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Phnom Penh Post - Troops Trade Shots in Battambang
Troops Trade Shots in Battambang
Kevin Barrington | Publication date 12 February 1993 | 07:00 ICT
Fri, 12 February 1993
Kevin Barrington
O' SLEK TRAI, Battambang Province- The soldiers of the Cambodian People's Armed Forces'
15th regiment were lazing in the shade or lying in their hammocks at this small outpost
along Route 10 about 55kms west of Battambang when the UN military observers and
Malaysian troops arrived on Feb. 1.
The peacekeepers wanted to check the location of CPAF's frontline positions further
up the road, reportedly only 15kms from Pailin.
The UN's request was denied: the road was too dangerous, too many mines. This was
the same story they always hear, according to Captain Noor of the Malaysian battalion.
With both the NADK and CPAF denying freedom of movement to the UN, peacekeepers admit
to the irony of their role in this contentious area-it's their movements that are
being supervised and controlled by the warring factions, rather than the other way
around as mandated in the Paris Peace Accords.
They try to overcome this by picking up information from local villagers who do move
around the area, some of whom even commute from SOC areas to work in the gem mines
around Pailin.
But the UN admits their information is at times limited and assessments are often
made from the sounds of incoming and outgoing artillery. As if to prove the point,
two shells exploded in the distance. "That's the NADK," Captain Noor said.
Within minutes there was a loud retort, followed by three more. CPAF's eight artillery
were stationed just a couple of kilometers back towards Battambang and, from the
proximity of the outgoing fire, were presumed to be the culprits of this most recent
ceasefire violation.
The peacekeepers headed back east quickly and found CPAF soldiers priming shells
for a 130mm artillery piece.
A military observer informed the CPAF commander that he was committing a ceasefire
violation. The commander, looking bemused at the sight of the protesting peacekeeper,
nonchalantly replied that the Khmer Rouge had dropped two shells on CPAF positions
and that he had been ordered to fire six rounds back.
The UN, realizing that there was nothing they could do, decided to leave. But, eager
to display CPAF's commitment to peace to the journalists present, the commander decided
not to fire the other two rounds as ordered, unless CPAF was fired at again. So the
Khmer Rouge took only four rounds in return for their two. And the CPAF unit then
retreated back to their hammocks.
The 130mm field piece has a range of about 27 kms which could allow CPAF to shell
the Pailin area. But the gun was aimed at NADK troop positions to the north of the
faction's jungle headquarters. Apart from this brief artillery exchange, there was
little sign on Feb. 1 of the major offensive that was reported as ongoing by the
Malaysian Sector Commander Colonel Arshad dismissed the news reports. "There
was fighting along the entire front from Bavel south to Treng from the the first
week to the last week in December. There's nothing serious now, just artillery engagements,"
CPAF, however, had gained the upper hand and it looked like they were trying to consolidate
ground, he said. "There is a shift of CPAF units into NADK areas. I told them
that that is a ceasefire violation. NADK have the right to retaliate. That's the
problem, we are trying to avoid the involvement of ground forces," the colonel
SOC spokesman Khieu Kanharith recently threatened that unless the UN set up a buffer
zone or ensured that the Khmer Rouge observed a ceasefire CPAF forces would take
Pailin.
The question is whether they have the capacity to do so. "It's the same question
I ask, whether (CPAF has) the capacity to go for Pailin," Col Arshad stated.
But the sector commander thought CPAF could take the Khmer Rouge stronghold provided
they launched a concerted attack on three fronts, straight from Treng and also down
from Bavel and Kompong Pouy. "The 6th division couldn't do it alone. It would
have to be a concerted effort with the 4th division and the 196th regiment. But if
they want to do an all out offensive, a concerted one, I think they can do it,"
the colonel said.
What was stopping them, he thought, was not the might of the Khmer Rouge. "The
NADK were not able to achieve anything substantial in Bavel, I don't think they could
do it in other areas as well. They have the capacity for harassment, to infiltrate
and cause destruction. They're guerrillas," he said.
The political hurdles, he felt, were more formidable. "It's too big a risk for
(SOC). I think that they are concerned about the reaction from the international
community. It would be a ceasefire violation, an act of blatant aggression,"
Arshad stated.
In the UN sector commander's view, CPAF was pursuing a policy of "containment,"
they were seeking to encircle the Khmer Rouge zone in order to prevent large NADK
troop movements.
Other observers feel that the State of Cambodia is trying to deconstruct the grounds
for international opposition by appearing to make conciliatory moves such as the
call for a UN brokered buffer zone. As one UN official commented, this idea appears
to be a reasonable request but he stated that there was nothing new about it, it
had been under discussion for months and the NADK had not responded to it favorably.
But the official speculated there may be a deliberate reason why it is being raised
now. SOC, he thought, may be laying the ground for damage control. "If UNTAC
doesn't come through with this offer that sounds reasonable to some people, then
they'll say that once again that UNTAC isn't doing anything. And if they want to
(take Pailin) later on, it will be once again 'UNTAC is letting the murderous, illegal,
uncooperative DK do whatever they want, until we had to take measures of our own',"
the UN official stated.
One worrying aspect of the UN official's view is that it touches on the accusation
that UNTAC has done little or nothing to curb Khmer Rouge aggression. Unaware of
the intricacies of the peacekeepers' mandate, many Cambodians increasingly see UNTAC
as a force that just runs away when trouble starts. And as Cambodia watcher Raoul
Jennar notes, SOC sees a major political advantage, particularly now in the run up
to the election, in presenting itself as the only force capable of defending the
people and protecting them from the Khmer Rouge.
"Hun Sen is sending two clear signals, he's protecting the people and he's doing
the job UNTAC is not," Jennar stated, adding "we will see in the coming
days and weeks more activities that are linked to the electoral campaign."
In addition to any possible electoral gains from pressuring the Khmer Rouge , SOC
may see a further incentive in obstructing or cutting off Khmer Rouge finances gained
through gem concessions. Already, Thai miners in the Pailin area are getting alarmed
at the proximity of conflict. Even without an all out offensive, CPAF now appears
to be in a position where their long range artillery could make gem-mining a rather
hazardous occupation.
The Thai Foreign Ministry appears to have recognized this and has issued a call for
Thai workers to be ready to return home.
"Those who are working in Pailin should keep a close watch on the situation
and must quickly return to Thailand if the fighting intensifies," a ministry
spokesman told the Bangkok Post.
So there are a number of factors that SOC may see as stacked in its favour for an
offensive on Pailin. The only thing they say will prevent them from launching an
attack is the establishment of a buffer zone. But as the UN official suggested, this
appears to be an idea which is being exploited to give false credibility to their
desire for peace while SOC is well aware that the chances of implementing the proposal
are slim.
As for the concerns of the international community being a barrier, the Khmer Rouge
have repeatedly shown that these can be treated with contempt and dismissed with
impunity. SOC can't have ignored the lesson here.
Against this backdrop, perhaps the Battambang offensive that wasn't an offensive
may finally turn out to be one.


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Dallas Soccer News - TCU womens soccer, Kira Michelson-Bartlett, Elise Kensinger
TCU Women Sign Five for 2009
The TCU womens soccer program added five new players to the program last week on national signing day. The five will join a TCU program on the rise after a 14-4-2 season in 2008. The five signees are Shelby Miller of Tyler, Tx, Kira Michelson-Bartlett from Bonney Lake, Washington, Lauren Edwards from Coto de Caza, California, Elise Kensinger from Colorado Springs, Colorado and Leigha Leonard of Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
Miller is a midfielder from Dallas Texans and three time All East Texas selection. "Shelby is the type of person that you want in your program. She will give us good depth out wide and is really comfortable with the ball at her feet," said Abdalla.
Kira Michelson-Bartlett brings a wealth of club and national experience after competing for the Washington Premier FC club team. She led WPFC to the 2008 State Championship as well as the Far West Regional Championship Tournament. A Washington State ODProgram team member, Bartlett was also selected to the 2008 Region IV ODP Pool. "Kira is a player that has the potential to be a national team goalkeeper for us. She has the mentality and the intangibles that you need in a goalkeeper," said Abdalla. "We're very excited about adding Kira to our program."
Edwards played club soccer for the Southern California Blues and West Coast FC. With her club squad, the midfielder led the SC Blues to the 2008 Coast Soccer Premier League Championship. "Lauren is a player that is athletic and has all the tools to excel at this level. Her potential is tremendous and she is going to get better in our training environment," said Abdalla.
Elise Kensinger helped lead Cheyenne Mountain High School to a state championship in 2007 as well as the state semifinals in 2006 and 2008. Kensinger plays club soccer for the Real Colorado National, helping them win two Colorado State Cup Championships and appear in two Far West Regional Championships. "Elise has all the qualities to be a very good player in our system. She is going play out wide and as a defensive midfielder for us," said Abdalla.
Leonard play's club soccer for Real Colorado National, helping them win three state championships, while also competing in two Far West regionals. Finally, Leonard won a U23 National Championship in 2008, while playing for the Real Colorado U23 team.
"Leigha is a speedy, crafty player that likes to go at players. She will be dangerous and add a good dimension to our program," said Abdalla.
Label: TCU womens soccer, Kira Michelson-Bartlett, Elise Kensinger

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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AUSTERITY: Osborne - finally 'sorry'.
In a rare interview, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne apologises for Austerity, but says "Cameron made me do it".
Osborne looking shifty yesterday
George Osborne, the United Kingdom's former financial leader told RFN yesterday that his actions in 2010 to introduce what is now known as Austerity, was a major error of judgement – on the part of then Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Speaking from his luxurious office at the London HQ of the global hedge fund where he works for two days per month on a salary of £3,000,000 per year, Osborne seemed oblivious to the misery that his programme of cuts to public services and infrastructure had caused to millions of British citizens.
"Little people will always whinge about the lack of social housing, the wretched state of our schools, the potholes in our roads and that annoying old man on Strictly. That's just part of being British. However, they simply do not understand that we've all had to suffer to keep the UK ship afloat. I only managed ten days in Barbados at Christmas in 2011 instead of my usual three weeks, but I accepted the fact that we had to have less for the nation to move forwards," he said.
Pimento fork from Osborne family heirloom collection.
A bit rich
Osborne is now the editor of the London Evening Standard, an advertising leaflet that is apparently given away free at London transport hubs every weeknight. Along with that occupation and his work for the hedge fund as an 'introducer', he is a TV commentator, speech maker, man about town and a dab hand with a pimento fork. He also has a further nine jobs. Forbes magazine last year placed him 37th on the list of world's richest men.
Unmoved by RFN's suggestion that he was out of touch with ordinary working people, he snorted into his 75 years old malt whiskey and pointed out that as a child, he didn't even have his own racehorse until he was six. Retreating into a defensive posture on the subject of Austerity's effects, he said, "I never wanted it. It was all that Cameron's fault. Him and Clegg. They made me do it. If I didn't, they would have taken away my minister's car. And anyway, how was I supposed to know it would slice a trillion off GDP and put 12 million on the dole? Do you expect me to read all the numbers? I'm not a bloody accountant!"
When presented with the transcript of a dinner speech he gave in 2013 to The Society of Rich White Bastards, wherein he stated, '…the plebs are having a tough time, but your profits have never been better. This government knows what's important,' Osborne denied saying the words, calling the transcript 'fake news'. YouTube video of the event which supports the written account was also waved off as 'photoshopped gimcrackery'.
RFN asked the former Chancellor if he ever felt guilt for the harm he had caused. He paused, took off his solid platinum reading glasses and fixed us with a stare, "I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused… by David Cameron."
Clusterfuck responsibility
A spokesperson issued a reply to this statement on official letterhead from David Cameron's £2 million Swedish garden shed. It said: 'There is no truth in statements made by the ex-Chancellor that implicate the former Prime Minister in any threatening behaviour. The economic decisions made following the financial crisis were solely the responsibility of George Osborne. It was his clusterfuck and his clusterfuck alone.'
Rusty Stanley knife used to threaten ex-Chancellor
A private source informed RFN that in fact, Osborne had been threatened by Cameron and his 'Gang of Two' old Etonian comrades and that the threats had included 'debagging' and 'shaving his pubes with a rusty Stanley knife.' However, we were unable to gain a final response from Mr. Osborne before we were escorted from his place of work by burly security guards.
Austerity has been blamed for the premature death of more than 52 million Britons, that big cyclone which hit the Philippines, the melting of the ice caps and England's tragic performance in World Cup 2018.
George Osborne was recently rejected as a possible contestant for 'Get Me Out of Here' .


In this article, we listed top 15 sports bars in Cologne where everyone can chill and holler.
Cologne is home to most loyal fanbase of football game in the Bundesliga. They are known be the biggest cheerer with unparalleled passion for the game – which is why – plenty of sports bar have flourished in Cologne to accommodate loyal sports fan in the city.
If you think we've missed a sports bar in Cologne which should be on this list, contact us! Are you looking for nightlife guide in other cities? Check out more cities here.


Content truly is king. Not only is it the very thing that brings visitors to your site, but the quality of the content therein also serves as the modern benchmark for your site's search engine ranking. Content, though, takes plenty of your sweet time to create,and posting them through your blog network or your social media profiles can be a bit of a chore. Of course, anyone would certainly want to make this whole thing go a lot easier. DigitalSedayu has been recently working on a product with this in mind. Their latest product is set to launch soon, and it's called Melia AutoPoster.
This product is an autoposting software that is designed to drive traffic to your site with minimal effort in your end. What it does is that it practically syndicates your content automatically, sharing it in your pages across all of your social media platforms. It also offers a degree of customization in this regard, allowing you to engage with each of your audiences the way you see fit through custom captions and post schedules. This product will be available for $36.
Melia AutoPoster is going to launch on this very date, June 6, 2018, and it is set to go live at 10:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time. If you wish to learn more about this brand new product, we recommend that you bookmark this page and just return shortly after it has gone live. By then, expect this post to be updated with our complete, in-depth review.


With only 27 days until the primary election, and not receiving a sample midterm ballot in the mail, i gave our local office a call. I requested the election supervisor send me one.
After being put on hold i was asked my name and phone number. It was confirmed I was not sent a general midterm sample ballot. The friendly person i spoke with asked if someone could call me back. They were trying to find a way to send me a sample midterm ballot.
I received a phone call back rather quickly. The person said it was not possible to mail me a ballot, but i could pick one up at the local supervisor of elections office. A friend had also mentioned not receiving a sample midterm ballot in the mail earlier. We both had received a sample primary midterm ballot before.
After asking if my sample midterm ballot had been lost in the mail the person stated, Debora Clark did not mail midterm sample ballots out this year. Instead they inserted sample midterm ballots in the newspaper. I was shocked to say the least. Responding with 'who reads a newspaper these days' the person chuckled hearing my response.
So if anyone in Pinellas County wants a sample midterm ballot they are available at any election office. The candidates are also listed here on votepinellas.com website.
You'd think Deborah Clark would have a scanned pdf document available for download, that can be opened by smartphone or web-browser. Using 90's style text based individual web pages that a voter looking for info must navigate through don't make sense today.


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KIUC and AES to develop solar/hydro project
Hawaii's Kaua'i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) is joining forces with The AES Corporation (AES) for the development, construction, and operation of the West Kaua'i Energy Project (WKEP) – a solar pumped storage hydro project.
WKEP is an integrated renewable energy and irrigation project with several key components: renewable energy production via hydropower and solar photovoltaic generation, coupled with pumped hydropower and battery energy storage to shift most of the project's output into the nighttime peak. This project will offset the use of 8.5 million gallons of fossil fuels annually and supply irrigation water delivery to support diversified agriculture on state-owned lands. The project will also rehabilitate the existing Pu u Opae, Pu u Lua, and Mana Reservoirs and the related ditch system infrastructure. In addition, historic diversion structures in Koke?e will be modified to restore and increase flow to the Waimea River in compliance with the instream flow standard established by the Waimea Watershed Agreement and adopted by the Commission on Water Resources in April 2017.
"This project's integration of pump storage hydropower with large-scale solar power is unique in the energy industry. Working with AES helps keep this important project moving forward while minimizing risk to our cooperative. Upon completion, the facility will operate at a cost that will benefit KIUC's members for decades," said KIUC's President and Chief Executive Officer David Bissell. "AES is a trusted partner with the expertise and experience to bring this complex project to successful completion."
When operational, the solar array will contribute up to 35MW directly to the grid and will store up to 240MWh for dispatch during evening peak. The hydro resources are expected to produce 24MW on average daily, which includes 12 hours of storage to be used overnight.
KIUC has completed two solar-plus-storage renewable projects in partnership with AES: a 20MW facility in Lawa i and a 14MW facility at the Pacific Missile Range Facility. AES has more than 200MW of solar, solar + storage, and wind resources in operation or under development across Hawai'i.
"AES has been a long-time provider of low-cost electricity for Hawai'i and we are honored to continue our successful partnership with KIUC to support Kaua'i and the state in transitioning to 100% renewable energy," said Woody Rubin, AES Clean Energy Chief Development Officer. "We look forward to continuing to work with the Kaua'i community and stakeholders to develop this project responsibly, and to realize the agricultural, economic, and environmental benefits the project offers."
"WKEP will deliver many benefits to KIUC's members and the community-at-large," Bissell said. "To name just a few, the project will move Kaua?i beyond 80% renewable generation, stabilize and lower electricity rates over time for our members, open up dormant agricultural lands for production, assure adequate streamflow and increase public access and recreational opportunities associated with the Pu u Lua Reservoir." He added that rehabilitation of the reservoirs will also assist first responders in addressing wildfires.
The project is expected to meet roughly 25% of Kaua'i's electricity needs, and will also support the grid with long-duration storage capability. The pumped hydropower will provide twelve hours of storage daily, compared to the conventional four- or five-hour storage from existing solarbattery facilities. This long-duration storage capacity will allow the island to run on 100% renewable energy for prolonged periods without sunlight and will provide additional grid stability by balancing intermittent solar with firm hydropower.
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One Pan Pesto Chicken & Veggies is another new family favourite of ours, & the best bit about it for me was there was not a lot of washing up after as it's all cooked in one pan- Bonus!
This recipe is packed with so much goodness & tastes like heaven on a plate, I love Mediterranean style recipes & this one is not only healthy but also gluten free. It's a perfect meal for the hot days/evenings that are slowly coming- hurrah! It's light, packed with veggies, full of bright colours & seriously so delicious.
I mean look at all the colourful veggies that go into this dinner.
It's super quick & easy to make aswell, just like all my other recipes- don't get me wrong I love to cook, but who has the time to slave away in the kitchen when you have children & babies? Not me, thats for sure!
With just 5 minutes prep time & about 30 minutes cooking time, you can't go wrong with that, can you?
Heat a large frying pan/skillet to a medium-high heat, add the oil & let the oil get hot, add the chicken strips & season well with salt & pepper, add half of the chopped sun-dried tomatoes- cook all of this for about 10 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Once cooked, remove the chicken & sundried tomatoes to a separate plate. Leaving the oil in the pan.
Add the asparagus to the pan & season well with salt then add the onion, cook on a medium heat until the asparagus is cooked. Remove the asparagus & onion to a plate & place in the oven to keep warm.
Remove the asparagus & onion from the oven & serve all together.
I served mine with a side of Mediterranean style rice just to bulk it out abit, but it would also be enough on its own if your wanting a lighter dinner.


With time running out on a crucial hostage deadline, Italy's foreign minister will travel to the Mideast in an effort to free two female aid workers abducted in Iraq, government officials announced yesterday.
Hours after a militant group purportedly threatened to kill the hostages within 24 hours if Italian troops were not withdrawn from Iraq, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was preparing to travel to the Persian Gulf region to meet with local government and religious officials.
Last week, armed militants stormed the aid agency's Baghdad office and grabbed the two Italian women.


Blackhawk Supply is the expert when it comes to HVAC or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. If you need HVAC actuators and valves, the company can provide you with anything that you need. They have different premium styles that are from the most trusted manufacturers all around the world.
But before you start on your project, here are the most important things that you would need for your heating as well as your cooling systems. The ordering process with the company is very easy. Every equipment and supplies that you order comes with benefits that you can never find from other suppliers.
Blackhawk Supply has been providing world-class service for more than 30 years. Even considered as a small business, they are well known in the Midwest. They are a team of professionals who know what you need when it comes to HVAC controls industry. With their decades of experience, they have been through numerous technology innovations. They are the best in this field. This is why in early 2015, the company started as a supporting organization for Solidyne Controls LLC.
HVAC Actuators – What Are They?
The HVAC Actuators are the ones responsible for controlling accurate water flow for different applications. This acts as a point of control and mechanical systems. This will make sure that your HVAC system has the right control and it is accurate. The actuators will control the direct digital control or DC outputs in your HVAC.
The HVAC actuators are very important that is why at Blackhawk Supply, they have the highest standards from the best manufacturers for them to be able to provide safety and longevity of your actuator needs. They have a wide variety of choices with their HVAC actuator products.
How To Shop At Blackhawk Supply?
As mentioned above, ordering from Blackhawk Supply is very easy. When you are decided to buy your HVAC actuator, you can use the e-commerce store to find the best product from their catalog that would fit your needs. You can do your orders online. Just select the product of your choice, and once your order, the company has a support team who can fulfill your orders in no time. Fast and accurate.
Blackhawk Supply has over 3 decades of experience, making them the best source when it comes to your heating and cooling systems. They can provide you with the best actuator for your next project. You can get in touch with their experts when you need assistance since their e-commerce is open 24/7, so you can order your HVAC actuator needs, anytime, anywhere!
How drone photography business helps you to attain more money?


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Two White Guys...
& an Ornimental Asian
DMV's HOTTEST COVER BAND TRIO
Call/Text (mobile only)
CharlieThomas
Charlie in 'Us!' 2016
Opening for Face Dancer at Club 66 in Edgewood, MD
Charlie Acoustic 2016
Seibel's Restaurant in Burtonsville, MD
Charlie in Face Dancer 2017
Club 66 at Edgewood, MD
Charlie Thomas has been a career guitarist and vocalist since the age of 19. In 2017, he will be inducted into the Maryland Entertainment Hall of Fame.
In college, he studied musical arranging with Bill Potts, the world renowned "Porgy and Bess" arranger and pianist. In the 80s, Charlie performed at a jazz studies clinic in DC with trumpet legend Clark Terry. Charlie has also greatly enjoyed his expertise at rock clinics at local high schools in MD, DC and VA. His recording credits are long and distinguished and he is a first call session player at many of the studios in DC metro area. At Omega Studios in Rockville, MD, Charlie is part of the Beta Test Recording Ensemble, which assembles annually to record big band jazz arrangements written by some of the country's finest Jazz composers.
Charlie performs frequently with "Swing Machine," a 17-piece jazz band comprised of current and former members of the military's premier jazz ensembles (i.e., "Airmen of Note," "US Army Blues," "Commodores"). Charlie has been a featured performer on numerous records within DC's Ethiopian community. He has performed for every president since Ronald Reagan at many private gatherings as well as the inaugural balls. He also was a featured combo guitarist at the Vice Presidential mansion. Charlie's credits include tours with the USO "Miss USA" shows visiting Latin America and the Caribbean backing several performers.
Charlie is a founding member of the variety band "Street Life" performing hundreds of society and corporate events, in addition to weddings and public clubs. He continues his career playing guitar and singing at private events and public bars in the band "Chuggalug," covering a huge variety of mainstream music to include Jimi Hendrix, Journey, Led Zeppein, Elvis, Joe Satriani, Foo Fighters, James Taylor, Lady Gaga, Pink, Katy Perry, jazz standards, etc. Charlie's newest band "Us!" performs original pop/rock music, and released a 14-song CD in 2015. In 2016, Charlie joined Capitol/EMI recording artist "Face Dancer" as guitarist and vocalist. Charlie is the humble epitome of what it means to dedicate your life to music as a full-time career musician.
Copyright 2021 Chuggalug
Mailing address: Chuggalug, PO Box 507, Rockville, MD 20848
chuggalugband@cs.com
PayPal: @chuggalugband ("sending to a friend" only)
Venmo: @chuggalugband
Zelle:
Checks payable to "Chuggalug"


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Cary Edwards – Heart Runner
Written by Kelly Joy
"I never regret a run. Every run is a positive. It is a fresh start to my day"
"Go big or go home, moderation does not work for me."
Cary Edwards – 11.09.2020
Cary Edwards and I chat over the phone. To be honest we chat on the phone most days. She is my running sister, my confidant, my therapist and she will laugh at my jokes. Cary Edwards is a ball of energy, with a smile that is infectious, a ballsy laugh that can warm the coldest of souls and she will always make a friend at every race she runs. With her dark hair swinging, fierce determination plastered across her face and her decisive, practiced stride, she truly is a running force and man that girl can bust out speed when she wants to.
At 46 years old (she does not look it) Cary has achieved a lot, run a lot, and cycled a fair amount. Cary has run track (she was a sprinter), X country, marathons, she has played competitive tennis, long jumped for the high school team, completed Iron mans, can ski, water ski and in 8th grade competed in the Junior Olympics; yes people, the Olympics. She ran in the 4×100 relay. Phew, that woman has done A LOT.
As a person, Cary is open, raw, bright, and intelligent. Everything she does is with an honesty and gusto that is refreshing in an age where people like to hide in groups and behind social media. Basically, if Cary Edwards likes you, then you have a loyal friend for life.
Born in Austin, TX, a single child residing in a small, countryside town, Cary's sole companion was her pet goat (yes I did say goat) called Pinto Bean, who she swears would bleat her name, "CAAARRRYYYYYYY" (now read that in the voice of a goat, I amused myself, it sounds pretty good, give it a try). Pinto Bean liked to run. Cary goes on to explain that to catch the bus to school it was 2 miles to the Highway and then 2 miles back. So, to save time Cary would run, Pinto Bean would run with her. She would like to run fast, Pinto Bean liked to run fast. They would run as fast as they could, and Cary's running days began at the ripe old age of 12.
As an aside, the "running to the road" and the "goat running" remind me of two books, one I have read and the other to read.
Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed, by Matthew Futterman
Bill Larsen, the main protagonist of the book learnt to run by running on his farm and to catch the school bus at the road. – Just like Cary Edwards.
Also, Pinto Bean, the goat that loved to run reminds me of a book by Christopher McDougall (of Born to Run fame) called Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero. Yes, I know it is a donkey, but a donkey that runs with people, just like sweet Pinto, the perfect companion to a probably sometimes lonely child, living in the middle of nowhere.
Both books are available on Amazon.
But I digress. On with young Cary. Now she is running, and she hits the X – Country team in middle school, track and field and is the 3rd leg of the 4 x 100 team that gets to the Junior Olympics in California. Sprints are her love and forte and as she gets to high school, those quick legs are eating up the 100m/200m/400m and 4 x 400m relay distances. That explosive power is also making its way to propel Cary in the long jump.
"I was always very loud on the track, I have always landed on my heels and even in my spikes you could hear me coming, I sounded like an elephant." Cary chuckles. "I loved the rush of sprinting, I still do. I have always been competitive and if someone is in front of me, I will chase them down."
Life moves on and Cary is still running. In college, where she is studying biology and nursing (Cary is a nurse practitioner by trade), she takes a job as a lifeguard at a country club and she starts to swim recreationally. Which also keeps her safe when she fell in love with water skiing. Not something you would imagine Cary doing, which reveals her sense of adventure and mental strength to push boundaries.
After running her first marathon in Austin, in 1996 at the age of 23, with a drive to achieve, the natural progression seems to be the Triathlon. But what about the bike? AHA but this gritty, I will have a go human, is also mountain biking, thanks to an old boyfriend. Although, she had a habit of flying off her bike.
It is around 1998, Cary is in her mid-20s, she enters her first Tri, Olympic distance, to help a friend in Denver, CO. In her own words "WORST RACE EVER!?!?" On her old mountain bike, with no bike training, no wetsuit; the water was freezing, no bike shorts or water bottle cage, I mean what could go wrong? She finishes the race, thirsty, sore, and freezing and that was it for the triathlon until she met her current coach, Aubrey Aldy from All Day Endurance. Where she went on to do a ½ Ironman in 2018, driven by a back injury and she needed to do cross training.
I could sit here and run through everything Cary has run, jumped, swam, and biked. I mean she has run around eight marathons, run 5Ks, 10Ks, ½ marathons, a fifty miler, she has run Boston, which is no mean feat. But WHY does she do this and after 34 years, why does she keep striving to achieve. What is running to her?
The thing that has always struck me about Cary is her heart and her capacity to care for others, I mean she is a Nurse Practitioner after all. Her ability to run in any situation and still manage to make time for others. For example, in her fastest marathon (which was a Boston Qualifier) she stopped to give a lady who was struggling some of her base salt; can you imagine what her time would have been? One year in the Naples half marathon, she assisted in helping a man who was having a heart attack; he survived. Whenever she runs, she comes back with a friend, but as much as she gives herself to others, what does running give back to her?
"I run for myself, it helps with my anxiety, it creates time for ME. It gives me a forum to feel balanced, physically, and mentally. It is my natural Prozac. It puts my problems into digestible bites and at the end of every run, it is like being given a fresh start to my day. I love the process, I love training, the accountability it gives, the sociability of the run". The "process" of the run, over the years has guided Cary to figure out who she is. Morphing from the little girl running to the highway, with a goat by her side, to the woman who continues to drive and strive forward and be the best she can. Like us all, Cary feels unsettled if she has no race to train for. It helps us to dial in our training and to justify having a coach. Cary runs with Aubrey Aldy and he is an especially important element in her life. He is a person she can check in with and be accountable to. He keeps her injury free. "Aubrey helps to keep me running as I grow older and my family likes it because happy momma, happy family".
Cary's 5-year plan in running and life.
When a person has already accomplished so much, what is next? As we get older, we do slow down, we can get injured and we have lived many dreams. But it is OK to have new ones, to reach for new goals and to power onward and upward. So, what is next for Cary? She reveals that she would still love to try and PR in the marathon, ½ marathon and maybe a 10K. Additionally, run more interesting races like the Leadville Marathon, to experience something challenging and new. "Life" she says, "is best lived one race at a time". Maybe she will go back and do another triathlon, as she did love that process, take up trail running, maybe biking. Who knows?
In life she is studying and working on opening her own functional nutrition practice, maybe move to a cooler climate, like Montana, Idaho, or Colorado.
Functional Nutrition, my interest piqued. We went on to discuss this further. Cary has very recently set up her own functional nutrition practice, called "Life Change Healing". A practice of medicine that believes no life change is too small and gets to the root cause of a medical concern.
Cary goes on to expand that a lot of clients are looking for a quick fix without taking into consideration what this could mean to their future health, and that is where "life Change Healing" comes in to play. Cary wants to fill in "that" gap for clients when they feel they are not being helped or heard.
How and what can functional nutrition treat?
How – "Clients and I can work together to determine how deeply we go, and how much time we spend working on optimal health". I consider each individual's uniqueness, and I focus on finding root causes and solutions towards improvement. I can also collaborate with a client's traditional medicine team to achieve the best possible outcome. Acting as a bridge when they may not have time or resources. I have learnt that food and lifestyle are the most powerful medications available, this is not disregarding all medications, it is just people are over medicating these days".
What – "I can tackle just about any ailment from a functional medicine perspective. I particularly love working on digestive issues, because to me this is where most medical ailments begin. In addition to endocrine disorders (Hormones) – for example, Hashimotos Thyroiditis, adrenal fatigue or sleep disorders. I also work on autoimmune disorders like Crohn's and Rheumatoid Arthritis. Then there are skin conditions, asthma, allergies, food sensitivities, memory disorders, mental health concerns, weight control issues and just simply wanting to feel your best, these are all areas I can address".
Where – "I am currently practicing functional nutrition in my home, through telemedicine, sometimes in my friend's office, sometimes in the park, and I have even met a client for walk, where we discussed treatment strategies. I will also communicate certain aspects via email or even text or phone calls. Being flexible is important to me, because I know there are a lot of barriers to optimal health.
What I do know about Cary is, whatever she does, it will be pursued with her heart open, ready to receive what nature throws at her. She will strive to do better, be better, love harder, work harder, run strong, run with abandonment, run as fast as she can. Just like the little girl and her pet goat Pinto Bean, with the wind in her hair and letting the freedom her legs provide wash over her and drive her demons into the dust. Keep running, keep loving and keep caring, as Cary, after all, is her name.
Cary Stats
Favorite race – Leadville Marathon – why? Because it was beautiful, scenic, new, and different. No pressure to perform, as all ran at altitude.
Fueling – Honey Stingers, Tailwind, "However I am still searching for the perfect nutrition".
Favorite Sneaker – A combination of the New Balance 1080 – Fresh foam, mixed with the Altra Torin 4.0 plush.
Runner Quirks – I get up 3 hours before a race to have my coffee and pre – race meal and I always pray.
Runner Superstitions – I visualize an ugly thing on my shoulder (this is my negative thought) and I flick it away. I also like to Sharpie 413 on my arm to remind myself I am not fragile. 4:13, Philippians "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me."
Inspiration – "My Kids, if they can get up to swim in cold water super early every day, I can get my ass out of bed to run. Also, my friend Bob, who has been through so much and still gets out to run and that helps me to want to keep going".
Things people do not know about me – Cary can speak Spanish. She was taught some Spanish by her Grandmother who helped raise her, which she leant from her Mexican husband, Cary's grandfather, whom sadly she never met. I am her friend and I never knew that.
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Q: RelativeLayout.setLayoutParams causes viewholder pattern to crash Depending on the screen size I would like to dynamically set the height of a RelativeLayout. Another method would be to use setMinimumHeight() but I still wonder why this is crashing.
    public View getView(final int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
        ViewHolder vh;
        if (convertView == null) {
            convertView = mInflater.inflate(R.layout.question_row_inflater, null);
            vh = new ViewHolder(); // will store references to views
            vh.answerBlock = (RelativeLayout) convertView.findViewById(R.id.answerBlock);
            convertView.setTag(vh); // store vh away
        } else {
            vh = (ViewHolder) convertView.getTag();
        }

        int height = mRes.getDisplayMetrics().heightPixels;
        // workaround for small screens
        if (height < 490)
            RelativeLayout.LayoutParams par = new RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, 30);
            vh.answerBlock.setLayoutParams(par);
        }
        return convertView;
    }

This is the classcast exception:

    <RelativeLayout
        android:id="@+id/answerBlock"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="@dimen/list_height"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:clickable="true"
        android:paddingLeft="16dp" >

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/answerText"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
    </RelativeLayout>

A: You are getting the class cast exception because you are calling vh.answerBlock.setLayoutParams(params); This sets the parameters on the parent ViewGroup (see the docs).
So I can surmise that the answerBlock RelativeLayout is a child of a LinearLayout (also the stacktrace is telltale).
The solution (to the exception at least) is to use the LayoutParams that match the view's parent.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Oct 17, 2020 - Health
N.Y. deploys "micro-cluster strategy" to target coronavirus "block by block"
New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at a news conference. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday announced the state will deploy a "micro-cluster strategy" to target the coronavirus "block-by-block" instead of at the statewide or regional levels.
Why it matters: Cuomo said that while New York's infection rate has remained relatively low — at an average of 1.1% average as of Saturday — "the fall is a new phase."
"When you get to the fall, schools are reopening, kids are coming back to college, it's colder outside, people are coming indoors, you can't do the indoor dining as much. The fall itself has an effect on the spread of the virus," the governor added at a news conference.
There has also been a surge in cases in areas of New York City, including parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
Details: "We are now going to analyze it block-by-block," Cuomo said.
"We actually have data so specific that we can't show it because it could violate privacy conditions, but we know exactly where the cases are coming from."
Cuomo said said micro-clusters would be labeled "red zones," with "orange" and "yellow" zones in surrounding areas.
Based on the zones, officials will implement targeted testing, mitigation efforts and enforcement for each locality.
Cuomo also said that beginning Oct. 23, movie theaters outside New York City could reopen at 25% capacity with up to 50 people per screen.
The bottom line: "A cluster signifies a lack of compliance, common sense. The only answer is more enforcement," Cuomo said.
"If people are following the rules, the virus does not spread," he added.
Watch to watch: Axios' Bryan Walsh notes that "a targeted lockdown is inevitably going to appear to single out specific groups of people, which risks creating a backlash that can undermine public support for long-term control measures."
That's already been the case in New York City, where Orthodox Jewish communities have taken to the street to protest targeted lockdowns in their Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Go deeper: Targeted lockdowns are the new way to control the coronavirus
Orion Rummler
Jan 24, 2021 - Health
CDC director: "I can't tell you how much vaccine we have"
CDC director Rochelle Walensky, newly appointed by President Biden, told Fox News on Sunday that the administration does not know the current number of COVID vaccines available for distribution — due to a lack of data gathered by the agency under Trump — making it more difficult for states to accurately plan.
Why it matters: Hospitals in states including Texas, South Carolina, New York, and California have canceled thousands of appointments due to running low on vaccines or nearly depleting their share, the New York Times reports.
Rebecca Falconer
Updated Jan 25, 2021 - World
Mexican President López Obrador tests positive for coronavirus
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a press conference at National Palace in Mexico City, on Wednesday. Photo: Ismael Rosas/Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Sunday evening that he's tested positive for COVID-19.
Driving the news: López Obrador tweeted that he has mild symptoms and is receiving medical treatment. "As always, I am optimistic," he added. "We will all move forward."
Felix Salmon, Stef W. Kight
Jan 25, 2021 - Politics & Policy
Coronavirus has inflamed global inequality
History will likely remember the pandemic as the "first time since records began that inequality rose in virtually every country on earth at the same time." That's the verdict from Oxfam's inequality report covering the year 2020 — a terrible year that hit the poorest, hardest across the planet.
Why it matters: The world's poorest were already in a race against time, facing down an existential risk in the form of global climate change. The coronavirus pandemic could set global poverty reduction back as much as a full decade, according to the World Bank.


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Tag Archives: marito
Ghost Marriages
China, Shanxi province, on the nothern part of the Republic.
At the beginningof 2016, the Hongtong County police chief gave the warning: during the three previous years, at least a dozen thefts of corpses were recorded each year. All the exhumed and smuggled bodies were of young women, and the trend is incresing so fast that many families now prefer to bury their female relatives near their homes, rather than in secluded areas. Others resort to concrete graves, install surveillance cameras, hire security guards or plant gratings around the burial site, just like in body snatchers England. It looks like in some parts of the province, the body of a young dead girl is never safe enough.
What's behind this unsettling trend?
These episodes of body theft are connected to a very ancient tradition which was thought to be long abandoned: the custom of "netherworld marriages".
The death of a young unmarried male is considered bad lack for the entire family: the boy's soul cannot find rest, without a mate.
For this reasons his relatives, in the effort of finding a spouse for the deceased man, turn to matchmakers who can put them in contact with other families having recently suffered the lost of a daughter. A marriage is therefore arranged for the two dead young persons, following a specific ritual, until they are finally buried together, much to the relief of both families.
This kind of marriages seem to date back to the Qin dinasty (221-206 a.C.) even if the main sources attest a more widespread existence of the practice starting from the Han dinasty (206 a.C.-220 d.C.).
The problem is that as the traffic becomes more and more profitable, some of these matchmakers have no qualms about exhuming the precious corpses in secret: to sell the bodies, they sometimes pretend to be relatives of the dead girl, but in other cases they simply find grieving families who are ready to pay in order to find a bride for their departed loved one, and willing to turn a blind eye on the cadaver's provenance.
Until some years ago, "ghost marriages" were performed by using symbolic bamboo figurines, dressed in traditional clothes; today weath is increasing, and as much as 100,000 yan (around $15,000) can be spent on the fresh body of a young girl. Even older human remains, put back together with wire, can be worth up to $800. The village elders, after all, are the ones who warn new generations: to cast away bad luck nothing beats an authentic corpse.
Although the practice has been outlawed in 2006, the business is so lucrative that the number of arrests keep increasing, and at least two cases of murder have been reported in the news where the victim was killed in order to sell her body.
If at first glance this tradition may seem macabre or senseless, let us consider its possible motivations.
In the province where these episodes are more frequent, a large number of young men work in coal mines, where fatal accidents are sadly common. The majority of these boys are the sole children of their parents, because of the Chinese one-child policy, effective until 2013.
So, apart from reasons dictated by superstition, there is also an important psychological element: imagine the relief if, in the process of elaborating grief, you could still do something to make your dearly departed happy. Here's how a "ghost wedding" acts as a compensation for the loss of a loved boy, who maybe died while working to support his family.
Marriages between two deceased persons, or between a living person and a dead one, are not even unique to China, for that matter. In France posthumous marriages (which usually take place when a woman prematurely loses her fiancé) are regularly requested to the President of the Republic, who has the power of issuing the authorization. The purpose is to acknowledge children who were conceived before the premature death, but there may also been purely emotional motivations. In fact there's a relatively long list of countries that allowed for marriages in which one or both the newlywed were no longer alive.
In closing, here is a little curiosity.
In the well-known Tim Burton film Corpse Bride (2005), inspired by a centuries-old folk tale (the short story Die Todtenbraut by F. A. Schulze, found within the Fantasmagoriana anthology, is a Romantic take on that tale), the main character puts a ring on a small branch, unaware that this light-hearted move is actually sanctioning his netherworld engagement.
Quite similar to that harmless-looking twig is a "trick" used in Taiwan when a young girl dies unmarried: her relatives leave out on the streets a small red package containing Hell money, a lock of hair or some nails from the dead woman. The first man to pick up the package has to marry the deceased girl, if he wants to avoid misfortune. He will be allowed to marry again, but he shall forever revere the "ghost" bride as his first, real spouse.
These rituals become necessary when an individual enters the afterlife prematurely, without undergoing a fundamental rite of passage like marriage (therefore without completing the "correct" course of his life). As is often the case with funeral customs, the practice has a beneficial and apotropaic function both for the social group of the living and for the deceased himself.
On one hand all the bad luck that could harm the relatives of the dead is turned away; a bond is formed between two different families, which could not have existed without a proper marriage; and, at the same time, everybody can rest assured that the soul will leave this world at peace, and will not depart for the last voyage bearing the mark of an unfortunate loneliness.
11 Comments Posted in MondoMacabro Tagged aldilà, anima, anthropology, antropologia, bereavement, body, bride, burial, cadaver, cadavere, china, chinese, cina, cinese, corpo, corspe, death, elaboration, elaborazione, famiglia, family, fanciulla, fantasma, france, francia, furto, genitori, ghost, girl, grave, grief, groom, husband, lutto, marito, marriage, marry, matrimonio, morte, netherworld, nozze, parenti, parents, posthumous, postumo, ragazza, relatives, salma, sepoltura, shanxi, snatcher, soul, spirit, spirito, sposa, sposare, sposo, spouse, taiwan, theft, tim burton, tomb, tomba, trafugato, underworld, young
Grief and sacrifice: abscence carved into flesh
Some of you probably know about sati (or suttee), the hindu self-immolation ritual according to which a widow was expected to climb on her husband's funeral pire to be burned alive, along his body. Officially forbidden by the English in 1829, the practice declined over time – not without some opposition on behalf of traditionalists – until it almost entirely disappeared: if in the XIX Century around 600 sati took place every year, from 1943 to 1987 the registered cases were around 30, and only 4 in the new millennium.
The sacrifice of widows was not limited to India, in fact it appeared in several cultures. In his Histories, Herodotus wrote about a people living "above the Krestons", in Thracia: within this community, the favorite among the widows of a great man was killed over his grave and buried with him, while the other wives considered it a disgrace to keep on living.
Among the Heruli in III Century a.D., it was common for widows to hang themselves over their husband's burial ground; in the XVIII Century, on the other side of the ocean, when a Natchez chief died his wives (often accompanied by other volunteers) followed him by committing ritual suicide. At times, some mothers from the tribe would even sacrify their own newborn children, in an act of love so strong that women who performed it were treated with great honor and entered a higher social level. Similar funeral practices existed in other native peoples along the southern part of Mississippi River.
Also in the Pacific area, for instance in Fiji, there were traditions involving the strangling of the village chief's widows. Usually the suffocation was carried out or supervised by the widow's brother (see Fison's Notes on Fijian Burial Customs, 1881).
The idea underlying these practices was that it was deemed unconcievable (or improper) for a woman to remain alive after her husband's death. In more general terms, a leader's death opened an unbridgeable void, so much so that the survivors' social existence was erased.
If female self-immolation (and, less commonly, male self-immolation) can be found in various time periods and latitudes, the Dani tribe developed a one-of-a-kind funeral sacrifice.
The Dani people live mainly in Baliem Valley, the indonesian side of New Guinea's central highlands. They are now a well-known tribe, on the account of increased tourism in the area; the warriors dress with symbolic accessories – a feather headgear, fur bands, a sort of tie made of seashells specifying the rank of the man wearing it, a pig's fangs fixed to the nostrils and the koteka, a penis sheath made from a dried-out gourd.
The women's clothing is simpler, consisting in a skirt made from bark and grass, and a headgear made from multicolored bird feathers.
Among this people, according to tradition when a man died the women who were close or related to him (wife, mother, sister, etc.) used to amputate one or more parts of their fingers. Today this custom no longer exists, but the elder women in the tribe still carry the marks of the ritual.
Allow me now a brief digression.
In Dino Buzzati's wonderful tale The Humps in the Garden (published in 1968 in La boutique del mistero), the protagonist loves to take long, late-night walks in the park surrounding his home. One evening, while he's promenading, he stumbles on a sort of hump in the ground, and the following day he asks his gardener about it:
«What did you do in the garden, on the lawn there is some kind of hump, yesterday evening I stumbled on it and this morning as soon as the sun came up I saw it. It is a narrow and oblong hump, it looks like a burial mound. Will you tell me what's happening?». «It doesn't look like it, sir» said Giacomo the gardener «it really is a burial mound. Because yesterday, sir, a friend of yours has died».
It was true. My dearest friend Sandro Bartoli, who was twenty-one-years-old, had died in the mountains with his skull smashed.
«Are you trying to tell me» I said to Giacomo «that my friend was buried here?»
«No» he replied «your friend, Mr. Bartoli […] was buried at the foot of that mountain, as you know. But here in the garden the lawn bulged all by itself, because this is your garden, sir, and everything that happens in your life, sir, will have its consequences right here.»
Years go by, and the narrator's park slowly fills with new humps, as his loved ones die one by one. Some bulges are small, other enormous; the garden, once flat and regular, at this point is completely packed with mounds appearing with every new loss.
Because this problem of humps in the garden happens to everybody, and every one of us […] owns a garden where these painful phenomenons take place. It is an ancient story repeating itself since the beginning of centuries, it will repeat for you too. And this isn't a literary joke, this is how things really are.
In the tale's final part, we discover that the protagonist is not a fictional character at all, and that the sorrowful metaphore refers to the author himself:
Naturally I also wonder if in someone else's garden will one day appear a hump that has to do with me, maybe a second or third-rate little hump, just a slight pleating in the lawn, not even noticeable in broad daylight, when the sun shines from up high. However, one person in the world, at least one, will stumble on it. Perhaps, on the account of my bad temper, I will die alone like a dog at the end of an old and deserted hallway. And yet one person that evening will stub his toe on the little hump in the garden, and will stumble on it the following night too, and each time that person will think with a shred of regret, forgive my hopefulness, of a certain fellow whose name was Dino Buzzati.
Now, if I may risk the analogy, the humps in Buzzati's garden seem to be poetically akin to the Dani women's missing fingers. The latter represent a touching and powerful image: each time a loved one leaves us, "we lose a bit of ourselves", as is often said – but here the loss is not just emotional, the absence becomes concrete. On the account of this physical expression of grief, fingerless women undoubtedly have a hard time carrying out daily tasks; and further bereavements lead to the impossibility of using their hands. The oldest women, who have seen many loved ones die, need help and assistance from the community. Death becomes a wound which makes them disabled for life.
Of course, at least from a contemporary perspective, there is still a huge stumbling block: the metaphore would be perfect if such a tradition concerned also men, who instead were never expected to carry out such extreme sacrifices. It's the female body which, more or less voluntarily, bears this visible evidence of pain.
But from a more universal perspective, it seems to me that these symbols hold the certainty that we all will leave a mark, a hump in someone else's garden. The pride with which Dani women show their mutilated hands suggests that one person's passage inevitably changes the reality around him, conditioning the community, even "sculpting" the flesh of his kindreds. The creation of meaning in displays of grief also lies in reciprocity – the very tradition that makes me weep for the dead today, will ensure that tomorrow others will lament my own departure.
Regardless of the historical variety of ways in which this concept was put forth, in this awareness of reciprocity human beings seem to have always found some comfort, because it eventually means that we can never be alone.
15 Comments Posted in Books & Literature, MondoMacabro Tagged america, amputazione, auto, crestoni, dani, dino buzzati, dita, dolore, donna, elaborazione, erodoto, eruli, femminile, fiji, funebre, fuoco, giardino, gobbe, immolazione, india, indiani, indonesia, koteka, lutto, marito, maschile, moglie, morte, natchez, nativi, nuova guinea, papua, pira, pratica, rito, rituale, sacrificio, sati, suttee, tradizione, tribù
Jan Švankmajer Wednesday January 20th, 2016
Dia de los Natitas Saturday July 14th, 2012
Un'intervista a Bizzarro Bazar Saturday November 29th, 2014


My husband was admitted to the hospital in November 2010 with acute liver failure caused by alcohol use disorder. Mark's doctor said he needed a liver transplant, but that they "wouldn't even look at him" until he was alcohol-free for six months. His doctors also refused to assess me as a living donor. "Alcoholics just drink again and waste the organ," I was told. At the time, I believed it.
Mark lived for just 16 days more.
Two years after his death, I stumbled across legislation that brought me to a shocking realization — Mark had the same right as any other person with liver failure to be put on the transplant waitlist without a six-month delay.
My first goal was to find out how many people returned to drinking after a liver transplant. I was shocked to discover that most of them do not drink post-transplant. I was also shocked to learn that the liver transplant community has been aware of this fact from the very beginning.
Mainstream research continuously concurred with Starzl's position. I reviewed dozens of research papers that explored outcomes after liver transplant among patients with alcohol use disorder. They do as well as, or better than, those with other types of liver disease. Depending on the study, their survival rate at five years is between 78 percent and 89 percent, well above the 50 percent likelihood of survival required by liver transplant centers. The majority of patients who return to drinking consume small amounts now and then with no effect on the transplanted liver. And the six-month wait does not improve survival or predict return to drinking. These results were confirmed by a 2008 University of Pittsburgh meta-analysis of 22 years of research in more than 3,600 patients.
A 2011 French study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported positive transplant results among patients with alcoholic hepatitis, triggering several international centers to review the six-month wait and begin trials of their own. Dr. Robert Brown at Columbia University is among those doctors now speaking out against the six-month wait.
How could a policy with such deadly consequences, especially one not backed by medical research, be put in place at transplant centers around the world? The six-month wait is a standard policy in all Canadian transplant centers. The United Network for Organ Sharing, America's organ transplant network, leaves waitlist criteria to individual hospitals, though most employ a six-month sobriety test for people with alcohol use disorder. Some states, such as Ohio, dictate their own waitlist criteria, which includes three to six months of being alcohol-free and participation in a recovery program. While the state policy has some provision for patients who cannot survive the wait, they are still subjected to a complex matrix of assessing their risk of return to drinking, recording times they have not remained alcohol free, and the quality of their social support system. Insurance companies often dictate a pretransplant alcohol-free wait as long as one or two years as a condition for payment.
In too many cases, a delay of any length results in unnecessary and preventable death.
This discriminatory policy is based primarily on a moral judgment of patients with alcohol use disorder, supported by an acute fear that public perception of the disorder will harm donation rates. This fear has been buoyed by occasional public outcries over celebrities such as Larry Hagman or Mickey Mantle receiving liver transplants in spite of their "self-inflicted disease" before patients who had been waiting longer for them. However, even public reticence to donate livers has never been objectively analyzed.
For four years, I was driven by blind determination, realizing that the imposition of a six-month delay for a liver transplant had ended my husband's life despite a high likelihood that he would have survived for years with a new liver and little chance that he would return to drinking.
On Oct. 27, 2015, without the assistance of a lawyer, I filed a constitutional challenge against the six-month wait in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Seven months later, the respondents — the hospital that denied my husband a liver transplant, the provincial government, and Ontario's organ network — asked me to stay my challenge and let them embark on a six-month review, which they felt they would have to do if I were successful in court. I agreed to let them proceed.
After months of negotiations and delays, we agreed to an out-of-court solution, which I recently announced: a three-year pilot program to launch in 2018 that would assess patients with alcohol-associated liver disease for liver transplants without the six-month wait. Patients accepted onto the recipient list will enter a program of care that includes a transplant surgeon, a liver specialist, an addiction psychiatrist, a nurse practitioner, and a social worker.
A three-year trial is not the perfect solution to my original quest to end the six-month wait. I am confident, however, that the results from the Ontario pilot program will mirror historical transplant success rates among individuals with alcohol use disorder, ensuring that the policy change becomes permanent.
I believe I was successful for many reasons. First, although I did this myself without representation by a lawyer, the law was on my side. The six-month wait is unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Second, I did my homework, revealing that the policy is not supported by medical research or science. Third, and most important to me, was having the right person in my court. My dream expert witness was Dr. John Fung, a world-renowned transplant surgeon from the University of Chicago. I cried when he offered to help. I strongly believe that his affidavit played a major role in getting the respondents to the negotiating table.
I am incredibly proud that Ontario will be the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce such a dramatic policy change. The six-month wait is still imposed on patients with alcohol use disorder at most U.S. liver transplant centers, though since my quest began in 2012, several centers in the U.S. and Europe have implemented a more modern approach that accepts all liver transplant candidates on equal terms.
I can only hope that someday every transplant center in Canada and the rest of the world will follow Ontario's lead. But it will always be heartbreaking to me that with all the evidence against the six-month wait, it still took a court battle over my husband's death to end it in Ontario.
Debra Selkirk, a former communications professional, is now working to start the nonprofit, Selkirk Liver Society, dedicated to advocacy and support for individuals with alcohol-associated liver disease.
c_morelands link and article were very interesting. I have never been an advocate or agreed with the organ harvesting BUSINESS. Its a wa$te of re$ource$ and terminates life prematurely and unnaturally. I have med directive with specific orders of no extraordinary care and state what procedures I do not want. If Im unconscious I don't want to be dissected alive for my liver to be donated to a person who chose to destroy theirs. Let them go to the Open Bar in the sky and party eternally.
Thanks for the article. I have never agreed with the organ harvesting BUSINESS. Its a waste of resources and terminating unnaturally life. I have med directive with specific orders of no extraordinary care and state what procedures I do not want. If Im unconscious I don't want to be dissected alive for my liver to be donated to a person who chose to destroy theirs.
Until you have lived in their shoes…… I understand guidelines. I understand how some would not want their liver to go to what someone they feel has a self inflicted condition, something they "chose", that someone that has an addictive disease for reasons they can not imagine, should not be allowed to live. Not that I agree, but I understand that some think that way. I do not understand how a doctor and a hospital will not allow family members or friends that know this man for who he is as an awesome person with a horrible disease (or fault- which is it everyone?) to donate part of their liver. The government spends taxpayers millions to save drug addicts repeatedly on a daily basis. How many addicts have been clean for over 6 months with the help of AA and others (as he had done more than once) only to have fallen to need help again. Wish he had 6 months this time. If you only knew him or his wonderful family including 6 grandchildren that loved him dearly. We all have our own issues (some refer to them as demons). Some have mental illness (to me this was a mental life issue), drug addiction, obesity, smoking, anorexic, bolemic……., Many of which are so-called "self-inflicted." He was a loving, providing, giving man with a heart of gold. But because he drank too much alcohol (for whatever reason), he could not get lifesaving help. I may have been like many of you at one time, but I have a VERY different perspective. I am blessed to have known him for who he really was. May God rest his soul and comfort his grieving family!
I started this fight for her but I will continue this fight in her name for others who want the chance to live without discrimination. My name is Sandi Lademan,God Bless you.
I had a relative who died of cirrhosis in our home cause she had nowhere to go. The dopey doctors at RWJ Med Center in NJ said " Oh she can go to Philly and get a liver and kidney. They have great success at dual transplants." As a healthcare professional I laughed internally and then told the physician my wife and I wanted a conference. I asked with no functioning liver and kidneys her ultimate outcome was death. Shes been an active alcoholic and druggie since 14 years old and I got her off opiates at least 3 times. Giving her a transplant would have been an absolute waste. So she came home with us, got morphine for pain, did 2 weeks of dialysis until she said she didn't want to live like that anymore. So she sailed out to the "Stairway To Heaven" happy to be buzzing along on morphine. She gone 7 years and we do not miss her drama and constant dysfunction. Her death gives her peace which booze and drugs could not. Some are unsalvageable. Just think how much resources the healthcare system saves when a liver transplant patient dies. After seeing the corruption of the transplant business I will only donate my bone marrow, eyes, ears but no internal organs.


We are looking for Gas Administrators who have experience within a call centre environment to focus on commercial properties. You would have some knowledge of the gas industry, and would love to help us build our service and grow our business.
As you'll have experience in a high volume call centre environment, you'll be used to the pressure and the challenges of that role.


Gardner: Your book came out last September and it affirmed this notion that the United States, or at least open Western cultures and societies, are particularly vulnerable to being infiltrated, if you will, from cybercrime, espionage, and dirty corporate tricks.
Why are we particularly vulnerable, when we should be most adept at using cyber activities to our advantage?
Brenner: Let's make a distinction here between the political-military espionage that's gone on since pre-biblical times and the economic espionage that's going on now and, in many cases, has n othing at all to do with military, defense, or political issues.
The other stuff has been going on forever, but what we've seen in the last 15 or so years is a relentless espionage attack on private companies for reasons having nothing to do with political-military affairs or defense.
So the countries that are adept at cyber, but whose economies are relatively undeveloped compared to ours, are at a big advantage, because they're not very lucrative targets for this kind of thing, and we are. Russia, for example, is paradoxical. While it has one of the most educated populations in the world and is deeply cultured, it has never been able to produce a commercially viable computer chip.
We're not going to Russia to steal advanced technology. We're not going to China to steal advanced technology. They're good at engineering and they're good at production, but so far, they have not been good at making themselves into an entrepreneurial culture.
That's one just very cynical reason why we don't do economic espionage against the people who are mainly attacking us, which are China, Russia, and Iran. I say attack in the espionage sense.
The other reason is that you're stealing intellectual property when you're doing economic espionage. It's a bedrock proposition of American economics and political strategy around the world to defend the legal regime that protects intellectual property. So we don't do that kind of espionage. Political-military stuff we're real good at.
Gardner: Wouldn't our defense rise to the occasion? Why hasn't it?
Brenner: The answer has a lot to do with the nature of the Internet and its history. The Internet, as some of your listeners will know, was developed starting in the late '60s by the predecessor of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a brilliant operation which produced a lot of cool science over the years.
The people who invented this, if you talk to them today, lament the fact that they didn't build a security layer into it.
It was developed for a very limited purpose, to allow the collaboration of geographically dispersed scientists who worked under contract in various universities with the Defense Department's own scientists. It was bringing dispersed brainpower to bear.
It was a brilliant idea, and the people who invented this, if you talk to them today, lament the fact that they didn't build a security layer into it. They thought about it. But it wasn't going to be used for anything else but this limited purpose in a trusted environment, so why go to the expense and aggravation of building a lot of security into it?
Until 1992, it was against the law to use the Internet for commercial purposes. Dana, this is just amazing to realize. That's 20 years ago, a twinkling of an eye in the history of a country's commerce. That means that 20 years ago, nobody was doing anything commercial on the Internet. Ten years ago, what were you doing on the Internet, Dana? Buying a book for the first time or something like that? That's what I was doing, and a newspaper.
In the intervening decade, we've turned this sort of Swiss cheese, cool network, which has brought us dramatic productivity and all and pleasure into the backbone of virtually everything we do.
International finance, personal finance, command and control of military, manufacturing controls, the controls in our critical infrastructure, all of our communications, virtually all of our activities are either on the Internet or exposed to the Internet. And it's the same Internet that was Swiss cheese 20 years ago and it's Swiss cheese now. It's easy to spoof identities on it.
So this gives a natural and profound advantage to attack on this network over defense. That's why we're in the predicament we're in.
Gardner: Let's also look at this notion of supply chain, because corporations aren't just islands unto themselves. A business is really a compendium of other businesses, products, services, best practices, methodologies, and intellectual property that come together to create a value add of some kind. It's not just attacking the end point, where that value is extended into the market. It's perhaps attacking anywhere along that value chain.
What are the implications for this notion of the ecosystem vulnerability versus the enterprise vulnerability?
Brenner: Well, the supply chain problem really is rather daunting for many businesses, because supply chains are global now, and it means that the elements of finished products have a tremendous numbers of elements. For example, this software, where was it written? Maybe it was written in Russia -- or maybe somewhere in Ohio or in Nevada, but by whom? We don't know.
There are two fundamental different issues for supply chain, depending on the company. One is counterfeiting. That's a bad problem. Somebody is trying to substitute shoddy goods under your name or the name of somebody that you thought you could trust. That degrades performance and presents real serious liability problems as a result.
The supply chain problem really is rather daunting for many businesses, because supply chains are global now, and it means that the elements of finished products have a tremendous numbers of elements.
The other problem is the intentional hooking, or compromising, of software or chips to do things that they're not meant to do, such as allow backdoors and so on in systems, so that they can be attacked later. That's a big problem for military and for the intelligence services all around the world.
The reason we have the problem is that nobody knows how to vet a computer chip or software to see that it won't do these squirrelly things. We can test that stuff to make sure it will do what it's supposed to do, but nobody knows how to test the computer chip or two million lines of software reliably to be sure that it won't also do certain things we don't want it to do.
You can put it in a sandbox or a virtual environment and you can test it for a lot of things, but you can't test it for everything. It's just impossible. In hardware and software, it is the strategic supply chain problem now. That's why we have it.
If you have a worldwide supply chain, you have to have a worldwide supply chain management system. This is hard and it means getting very specific. It includes not only managing a production process, but also the shipment process. A lot of squirrelly things happen on loading docks, and you have to have a way not to bring perfect security to that -- that's impossible -- but to make it really harder to attack your supply chain.
Gardner: So many organizations today, given the economy and the lagging growth, have looked to lowest cost procedures, processes, suppliers, materials, and aren't factoring in the risk and the associated cost around these security issues. Do people need to reevaluate cost in the supply chain by factoring in what the true risks are that we're discussing?
Brenner: Yes, but of course, when the CEO and the CFO get together and start to figure this stuff out, they look at the return on investment (ROI) of additional security. It's very hard to be quantitatively persuasive about that. That's one reason why you may see some kinds of production coming back into the United States. How one evaluates that risk depends on the business you're in and how much risk you can tolerate.
This is a problem not just for really sensitive hardware and software, special kinds of operations, or sensitive activities, but also for garden-variety things.
Gardner: We've seen other aspects of commerce in which we can't lock down the process. We can't know all the information, but what we can do is offer deterrence, perhaps in the form of legal recourse, if something goes wrong, if in fact, decisions were made that countered the contracts or were against certain laws or trade practices.
Brenner: For a couple of years now, I've struggled with the question why it is that liability hasn't played a bigger role in bringing more cyber security to our environment, and there are a number of reasons.
We've created liability for the loss of personal information, so you can quantify that risk. You have a statute that says there's a minimum damage of $500 or $1,000 per person whose identifiable information you lose. You add up the number of files in the breach and how much the lawyers and the forensic guys cost and you come up with a calculation of what these things cost.
But when it comes to just business risk, not legal risk, and the law says intellectual property to a company that depends on that intellectual property, you have a business risk. You don't have much of a legal risk at this point.
You may have a shareholder suit issue, but there hasn't been an awful lot of that kind of litigation so far. So I don't know. I'm not sure that's quite the question you were asking me, Dana.
Gardner: My follow on to that was going to be where would you go to sue across borders anyway? Is there an über-regulatory or legal structure across borders to target things like supply chain, counterfeit, cyber espionage, or mistreatment of business practice?
Brenner: It depends on the borders you're talking about. The Europeans have a highly developed legal and liability system. You can bring actions in European courts. So it depends what borders you mean.
If you're talking about the border of Russia, you have very different legal issues. China has different legal issues, different from Russia, as well from Iran. There are an increasing number of cases where actions are being brought in China successfully for breaches of intellectual property rights. But you wouldn't say that was the case in Nigeria. You wouldn't say that was the case in a number of other countries where we've had a lot of cybercrime originating from.
So there's no one solution here. You have to think in terms of all kinds of layered defenses. There are legal actions you can take sometimes, but the fundamental problem we're dealing with is this inherently porous Swiss-cheesy system. In the long run, we're going to have to begin thinking about the gradual reengineering of the way the Internet works, or else this basic dynamic, in which lawbreakers have advantage over law-abiding people, is not going to go away.
Think about what's happened in cyber defenses over the last 10 years and how little they've evolved -- even 20 years for that matter. They almost all require us to know the attack mode or the sequence of code in order to catch it. And we get better at that, but that's a leapfrog business. That's fundamentally the way we do it.
Whether we do it at the perimeter, inside, or even outside before the attack gets to the perimeter, that's what we're looking for -- stuff we've already seen. That's a very poor strategy for doing security, but that's where we are. It hasn't changed much in quite a long time and it's probably not going to.
We're talking about the Balkanization of the Internet. I think that's going to happen as more companies demand a higher level of protection.
Gardner: Why is that the case? Is this not a perfect opportunity for a business-government partnership to come together and re-architect the Internet at least for certain types of business activities, permit a two-tier approach, and add different levels of security into that? Why hasn't it gone anywhere?
Brenner: What I think you're saying is different tiers or segments. We're talking about the Balkanization of the Internet. I think that's going to happen as more companies demand a higher level of protection, but this again is a cost-benefit analysis. You're going to see even more Balkanization of the Internet as you see countries like Russia and China, with some success, imposing more controls over what can be said and done on the Internet. That's not going to be acceptable to us.
Gardner: We've seen a lot with cloud computing and more businesses starting to go to third-party cloud providers for their applications, services, data storage, even integration to other business services and so forth.
If there's a limited lumber, or at least a finite number, of cloud providers and they can institute the proper security and take advantage of certain networks within networks, then wouldn't that hypothetically make a cloud approach more secure and more managed than every-man-for-himself, which is what we have now in enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)?
Brenner: I think the short answer is, yes. The SMBs will achieve greater security by basically contracting it out to what are called cloud providers. That's because managing the patching of vulnerabilities and other aspects and encryption is beyond what's most small businesses and many medium-sized businesses can do, are willing to do, or can do cost-effectively.
For big businesses in the cloud, it just depends on how good the big businesses' own management of IT is as to whether it's an improvement or not. But there are some problems with the cloud.
People talk about security, but there are different aspects of it. You and I have been talking just now about security meaning the ability to prevent somebody from stealing or corrupting your information. But availability is another aspect of security. By definition, putting everything in one remote place reduces robustness, because if you lose that connection, you lose everything.
Consequently, it seems to me that backup issues are really critical for people who are going to the cloud. Are you going to rely on your cloud provider to provide the backup? Are you going to rely on the cloud provider to provide all of your backup? Are you going to go to a second cloud provider? Are you going to keep some information copied in-house?
By definition, putting everything in one remote place reduces robustness, because if you lose that connection, you lose everything.
What would happen if your information is good, but you can't get to it? That means you can't get to anything anymore. So that's another aspect of security people need to think through.
Gardner: How do you know you're doing the right thing? How do you know that you're protecting? How do you know that you've gone far enough to ameliorate the risk?
Brenner: This is really hard. If somebody steals your car tonight, Dana, you go out to the curb or the garage in the morning, and you know it's not there. You know it's been stolen.
When somebody steals your algorithms, your formulas, or your secret processes, you've still got them. You don't know they're gone, until three or four years later, when somebody in Central China or Siberia is opening a factory and selling stuff into your market that you thought you were going to be selling -- and that's your stuff. Then maybe you go back and realize, "Oh, that incident three or four years ago, maybe that's when that happened, maybe that's when I lost it."
So you don't even know necessarily when things have been stolen. Most companies don't do a good job. They're so busy trying to find out what's coming into their network, they're not looking at what's going out.
That's one reason the stuff is hard to measure. Another is that ROI is very tough. On the other hand, there are lots of things where business people have to make important judgments in the face of risks and opportunities they can't quantify, but we do it.
We're right to want data whenever we can get it, because data generally means we can make better decisions. But we make decisions about investment in R&D all the time without knowing what the ROI is going to be and we certainly don't know what the return on a particular R&D expenditure is going to be. But we make that, because people are convinced that if they don't make it, they'll fall behind and they'll be selling yesterday's products tomorrow.
Why is it that we have a bias toward that kind of risk, when it comes to opportunity, but not when it comes to defense? I think we need to be candid about our own biases in that regard, but I don't have a satisfactory answer to your question, and nobody else does either. This is one where we can't quantify that answer.
Gardner: It sounds as if people need to have a healthy dose of paranoia to tide them over across these areas. Is that a fair assessment?
People need to understand, without actually being paranoid, that life is not always what it seems. There are people who are trying to steal things from us all the time, and we need to protect ourselves.
Brenner: Well, let's say skepticism. People need to understand, without actually being paranoid, that life is not always what it seems. There are people who are trying to steal things from us all the time, and we need to protect ourselves.
In many companies, you don't see a willingness to do that, but that varies a great deal from company to company. Things are not always what they seem. That is not how we Americans approach life. We are trusting folks, which is why this is a great country to do business in and live in. But we're having our pockets picked and it's time we understood that.
Gardner: And, as we pointed out earlier, this picking of pockets is not just on our block, but could be any of our suppliers, partners, or other players in our ecosystem. If their pockets get picked, it ends up being our problem too.
Brenner: Yeah, I described this risk in my book, "America the Vulnerable," at great length and in my practice, here at Cooley, I deal with this every day. I find myself, Dana, giving briefings to businesspeople that 5, 10, or 20 years ago, you wouldn't have given to anybody who wasn't a diplomat or a military person going outside the country. Now this kind of cyber pilferage is an aspect of daily commercial life, I'm sorry to say.


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Thohir: "Kovacic will be the future star of Inter"
After weeks of silence, Inter's president Erick Thohir is talking again, at a press conference in Jakarta. Here are his words reported by the website Goal.com: "We are in transition, we have to buy but be careful. Regardless, we already have 11 players that we consider starting players like Handanovic, Juan Jesus, Vidic, Hernanes, Kovacic, Palacio and Icardi, which will be the backbone of the team. We will act with intelligence and care – continues Thohir – but no matter who, players will be added to the team. We'll go forward with calm, we are balancing the team not only in terms of age of the players, but also in terms of positions. In some positions we are weak, in others there is redundancy. We have an average age of 26.5 years, we need to find the right balance both tactically and from this point of view. There are other opportunities to add players to the team but I don't want to give names nor give clues to the origin or any signings because it would not do good for Inter. The World Cup? There will be many players in Asia and Eastern Europe, but also South America. We'll try to monitor them. There will also be Kovacic – concludes Thohir – not yet 20 years old and he will be the future star of Inter."
Source: fcinternews.it
By Olof Svensson
Italian Media Highlight Factors Behind Why Inter Are Pulling Away From Serie A Title Rivals AC Milan & Napoli
Ex-Nerazzurri Midfielder Luigi Di Biagio: "Antonio Conte Built The Base Of This Inter But Simone Inzaghi's Influence Is Clear"
Inter Defender Danilo D'Ambrosio: "Nerazzurri Shirt Like A Second Skin After 200 Serie A Apperances, Time To Win More Trophies"


Hello! I hope that everyone had a great weekend and gave their dads lots of love. Here are a couple of photos from my weekend. Sadly, I don't have a camera at the moment so I'm using my old school IPhone 3 and my IPad to take pictures for now, so they're not the best quality. It's taking a lot of time for me to get back into the swing of being a proper grown up in England and sorting out a new phone contract!
The weekend started off with a bit of a bang as a house on my road caught fire thanks to some faulty solar panels on the roof. The firemen were hard at work trying to put the fire out and I wasn't allowed to get to my house, so I spent the sunny afternoon in the park. Luckily I'd just been shopping so had some cherries and wine to keep me company! Everyone in the house got out safely but there house is not in a good condition.
Friday I saw the Coppards and Sheena and we went for a few drinks in Sheffield town centre. We tried the new Bamboo Door Bar in Leopold Square. This is a cute tiki themed cocktail bar and I had the most amazing cocktail called Eats, Shoots and Leaves which was a piña colada-esque cocktail with a toasted marshmallow on top. Yum.
Saturday was lost to sensible things like getting my eyes tested and looking at phones. There are so many fancy ones nowadays it all felt a bit bewildering. When I got home I tried to find a new home for the lovely gifts Tasha bought me from her trips around Asia. I finished the day trying to watch the England vs. Italy World Cup game but had to go to bed after half time because of my eyes involuntarily drooping!
Sunday I celebrated Father's Day by mowing the lawn. It was a lot harder than it looked and not what I was expecting my dad to want so I wasn't really dressed appropriately. Under the lovely green fleece is my new charity shop find.


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