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Trip Report: Iberia | Airbus A350 | Madrid – New York JFK
7th September 2019 8th April 2020 James	0 Comments	Iberia, OneWorld, USA 2019
Previous parts to this trip:
Introduction: USA, September 2019
Trip Report: TAP Portugal | Airbus A330 | London Heathrow – Lisbon
Trip Report: TAP Portugal | Airbus A320 | Lisbon – Geneva
Hotel Review: Crowne Plaza, Geneva
Trip Report: Iberia | Airbus A320 | Geneva – Madrid
After a slightly late arrival from Geneva, it was straight over to the lounge for a bite to eat.
I didn't have too long there – just about enough time to eat and make a quick update to the website before moving on to the gate. No big deal though, as the Iberia lounge in Madrid is probably one of my most visited.
Heading down to the gate
Boarding began at 16:10 as advertised, although we were then held on the jet bridge for a good fifteen minutes.
By which time, group 3 had started boarding through the other jet bridge.
I still made it on board before the masses though and was glad to see that seat 21A that I'd reserved shortly after booking did indeed have a TON of legroom. A lot more than premium economy in fact, just a row ahead. Although the downside of this seat was that due to the tables and IFE screen being stored in the arm rest, it was more than a little snug.
Unlimited legroom
The seats themselves were identical to what's found on British Airways new A350.
Pushback came a few minutes behind schedule but nothing too serious. There was a pretty short taxi over to the runway before we took off into the Spanish sun.
Shortly after departure the crew made the usual announcements, as well as mentioning that we were flying on the "New A350 flagship of the Iberia fleet". Whether this is standard procedure or the crew member in charge was genuinely proud of the new plane, I couldn't possibly say.
The crew started the onboard service around 45 minutes after departure. As I was at the front of the economy cabin, I was one of the first to be served. Meal choices today were either pasta or meatballs. I opted for the meatballs and it was quite possibly one of the best economy meals I've had.
Once the crew had finished serving up the main courses, they passed through the cabin once more offering more bread rolls. They followed shortly after with a second drinks round. Very impressive!
The service finished with no less than three rounds of coffee.
After this, the crew all but disappeared. Would it have been so difficult to do just a couple of juice runs?
There were a few drinks set up in the galley, but it was very much self service.
Once the trays had been cleared, I took a look at the IFE. The first thing I did was have a look to see how long this flight would be. Nobody had actually mentioned so far. The flight deck hadn't made any announcements whatsoever, which is a common thing on Iberia I've found.
The system was a responsive touch screen. There was also a small control which was fixed in the centre console. It was pretty impossible to use when you were seated however, so using the touch screen is the way to go.
I must admit I didn't really explore the whole system. For once I was able to find more than a few things to keep myself entertained for a few hours.
WiFi was available, and 20mb for free was advertised although I couldn't get it to work. I didn't pay for it, so can't comment on the speed.
Somewhere mid-Atlantic
Mid-Flight
With around 1h45 until landing, the crew reappeared. The snack service was distributed. This consisted of a large box containing a ham and cheese roll, a cake slice, a yogurt and a kitkat.
Descent started with around 30 minutes left to run. As the approach was made over the ocean, there wasn't too much to see for the majority.
We touched down pretty much on schedule and made a painfully slow journey over to terminal 7.
Luckily I was in the first batch of passengers off the plane, as there was just the one officer at immigration. This meant a bit of a wait, but I was stamped into the USA without too much hassle.
Despite prebooking a transfer to the hotel, I still ended up waiting thirty minutes in the arrivals hall for it, which was mildly annoying. Especially as they advertised many times that they would be there ready and waiting.
JFK arrivals hall
Admittedly, I had somewhat low expectations for this flight. Yet Iberia were good enough. The food was tasty, and although the crew did do a bit of a disappearing act, they were friendly enough. The major downside of this flight was the width of the seat. Whilst I had plenty of legroom, I found the seat a little on the narrow side. This isn't an Iberia issue though. It was similar when I flew on Lufthansa's A350 earlier in the year. Yet Airbus seem to advertise the A350 as having an eXtra Wide Body. I'm not so sure…
www.iberia.com
← Trip Report: Iberia | Airbus A320 | Geneva – Madrid
Hotel Review: Crowne Plaza, HY36 Midtown Manhattan →
Virgin Atlantic | Airbus A340-600 | SYD-HKG | Upper Class
1st August 2014 10th March 2020 James	0
Iberia Express Business Class, A321 MAD-PMI
4th August 2020 8th August 2020 James	0
Emirates | Airbus A380 | DXB-LHR |Economy
3rd September 2013 20th July 2019 James	0
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5th September 2019 8th April 2020 James	0
Qatar Airways | Airbus A330 | SIN-DOH | Business
28th April 2016 9th August 2020 James	0


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Australia: long-awaited report on energy transition is published
Australia's chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel finally released its long-awaited report on how the country's energy system is changing. The renewable sector had long hoped the report will set out a vision for the country's transition to low-carbon electricity generation.
June 9, 2017 Sophie Vorrath and Giles Parkinson
25 MW Barcaldine Solar Project in Queensland, Australia
Elecnor
Reneweconomy's coverage of the main Finkel findings can be found here, along with the reaction, and a look at his modelling. Here is Reneweconomy's initial take on what the final Finkel Review all means.
This is not Grid 2.0
In the first draft of the Finkel Review, chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel spoke of Australia's "unstoppable" energy transition, driven by new technologies and the role of the consumer.
But but he may just have found a way for skittish politicians and incumbent utilities to throw a spanner in the works and slow it down. This report had the opportunity to redefine the energy markets. But, to borrow an expression, it reads more like history ++ at best, rather than Grid 2.0.
That's because Finkel has been focused on trying to find a pathway through the toxic energy politics in Australia, and accommodating the Coalition Federal Government's modest climate targets, rather than seizing the moment and outlining what can and should happen, and what Australia would need to do to meet the Paris climate targets.
That it only modeled the Coalition's initial down-payment for the Paris climate deal. It shows it a path to reach that, but not its likely obligations in a world that vowed to cap average global warming at "well below 2°C" and so can be seen as a huge victory for the incumbents.
We need a plan
Finkel emphaszses there is no plan right now, and one is needed to manage the scale of the transition. "We need a plan," he says.
So he has recommended a whole series of actions, including a Clean Energy Target and only because of opposition to the emissions intensity target. Other options such as a high renewable energy target were not considered, even though its is clear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of new energy,
Finkel suggests a wave of market and regulatory reforms, but appears to rely heavily on the Australian Energy Market Commission (AMEC), whose snail-pace approach to reform and new technologies has driven most players crazy with frustration (apart from the incumbents, of course).
The suggestions include new market rules, particularly for distributed generation (household solar and storage), but it also demands The Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO) set up a planning regime and review its own management practices, particularly on short-term forecasting. He proposes a new energy security board.
Wind and solar are cheaper
The report does acknowledge that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity, even with storage (or the costs of firming. i.e. signing a contract with a gas generator) added. But we might have to wait a while for that fact to sink in for the government to truly absorb it.
Finkel insists the Clean Energy Target is the cheapest option. He wants the renewable energy target to end in 2020 and not be extended.
But despite the lower costs of wind and solar, he only sees the share of large-scale renewables creeping up to just 33% by 2030, from 23.5 per cent in 2020.
The report predicts rooftop solar will only account for 11% of total generation by 2050, which is more akin to AGL's vision of the future, than the CSIRO report which credited nearly 50%. This is hardly the Grid 2.0 he talked of in the draft.
The Coalition may be mollified by Finkel's modeling that suggests some existing power stations will last longer, and cannot close without three years notice. The reasoning for allowing coal-fired power stations to stay longer in the system seems to be that this is a better outcome than having new fossil fuel generation.
Finkel says: "A mix of wind, solar and coal generation would be equally acceptable as a mix of wind, solar and gas generation as long as the (modest) emissions reduction trajectory is achieved." But what about the Paris climate target?
Retailers reign supreme
By recommending a system that generates credits, and obligations on retailers, means that this powerful oligopoly reigns supreme.
Over the past few years we have seen how the all-powerful 'gen-tailers' have been able to manipulate the renewable energy targets, first going on an investment strike, forcing policy changes, and then pocketing the benefits of the high LGC price they created when they finally started signing contracts.
They have fought elements of carbon pricing, pushed back on energy efficiency and demand management schemes, and rule changes such as the five-minute rule. By creating a new certificate scheme that puts the obligation on retailers, they again get to sit in the driver's seat and protect their generation and retailing interests.
States will have to lead the way
It will again be up to the states to go it alone if they want a quicker transition and greater ambition. According to Finkel's numbers, Australia will get to 42% renewables by 2030, and just 33% large-scale renewables). A cynic would say that was deliberately calibrated to fit in with the Coalition, given the way it criticized Labor's 50% renewable policy.
The states, however, have far higher ambitions – the ACT 100% by 2020, Queensland and the Northern Territory 50% by 2030, and Victoria 45% by 2025. South Australia is already well past its 50% target for 2025. Finkel does not recommend that the states be forced to abandon their own targets (they can't), and one can see why, although they will remain subject to partisan politics and the electoral cycle.
Controversy over "reliability" plan
The most controversy among the industry will be around the storage issue and system reliability. The report recognizes that battery and pumped hydro storage can give the grid the reliability and security it needs, but notes that in the short term, higher levels of flexible, gas-fired generation will be needed to support "variable" renewables.
Finkel suggests that new wind and solar plants, beyond 2020, be required to be paired with a certain amount of storage or contracts with "firm capacity". The renewable energy industry might well ask, and they will: Why are renewable energy generators obliged to sign up for "dispatchable" generation and the coal and gas fires stations are not?
It was the failure of coal and gas plants last summer that put the grid at risk on most occasions. Yet under this recommendation, any new solar and wind plant built after 2020 will have to come with some measure of dispatchability or its own storage attached.
This is despite CSIRO and the networks saying repeatedly that any penetration of wind and solar below 40 per cent can be considered "trivial" and this target will not be met by 2030. AEMO will have some discretion over where and how much storage will be needed.
"This makes no sense and there are likely to be far cheaper and easier ways to manage the fact that output from wind and solar farms varies," says Tristan Edis from Green Energy Markets. "Reliability isn't a function of each individual power station, but all of them." The Clean Energy Council is also concerned.
Coal gets to write the rules of its own exit
Another controversy is over the requirement for coal fired power stations to give three years notice on their retirement, but the rejection of any idea of a staged exit. This, more than anything, is designed to salve the far right, but NGOs say it makes no sense.
"Expecting coal-burning power stations to voluntarily nominate their closure date 3 years in advance is wildly unrealistic. In the absence of a government plan for orderly retirement of coal power stations, generators have been reluctant to signal their intentions and give their competitors a leg-up and that's unlikely to change," said Nick Aberle from Environment Victoria.
Tougher rules on all generators:
Wind and solar plants might have to add their own storage, and they will also be required to provide voltage and frequency control, which should not be an issue. However, Finkel said an FCAS market should only occur if there is a demonstrated benefit.
But Finkel has also identified a significant security issue with existing coal and gas generators, and has ordered AEMO to decide on a requirement for all synchronous generators to change their governor settings, this would provide a more continuous control of frequency and fall in line with international practice, and avoid some of the dramatic voltage swings that threatened more major blackouts last summer.
The bipartisan question
Will there be bipartisan political agreement? It's not clear. It is neutral enough for both mainstream parties to find common ground, but might really be designed to soothe the coal-protecting, climate deniers in the Coalition back-room, and conservative voices in the media.
But the conservatives will protest anyway, and it is difficult to see how Labor can endorse a plan that undercuts renewable energy so comprehensively, and completely ignores the Paris climate agreement.
Even if bipartisan agreement on the design of a CET is agreed, there still needs to be a clear path to ramp up ambition and accelerate this transition. And there isn't one.
As Finkel notes: The Australian, State and Territory governments must agree to a national emissions reduction trajectory. That is going to be hard to achieve, despite the fact that Australia has signed on to Paris.
The Coalition envisages a zero carbon grid in 50 years, climate experts says it needs to happen at least 20 years before that, and the CSIRO at least says that is eminently possible.
Cheaper prices? Will the consumer be king or not?
Will it reduce prices? Finkel says yes, the Clean Energy Target gives that indication in a graph in its report.
The key to wholesale prices will be in how it reduces the ability of the gas generators to impose high fuel costs and the way they control the market. Rule changes like the five-minute settlement could help that, and so will increased competition from battery storage and demand-side initiatives, such as voluntary load shedding and energy efficiency.
But these are not big savings, and it seems to ignore the impact and the opportunity that the plunging cost of solar and storage will have for households and businesses. Why stay with the grid for a measly saving of less than AU$2 a week when solar and battery storage costs are likely to be one half of the cost of the grid? In 35 years time?
The question needs to asked: despite all the rhetoric, will the consumer still be king? The report talks of the need to reward consumers for the benefits they may offer in demand management and reducing network spending, but there is no talk of the substantial savings they could obtain from their own generation.
The benchmark
Finkel says it does not really matter whether the benchmark is set at 600kg of CO2 equivalent of every megawatt-hour, or 700, or even 800 or higher.
It will depend on what the actual carbon intensity target of the government is, and this will relate to the government's climate policy and abatement targets. Given that these targets are so modest, that results in more coal generation in the system than would otherwise be the case.
Article reproduced with permission from RenewEconomy.
More articles from Sophie Vorrath
More articles from Giles Parkinson

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LEGO Technic 42098 Car Transporter review
26/07/2019 28/01/2020 Dimitri 3294 Views 0 Comments 42098 Car Transporter, LEGO, LEGO Technic, Technic
Measuring over a staggering three feet long with the ramp fully lowered, LEGO Technic 42098 Car Transporter certainly packs it in the size department – but does bigger equate to better?
Price: £139.99 / $179.99 / €149.99 Pieces: 2,493 Available: August 1
If there is one thing– and there are many – that LEGO Technic does well it is cars, but up until now fans have had no way to transport their fleet around, expect for laborious moving them one by one to a new destination. That is up until now with the release of an automotive behemoth, that just happens to be the LEGO Group's largest vehicle ever (by length), Technic 42098 Car Transporter. Consisting of 2,493 pieces this set is almost like three builds in one. An azure blue American muscle style car, front cabin and trailer and the entire rear section all feel very different in their construction yet go together to form an absolutely fantastic Technic set.
Initially this could be a completely overwhelming set for all but the most die hard and dedicated Technic fans. The box is absolutely gigantic and the manual is a whopping 544 pages long. Thankfully, every bag is numbered and the entire build can be undertaken in small steps rather than tackling everything at once. It certainly makes for a much more manageable and enjoyable experience than some of the other large Technic sets released this year.
First on the building agenda is the American muscle car. Its a very sleek looking thing that bears more than a passing resemblance to the 42093 Corvette ZR1, which was released back in January of this year. It shares similar shaping but there are a few different techniques at play, most notably the steering. The Corvette used a more traditional gear system, whereas here the steering is taking care of by a regular CV-joint.
Despite coming together fairly quickly the build is very enjoyable and the overall look is brilliant. The angles created at the front look excellent. It looks powerful, mean and muscly, perfect for this style of car. The body work in places feels like one solid unit rather than a number of sub assemblies. There's an opening hood allowing the builder to check out the 'junk in the trunk', which is a nice little addition and the use of the trans-light blue elements for the front headlamps is an aesthetically pleasing choice. This could easily have been released on its own and would have made a nice little set but here it forms just the tip of the massive Technic iceberg. There is enough space to fit four of these cars onto the transporter so it gives you some idea of the huge scale.
The build for the truck's cabin and trailer once again begins with assembling a complex gear system, this time it is far more involved and deep than the muscle car. Its a long process but a very satisfying one when all the cogs and gears slowly begin to fit together bringing the inner workings to life.
Next the build moves onto the frame work and cabin, again its a long process but still very enjoyable. Despite its size nothing ever feels too laborious or repetitive, which all things considered is some achievement. The frame work is nearly all Technic elements but there are a few system bricks that make their way into the build. The 2×2 brick with trans-clear and trans-orange sloped pieces used for the front headlamps is simple yet effective looking, as are the 2×4 and 1×2 tiles used for wing mirrors.
The cabin is a particular highlight of the build, especially the front bumper. It's an incredibly fun sub assembly to put together, with shaping on the grille coming from the technic tubing pieces. It's not only fun to assemble but looks great too. The build for the top layers feels very deep and involved – it is the most labour intensive area – but the mechanism for lowering the platform works brilliantly and is an utter joy to operate.
The final section to build within the set is the rear trailer. Fans might be surprised to discover that it feels quite different to the front and cabin sections. With the exception of the trailer beds themselves, there is fairly any repetition and it's all the more enjoyable experience because of it.
This section also contains the most working features, including a lowering top section, extendable ramp and two moving front ramps, which help connect the front and rear trailers together. Every feature works perfectly and is honestly so much fun to operate. Watching such a huge vehicle raise and lower with twists of a cog is a true sight to behold and rewards the builder with a real sense of accomplishment.
The overall look of the car transporter is a wondrous thing. Regardless of the size, it looks incredibly accurate to its real life counterparts and really comes into its own once one or more cars are placed on top or below. Technic sets more than anything rely on stickers to add the necessary details and in this instance they look fantastic too, really adding to the final look.
Due to it's size, LEGO Technic 42098 Car Transporter could seem like a daunting undertaking – yet the complete joy of the build, with each section feeling like its own separate model, coupled with the immense playability of this set means it comes highly recommended.
This product was provided for review by the LEGO Group.
42098 Car Transporter is available now, exclusively at shop.lego.com. You can help support Brick Fanatics' work by using our affiliate links.
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The absurdly magnificent works of Kwanchai Moriya
Posted on February 23, 2018 February 23, 2018 by Hook
Take a look at Kwanchai Moriya's portfolio and you will discover unparalleled works of an extremely talented and versatile artist. From the 'Days of Ire' cover to Flips Ships and Dinosaur Island we get significant images dripping with personality. I am so thrilled to bring an interview with Kwanchai Moriya – the half-Thai and half-Japanese, born in Manhattan, grew up in Chicago, and currently living in Los Angeles, California.
Tell us a little about your artistic background and how you got into making art in general and for board games?
My mom enrolled me in a pastels class at my local park district when I was, maybe, 8 or 9. I did a pretty good job on a banana and an apple, and so began the journey!
I went to a few different colleges and had many different jobs, eventually found myself in LA with: 1) a bachelors degree in History and another one in Illustration, 2) no idea what I was doing and 3) a lot debt. I was working odd jobs and freelancing at night in my studio. And when I say studio, I don't mean fancy art studio, I mean the kind where you have to quickly make the bed into a couch before people come over. I finally worked up the courage and the experience to jump full-time into freelance illustration, about 4 years ago. My first real gig was for a children's book series called Dinosaur Head to Tail, published by Kids Can Press, and my first board game gig was doing teeny tiny soldier illustrations for a wargame called Lock N Load. But Catacombs 3rd Edition was my first well-known game, and helped me get a foot in the door. I was a big fan of the game, and was asked to do a top-to-bottom redesign of all the art, after the publisher (Aron from Elzra Games, a gentleman and a scholar) saw some of my fan redesign work on BGG. That was 6 years ago, and I've had the good fortune of doing a few dozen games since.
You have worked on many games, awesome looking games: Machi Koro, Kodama, Capital Lux, Dinosaur Island, Flip Ships and many more. You seem to have a variety of styles in you skillset. It seems like your art style with traditional mediums are finding their way into board games like Capital Lux and Flip Ships. Do you also do graphic design on some projects or always illustrations?
I am definitely an illustrator first, though I have done graphic design on projects in the past. Lately, I've had the chance to work more often with publishers who have more resources. So there is usually a graphic designer on staff to do all the heavy lifting. I do enjoy messing around with typography in particular, especially title logos and harmonizing it with the box cover art. But I don't think it's my forte.
What do you think is important in a brief on a new assignment?
A crystal clear list of all the art needed, what size each piece needs to be, and concise art direction on what each piece needs to convey. Ideally, a briefing should express what the art needs to convey, while leaving the bulk of the visual and artistic choices to the illustrator. Of course, the client/illustrator relationship is always a cooperative, combinative process, but all my best work happens when I feel trust from the client. The best way to start a project is when a client asks, "What do you think would look best for this project?" Makes me feel like the prettiest princess at the ball.
Ideally, a briefing should express what the art needs to convey, while leaving the bulk of the visual and artistic choices to the illustrator.
Can you tell us about your creative process when making a piece of board game art.
I think my process is probably pretty vanilla, relative to any other illustrator. I start by collecting a big folder of inspiration and reference. And then it goes: rough sketches to final sketch and then to final art. I guess a big part of my creative process is spending time away from my screens and easels: woodworking in my shop, backpacking trips into the Sierras, playing board games with friends. Tired eyes makes tired work.
Tired eyes makes tired work.
I work in Photoshop, and use a Wacom Intuos Pro. If I'm doing traditional painting for a project, then I prep large 1/8" plywood boards and paint with Golden acrylic paints. Then I scan the paintings, and rework and tweak in Photoshop to get a final illustration ready for delivery. My workplace is the second bedroom (of our 2-bedroom house), converted into my studio workspace. And when I say converted, I mean lined with shelves of board games, books, and doodads. Very convenient! But also very not convenient, because I can see my warm bed from across the hallway.
Your colors really lift your work to something unique. How do you choose your colors?
Thank you! I think artists who are good at color, are actually really good at seeing values, light and dark. If the values in your composition are right, then the colors can almost be anything. That said, I enjoy bold colors. There's a lot of very muddy colors in board games. The overwhelming amount of fantasy or medieval games are browns and grays, and sci-fi games use a lot dark dark blues and a lot of black. It can get very predictable and boring, so I like to try being fresh and different.
What is most important to remember when making art and graphic design for games?
I think a good board game artist needs to do two things well. First off, you need to be able to be able to illustrate a variety of things with lively and fun art. Like, you've gotta be able to draw an astronaut lady's face AND you've gotta draw a cute goblin riding a boar. That part's not too hard for most artists, but yea, variety is key. The second skill, and the more important one I think, is to be able to deliver a great looking box cover that holds up on the shelf. I think there's a lot of artists that can do decent art for components or cards, the relatively small size is forgiving to mediocre art. But if you really want to woo a publisher, you've got to be able to do a solid box cover illustration, one that alludes to what's in the box, but more importantly is really good art. And that means: good composition, correct anatomy/perspective, and good colors, all reflecting the theme and mood of the game.
What has yet been your biggest challenge in board game art?
Meeting deadlines is very difficult as a freelancer. Or…maybe just me, actually, who knows. Game publishers often need something turned around really quick, like, "Here's two months, aaand GO!" Compare that to my children's book publishers which have a year or more for deadlines. Moreover, because game publishers overwhelmingly: a) print in China, b) showcase at Essen, c) showcase at GenCon…etc., there's a certain rhythm to production schedules. And if all your clients are in the board game industry, it means that all your clients are on the same cycle of slow months and hectic months. It can get crazy.
Are there any pitfalls game artisans should try to avoid ?
Maybe, don't be precious about your art? But publishers, especially game publishers, need an artist that works diligently and takes feedback well. This doesn't mean you should do endless revisions, it does mean you should be as friendly a co-worker as you can. No one's like a rockstar at work. People like Kevin, who is good at communicating issues with a smile and sometimes brings in donuts.
Also, you'll never make it very far just sitting in front of a computer and wishing for more work. Don't let Facebook likes, Instagram subs, and retweets of your work, shore up a flagging or yet-to-exist career. Pound pavement, make calls, go to conventions, schedule meetings or ask for portfolio reviews.
What's the best piece of advice on making art that you have been given?
Make art that YOU are excited about. You end up on a project for any combination and number of reasons. It even might be a project that isn't really up your alley, or the client is art directing way too much and it's bumming you out. But when it comes down to it, when pencil hits paper, when Wacom pen hits plasticky pad thingy, you better find a way to be making art that excites you.
But when it comes down to it, when pencil hits paper, when Wacom pen hits plasticky pad thingy, you better find a way to be making art that excites you.
J.C. Leyendecker, Andrew Wyeth, Gregory Manchess
Wow – that is some wonderful artists. Is there one game you think is particularly beautiful (you did not make)?
Anything Ian O'Toole or Jacqui Davis makes.
What are your current and future projects?
I can't talk about anything specific I'm working on, sadly. The publishers like to make a big ol announcement thingy about their stuff at the right time to drum up buzz. But 2018 has me booked on projects with Renegade, Pandasaurus, Tasty Minstrel, Osprey, Artana, Mayday and IDW, so far. But for the last few months I've just been in the garage painting stuff for Renegade Games' Overlight RPG, which they announced at Gen Con last year. Stay tuned, it is my most challenging and interesting project to date, in terms of slinging paint!
We will ! Finally let's direct the readers to your fantastic Galaxy Trucker poster. Is there any other place for inspiration, creative tutorials, personal shop links or other resources you want to advocate?
Yea thanks! You can still get the poster through the Boardgamegeek Store, I think. I was really happy that I was invited be a part of the Artist Series. I also have some prints that I sell through INPRNT.com, (https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kwanchaimoriya/) but mostly if you feel the need to keep me employed, you can do this: if you enjoyed the art on a game, just say so on BGG, or Twitter, Facebook, etc. when you post about it. You can even tag me, and utilize important keywords, like "unparalleled" or "absurdly magnificent." The publishers read all that stuff, and it really does matter. It helps me put food on the table and then some. Also, if you ever see me at a convention please come say hi!
Heheh. I will say this interview is unparalleled and magnificent!. Thanks for sharing so much with us all. We will look forward to see your paint explosion on the Renegade Games RPG.
Interview by Niklas Hook
How Jacqui Davis use lots of reference for her stunning paintings!
Juggling art and sculpts in making a Brutal PVP arena game.


If you are reading this, you may be considering attending the Landmark Forum and are wondering what it is all about. Until a few weeks ago, I was just as much in the dark. I vaguely remember attending one of the Tuesday evening sessions about seven years ago on the invitation of someone who had just 'graduated' from the course, and being very confused as to what it was all about— but anyway, I never even remotely considered attending. I do remember that they put a fair amount of pressure on me to sign up on some mailing list or other, and giving them a fake name and address.
About two months ago, Landmark came up again— no need to go into more detail other than to say that my attendance wasn't entirely voluntary. I didn't know what it was about and had nothing specific that I planned to get out of it. The little Internet research I did only reinforced my perception of it as some kind of cult or brainwashing operation.
Let me say up front that I have no personal stake in Landmark or their services, other than having taken the Forum course. I'm not promoting it nor am I dissuading anyone from it. Also, and very importantly, I am not a mental health professional of any sort and nothing I write should be construed as any kind of expert opinion. My purposes here are to help you through the same decision that I once had to make— and for myself, to gather my own thoughts on what transpired that weekend.
If you are reading this to help you for the former reason, and you are trying to decide whether the Forum might be useful to you, then I suggest that you read only the next section ('About the Forum'). I believe that the effectiveness of the Forum relies at least partly on its structure, and reading beyond that section would undermine that structure enough that you might cheat yourself out of any results.
Like I said, what little I knew about Landmark made me strongly suspect it was a kind of brainwashing scheme. The dozen-page disclaimer I had to sign vouching for my emotional and psychological health and the intense schedule only reinforced that. I was paranoid enough that I gave them only a post office box address and a voice mail-only phone number.
Having now taken the course, I can say that there is a little bit to this, but benign and certainly nothing like what I imagine something like Scientology would be like. Landmark does apply fairly strong and persistent pressure to sign up for their (isn't there always one) 'advanced course'— but not really a lot more than what a car dealer or any other salesperson might. If you're a soft touch for the hard sell, you might seriously consider not bringing any checks or credit cards to the sessions— especially the last one. The periodic plugs throughout are nothing if not annoying and in my opinion really do distract from the course— pretty much like watching a movie interrupted by commercials. But Landmark is a business, after all, and even movies interspersed by commercials can be enjoyable.
So what is the Forum about? In a nutshell, and to borrow their own phrase, it is part of a 'curriculum for living'. It tries to show your life in a perspective that may be more effective than the one most of us grew up with. That probably sounds rather ambitious and vague. Although I could summarize the primary lessons of the Forum in a few paragraphs this would be pointless. Rather, ask yourself if there are aspects of you that seem 'in the way' of your own development and that you might like to transcend.
Part of the power of the Forum certainly lies in the delivery. Three straight days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) from 9 in the morning to past 10 o'clock at night barely leaves you time to get home, eat, and sleep. I have to think that this is intentional. Achieving any significant results in a relatively short time frame demands a consistent intensive focus which the compressed schedule contributes to. In fact, I took it in a different city and away from home, and I feel that not being 'reset' to the real world really helped me focus on what was happening. After the weekend there is a ten-week seminar (which I'm currently attending) that reiterates the message in a more measured pace.
Another aspect is that you are going through this together with a fairly large group, and for me this made all the difference. If you follow the game rules you will be forced to interact at different levels with different people. Although I saw several people who attended together with a friend of family member, I can only imagine that this would be much less effective, and I would recommend against it. One thing that impressed me very much is that the instructors seem very well trained in managing such large groups in a way that makes the size of the group a very positive thing.
Different people will react to the course in different ways, and the instructor seemed to recognize this. I went in being fairly skeptical of any significant results but at all times tried to maintain an open mind. Although this was extremely difficult at times, it was well worth it in the end.


Our team had to move one of our campuses in just four days. Not from high school to high school, but from high school to permanent location. This included build out, painting, décor, cleaning, etc. You name it—we did it in just four days!
We launched another addition of our very successful family experience. This time it's called "Angry Words" and it won't take a rocket scientist to figure out our theme.
On top of all that we had to get ready for Easter. To say the very least, my last two weeks were probably some of the busiest weeks I've ever experienced.
•	I totally bombed at hiding my frustration. As you can imagine, moving an entire campus in four days put me a little over the limit in the stress category, especially since this wasn't a planned move AND we were getting ready for our family experience launch AND Easter was just one and a half weeks away. Why was this bad? Well, I feel as a leader I'm allowed to be frustrated, but I'm not allowed to let it affect other people. There were people "under" me who were given a negative impression of leadership because of my attitude. I had to eat some humble pie and ask forgiveness.
•	Serving God isn't always "cookies and cream". As a staff pastor I have to trust my leadership. This doesn't mean I have to agree—it means exactly what I said—I have to trust them. If my pastor feels like this is the best move, I need to bring up my disagreements behind closed doors (which I did), but in the end I need to do my best to make it happen with a great attitude.
•	A lot can happen when people are excited about the vision. We got A LOT done in a very short amount of time. It was due to volunteers getting excited about what God can and will do through serving our community. I want to find and create ways to excite our volunteers at all our campuses.
•	I wanted everything to be perfect in my four-day move at our new kids building, however I was reminded that parents, members and guests at our church have no idea what "perfect" is. Because we went from temporary to permanent—anything (almost) we would've done would have been a great improvement and they would have loved it. Then, we could continue to finish up the building over the next several weeks and with every new added item would add new excitement.
So, as you can see we've been busy and God's been refining me. There's one thing that I'm absolutely certain of—I love what God is doing through our church and I love leading a great group of world-changers. I'm reminded that as crazy as things get, this is the best "job" ever!
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Great Reminder! Thanks for your leadership!


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Caught Between Worlds
Author: Joe Snader
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Format: PDF, ePub, Docs
Category : Literary Criticism
The captivity narrative has always been a literary genre associated with America. Joe Snader argues, however, that captivity narratives emerged much earlier in Britain, coinciding with European colonial expansion, the development of anthropology, and the rise of liberal political thought. Stories of Europeans held captive in the Middle East, America, Africa, and Southeast Asia appeared in the British press from the late sixteenth through the late eighteenth centuries, and captivity narratives were frequently featured during the early development of the novel. Until the mid-eighteenth century, British examples of the genre outpaced their American cousins in length, frequency of publication, attention to anthropological detail, and subjective complexity. Using both new and canonical texts, Snader shows that foreign captivity was a favorite topic in eighteenth-century Britain. An adaptable and expansive genre, these narratives used set plots and stereotypes originating in Mediterranean power struggles and relocated in a variety of settings, particularly eastern lands. The narratives' rhetorical strategies and cultural assumptions often grew out of centuries of religious strife and coincided with Europe's early modern military ascendancy. Caught Between Worlds presents a broad, rich, and flexible definition of the captivity narrative, placing the American strain in its proper place within the tradition as a whole. Snader, having assembled the first bibliography of British captivity narratives, analyzes both factual texts and a large body of fictional works, revealing the ways they helped define British identity and challenged Britons to rethink the place of their nation in the larger world.
Author: Alison L. Perry
Publisher: Alison L. Perry Books, LLC
Format: PDF, Kindle
Balancing life as a vampire and human is harder than she thought… Ever since Sadie decided to hide her vampirism by masquerading as a normal sixteen-year-old high school student, her world has plunged into chaos. Still a clumsy mess who attracts trouble and embarrassment like bees to honey, she's navigating a slew of challenges: the fallout from an explosive Homecoming queen showdown, knocking out the school's newly returned golden girl in gym class, and falling head-over-heels in love with Cam, the supposed bad boy of the school. As a test subject in a secret experimental vampire program gone wrong, Sadie also has a target on her back. To erase all traces of the failed program, the elite vampire First Families want her dead and have gone to extreme measures to make it happen. Now Sadie must deal with a shadowy stalker who seems to relish the hunt, using her and her loved ones as pawns in a sinister game of his own making. Can she survive his schemes and protect her friends and family at the same time?
Author: Harrison Pope
Publisher: Lulu Press, Inc
Category : Social Science
Jake a lonely young gay teen finds his world turned upside down after his parents are brutally murdered. Jake hides a dark power within that society shuns him for. Can he rise up to take revenge or will he fall to the wrath of conformity?
Author: Melanie Hope Adsit
Author: Therèse Tappouni
Publisher: Bookbaby
Tom O'Hara's father, John, is injured and kidnapped by terrorists from Iran. An American businessman in Iraq, he and his son are tragically separated as Iraq gears up for war with Iran. Iraqi authorities have no time or resources to search for him. Tom's mom died of cancer a year ago, and now he fears the loss of his father. He and his best friend Mikhail decide to rescue John, combining the Can Do American way and the Insha'Allah (God willing) of the Middle East. Both boys are inspired by Alexander the Great. They search for John following Alexander's legendary route to Gaugamela. They are helped by many, including a Samoyed named Ursa, whose life they saved in the souk, Tom's mother's spirit, Mikhail's sister Mariam who has unusual powers, a Kurdish fighter named Bogasian, a Yezidi healer, and Daryoush, a young Iranian. Time-traveling Alexander, his right-hand man, Hephaestion, and Aristotle, known as The Teacher, are frequent companions as the boys trek north to Kurdistan. Caught between worlds at war, with time running out, they must rely on every ally to rescue John O'Hara.
Caught Between Two Worlds
Author: Dee W. Beasley
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Category : Biography & Autobiography
How many times have you gone through the most unpleasant experience, only to have it become the most beneficial and greatest learning experiences you can remember? My husband learned he was legally blind; his vision was deteriorating. How do you see? I feel Im caught between two worlds. Wow! What a title for a book. I wrote it down, set it aside, but couldnt leave it. I collected his thoughts, experiences, feelings, the progression of his life, and the decline of his sight. After telling his story, I realized all of us, at one time or another have found ourselves Caught Between Two Worlds. Take a look at your life and ask, What two worlds am I in? Then see how you can escape them.
Caught Between Two Spiritual Worlds
Author: Reverend Harold A. Vieux
Publisher: WestBow Press
Category : Religion
This is a true story, a series of events that transpired in my life which I deemed necessary to expose and by so doing alert others to vigilance. Naturally, the subject matter is sensitive both for me and all parties involved. I can never discount the relevance of demons, deny their reality and their harassing ways. If and when I was to do so, I would magnify the role of human agents. Frequently, even mature Christians underestimate the magnitude of the spiritual warfare enlisted in from the time of the new birth. We are in a severe struggle, persistently and subtly driven by powerful, spiritual opposing forces beyond our comprehension. Often we rely on human resources and fail to use the spiritual source available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. I fell in the fourth generation of my maternal fore-parents lineage to suffer unnecessary heartbreaking consequences because of spiritual ignorance. Since I came to see the light of Jesus Christ, I made up my mind to loose all yokes of bondage over my generation and the ones to come after me should Christ tarry. I now know demonic spirits are to be kept afar and never be trusted. Even though at times through subtlety we may be deceived to think that certain spirits work for the good and well-being of a person, such deception should be seen as a trap, a means of securing the individual into a mesh. Sooner or later, such individual will be caught unaware and conquered. It should never be a surprise how the Devil, the starch enemy of the saints, will use anyone, foe and often those who would be considered ally, to win a person over to cause him to fall. Read on and enjoy this treat to your spiritual health!
Author: Judith L. Cameron, Ph.D.
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
This book by Judith Cameron, PhD, is the true story of her ongoing encounters with benevolent extraterrestrials and the education that she has received from them throughout her life. She had a lucid dream that told her that part of her life's work was to train to be an ambassador—a liaison between Earth humans and extraterrestrials when those extraterrestrials came en masse on their first contact mission. Follow Judy's adventure, from being a child of six and meeting her first extraterrestrials, to the present-day encounters, many of which are a result of her training to become an ambassador to the universe. You will learn about the Galactic Federation of Light and their representatives on Earth who have continued her learning and training. Sheldon Nidle of the Planetary Activation Organization and Dr. Steven Greer, MD, founder of CSETI, are two of the selected teachers whom Judy has chosen to work with. Judy's encounters have taken her around the globe to places such as Bora Bora, one of the Tahitian Islands, Orpheus Island, Australia on the Great Barrier Reef, Hawaii, and the Great Southwest of the United States. Working as a public school teacher for forty years teaching all grade levels and at NASA as an education consultant, along with her work as a doctor of clinical hypnotherapy, has given Judy the background and credibility that she needs to carry out her mission. Follow Judy now as you learn of the wonderful possibilities for our future Earth.
Indigenous Caught Between Two Worlds
Author: Anthony Mordini
Publisher: Garratt Publishing
Author: William Pallister
John Milton's Paradise Lost has long been celebrated for its epic subject matter and the poet's rhetorical fireworks. In Between Worlds, William Pallister analyses the rhetorical methods that Milton uses throughout the poem and examines the effects of the three distinct rhetorical registers observed in each of the poem's major settings: Heaven, Hell, and Paradise. Providing insights into Milton's relationship with the history of rhetoric as well as rhetorical conventions and traditions, this rigorous study shows how rhetorical forms are used to highlight and enhance some of the poem's most important themes including free will, contingency and probability. Pallister also provides an authoritative discussion of how the omniscience of God in Paradise Lost affects Milton's verse, and considers how God's speech applies to the concept of the perfect rhetorician. An erudite and detailed study of both Paradise Lost and the history of rhetoric, Between Worlds is essential reading that will help to unravel many of the complexities of Milton's enduring masterpiece.
Author: Scott Russell Hill
Scott Russell Hill got word to actor Brandon Lee that his life was in danger. On his radio show Scott predicted "a famous black American football player will be charged with murder," Unknowingly, Scott also predicted the death of John Lennon. Now Scott takes you on a roller-coaster ride through these and other spiritual events. Psychics, near death experiences, ghosts, UFO's, reincarnation and an underground network of Hollywood stars with an alien connection. They're all part of a journey that will mystify and intrigue you as Scott finds himself Caught Between Two Worlds.
Author: Laura E. Weymouth
Category : Young Adult Fiction
What happens when you return to the real world after being in a fantastical one like Narnia? This YA debut by Laura E. Weymouth is perfect for fans of Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood and Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Six years ago, sisters Evelyn and Philippa Hapwell were swept away to a strange and beautiful kingdom called the Woodlands, where they lived for years. But ever since they returned to their lives in post-WWII England, they have struggled to adjust. Ev desperately wants to return to the Woodlands, and Philippa just wants to move on. When Ev goes missing, Philippa must confront the depth of her sister's despair and the painful truths they've been running from. As the weeks unfold, Philippa wonders if Ev truly did find a way home, or if the weight of their worlds pulled her under. Walking the line between where fantasy and reality meet, this lyrical and magical novel is, above all else, an exploration of loss and healing, and what it means to find where you belong.
Category : Mexico
Author: Sue Davies
Contributors discuss the experiences and empowerment of women in higher education and women challenging the mainstream curriculum, in papers that grew from a November 1993 conference held by the Women in Higher Education Network. They detail empowerment strategies for older, disabled, and black students, and discuss how women can initiate change within traditional disciplines of academia. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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Claire Bishop
Claire Bishop is the author of Installation Art: A Critical History and a contributor to many art journals, including ArtForum, Flash Art, and October. She is a Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Warwick.
Claire Bishop 2006
Art that seeks to produce situations in which relations are formed among viewers is placed in historical and theoretical context in key writings by critics and artists.
The desire to move viewers out of the role of passive observers and into the role of producers is one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century art. This tendency can be found in practices and projects ranging from El Lissitzky's exhibition designs to Allan Kaprow's happenings, from minimalist objects to installation art. More recently, this kind of participatory art has gone so far as to encourage and produce new social relationships. Guy Debord's celebrated argument that capitalism fragments the social bond has become the premise for much relational art seeking to challenge and provide alternatives to the discontents of contemporary life. This publication collects texts that place this artistic development in historical and theoretical context.
Participation begins with writings that provide a theoretical framework for relational art, with essays by Umberto Eco, Bertolt Brecht, Roland Barthes, Peter Bürger, Jen-Luc Nancy, Edoaurd Glissant, and Félix Guattari, as well as the first translation into English of Jacques Rancière's influential "Problems and Transformations in Critical Art." The book also includes central writings by such artists as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Joseph Beuys, Augusto Boal, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. And it features recent critical and curatorial debates, with discussions by Lars Bang Larsen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hal Foster, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.
Copublished with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
Practicable
From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art
Samuel Bianchini and Erik Verhagen 2016
Critical analyses, case studies, and artist interviews examine works of art that are realized with the physical involvement of the viewer.
How are we to understand works of art that are realized with the physical involvement of the viewer? A relationship between a work of art and its audience that is rooted in an experience that is both aesthetic and physical? Today, these works often use digital technologies, but artists have created participatory works since the 1950s. In this book, critics, writers, and artists offer diverse perspectives on this kind of "practicable" art that bridges contemplation and use, discussing and documenting a wide variety of works from the last several decades. The contributors consider both works that are technologically mediated and those that are not, as long as they are characterized by a process of reciprocal exchange.
The book offers a historical frame for practicable works, discussing, among other things, the emergence and influence of cybernetics. It examines art movements and tendencies that incorporate participatory strategies; draws on the perspectives of the humanities and sciences; and investigate performance and exhibition. Finally, it presents case studies of key works by artists including and offers interviews with such leading artists and theoreticians as Claire Bishop, Thomas Hirschhorn, Matt Adams of Blast Theory, Seiko Mikami and Bruno Latour. Numerous illustrations of artists and their works accompany the text.
ContributorsMatt Adams (Blast Theory), Jean-Christophe Bailly, Samuel Bianchini, Claire Bishop, Jean-Louis Boissier, Nicolas Bourriaud, Christophe Charles, Valérie Châtelet, Jean-Pierre Cometti, Sarah Cook, Jordan Crandall, Dominique Cunin, Nathalie Delbard, Anna Dezeuze, Diedrich Diederichsen, Christophe Domino, Larisa Dryansky, Glória Ferreira, Jean-Paul Fourmentraux, Gilles Froger, Masaki Fujihata, Jean Gagnon, Katrin Gattinger, Jochen Gerz, Piero Gilardi, Véronique Goudinoux, Usman Haque, Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (HeHe), Jeppe Hein, Thomas Hirschhorn, Marion Hohlfeldt, Pierre-Damien Huyghe, Judith Ickowicz, Eric Kluitenberg, Janet Kraynak, Bruno Latour, Christophe Leclercq, Frédérik Lesage, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Peter Lunenfeld, Lawrence Malstaf, Julie Martin, Seiko Mikami, Dominique Moulon, Hiroko Myokam, Ernesto Neto, Mayumi Okura, Eddie Panier, Françoise Parfait, Simon Penny, Daniel Pinkas, Chantal Pontbriand, Emanuele Quinz, Margit Rosen, Alberto Sánchez Balmisa, Frederik Schikowski, Arnd Schneider, Madeline Schwartzman, Luke Skrebowski, Vanessa Theodoropoulou, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andrea Urlberger, Erik Verhagen, Franz Erhard Walther, Peter Weibel, Renate Wiehager, Catherine Wood, Giovanna Zapperi, Anne Zeitz, David Zerbib
Edited by Samuel Bianchini and Erik Verhagen with the collaboration of Nathalie Delbard and Larisa Dryansky.
Moscow Symposium
Conceptualism Revisited
Boris Groys 2012
Beyond the view that multiple, globally dispersed conceptual art practices provide a heterogeneity of cultural references, Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions propose much more: other dimensions altogether, other spatiotemporal politics, other timescales, other understandings of matter, other forms of life—not only as works, but as a basic condition for being able to perceive artworks in the first place. Could it be that the Moscow Conceptualists were so elusive or saturated with the particularities of life in a specific economic and intellectual culture that they precluded integration into a broader art historical narrative? If so, then their simultaneously modest and radical approach to form may present a key to understanding the resilience and flexibility of a more general sphere of global conceptualisms that anticipate, surpass, or even bend around their purported origins in canonical European and American regimes of representation, as well as what we currently understand to be the horizon of artistic practice.
e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
ContributorsClaire Bishop, Keti Chukhrov, Ekaterina Degot, Jörg Heiser, Terry Smith, Anton Vidokle, and Sarah Wilson


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Tycoon Tax? No Thanks! - Spear's Magazine
JK Rowling Slips Off Forbes Billionaires List, But How Accurate Are Rich Lists?
Scrap HS2 and save '25 billion
Tycoon Tax? No Thanks!
12th March 2012 by Spear's
If the government wanted people to pay a flat rate of tax, then it should introduce a flat rate. But it does not.
Throwing a distracting handful of dust in the eyes of his critics, Nick Clegg told his party's spring conference that he wanted to introduce a 'tycoon tax' to ensure that everyone pays an absolute minimum of tax: 'We will call time on the tycoon tax dodgers and make sure everyone pays a fair level of tax,' he declared. This would be 20 per cent, he suggested. And this on top of Vince Cable's 'mansion tax'!
Never mind that no-one else seemed to know about this – not even David Cameron or George Osborne – or that his Lib Dem colleagues disagree – Vince Cable's ally Lord Oakeshott said the proposal was 'a superficially attractive measure that falls apart under scrutiny and does nothing to do with the super rich non-doms and non-residents'.
A Lib Dem on last night's Westminster Hour on Radio 4 pointed out the biggest problem with this tax level even as he tried to support it: he said HNWs should not use entrepreneurs' investment relief or philanthropic donations to avoid paying tax. (Does he want no HNW to invest in start-ups or give to charity ever again?) The tax system is riddled with potential deductions becuase it used to make social policy.
If the government wanted people to pay a flat rate of tax, then it should introduce a flat rate. But it does not – it wants to use the tax system to support this or discourage that, in which case it should not be surprised when people do that, whether through 'pure' or tax-dodging motives. A tycoon tax is not the answer – a more sensible tax system is.
Read more by Josh Spero
Nicholas McCarthy, the First One-Handed Pianist to Graduate from the Royal College of Music
Giac's Back
Britain Wins Gold… In The Double-Dip


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Profiles | April 2019
A Conversation with Deesha Philyaw
By Amanda Jaros
Deesha Philyaw. See more of Deesha's work at deeshaphilyaw.com.
Deesha Philyaw is the author of the book Co-parenting 101, which she co-wrote with her ex-husband, and she is a former Literary Mama columnist who wrote the column The Girl is Mine from 2004 to 2007. Philyaw's writing has evolved from a focus on parenting and family, to race, gender, and pop culture. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, McSweeney's, Ebony, Brevity, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She also curated a column for The Rumpus called Visible: Women Writers of Color. Recently, Editor-in-Chief Amanda Jaros reached out to Philyaw to talk about her writing life since her time with Literary Mama, what it was like writing a book with her ex, and how she faces societal racism.
Amanda Jaros: Literary Mama is celebrating its 15th birthday this year and you were one of our earliest columnists. How did you know you wanted to be a writer? How did you get started on this path? And how did you find your way to Literary Mama?
Deesha Philyaw: I started writing in earnest around 1999/2000, when my oldest daughter was a toddler, and I was a stay-at-home mom. Writing was my outlet, my solace, the one thing I did for myself. Those early stories and novel attempts were semi-autobiographical tales about dissatisfied women leading boring domestic lives.
Poet and editor Kalamu ya Salaam created a Yahoo e-list for Black writers that I subscribed to, and it listed tons of writing opportunities. In 2003/2004, someone from Literary Mama posted the call for columnists on this list. At the time, I was writing some pretty terrible fiction and submitting it to places like The Sun and The New Yorker and getting rejected left and right. Surprise, surprise. Nonfiction about parenting wasn't at all on my radar, but more than anything, I wanted to be published. So, I submitted a sample column to Literary Mama.
One of the many great things about Literary Mama was that, more than publishing and exposure that led to national print publishing opportunities, I also got to work with, and alongside, some fantastic writers and editors. I got published, but I also became a better writer. Literary Mama was my MFA program.
AJ: Your column, The Girl is Mine, ran for three and a half years and focused on your life as an adoptive Black mother. What was the inspiration for this column? How do you think the story, and your writing, evolved over that time?
DP: I became a Literary Mama columnist when my youngest daughter was just a few months old. She's 15 now, the same age as Literary Mama, and she was the impetus for my column. The title, The Girl is Mine, really speaks volumes: I was asserting that I was this child's mother. (And I liked the title as a play on the Michael Jackson-Paul McCartney song.) Because my body didn't "look postpartum," strangers who saw me in public with this tiny baby would compliment me on snapping back so quickly. I would explain that we had adopted her and that led to all kinds of conversations and questions.
In retrospect, given what I've learned from my daughter and other adoptees, I think it's more important to assert that the girl is not just mine. She belongs to herself. And she belonged to her birth family first.
When I was writing the column, my focus was on what it meant to be an adoptive mother. How do I meet the unique needs of a child who is adopted? How do I best answer her questions? How do I honor her biological roots? What do I do with my feelings and needs as a mother? Once she was no longer an infant, her adoption status became invisible to people who didn't know our family. Our friends and family pretty much stopped asking questions related to her adoption. I began wrangling with a different set of questions. How much do I share? Where does my story end and my daughter's begin? The column became less about being an adoptive mother and more about my mothering experience in general.
And then my mother died of breast cancer. My grandmother and my father also died, and I separated from my husband that same year. It's an understatement to say that 2005 and the years immediately following were rough. I took a little hiatus from the column. It was hard to write about my parents. It was hard to write about my divorce, and about grief, because I was still very much in the middle of it all. I've found that essay writing isn't cathartic for me until there are some years between a particular moment in my life and the moment that I write about it. On top of that, it was hard to know how to write honestly and clearly, while protecting certain aspects of my private life and respecting my loved ones' privacy.
I think the column lost focus. But I had grown and learned so much from Literary Mama editors and fellow columnists. I was an exponentially stronger, more confident writer when I decided to end the column's run.
AJ: Your children were little when you were writing The Girl is Mine. Now that they're older, have they read your column? Do they have feelings or thoughts about being featured? How do you feel about writing about your kids now?
DP: I don't know if they've read the column. I haven't asked them and they haven't told me. I figure, if they haven't, they aren't interested in it. Or if they have, they don't want to talk to me about it. They are 15 and 20 now, and I'm letting that sleeping dog lie.
As my kids have gotten older, I've asked permission first before writing about them. They are fine with it, but they don't seem particularly interested. I know they are proud of me as a writer, and I appreciate that. As for my writing itself, the fiction and the nonfiction, I think it's too personal for them to engage with it, or to engage with me about it.
These days, I'm more invested in writing fiction and also nonfiction about the non-parenting aspects of my life. Parenting is still a very big part of my life, but I don't have the same need for community around it anymore. And that's what my parenting writing has been mostly about—a means of connecting with other parents who could relate or be encouraged by what I share. It's incredibly rewarding, but I think it may have run its course for me.
AJ: Since your time writing for Literary Mama, you've done so much other writing. You co-wrote a book with your ex-husband, Co-parenting 101, about successfully raising children in separate households after divorce. As a stepmother who went through a traumatic custody battle with my husband's ex-wife over his daughter, the idea of coming together with his ex is impossible for me to imagine. How did you and your ex accomplish this? What is the secret to positive co-parenting?
DP: From the outset, we agreed that we would spare our kids any battles or ugliness. They were aware that we didn't always see eye to eye, but as far as they knew, we kept our focus on them. It helped that we respected each other as parents and valued the other's presence in our kids' lives. That was never a question. We both wanted our kids to be able to spend as much time as possible with each of us and to not feel like they were in a tug of war or having to choose sides. We committed to honoring the relationship they had with the other parent.
Both parents have to be willing to start over, to treat co-parenting as a new, separate relationship—not a new battleground to keep rehashing the past or punishing the other parent. Treat it like a business arrangement, if you have to; you don't have to be friends, or even like each other; just be civil. It helps immensely if you can trust and respect your co-parent—and if you conduct yourself in such a way that your co-parent can trust and respect you.
Let your kids know that they are free to love and appreciate both of you separately. Kids can benefit even if only one parent commits to focusing on the kids' well-being and sidestepping the conflict when possible.
AJ: Writing is generally a solitary pursuit. How did you adapt to working with a co-writer? Particularly with a man you were divorcing! What was your writing process like?
DP: I actually enjoy the company of other writers. Sometimes I need solitude, but sometimes I find it helpful to spend time with other people who are also creating.
We had been divorced a few years before we started working on the book. So there had been some time to heal, and to build a new kind of partnership focused on parenting, and not on each other. We launched a blog, a website, and a weekly podcast as part of our process of writing the book, so a lot of the content from the book came from those. In some ways, it was like piecing together a puzzle, looking to see which pieces were missing, and then filling in the missing pieces. We each worked on different sections and then shared with the other to review and tweak as needed.
AJ: Your writing covers many race, gender, and culture issues. Your piece in Brevity, "A Pop Quiz for White Women Who Think Black Women Should Be Nicer to Them in Conversations about Race," particularly moved me because of its deep honesty. It cuts right to the heart of implicit bias and structural racism. How did that piece come about? What has the response been to it from women of color, from white women?
DP: That piece was born of my frustration and anger in 2016 in the months leading up to the election. I sat down one day and wrote it straight, in one sitting. It was the culmination of conversations I was taking part in and witnessing online, between Black women and white women. I found myself and other Black women responding over and over to white women who were repeating the same things: They had christened themselves arbiters of what is and isn't racist, refusing to be accountable for their own biases, racism, and complicity in white supremacy. It was like predictive text; I knew what they were going to say at each juncture. And I captured that in the quiz.
Collectively, and compared to Black women, white women are ill-informed about race and racism, and about American history as it relates to race and racism. Yet they insist on dominating conversations about race and racism. Where else do we allow people with the least information to lead the conversation? Dr. King said, "Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn."
White women who think racism is merely a set of bad actions and attitudes, not a system of oppression that they benefit from—these women have the nerve to lecture Black women. Certainly, white feminists don't let men lecture them on what is and isn't sexist, or how they should pursue justice as it relates to sex and gender. And yet, white feminists feel entitled to tell Black women what to do and how to feel, often in the name of some mythical, ahistorical "unity" and "sisterhood" that they feel is undermined by criticism like mine. And the pearl clutching begins: "If we keep fighting amongst ourselves, THEY win." To which I say: "You are THEM too." Fifty-three percent of white women voted for Trump. That's not just an inconvenient little truth.
White women in these conversations see this as a fight against Trump and his base. I see it as a fight against white supremacy that is centuries old; this is just the latest manifestation. Justice and accountability and dismantling white supremacy are the goals, not sisterhood. Sisterhood and unity are concepts that make white women feel better and purposeful. I'm interested in justice. Yes, we can work together, if we're fighting the same fight. If you want to fight Trump and think we can address Black women's concerns later, you're no sister of mine.
White women inevitably said something to me like, "If we could just get to know each other, you'd see we have more similarities than differences." Again, they fail to see systems at play; it's all personal. They just want to be seen as one of the good ones. Now, instead of engaging in these conversations, I post the link to the quiz and say, "Read this, and if you still want to meet for coffee, let me know." Crickets, LOL.
Black women and other women of color have thanked me for the quiz because it affirms how maddening and exhausting dealing with white women can be. And some white women have thanked me for it as well, because they realize that they have much to learn.
AJ: Women, and particularly women of color, have long faced discrimination and inequalities in the literary community. What has your experience of this been? What challenges have you faced in pursuing a writing career?
DP: I've been very fortunate. Relative to some writers of color I know, my experience has been good, for the most part. I was spared the racist BS you find in MFA programs and academia because I don't have an MFA, and I've never taught as regular faculty in a literary program. So, my experiences in the community have been centered on publishing and working with editors and those have been positive with a couple of exceptions.
I once had some magazine editors tell me that my lengthy primary and secondary research supporting the fact that racism exists in the adoption and child welfare system was inadequate. They told me that racism was such a serious claim to make and that we needed a famous Black scholar to vouch for it—not the preeminent Black woman scholar on the subject whom I'd interviewed and whose book I'd cited. No, she wasn't enough. This was almost a decade ago and racism in child welfare and adoption was an open secret even then. The claim of racism made these particular white women editors—and, I presume, their magazine parent company—nervous. So, we needed a random Black (male) scholar with a big name to be the spoonful of sugar. I opted to kill the story rather than cater to that nonsense.
I think it's also important to point out that inequity persists in the acceptance/rejection process. When you get generic form rejections, you have no idea whether bias, implicit or otherwise, is at play. Everything is about "fit," and if a publication's bent has historically been toward white writers and a particular aesthetic that's different than what writers of color bring to the table, then no, we're not going to "fit." I submit my work to those journals with a long history and no people of color on the masthead, but just as often I submit to newer publications that specifically seek out and showcase work by writers of color, publications that have people of color on the masthead. So far, I feel like my work has consistently found a good home and ended up where it's supposed to be.
AJ: How would you define success?
DP: I like what poet Nayirrah Waheed suggested that we ask ourselves about our relationships:
how is your heart.
is your breath happy. here.
do you feel free.
I am succeeding when my heart is in good shape, when my breath is happy, when I feel free. Sometimes that's how I feel when I finish a story or publish one. Sometimes that's how I feel when I start one. It's how I feel when one of my children laughs or stands up for herself or does a hard thing she didn't think she could do.
1 reply on "A Conversation with Deesha Philyaw"
Deb Dawsonsays:
My book club just finished discussing your book and loved it. I learned today that Tessa Thompson is doing an adaptation. Congrats!
Amanda Jaros


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text:
Why does cancer exist at all? In search of an answer, science turns to elephants, mice and ancient life
ABC Health & Wellbeing
By Zoe Kean
Posted Sat 3 Aug 2019 at 8:00am Saturday 3 Aug 2019 at 8:00am Sat 3 Aug 2019 at 8:00am , updated Sat 3 Aug 2019 at 12:09pm Saturday 3 Aug 2019 at 12:09pm Sat 3 Aug 2019 at 12:09pm
Understanding cancer throughout evolutionary history has inspired new ways to treat it. (ABC Science: Rex Smeal )
abc.net.au/news/why-do-we-get-cancer-look-to-evolution/11279656
Cancer has touched most of our lives, taking down friends in their prime and plaguing the older years of loved ones. But — from a biological perspective — why?
Cancer has existed for hundreds of millions of years
Animals have evolved a variety of strategies to combat uncontrolled cell growth
Research into evolution and ecology has inspired novel cancer treatments
Cancer is responsible for a huge amount of animal death, so surely we should have evolved defences against its malignant spread.
Understanding how and why cancer evolved may help us tackle the big C in humans, according to cancer biologist Darren Saunders of the University of New South Wales.
"Evolution is at the heart of the way a tumour behaves," Dr Saunders said.
By understanding why cancers have evolved, scientists are uncovering new ways to treat them.
Applying evolutionary theory to cancer research has also inspired new ways of tackling treatment-resistant tumours.
In the beginning, there was cancer
To get to the heart of why we get cancer, we need to go back in time. Way back, more than 700 million years, to when life on Earth changed forever.
For the first few billion years of life on our planet, single-celled organisms had the globe to themselves.
But at some point in deep time, cells began to team up and multicellular life arose.
Multicellularity makes you vulnerable to cancer. It's likely that even trilobites living around 500 million years ago could have been susceptible. (Wikimedia Commons: Tim Evanson)
Being multicellular has many benefits, according to Dr Saunders. Cells cooperate and work toward a common goal.
This cooperation of trillions of cells allows us to have the incredibly complex structures we enjoy, like our brain.
But being multicellular comes at a cost. According to Dr Saunders, that cost is cancer.
Cancer occurs when cells start growing uncontrollably and lose their function. They become deadly when they spread and grow around the body, disrupting organ function.
Cancer is multicellularity gone wrong — tumour cells that have lost their ability to sense their context and cooperate with the cells around them.
"They start behaving like raucous toddlers and ignore the fact that there are other cells around trying to do their jobs," Dr Saunders said.
Cancer cells do not revert to acting as if they were a primitive single-cellular organism, Dr Saunders said, but they do take on some of the characteristics of a more primitive cell.
For example, cells in many parts of the body, such as the lining of the gut, are meant to stay put. But when they become cancerous they move and spread, much like a single-celled organism would.
Cancer cells divide indefinitely. The instructions on how to do so are hidden in our DNA. (Getty Images: Kateryna Kon/ Science Photo Library)
We also carry a legacy from our single-celled past in our DNA.
When early multicellular life evolved, some cells had to give up independent proliferation to focus on other tasks, said evolutionary ecologist and geneticist Beata Ujvari of Deakin University.
Within the genetic code of every multicellular organism is information on how to divide independently and infinitely, like a single-celled ancestor, Dr Ujvari said.
However, most of the time that information is suppressed, she said.
"Some of our cells are able to reignite that information and start proliferating, start dividing independently from the other cells."
Why has cancer persisted?
If cancer has been around since complex life began, why haven't we evolved to be resistant to it?
The answer, according to Dr Saunders, is that most cancers occur after reproductive age — once an organism has already passed its genetic material on.
This means that a vulnerability to cancer in later life can be passed down to the next generation.
"Cancer is hidden from evolution," he said.
But evolution hasn't been completely slack when it comes to cancer, according to Dr Ujvari. Our bodies have many strategies to try and prevent it.
When cancer occurs after an animal has reproduced, the predisposition to that cancer can be passed on. (Pixabay: Skeeze)
"All multicellular organisms have a gene called the TP53 tumour suppressor gene. It's one of the key genes which prevent the abnormal proliferation of cells," she said.
Some animals, such as whales and elephants, are particularly good at supressing cancers.
This is surprising, as being large-bodied, they have more cells. And the more cells an animal has, the more opportunities there are, statistically, for things to go wrong. But this is not the case.
So whales' and elephants' surprising resistance to cancer has led researchers to investigate whether they could hijack the cancer defences of these behemoths.
This is where the TP53 tumour suppressor gene comes in: these animals have more copies of the gene than most other multicellular life.
Elephants should be vulnerable to cancer because of their great size, but multiple copies of a cancer-suppressing gene help them avoid the disease. (Pixabay: jeanvdmeulen)
Researchers are developing ways to isolate the proteins that this gene produces in elephants and, eventually, use them to create cancer resistance in humans.
How culture may affect cancer
But, if cancer is lurking in the wings, waiting till our fertile years are over, why do so many women live cancer-free for decades after menopause?
Women are slightly more resistant to most cancer then men, which may be because long-lived women help descendants to survive. (Flickr: Matt Barber)
It's complicated, Dr Ujvari said, but it may in part be explained by the grandmother hypothesis.
"Older women have a really strong role in bringing up the grandkids. They are providing support and they are beneficial for the fitness of the next generation," she said.
"Therefore, selection has been pushing suppression [of cancer] beyond the reproductive period.
"Women in general, not for all cancers, but in general, are able to cope better with cancer then men and react better to treatment."
Senior whale and elephant females also have an important social role for the herd or pod, Dr Ujvari said. This may be one of the factors which contributes to their longevity and cancer resistance.
Treatment inspired by evolutionary ecology
Thinking of human bodies as ecosystems in which evolution is constantly occurring has changed the way some cancer researchers work, Dr Ujvari said.
Early research into prostate cancer that tested a regimen inspired by evolutionary ecology showed a significantly better response when compared to conventional treatment, she said.
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Dr Ujvari explains this with the metaphor of a forest, where out-of-control mice represent cancer cells in the body.
If owls enter this forest, only mice who avoid open spaces will survive to breed, leading (over generations) to a population of timid mice who can avoid owls.
Cancer treatment often has the same effect as these owls. It wipes out all but some of the cancer cells, where the ones left to multiply are the most resistant to the treatment.
But, if snakes are introduced to this forest, the shy mice lose their advantage. With two predators at work, the mice might be eradicated.
Studying predator-prey dynamics in the wild can inspire new types of cancer treatments. (Flickr: California Department of Fish and Wildlife)
The predator-prey dynamics of this forest is beginning to be applied to treating cancer, Dr Ujvari said.
A second treatment acts like the snake, attacking the remaining cells in a way they have not adapted to fight.
"For example, we can first use immunotherapy to attack the cancer. Once we suppress the tumours then we can introduce an additional therapy, chemotherapy, to eventually wipe out the malignant cells." Dr Ujvari said.
By understanding the deep roots of why cancer exists, scientists are uncovering new ways to treat it.
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Posted 3 Aug 2019 3 Aug 2019 Sat 3 Aug 2019 at 8:00am , updated 3 Aug 2019 3 Aug 2019 Sat 3 Aug 2019 at 12:09pm
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Minnesota Vikings wideout Stefon Diggs is OUT Sunday due to the groin injury that has hampered him the last few weeks. Cordarelle Patterson is expected to start in Diggs; place.
Analysis: Sizable loss here as Diggs is capable of big PPR numbers but the groin is getting worse and the Vikes want to get this thing taken care of. Patterson has low-end WR 3 value with many teams on a bye.


With a stay at Best Western Plus Aston Hall Hotel, you'll be centrally located in Sheffield, within a 15-minute drive of Magna Science Adventure Centre and Motorpoint Arena. This eco-friendly hotel is 9.3 mi (14.9 km) from Meadowhall Shopping Centre and 11.5 mi (18.5 km) from Sheffield Hallam University.
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