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Home » Blog » Random » Soundtrack of my Life
Soundtrack of my Life
Music is a very important part of my life. I'm sure that is the case for many people, yet I wanted to explicitly mention it in this post. I listen to music during almost my entire work day, I have been playing piano since I was 8 years old and I also write songs occasionally and produce a few things using tools like Cubase and such. So yesterday I had the thought of looking back and thinking about the songs that I have listened to over all the years, songs that may even have shaped me in a way. I asked myself whether I could determine a song for every year that I associate the most with that time in my life. Things like that are just something I'm interested in, for example I've also been keeping track of my musical listening habits through Last.fm since 2007. It was also very nice to take some time to dive into old memories. So in this post I'm putting the list of songs out there. This is kind of a very personal post in some cases; maybe you're just interested in such things the same way as I am, or you are curious about music recommendations, or you would like to know me better. For me the reason of writing this is that I simply want to keep track – after all, people used to call blogs weblogs, and that's what I'm doing here – logging my favorite songs for each year of my life. Well, not my entire life: I will start with the year 2000 (I was 10 years old then), since I can't quite recall anything before that and it would mostly have been entirely charts music anyway – and you will notice that especially in the first years of the list, my musical taste was still evolving. 🙂 By the way, to start things off, I'm pretty sure that I can say that German band Rammstein has been the only constant for as long as I can remember: Although none of their songs is present in the following list, I have listened to them at the same time I listened to Britney Spears, and I still listen to them now from time to time. But now, here's the list of my favorite songs for each year as far as I can remember. Some of the years I would say there was more than 1 song I could have put there, but I think what I have there is a pretty good representation of my taste in music and also events in my life. Please note in advance that the songs represent what I've listened to for each year – it doesn't necessarily mean that it was released in that year.
2000: Michi Beck in Hell by Die Fantastischen Vier
That was long ago! I was still in elementary school, and I remember that at the time I used to write down a list of my Top 20 regularly, and that song was always ranked #1. If you're not German, Die Fantastischen Vier are a German Hip Hop group that has been around for many years. I'm sure I just liked this song because I thought it was funny (listen to it till the end and you will understand how a child can find this funny). I haven't listened to the song in years, but I still know most of the lyrics, and I kind of like its mood. And it still is kind of funny, just differently than it was back in the days.
2001: Ramp! (The Logical Song) by Scooter
As you can see I had a great taste in music as a kid. Again, if you're not German, Scooter is the most amazingly crappy Eurodance-style-but-they-call-themselves-Hardcore-techno group in Germany. They have been selling records like crazy for the past more than 20 years although their music is bad and their lyrics are plain stupid. If you're a native English speaker, I'm sure their lyrics will sound even dumber than they sound to us. I was a huge fan when I was young – and now I honestly still am, although only in a funny way. Their stuff is still tremendous party music you can laugh about, and I have respect for how they've remained successful over time, especially since they have admitted multiple times that their music is stupid, but they would continue as long as people bought it.
2002: Tainted Love by Marilyn Manson
First song in the list that I still listen to! I was never a fan of Marilyn Manson, but this song is just punchy and one of the few that I really was into. The song was also notably out of my usual musical scope. Things like Scooter were still huge for me at that time, so this was an exception. I listened to it a lot, really – so much better than the original in my opinion.
2003: Get Busy by Sean Paul
I'm sure everyone knows this song. Obviously that time still belongs to the charts music period of my life, and I loved Sean Paul's music when I got to know it (when it came popular). At the time I had probably never listened to a song with that Jamaican style of speaking (sorry if it's not Jamaican, I don't know what this kind of language/dialect is actually called).
2004: Stay Together for The Kids by blink-182
Suddenly my musical taste of today started shaping. I would say it was end of 2003/early 2004 that I got into listening to pop-punk. Suddenly it was hardly any other genre. While bands like blink-182, The Offspring, Sum 41 etc were kind of at the end of their mainstream success, I just got started with their music. I listen to almost any genre as of today, but if you asked me, I would probably still say that pop-punk is my favorite. And even with 26 years I still love that teenage music although lyrics about first dates and parties are not really what I'm into now – I really like these songs for how easy-going they are, plus it might also be nostalgia, yeah I'm sure there's some involved. This song in particular really mattered to me as it pretty much got me in contact with the girl I had a crush on at that time. Teenage stories, right?
2005: Denial, Revisited by The Offspring
The Offspring turned out to really become what I would call my favorite band, and similar to how pop-punk has always remained within my musical boundaries, I still consider The Offspring's music my favorite. Although hardly anyone notices, they're still active and put out releases occasionally each of which I really digged in some way. The song mentioned here was their only ballad, and these were often my favorites especially at that time. But their Um-Ta-Um-Ta-Aaaahs-and-Oooohs songs were outstanding as well, I certainly prefer those ones now.
2006: Supermassive Black Hole by Muse
This song. I listened to it so often. I think the sound of it is incredibly huge, I love the overall style of it. It was almost the only song I ever listened to by Muse (didn't like most of their other stuff a lot), but I remember it used to be my most-played song on Winamp. I got to know the song from FIFA 07 (soccer video game) which I played a lot back then…
2007: Nothing in my Way by Keane
…and it is also the same game I got this very song from. Only in this case, it wasn't specifially the song that I liked a lot. I started listening to Keane, bought their two albums, and they were on my playlists throughout the entire year (and a little bit beyond). I still love these two albums as of now, and it's still a bummer for me that their musical style changed so much on the following albums (which I never bought because of that). That's probably also the reason they're rather a great memory than an act currently on my playlists. Their songs moved me very much in all kinds of moods, especially during and after my US exchange that took place that year. Ya I know it's weird, they're one of the very few non-American musicians in the list right?
2008: Forever by Chris Brown
Summer 2008 had me back in the US, and the time I spent there was not less amazing than during the exchange. This was a party song that is basically entirely a reminder of that time, and therefore it has a special place in my heart. I usually don't like R'n'B at all, and I'm not even sure that I like this song. That doesn't mean I do not sing the entirety of its lyrics along with it, in the same overly emotional way any time this comes on (which in most cases happens because I put it on, and people lose faith in my music choices).
2009: Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit
In this year Limp Bizkit who I had been listening to occasionally since 2003/2004 reunited after a few years of hiatus. So I started listening to their music and suddenly discovered how much I liked it. I went on to see them live at Rock am Ring, so this entire year was full of their music. I even gave a performance of that song alongside some friends' metal band which occurred mostly because people said that I could imitate the voice and rapping style of the band's singer Fred Durst pretty well.
2010: Enjoy by Kottonmouth Kings
An exchange student (and nowadays good friend) from the US who attended my school for about a year told me about that 420-kind of a rap group called Kottonmouth Kings. I've never been a stoner or anything like that, but I liked their sound immediately, especially how they regularly also do songs of completely different genres than rap. That song is probably my favorite by them, but they're one of the few artists where I can listen to any of their albums in its entirety and not get bored. That's also the reason I'm sure that they are the globally most-played artists on my Last.fm profile.
2011: Heaven by Angels & Airwaves
If you haven't heard of that band, it's the project that one of the blink-182 (ex-)members had started some years ago. While you can tell they have similarities to blink-182 (mostly because of his voice for sure), their music is completely different. It's much more calm, kind of stadium rock, but with many SFX, for me their music is really moving. This particular song is certainly one of my all-time favorite songs. I can listen to it at any time: When things are good, it just expresses my mood in the best way possible, and when they aren't, this song really has the power to change my mood by simply listening to it. In that particular year, I listened to it more than regularly though: It was a great year that some many changes happening, I moved out of my parents' home, I was in a healthy relationship, I started going to university.
2012: Beez in the Trap by Nicki Minaj
Yes, you got that right. That year I started listening to Nicki Minaj, and I have been doing so ever since. She's totally out of my usual musical habits, but I love her music. Her style of rapping is outstanding, although she only rarely uses it anymore since she turned mainstream just a little bit too much in my opinion. Still, I like a lot of her music, that song was her one I listened to the most in that year. If you don't know what I'm talking about regarding her style of rapping, make sure to listen to her part in Kanye West's Monster – I think it's incredible. Nicki Minaj is definitely the artist where most people cannot understand how I like her music so much. So I was happy to know I'm not the only one when I learned that WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí is also into her music. By the way, 2012 was also the year I started with WordPress. But I don't wanna talk about WordPress in this post, so that's the only time, promise!
2013: Rosana by Wax
I listened to that song throughout all summer of 2013. It's one of the songs that sounds childishly happy to me and great so sing along, not sure because or regardless of its dirty lyrics. This song is definitely what a German would call an "earworm" which denotes a song that is stuck in your head. I don't listen to that song very often nowadays, but when I do, I do it a lot in a short period of time – that's the only way to get rid of that earworm. 😀
2014: Bloodflows by SOHN
In that year I faced break-up from my long-time girlfriend, and it was also the year that many other couples I or we were friends with broke up. It's really strange how that can suddenly happen at a similar time for so many people. The music I listened to in that year expressed that in a way, but I found a lot of hidden gems as I looked out for less known independent music quite a bit. The musicians SOHN and JMSN were the two I discovered that year, and I can totally recommend you to check out their interesting sound. While JMSN has more songs that I like, SOHN has a few that really stand out to me – the one mentioned for example. I got most of my new music input from a Spotify playlist called Future RNB – many great independent artists in there!
2015: Anomaly by Angels & Airwaves
Another song by Angels & Airwaves, this is distinct from most of their other songs as it is a basic setup without as many synths and effects, plus the singer's voice sounds completely different. A very calm, but moving song – the accompanying album unfortunately was the first one I couldn't really get anything out of, except for this song that I think is just marvelous.
2016: Like A Bitch by Zomboy
This year was made to escalate! If you had told me a few years back that I would listen to that kind of EDM regularly, I would have laughed at you. Totally out of range, I'm not sure how that happened, but I started enjoying dubstep this year. Although the tracks are obviously compositionally basic in almost every case, I really dig the sounds and the work that goes into these. The more I became interested, the more respect I had towards the people making that kind of music – while it's not quite complex songwriting, there is simply another focus and challenge in making that music: While bands write their songs and then let other people take care of recording them and producing it, most of these DJs handle it all on their own. I never thought about it that way before, but this is certainly something I appreciate. I even started playing around with dubstep sounds in Cubase together with a friend, so let's see where this is going in the future. That artist Zomboy is who I listened to the most, his sound is just huge. So, yeah, I enjoy dubstep – however, maybe that isn't even so far off the road as I think the sound resembles more with acts like Limp Bizkit than let's say David Guetta (punchiness-wise). I would totally understand if you shook your head now though. 🙂
So that's it for my list of songs. How about you? Would you be able to get such a list together and be interested in doing it? If you do anything like it, make sure to ping me as I, like I said before, am interested in that stuff, and I'm always looking out for new musical inspiration and recommendations. So maybe I'll be able to read a similar post from you at some point. 🙂
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The Milwaukee Rotary Centennial Arboretum will be the primary gateway to 878 acres of urban wilderness known as the Milwaukee River Greenway. What is the Greenway you might ask?
Ann Brummitt, the Director of the Milwaukee River Greenway Coalition, will walk us through the group's short history and long vision. In fact, first phase of Greenway improvements are underway - PCB cleanup, a new Greenway gateway, signs, easements, sustainable trails, and habitat inventory.


The OpenMode enumeration is used by the FileOpen and FileAttr methods in the FileSystem module to indicate the way in which the file will be used. The OpenMode enumeration values have no constant equivalents.
The file will be used for input.
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Magnesium is one of nature's powerhouse minerals, but up to 75 percent of Americans are deficient. While there are dietary sources of magnesium such as dark leafy greens like spinach and swiss chard, quinoa, cheese, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, tempeh and organic non-GMO tofu, in general it's difficult to get enough magnesium through diet alone. Supplements are a great way to make sure you get what you need to feel your best, and we're breaking down why it's so important to keep your magnesium levels up.
Melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep, doesn't work when we're magnesium deficient. Magnesium also helps your heart rate lower when it's time to get some much-needed rest.
2. It can help with diabetes.
Magnesium plays a key role in blood sugar regulation, and most people with Type 2 diabetes also report low magnesium levels.
3. It'll keep you regular.
Magnesium can help combat digestive issues by relaxing muscles in the digestive tract while also making sure everything moves through the intestines as it should.
4. You'll be properly hydrated.
Dehydration can cause fatigue, headaches, irritability, muscle cramps, increased heart rate and rapid breathing. Magnesium is also an essential electrolyte that aids in avoiding dehydration by regulating your potassium levels.
5. It's necessary for strong bones.
Magnesium is as important for strong, healthy bones as calcium. They are both essential to bone formation, and can also help prevent osteoporosis.
Tight muscles and cramping are a common indicator of low magnesium levels. They can also physically contribute to stress by putting the panic in a fight or flight state. Magnesium can help your muscles relax and allow you to move more comfortably.
7. It helps manage stress and anxiety.
Magnesium helps regulate the release of stress hormones, and it also plays a pivotal role in the creation of happiness hormones like serotonin. Adequate magnesium levels are key in keeping your stress and anxiety levels in check.
8. You'll have less migraines.
If you're plagued by migraine headaches, reach for the magnesium. It helps promote blood circulation and also releases pain-relieving hormones.
Magnesium is involved in the function of over 350 enzyme systems, and has an especially noticeable impact on things like stress, sleep, and anxiety. If you're feeling a bit tense, it might be time to look at your magnesium levels.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Welcome to the Welborn Devices, LLC web site. If you shell peas or beans to sell to the public, you are at the right place! If you shell peas or beans for your own personal use, you are at the right place! We manufacture, sell and rebuild the ROTO-FINGERS* PEA-BEAN SHELLER (Commercial and Home Models).
The simplicity of operation makes the ROTO-FINGERS* PEA-BEAN SHELLER easy to operate. Many satisfied customers operate ROTO-FINGERS* PEA-BEAN SHELLERS in co-ops, produce stands, farms, schools, universities, and correctional facilities across the nation. You can be confident in knowing that we take the utmost care building these machines to provide many years of reliable service.
*ROTO-FINGERS is a registered trademark of Welborn Devices, LLC.


Kandasamy, Yogavijayan, Rudd, Donna, Smith, Roger, Lumbers, Eugenie R., and Wright, Ian M.R. (2018) Extra uterine development of preterm kidneys. Pediatric Nephrology, 33 (6). pp. 1007-1012.
Kandasamy, Yogavijayan, Hartley, Leo, Rudd, Donna, and Smith, Roger (2018) The lack of association between vascular endothelial growth factor and retinopathy of prematurity in an observational study. Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, 31 (16). pp. 2202-2208.
Kandasamy, Y., Rudd, D., and Smith, R. (2017) The relationship between body weight, cystatin C and serum creatinine in neonates. Journal of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine, 10 (4). pp. 419-423.
Kandasamy, Yogavijayan, Hartley, Leo, and Rudd, Donna (2017) Vascular endothelial growth factor-A levels in term neonates. Journal of Child Science, 7 (1). e151 -e154.
Sands, Renee, Cameron, Elizabeth, and Rudd, Donna (2016) Omniscience case study Porphyria. Clinical Biochemist Newsletter: e magazine, 202 (June). pp. 18-19.
Kandasamy, Yogavijayan, Hartley, Leo, Rudd, Donna, and Smith, Roger (2016) The association between systemic vascular endothelial growth factor and retinopathy of prematurity in premature infants: a systematic review. British Journal of Ophthalmology, 101 (1). pp. 21-24.
Kandasamy, Yogavijayan, Smith, Roger, Lumbers, Eugenie R., and Rudd, Donna (2014) Nephrin: a biomarker of early glomerular injury. Biomarkers Research, 2. 21. pp. 1-12.
Rudd, Donna M. (2012) Development of a non-depolarising normakalaemic cardioprotective preservation solution for use in orthotopic heart transplantation. PhD thesis, James Cook University.
This list was generated on Sun Apr 21 05:46:39 2019 AEST.


Travis Engen drove his GMT Racing-prepared 2005 No. 2 Audi R8 LMP to an overall B.R.M. Chronographes Enduro victory while Alegra Motorsports Porsche 911 teammates Scooter Gabel and Carlos de Quesada scored a top-two podium sweep for the second-straight day Friday in Historic Sportscar Racing (HSR) competition at Sebring International Raceway.
Both the B.R.M. Enduro, which included Prototype, Historic and GT Modern (GTM) classes, and Friday's HSR Classic RS Cup sprint were part of this weekend's HSR Sebring Historics schedule. The season-ending event for the year-long HSR championships, the HSR Sebring Historics shares the weekend card with the third annual HSR Classic Sebring 12 Hour, Pistons and Props, presented by the Alan Jay Automotive Network, which begins at Noon on Saturday.
While Classic Sebring 12 Hour competitors qualified Friday, the day's racing excitement came in the Sebring Historics events. Engen soloed to the overall and Prototype-class victory and shared the podium with runners-up Mirco Schultis and co-driver Eric Filgueiras and third-place finisher William Hubbell.
Driving the Starworks-prepared 2009 No. 9 Oreca FLM09, Schultis and Filgueiras were the only competitors to finish on the lead lap with Engen. Hubbell finished one lap behind the top-two in a solo drive in his Hudson Historics 2009 No. 230 Corvette Daytona Prototype.
Fourth-place overall went to GTM-class winner Phil Lasco who put in a perfect drive in his 2000 No. 14 Panoz GTS. Second-place GTM-class finisher Greg Griffin also maintained a quick pace, taking the checkered flag not far behind Lasco and fifth overall in his SpeedWorks 2013 No. 71 Ferrari F458.
Third in GTM, and a solid sixth overall, went to Shaun McKaigue in his 2013 No. 34 Porsche 997 GT3 Cup.
The B.R.M Enduro Historic division was won by Predator Performance co-drivers Ken McKinnon and Mike Bruns in the 1972 No. 01 Porsche 911 RSR.
Thomas Kirk finished second in the Historic class in his Zotz Racing 1995 No. 114 Porsche 993 while third went to Nigel Greensall - who co-drove to a Classic Sebring 12 Hour Group A win last year in a 1966 No. 96 McLaren M1b - and his Wisko Racing Enterprises co-driver Gary Ball.
The season-ending HSR Classic RS Cup race kicked-off Friday's racing schedule and saw Alegra teammates Gabel and de Quesada promptly pick up right where they left off in Thursday's Sasco Sports International/American Challenge sprint.
Gabel and de Quesada swept the top-two finishing positions in the Porsche class in the Sasco Sports race and pulled off a perfect repeat performance Friday in the Classic RS Cup eight-lap sprint. Gabel took the lead in the 1974 No. 159 Porsche 911 RSR at the start and led every lap to the finish for his second-straight victory this week at the HSR Sebring Historics.
Team owner de Quesada in turn scored runner-up honors for the second-straight day in his 1973 No. 22 Porsche 911. The Alegra duo was joined in victory lane by David Agretelis, who completed the podium in his JWE Motorsports 1978 No. 92 Porsche 911 SC.
Agretelis pulled off a repeat podium performance of his own with Friday's Classic RS Cup third-place finish following Thursday's third-place overall showing - and second in the GT Classic (GTC) class - in the one-hour B.R.M. Vintage and GTC Enduro.
This weekend's Classic Sebring 12 Hour, Pistons and Props, features HSR historic and vintage sports car racing and a full "fly-in" and display of equally iconic military and civilian aircraft from the last half century and beyond.
Another highlight of Friday's schedule was the now traditional parade of planes from nearby Sebring Regional Airport to the HSR paddock. The vintage aircraft will be on display alongside historic race cars in the HSR paddock through Sunday morning.
Among the aircraft that arrived in Sebring Friday are a rare North American P-51D "Mustang" of Jim Lyons and a North American T6-G "Texan" that was flown to Sebring by Jon Rising. Both planes will be making their event debut in addition to a first-time appearance by a 1943 Boeing N2-S3 Stearman.
Returning planes include a 1942 Vultee BT-15 Valiant piloted by Tom Smith and the similar 1943 Vultee BT-13 Valiant of Bryce Bock, a 1941 Beechcraft C-45, 1955 Beechcraft T-34B Mentor, 1962 Piper U-11A Aztec, 1956 North American T-28C Trojan and 1973 British Aviation LTD Bulldog.


What should have been a day of sorrow for Senator Leila Dilemma ended up having a party. The fact she waved her hand confidently as she was arrested aroused suspicion. After samples of Robredo Facial Cream were confiscated from Dilemma's belongings together with whatever is not allowed, it turned out that there is still a lot of work to do.
While the van entered into the Bureau of Corrections, a huge banner saying "Welcome Home Leila De Lima" was brought up. Party organizers were Unggoy Estrada and Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. More details were show that a welcome party was done in the Bureau of Corrections.
Indeed, a welcome party was given to Senator Dilemma. Photographic evidence showed that both Unggoy and Bong welcomed her with open arms. It turned out that while Dilemma and company are only given an electric fan for their cells but they were still able to order food. Among the inventory listed by detained pork barrel prisoners were the following: lechon baboy, soft drinks, grilled fish, barbeque, guso, lato, lugaw and macaroni salad.
The incident made Justice Secretary Vitaliano N. Aguirre Jr. and PNP Chief Bato Dela Rosa open their jaws. Both of them could not believe how a welcome party was given to Dilemma. Both stated that there is still much cleaning up to do. Dilemma was last seen in good spirits and was seen dancing with pork barrel inmates.
Investigation also revealed that #LeniLeaks also pointed out to Vice President Leni Robredo having catered to lugaw at Dilemma's welcome party. Although she did not cater to the lechon, grilled fish, barbeque, guso and lato but the lugaw was definitely Leni's Lugaw. Because of the incident new structures for appointment of Liberal Party members have changed.
"Leni likes to cook porridge so much right? It may be best to unseat her as Vice President in favor of the new position as Minister of Lugaw at the Malacanang and the whole country. Also, we would like to announce that Antonio Trollanes IV will be appointed as the new energy secretary by the time I get the votes to secure Leni's position as head of the Lugaw Committee." said President Rodrigo R. Duterte who actually praised her cooking.


In February 2007, the world's rarest baseball card sold at auction for $2.3 million.
If you think that's totally wild, consider the world's rarest bible, which could net you $25 to $35 million. Single pages of the Gutenberg Bible go for $25,000 each.
An ancient artifact such as the Gutenberg Bible is perhaps expected to fetch a fortune at auction, but what about a pair of jeans? Original Levi Strauss jeans recently sold for $60,000 to a collector.
From wine, coins and jewels to jeans, pets and food -- collectors abound throughout scores of different topic areas and categories. Click through to see the the world's rarest items, including one stunning red gem and a very, very pricey bowl of soup.
The world's rarest gem is believed to be painite. The painite is orangish or reddish brown and was first discovered in Burma in the '50s. Within the last couple of years, the source of the two original painite crystals was discovered and now a few hundred faceted stones exist. A more well-known (but still very rare) gem is the red diamond.
He may have done a lot of writing, but with only 6 of them in existence William Shakespeare's signature is one of the rarest of all and is valued somewhere around $3 million dollars.
One of the rarest comic books still in existence in near-perfect condition is an issue of "Amazing Spider-Man #1," rare not only because of its singularity but also because of its quality. The comic book sold for only 12 cents per copy when it was published in March 1963, and is now worth over $40K -- not an exceedingly high price for comic books -- but extremely rare in such pristine condition.
The most expensive item by weight and volume is the Treskilling Yellow stamp from Sweden. It has a current estimated worth of $2.3 million. Here's what makes it so valuable: In 1858, when the currency was known as the skilling, the 3-skilling stamp ("treskilling") was printed in blue. And an 8-skilling stamp was printed in yellow. But due to a printing error, a few 3-skilling stamps were printed in yellow.
The earliest known sea salt produced by the Japanese may be the rarest of all. Called Amabito No Moshio ("Ancient Sea Salt"), unpolluted sea water is collected from the Seto-uchi inland sea, infused with seaweed to develop the "unami", and then processed by cooking in an iron kettle, put into a centrifuge, and finally, cooked over an open fire while stirring constantly. The salt is worth over $40 per pound.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most valuable jeans are an original pair of Levi Strauss & Co 501 jeansaged over 115 years old which were sold to a collector in Japan for $60,000 through eBay in 2005. Quite rare indeed considering a new pair sells for $46.
In 1999, Mark David Chapman's copy of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's album Double Fantasy, autographed by Lennon five hours before Chapman fatally shot him, sold. The album had been found in a flower planter outside Lennon's home, at the scene of his murder. The record bears the forensically-certified fingerprints of Chapman, and was even used as evidence in the case against him. Price tag: $460,000.
The Sorraia Horse (pictured) is said to be the direct descendant of the wild Iberian horse but only 200 currently remain living in South Iberia. The Tiger Horse is a rare breed which is said to have existed in Ancient Spain and the beginning of the New World. Rare in terms of its abilities and characteristics, is the Lipizzaner. Bred for its military prowess, one of these animals can sell for up to $100,000.
There are countless rare books in the world, but by most experts' standards the rarest of them all is the Gutenberg Bible. It was the first book ever printed back in 1456, and although several hundred copies were originally printed finding a complete first edition would net you $25-$35 million. In today's market single pages alone go for $25K each, and several years ago just 1 volume (it's a 2 volume set) sold for $5.5M.
In the world of rare necklaces, a couple million dollars doesn't get you much. Even ten million dollars is cheap for these babies. The most expensive necklace may likely be one built around the Blue Empress, a rare natural blue diamond. The pear-shaped diamond weighs about 14 carats. It is set in 18k white gold and surrounded with white diamonds. It's estimated to be worth $16 million.
One of the rarest bottles of wine ever sold was purchased by Christopher Forbes for a mere $160,000. It was an unmarked green glass bottle with the inscription of "1787 Lafitte Th. J." (now known as Lafite and thought to be owned by Thomas Jefferson), found behind a wall in Paris.
In 2006, a 20-inch high blue and white Yuan Dynasty vase fetched over $2 million. That sounds rare but at the end of that year, casino owner Steve Wynn paid even more for a rare vase. The small copper red and white porcelain vase, is a 14th century Ming vase (pictured) decorated in scrolling flowers. It is from the exceptionally rare Hongwu period and went for around $10.9 million, making it the world's most expensive.
As a general rule the more rare a coin is the more it's worth, so what's the rarest coin ever? It's a debatable subject as not all experts always agree, but if the Double Eagleisn't at the top of that list it's sure near it. Back in 2002 the only Double Eagle coin left to be in private hands (or so everybody thought) sold for $7.9 million dollars.
Served in China for over 400 years, the primary ingredient in bird's nest soup or "Caviar of the East" is saliva nests built by cave swifts. Among one of the most expensive animal products consumed by humans it is believed to aid digestion, raise libido, and even alleviate asthma as it is dissolved in water to create a gelatinous soup. In Hong Kong, a bowl costs up to $30. Red version can cost $10K per gram.


PERSHING REGIONAL HEALTH CENTER -MARCELINE is the most important airport of Marceline, Missouri, United_States. It is modern and one of the largest airport of the North America. PERSHING REGIONAL HEALTH CENTER -MARCELINE is important for people and goverment of United States.


"A SAMple of Love" on Body Mind Spirit Radio!
I'm so excited to share with you, my readers, that beginning February 4, at 1pm, I'll be able to brighten up your Mondays with my new show, "A SAMple of Love" on Body, Mind, Spirit Radio! I'll be sharing the link to this show on my social media and through my newsletters to make listening more accessible.
"Sample of Love" came to me after the death of my father, Sam. After his passing, I was left with the inability to write. I had been a writer for over 25 years, with two successful blogs, a regular column and clients all over the country. But it seemed as though my grief had taken over and my writing days were a thing of the past.
My personal journey to finding permanent love hasn't been simple. This adventure was one of getting to know myself first and, in doing so, figuring out what I was looking for in a true partner. I not only share my insight in this blog as a successful relationship coach but as a woman with a passion for love, who has seen it all.
I have personally experienced being single, married, divorced and single again. I have lived through a second time on the "dating-go-round" seeking my "forever" partner… whom I have finally found.
A Sample of Love's goal in both radio and in the blog, is to share relatable life experiences from myself, my friends and family and those whom I've coached to inspire and guide through all relationship hurdles.
Join me in seeing truths, insights and methods intended to help with your personal relationship path.
This dose of reality will inspire you to ask the hard questions while creating clarity regarding your relationship needs and wants — with the ultimate intent to motivate through self-awareness, spirituality and the SAMpling of love from myself and experts.


We are Sara and Bob Knapp. Welcome to our web site svquintessa.com.
This site will document our multi-year travels aboard our sailboat "Quintessa" as we cruise the North Atlantic Ocean including the Bahamas, Mediterranean and Caribbean. We have included a blog of our travels which we hope to keep up to date every few weeks. Our boat is a Hylas 49 and we will have a section that covers the boat and her systems.
We are also working with two fourth grade classes in our home town of Andover, Massachusetts called "The Atlantic Project". We have included the periodic logs we send to the classes that the teachers are using for their curriculum. Lastly, there is a Gallery of pictures along with a neat little map app that shows where we are at all times. We hope you enjoy our site.


text:
The Making of a Mexican American Dream
Despite the rhetoric and hate crimes, Mexican immigrants are poised to reframe American culture, if white people would only let them.
Sarah Menkedick
(Photo: Terence Patrick)
I met Vianney Bernabé in the buffet line at the Fiesta Inn during the Fulbright orientation in Mexico City. I was struggling to contain my toddler, who was a hydra-like mess of limbs fighting to race freely up and down the corridor. "She's beautiful," Vianney said, and we started chatting. Vianney's English is quintessential California: lots of "likes" and drawn out "yeahs" and "killed its," with big vowels and sentences that curl at their ends into question-like realizations. She is petite, with a tensile, restless energy. Her wavy black hair is often corralled in a low ponytail, and her features are chiseled: fine cheekbones, fine collarbones, delicately contoured fingers. They are the features of a violinist, which she has been since she was eight years old.
As we inched closer to the tubs of chilaquiles, she began telling me her story, and a familiar space opened between us: a territory de aquí y allá, a shared experience of having family on both sides of the border. We started talking by phone every Monday night, after she'd finished her 12-hour day of commuting and work at a security firm as part of the Fulbright Binational Business Program. Her family here in Mexico, she explained, thought of her as American: a deserter of her home country, wealthy and privileged, a gringa come to strut around with all the gringa's carefree assumptions of power. Meanwhile, in the United States, Vianney's parents clung to the lowest rungs of a racialized U.S. labor and power hierarchy, having worked for three decades to give their children better lives. She and her sisters had grown up in some of the most marginalized neighborhoods in Los Angeles, struggling against failing schools, crime, racism, and poverty.
Vianney had come to Mexico City expecting to embrace her past and to be embraced as a long-lost daughter. Instead, like many second-generation Mexican Americans who return to Mexico, she wound up being confronted with her Americanness. "I have never had turkey at Thanksgiving. I grew up listening to cumbia, but on the other hand my education was from the United States," she told me. Our conversations were full of this vexed ping-ponging between Mexicanness, Americanness, and Mexican Americanness, an ineffable cultural zone inhabited by more and more Americans, including my own Mexican-American husband and daughter.
For Vianney and the other seven million second-generation Hispanics in the U.S., most of them Mexican Americans, this quest to define identity and establish belonging has significant ramifications. As a Pew Research Center demographic survey put it, "The kinds of adults these young Latinos become will help shape the kind of society America becomes in the 21st century."
What these young Latinos become will be determined not only by their own struggles and achievements, but also by the willingness of many Americans to rethink their fundamental conceptions of Americanness, to recognize the dangerous fiction of an essential, unchanging America defined solely by white culture.
Vianney was born at the UCLA Medical Center approximately 10 months after her family arrived in L.A., and was followed 15 months later by a younger sister and four years later by another. They lived in Mid-City, a neighborhood where they were surrounded by other immigrant families.
Her parents had left Mexico City when her mother was 25, her dad was 31, and her older sisters were eight and nine. Vianney's mother had become an orphan at 17 and a mother of two by the time she was 18. She'd struggled to go to university, but was tyrannized by her father-in-law. "Why are you going to school?" he'd ask. "You have daughters, you should be cooking." She pushed Vianney's father to take the family to L.A., because his seasonal work wasn't enough to support them and it was hard to imagine their daughters getting ahead in the vice-grip of Mexican machismo.
Vianney's parents didn't miss Mexico. "Even though we were poor in Los Angeles, they had food in the fridge," she said. "They always had milk. That was their thing. They always had milk, and meat."
From an early age it was clear that Vianney was unique. "My mom set me up to be the one to understand things," she said. She has carried this weight her whole life; it hung from our conversations like an anchor. Her parents are undocumented. Her father had a drinking problem and would regularly come home and beat his wife and children. Vianney would run to her younger sisters' room and try to shield them from the sound of his violent retching.
She found her refuge in music. When she was eight she started playing violin, and by the time she was 10 her music teacher declared, "You're going to be great one day."
"I was the roughest of kids in the hood," Vianney told me. I struggled to imagine this; it seemed as likely as a university professor declaring she'd once been a pro wrestler. Vianney exuded warmth, professionalism, the pluckiness of the straight-A student. But as a 13-year-old she'd rebelled hard. She drank, tried drugs. She was on the verge of flunking out of school. She was angry, and she repressed this anger as best she could until one day at school she got in a fight with another girl.
"That anger was crazy," she said. "I felt like I could've done some serious damage if there wasn't anyone there to break us up." The police were called, and the incident likely would have ended there if Vianney hadn't kept raging. She couldn't stop. The anger had been uncorked.
She was sent to the police station, and then, per her parents' acquiescence, to a detention center, where she caught a glimpse of her potential future: pregnant 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds who'd overdosed on meth. But also a sense of community, of shared differentness. It was the first time race as a social issue registered for Vianney. Why, she wondered in the courtroom, are there no white people here? Later, after the Fulbright orientation, she'd echo this sentiment to me: "I just looked around the room and thought, Why are there no people of color here?"
Thirteen was the year Vianney leaned over the edge of the abyss, and 13 marked the beginning of her rise. Her mother enrolled her at the Harmony Project, an L.A. non-profit that offers students from low-income communities musical instruments, classes, community support, and field trips to cultural events. Vianney trained at Harmony for five years. When she turned 15, at the urging of her music teacher, she applied to the elite Music Academy at the Colburn School in downtown L.A. To her shock, she was accepted with a 50 percent scholarship.
Soon she was competing at summer camps across the country. She won scholarships to the Interlochen Center for the Arts and CalArts. Meanwhile, her family struggled to pay tuition. "My mom had to make payments of $100, and the work she had to do to make those payments was crazy," she told me. Eventually, seeing the progress she was making, the Harmony Project offered to pay the other half of Vianney's tuition.
The Music Academy at Colburn is a highly competitive pre-college program, and Vianney said most of the top musicians there were white. They came from elite private schools. She immediately understood how different her experience had been from theirs. "I was taking Honors Literature and I struggled," she told me. "I mean, a lot. In private school they teach other stuff, because these kids walked into Honors Lit and they killed it."
She started reading the newspaper every day, studying all the vocabulary she didn't know. "It became like a mission," she told me, "to just push myself, push myself, push myself." In 2008, during her sophomore year, she read the phrase "religious crusade" and understood what it meant, and in that moment it dawned on her that her work was paying off. In 2009, the Harmony Project won a Coming Up Taller award from the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and Vianney was selected to be part of a small delegation that would travel to Washington, D.C., for the presentation. She attended the awards ceremony — presided over by Michelle Obama — met the violinist Joshua Bell, and went sightseeing around the capital for three days.
(Photos: Terence Patrick)
In Washington, looking at the stately architecture and the well-dressed people walking the streets with a sense of purpose, she was struck by the gulf between the world she had grown up in and this world of privilege, wealth, and status that was largely white, and that white people seemed to own so lightly. On that trip, she decided she wanted to become a lawyer in order to help struggling minorities succeed in a society where opportunity was so unevenly distributed. She applied and was accepted to California State University–Chico, and she turned down a music scholarship at California State University–Northridge in order to go.
At Chico, Vianney was one of only two Hispanic students in her seven-story dorm. "For a while," she told me, "I really wanted to be white. I wanted to dress like them, and talk like them, and look like them, and be friends with them. I remember praying to God one night, Let me be like them." It took studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, for Vianney to let go of this need to fit in. It was there that she stopped trying to make herself seem white and started to embrace her Latina heritage.
For many European immigrants who came to the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the gradual shedding of ethnicity in order to fit into Anglo-Protestant white culture was essential to success and advancement. As one mid-century Italian American put it, "We were becoming Americans by learning how to be ashamed of our parents." For many second-generation Mexican Americans today, the opposite is true: They are becoming Americans by seeking out and embracing their ancestral cultures, learning how to be proud of their parents. Their understanding of what it means to be an American derives not so much from the symbols and institutions of mainstream white culture but from a powerful sense of in-betweenness. For them, Americanness is less a sweeping mythology to which they must submit and more a framework for seeing, thinking, blending, reinventing. Their experience grows out of distinct demographic, social, and economic conditions, and their unique take on identity has challenged longstanding ways of thinking about assimilation.
Classic assimilation theory arose out of the Chicago School of urban sociology in the 1920s. European immigration had peaked around the turn of the century, and students under the direction of sociologist Robert E. Park scattered into Chicago's immigrant neighborhoods to study the relationships of ethnic minorities to their new society. Park and his students developed the "straight-line" model of assimilation, which describes immigrant groups as moving closer to the cultural mainstream via successive and irreversible phases until being completely absorbed. Unlike his successors, however, Park did not see assimilation as the total usurping of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority. Rather, he described "a process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons and groups and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life."
This nuanced notion of assimilation as fusion was largely neglected in favor of emphasis on the dissolution of ethnic, racial, and cultural difference into an Anglo, Protestant, white "core culture," a theory most saliently represented in sociologist Milton Gordon's canonical 1964 book Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins. Gordon's assumptions still form the basis of popular conceptions of the immigrant experience and the American dream. According to Gordon, assimilation depended first upon acculturation: the immigrant group's willingness and ability to learn English, and to adopt white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class customs, after which point its members would gradually be allowed into white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class clubs and institutions, and would ultimately identify with and marry into the dominant group. In this theory there is no mutuality, no fusion. Assimilation is a one-way train to the cookie-cutter suburbs of Kansas, Applebee's, Kmart, and the NFL. Gordon admitted a modest influence of ethnic minorities on cuisine, architecture, and place names, but the sizzlin' pepper-jack quesadilla was largely the extent of the exchange. To adherents of this view, the "core culture" is stolid and unchanging; it exists beyond reach of minority groups, and cannot be influenced by their beliefs, traditions, and lifestyles. The incorporation of immigrants into white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture is seen as progressive, complete, and irrevocable, a gradual, generational act of erasure.
In the 1990s, a new surge of assimilation studies challenged the straight-line paradigm. In their 2008 book Generations of Exclusion: Mexican-Americans, Assimilation, and Race, sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz suggested that Mexican Americans were not actually assimilating into a white mainstream but rather into "the lower rungs of a racialized order." At the University of California–Los Angeles, where Telles and Ortiz were professors, a vast 1965 survey of Mexican Americans was discovered on a dusty bookshelf, and Telles and Ortiz managed to find and follow up with the majority of respondents, generating an analysis of 35 years of assimilation. They concluded that, while second-generation Mexican Americans made significant leaps ahead of their parents in education, income, and occupational status, progress tended to stop there, and third- and fourth-generation immigrants either stagnated or sank back into poverty. Telles and Ortiz explained this halted assimilation largely in terms of education, particularly public schooling, which they called "the single greatest institutional culprit for the persistent low status of U.S.-born Mexican Americans." Segregated schools, poor public education, and stereotyping all disproportionately affected Latinos, evidence of a pattern of racialization with which European immigrants did not have to contend.
Drawing on the results of a 15-year longitudinal study on second-generation youth conducted from 1991 to 2006, sociologists Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut expounded on the theory of "segmented assimilation," which has superseded Gordon's as the predominant thinking in the field. Portes and Rumbaut argued that, while a majority of second-generation immigrants would assimilate into the social, cultural, and economic mainstream, a sizable minority might instead experience "downward assimilation." Frustrated by insurmountable racial prejudice, lacking strong parental support and community, and finding themselves marooned between their traditional family culture and that of the U.S., they could be drawn into an underclass defined by gangs, drugs, and incarceration.
Another impediment to assimilation identified by Portes and Rumbaut was the "hourglass" U.S. labor market, with competitive professional jobs that demand higher education at the top, low-wage jobs for unskilled workers at the bottom, and few opportunities in between. While early-20th-century European immigrants benefited from strong unions and well-paying, unskilled industrial jobs that allowed them entry into the middle class, many contemporary Mexican immigrants must either make a massive leap in education from one generation to the next or toil in low-wage work that barely allows for subsistence. U.S. corporations eagerly employ Mexican workers at barely a living wage, while taxpayers balk at providing these workers social services, quality schools, and even the basic security of legal status.
Despite all these obstacles, in 2013 the college enrollment rate for Hispanic high school graduates actually surpassed that of whites (49 percent compared to 47 percent). However, Hispanic students — lacking the financial security, cultural know-how, and familial support enjoyed by the majority of white students — are only half as likely as their white counterparts to complete their degrees. Those who do have made a phenomenal leap in status and achievement, prompting a 2014 University of California–Irvine/UCLA study to label them the most successful immigrants in America.
Vianney spent her final year at Chico seeking a way to get to Mexico, having come to the realization that going there and meeting her family was "the only way I can really accept myself, who I am, where I come from." She became curious about the drafting of contracts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which had devastating effects on Mexican agriculture and had sent her family and millions of other Mexicans fleeing northward. "I wanted to know how contracts are made, how business is run," she said, and this interest led her to the Fulbright Binational Business Program. The application was daunting, and Vianney didn't believe she was talented enough to make the cut. She mentioned her hesitancy in passing to a professor, who was appalled at her reticence and insisted she apply.
Still, she wasn't sure. "I told my dad, 'Dad, I don't have any skills, no one's going to want me,' and my dad said, 'Tu diles que sí sabes, tu sí sabes, a huevo sabes.'"
Months later, when she learned she'd won the fellowship, her father was conflicted. "You know," he said, "everyone in Mexico tries to go to the United States, and you're the only one trying to go back." Reluctantly, he called his brother in Mexico City and arranged for her to stay with him.
Vianney's first memory of Mexico is of her and her uncles sitting across the table from one another in silence. She had moved into a divided house. Her aunt and cousin lived under the same roof as her uncles but avoided all contact with them, cooking in their own small kitchen, staying in their own rooms in a silent boycott of the men's old-school machismo. Vianney tried to make peace, but found herself highly restricted: a curfew, no keys to the house, no social life. Work was a two-hour commute through dense traffic. She lasted a month before finding her own apartment in the Hipódromo neighborhood, where she felt infinitely lighter.
But still, Mexico City weighed on her. She had long, grating days of commuting and work, and her colleagues seemed to be playing mind games with her, inviting her for drinks and then spreading rumors, changing meeting times and events at the last minute, making fun of her accent. She was younger than many workers but above them in the hierarchy, and this put her in the strange position of being resented for her privilege, even though she'd spent much of her life working hard to overcome being underprivileged, and was seen by many in her own country as a pariah. To her colleagues in Mexico she was a gringa, even though she wasn't white or blonde or rich or gallivanting across Latin America with a backpack. She grew furious when a man she was seeing was hours late to a date; she was irritated when he didn't help her with the dishes. She asked him to get tested for HIV. She told him about The Communist Manifesto.
"Por qué? Eres tan loca, gringa!" he said to her.
Meanwhile, Vianney began seeing her parents differently.
"I'm like, Oh my god, I get it," she told me in December, the middle of our Fulbright year. "Like the education my dad received at home. As a young kid, when I would get whipped by him, I'd cry and cry and cry to my mom like, Why did you marry him, he's a monster. I understand that now. He grew up seeing that — violence, and drugs, and alcohol — and his father was more machista than him."
She called her dad regularly and they found a new closeness talking about Mexico City's culture. Whereas the typical study-abroad student might call home and gush over newly discovered exoticisms to the amazement and delight of her parents, Vianney's dad knew it all firsthand. She'd bemoan the sorry state of street dogs and he'd say yep, yep, yep. She'd marvel at the thousands of taco stands and he'd say yep, yep, yep. She'd worry about how many Mexicans have gastritis and he'd say yep, yep, yep.
Small moments of understanding and connection bloomed amid the confusion and the frustration. Mexico began to grow on her, and, as it did, she grew more confident in herself. For New Year's, she took a trip with a group of friends to Chacahua, a remote beach town in the state of Oaxaca. As she stood on the beach one night, a Mexican woman she'd just met turned to her and said, "You're Mexican, huh." And Vianney, having learned by then the proper response, said, "Yeah, but I'm from Los Angeles," and the woman said, "Yeah, but you're Mexican." She recounted this with both pride and bemusement; it came right at the moment when she no longer needed to hear it.
Any conversation about Mexican immigrants in the U.S. must acknowledge that it's absurd to talk about many of them as immigrants at all. The first sizable population of Mexicans was here when the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, requiring Mexico to cede more than half of its territory to the U.S. At the time, Mexicans living in what is now Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah automatically became American citizens. The concept of an American culture defined by middle- and upper-class white people demands and perpetuates cultural amnesia.
"Forget the French Revolution," wrote Richard Rodriguez. "Forget the Dutch; forget Spain, obviously; forget the Massachusetts Indians who rescued the Puritans from winter; forget the African slaves who created the wealth of a young nation." Yet many Americans would have us believe that this culture has persisted, largely unchanged, since the earliest days of settlement, absorbing immigrants into its cloak of Anglo-Saxon whiteness like water into a sponge. Those who do not allow themselves to be absorbed have long been persecuted or exterminated, their histories expunged from the cultural record. To understand the challenges faced by second-generation Mexican Americans, it is necessary to understand the pervasiveness of this fiction of an essential national identity based on the norms of white privilege, and the prevalence of the fear of brownness and differentness that underlies it.
Second-generation Mexican Americans are confronted with this myth early in their lives, and must make a choice whether to believe it — to attempt to behave in accordance with mythical whiteness — or to assert a different kind of belonging based not on the willful denial of difference but the acceptance and celebration of it. According to Portes and Rumbaut, the deciding factor in whether second-generation immigrants achieve success is whether they are able to adopt U.S. cultural and social norms while simultaneously honoring and preserving the traditional cultures of their families. In academic circles, this is known as selective acculturation. It is a notion similar to multiculturalism, although more substantive in practice: The goal isn't for Mexican culture to be a colorful sequence of parades and piñatas adorning the stolid, white, Protestant, Anglo mainstream, but rather to be a reservoir of deeper meaning for immigrants, offering them a foothold of purpose, history, and connection as they interact with often hostile and predominantly white institutions. Selective acculturation, which includes fluent bilingualism and the reinforcement of ethnic identity, could be a cushion against a nihilistic descent into the anarchic, deadly belonging of gangs or drugs.
It is not often discussed today, but the European immigrants who arrived between 1890 and 1920 also experienced a backlash, and in 1924 the U.S. passed a law stipulating that the maximum annual number of immigrants who could be admitted to the U.S. from any given country was 2 percent of the number of immigrants from that country living in the U.S. in 1890. This was strategic. In 1890, the immigration boom had not yet begun. The numbers from which the law drew its quotas were very small, and this had the effect of essentially cutting off immigration from 1924 until 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act finally lifted the national-origin quotas. Turn-of-the-century European immigrants therefore had roughly 40 years to assimilate without any new waves of immigrants refreshing ties to their home countries or reinforcing ethnic enclaves. The experience of Mexican immigrants today is fundamentally different.
Ever since the U.S. annexed part of Mexico, new immigrants have mixed with the second, third, fourth, fifth, and further generations. These successive waves of immigration have affected Mexican Americans in ways that don't necessarily fit any existing models. Whereas ethnicity became an optional trait for European immigrants of the second generation and beyond, the constant arrival of new immigrants from Mexico and the brutish treatment they often receive from the U.S. media serve to strengthen Mexican-American identity, constantly reinforcing the ties of second-, third-, and fourth-generation immigrants with their ancestral cultures and also with the plight of struggling newcomers. The racist cultural positioning of anyone with certain ethnic features as Mexican and as potentially "illegal" (most notably embodied in Arizona's Senate Bill 1070) makes shedding ethnic identity nearly impossible even for third- and fourth-generation immigrants. The nearly 2,000-mile border the U.S. shares with Mexico complicates their ability to entirely disconnect from their pasts. And rapid-fire advances in communication and transportation facilitate increasingly transnational lives.
All of these factors render it both extremely difficult and increasingly undesirable for second-generation Latinos to blend into a white cultural mainstream. The conflicted Americanness they carry with them — even when in Mexico — is not an Americanness those so accustomed to proclaiming the country's greatness would recognize or understand. It stretches the limits of my own understanding even when I am part of a bilingual and bicultural family. It is an Americanness that sees the U.S. as a unique cultural and social space of possibility, of becoming, of fusion and malleability, and simultaneously as a space where historical violence and erasures must be constantly acknowledged and confronted. It is an Americanness based less on a mythical, traditional foundation than on constant re-invention, the twinning and fusing of seemingly opposed forces: resistance and celebration, hope and skepticism, inclusive patriotism and ethnic pride. It is an Americanness that, by valuing inquisitiveness and adaptability, has the potential to heal social rifts and transform the nation.
In Mexico, Vianney did not experience the innate sense of rightness and belonging that she'd expected to feel, the country like a key unlocking her true identity. Instead, she experienced a growing confidence in her own abilities. She had overcome a racialized and rigged economic system in the U.S., and now she was navigating her family's culture with dignity, curiosity, and confidence. It was not easy. Her metaphors for her daily life in Mexico were often a troubled mix of jungle exploration and war: "It's like going into a river at night," she told me, "without really knowing how deep it is, how cold it is, but if I don't throw myself in there and put a bulletproof vest on so people don't shoot my ideas down, I'm never going to make it to the other side."
She swam, in her bulletproof vest, in the dark and the cold, as she always had. She is a swimmer.
This is the difference between Vianney and me, between Vianney and most of the people I grew up with, who never even knew there was a river, much less what it meant to cross. Vianney embodies two fundamental American traditions: the dream of triumphing over adversity to achieve success, and its nightmare shadow of xenophobia, fear, and hatred.
Mexico gave Vianney what the United States could not: the ability to believe in herself. It did this not by granting her unequivocal acceptance or answering the persistent questions of belonging posed in the U.S., but by forcing her to come to terms with her ambivalence. It allowed her to acknowledge that she was American, but an American for whom Americanness did not mean unquestioning assimilation into white institutions, but solidarity with the many people excluded from these institutions. It granted her a new faith in herself in spite of the hatred and oppression. It familiarized her with in-betweenness, a state deeply and violently resisted in the U.S., where patriotism is feverish and flavorless, where you are with us or against us, where, at this moment in time, simply speaking Spanish or wearing a hijab is enough to elicit righteous white rage.
Undoubtedly the success of future generations of immigrants is dependent on education and immigration reform. It is equally dependent, however, on a shift in the way we talk about immigrants — no longer depicting them as "illegals," as a problem to be solved, as a threatening underclass. It depends on the willingness of white Americans to break down the monolith of white cultural myths and assumptions, to be seen as well as to see. It depends on a new appreciation of straddling cultures and worlds, and an increasing awareness of the erasures and exclusions that have been as much a part of American identity as the stories every U.S. kindergartner learns in school.
This requires humility, and an acceptance of the fact that many privileged white Americans have inherited an Americanness that is an illusion and a scam. I think of Vianney's mother counting money at the kitchen table, and I think of growing up in the suburbs without ever questioning whether I would go to college or how. I think of calling my dad from Lima, Peru, so that he could wire me money after I'd been robbed; of how much of an adventure it was to be alone and penniless in South America. I never earned my Americanness. I inherited it, which might be the most un-American condition of all. Vianney, and the rising class of second-generation immigrants of which she is a part, earn it, in spite of the rhetoric of hateful rejection and the practical, concrete obstacles in their way. And many are not even sure whether what they have earned — access to this society and its institutions — is really all that dreamy, especially if it is built on the systematic oppression of people like them.
By the end of her year in Mexico, Vianney's experience of the corporate world had soured her on the idea of law school. "In that type of profession, you have to look out for you," she told me. Instead, she wanted to teach music to minority kids, kids struggling with poverty, kids who, like her, were likely to be labeled delinquent, and abandoned. She wanted to "just give it to them real, no sugar-coating: Your chances of making it if you don't work really hard are low." She wanted to increase those chances.
"Growing up in Los Angeles, in the hood," Vianney told me, "you're not really taught to, you know, be the best." But at the end of our year in Mexico she said to me, with real conviction, "I know that I'm good enough. I can be certain that I'm good enough. I can finally say that."
She returned to the United States in August of 2016, when the message being blared to Latinos was precisely the opposite: Not only were they not good enough, they were rapists, drug dealers, "bad hombres." Vianney, with her hard-won confidence in herself, and her renewed commitment to help those left out of American progress, came home to the feverish chanting of Build the wall! Donald Trump's victory in November — despite his losing the popular vote by a historic margin — has legitimized and strengthened a vision of the United States in which only white people belong and have ever belonged. The most popular, foundational myth of the United States as the land of freedom for the world's oppressed has been eclipsed by the ever-present but thinly buried myth of white dominance and superiority.
Yet as people of color and immigrants supplant whites as the majority over the next 30 years, white Americans will need to accept and embrace the fact that a fundamental part of American identity is multicultural consciousness. They will need to make peace with the notion that the United States has long drawn much of its unique energy, creativity, innovation, and potential from Americans' enduring love for somewhere else.
To Trump and his supporters, Americanness is not an aspirational quality, earned through hard work and a respect for diversity and equality, but an innate characteristic residing in a glorified past and possessed only by whites. Their America does not include people like Vianney. Nor does it include my daughter, who proudly says things like "I want otra manzana please!" and who is equally at home amid the fireworks and brass bands of a Mexican street fair and the hushed propriety of a U.S. lecture hall.
This most recent triumph of virulent nativist populism could end up squandering the potential of a generation that has a unique capacity to heal social rifts, fight poverty, and transform America, a capacity born not from a simplified knee-jerk patriotism for pledges and flags, but from the creative friction between cultures, identities, and feelings of belonging. At a moment when Hispanics make up nearly one-fifth of the U.S. population, second-generation Latino immigrants should be a source of great hope for our nation. Their in-betweenness can be a bridge to a more creative and compassionate and just world. I pray that white Americans don't burn it down.
Features & InvestigationsMexicoImmigrationMagazineFeaturesMar/Apr 2017
Sarah Menkedick's debut essay collection, Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm (Pantheon, 2017), was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
The Business of Shooting Pigs From the Sky
A Texas-style response to the country's feral pig epidemic involves tourists with assault weapons and helicopters.
A Trip Through Ecuador's Cofán Community — and Its Disappearing Homeland
The indigenous Amazonian people stand strong, despite the forces that have despoiled their home.
Failure at the EPA
The agency has left immigrants and minorities to fend for themselves at toxic waste sites across the country.
The Girl Gangs of El Salvador
Joining a gang seemed like the best way to evade violence for women in El Salvador, but in many cases it only put them more squarely in danger.
Women Saving the Planet: Kayla DeVault, Advocating for Navajo Nation
The scholar and indigenous activist explains how tribal communities can help solve the energy crisis.
Brain-Altering Science and the Search for a New Normal
An electrical implant known as a deep-brain stimulator is giving some patients a new start.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"There used to be somewhat of a boys club here, but that has improved over the years. However, it seems they are now inclined to favor younger people for promotions and growth opportunities."
Would you recommend UMB Bank to other women?


Beach, Boat, Bay & Gulf- 2bd/2ba with Views of Ono Island, Bridge and Ol` River (Perdido Bay). Directly across from the Beautiful Gulf of Mexico!! 2 Kayaks included!
2 Kayaks Included for Bay Use - Great for Watching the Dolphin - Ono Island Views 2 bd/2 ba - Sleeps 8 - Beautiful Sunsets!
Property Size 1,100 sq. ft.
If you don't want to spend a fortune, or race to the beach to get a place near the water, this is the perfect place! You can bring your boat or jet ski, book a fishing trip or just enjoy the beach and the river.
Beautiful water front condo across from the Gulf of Mexico. Enjoy the balcony while you watch the beautiful sunset and the boats go by on Ole River that feeds into Perdido Bay, dangle your feet off the dock or fish and crab from the docks! Fun for children and adults alike! No need to pay for the dolphin cruise – watch them from the dock or balcony, they come by often.
Enjoy the waves, sun and sand on the beach or watch turtles nesting from May thru September. You can reserve rental beach chairs and umbrellas for the entire stay or take your own. There is the mile stretch of undeveloped beach to walk, jog or shell search. At night the family can crab hunt! It is only a short walk to the beach with a cross walk for your safety and convenience.
Amenities to enhance your experience include two swimming pools, private boat slips and dock. There is also boat or wave runner storage on property. We get major entertainment at our Wharf Amphitheater including Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift, Kelly Pickler, Brad Paisley, ZZ Top, Gretchen Wilson, Montgomery Gentry, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp...just to name a few in past year. There's great local entertainment year round. The Wharf shopping area features restaurants, shopping, movies, and entertainment and has one of the largest ferris wheels in the southeast U.S. Outlet mall shopping is always a good option!
There are numerous restaurants for every taste and budget or have a leisurely meal in our well equipped kitchen.
We have tried to equip our second home to make you comfortable and feel pampered!
Come stay with us for a great vacation at a reasonable price.
Though this wonderful home can sleep up to 8 people, we prefer to keep it down to 6 at the most. However, the bedding creates options for spreading out.
My husband and I both agree that if we ever return to Orange Beach we will request to stay in 413. We had a magical wedding weekend, definitely one for the books!
Excellent. I was very pleased with our accommodations. Efforts to make sure we were able to have access to the necessary information was successful. We would definitely try to stay with you when we are next in your area.
We loved the accommodations. Everything was in good condition for a rental property.
They were amazing. Very helpful and responsive.
The condo was amazing. Very clean, spacious, comfortable, beautiful inside and the view also amazing. I could see my boat from the my room.
Very courteous and responded within a timely manor.
Only dislike is having to pay for a parking pass for one and only vehicle. Overall stay was great, excellent view, quiet, and comfy beds.


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Supervisory Accounting Technician, GS-0525-09
Accountant, Construction and Skilled Trades
This position is located in the Accounting Operations Division, Coast Guard Finance Center (FINCEN). As a Supervisory Accounting Technician, this position serves as a first line supervisor in an organization charged with payment of bills and maintaining accounting records.
Being a Coast Guard civilian makes you a valuable member of the Coast Guard team. Typical work assignments include:
Planning and directing work through Lead Technicians, setting short-term priorities, balancing work between units, and assuring quality and quantity of work is maintained.
Applying experienced knowledge of accounting principles, appropriation law, procurement regulations and other regulatory guidance to the accounting/transaction document.
Reconciling and interpreting complex data and data elements from computer screens, printouts, or manual reports to source records (electronic and/or paper copy) and makes complex adjustments as determined necessary.
Responding to a wide variety of routine, unusual and complex questions generated from a large and diverse customer base.
Supervising the maintenance of records/files/batches to substantiate, track, and/or reconciling inputted documents.
NOTE: This announcement, which closes on Feb 09, 2023, has the following cut-off dates: Oct 30, Nov 29, Dec 29, Jan 28, and Feb 09, 2023.
Applications received by 11:59EST on Feb 09, 2023 will be reviewed for consideration and those deemed qualified in accordance with merit promotion procedures will be referred to management for consideration. Applications received after the initial cut-off date will be considered as needed.
If no selections are determined to be made as the announcement closing approaches, the announcement may be extended to obtain additional candidates and a new closing date will be established and posted on USAJOBS.
U.S. Citizenship is required.
This position requires a National Agency Check with Inquiries (NACI).
Males born after 12/31/1959 must be registered for Selective Service.
A one-year Supervisory Probationary Period may be required.
All qualification requirements must be met by the closing date of the announcement. This includes Time-In-Grade requirements for current status employees applying through merit promotion procedures. Status applicants applying for a promotion must have 52 weeks of service at the next lower grade.
To qualify for the GS-09 level: Applicants must possess one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-08 grade level in the federal sector. Specialized experience is experience that has equipped you with the particular ability, skill, and knowledge to successfully perform the duties of this position and is typically in or related to this line of work.
Examples of specialized experience include the following:
Maintaining and aging accounts payable and accounts receivable;
Processing payment vouchers and supporting documents;
Applying accounting principles, appropriation law, and procurement regulations at work;
Establishing priorities for projects/assignments;
Monitoring accounting transactions, and performing examination, audits, interpretations for unusually, difficult and complex reconciliation.
National Service Experience (i.e., volunteer experience): Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.
The Office of Personnel management (OPM) must authorize employment offers made to current or former political appointees. If you are currently, or have been within the last 5 years, a political Schedule A, Schedule, C, Non-career SES or Presidential Appointee employee in the Executive Branch, you must disclose this information to the Human Resources Office.
This position does not have a positive education requirement. If you are including education on your resume, report only attendance and/or degrees from schools accredited by accrediting institutions recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. See Required Documents section for detail.
FOREIGN EDUCATION: Education completed in foreign colleges or universities may be used to meet Federal qualification requirements if you can show that your foreign education is comparable to education received in accredited educational institutions in the United States. It is your responsibility to provide such evidence with your application. See Recognition of Foreign Qualifications click here
Applicants will be required to complete questions contained on the Declaration for Federal Employment (OF-306) at the time a tentative job offer is made. Certain responses on the form could pose a problem with suitability for employment determinations. If you receive a conditional offer of employment for this position, you will be required to complete/make updates to the OF-306 and to sign and certify the accuracy of all information in your application, prior to entry on duty. False statements on any part of the application may result in withdrawal of offer of employment, dismissal after beginning work, or imprisonment.
DHS uses e-Verify, an Internet-based system, to confirm the eligibility of all newly hired employees to work in the United States. Learn more about e-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities at click here
Recruitment incentives may be authorized.
This is a supervisory position, under provisions of the Civil Service Reform Act, first time supervisors and/or managers will be required to serve a one-year probationary period.
All Federal employees are required to have Federal salary payments made by direct deposit.
The Department of Homeland Security encourages persons with disabilities to apply, to include persons with intellectual, severe physical or psychiatric disabilities, as defined by 5 CFR § 213.3102(u), and/or Disabled Veterans with a compensable service-connected disability of 30 percent or more as defined by 5 CFR § 315.707. Veterans , Peace Corps / VISTA volunteers , and persons with disabilities possess a wealth of unique talents, experiences, and competencies that can be invaluable to the DHS mission. If you are a member of one of these groups, you may not have to compete with the public for federal jobs. To determine your eligibility for non-competitive appointment and to understand the required documentation, click on the links above or contact the Servicing Human Resources Office listed at the bottom of this announcement.
More than 1 selection may be made from this announcement if additional identical vacancies in the same title, series, grade, and unit occur within 45 days from the date the certificate was issued.
If you need a reasonable accommodation for the application and hiring process, please contact 202-795-6291. Decisions on granting reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis. Visit Reasonable Accommodation
Accountant Federal jobs in Chesapeake
Construction and Skilled Trades Federal jobs in Chesapeake


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Review Eduardo Herrera & Zelmar Garín – Ahí Vienen!
by Marco Canepari 24 September, 2014
The delicate and peaceful guitar arpeggio, which leads the listener into "Oceano Jabali", is the best possible prelude to the latest opera by Eduardo Herrera & Zelmar Garín.
It is, in a small way, a summary of the lyricism and the emotional intensity that impregnates the four-handed project. Ahí Vienen! is indeed a suggestive work, but at the same time so eventful and erratic, which can easily catch you off guard.
Next to its expressiveness, the main strength of the album lies in its artistry: the vivid musical coloratura, which inebriates and engages all along its 11 chapters. From the first tracks onward it is clear that Ahí Vienen! is the product of a long, intense and challenging project; but also a bright reflection of the creative harmony that links its authors.
Behind the album, there's a 10 year path: an experience that the two musicians started off alongside the Argentinian Noseso label and which has led them to their first release together. Their debut is, as Herrera and Garín love to specify, "unclassifiable music", a work in which dozen of styles come into contact with each other, mix themselves and give life to an open-ended musical plot.
It is hard to tell where the two artists are heading to; it is hard to foresee their next move. Listening to Ahí Vienen! you don't expect to follow the course of a narration, or to identify a musical continuum, but to enjoy the details, to be amazed by the moments. That's how poles-apart tunes, like the intimate whispering of "Milonga del Agua y el Fantasma", the dark rarefaction of "El Fantasma" and the bewitched rhythm of "Gospel", can smoothly follow one another.
Herrera and Garín are superb at bringing experimentalism in the everyday life. They express a popular and folkloric attitude, which is nostalgically revealed in "Mexicano Mamurry and Belgica"; but then they mask it, mould it and finally they transpose it: soaking every feeling in emotionally unstable conditions, as it happens in "Sinfin" or "Quizas Venus".
As long as you are able to give up the quest for a down-to-hearth significance, or for a pragmatic meaning, you will find a sense of completion in the album's eclecticism and its singularities. You will find fulfillment in the distinct instants, which compose an always-fresh ten years old project.
Ahi Vienen! is available for free download from Noseso Records
Mexico / REVIEW Our Time
Brazil / REVIEW Marcos Valle – Sempre
Tags: Argentina, Argentine Music, Buenos Aires, Eduardo Herrera, Noseso, Zelmar Garin


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Gene Ambaum	in Book Review	 February 16, 2018 January 27, 2018 316 Words
We Can Never Go Home Volume One: What We Do Is Secret by Josh Hood, Brian Level, Matthew Rosenberg, Patrick Kindlon, and Dylan Todd. Black Mask, 2015. 9781628750843. Originally published as We Can Never Go Home #1 – #5. Publisher's Rating: M / Mature.
1989. Duncan is outside of the small town where he goes to high school, shooting his father's pistol, when he comes across a truck in which Ben is groping Madison. Ben catches Duncan peering in the window, and in the course of trying to start a fight he throws Madison to the ground. Big mistake. Madison's eyes glow and shoot lightning, and she uses super strength to toss him through the window of his truck. He calls her a freak and drives off. She threatens Duncan, making it clear he shouldn't tell anyone about what happened. But on their long walk home she comes clean about her powers. (She's adopted, has no idea where she got them, and does not want to be a superhero. She just wants to leave town. And then Duncan tells her his secret: he can kill people with his mind. (Really?))
It's not too far to a scene of old fashioned high school bullying, Duncan giving Madison a mix tape, a somewhat accidental murder, and them going on the run together. The problem is they need some cash, so they start robbing drug dealers. The authorities are soon after them, and so are others interested in using their powers.
There's a lot to love in the book, particularly the bit where Duncan tries to get Madison to buy superhero clothes at a costume shop. The pacing is great, the violence is realistic, and when others with powers finally show up, it's weird. It's a really enjoyable YA adventure that's a readalike for They're Not Like Us and the classic Teenagers from Mars.
Why does that guy's name always come first?


The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences, and Marvels for the Eyes, an eleventh-century Arabic geography, is still a wonder.
Is Pokémon Go is preparing us for a world without cartography?
We now know there's liquid water on Mars, according to NASA. But at the turn of the 20th century, we believed something else: that Mars had canals.


As your trusted holistic dentist in La Mesa and El Cajon, CA, we at Smilehaven Dental Center are well-known for our ability to give patients healthier smiles. Dr. Stephen L. Chan has been practicing for over 30 years in the dental field and with an emphasis on holistic dentistry and an adherence to all the latest dental techniques and technologies, he's more than capable of helping you reach your optimal level of oral health. Having said that, we're also quite capable of giving patients beautiful smiles as well. While we place a priority on the health of a person's teeth, we understand all of the benefits that come with having an attractive smile, which is why we go above and beyond to offer a comprehensive selection of cosmetic dentistry treatments as well.
Allow you to never be afraid to smile or laugh in public.
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Lead to more social and professional success.
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One of the things that sets us apart from other La Mesa and El Cajon, CA cosmetic dentists is that we place a strong emphasis on holistic dentistry. If you're unfamiliar with the term, holistic dentistry is a focus on a person's entire body during dental care instead of just the mouth. We utilize bio-compatible whole body dentistry and think about how your dental condition and our treatment will affect your systemic health. We're strong believers that a person's oral health is deeply tied with his or her systemic health and with the help of our holistic dentistry, we'll have both your mouth and your body feeling as good as ever!
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