loan temp.
confidentiality agreement template free inspirational simple best policy employee non disclosure.
free employee contracts templates unique word confidentiality agreement non disclosure template employ.
employee confidentiality agreement template free disclosure printable australia t.
employee confidentiality agreement templates free sample throughout employment non disclosure template fr.
example salary human resources confidentiality agreement employee template free uk templates.
best of employee confidentiality agreement template beautiful non disclosure free australia ag.
human resources employee confidentiality agreement template write with free samples simple non disclosure emp.
employee confidentiality agreement template top free non disclosure co.
example standard form confidentiality agreement for employee non free template disclosure 8 confidential.
employee confidentiality agreement template elegant form free documents in australia agreem.
employee confidentiality agreement template form sample free simple non disclosure t.
free confidentiality agreement template download unique employee hospital private simple non disclosure agreeme.
sample employee confidentiality agreement template non disclosure free templates.
employee confidentiality agreement template free unique australia a awesome startup conf.
employee non disclosure agreement free confidentiality template australia form word documents.
confidentiality agreement template 8 employee free this is uk confidenti.
non disclosure agreement template free unique word employee confidentiality templates new inspirational simple fr.


Christmas Eve Boxes are fast becoming a really charming family tradition. Growing in popularity as a treat for both young and old, these thoughtful boxes stuffed with festive themed items and activities are a fantastic way to get friends and family members in the seasonal spirit and are perfect to mark the final day of the advent countdown.
Having been criticised more recently for applying added pressure and stress to parents, both financially and organisationally, the Christmas Eve Box tradition has also been praised for teaching children about the patience of waiting and preparing for the big day itself. Here at Tiny Box Company we feel they really capture the magic of Christmas, and the joy behind gift giving, and we are all for starting the festivities early.
So, what to put into these Christmas Eve Boxes for the children? Ideas include pyjamas, festive books or films, sweets and hot chocolate. Activities such as colouring in, a family game or the ingredients and recipe for baking yuletide treats. An innovative idea is to get your little ones to bake something that they can leave out for Santa Claus – the bonus, of course, being that you get to eat something tasty on Santa's behalf once the kids are tucked up in bed! Other clever things you can add which won't break the bank include popping in a carrot ready to give to Rudolph or a handful of muesli labelled as 'reindeer food' – helping the kids get extra excited for the arrival of Father Christmas.
And what about the adults? If you are putting together a Christmas Eve Box for a grown up why not add in their favourite tipple, some luxury chocolates or some festive jam or chutney. Treats for women include a wintery scented candle, a pair of cosy socks or a Christmas bath bomb - we love the current range from Lush. Men might like some noel themed underwear, a mug or a bottle of craft beer to relax on Christmas Eve.
We offer a whole range of Christmas Eve boxes which are suitable for all ages. They come in a selection of colours with festive hot foil printed designs on the lid, and you can fill them with whatever gifts take your fancy, meaning you can really make them personal to the person receiving them. Whether you are a business offering ready-made Christmas Eve Boxes or an individual making one for someone special you are sure to find the perfect box from our range. Take a look at them here.


With two GRAMMY® nominations, multiple sold-out tours, and with the recent release of his sixth studio album, Morgan Page is widely acclaimed for his EDM musical mastery. He has now teamed up with Alonso Sound, a leading soundware designer, to develop a new soundset for Spire, a software synthesizer by Reveal Sound.
Chicago, IL – With two GRAMMY® nominations, multiple sold-out tours, and with the recent release of his sixth studio album, Morgan Page is widely acclaimed for his EDM musical mastery. He has now teamed up with Alonso Sound, a leading soundware designer, to develop a new soundset for Spire, a software synthesizer by Reveal Sound.
Distinguished for his wholehearted approach to music, Page has defined each preset to have its own character and individuality. Each patch is optimized for CPU performance and assigned mod wheel controls for multiple sound-shaping variations. New sonic dimensions can be explored by activating the Muted FX slots for fresh and unpredictable possibilities.
Continuously motivated by his fans, Page wanted to give back and take part in shaping the next era of producers and music. "Not only can I inspire people with a new album, but I can take it a step further and share the tools to help up-and-coming music producers succeed in their own careers," he said. "It was really important for me to develop a sound pack I'd personally use on every song, containing everything from big bass lines to tuned drums. The pack has everything you need to build a new song from scratch. I can't wait to see what people do with it!"
The Morgan Page Spire Soundset contains all of the tools needed to produce music like an award-winning artist. Included are sounds from Morgan's recent releases, such as his latest album release DC To Light, as well as sounds from upcoming productions.
The Morgan Page Spire Soundset is available now at an introductory price of $34 through October 21, 2015. Regular price is $49. Product and ordering information is available at www.alonso-sound.com.
Morgan Page is an artist, DJ, and songwriter. He has become a seismic presence at festivals such as Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, Big Day Out, and many more worldwide events. In 2012, he was nominated by the IDMA's in the "Best American DJ" category alongside Skrillex, Kaskade, and Deadmau5. Two Grammy Award nominations are credited to his name, and his 2011 full-length album, In The Air, debuted at #1 on Beatport's "Top 100 Albums" Chart and #6 on Billboard's Heatseeker's Chart, while the single reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay Chart. With sales figures over 600,000 digital tracks and YouTube views that surpass 19 million, the Wynn Las Vegas tapped him for a prestigious residency in 2012 and Sirius XM gave him his very own radio show—aptly titled "In The Air", which is on its 162nd episode and counting.
Alonso Sound is a pioneering sound design company based in Chicago, specialized in the advancement of cutting-edge sample libraries and synthesizer presets. The company's aim is to create high quality professional audio tools that lead the way for producers of all levels to develop their sound and create, themselves, the future in the music industry. Alonso Sound products are used prominently in professional and project studios throughout the world.


Celebrate your health! Shot glasses are perfect for juice shots!
Retro Martini & Olive glass coasters. Fine day for a cocktail or your favorite hot beverage!
Colorful pups. Shot glasses can be used for juice shots, bud vose, even tapered candle holders. Cheers!
Spring shopping! Cute mini salt & pepper shakers.
Colorful cat for colorful juice shots!
Painting some more cocktail pick beads on glass and stone. It's always fun to create new designs on the little beads.
New displays! So happy with them at the first of many holiday gift shows this year!


text:
The Birth of Isaac
1Now the Lord attended to Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised. 2So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised.
3And Abraham gave the name Isaac #21:3 Isaac means he laughs. to the son Sarah bore to him. 4When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. 5Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
6Then Sarah said, "God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me." 7She added, "Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."
8So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned.
Sarah Turns against Hagar
(Galatians 4:21–30)
9But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking her son,#21:9 LXX and Vulgate; Hebrew lacks her son 10and she said to Abraham, "Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac!"#21:10 Cited in Galatians 4:30
11Now this matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son Ishmael. 12But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to everything that Sarah tells you, for through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned.#21:12 Cited in Romans 9:7 and Hebrews 11:18 13But I will also make a nation of the slave woman's son, because he is your offspring."
14Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar's shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba. 15When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes. 16Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she said, "I cannot bear to watch the boy die!" And as she sat nearby, she lifted up her voice and wept.#21:16 Hebrew; LXX the child lifted up his voice and wept
17Then God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, "What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies. 18Get up, lift up the boy, and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation." 19Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
20And God was with the boy, and he grew up and settled in the wilderness and became a great archer. 21And while he was dwelling in the Wilderness of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
The Covenant at Beersheba
22At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, "God is with you in all that you do. 23Now, therefore, swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants. Show to me and to the country in which you reside the same kindness that I have shown to you."
24And Abraham replied, "I swear it."
25But when Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech's servants had seized, 26Abimelech replied, "I do not know who has done this. You did not tell me, so I have not heard about it until today."
27So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. 28Abraham separated seven ewe lambs from the flock, 29and Abimelech asked him, "Why have you set apart these seven ewe lambs?"
30He replied, "You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well." 31So that place was called Beersheba,#21:31 Beersheba means well of seven or well of the oath. because it was there that the two of them swore an oath. 32After they had made the covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army got up and returned to the land of the Philistines.
33And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the Eternal God.#21:33 Hebrew El-Olam 34And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for a long time.
Berean Study Bible © Bible Hub, 2020.
Isaac Is Born
1Then the Lord took note of Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had #Lit spokenpromised. 2So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him. 3Abraham named his son who was born to him, the son whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. 4Then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5Now Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6Sarah said, "God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh #Lit forwith me." 7And she said, "Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have given birth to a son in his old age."
8And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
9Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking Isaac. 10Therefore she said to Abraham, "Drive out this slave woman and her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be an heir with my son #Lit with IsaacIsaac!" 11The matter #Lit was very grievous in Abraham's sightdistressed Abraham greatly because of his son Ishmael. 12But God said to Abraham, "#Lit Do not let it be grievous in your sightDo not be distressed because of the boy and your slave woman; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac #Lit your seed will be calledyour descendants shall be named. 13And of the son of the slave woman I will make a nation also, because he is your #Lit seeddescendant." 14So Abraham got up early in the morning and took bread and a #I.e., a skin used as a bottleskin of water, and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.
15When the water in the skin was used up, she #Lit castleft the boy under one of the bushes. 16Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, "May I not #Lit look at the death of the childsee the boy die!" And she sat opposite him, and raised her voice and wept. 17God heard the boy crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "#Lit What to you; an idiomWhat is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18Get up, lift up the boy, and hold him by #Lit yourthe hand, for I will make a great nation of him." 19Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the #See note v 14skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
20And God was with the boy, and he grew; and he lived in the wilderness and became an archer. 21He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Covenant with Abimelech
22Now it came about at that time that Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, spoke to Abraham, saying, "God is with you in all that you do; 23so now, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring or with my descendants, but according to the kindness that I have shown to you, you shall show to me and to the land in which you have resided." 24Abraham said, "I swear it." 25But Abraham #Lit rebukedcomplained to Abimelech because of the well of water which the servants of Abimelech had seized. 26And Abimelech said, "I do not know who has done this thing; you did not tell me, nor did I hear of it #Lit exceptuntil today."
27So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant. 28But Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. 29Then Abimelech said to Abraham, "What do these seven ewe lambs mean, which you have set by themselves?" 30He said, "You shall take these seven ewe lambs from my hand so that it may be a witness for me, that I dug this well." 31Therefore he called that place #I.e., well of an oathBeersheba, because there the two of them took an oath. 32So they made a covenant at Beersheba; and Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, got up and returned to the land of the Philistines. 33Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. 34And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for many days.
NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE® NASB®
Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977,1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation
A Corporation Not for Profit
www.lockman.org

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Courtney Friel Wiki, Age, Height, Husband, Family, Net Worth, Biography
Courtney Friel was born on April 22, 1980, and from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. She is a news anchor and reporter on television in the U.S. Curently, she works for KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, California.
Recently, She saidTrump's come-on was made during a phone call to her office weeks after she mentioned an interest in working as a judge on his Miss USA beauty pageant. She says she was shocked by the proposition, which "came out of nowhere".
TheGuardian reported, "'Donald,' I responded, 'I believe we're both married.' I quickly ended the call," she wrote in her book. "This proposition made it difficult for me to report with a straight face on Trump running for president. It infuriated me that he would call all the women who shared stories of his bold advances liars. I believe them," she says.
Courtney Friel, who occasionally worked on Trump's favorite morning show Fox & Friends, made the allegations in her memoir Tonight At 10: Kicking Booze and Breaking News.
Courtney Friel Career
Courtney Friel was a sports anchor and entertainment reporter for GoTV Mobile Television, as well as the hostess for the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel. Earlier, she covered entertainment for Fox owned-and-operated station KTTV in Los Angeles as well as other local stations and also the Fox News Channel.
Later, she was the entertainment reporter at Fox News Channel, contributing to some entertainment-related programs for the network's website, FoxNews.com. She was a frequent guest contributor on the Fox News late-night satire show Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld.
In her career, she worked as an anchor at ABC affiliate WBBJ-TV in Jackson, Tennessee in 2003 and in February 2007 she joined Fox News Channel. Courtney graduated from San Diego State University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.
Courtney Friel Family
How old is Courtney Friel? She was born on April 22, 1980, and from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S and she are 39 years old as of 2019. She is the daughter of Bernard Friel and mother is Lois Friel. She has two sisters: Meredith and Lindsay.
She is known for her work on xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013) and Roe v. Wade. In high school, Courtney was always trying to get her friends and teachers to be interviewed on camera. She was very active in her school's media and television production class and often did the morning announcements.
Courtney Friel Husband
She was married to her husband Carter Evans who is an American journalist who is CBS News' Los Angeles-based correspondent. They were together from May 2005 to 2016 and they share 2 children.
On January 1, 2011, she gave birth to a son named Cash Hudson Evans and she welcomed daughter Cameron Kaiulani Evans on April 6, 2012.
Courtney Friel Net Worth
Estimated Net Worth of her is $850K USD as of 2019. She stands 5 feet 5 Inch tall and weighs 58KG.


text:
Q: Set operations on cell level Let's say I have a DataFrame with values in one column being a set:
df = pd.DataFrame([{'song': 'Despacito', 'genres': {'pop','rock'}},
                   {'song': 'We will rock you', 'genres': {'rock'}},
                   {'song': 'Fur Eliza', 'genres': {'piano'}}])

print(df)

               song       genres
0         Despacito  {rock, pop}
1  We will rock you       {rock}
2         Fur Eliza      {piano}

How do I select rows with genres overlapping with expected genres? For instance, I would expect
df[~df['genres'].intersection({'rock', 'metal'})]

to return first two songs:
               song       genres
0         Despacito  {rock, pop}
1  We will rock you       {rock}

Obviously, this will fail, because Series does not have intersection() method, but you get the idea.
Is there a way to implement it with pandas DataFrame or DataFrame is not the right structure for my goal?

A: Use isdisjoint method with Series.map:
df = df[~df['genres'].map({'rock', 'metal'}.isdisjoint)]
print (df)
               song       genres
0         Despacito  {rock, pop}
1  We will rock you       {rock}


text:
Home Archive Shoe Factory Road in Hoffman Estates, Illinois
Shoe Factory Road in Hoffman Estates, Illinois
https://pixabay.com
The most distinctive feature on Shoe Factory Road in Hoffman Estates is an old, derelict Spanish Colonial revival style building. Just down the street, in the direction of the Poplar Creek Forest preserve, sits an abandoned farm. Both are rumoured to be haunted.
The unique stone house was at one time the Charles A. Lindbergh School, named after the famed aviator and American patriot. According to John Russell Ghrist, who has written on and researched the school extensively, the current structure was built in 1929 to replace the Helberg School, named after a neighbouring farmer, after it burnt down.
The Lindbergh School's first enrolment consisted of 29 students from the surrounding community. Their teacher was named Anne W. Fox, who would be employed there for most of the school's existence.
The institution was closed in 1948 when rural schools began to be consolidated into the modern Illinois public school system. The stone structure spent the next 30 years as a residence, until it became abandoned sometime during the 1970s.
According to the Daily Herald, an archeological survey of the property in July 1998 yielded pottery shards that could have been used by Amerindians over one thousand years ago. The archeological firm that conducted the survey for Terrestris Development Company described the shards as "weathered and hard to classify."
In 2001, the development company offered to donate the former school to the village of Hoffman Estates, but the village board was unable to find anyone who would shoulder the cost of bringing the building up to code.
By 2007, the effort to save the building had gained momentum and a small sum of money had been raised. In May, the village board debated a plan to turn the former school and residence into a museum. According to the Daily Herald, a final vote on the structure was put off until July, and then extended to August. As of today, the fate of the old Lindbergh School is undecided.
The only source of information on the alleged hauntings of Shoe Factory Road come from the Shadowlands Haunted Places Index. One entry claims that the stone house became abandoned after a child killed his parents. The ghost of the child, who plays with a knife, can be seen sitting on the steps.
The haunted farm, and its nefarious barn, are associated with several stories. One story has the farmer going insane and murdering his family, burying them at the middle of a circle of trees. The other has the family being murdered and hung in the barn by a mental patient.
None of these stories, to my knowledge, can be substantiated. For more information on the Charles A. Lindbergh School,
Legends and Lore of Illinois Vol. 1 Digital Edition
Order all 12 issues of the Legends and Lore of Illinois from 2007 in a special digital edition for your favourite e-readers. Places covered in Vol. 1: Bachelor's Grove, Greenwood Cemetery, Devil's Gate, Chesterville Cemetery, Dug Hill Road, Resurrection Cemetery, "Cemetery X," Shoe Factory Road, Ridge Cemetery, Cuba Road, Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, and St. James-Sag! Plus, read bonus "personal experiences" and put your knowledge of these locations to the test with challenging trivia questions. Don't miss these classic issues from the archives of the Legends and Lore of Illinois.
Creep Out In Lawang Sewu, The House Of Thousand Doors
Top 10 Most Haunted Places in Texas
Top 10 Creepiest Abandoned Castles In The World


One also might have a different skin type for the body and face. In such cases the skin care regime and treatments required would also vary accordingly. These days' the markets are flooded with skin care products, tools and treatments. Any of these should be selected and used only after diligently examining one's skin type. Proper skin care products and regime can help one get radiant and youthful skin.
Naomi Andrews is a skin care expert from Hawaii. She has gained training for all types of skin care treatments, anti-aging treatments and many other skin care and cosmetic procedures and treatments.


I think we have always known that the majority of Labour MP's are not mad Brexiteers but their voices have been hard to hear as they fear losing their seats if they stand up against Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit enabling policy stance. But here we have a Labour MP who has broken cover and is saying some things that many progressives in UK politics believe to be the case. She's too guarded in what she says and sadly fails to make a case for a Peoples Vote but these small steps are significant if they are repeated in many other Labour held constituencies where the incumbent MP is still hidden behind the Brexit sofa.
I wonder what consequences she will suffer for trying to be brave?


Stuck in time? There are lots of good examples, but Bulawayo is high on the list, because there's been so little investment in the city since the 1970s.
Most of Bulawayo's Victorian street lights have been replaced, but a few survive. You have to admit the streets are clean.
A statue of Joshua Nkomo was unveiled in 2013 at the corner of Main Street and Eighth. A statue of Cecil Rhodes stood on the same spot (but with a different plinth) until 1980. Main Street at the same time got a name change: now it's J. Nkomo Road. Cynics pointed out that the change was ordered only after Nkomo, Robert Mugabe's longtime rival, was safely dead. The building on the right is one of several in town belonging to Barclays.
Up top, the singularly uncomfortable vehicle called a Cape Cart. The carts were often fitted with a canopy, but it didn't make the ride any smoother.
Substantial buildings were built within a decade of the town's creation. Prime example: the Willoughby Building from 1901. The building was the headquarters of Willoughby Consolidated, a mining and ranching firm established by Sir John Willoughby, a military officer who was on the famous (more commonly, the infamous) Jameson Raid. In 1980, the year of Zimbabwe's independence, the building was sold and became an art gallery. It is now a branch of the National Gallery.
There were hopes at the time of another Rand, but 'twas not to be. The copper mines to the north wound up mostly in the Belgian Congo. Rhodesia had to settle for the Wankie colliery, an important resource but... coal isn't copper, let alone gold.
Other buildings of the time are not so well-maintained.
A third example, with what seems to be the original front door. In the British era, the occupant was Preece and Mackenzie, printers.
Gradually, cast iron lost its allure and was replaced by masonry. Here's an early example, the Anglican Cathedral of St. John.
The Duke was Victoria's third son, and he traveled prodigiously, including a trip to South Africa to open the newly created parliament of the Union of South Africa. He squeezed in a side trip to Bulawayo.
Masey, who had worked in the London office of Alfred Waterhouse, came to South Africa and found himself in partnership with Herbert Baker. Eventually the partnership broke up, and Masey came north to Rhodesia in 1910, only to die of pneumonia three years later. This church was one of his local accomplishments; another was the Shangani or Wilson Memorial, coming up later in this file.
A handsome plaque remembering one of the men honored on the same Shangani or Wilson memorial.
The Tredgold Building is a court house and the seat of other government offices. It was built in the 1930s and later named for Robert Tredgold, a judge who held many other government positions. It's pretty boring, but it made the news in 2011 when its water supply was shut off for non-payment. The building was then condemned as unfit for occupancy. Somebody intervened and at least a trickle of water came back.
The most interesting part is this older sandstone arcade. The gates are all locked tight. Guess what's behind them.
It's a little "Hero's Acre," though the monuments can't be approached.
These are least are legible. BSA refers to British South Africa, Rhodes' company.
The High Court, at the head of Eighth Avenue. Also from the 1930s, it echoes the high court in Johannesburg.
It's a severe fusion of Classic and Modern. Stripped classical? The simpler explanation is that money was tight.
What could this be? It's not commercial, it's not a government office, it's not residential, yet it's an essential part of any colonial town. Any ideas?
The logo tells the story: BC for Bulawayo Club. It opened in 1935 and replaced an earlier version. In 2014, the interiors were being refurbished for a hotel scheduled to open that year. The ground-floor rooms included a dark-paneled lounge and a teak bar that stretches forever.
Who knows? There once was a United Empire Club based in England but with branches hither and thither. The club was known informally as the Empire Club, so maybe that's what we're looking at.
Corroborating evidence: the foundation stone was laid by John Gordon McDonald, a longtime associate of Rhodes and author of a 1927 biography of that man-colossus.
Another link to Rhodes. Alfred Beit was the quiet partner in DeBeers. Childless like Rhodes, Beit's philanthropy reached far and wide, including libraries like this one at Silundika and 12th.
An office building of the era.
No ironwork here. Whether in Bulawayo, Salisbury, or several smaller towns, Meikles was for generations Rhodesia's Macy's.
Most Europeans of means lived in a suburb imaginatively called Suburbs, but apparently there was a market for city living, because there are several blocks of flats. Here's one from 1931, Prince's Residential Flats.
Some of these flats were conspicuously stylish, like this one, Marvel House. Times change, however, and all the tenants were evicted in 2013. The water had been turned off, rooms turned into toilets and brothels. Some of the tenants broke down the barriers and moved back in. The owner? None other than the Church of Scientology. Go figure.
Another block, less elegant unless you like helicopters.
Flats continued to be built into the 1960s, judging from this one.
A few office highrises went up, too, including Pioneer House at Fife and 8th, across from the City Hall.
Who was Lendy? Roger Marston argues that "Lendy physically established the abiding Rhodesian principle that any dissent by the natives, and particularly the Shona, must be met with force at the level that would nowadays be called 'shock and awe.' He did this in the so-called Ngomo Incident in 1892 when presented with an allegation of impertinent shop-lifting by a Shona community he mounted an unannounced attack on the village with artillery (a seven-pounder and a Maxim gun) which left at least 23 villagers dead. Two years later he was largely responsible for kickstarting the Matabele War"
See Marston's Own Goals (2010), p. viii.
A quick detour now to Sunbury on Thames, where, about three miles south of Heathrow Airport, there's another monument to Lendy.
"To the memory of Charles Frederick Lendy, Captain RA, who died at Bulawayo, South Africa 15th January 1894 aged 30, from the effects of the Matabele Campaign through which he served in command of the guns with indefatigable zeal and conspicuous bravery."
The inscription continues: "Edward Augustus William Lendy DSO killed in action 23rd December 1893 at Warina, West Africa aged 25. Captain, Sherwood Foresters and seconded as Inspector General Sierra Leone Frontier Police. The only sons of the late Mayor Lendy of Sunbury on Thames. This fountain has been erected in their native village by their friends as a tribute to the memory of two brave men."
The monument has been moved from its original location to a small park and no longer has a fountain.
Back to Bulawayo and a typical street in Suburbs, which covers a grid of about seven by nine. It's very quiet, but all the houses have perimeter walls topped with electrified wires, in the manner of South Africa.
A house in Suburbs. It once belonged to the minister of industry in the Rhodesian government. Back then, it had no perimeter walls, let alone electric fencing.
Another house in Suburbs. Notice the electric insulators atop the concrete pillars. The house was for sale in 2014, and probably at a bargain price.
Here's a house at the edge of City Centre, in a rundown neighborhood where fences are made of whatever's available. The owner is getting by without electric protection.
Bulawayo once had a busy industrial zone, curiously called Belmont. Nearly all the factories, which specialized in textiles, were closed by 2014.
The headlight goes on when you step on the boards.
Rhodesia Railways bought 250 Garratt locomotives between 1925 and 1958. Articulated giants, they were designed to flex around the tight curves of a narrow gauge line, in this case the South African gauge of three feet six inches.
One car comes with a serious door.
Same car; it carried the payroll.
Rhodesia Railways survived as an independent company until 1967. It operated to a high standard, which included worker benefits such as this Raylton Recreation Club, a short walk from the museum.
There was also a library for railway workers. It's still in use (2014).
It's a different story for the old headquarters building of the railway company. A fire removed the roof.
Most of the Garratt locomotives are no longer operable. This one's been cannibalized.
A few are still in working order.
The line operated from 1903 to 1948. The interesting bit can be read in the sunlit lines.
Nowadays, you drive to the Matopos.
He-men will laugh at the road. "What! Paving! Where are the leopards? I want spoor!" But it's fun to drive. Passing lanes are few, and traffic is less.
You know why we're poking around out here, don't you?
The main attraction is near those pebbles up top.
When it rains, a bit of grass sprouts.
Here's the view from near the summit: 360 degrees of wildness.
Here we are. It's time to unfold the Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes. "I admire the grandeur and loneliness of the Matoppos in Rhodesia and therefore I desire to be buried in the Matoppos on the hill which I used to visit and I called the "view of the World" in a square to be cut in the rock on the top of the hill covered with a plain brass plate with these words thereon--"Here lie the remains of Cecil John Rhodes...."
Hard to find a better known, more polarizing figure in the history of the British Empire.
What's this? Off to the side, another tomb. Who could it be?
Ah! The doctor, colonial administrator, and good friend of Rhodes, who jumped the gun on the planned British takeover of Johannesburg, was rebuffed by the Boers, and did huge damage to the political ambitions of the man he loyally served.
Off on the other side of the hill and down a bit there's a third grave. Cochlan is much less well-known than Jameson and infinitely less so than Rhodes, but he was the first premier of Southern Rhodesia, which in 1923 became a self-governing part of the empire.
And one more grave, this time a collective one for the reinterred remains of the men who died on the Shangani River. Rhodes was responsible for the monument. Back to his Will: "I direct my Trustees on the hill aforesaid to erect or complete the monument to the men who fell in the first Matabele war at Shangani the bas-reliefs for which are being made by Mr. John Tweed."
Tweed (1869-1933) was for a time assistant to Rodin. He did the statue of Rhodes that formerly stood in Bulawayo, and in London he did the Kitchener Memorial in Horse Guards, the Wellington monument at St Paul's, and the Clive monument on King Charles Street. This monument, apart from Tweed's work, was designed by Francis Masey, the cathedral architect.
The inscription reads: "To the Enduring memory of Allan Wilson and His Men whose names are herein inscribed and who fell in fight against the Matabele on the Shangani River on December the 4th, 1893. There was no survivor."
You can't miss the place.
A few miles away, another monument.
We saw McDonald's name on the stone outside the Empire Club. He was one of more than 600 people on board the Ceramic, which late in 1942 sailed from Liverpool for Cape Town. It never made it: about 400 miles northwest of the Azores, U-515 torpedoed the ship. Boats were launched, but it was a stormy night, and everyone aboard was lost, save one man taken aboard the U-boat at its captain's order.


GRETCHEN TRIES STUFF EPISODE 10: The one with essential oils, lotions, serums & more!
Throughout a large chunk of my life, I've been pretty lazy about my beauty routine. Until recently, the most makeup I typically wore was tinted sunscreen, I had no idea what a serum was, and I rarely actually washed my face (splash of water seemed good enough…right?). This lazy beauty routine worked well for me for most of my 20s, but unfortunately, this would not last forever. One beautiful spring day (about two and a half years ago), I switched to a new body wash in one of my absolute favorite scents: Jasmin. No more than 24 hours later, I notice a small rash on my right arm. It quickly spread. all. over. my. body! Assuming it was a reaction to something in the body wash, I decided to make a switch to more natural products. I started using a minimalist bar soap (an olive oil-based soap with only three ingredients), made my own shampoo and conditioner, and bought Jojoba and Tea Tree oil for the first time ever (they're both naturally suppose to help with skin issues). It was my first time using essential oils. I'd leave my shower smelling vaguely like a koala who's been binge eating salads, but if this is what it would take to keep my skin nice, it'd be worth it.
Turns out I actually have a rarer form of psoriasis—an auto-immune disorder where your immune system starts attacking your body's largest organ, your skin. So, I could have totally skipped what I now dub my "koala phase." But something good did come from all of it: I discovered the benefits of using a bit of Tea Tree oil on my face in place of harsher acne treatments (bonus tip: unlike some of the other acids used to treat acne, Tea Tree oil won't stain your pillow case if you apply it right before bed.) The over all experience also forced me to start putting more thought into how I treated my skin, which would become necessary within the next year. By the end of that summer, I moved to China for work. For most of my life I was lucky to have pretty minimal acne, but after little time living in China, it was a whole new ball game. It wasn't super horrible acne, but it was constant and the most I'd experienced so far in life. My skin was not a fan of the air, or the food, or any other number of things that could have been causing my skin to freak out. When I moved backed stateside I was super hopeful my skin would go back to normal. Nope! It got worse (I guess it's common to go through a period of really bad acne while you're skin gets rid of the toxins it absorbed from the pollution in the Chinese air). While my skin isn't nearly as bad as it was after I got back from China, it never felt the same from the whole experience.
Once a week I also like to "treat myself" to a face mask. I really love The Face Shop's Animal Masks (I brought home a suitcase full of them from South Korea) but I also like Glossier's Moisturizing Moon Mask. It leaves my skin feeling delightfully soft, particularly when harsher winter weather is taking a toll.
I apply a lotion and serum (I tend to combine them) in the morning and after washing my face at night. Some people use serum to replace lotion, and that works okay for me in summer, but in the winter I really need the extra hydration from the face lotion. I've been using the same base-lotion for years now because I love it. A lot. I use YesTo Cucumber Face Lotion and The Ordinary Niacinamide + Zinc Serum. I can typically pick up The Ordinary products for anything from $5-$10, so it's pretty affordable. I've used three of their products so far, and the Niacinamide + Zinc is the what works best for me. Pro Tip: Don't forget your neck when applying lotion. You won't regret it later.
Essential Oils before bed. I always have Tea Tree and Rose Hip oils on hand. Tea Tree is really nice for acne and rose hip is great for redness. I usually apply them before my face lotion when needed.
Taking a makeup break. A couple times a week I like to give my face a break from wearing a full face of makeup. This could be either removing my makeup earlier in the evening or going a full weekend day without it, just to give my skin some time to breath, be natural, and not feel clogged up with foundation.
Always, always wear sunscreen. I put sunscreen on when I'm getting ready in the morning even if it isn't sunny out. You should also be reapplying sunscreen before you go outside (multiple times a day, because as magical as it would be to just put it on once, sunscreen doesn't protect you all day long with only one application).


The Graykite Canmore Hero Unlimited Snowkiting Package lets you feel the true soul and passion of kite snowboarding. Learn to snowkite unlimited and uninhibited.
With over 15 years of experience we understand that many of our clients want to learn to kite snowboard as quickly, safely and progressively as possible. And of course you want to get maximum value for your time and money. This is why we have developed the Hero unlimited course, to bring you the ultimate kite snowboarding experience. It's a one stop shop with a stress free approach to riding and life. You'll love it!
The Hero package is designed so that you can experience the sport while learning at your speed and in your style. Instead of booking by the hour you simply book one to three days. You can decide when you'll have a break to eat or a drink, and once you've mastered the basics what you want to learn next. You're in charge! The balance between going at your feel in the moment and Graykite's expert instruction and teaching methodologies, means that you will surely be a kite snowboarding rockstar in days.
Canmore is home to the 14.7 kilometer long and 1.7 kilometers wide Spray Lakes venue, a truly world class playground for kite snowboarding. Not only is the sheer size of the lake, near constant powder and quantity of the wind ideal, but the natural beauty of the surrounding 13,000 foot Rockie Mountains makes for a Hero experience that you will cherish for a lifetime.
If you're a beginner getting up on your board quickly is made much easier by having such a vast flat space on the lake with no obstacles or dangers to worry about. You'll be free to learn and enjoy the powder, expert guidance and awe inspiring surroundings.
Kite snowboarding is much easier to learn than kitesurfing. As soon as you learn the basics of kite control you have a solid yet soft surface beneath your board or skis on, and off you go. You don't have to worry about waves or water and the world of snow kiting in champagne powder is yours to embrace.
If you already know how to Kitesurf often we can have you up and riding on your snowboard or skiis with an hour or two. We will go over some of the important basics, as you will need to understand mountain wind, (a different level of comprehension than water surface wind), and how to read ice and snow pack as well as the different levels of load you need on the heel edge of your board compared to riding on the water.
If you haven't tried kitesurfing before, learning to kite snowboard first is like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. It's much easier to learn to snowkite than to kitesurf. Just like toddlers find that extra support and balance with two extra wheels, you will have that added benefit of finding your stamina and balance with kite while standing on solid ground. You will step into your board or skiis and get going in a much shorter time than on the water.
If you learn to snowkite before you learn to kite surf you will have all the basics down, including precision bar and kite control and heel edge load on the board and also how to ride up wind. All that knowledge will make it much easier for you to learn to kitesurf in future.
Now that your adventure in the exciting world of kiting has begun you can decide when and if you want to progress to the next level, either by taking one of our Graykite kitesurfing courses in any one of our exotic locations around the world or by having more snowkiting lessons to learn new tricks, flicks and techniques.
So after you've enjoyed all the wintry goodness of your snowkiting vacation you'll be well past your entry level into this exciting sport and be ready for first water starts in a sunny paradise. Your training wheels can be put in storage because all we need to teach you is the added dimension of balance on water. One or perhaps two more Hero days on water and you will be a truly multi dimensional, independent and well seasoned kiter.
With the Hero Unlimited Package we can also arrange accommodation at a winter wonderland chalet in the heart of Canmore. Other accommodation options are available on request.
The Graykite Hero Unlimited Package guarantees you a no stress atmosphere, the chance to progress at a speed you're comfortable with, unlimited time on the snow and complete freedom to ride. And the expertise to get up on a board in the water somewhere sunny next time you decide to catch some rays.
We can give you an idea how your days might work out – but never forget, with the Hero Package it's all up to you.
Graykite Canmore is here to help you learn, enjoy and progress. Our kitesnowboarding school offers lessons for all ages and skill levels from beginner through improver to advanced level.