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Why I Submitted Just One Signature For Ballot Access in Indiana
By Andrew Straw - January 18, 2019 Leave a Comment
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I ran for Congress in the 2012 cycle after announcing my interest in the race to replace congressman Joe Donnelly (now former U.S. senator). I ran as a Democrat and my campaign manager Greg Brown served as a bodyguard for Michael Jackson. However, the district party leadership (Butch Morgan and his allies) was against me because I pushed for disability access at the district headquarters in South Bend. The whole event was featured on ABC 57 in South Bend:
I also filed a formal Indiana Civil Rights Commission complaint regarding the Democratic HQ in South Bend and first received a 6-0 unanimous decision in my favor. However, when the Democratic state chair showed up to a hearing arguing a First Amendment right to reject any disabled person and exclude them from the HQ, the ICRC caved and voted for the Indiana Democratic Party, 4-0. Straw v. Indiana Democratic Party, 93A02-1406-EX-00399 (Ind. 3/9/2014)(denied on appeal)
I switched parties and became an Indiana delegate to the Green Party of the USA national convention in 2012. I had some issues with the Green Party and disability access, but nothing so serious as what the Democrats presented. The Indiana Democratic Party had exclusion of people with mental disabilities from meetings in their state rules for decades. I was institutionally not welcome in that party. My local county chair even refused to slate me to run for county judge in 2010 because of my mental disability. They decided NO CANDIDATE was better than having me as a candidate.
Honestly, when the Democratic 2nd District Chair Butch Morgan was convicted of a felony for leading a forgery ring to get signatures for Obama and Clinton in 2008, I felt vindicated as he went to jail.
The state rules (Rule 10) continued to discriminate and I finally got that to change when I met one of the candidates for DNC Chair. She helped me get the word out that Indiana was not following national Democratic Party principles by excluding mentally disabled people from meetings. Rule 10 was modified after my appeal to every single DNC member.
As a Green Party candidate for U.S. House, I was stuck with a signature requirement of nearly 4,000 signatures in 2012. My broken bones would simply not allow me to do that. I reviewed Indiana law and found that any small party candidate needed merely to get 2% of the votes in the last election for Indiana Secretary of State. The Republican winner of the 2010 Indiana Secretary of State election had to resign for election-related fraud. The replacement was appointed by Gov. Mitch Daniels. I took this to mean that the last election only had one voter (Gov. Daniels) and the total turnout was 1 vote.
Given this, my small party signature requirement should have been 2% of 1 vote, rounded down per the Indiana Code. IC 3-8-6-1; IC 3-8-6-3. NB: the Republican legislature later made it easier for disabled people to sign by allowing someone to help them sign. This should allow gathering signatures of disabled people with online petitions. IC 3-8-6-6.
On principle, I filed my petition for ballot access with the support of the Indiana Green Party with one signature on it, my own. The same Indiana Secretary of State, Connie Lawson, who only received one vote from the governor when she was appointed rejected my petition to be on the ballot with one signature.
Lawson has little concern for the law or the Indiana Constitution. The Indiana Constitution limits a secretary of state to 8 years in office. Lawson was appointed after Charlie White was forced out of the secretary of state office.
Lawson was appointed on March 16, 2012, just 3 days before my birthday. It does say something about the voters in Indiana that they would give over 57% of the vote to someone so dishonest as Charlie White, probably because Vop Osili is black. People said rude, racist things to Mr. Osili in Northern Indiana and when I heard about it after the Elkhart County Fair Parade, I asked Mr. Osili to sign the back of my bar membership card, which he did.
Connie Lawson was appointed and that means her second election will require her to resign because she will serve more than 8 years out of 12 (the constitutional limit in Indiana) and this will allow the governor to engage in another appointment, creating the exact same conditions again that I sought to use as a single-vote election by the governor.
Republicans have no problem with single-vote elections of people from their own party because Republicans don't believe in elections. In Indiana, the voters also have no ability to propose amendments to the Indiana Constitution, but have to wait for both Republican state houses to take action. All power in Indiana is concentrated in government bodies completely under the control of the Republican Party. The Republicans in that state have so much power, they attempt to corrupt the Democratic Party. Single party control tastes, sounds, and looks like tyranny, like Soviet politics.
Despite the fact that I was a founder of Indiana College Democrats, served as a Democratic precinct chair in Bloomington, was a Democratic state delegate, helped many Democratic candidates as a lawyer and manager, wrote columns and promoted a petition for Democratic policies, I will never be a Democrat in Indiana again. I don't trust them and they have discriminated against me both in my broken legs and pelvis (South Bend HQ) as well as my mental disabilities (state party Rule 10). It took the national DNC to get Indiana to strip decades of discrimination from the state party rules. I don't need that kind of hassle and constant fear of someone stabbing me in the back. Truly, after all my efforts to build that party in Indiana, I was stabbed in the back.
Other states have Democratic Party officials whom I respect, but Indiana is a problem.
Filed Under: DC Authors Tagged With: American State Elections, Democrats, Disability and Democracy, Green Party News, Racism and Prejudice, Third Party, Voter Access
About Andrew Straw
Andrew Straw is a Virginia lawyer who writes for Democracy Chronicles from the Philippines. Straw grew up in Indiana, where his brother, twice a veteran of Afghanistan, ran for sheriff of Hamilton County in 2018. He was born at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, where his father was training as a U.S. Marine for his Vietnam duty.
Straw has served as corporate counsel for billionaire Alan M. Voorhees, who designed the Interstate Highway System and the Metro in Washington DC. Straw then worked for the Chief Justice of Indiana and was the assistant dean in charge of the International Programs at Indiana University-Maurer School of Law.
He started a group called Children of Camp LeJeune for people born or poisoned there. Straw also founded Disability Party and it has thousands of followers in over 40 countries.
Straw has visited 16 countries and has lived in the United States, Italy, New Zealand, and the Philippines. He has provided services to the Italian Foreign Ministry as a contractor and passed the written U.S. Foreign Service Officer Test. For more information, Straw's CV can be found here.
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Home | DC AUTHORS | Why I Submitted Just One Signature For Ballot Access in Indiana


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Oral Archives of the World ...
Oral Archives: Gérard Bolla
Gérard Bolla
Oral Archives of the
Gérard Bolla studied economics and law in Switzerland before joining UNESCO in 1955. He became director of the office of Director-General René Maheu in 1969, a position he held for two years before being appointed Assistant Director-General for Culture.
It is in this capacity that he became involved in the negotiations for the drafting of the text of the World Heritage Convention and its adoption at the General Conference of UNESCO in 1972. He then participated in statutory meetings for World Heritage until 1981. His important contribution was highlighted in 1992 on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Convention at the Committee's session in Santa Fe, United States.
With Michel Batisse, Gérard Bolla recorded his experience in The Invention of "World Heritage" in 2003, English translation 2005 (History Papers, Association of Former UNESCO Staff Members, History Club). He is also co-author of Le patrimoine à l'UNESCO: le défi de la sauvegarde, published in 2009 in the same series.
26 October 2007, Paris, France
The following audio excerpts are from an interview with Gérard Bolla by Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler the 26 October 2007 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France. These capsules reveal, thanks to Gérard Bolla's inside perspective, the behind-the-scenes negotiations leading up to the adoption of the World Heritage Convention. They also place the Convention in the wider circle of UNESCO's cultural and heritage interventions.
1. The World Heritage Convention
1a. Involvement and participation of Gérard Bolla in World Heritage
1b. The World Heritage List
1c. The Convention as a Tool for Conservation and International Cooperation
1d. Failures and successes of the Convention
2. The World Heritage Committee
3. The advisory bodies: IUCN, ICOMOS and ICCROM
Under the leadership of the Canada Research Chair on Built Heritage at the University of Montreal, an international team of researchers conducts interviews with pioneers of World Heritage to capture memories of important moments in the history of UNESCO Convention.
Launched in 2006, this initiative is part of the UNESCO History project that celebrated the 60th anniversary of the creation of UNESCO. The Oral Archives project records the precious witness of people closely associated with the creation and implementation of the Convention. Their recollections and views have greatly enriched the book by Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler, Many Voices, One Vision: The Early Years of the World Heritage Convention (Ashgate/Routledge, 2013).
Listen more Interviews
Oral Archives of the World Heritage Convention
Oral Archives
Date Start: Friday, 26 October 2007
Date end: Friday, 26 October 2007

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A few years ago I wanted to write a blog post about frustrating evasions that religious people make when we try to criticize their beliefs, values, and institutions. The first thing I was eager to rail about was the way that they accuse us of calling them "stupid" when all we are doing is showing them the flaws in their reasoning processes–which is perfectly intellectually legitimate. It's wrong to insinuate that all criticism of your ideas is abusive treatment as a way to avoid the burden of actually reexamining your beliefs and attempting the difficult work of refuting challenges to them.
But before I made much progress on the post I suddenly started noticing something. All over my Facebook feed, teeming with the kinds of atheists who like to socialize with other atheists on social media, were atheists who were calling religious people any of a variety of variations of the word stupid. Perhaps they were musing that they were "religitards" or if they were also political conservatives perhaps they were being mocked with the sexually degrading nickname of "teabaggers" (an allusion to Tea Party activists' ignorance when they unwittingly suggested something sexual by proposing to "teabag" Washington by flooding the Congress with teabags sent by mail).
I wanted to make the case that atheists generally were like I was—focused only on criticizing religious people for what was objectively criticizable about the content of their beliefs, values, institutions, and harmful actions that could be tied in some significant way to their religions causally. But the harsh reality was that a fair number of my fellow anti-theists crossed the line all the time into getting their jollies demonizing religious people tout court and using verbally abusive insults to describe them–whether as a group or individuals–on account of their false beliefs.
And so I intensified over the next couple of years in my attempts to call for greater civility in how we treated one another. Because as far as I'm concerned, the dehumanization that results in violence begins as speech. I have cleaned up my Facebook feed drastically in the last couple years. I no longer hear much from anti-theists like the one in October who saw said "I'd like to smack that idiot in the mouth with a brick" when said "idiot" had done nothing more than reply to a cute owl video with the remark "God has given us so many wonderful creatures to enjoy". That was the day I ended my friendship with the guy who liked to celebrate his violent feelings towards religious people.
I don't believe in being friends with or making excuses for bigots and bullies. I don't care whether atheists or any other group is marginalized, I don't just turn a blind eye when they use dehumanizing and abusive rhetoric about other people. I don't let people get away with calling themselves skeptics while promoting a black and white picture of the world where their own tribe can do no wrong and their opposition is the root of all evil. I don't let people claim they're only criticizing ideas when they're also verbally assaulting people. I don't let people claim that they're enemies of hate when they're unapologetically expressing hatred itself.
And, specifically, germane to today's news about the awful murder of three Muslim students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by an anti-theist active on social media, I don't let slide the claim that no atheist criticism of Islam ever has anything to do with irrational bigotries because "religion is not a race" and "criticism of ideas isn't hatred of people".
Islam indeed should not be sacrosanct from criticism. Muhammed should not be immune from mockery. But neither should racism, jingoism, or plain old hatred of religious people be allowed to be passed off as just the criticism of ideas.
I don't know if this murder was specifically motivated by a desire to kill these three Muslims because they're Muslims. The cops are so far saying they think it was triggered by something as heinously trivial as a simmering parking dispute. I have a hard time understanding how that leads to three people's deaths. I have an even harder time swallowing the idea that none of the common propensities to dehumanize Muslims for being foreign in appearance or even for being religiously Muslim played any role in whatever matrix of causes was at work in Craig Hicks's mind. I don't know if this is indeed a terroristic hate crime but I don't blame the Muslim community in America for responding in terror and outrage and feeling threatened. And the fact is that the effect of this crime is the effect of terrorism and it is the effect of a hate crime. If you don't want your ideology to be blamed for violence against one of the groups you constantly denounce then you don't get violent with precisely those people.
And the fact is that even if Hicks wasn't motivated in the main by hatred of the religious or of Muslims in specific, it's always possible that the member of any tribe can go off the rails into violent expression. And that's just one more reason that I am so insistent we not create a climate of routine dehumanization of our enemies, whoever they are. Because if some day there is the most unambiguous of all anti-theist motivated hate crimes against religious people, I don't want to know that just the day before I was carelessly intermingling my justifiable criticism of bad ideas with unjustifiably dehumanizing rhetoric, right along with that violent person, and clicking like on his very own criticisms that blurred the line between scathing critique and outright hate.
I want to make it clear that the only kind of humanism that's real and which I support is the kind that is humanizing in how it is advocated and has a demonstrably humanizing effect on those most passionate about it.
Maybe the bitterest evidence that merely abstract lip service to the right ideas is insufficient is the post below from Hicks's own Facebook page in which he himself seems to understand, through sarcastic expression, that in the abstract you cannot directly blame Christianity simpliciter for the Ku Klux Klan or Islam simpliciter for terrorism. It's one of many humane and valuable ideas (including adamant support for LBGT rights, women's reproductive rights, and the freedom of religion) expressed on his Facebook page and which he unconscionably betrayed.
Abstract understanding is not enough. How we treat people is what matters.
And maybe some of that gun control Hicks seemed to have such contempt for could have helped too.
Hemant Mehta has collected together the condemnations of the crime by the major voices in the atheist movement.
February 12, 2015 Atheism Is Not A Religion. But There Should Be Atheistic Religions.


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ABCC back in business, review contracts and enterprise agreements now
Clayton Utz
Australia November 30 2016
With the passage through Senate earlier today of the final stage of the Government's industrial relations reform agenda to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), businesses in the construction industry should be reviewing their contractual arrangements with contractors and subcontractors, and current enterprise agreements.
This development comes a week after the passage of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill which together form two parts of the most significant industrial relations reform since the creation of the Fair Work Act in 2009.
Changes to the ABCC Bill made by the Senate
The Bill received the support of nearly all cross-bench senators but not without significant last minute amendments that:
introduce a security of payments regime to the Building Code (this SOP regime is as yet undrafted) to protect unpaid sub-contractors which will require head contractors to hold money in a trust type arrangement which will be made accessible to unpaid businesses in the subcontracting chain;
abolishes the reverse onus of proof provision in the former draft relating to proceedings for unlawful industrial action and picketing. The ABCC must now establish on the balance of probabilities that the activity was carried out for a particular reason;
allow building industry participants before 29 November 2018, to tender for and be awarded Commonwealth funded building work even if they have a non-compliant agreement. Any new enterprise agreements entered into after the Code commences must comply with the Code. This provides a transition period for existing agreements to be re-negotiated so they are Code compliant before 29 November 2018; and
from March next year, companies bidding for government projects worth more than $4 million will need to show how they are contributing to the Australian economy.
Not just about re-establishing the ABCC
The main purpose of the Bill is to reintroduce the ABCC as the industry regulator and abolish the current Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate (FWBII).
While most attention has been on the restoration of the ABCC and its increased jurisdiction and powers, the Bill also:
expands the definition of "building work" to cover the transportation or supply of goods to building sites and offshore resources platforms;
creates a new prohibition on the organising or taking of unlawful industrial action, including unlawful picketing, which will cover conduct that has the purpose of preventing or restricting access to, or from, a building, or ancillary site, where the conduct is for the purpose of advancing industrial claims, motivated by advancing industrial objectives of the relevant union, or is otherwise unlawful;
creates an express power of the Court to order injunctions to stop unlawful action, including pickets;
expands the existing offence of coercion to include superannuation and to make it explicit that action intended to force an employer to enter into an enterprise agreement is unlawful;
prohibits specific agreements where the intent is to provide standard terms and conditions to workers across multiple employers outside of the Fair Work Act (pattern bargaining);
significantly expands the power of the regulator who now has the power to compulsory examine people that may have been involved in a contravention, or who could otherwise assist the ABCC in its investigations;
removes the current limitation preventing the regulator from initiating or continuing enforcement action where the parties involved have settled a dispute; and
significantly increases penalties for unlawful industrial actions committed by individuals and corporate entities ‒ including unions with the same penalties applying to unlawful picketing.
How the new ABCC will affect your business
Senator Abetz says the new regulator will put a "tough cop back on the beat". Significantly, the ABCC's powers and protections now extend to businesses responsible for transporting materials to building sites.
The three areas that will have the most impact on business in the building industry will be:
The Building Code in 2018: this
includes new requirements for companies' contractual arrangements with contractors and subcontractors; and
enables further Commonwealth control over the industrial practices of companies tendering for federally funded projects.
New procurement rules: taking effect from March next year, these require businesses bidding for government projects worth more than $4 million to show:
how much locally-produced material they will source;
how they are contributing to local employment;
how they are growing local skills;
the whole-of-life cost of the project, not just the build cost; and
that the material they use comply with Australian product standards.
A new offence of unlawful picketing: this is designed to capture conduct that disrupts the supply of goods, services and labour to building sites. While this mostly relates to trade unions, it can also cover any person who engages in this sort of activity and would cover conduct such as secondary boycotts by suppliers.
Getting your business ready for the ABCC
Building industry participants will need to:
review their contractual arrangements with contractors and subcontractors to ensure that they are up to date and that any issues identified are addressed;
review relevant requirements in the Building Code and consider how they might affect their business, particularly if these businesses undertake Commonwealth-funded building work; and
consider whether their current enterprise agreement complies with the Building Code, and whether re-negotiation of the enterprise agreement is necessary when the new Building Code is introduced in 2018;
if re-negotiation of an enterprise agreement is required, take steps now to plan for that process, including for any industrial campaign and protected industrial action that may be taken.
Civil asset recovery in Australia *
Reporting requirements for defective products in Australia *
Conducting litigation in Australia *
Indemnities for breach of contract - do they do what you think they do? *
Confidential information and departing employees - the threat from within *
Gender pay gap – is reporting enough?
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Senate Passes The ABCC Bill: The ABCC Is Back In Business *
Overview of the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Act *
Your guide to the Australian Building & Construction Commission *
Massachusetts Court Upholds Record $2.6M Fine against Beer Distributor * - USA
Nashoba Valley Winery Fights For Its Existence After ABCC Reinterprets Farmer-Series License Statutes * - USA
Nguyen: pay to play investigation of craft beer industry comes to a head * - USA
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Canon Australia Pty Ltd
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Following the news that a possible UFO was spotted off the coast of Kerry before heading north, PSNI have confirmed that they would like to speak to the driver or drivers of the vehicle for multiple motoring offences.
The list of misdemeanours include failure to stop at traffic lights, several speed limit offences, failure to hold a legitimate driving licence and lack of MOT certificate.
An Garda Síochána admitted they are monitoring the situation at present but currently state they will not seek contact for the recent incident as they're not sure themselves about speed limits on country roads.
PSNI have described their bread haul as 'significant' after raids in houses and vehicles in the Derrytresk area discovered a highly sophisticated bread ring operating since the recent bad weather began.
Over 600 white loaves, 300 soda farls and dozens of wheaten bread, brown bread and pancakes were confiscated over a three-hour period this morning with over 50 arrests. 28 griddle pans and open fires were smashed in a no-nonsense approach from police who described locals as 'not that hungry looking'.
Meanwhile, the local poitín black market remained untouched. Fitzhanna also revealed how two constables bought 8 bottles of plum poitín off him and refused to arrest him after his bread making sideline was smashed to pieces by the same men.
Police were called to an East Tyrone drinking establishment after several punters became embroiled in a brawl over a comment made by a regular customer.
Eyewitnesses claim several chairs were smashed over heads in scenes which one drinker said resembled 'some old bar-room brawl you'd see in the pictures with John Wayne in it'. The incident escalated after local general expert Leo Lyons claimed that 'there was a quare stretch in the evenings already' which was vehemently disputed by three fellow drinkers at the Nally Stand bar in the centre of the town.
Police confirmed that the brawl spilled outside onto the roundabout and fighting numbers were doubled in size when drivers heard what they were arguing about.
Scenes finally settled after the priest was called for and asked to confirm whether or not there was a quare stretch in the evenings. After some thought he declared that there wasn't a quare stretch really, which appeared to end the riotous scenes apart from another man with a beard who threw a packet of half-eaten KP Salty Nuts at Fr Fay's vestments as he walked back to his carriage.
Seamus McSorley, a 48 year old plumber from the locality, admitted he'd mistaken his own reflection in the passenger window of a taxi for that of a rival punter during a five-minute aggressive argument in broad daylight.
This wasn't Mr McSorley's first arrest for public disturbance this year. In April in was reported on here that he was taken in for questioning after arguing in a threatening manner with an election poster in the village.
Following the demolishing of the Coalisland Barracks this week, the Mid-Ulster council have launched a competition to the public as to what should replace it.
Already there have been over 300 suggestions ranging from a new cinema where the currency is jam jars to a corn mill that actually sells corn.
Early indications show that the idea which has garnered most votes was the suggestion of the erection of a massive hand with the middle finger raised, pointing in the direction of Brackaville, closely followed by a Coalisland Fianna Centre of Excellence which rival wags from Clonoe have renamed the Coalisland Centre of Continued Mediocrity after yesterday's heavy defeat in the county final.
The new initiative has created great buzz around the town and surrounding areas although rumours tonight suggest that the Planning Department may be considering a new PSNI station.
The idea of an 18-hole crazy golf course full of old bombed out helicopters for the more nostalgic 'Islanders was thrown out as contentious.
Aromatherapists and perfume scientists at Queen's University have admitted to being at a loss to explain the commercial success of a Fintona-based company's dung-scented toilet roll product.
The product, Keeper Clean, has sold over 200'000 units since its launch last week, making the new company, Red Hand Wipes, a profit of £o.5m after tax.
Shopkeepers have reported sporadic fights in stores as far away as Strabane over the Keeper Clean Dung-Scented Toilet Roll as shelves are bare within minutes of a refill of the product. PSNI have urged shoppers to stay calm as the company have promised another five million units of the product are in the final stages of production.
The toilet roll can be bought for £5.99.
Due to recent media reports of PSNI officials speeding in their work motors, a police car was unable to catch a man suspected of using agricultural diesel in his Ford Mondeo for over four hours around the Tamnamore Roundabout.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland have come under fire recently after it emerged that hundreds of their vehicles have been caught speeding over the last 24 months. In the aftermath of the report, police cars have been under strict orders to observe normal speeding restrictions no matter what incident they are attending to.
The Mondeo finally sped off down the M1 after the PSNI vehicle made a move towards the service station to top up on fuel.
Police HQ refused to comment on the incident but admitted to infiltrating the new social media site set up by drivers to warn other motorists of diesel dippers in the area. Posting as 'Cooking Oil Expert', a media-savvy police official befriended several dipper dodgers, one of whom being the suspected Mondeo driver.
'Mondeo Lover' recently posted a message on the site saying "ring a ring 'o roses, ye boy ye" – a direct taunt to his pursuer on the roundabout.
A source close to the PSNI's Public Disturbance Department has revealed that every home in the county is to receive a letter outlawing spontaneous outdoor line-dancing battles which appear to be on the rise in the run up to Easter.
The impromptu challenges, which appears to have replaced traditional fist fights and brick throwing sessions, appear to be popular now amongst the 18-35 age group and often take place in alleyways and ramparts in remote country areas after midnight, often fuelled by a cocktail of alcohol and tobacco consumed at discos.
The Tyrone Line-Dancing Committee have condemned any shows of spontaneous outdoor line-dancing challenges under the cover of darkness and have pleaded for people not to demean the good name of their discipline.
PSNI officials have confirmed that recent budget-tightening constraints have resulted in many officers using ghd Deluxe hairdryers and just guessing how fast cars have been going by counting in their heads how long it took for each motor to get from tree to tree or sometimes a lamp post to a fence.
PSNI officials have denied they're to commence a new cost-cutting breathalyser initiative which sees officers sniffing the breath of suspect drink drivers and guessing how many pints they've had and then getting them to sing 'I Will Survive' into a karaoke machine.
In a highly unusual development, the imaginary friend of a Dromore bachelor is currently being questioned in an Omagh detention centre over failure to return tax forms since 1994 as well as neglecting to pay TV, dog and gun licences and other minor misdemeanours.
Felix McGinn (48), who turned his friend 'James' (also 48) in at 5pm yesterday, revealed he was finding it hard to maintain a friendship due to the mountain of skulduggery his childhood partner was indulging in since the 1994 ceasefire.
A PSNI Fraud Squad spokesman has confirmed that questioning has been 'difficult' with the imaginary suspect regularly refusing to answer questions or even appearing in the room.
A Brackaville builder has described the actions of the PSNI as 'petty' after he received a speeding caution whilst pushing a wheelbarrow down to Coalisland to get its tyre fixed.
A PSNI spokesman confirmed they issued a £90 fine to a 58 year old Brackaville man claiming to be 'Dr Who' for travelling at 8mph on Barrack Street in a restricted speed section of the road.
Gillis has 90 days to pay the fine and has been banned from operating wheelbarrows or any other small hand propelled vehicles. The wheelbarrow in question has been confiscated for the duration of the fining period.
An East Tyrone school has been accused of applying Draconian tactics after it emerged that black puddings were the latest cause of hyperactivity in children according to a report someone read in a magazine in Canada.
Kiltytresk P.S. reportedly searched the bags of all 200 pupils in their large rural school for the foodstuff after their Board of Governors banned the traditional blood sausage from their premises. A local journalist confirmed that over 40 pupils were caught with black puddings hidden in the lining of their school bags with some pupils stuffing it down their socks in a ploy to evade detection.
A recent survey in the Kiltytresk townland showed that, on average, over 89% of children under the age of 16 eat up to ten black puddings a day.
PSNI officials have warned underground black pudding vendors outside the school that they'll shoot on sight.
The PSNI have warned people in East Tyrone to be wary of a man with a strong South Armagh accent going from door-to-door selling bits of the sky above their houses.
The fraudster, who calls himself 'Francie', claims to work for 'The Sky' and attempts to sell 16-square feet of sky for £322 in a one-off cash payment. Police have worked out that he targets houses with no satellite dishes in the hope that the residents don't know much about how Sky TV works.
Adkins revealed her suspicions to the police after she spotted a whole flock of blackbirds sitting on her chimney the next day in her recently purchased sky bit, without a care in the world.
The PSNI have received 32 calls from house-owners in the greater Coalisland area who also fell for the sky deal. They were also called to a violent argument in Brackaville over who owned what bit of sky for kite flying and for smoke blowing from chimneys into other bits of sky owned by others.
A deceased 71-year old former funeral director from Strabane has been fined a posthumous £60 and warned about future conduct after the hearse he was resting in was caught doing 44mph in a residential 30mph zone in the town last night.
Jeremiah Pauncefoot, who passed away on Monday after a short illness, was making his way to his final resting place in a top-of-the-range solid panelled oak coffin when the hearse he had previously owned was flagged down by a PSNI officer on the Clady Road.
The young driver, who had just started work experience at the Pauncefoot Funeral Service, used his dead boss's licence when asked for ID before finishing the journey and jumping on a boat to England.
West Tyrone PSNI spokesman Rory Gilgull has warned undertakers across the county to be on their guard as this is just the start of a clamp-down on funeral directors who think they're above the law.
Jeremiah Pauncefoot's business has been bought over by his son, Darkness.
Following news that the PSNI underspent their annual budget to the value of £14 million, insiders confirmed that a massive Easter party and parade has been commissioned by police headquarters in Dungannon with the The Wolfe Tones reportedly headlining a concert which will round off a five-day session.
Faced with either handing back the money to the government or receiving a reduced budget next year, officials in the police force have voted to blow the money on beer, chocolate and concerts in the run-up to Easter, as well as male and female dancers.
A document leaked to our office catalogues what is planned for the 5-day extravaganza which will be attended by over 4500 police officers on off-duty at various times from April 1st-April 5th.
A £300'000 firework display of red, white, blue, green and orange colours.
£1 million has also been set aside for a 4000-strong fancy dress party to be held up on Dungannon Hill for police forces across the world with a strict 1980s dress code enforced and music provided by the Village People Tribute Band from Killyman.
The SDLP, DUP, Sinn Fein and UUP will all sent representatives to the various functions that week to make sure the money is spent wisely.
Drumquin Man Caught Legally Driving Last Night. Parents Distraught.
A Drumquin man's family is blaming modern society after their son was caught with insurance, tax and MOT certificates, good tyres as well as a full tank of clean diesel.
Jeremy Maguire, a 26 year old joiner with no convictions since 2008, was stopped by police whilst travelling at 34 mph on the Dregish Road at 9pm on Sunday night for a random spot-check.
Onlookers described confusing scenes as police officers were seen nodding their heads in approval while rifling through documents and joking with the driver, at one stage giving a high five to the ex-Drumquin full back soon after the diesel was dipped.
Mrs Maguire, who refused to be officially interviewed, blamed modern society on her son's tendency to stick to the rules and has warned other parents to be careful of the dangers of YouTube and social media.
PSNI confirmed this evening that a car was stopped last night in the Dregish area and given the all-clear following a stringent spot-check including an emissions test.


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Environment · November, 2009
Stories about Environment from November, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Citizens' Fury At Flood Deaths
Saudi Arabia's second largest city, Jeddah, was struck by heavy floods last week, and the death toll has risen to more than 100 people. Poor infrastructure and mismanagement of city works construction have been blamed, and thousands have joined a Facebook group criticising the authorities.
Kyrgyzstan: Water Management
Central Asia & Caucasus 29 November 2009
Misha reflects on the problems of water management in Central Asia against the background of the news about glacial retreat in Kyrgyzstan.
Ghana: Who Will benefit From Oil?
Sub-Saharan Africa 28 November 2009
When UK firm Tullow Oil announced its discovery of 600 million barrels of oil in Ghana in 2007, the blogosphere responded with variegated tones of hope and cynicism.
Ecuador: Power Outages Back Home
Latin America 28 November 2009
The blogger from Viviendo en Venus [es] , who is currently living in Germany, is concerned about her fellow Ecuadorians who are going through too frequent power outages.
Suriname: Seamlessness
Caribbean 27 November 2009
"There is a way that Caribbean music or musical interests create a seamlessness between locations": Blogging at Paramaribo SPAN, Chris Cozier ruminates on seamless spaces created by sound.
South Asia: Mass Murder Of Animals
South Asia 27 November 2009
Dipen Bhattacharya at Mukto Mona criticizes the rituals of sacrifices – be it during Kali Puja for Hindus or Eid-ul-Adha sacrifices for Muslims. "Man might need to eat meat, but mass murder of helpless animals using brutal methods cannot be considered self-sacrifice," he opines.
India Should Wake Up On Climate Issues
Supriyo Chaudhuri at Sunday Posts discusses why India must wake up on climate change issues.
Cuba: Here Comes The Rain Again
Cuba's Generation Y longs for "what seems to be a pipe dream for so many, when the city will not collapse because of a simple shower that falls in the tropics."
Uzbekistan: Tashkent, a green city. Or not?
Old trees are cut down in the center of Tashkent – the shocking news was spread in the city within a day. Photo by goricvet Planetrees, or platanus, planted at the end of the 19th century, were cut down in the public garden named after Amir Temur (Tamerlane) in Tashkent...
China: Great Wall damaged by gold miners
East Asia 26 November 2009
Angry Chinese blogger blogs about the ongoing destruction of Great Wall as a result of local corporates' private interest. In a recent case, a 100 meter long Great Wall has been damaged by gold miners in Inner Mongolia.
Ecuador: Kichwa Women Oppose Oil Exploration on Native Lands
It is a popular saying in Latin America that women always get what they want. For 20 years, fearless women from the Kichwa community, an indigenous group in Ecuador, have been resisting against oil companies' presence on their lands.
Japan: Peak oil crisis and organic farming
Martin J Frid from Kurashi reports on a discussion on the projected peak oil crisis and the example of Ogawa organic farming project in prepare for the future.
Sri Lanka: Potentials Of Fishing Industry
Serendipity comments that after the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami and the restrictions during the war against the LTTE, the Sri Lankan fishing industry is poised to take off provided there is necessary support from the government.
Can ICTs aid small-scale farmers?
North America 24 November 2009
The world's small-scale farmers grow a large amount of food and provide many important jobs in rural areas. However, they do their work at great economic and environmental risk. How can ICTs make the jobs and lives easier for the world's farmers?
China: Protest against garbage incinerator
Cochina posts a series of videos showing yesterday's protest against the construction of garbage incinerator in Guangzhou Panyu. ESWN has translated the details of the protest.
Kyrgyzstan: Prices for utilies are skyrocketing
Aravanski reports that the Kyrgyz government sharply increased the prices for electricity and heating, making those barely affordable by most citizens.
Japan: Images of Minanamata Disease
@Minori_okd points us to the photographic work MINAMATA by W. Eugene Smith and Ailejjen M. Smith that covers the Minamata Disease.
Trinidad & Tobago: Loss of Mind?
From the tobacco legislation to the carbon footprint post-CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, Coffeewallah asks: "Has everybody in this country lost their cotton picking minds?"
Malaysia-Singapore Water Agreements Under Review
Singapore sources about half of its water supply from its neighbor, Malaysia. It has two major water agreements with Malaysia. One of these agreements will expire two years from now. Malaysia's former Prime Minister, through his blog, asks if the current government will negotiate for a better deal.
Taiwan: Science park expansion dispute
Recently, the Executive Yuan in Taiwan has passed a bill in favor of Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) fourth stage expansion. The construction plan has drawn the attention of ecologists and caused heated discussion in the Taiwan blogosphere. Jeremy explains the problem of the construction plan in a blog post...
Russia: Blogging the Winter in Yakutia
Eastern & Central Europe 20 November 2009
Winter is yet to arrive in much of Europe, but one of its geopolitical attributes is already back in the spotlight: fears of disruptions of Russian gas deliveries are growing more intense, due to the recurring dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Politics aside, though, in some of Russia's regions winter has been there since early fall. In Yakutia, for example.


WASHINGTON – Maricopa resident Akeala Edwards was a student and a parent when she took out an online payday loan to help her get by, electronically signing the accompanying documents with little thought.
It wasn't until after the lender renewed her loan without her knowledge that Edwards learned that the paperwork she signed included a mandatory arbitration clause. That meant she could not go to court but had to take the dispute to arbitration.
That legislation, the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act, would prohibit clauses that force people into arbitration in consumer, job, civil rights or other disputes.
The FAIR Act was the primary piece of a package of bills unveiled by various lawmakers Thursday, including measures that would block forced arbitration for nursing home residents, members of the military and victims of workplace sexual harassment.
A spokesman for the American Arbitration Association said the organization cannot comment on specific legislation, but he did offer a defense of arbitration in general, saying it has its benefits.
Clark refuted complaints about the confidentiality of the arbitration process.
But Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, the lead sponsor of a House version of the FAIR Act, said consumers should not be denied their "indelible constitutional right" to a trial. The bills would fix that, he said.
Johnson said former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor supported the right to trial. But since her retirement, he said, the court has moved with "reckless abandon" to protect arbitration, in decisions that he said have created a "private, for-profit legal system" that is stacked against those who sign contracts that force arbitration.
The event included numerous people like Edwards, who had been forced to agree to arbitration to get a job or buy a product. That included Google program manager Tanuja Gupta, who joined other workers at the tech company in a walkout to protest its forced arbitration policy.
"Now, time is up for all corporations, and all their subsidiaries and suppliers, across all sectors," she told a packed room in the Capitol.
Edwards said she was ultimately able to get her case into court, where she won – even though her attorney initially noted that she had signed the arbitration clause when she accepted the loan's terms and the lender wanted to arbitrate.
Edwards vowed to keep fighting for awareness of forced arbitrations, adding that she does not want others to have to go through what she did.
"If consumers don't know that they may be privy to the arbitration clause, than this can also happen to them," Edwards said.


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Editorial/Opinion Features Reviews
Album Review: Morcheeba – Head Up High
Posted On November 1, 2013	 RESPECT. Staff 0
It's very difficult to come up with a grand narrative of trip-hop – even its Wikipedia page doesn't really offer one . Furthermore, the genre itself stands on tenuous ground. The arguable "kings" of trip-hop, Massive Attack, have been dubious of the term since its inception, and the genre's most iconic features – methodical slowness, deep bass, breakbeats – can easily be found in other genres. Of course, all genres are rather fragile if you seriously interrogate their borders, but this fragility is often undergirded by some kind of narrative that more or less holds the genre together, like pop being defined by "what's popular" or blues being defined by "having the blues." Trip-hop lacks such a narrative and it shows in the music. If you assemble a playlist of songs by alleged trip-hop artists, the only thing that will truly persist is the allegation, the label. Song content will vary wildly, almost chaotically. Morcheeba's Head Up High is a notable intervention into that chaos.
Using love and romance as a general compass, Morcheeba ground their songs in intimacy and the quest to acquire, enjoy and maintain it. It's a strange move for an aggressively unfocused genre like trip-hop, where even process and production are inconstant, but their approach works. On the opening track and single, "Gimme Your Love," driven by scratches and Skye Edwards' subtly soulful voice, Morcheeba draws the listener in despite keeping the song at a noticeable equilibrium; the song never accelerates, decelerates, amplifies or hushes. This humble beginning is flanked by the lively second track, "Face of Danger," which features a slyly sassy performance from Edwards and a defiant guest verse from Jurassic 5 veteran Chali 2na. The guitar solo that proceeds Chali's verse is a bit subdued in comparison to the preceding vocals, but the song maintains its energy to the end.
"Face of Danger" is followed by "Call it Love," a collaborative track that is assisted by White Denim guitarist and vocalist James Petralli. The song, a blues duet, works in and of itself, but its placement on the album sharply disrupts any momentum the album might have had. Its content – love – is the only thing that anchors it to the album. This problem of counter-productive placement manifests again when Petralli assists on "I'll Fall Apart" and "Finally Found You." Though individually well-crafted, these songs simply don't cohere to the rest of album. They feel very appendaged, like a prosthetic limb on a complete skeleton.
Other collaborations are much more productive. For instance, Nature Boy Jim Kelly's appearance on "Release Me Now" actually saves the song, injecting it with some much-needed energy. Delivering his verse in an excited whisper, you can feel him hyping himself up for the song's liberating chorus. His approach notably differs from Edwards' monotone opening verse. The strongest collaboration is with French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux on the song "Hypnotized". Here we see some of the Godfrey brothers' best production. Their combination of funk and folk elements mixes beautifully with Edwards' surreal images and Tijoux's patiently-delivered rhymes. The result is tantalizing.
The album highlights are "Make Believer" and "Do You Good." The former is a radioactive track that feverishly builds without pretensions of being epic. Edwards pushes her voice to its heights here, but the real stars of the show are the Godfrey brothers, who layer the track very patiently, forgoing maximalism and allowing the constituent sounds to mingle at their leisure, like nervous teenagers at a high school prom. This approach makes the apex of the track infinitely more rewarding. "Do You Good" is the album's penultimate song, right before the final Petralli collaboration. Though there are no noticeable vocal alterations, Edwards' voice takes on a mystical quality that makes it strangely comforting; her offer of love feels truly genuine.
All in all, Head Up High is an admirable effort that emphasizes the trip-hop trio's awing versatility. While this variability isn't packaged as well as it could be, – those James Petralli songs could have been released as a separate EP, perhaps – it is impressive nonetheless, especially since it mostly coheres. By enabling this coherence through a consistent subject, Morcheeba gives trip-hop a narrative it never had. Narratives are far from necessary, and this is just one possible narrative among others, but there is something refreshing about it.
#Ana Tijoux#Chali 2na#Godfrey brothers#Head Up High#Jurassic 5#Morcheeba#Nature Boy Jim Kelly#Skye Edwards#Trip-hop#White Denim
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Robert Dresser was first appointed to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board in February of 2011, and was reappointed in August of 2014 and served as Chair through 2017. Chairman Dresser brought an enormous amount of experience and familiarity to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board (CUIAB) to the department. He most recently served as Enforcement Counsel for the Contractors State Licensing Board from 2007 until his appointment to the Board at CUIAB in 2011, where he served as Chair from February 2011 to December 2016, and continues to serve as a Board Member. From 2002 to 2007, he served as General Counsel to the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. This agency oversees CUIAB and the Employment Development Department. He previously served as Chief Counsel (and former Interim Director) to the Department of Information Technology where he served as a senior legal advisor to the Director and State Chief Information Officer.
From 1992 to 2001, Member Dresser was an Administrative Law Judge at CUIAB assigned to the Appellate Unit. During that time, he also volunteered to conduct over 1,000 first level appeal hearings and issued decisions in those cases. From 1975 to 1992, he held different assignments at the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB). From 1984 to 1992, he was ALRB Senior Board Counsel III and from 1981 to 1987, he was the Supervising Attorney for the ALRB Office of the Executive Secretary. From 1978 to 1981, he was the Director of the ALRB Office of Agency Communications. Between 1976 to 1978, Member Dresser served as the Regional Director of ALRB's Fresno Office after starting at ALRB in 1975 as a Staff Counsel. He began his California legal career in 1969 as an attorney for Community Legal Services in San Jose, California.
Prior to practicing law in California, Member Dresser served as a VISTA lawyer in Austin, Texas and was instrumental in the start of the Texas Rural Legal Assistance program, which began in 1969 and is still in operation. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College.


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by Daniel Shifrin | Jan 4, 2023 | Career, Professional Skills, Workplace Matters
"Oh, you're just being difficult!" As a pharmacy manager, I got that a lot. I always felt my pharmacy department was treated like second-class citizens. We were the ones that always had to compromise. We had to change the way we did things to make others...
How My Short-Lived Role as an Acting Director Allowed Me to Merge as a Valuable Commodity
by Daniel Shifrin | Jul 7, 2021 | Career, General, Success Story, Workplace Matters
I really enjoyed working in my first hospital. I was hired by an older gentleman. He was the Director of Pharmacy. I believe he liked the suit that I was wearing. He was very knowledgeable and very soft spoken. He was also very close...
How Other Departments Exceed Their Boundaries and Exert Their Influence Over the Pharmacy
by Daniel Shifrin | Sep 30, 2020 | Workplace Matters
I was very lucky. I had a good boss. He made me the pharmacy manager of the pharmacy in the main hospital. This was shortly after our hospital merged with a smaller hospital. He was the Director of Pharmacy at this smaller hospital. He made a woman the pharmacy...
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Beyond Jazz's Boys Club
Chris Becker interviews Judy Chaikin
JAZZ IS GENERALLY perceived to be a male-dominated musical genre. But even casual fans may have noticed a recent, growing presence of women in the field. This would come as no surprise for a person in the coveted millennial demographic, whose musical selections are often determined more by algorithms than old school music critics. Esperanza Spalding playing bass and singing the 1930 standard "On the Sunny Side of the Street" at the White House? Why not! Saxophonist Grace Kelly playing a funked-up rendition of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Awesome! But for those of us born before 1990, and especially before the reemergence of the women's rights movement in the mid-1960s, the acknowledgment, celebration, and employment of women instrumentalists signals something close to a sea change in the world of jazz.
How much of a sea change? Check out the trailer for Judy Chaikin's award-winning documentary The Girls in the Band, which opens with a title card quoting celebrated jazz writer George T. Simon: "Only God can make a tree, and only men can play jazz." It then follows with Texas-born Clora Bryant's swinging trumpet blast, and a montage featuring vintage film clips of drummer Viola Smith, saxophonist Vi Redd, and trumpeter Ernestine "Tiny" Davis — all of whom had active careers. Simon's belief was not unique, however; over the years, sexist historians have shaped how jazz is documented for and presented to the general public. The fact is, women musicians, both singers and instrumentalists, have been vital contributors to the development of this music since its beginnings in New Orleans — a fact made evident throughout Chaikin's entertaining and enlightening 88-minute film.
Chaikin skillfully unfolds an alternate history of jazz from the late 1930s to the present day through dozens of interviews, with such pioneers as saxophonist and bandleader Peggy Gilbert, who as far back as the 1920s was a powerful advocate for women musicians, and pianist and composer Marian McPartland, perhaps best known for her long-running public radio show, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. Given the number of women interviewed in the film — including surviving members of the first racially integrated all-woman big band, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which enjoyed a great deal of popularity during the late 1930s and '40s (they even traveled overseas to perform for US troops during World War II) — it's amazing to consider how little has been done to document women in jazz. Notable examples do exist, such as author and musicologist Sherrie Tucker's book, Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s; Sally Placksin's American Women in Jazz; and Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen by Linda Dahl. But for the majority of people, including many professional jazz men and women, the stories and events recounted in The Girls in the Band are revelatory, and speak to the impact gender discrimination has on our understanding and appreciation of the United States's only true musical art form.
Chaikin was compelled to tell this story, in part, because the untold struggles of these instrumentalists mirrored her own in the film industry. With few women directors for role models, and even fewer opportunities to direct, Chaikin, a second-generation artist who grew up in Los Angeles, initially pursued a career as an actress, dancer, and comedian as "a pathway" to directing films. She went on to receive multiple awards for her film and television directing, including Emmy nominations for her PBS documentary Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist (1987) and the documentary Building on a Dream: The NoHo Art Project (2004). Since its release in 2013, The Girls in the Band has won several film festival awards and continues to screen across the Unites States, Canada, and Europe.
Sitting in the darkened theater at the end of a screening for The Girls in the Band in Houston, what I felt, and sensed from the audience, was powerful, but difficult to explain. Pianist Herbie Hancock describes wiping away "tears of joy" after seeing the film, and indeed, as the end credits rolled, I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. The audience applauded, which rarely happens at a film showing outside of festival screenings, and that reaction may bode well for the future of jazz. "It leaves people feeling some sense of hope, and that's exactly what I wanted the film to do," says Chaikin. She also wanted to bring awareness — and with awareness, comes change.
CHRIS BECKER: The initial spark for the film was your discovery of a female drummer who played in big bands during World War II, correct?
JUDY CHAIKIN: Yes: Jerrie Thill, the composer and producer. Alison Freebairn-Smith first told me about her. Jerrie was active in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and had an all-girl band. She ended up being a drummer out here in Los Angeles and played a regular gig at a place on Hollywood Boulevard for about 20 years. She died at 93, and had been playing up until the year before. She was pretty phenomenal.
Were you surprised to discover there was so little about women who played jazz?
It was totally surprising, and that was one of the things that really spurred me on. When I realized how many women there were, and that no one had paid any attention to them, that really got me going.
How did you start with your research for the film?
It started with learning about Jerrie Thill, and then talking to various musicians I knew who gave me a couple of other names like saxophonist Roz Cron, who lived out here in Los Angeles and had been in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm; contemporaries like the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, who were big in New York, and also the all-female big band, Maiden Voyage, that was here in Los Angeles. I just started contacting these women and talking to them and one by one they started giving me other names, like Clora Bryant. One person led to another, and the story started to unfold.
What was the initial audience reaction?
The reaction was so surprising to me, because it covered such a wide audience: a lot of young female musicians literally came up to me crying afterward saying, "I can't thank you enough. I thought I was the only one!" Older people who were big band fans said, "This is phenomenal. I can't believe this. I had never heard of these women!" And then professional musicians, a lot of them said, "Boy, this is shame that these women are not known, and that I don't know about them. They were so fantastic." So the sense of wonder was across the board.
One of your earliest screenings was in Dubai. What was the response there to these women musicians?
The screening in Dubai was a little strange. It was an outdoor screening on the beach, and people were just sort of wandering around like they were at a rock concert. [Laughs.] But people came up afterward and said they enjoyed it.
The greatest overseas screening that I attended was in Sweden. The film screens somewhere in Sweden almost every other week. They absolutely adore it. It's playing on television as well, and we keep getting requests for it. When I was there, it played at a film festival, and it played at a college, and it played in a theater. The response was fantastic.
I think one of the reasons for that is because a lot of the women in the early years of jazz, who could not have careers in the United States, went to Europe and had careers there. In some of the places where the film showed, these women were known. Generally, there is such a big interest in jazz in Europe, so much more than there is here. You walk through public places and jazz is playing, in stores, in restaurants — it's always jazz you hear.
Dr. Billy Taylor, the late musician and composer, and Woody Herman, who is also now deceased, are both in the film. These men, in different ways, were strong advocates for women in the bandstand and providing equal opportunities for women jazz.
Has your film helped to open any dialogue between jazz men and women — either performers or educators?
Not being a musician myself, and not being in the studios having face-to-face contact with the men in the business, I don't know about that dialogue. What I know is from hearsay. The men I know have said to me how wonderful it was that I brought this to their attention. That's the only thing I can go on.
Herbie Hancock is also in the film, and his hiring of drummer Terri Lyne Carrington was really major. [In the late 1980s, after late-night stints in the house bands on television's The Arsenio Hall Show and the Quincy Jones–produced Vibe talk show hosted by Sinbad, Carrington helped conceptualize Hancock's 2002 Future 2 Future tour, and contributed to Hancock's 1998 Grammy-winning album, Gershwin's World.]
That was a really big deal. There are more women now showing up in the big bands on the late-night television shows. There was a woman on Dancing With the Stars in the house orchestra. After 17 seasons, the Dancing With the Stars orchestra was fired and replaced by recordings to "attract a younger demographic," despite being one of the most watched shows. The presence of women is beginning to be seen. I don't know if we did it, or if these women had just been working so hard that they finally got there, but it's not that unusual anymore to see a woman in a band.
Some younger musicians may be reluctant to speak out against gender disparity for fear of not getting hired. Was there any reluctance from the women you approached for the film?
I did not encounter women who were afraid to speak up. They were all pretty forthcoming. They didn't indulge in male bashing, which I appreciated. I think they felt free to say what they had to say, both younger and older musicians.
There is a generation of musicians coming up who feel jazz is the great equalizer — either you can play it or you can't. It's not about gender.
That may be happening at the college level. I'm not sure if it's permeating into the professional world yet. It will probably take a little more time to get there. The jazz profession is still pretty much a man's world, but I think things are changing as these young women come up in the college arena, and they show they've got the stuff.
First of all, we have to look at jazz in the proper light in the United States. It occupies such a minor position in the cultural world. It's tragic, but true. So we're already looking at a teeny-tiny piece of the musical pie. Within that teeny-tiny piece, there are incremental changes. I wouldn't say there's any big revolution that has happened, just a level of awareness. The awareness comes first, and then, after a long period of time, the change comes. We're in the period of awareness right now. I don't think real change has happened yet. But hopefully, it's coming.
You were initially interested in acting before you began directing.
Right. I always wanted to be a director, but women were not allowed to be directors. The only woman I ever saw who was a director was Ida Lupino [who helmed film and TV projects during the late 1940s through the 1960s], and she got there by being an actress. So I figured, well, maybe that's a pathway, and I had a bit of a career in the movies, on television, and on the stage.
I loved being involved in film, and I could see that behind the scenes in film, there were jobs for women. So I turned myself into a crewperson. I started volunteering on films, and eventually got a job as a second unit director. I worked my way up in the film business in that way. But there was no direct path for me, at that time especially. After the women's movement, I got really involved in all kinds of organizations to promote women directors. I am one of the founders of the Alliance of Women Directors, which is now a fairly big and powerful organization.
Has your film inspired young women who want to direct?
Well, the reason I had such empathy toward these women is because it's exactly the same fight that I face as a woman director. I've been in this business a long, long time, and things have started to change for women in the directing world, too, but very, very slowly. It would be hard for anyone to say there is equality in that world. Women are already inspired to make films; it's the opportunity to make films that is not available to us.
Independent film productions have provided those opportunities for women to make films, which I'm seeing among jazz musicians starting their own independent labels and getting their music heard maybe to a greater extent than ever before.
That's absolutely true. If it wasn't for the way the world has gone technologically, I think we'd still be in the dark ages. All the new advancements have allowed easier access to the tools you need to make a film. And because of this, a lot more women have been able to do just that.
Are there some women jazz artists you are especially excited about now? Perhaps musicians you met while making the film or showing it to audiences?
I've met so many up-and-coming young women. There's a trumpet player named Angeleisha Rogers in New York who's very exciting. There's pianist, Lindsey Hundley, who has a trio out here, and is also an exciting performer. People keep sending me clips of young girls and women all over the world that are really phenomenal. I'm hoping that one of them can really break through in the same way Esperanza Spalding has.
With so little of the history of women in jazz in film, The Girls in the Band is a great tool, especially for those who teach music. Is it available to educators?
We've done an educational version of the film that includes not only the full-length film, but there are also bonus tracks on it designed specifically for educators, including a master class by keyboardist and singer Patrice Rushen. Michael Greene, who was the head of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and is the executive producer of the film, does a master class on the business of music. So we have this incredible educational package.
We've also done a collector's edition for the home viewer and that has a whole bunch of bonuses on it, including a 20-track record album. All of these versions are available on our website.
Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner is a major funder, and one of the producers, of your film. When Hugh's name appears in the credits, people in the audience are generally surprised.
I know! Hefner used to have a jazz television show (Playboy's Penthouse), and he produces the biggest jazz festival in all of Los Angeles (the Playboy Jazz Festival, now produced in association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic by FestivalWest, Inc.) at the Hollywood Bowl — a two-day jazz festival. He's hired a lot of women musicians for the festival. I'm always amazed by it. He hired the entire DIVA Jazz Orchestra in 2008 and brought them here all the way from New York.
Was it Hugh, or his enterprise, who helped to finance your film?
Hugh personally. I first got a grant from Herb Alpert. I knew Herb personally. He had helped finance my film Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist. When I came to Herb with The Girls in the Band, I already had Michael Greene on board, and he said he would give me a matching grant. Within three months, I got the project to Hugh Hefner through the documentary community. I sent it to him, and the next day he said, "Yes," and doubled the money Herb had set. That got the film off and running.
And he never interfered with the process one bit. He never gave me any bad notes. I sent him all the cuts of the film as it was going along, and he always loved it. At the end, he gave us a fundraising party at the Playboy mansion. He was really good to us.
That's an encouraging note for filmmakers knowing they can hang on to the integrity of their work even when working with deep-pocket funders.
That is something you want to be careful of, that whoever you are getting into bed with monetarily isn't calling the shots. Even my executive producer, Michael Greene, who put the first money into the film — who helped fund the eight-minute demo reel which is what got Herb and Hugh hooked — was very hands on. When it came down to a creative decision, if we didn't see eye to eye, he always let me have my way. That was very important to me. I always considered what he had to say, and if I thought he was right, I would concede. But when it was something I believed in that he wasn't really crazy about, he backed away. Those are the kind of people you need to work with.
Chris Becker is a writer and editor, with more than a decade of experience covering music, art, literature, entrepreneurship, and economics. As a composer, Becker has created music for dance, experimental video, and mixed-media installations.
Jazz for the Thrill of It
By Chris Becker
"Ain't Got No, I Got Life": #OscarsSoWhite & the Problem of Women Musicians on Film
By Daphne A. Brooks
Nina Simone in the New Millennium
By Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn
Confronting the Unwatchable
By Maggie Hennefeld, Nicholas Baer
Identity Shaping on Social Media: On Jia Tolentino's "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion"
By Maggie Levantovskaya
Tackling Three-Letter Words — LSD, Sex, and God: An Interview with T. C. Boyle
By James Penner
Saying Something: Trans Characters in YA Fiction
By Clarence Harlan Orsi
"But There Has Been a Catastrophe": On Vasily Grossman's "Stalingrad"
By Philip Ó Ceallaigh
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Jim Bridger Trail is a hiking, biking, and horse trail in Powell, Wyoming. It is 17.1 miles long and begins at 4,160 feet altitude. Traveling the entire trail is 34.3 miles with a total elevation gain of 1,629 feet.
One of Wyoming's best trails, Jim Bridger Trail is located near Powell, WY. Trails' printable online topo maps offer shaded and un-shaded reliefs, and aerial photos too. Use topographic maps to find elevation, print high resolution maps, save a PNG, or just learn the topography around Jim Bridger Trail. You can also get free latitude and longitude coordinates from the topographical map and set your GPS. Premium members can download or print any topo and cover more terrain when you map your Jim Bridger Trail route ahead of time.


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Loss-making Gaylin Holdings completes US$100m investment and debt restructuring
Tue, Mar 13, 2018 - 11:09 PM
Stephanie Luobtnews@sph.com.sg@StephLuoBT
GAYLIN Holdings has completed a US$100 million investment and debt restructuring organised by Asian private equity fund manager ShawKwei & Partners.
On Tuesday, the multidisciplinary offshore and marine services firm announced in a Singapore Exchange filing that ShawKwei has purchased US$52 million worth of new Gaylin shares and holds a 76 per cent stake in the company.
The 1.36 billion new ordinary shares in Gaylin were bought at five Singapore cents apiece.
The banks which have loaned the amount to Gaylin include UOB, OCBC, CIMB and RHB.
Together with the new equity investment, Gaylin restructured bank debt facilities totalling US$48 million by extending repayment dates and adjusting covenants.
Gaylin widens Q2 loss to S$4.96m
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Kyle Shaw, newly appointed chairman of Gaylin as at March 13 and founder of ShawKwei, said: "The equity and debt financing provides long-term stability for Gaylin and will underpin sales growth through existing operations as well as attract potential acquisitions of similar businesses."
On Tuesday, Gaylin also announced several changes to its board.
CEO Desmond Teo Bee Chiong, who was appointed in February 2010, has resigned.
The company said that this was due to the change in control of the company, and Mr Teo will serve a six-month notice period. He will be appointed a consultant of Gaylin immediately after the notice period expires.
Others who have resigned include Ang Mong Seng, who will no longer be the independent non-executive chairman of the company from March 13, and Ng Sey Ming, who will cease to be an independent non-executive director.
Gaylin also announced the appointment of James Parsons as the global managing director of the company and Victoria Yong as the senior vice-president of finance with effect from March 13.
For the third-quarter ended Dec 31, 2017, Gaylin widened its losses.
It posted a loss of S$2.6 million, a further decline of 29.8 per cent compared to the year-ago period.
Revenue similarly fell by 23.6 per cent to S$14.6 million from S$19.1 million in the year before on the back of a still-weak oil and gas market.
The decrease was mainly due to a drop of S$5.3 million in the rigging and lifting segment, which was offset by an increase of S$0.8 million in the ship chandling segment, Gaylin said.
Gaylin last traded and closed at S$0.054 on Feb 28.
gaylin
Keppel Capital Holdings launches new infrastructure fund
KEPPEL Capital Holdings has launched a new closed-end infrastructure private equity fund which has achieved its...


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Home Video Games SEGA PARTNERS WITH NASCAR & HOT WHEELS
SEGA PARTNERS WITH NASCAR & HOT WHEELS
SEGA® of America Inc. is thrilled to announce a unique partnership with Mattel, Inc. and the iconic Hot Wheels® brand offering consumers an exciting cross-platform experience for the upcoming release of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Within the video game, players who choose to race as Danica Patrick will be able to drive a custom transforming electric green Hot Wheels® vehicle, designed to navigate the dynamic land, sea and air environments. In addition to its in-game presence, the "Danicar" will also be available as an exclusive diecast vehicle available this holiday season with purchase of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed at select retailers.
"Using Danica Patrick's existing relationship with Mattel and Hot Wheels, we were able to extend our brand beyond the Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed game universe and into consumer products with the creation of this custom toy," said Marcella Churchill, Senior Director of Marketing, SEGA of America. "The Hot Wheels brand has a reputation for developing beloved childhood toys and our partnership will undoubtedly ignite this nostalgia amongst fans when they get to race this transforming vehicle within the game."
"We are incredibly excited to link two iconic brands like Hot Wheels and SEGA's Sonic the Hedgehog together for the first time," said Matt Petersen, Vice President of North America Boys and Games Marketing, Mattel. "The new 'Danicar' is a unique vehicle that combines style elements from Danica Patrick and Sonic the Hedgehog with the outrageous design that Hot Wheels is known for – resulting in an in-game vehicle and diecast toy that all of our fans will love."
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will be available November 18, 2012 on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Nintendo's Wii U™ system. On December 11, 2012 it will be available on PlayStation® Vita system and the Nintendo 3DS™ hand-held system. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed races onto Windows PC via digital download this holiday season.
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How will Labour top losing the election? By losing its own leadership contest
Perhaps the whole debacle is a brilliant piece of marketing designed to make whoever takes over seem like a genius
Thu 27 Aug 2015 04.29 EDT Last modified on Sat 25 Nov 2017 01.56 EST
'Every photo of the candidates looks like the staff room of a failing comprehensive feigning amusement at being photobombed by the janitor.' Photograph: Tolga Akmen/LNP/REX Shutterstock
Many people thought the Labour party would struggle to top the disaster of losing the general election, but it has silenced the doubters by somehow contriving to lose its own internal leadership election. Voters have signed up to support it, and Labour has reacted with a purge of such generalised unfairness that I'm almost starting to doubt that its leading lights really wanted to bring democracy to Iraq. It must be easy weeding out applications from those who don't share Labour values – surely the very fact that they've made a decision and put their name to it is a huge beacon saying "Outsider!" A party that sees enthusiasm as a negative – at least that's a quality that may win back Scotland.
Perhaps Harriet Harman's handling of the whole debacle is a brilliant piece of marketing designed to make whoever takes over seem like a genius. There's an easy way to find genuine Labour supporters – they boasted about voting Green in this election and kept quiet about voting Lib Dem in the last. Naturally, what Labour fears is not Tory entryism, but the horror of infiltration by the sort of people Labour is supposed to represent. Most columnists seem to feel that the party should plump for one of three fairly unpalatable options as at least they can win an election, just not this election, as there are too many people voting.
Confusion and anger over Labour leader ballot | Letters
Every photo of the candidates looks like the staff room of a failing comprehensive feigning amusement at being photobombed by the janitor. Liz Kendall, with her permanent air of an office manager who has just come back from a course, couldn't lure a voter out of a burning building – and her whole campaign is based on changing Labour to be whatever people who hate it want it to be. Meanwhile, Burnham, who looks as if he has carved Fireman Sam's face off and laid it carelessly across his own skull – and would soon have Labour polling lower than Mrs Brown's balls – wants to change the party into something bold and exciting. You've got to ask the question: well, why hasn't he? It's not as if he's spent the last 15 years working at Asda.
Yvette Cooper, whose name sounds like something Jeremy Corbyn drove in the 1960s, says Corbyn doesn't have answers for the future. She doesn't have a particularly firm grasp of the future either, as she spent the first three months of this year telling us that Ed Miliband would be prime minister. Of course, as Cooper and Kendall have pointed out, there is sexism in the coverage of the contest, as there is everywhere. Cooper must wonder just how entrenched it is when her call to end detention for asylum seekers was overshadowed by Jeremy Corbyn taking the night bus.
Leaders around the world are nervous about Corbyn winning and becoming PM, as they know every time they visit the UK he'll present them with another bottle of his homegrown elderflower champagne. I'm enjoying senior Tory peers calling Corbyn a "throwback". A guy in a horsehair wig wearing a cape, who got a job for life because his great-great-great-grandfather had a knack for picking out the healthiest slaves? We can safely assume that Corbyn is no longer on the establishment's Christmas card list. But he has been added to their other list, right below the crossed out name of Dr David Kelly.
Labour is now so passive, it might as well be led by an out-of-office email
Corbyn has met with extremists. Meeting someone doesn't mean you agree with them – I've met Olly Murs, but that doesn't mean I think you gotta hold on, hold on to what you're feeling, that feeling is the best thing, the best thing all right. In the age of Facebook, we know that calling someone "friend" isn't necessarily an endorsement, and generally signals an attitude somewhere between antipathy and disgust. Of course, it's very difficult to have a career in politics without meeting a variety of people who support mass murder. Indeed, some of them will have been leading the Labour party. Britain is always in an awkward position talking about fighting extremism while we support and arm extremists such as Saudi Arabia. Our exact moral position is unclear. We're opposed to beheadings unless they're for sorcery? Something like that.
I wouldn't be tempted to vote for someone bland, thinking that they might play better in the media. The media will thoughtlessly monster whoever is elected, just as I will. Those who hope for favours from the press would do well to remember how Ed Miliband was savaged simply for looking and sounding like some cruel alien satire on humanity. I feel pessimistic about Corbyn's chances of doing anything if elected, but maybe I can afford to be. Maybe if I was being sanctioned or discriminated against or evicted, I would have to hope. Perhaps the politics of optimism always feels self-indulgent to those who don't really need it. In any case, I'm pretty confident that the election itself will result in a landslide for Robert Mugabe.
Labour party leadership
Liz Kendall


I know you must have wondered about those bird bath (or radar dish) hats also. I can't possibly be the only one.
So, does anyone know their beginnings?
Did they really originate as a personal water catching device after some past drought, and later got filled in with tinfoil and fabric? And are they expected to get even bigger/taller with time?
The hats are derived from the Soviet's uniform hats.
The girls love them… Makes you look like a man of power.
Shakos and busbies are far more practical.
SBMinisguy: The hats are derived from the Soviet's uniform hats.""
Lol. If that's the case, then it looks as though they might have initially started with those, but then went and overstuffed them beyond what one would think was humanly possible.
Makes the little guys look taller and gives them someplace to hang additional medals when the pant legs are full. Also serves as a personal umbrella and sun shade.
Uh-oh. It was just reported that kim jung wacko has personally targeted one of their new icbm's at Cacique Caribe for dissing him.
They are designed to make people look and feel taller and more menacing.
Amazing number of awards on these clowns seeing as the NorKs haven't really been shot at on any great scale since the early 50s.
Dave (StoneMtnMinis): "Uh-oh. It was just reported that kim jung wacko has personally targeted one of their new icbm's at Cacique Caribe for dissing him."
Dave, did I ever tell you of how excited Lil Kim got when he saw the movie Ant-Man, and how he is now working on a plan to miniaturize his entire population, making them just a little bit smaller each year?
Kim's dad played 3rd edition Chaos Dwarves and fell in love with the Big Hats, vowing to make it a reality during his reign.
Dan, it was in a top secret decoded message from Pyongyang to GW HQ in the 80's. It just got declassified along with another message requesting Big Hat champions to have medals added to their tunic.
Lol. What about the high heels we see on the female troops in their military parades? Was that also in the comunique?
That was a byproduct of a combination of two events.
Fashion Week 1965 and Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'" topping the charts in January 1966.
Soon thereafter these new military "fashions" appeared.
I just want to know what great battles these obviously superior Generals have been in!
So much awards! So much great!
Well, they get a medal for every 3 years of their life. Being as old as they are, that's a lot of chest bling! Battles…what battles? They were probably all drivers for the previous Kim Jong whatevers.
I've seen plenty of pictures of US officers and personnel wearing chestfuls of ribbons – 30 odd sometimes. It's amazing what you can accumulate during a lifetime in the military.
I mean the guy on the right in the foreground 'only' has 38 medals.
Geesh, I could play the drums on these hats!


Rick's Firearm Academy of Detroit salutes Black History Month by honoring patriots who fought for freedom. Today's honoree is Robert F. Williams.
He is the author of the book "Negroes with Guns." The book was influential with younger black men, including Huey Newton, who later founded the Black Panthers. Williams was a civil rights leader, the president of the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP chapter in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Additionally, he was a key figure in promoting both integration and armed black self-defense in the United States. He was a fugitive from justice for many years after he was falsely accused of kidnapping and exiled himself in Cuba. The charges were later dropped but while in Cuba, he wrote his aforementioned book which detailed his experiences with violent racism and his disagreement with the pacifist Civil Rights Movement philosophies.
Robert F. Williams was a true patriot and today we salute his legacy.