The Carrot Project views as clients the farmers and businesses it works with directly. For over ten years, it has helped to build the financial management skills of its clients, and it takes pride in its 2017 Outcomes: 72 clients (whose service ended in the year) averaged an increase in net income of $28,500, 1767 farmland acres in production, and 47.5 jobs supported. And in 2017, it oversaw loans totaling $467,000 to current borrowers.
To meet its mission of increasing the number of profitable, viable farm and food businesses, The Carrot Project collaborates with various lending institutions. Earlier this month, its Ready to Grow fundraiser at the Boston Public Market was sponsored by Farm Credit East, SlowMoney Boston, Fresh Pond Capital, Eastern Bank, Honeybee Capital Foundation, and Trillium Asset Management.
The fundraiser, A Meet + Eat with Local Farmers, spotlighted two small farms, Three Maples Market Garden in West Stockbridge (Berkshire County, MA) and Ironwood Farm in Ghent (Columbia County, NY).
Three Maples Market Garden was started by Cian and Amanda Dalzell as a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, noting that they loved knowing the families who were eating our produce. They grow an impressive array of crops: squash, kale, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, cabbage, tomatoes, turnip, rhubarb, zucchini, daikon, scallions, potatoes and radishes, as well as herbs, basil, sorrel, parsley, cilantro, dill, celery herb, tarragon, rosemary, and thyme. Cian Dalzell took a Making It Happen farm financial management course with The Carrot Project and has also trained to work as an instructor and business advisor to pay it forward.
Ironwood Farm is an impressive organic farm, certified organic by the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) of New York, on ten acres of leased land. The farm sells its produce at farmers markets, wholesale to restaurants, shops and resellers in New York's Hudson Valley, and it also offers CSA farm shares. This certified organic farm is the collaboration of three women working together for seven years who hoped to achieve more together than apart and now make an income for each of their three households.
In addition, The Carrot Project at its recent fundraiser honored Scott Budde, who worked with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MORGA) and Maine Farmland Trust to found the first credit union (Maine Harvest) focused on improving a local food system by lending to small farms and food producers, opening January 2019, with a capitalization of $2.4 million.
Investors and lenders helping to sustain the good food movement, rooted in small farms and local food producers, deserve gratitude for helping to counteract corporate gigantism, as evidenced by recent data released by the Open Markets Institute, showing increasing market share of the largest companies in many American industries, including the production of various agricultural products. For example, four giant enterprises, JBS SA, Tyson, Cargill and Smithfield have a market share of 53% (a 250% increase from their 21% market share back in 2002) of the Meat Processing Industry's revenue (noted to be $123.2 billion in the data released by the Open Markets Institute).
Investors and lenders mindful of the ideals that monopolies undermine- like market competition, economic dynamic and individual freedom (in the words of David Leonhard in his op-ed, The Monopolization of America, NY Times, 11/26/18) deserve recognition.
Kudos for The Carrot Project in building the financial management skills of small farms and agricultural businesses and bringing together lenders and investors with well-managed small farms and local food businesses. The Project's special recognition of two successful small farms and a caring investor/lender at its fundraiser earlier this month was a very special occasion worth celebrating.


Alexis DeJoria (born September 24, ) is an American drag racer competing in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). She is a member of Kalitta.
Sandra Bullock's ex Jesse James marries drag racer Alexis Dijoria after Jesse and Alexis - who started dating around September - tied the.
Jesse James Dating History. Relationship info powered by: Married; Relationship "Encounter" 8 11 Alexis DeJoria Libra Alexis DeJoria (born September 24, ) is an American drag racer competing in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). She is a member of Kalitta Motorsports and sponsored by Patrón Spirits Company.
but I'd say celeb power couple Jessie James and Eric Decker have both gained "He was in Arizona training, and I got a text from my girlfriend who said, 'I'm This year has been a year for the history books for Hilary Duff.
Bullock has also dated a few of her co-stars, admitting to . find out that the star of Jesse James Is a Dead Man was actually just a jackass.
Jesse James at the book signing for "Jesse James: American Outlaw". Your first girlfriend cheated on you—twice—and your stepmothers.
Alexis Dejoria is listed (or ranked) 1 on the list Jesse James's Loves & Photo: via Imgur #63 on The Greatest Actors & Actresses in Entertainment History.
New Couple Alert! Jesse Williams and Minka Kelly Are Dating (EXCLUSIVE) Get the Scoop on His Full Dating History! If You Want Sammi.
Jessie James Decker is getting personal in her new book, Just She Found the " Wrong" Boyfriend: After arriving in Nashville, Jessie still felt.
In an exclusive interview with , Jesse James says he has 'no regrets' about his Sandra Bullock and live-in boyfriend Bryan.
When Kat started dated Jesse James we all could have sworn they were going to get married but that definitely wasn't the case. The two started.
Bachelor Hunk Jesse Palmer: Dating and Girlfriend History. Where is Jessica Bowlin? Is She Married?
Jesse James was engaged to Kat Von D; Jesse James dated Kat Von D; Jesse James was married to Sandra Bullock; Jesse James was married to Janine.
Jesse James American TV Personality. Jesse James was previously married to Sandra Bullock ( - ), Janine Lindemulder ( - ) and Karla James ( - ). Jesse James has been in relationships with Michelle McGee () and Melissa Smith ( - ).
They had been dating since the summer of , after Jesse's very public divorce with actress Sandra Bullock. They ended things for good in September Jesse James Dating History Start.
A History of Women Who Date Down Sandra Bullock and Jesse James The talented (and physically gifted) Eva Mendes' dating history.
Jesse Gregory James (born April 19, ) is an American television personality and former Through James's show "History Of The Chopper" there are also glimpses of his involvement with the Hells Angels. He also In August , tattoo artist Kat Von D confirmed reports that she and James were dating. James and.


"The greatest danger in the modern world is the attack on man as the image of God. That God became man in order to unite man to God is the only sure Divine underwriting of human worth. We have value because of the image we bear" (Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas).
The Apostle John taught that if you hate your brother you are guilty of murder (1 John 3:15). These are the strongest of words, especially for us here in the United States where we are seemingly in an unending cycle of racial tension. For many of us, the best we can do is to throw up our hands in resignation, and to do our best to "mind our own business." I admit that this type of resignation in the face of such deeply entrenched attitudes and issues, seems like the wise choice; however, as the old adage states: those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. For me, the hard fight for understanding of the theology of the Icon by the ancient Church has been the greatest antidote against the atrophying doom of ignorance.
If I were to boil this down to an essential statement, I believe it would simply say that the Icon explains what words alone cannot. It reveals to mankind that God loves His creation. That God would humble Himself and become a man like us, is too great of a mystery to simply be pronounced with words. How is it then, that racism is the new Iconoclasm? Racism not only blinds our ability to see those who simply look different than us as being made in the image of God, it can go as far as to distort our vision of them into horrific caricature. We all have family members that we struggle to get along with; accordingly, most have also had the experience of having a friend that is closer than a brother. This phenomenon is the proof, that relation is something deeper than biology. It's about relating.


text:
Q: probability problem in Binomial distribution The question:

A newsboy purchases papers at 12 cents and sells them at 16 cents.  However, he is not allowed to return unsold papers.  Suppose that his daily demand follows a Binomial distribution with n=10, p=1/3.  His mother suggests him to purchase 6 papers per day but his girlfriend suggests him to purchase 4 papers per day.  Who should the boy listen to so that he can obtain a higher expected profit?

I am confused by this question.I tried the following:
Define the probability distribution function by
$$f(x)=\sum_{i=0}^{10}\binom{10}{x}p^x(1-p)^{10-x}$$
then define $u(x)=0.04x+(n-x)(-0.12)$.
For $n=6$, find $\sum_{x=0}^6u(x)f(x)$;for $n=10$, find $\sum_{x=0}^{10}u(x)f(x)$,then compare the two sums.  But I do not quite understand the question. Could anyone help?

A: If the boy purchases $n\leq10$ papers and the demand is $X$ then if $X>n$ he will gain $0.04n$ and if $X\leq n$ he will gain $0.04X-0.12(n-X)$.
That gives expectation: $$E_n:=\sum_{k=0}^n\left[0.04k-0.12(n-k)\right]P(X=k)+\sum_{k=n+1}^{10}0.04nP(X=k)$$
where $X$ has binomial distribution with parameters $10$ and $p=\frac13$
The question to be answered is actually: do we have $E_4>E_6$ or $E_6>E_4$?
I leave that to you.

A: If a newsboy purchases $k$ papers and sells $i$ papers ($i\leqslant k$), his profit is
$$16i - 12k$$ so the expected profit
is
$$\sum_{i=0}^k\binom{n}{i}p^i(1-p)^{n-i}\cdot (16i - 12k)+\sum_{i=k+1}^n\binom{n}{i}p^i(1-p)^{n-i}\cdot 4k$$
where $n=10$, $p=1/3$.

A: If you buy $n$ newspapers, and the demand that day is more than $n$, you will still make profit $u(n)$. Because you are currently only summing $u(x) f(x)$ up to $x=n$, and no further, you are ignoring the profits from these cases where demand exceeds supply. Instead of $\sum_{x=0}^n u(x) f(x)$, you should look at $\sum_{x=0}^{10} u(\min\{x,n\}) f(x)$.
Also, your expression for $f(x)$ has a summation over $i$ that isn't doing anything. It should be removed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Will also add the veil at no cost if you are interested. There is a L-shaped tear on the back of the dress, about 18 inches below the waist from where the train was safety pinned during our wedding to keep the dress from dragging on the floor. The tear is about 4″ by 4″.


text:
12 reasons Lincolnshire is the best place to live in the UK
Kate ChapmanThursday 1 Oct 2015 8:00 am
Lincoln Cathedral (Picture: Getty)
Whenever I tell anyone I live in Lincolnshire they either comment about how flat it is or mutter something about cabbages.
As a lifelong Yellowbelly this can be a little annoying as there is so much more to our wonderful county than meets the eye.
And since today is the tenth annual Lincolnshire Day, there's no time like the present to celebrate all it has to offer.
Here's 12 reasons why Lincolnshire is the best place to live in the UK:
1. Beautiful landscape
From the rolling Wolds in the north, its 30-mile stretch of golden sands on the east coast and the flat agricultural Fenlands of the south, Lincolnshire's natural beauty is second to none.
Everything else pales in comparison to a glorious sunset across its wide open skies.
Kent may be the garden of England, but Lincolnshire is its breadbasket. Thanks to its rich silt soil a large proportion of the country's vegetable and cereal crops are grown here including potatoes, cauliflowers, carrots, Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, onions, wheat and barley.
It's also famed for delicacies including haslet, cheeses, stuffed chine and plum loaf.
(Picture: Getty)
3. Lincolnshire sausages
I know I've already listed food as one its greatest attributes, but Lincolnshire's sausages are divine and really do warrant a special mention of their own.
It's all down to their unique flavour – thanks to the addition of sage – which has even seen them subject of a campaign to give them protected status.
4. Lincolnshire folk are a friendly bunch
We say 'hello' to complete strangers in the street and are always happy to stop and give directions – even if we have no idea where we're sending them.
Yellowbellies have a great sense of humour too – well who else would adopt Cabbage Hurling and Egg Throwing as official sports? Lincolnshire holds annual championships for both.
It may be vastly rural, but it's a hub for innovation. Its Carbon Neutral Business Zone (CaNeBuZo), in Long Sutton, is Europe's largest earth-sheltered development of its type and the first business campus in the UK designed specifically to reduce a business' reliance on fossil fuels.
The town is also home to Unity Gardens – one of the country's greenest communities – where thanks to the design of the buildings, residents don't pay any fuel bills.
6. Wildlife
Lincolnshire is home to an abundance of wildlife. Barn owls can often be spotted flying above agricultural areas in the late afternoon, while brown hares, great crested newts and deer are also common sights across the county.
Every winter grey seals give birth to their pups near the sand dunes at Donna Nook National Nature Reserve – a wildlife spectacle attracting visitors from across the UK.
7. Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)
Covering 62,000 hectares, the wetland wilderness of The Wash is the most significant site for water birds in Britain, and one of the most important in Europe.
It's a haven for wildfowl and waders including avocets, merlins, pink footed geese and oystercatchers. The mudflats at the RSPB reserve at Freiston Shore Nature Reserve, near Boston, are used as a feeding ground for hundreds of thousands of birds each year.
8. Thriving economy
Many of its biggest businesses are connected to its horticulture, agriculture, packing and transport industries – including Interflora, Grimme UK and Lincolnshire Field Products. But Lincolnshire is also where the Butlin's story began back in 1936, when its first holiday camp was opened at Skegness.
Size isn't everything though – there are plenty of wonderful, smaller independent retailers, food producers and craft industries too.
9. Something for everyone
Despite its rural character there is something for everyone; from the bright lights and thriving nightlife of its university city, to the family friendly amusements of its coastal resorts and country walks and pursuits for those who prefer something a little quieter.
It's also home to the RAF's stunt display team the Red Arrows and some pretty impressive historic properties – including Lincoln Castle, Belton House, Burghley House and Tattershall Castle.
Belton House (Picture: Getty)
10. Festivals and events
The county event's calendar is bursting with celebrations of sport, arts, culture, food and more – there's the Burghley Horse Trials, Lincoln Sausage Festival, Spalding's Tulipmania and annual Pumpkin Festival and the SO Festival with entertainment lasting several days to name a few.
11. A fine aviation heritage
Lincolnshire is a plane-spotter's delight. Known as Bomber Command during World War II, it is home to the infamous 617 Squadron who flew the legendary Dambusters' raid and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, formed to commemorate the RAF's major battle of honour.
All this unique history is celebrated at several museums including Lincolnshire's Aviation Heritage Centre at East Kirby.
12. A gentler pace of life
Lincolnshire's quiet rural charm is draw for those looking to enjoy a quieter pace of life in their twilight years.
The county is one of the few without a motorway, while some of its more outlying areas are frequently prone to slow broadband speeds and intermittent mobile phone signals – which can sometimes be a blessing when you just want to kick back and relax, free from the distractions of the modern world.
MORE: Amazing moment mother seal gives birth in Lincolnshire
MORE: 13 reasons why nobody should move to Scotland
I don't want children and I don't owe you an explanation
Bookworms rejoice: Amazon is selling a beach chair with a face hole for reading
Home › Lifestyle

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


hey where is all the info on the 99 spec spoiler gb through jt-imports? and what are the updates on getting the rest of our spilers shipped?
Info coming in a couple days, its crazy out here right now.
any word on the gb?
I will let you guys know soon since another 5 will leave soon.
I hope one of those 5 are mine and it's VR.
id still like an update please.


Looking forward to it Kerry!
Grain structure when broken cold is usually very course with high phosphorus iron. It's a beautiful working iron when hot under the hammer, but when cold can be brittle. Twisting a square bar when cold and hot will give you much insight into the working properties of the metal, Lee Sauder could probably explain this better than I can. The twists in pattern welding were probably there for a good visual indicator of the quality of the iron, and not the popular held belief that there was some sort of strengthening of the iron by the twists. A very good indicator of well made bloomery iron is how tight of a twist you can do without it coming apart.
All the bloomery steels that I've worked with, are very shallow hardening. Like was said, they usually require higher temps, and a brine or water quench, to get hard enough. I've got a few pics of auto hamon's on bloom steel blades here somewhere, I'll try to locate them and post them. Working with Mark's ore, every time I've had the steel anaylized, there was nothing for manganese content. I've always wanted to add some manganese dioxide to a smelt to see if it would add manganese to the steel, this is an experiment for sometime in the future. Comparing chemistry between "old" steel and modern, IMHO, could be problematic though, as there is always a slag component in the "old" steels, which could be mistaken for being in the steel and actually be a component of the slag, depending on the method of measurement.
https://youtu.be/CNuEDtnVdeM You may notice a couple other folk from the forum in this episode Other than Jesus, Mark, and myself, Chris Price was on one of the compacting hammers, Dennis McAdams was there helping with the smelt as well as Daniel Cauble. If you look closely you can catch JJ Simon in the background as well as probably others. The guys at BKS did a great job with build on this one, and I was humbled to be asked to help out, as well as work with the rest of the smelting crew that day.
If you added metal, and it melted, but all you got was slag, then i would assume the metal oxidized, keep it further from the tuyere. Like both have said, you need an air supply with pressure, an old vacuum cleaner works great, or a good bellows. Keep after it, it's never an exact thing, some runs are better than others.
The green in the glass is from iron. Grind into the ingot and see if it etches differently, it's more than likely just on the surface, just places that were protected a bit more from oxygen after it solidifyed and didn't discolor.
Got back home late last night, it was an epic weekend. Thanks to the hosts and everyone who attended! It's a long drive for me, but well worth it to be around so many like minded people!
I'll be there Thursday sometime Kerry if you guys need help getting everything ready. I think the plan is to get the smelter built Friday afternoon after Mark gets there.


text:
For Brown Babies Who Love Superheroes: Diversity in Comics & Film
By TERREECE M. CLARKE
My dad was into comic books. He had huge stacks of weekly adventures and I will never forget the day he brought a few of those stacks to us. My sister and I sat at home lamenting the awful itchiness of an 80's era chicken pox outbreak that laid waste to the majority of St. Ann's Elementary School.
It was Easter break and instead of coloring eggs and biting off chocolate bunny ears while wearing our shiny patent leather shoes reserved for Easter Sunday, we were stuck in our rooms. My dad swooped in like a superhero in his own right, stopping by long enough to check on us, carefully scratch an unreachable spot and drop off a massive stack of color and adventure.
Wonder Woman and Storm from X-Men, Firestorm and Black Panther got my attention first and after I had read and re-read all of those, I was still left with a huge pile of 'other' comics. Looking back I can see a pattern. I have always sought out characters that I could I identify with – those with similar stories, interests, race, gender, etc. I liked Superman and everyone loves the Hulk (shout out to my bae Lou Ferrigno), but I could never understand why there were no Black Panther Underoos.
"Comic books, graphic novels and superheroes represent wish fulfillment for people of all ages and backgrounds, which is why superhero movies, conventions like Comic-Con and superhero products continue to sell out. We all want to be the hero or the person that makes a difference," Television director and creator of the Legend of the Mantamaji series, Eric Dean Seaton, said. "Fantasy and fiction is best when it's based on something people can relate to. People of color were an afterthought in Superhero or Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories."
Comic-Con's Big Diversity Announcements
This summer leading up to Comic-Con San Diego—one of the biggest events in superhero-dom— diversity in comics was a hot topic. Thor was recast as a woman. Falcon—a black superhero—stepped into the role as America's shield-wielding representative, Captain America. Wonder Woman's rebooted character and costume were revealed as a part of the upcoming Batman versus Superman film.
So why now? What has changed? Why is the exclusive world of superheroes becoming more inclusive?
I'd love to say it's because the big publishers have suddenly awoken to the fundamental importance of inclusion as a societal responsibility. In reality, the monetary benefits are too big to ignore.
Money, Minorities and Superhero Magic
Comics that have become more inclusive have garnered commercial success. According to Vulture.com, Marvel Entertainment's latest X-Men books rake in big dollars monthly with a cast of characters who have become increasingly multicultural, half of which are women. There was even a blow-out same sex wedding last year.
Additionally, Pakistani-American student Kamala Khan became the first Muslim Ms. Marvel and her story has gone on to a rare sixth printing, which is a big deal in the comic book world, topping the Spiderman issue that featured President Obama which only made it to a fifth printing.
What's Missing in Superhero Diversity
While the announcements were welcomed by most, there were a vocal few puritanical comic fans who swore the same comics in which heroes routinely die, become reborn, lose their powers and travel to alternative universes had strayed too far from their roots. It also bears noting that the changes to cornerstone characters will, in time, be reversed, like all major changes in comic book history. For real diversity, new characters of multicultural backgrounds need to be developed and long standing characters of color need an opportunity to shine.
"Think about it: 'Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids' is still the number one African-American animated franchise, and it's over 44 years old," Seaton said. "The most prominent and famous black Marvel characters, "Black Panther" and "Storm," are 48 and 39 years old. There have been many characters since then and even some good ones out today, but nobody has truly broken the glass ceiling and become as popular as those Marvel characters or DC Entertainment's black character, "Cyborg," who is 34 years-old."
Additionally, DC, the other big comic publisher, is lagging behind Marvel in comic innovation and the films from both studios have overwhelmingly rejected many of the strides in diversity comics have made over the years in favor of the traditional, white, hetero-male, alpha hero.
In a post for The Good Men Project, "Why Hollywood Would Make Way More Money If It Had Black Superheroes," writer Adam Pliskin outlined the case for the economic and social impact of increasing the number of multicultural and gendered superheroes on the big screen, citing the rising number of black moviegoers and the decline of white moviegoers in recent years. My favorite line:
"It's also important to note that 80 percent of the films that African-Americans see do not feature predominantly black casts. So get that notion out of your head that black people only go to the movies to see Tyler Perry dress up like an old woman… The point is that people want to see their own cultural experiences reflected in art, on the big screen, at 24 frames per second. They want to feel represented. They want to have a communal, cathartic experience. And they want to see people they can relate to blow sh*t up. They also want their children to have proper cinematic role models. What does it say to young African-Americans if all the people they emulate from the movies are white? How will that affect their thinking when they eventually become men and women in the world?"
That's right, I want to see a black woman with locs blow some sh*t up in the name of truth and justice. I want to see an Hispanic man fly through the air and laser something with his eyeballs and I want my son to see a brotha throw down on Asgard (Hey Idris, hey boo).
How to Get More Color in Your Superheroes
Ask for it. Money talks and social media provides a megaphone. Let the folks at Marvel and DC know you want your babies to see themselves saving the world. Email them here and here and follow them on Twitter: @Marvel and @DCComics.
Support diverse comics and characters by buying the merch when it's available.
Follow along with WeAreComics.tumbr.com and share your comics story.
Support independent comic publishers, creators and reviewers who are far and away more representative of the diversity in the world. Here is a small, limited list:
Legend of the Mantamaji by And…Action! Entertainment
Lowriders In Space Facebook page
Guide to Multicultural Resources – Billy Ireland Museum at The Ohio State University
Concrete Park website
Diversity in Graphic Novels and Comics – compiled by Indiana University Southeast
Strawberry Scented Burnout
Africomics.com
Black Writers & Artists
Women Write About Comics.com
Share this article and others that keep this important conversation going:
So Why Aren't There More Gay Superheroes?
Marvel's Diversity Issue: Screen Output Doesn't Reflect Open-minded Comics
Why Diversity in Comics is Much More Important Than You Think
The online push for greater diversity in books and comics
Shifting diversity of comic characters a sign of the times
DC Comics' Diversity Crisis: Why the Status Quo Rules
The Color Barrier
Everybody In Spandex: On Diversity And Superhero Comics
Terreece M. Clarke is a freelance writer/journalist for a variety of magazines, newspapers and websites and a rocking' wife and mother of three. Follow her on Twitter: @terreece!
The Gift of Black Children's Books: a $1,000 Donation for Denene Millner Books
"Good Night MyBrownBaby": Denene Millner's "Early Sunday Morning"
Early Sunday Morning Is Out Tomorrow—Celebrate With Me!
Black children and comics Black comics books books for black children great books for African American children great children's books multicultural books
Kimber Lee | Business Strategist
Nice read. My son swears he's a super hero and we just allow him to be his own super hero. He calls himself Super Hero Kieran Knight.
Terreece Clarke
That's adorable!
thisbrownqueen
Love this. I have three boys and they all love super heroes. They beg me to play Marvel on the xbox all the time. A once in a blue moon treat lol. But this is great. For the longest all I knew was Storm.
Melanie Edwards
My 8-year-old daughter just recently asked us about Black and Latin@ superheroes and women superheroes. We went to the comic book store and she wanted to buy a comic with either a Black or Latina heroine. We left without purchasing one because we need to research one that is appropriate for her age. But, we're excited about Miles Morales! Thanks for the resources! Will definitely check them out.
◀ Painting With Light: Bunch Washington & the Importance of Black Art To Our Children
▶ #WhyIStayed: Teaching Our Daughters & Sons How To Love, Sans Violence


Subway has gained legions of fans for its affordable submarine sandwiches and huge range of fillings.
But now an anonymous UK employee is claiming to reveal the tricks of the fast food empire's trade - and it may make you look at the chain's chicken sandwiches in a whole new light.
In response to the thread, a UK Subway spokesman said that all its stores were independently owned and operated by franchisees.
Kicking off proceedings, the 'manager' on Reddit instructed users to 'ask me anything Subway related', making clear that they were not speaking on behalf of his employer.
A. 'Avoid: Chipotle Chicken and Teriyaki Chicken. Why? Chicken is given a two-day shelf life, once in the counter. However, these two [sandwiches] bypass this and get four days, and can get a little stinky.
Q. Why doesn't a footlong sandwich measure 12 inches?
A. ''Subway Footlong' is a trademark of Subway, and is just the name of the submarine sandwich size.
'However due to a lawsuit, Subway have decided to ensure each footlong is exactly 12 inches.
'In regards to shrinkage, minor shrinkage occurs when the bread is baked. We have a measuring ruler built into the counter (normally only used for kids packs, 4-inch sandwiches), and our bread seems to always be around 12.1 inches.


Discussion in 'Current Medical Students' started by Samuel Bird, Apr 13, 2018.
The SJT has ruined my life!
I simply do not understand how the most important year as a foundation doctor can be dictated by sitting one exam, on one day, in one sitting (no retakes) accounting for 50% of your EPM with the other 50% from 4 years of medical school.
My question is, does anyone else feel that the SJT works for the majority, but when faced with extraordinary circumstances, the system lets down those people who have fought the hardest for their place at medical school and those who want to achieve despite personal set backs.
Has anyone had any similar experiences and if so what did they do?


text:
'This US government looks more like Iran's every day': Shirin Neshat talks about the power of political satire ahead of LA show
The Iranian artist's major exhibition opens at the Broad museum features new work addressing discrimination in Trump's America
Aimee Dawson
Shirin Neshat © Rodolfo Martinez, Courtesy of Goodman Gallery
Shirin Neshat's early life in the US was less American Dream and more brutal reality. The Iranian-born artist and film-maker was 17 in 1975 when she arrived in Los Angeles—and she hated it. The Hollywood glamour that had intoxicated her in the cinema of her small hometown of Qazvin, two hours outside of Tehran, was not what she encountered. "I was very, very homesick," Neshat remembers. Later she moved north to study art at Berkeley, but she continued to feel lost—and, when it came to creating art, inept. After graduating and leaving California, Neshat stopped making art for ten years.
Forty years on, she is triumphantly returning to the city in which those dreams were dashed. Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again at the Broad museum (19 October-16 February 2020) spans her 30-year career, showing more than 230 photographs and eight video installations, many exploring her American-Iranian identity in the context of the ruptures between the West and the Middle East. They include the new multimedia work, Land of Dreams.
As well as the Broad exhibition, Neshat is organising A Bridge Between You and Everything: an Exhibition of Iranian Women Artists at the High Line Nine Galleries in New York (7-24 November), with the US non-profit Center for Human Rights in Iran. The Art Newspaper wrote about the show in July and since then, Neshat says, "Some of the artists have backed out in fear of not being able to return to Iran, or of having problems with the government, because the organisation we are working with is about human rights." She adds: "The more this show is developing, the more it becomes clear to me why it is important to do it: it shows artists whose work is always caught between a political reality and their personal circumstances." At the end of January 2020, meanwhile, she will show some of the work from Land of Dreams at Goodman Gallery's new London space.
Here, Neshat talks about her LA homecoming, the power of political satire, and what she sees as the alarming similarities between the US and Iran.
Alfonso Garundo (2019) © Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery and Goodman Gallery
The Art Newspaper: Your show at the Broad is your biggest ever retrospective—what can we expect?
Shirin Neshat: I'm very happy with the way that, unlike a lot of the other exhibitions I have done, this show is not entirely related to Iran and its history. The show is chronological, but it shows the evolution of the work both thematically and in terms of the form. It starts with pieces that took a nostalgic look at Iran in the 1990s after the Islamic Revolution [in 1979], like Women of Allah (1993-97). It shows how my work developed after it became impossible for me to return to Iran, when I began to do a lot of video work like Rapture (1999) and Passage (2001).
But I also had the opportunity to make a new work for the Broad show called Land of Dreams (2019), which I shot in New Mexico. This latest work is, for the first time, about me in this country—exploring the US from the perspective of an Iranian immigrant. So the show circles: it starts with me looking into Iran from the outside and ends with me looking at the US as an outsider.
What was your initial experience in LA in the 1970s?
I had this vision of LA being like Hollywood. Most of us in Iran at that time had the greatest image about America. And then when I landed in LA, it was not what I expected. I fell into a deep depression and I just despised everything I was seeing. I desperately wanted to go home, but my family didn't agree. And then the revolution came and I was just sort of lost behind the border for 11 years.
Since becoming a film-maker, I have realised that of course LA is the place to be. I feel the buzz in the city, the art world and the Iranian community. So there is certain gravitation for me to be there, but I still have such a dark memory from feeling abandoned in LA.
Is LA growing as an art centre?
Absolutely. The Broad museum itself is such a force, and the combination of the various strong museums, galleries and artists living in the area makes it a fantastic location. LA is now a little bit ahead of New York in many ways. New York is becoming more difficult—very expensive and super blue-chip. Smaller galleries are having difficulties and mid-size galleries are closing. A lot of artists are moving out of the city, either to Brooklyn or to the West Coast. LA seems to be thriving with their more grassroots, underground organisations. The diversity of the artists and the different communities working there is just tremendous, never mind the film community inside and outside of Hollywood.
Raven Brewer-Beltz (2019) © Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery and Goodman Gallery
Los Angeles has the largest Iranian community outside of Iran. Are you excited to put on this show in that neighbourhood?
I am, and I'm very nervous. I must admit that a lot of the Iranian people I know here are not really museum-goers—they love music and films. But I think there's so much in this exhibition that is about more than just art history. It invites Iranians to look at their own history, but also to look at their own status as immigrants in the US. Like I said, my latest work questions us as Iranians being cornered in this country and how vulnerable we are. In fact, it is about the tension between the US and Iran, and then us as immigrants being caught in between.
Let's talk about this new work, Land of Dreams. What is the story?
Essentially, it's about an Iranian woman, who is basically an extension of myself. She is an Iranian photographer and immigrant who goes door to door in a small US town and asks to take people's portraits. But after she photographs them, she asks them about their latest dreams. In the video she has many encounters with different types of people: Native Americans; an old military man; a religious woman; an immigrant and so on. She then mysteriously takes these dreams and portraits back to a surreal Iranian colony tucked away inside a mountain. Inside, people are secretly analysing the American people's dreams. She is almost like a spy but also like a mediator. It is a kind of a political satire—a very dark comedy.
How is the work displayed?
There are two videos, each 20 minutes long: one of her encountering the Americans, and the second showing her working within this enclosed Iranian colony. Then there is a whole room of photographs that "she" has shot (that obviously I have taken). The images are black and white and have Farsi writing on them, as in my previous photography. The writing relays each person's dream.
Where was the video filmed?
In New Mexico—we went to the Navajo Nation and found this spectacular sacred mountain where the colony part is filmed. In the film, the inside of the mountain looks like a power plant. It has this kind of Fritz Lang feel to it, or like the aesthetic of Orson Welles's The Trial [1962].
The other video was actually shot in a few different locations, including Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Farmington. I picked New Mexico as a location because of the desert setting—it resembles Iran in so many ways. Sometimes, in the videos, you don't know if you're in Iran or the US.
This was your first time filming in the US. What was the experience like?
It was so timely and relevant for me to now turn my gaze towards the US. I cannot talk enough about the experience. Meeting other immigrant communities, like the Hispanics and Native Americans, and bonding with them and understanding the devastation in this country, but at the same time enjoying their hospitality and warmth. It was like experiencing everything that I love and everything I hate about this country. It was an eye-opener for me.
How do you feel about the ongoing showdown about Iran's nuclear activities, and the US sanctions?
There is such an absurdity about this antagonism between the two cultures that is perpetual. For me, the demon lives on both sides. This US government is looking more and more like the Iranian government every day. I am cornered on both sides in a way, maybe not so badly yet in the US. At the moment the sanctions are killing Iran—not just the government but the people too—and they are desperately trying to find a solution. And then in the US, my God—it is just going to hell. There are such profound problems: corruption, healthcare, education, the issue of poverty. The conditions of the Native Americans, for example—where they live, the lack of employment—it is unheard of. The way that this government is turning its back on people and yet being the "superior leader" in the world; I can't even find words for it.
The US media demonises other cultures and people like Mexicans or Muslims. Iran does this too—both countries use the image of the enemy to distract their citizens from their internal problems. Political satire has to be the best way to deal with it.
Training: UC Berkeley, 1978–82
Prizes: Praemium Imperiale Award, Tokyo (2017); Rockefeller Fellow, United States Artists, New York (2016); Silver Lion, 66th Venice Film Festival (2009); Grand Prix, Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2000); Golden Lion, 48th Venice Biennale, (1999)
Key shows: Shirin Neshat: Facing History, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2015); Shirin Neshat, Detroit Institute of Arts (2013); Shirin Neshat, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montreal, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Miami Art Museum (2001); Shirin Neshat: Turbulent, Tate Gallery, London (1998)
Women of Allah (1993-7) © Shirin Neshat; courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
Women of Allah (1993–97)
Neshat's most famous work, this series of black and white photographs of veiled women (some of whom are posed with guns) is in three parts. The first, Unveiling, is about the women's struggles between religiously rooted social codes and their personal desires. The second is about Iran's changing concept of martyrdom, and the third features Iranian women in prayer. All three parts are on show at the Broad.
Turbulent (1998)
This split-screen video addresses Iran's prohibition of women singing in public. It shows a man singing in front of an audience on one screen (played by Shoja Azari, Neshat's husband) and a woman standing alone on the other (played by the Iranian vocalist and composer Sussan Deyhim). It won the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion in 1999 and is part one of a trilogy, completed by Rapture (1999) and Fervor (2000).
Land of Dreams (2019)
Neshat considers this, her latest piece, as the work where all of her practice collapses into one complete installation. It is made up of a photographic series and two videos and will eventually include a feature-length film. It is also the first time that the artist has turned her gaze to the issues facing the US, a country that she has lived in longer than her native Iran, at a politically tumultuous time.
• Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again, Broad Museum, Los Angeles, 19 October- 16 February 2020
• A Bridge Between You and Everything: an Exhibition of Iranian Women Artists, High Line Nine Galleries, New York (7-24 November)
Shirin NeshatExhibitionsArtist interviewLos AngelesIranBroad Art Museum US politicsIranian politics election 2020


Editor's note: Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister delivered a keynote address at the Fourth International Oblate Congress, which took place Nov. 4-10 in Rome. The following is Chittister's address, "Let the call be heard." Read more about the conference at Global Sisters Report.
Each of us — lay as well as religious — carries within us a piece of the truth — but only a piece.
Abba Arsenius knew what as religious communities, as church, and as people we have forgotten for centuries: Life is the world's greatest spiritual director. And each of us learns from it. Each of us — lay as well as religious — carries within us a piece of the truth — but only a piece.
A measure of the wisdom toward which we all strive lies in learning the language of life around us, and, most of all perhaps, being willing to hear the wisdom, of the other. It is by absorbing the wisdom of others, The Rule of Benedict is clear, that we ourselves become wise. You from us, yes, but we from you, as well.
The second story comes from the tales of the Hasidim: A seeker traveled miles every week to learn from the holy one on the other side of the mountains. "What does the holy one preach about," some friends asked, "that would cause you to make such an arduous journey so often?"
"Preach? Why, the holy one never preaches to me at all," the seeker said.
"Well, then," the friends asked, "what rituals does the holy one do that are so important to your soul?" And the seeker answered: "The holy one doesn't do any rituals for me whatsoever."
"Well, in that case," the friends persisted, "what potions are you given there that seem to make life holier for you?" And the seeker answered, "I'm not given any potions at all."
"But if the holy one doesn't preach to you, and the holy one doesn't do rituals for you, and the holy one doesn't provide you with potions, why do you go there?"
And the seeker said, "To watch the holy one build the fire."
Clearly, the Zen masters know what we know: Witness, not theory, is the measure of the spirituality we profess.
That seeker knows what every truly spiritual seeker everywhere knows: there are some spiritual truths we come to understand only by seeing them in another — only by doing what others do who have already gone before us and know the value of going this way. It is the link to holy tradition that keeps us on the path.
Finally, the Zen masters tell the story of the monk Tetsugen, the goal of whose life was the printing of 7,000 copies of the Buddha's sutras — till then only available in Chinese — in Japanese wood blocks. It was an enormous undertaking.
Tetsugen traveled the length and breadth of Japan to collect funds for this project. But after long years of begging — and just as he collected the last of the funds — the river Uji overflowed and thousands were left homeless. So Tetsugen spent all the money he'd collected to print the scriptures into Japanese on the homeless and began his fundraising again.
But the very year he managed to raise the money for the second time, an epidemic spread over the country. This time Tetsugen gave the money away to help the suffering.
Finally, once again, he set out on another fundraising journey and, twenty years later, sure enough, a coin at a time, he finally raised enough money for the third time to see his dream come true: the scriptures would finally be able to be printed in Japanese.
But the Japanese tell their children to this day that Tetsugen actually produced three editions of the sutra and that the first two editions– the care of the homeless, and the comfort of the suffering– are invisible but far superior to the third.
Vowed Benedictines and committed Oblates need one another.
The ancients are clear: there is a common bond between the carriers of the great spiritual traditions and seekers of the spiritual life in every age. One enlightens the other. One energizes the other. One empowers the other. The tradition enlightens the times, yes, but seekers re-energize a tradition, as well.
The questions then are simple ones: "Why do you exist as an oblate?" "Where did you come from?" "Who are you in this great Benedictine story?" "What must you do for the charism to thrive?"
Question 1: Why do you exist? is a question of purpose.
Lay-religious programs — by whatever name they've been called through time — Oblates, a Benedictine term as old as the sixth century; or confraters in medieval monasteries; lay preacher tertiaries of 13th century France; Franciscan, Dominican and Carmelite third orders of the later Middle Ages; or the Jesuit volunteers; or Maryknoll Lay Missioners of today.
Question 2: Where do you come from? is a question of legitimacy that goes back to the roots of the church and the tradition itself.
Paul is very clear about it in Corinthians: "To each one," he teaches, "the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. … To one is given wisdom, to another knowledge, to one faith, to another healing, to one power, to another prophecy. … All these are the work of one and the same Spirit and given to each one as the Spirit determines for the sake of the body, the whole."
The day we keep our charism to ourselves — either as individuals or as religious communities — that very day the charism dies in us and the Holy Spirit goes seeking for softer sand through which to run.
Clearly, the spiritual channel of religious charisms or gifts is meant to be an unbroken one — through the keepers of the wells of those traditions, us, to you, the keepers of the byways of the world.
Scripture itself is full of companionship models of spirituality: Ruth and Naomi, Judith and her maidservant, Elisha and Elija, Paul and Timothy. In every case it is the blend of differences, the meld of diverse gifts, that makes possible the final miracle of faith.
In every case, it is the listening, the learning, the loving attachment of their spirits that take two weaknesses and makes it strong.
Thanks to Ruth, the Moabite, the foreigner, the outsider, Naomi, the Israelite, can return to Bethlehem. And so the line of David stays intact and Jesus is born to that line by — of all things — the foreigner, Ruth.
Thanks to the prophet Elija, Elisha is recognized — as the one who will carry on the prophetic work itself and gives it stage for its own message.
You and I must do that same thing for the voiceless of our own time. Thanks to Paul himself who recognized in Timothy's youth and his Greek ancestry the bridge Paul himself needed to preach Jesus to a whole new non-Jewish population, the work of the early church was able to thrive in regions far beyond the sound of Paul's own voice.
Now, we — you and I — must raise our voices together — where the Gospel is seldom heard. You in your world, we in ours.
Indeed, it was Jesus himself who said to many, everywhere and anywhere, come and see. And then sent them out together — no apostles in sight — to be the disciples of his own life.
Indeed, Oblate programs share a proud history, a broad scope. They also embody a bold theology: They demonstrate in a period of clericalism and a closed ecclesiology that the charisms of Jesus — all the gifts of which Paul speaks — are not for the keeping by a few.
The charisms of Jesus that the Spirit gives to each of us are not for sequestering by professional religious types.
Question 3: Who are you? is a question of identity and the answer is clear: to be an Oblate is to be a carrier of Benedictine spirituality. It is to be exactly who we are — who your monastery is — but in a different form.
You and we — we and you, are all meant to be gifts of Benedictine peace, prayer, justice humility, human community and life-giving work. Indeed, together we are meant to be messengers, models and makers of a whole new world wherever we are.
Indeed, the charisms of Jesus that the Spirit gives to each of us are not for sequestering by professional religious types. The charisms of Jesus the preacher, the healer, the wonder-worker, and gatherer of nations, are preserved to this day by the workings of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of seekers everywhere.
They were made visible when oppression and slavery were thought to be God's will but equality and justice was the hallmark of Benedictine monasteries, and so call us to join hearts and hands and insights to make equality a sign of our own communities today.
They were made visible in the prophetic works of Benedictines for peace when nations sinned in the name of God and called it Christianization, and the church itself strayed from the Gospel and called it orthodoxy.
And those charisms are meant to be shared, to be spent, to be strewed recklessly through the body of Christ, not held captive to some kind of semi-clericalized corps of ecclesiastical aristocracy.
More than that, they are the essence, the mark, the message of the life of Jesus. The charisms of the Spirit are alive, in other words. They go on going on — as Jesus goes on going on.
They are not then ever complete. They are not frozen in time. They are not fixed and static, stagnant and stock-still. They leap with life. They never die. They are the electricity that powers every good in us. They are that surge in you, that surety in me that we ride on a river of grace that is still and deep, raging and new.
Charism is always ripe but always in bloom again, always finished for one age and people but starting over again in another — charism is like every living thing. It takes the shape of seed, branch, tree, flower and fruit of the spiritual life. It grows through one stage of life after another and then, through you and me, grows again. Here. Now. Always.
Oblate programs are often now twice as large as the monasteries that sponsor them. But clearly — if the Gospel is any proof of the power of holy companionship — then Oblates are not meant to be simply consumers of the tradition.
You are also meant to be companions to the monastery to which you are attached. You are meant to be the carriers of the tradition, as well. As individuals, yes, but in concert, in community, with the Oblate community that is in concert, in community, with the monastery community itself.
There are Oblates everywhere being the charism of their order: They are preaching peace in my country that spends more money on destruction than on development.
They are doing justice in a world that provides its CEOs 100 times the salaries of the workers who make their money for them. They are being mercy in a world that kills killers to show everybody that killing is wrong.
Oblates themselves must become a new kind of people in the midst of the mess of violence and greed and oppression and power: a people whose weapon is truth and whose strength is fearlessness. And whose witness, in concert with their monasteries, is the power of the Oblate community itself. In them indeed, the best of the Benedictine charism is meant to live on.
Oblate programs must also model a whole church — a church that is wholly ministering, wholly open, wholly renewed — in the very heart of a church that has become, over time, too male, too clerical, too distant from the people of God.
Question 4: What must we do? is the question of mission and meaning.
First, Oblate programs must also model a whole church — a church that is wholly ministering, wholly open, wholly renewed — in the very heart of a church that has become, over time, too male, too clerical, too distant from the people of God.
When professed members of a Benedictine community merge their lives and their work, their spiritual wisdom and their public witness, their decision-making and the deepest part of their concerns with the Oblates who surround them, then the church itself becomes new — becomes whole — again.
In the spirit of the Jesus who walked with women, talked with Samaritans, and contested with the keepers of the synagogue, Oblate programs lift up the gates that have divided us from ourselves — and to the detriment of both of us.
Oblate programs make the integration of lay life and canonical religious life obvious, yes, but they do more than that. They give lie to the notion that one state is higher than another. They make evident the inherent holiness of each. They make evident that each of us is on the way to the same God — the only difference in our journeys is the way we choose to get there.
Oblate programs demonstrate what de Vinci's painting of the Last Supper – with its all-male, apostolic, privatized version of Jesus' eucharistic theology fails to record, but which Piasecki's print of men, women and children eating together at the Passover feast makes plain: the table to which Jesus calls us is a table of men and women, of apostles and disciples, of young and old, all sharing the same meal, all called to the same cup. And all participants in the theological development of the early Christian community.
Oblate programs are meant to dispel the image of exclusivity that makes spirituality the purview of a private club of cognoscenti — of special people — people specifically privileged, specifically gendered, supposedly more knowledgeable, specially recognized, specifically asexual — who define its limits and confine its rewards to themselves.
Finally, Oblate programs seen as both consumers of the tradition and as part of its present carriers, as well, enable both its body of oblates and the religious community itself to strengthen the gifts of the other and to learn from the gifts of the other at the same time.
That model is a cry to us to see the development of Benedictine values as our social responsibility — not an excuse to withdraw from society in the name of false and fruitless piety in the face of the Jesus who says clearly: "By their fruits you will know them."
Monastics, who are accustomed to the security of group projects, must learn the breathtaking impact of the kind of independent and individual actions that lay associates, in their isolated lives, risk every day, take for granted every day, brave without end every day.
There are challenges, of course; It is an adjustment period for us all. In the first place, monastics and religious at large are just learning to learn from the laity. Religious are coming to a sense of a wisdom beyond the conventional.
And they need someone to talk to. They need connectedness — a sense of being part of something larger than themselves, something that enables them to know that on the wide stage of the planet, they too count on the issues that make the Gospel real and the beatitudes true and the Resurrection possible for everyone.
They need, most of all, an opportunity to make a faith-journey that is regular and deep and tried and true — and they need someone to walk the journey with them. To teach them the way, to point out the path, to monitor the going, to applaud the efforts, and to care about both them and the tradition enough to walk the way with them.
Oblate programs are not meant to be this decade's substitute for ladies aid societies or monastery guilds or alumnae programs or community auxiliaries.
Oblate programs need to be the spiritual ripple, the life companion, and the support of the monasteries to which they belong — a call to community that is so rare in a world of isolates.
They are the hope that in this century, too, the life and values and spirituality of the Benedictine vision — now centuries tried and true — can be born in us again, anew and always.
And most of all, if our Oblate programs are to be authentic, let there be Oblates who will carry these values beyond the monastery to city hall and Congress, to corporate offices and city streets — even, if necessary, into monasteries themselves that have become too quiet, too comfortable with the world as it is, rather than committed to shaping a world as it must become.
Oblate programs and not meant to be pious additions to a string of private devotions. Benedictinism is a journey into the depths and demands of the contemplative life, into a prayer life that is real not simply ritualistic.
Benedictines stand on a mountain top of prayer immersed in the cries of the psalmist, challenged daily by the prophets, touched to the core by the demands of the gospel and called by Jesus — liberator, redeemer, healer, and lover — to "Come follow me!"
And so Benedictine prayer leaves us with the questions: As a Benedictine, who are you struggling to liberate from the chains of rejection, poverty and greed? What have you redeemed in a world full of its own destruction? Who do you love? Only the self or also the other and how would we know it if we ever saw it?
Instead we are at a common table, you and I, called the church. We are called to share a common feast, with the world around us. We bear a common responsibility to bring the bread of life to every dying thing we see. We owe to the world now the cup of blood that is our own.
Once upon a time a disciple asked the holy one, "Holy one, what is the difference between knowledge and enlightenment?" And the holy one said, "When you have knowledge, you use a torch to illuminate the way. When you are enlightened, you become the torch to lead the way."
What must you do? You must embody and extend the charisms or gifts of the Spirit long embedded in this great monastic tradition in new and even richer ways.
Finally, the truth is that the call to wisdom, to witness, and to oneness in community is common to us both: Oblate and monastic alike, and the call must be heard. Together you and I must make it happen.
May you, I, our monasteries and our Oblate programs everywhere companion one another, listen to one another's wisdom and so become even a stronger part of the tradition — both of us — than we can ever be alone.
May you, I, our monasteries and our Oblate programs everywhere companion one another, listen to one another's wisdom and so become even a stronger part of the tradition — both of us — than we can ever be alone.


text:
Shailene Woodley went through 'darkest' time after 's--tty' Aaron Rodgers split
January 23, 2023 | 1:38pm
The "Big Little Lies" actress shared that at the time of their breakup, "My personal life was s--tty, so it felt like a big pain bubble for eight months."
Inside Aaron Rodgers' dating life: 'He makes Pete Davidson seem demure'
January 6, 2023 | 7:45pm
While Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers has dated a string of beautiful women — from Shailene Woodley to Olivia Munn to, reportedly, model Mallory Edens — it's hard to pin down...
Shailene Woodley cozies up to Ansel Elgort over Italian dinner
September 7, 2022 | 5:33pm
The two have been close friends since starring as each other's love interests in the film "The Fault in Our Stars" back in 2014.
Aaron Rodgers debuts first tattoo after Shailene Woodley breakup
July 7, 2022 | 3:10pm
"There's a deep and meaningful story and connection to absolutely each element of this art piece, and I'll share a little more about that one day."
Why Shailene Woodley feels 'nurtured' after Aaron Rodgers breakup
June 30, 2022 | 8:19am
The "Secret Life of the American Teenager" alum called June "the best month ever" via Instagram, gushing, "God i'm grateful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Shailene Woodley gushes over 'oiled up' Miles Teller
June 2, 2022 | 12:37pm
"He really is such a wildly talented actor, and it made my heart explode watching him do his thing in this," the "Big Little Lies" star said of her pal.
Shailene Woodley posts about 'grief' after Aaron Rodgers breakup
April 28, 2022 | 9:58am
The "Big Little Lies" star seemingly addressed reports that she and the Green Bay Packers quarterback have called it quits on their engagement.
Shailene Woodley reportedly 'done' with Aaron Rodgers
April 26, 2022 | 10:40am
The actress reportedly has no desire to continue dating the NFL star after the two attempted to rekindle their romance earlier this year.
Shailene Woodley shows off her engagement-ringless finger and more star snaps
Shailene Woodley goes for a solo stroll, Bennifer 2.0 holds hands and more...
Aaron Rodgers, Shailene Woodley spotted together again at California winery
March 20, 2022 | 4:59pm
"They seemed really happy," a source told People. "[Shailene] was sitting on [Aaron's] lap while they hung out at the table with friends."
Shailene Woodley and Aaron Rodgers arrive in Palm Beach after friend's wedding
March 8, 2022 | 2:45pm
The on-again, off-again couple have recently sparked reconciliation rumors after this Sunshine State sighting and attending a wedding together last weekend.
Shailene Woodley and Aaron Rodgers attend friend's wedding together
Video of the pair standing around a dancing circle at the reception made the rounds on social media. They appeared to be laughing and having a good time.
Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley are 'talking things through' amid split rumors
February 26, 2022 | 11:34am
"Things are different now, but they were definitely over," a source insisted to Us Weekly this week after the pair were spotted at a grocery store together.
Shailene Woodley and Aaron Rodgers spotted together amid split rumors
The Green Bay Packers quarterback reunited with the "Divergent" actress on the same day that he hinted they may have not called off their engagement.
Aaron Rodgers hints that he and Shailene Woodley are still together
February 22, 2022 | 3:06pm
"When your home life is stable and you have an amazing partner to do life with, it just makes the work life a bonus," the NFL MVP said in a...
Aaron Rodgers thanks Shailene Woodley for 'unconditional love' amid split rumors
February 22, 2022 | 12:07pm
The Green Bay Packers quarterback also told his rumored ex, "I love you and am grateful for you," less than a week after several sources confirmed they have split.
Aaron Rodgers reflects on love after Shailene Woodley split: 'I give you the truth'
The NFL star shared some inspirational words to his Instagram Story, less than one week after calling off his engagement to the "Big Little Lies" actress.
Shailene Woodley seen sans engagement ring for first time since Aaron Rodgers split
The exes had confirmed their engagement in February 2021; news of their reportedly "amicable" broken-off engagement surfaced earlier this week.
Shailene Woodley and Aaron Rodgers break up: reports
The "Divergent" star and the NFL MVP have reportedly called off their engagement after nearly two years together.
Aaron Rodgers sells California home as fate with Packers looms
Aaron Rodger's has sold his longtime California home — where he would go to unwind in the offseason — for $5.13 million, The Post can report. The Green Bay Packers quarterback...
1 Ashton Kutcher admits he was 'f--king pissed' by ex Demi Moore's memoir 2 Ben Affleck hangs with ex Jennifer Garner's boyfriend, John Miller 3 Paula Abdul, 60, looks like a teenager in Photoshop fail: 'Who is this?'


text:
Offsite Projects
VISION: To cultivate contemporary visual arts, artists and audiences.
MISSION: NCCA is the leading centre for contemporary visual art in the Northern Territory – bringing together diverse communities of artists and audiences to engage with contemporary ideas and practices. NCCA brokers opportunities for artists locally, nationally and internationally and connects communities through its dynamic programs.
NCCA VALUES:
EXPERIMENTATION: Providing a supportive and critical space for artists and curators to take risks. ACCESSIBILITY: Presenting art in a context that develops audiences andunderstanding. EXCHANGE: Connecting artists and arts organisations across the Northern Territory, Australia and Asia. INTEGRITY: Conducting business with respect, honesty and transparency. EXCELLENCE: Pursuing high-quality artistic content and presentation models across exhibition, projects and public programs.
Please click to access NCCA Annual Report
NCCA's Constitution 2019
Colin McDonald, QC (Chair)
BA, LLB (Hons) . Inaugural President of the Northern Territory Criminal Lawyer's Association, 1982; appointed by the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister the Honourable Gareth Evans QC to the Board of the Australian-Indonesia Institute, 1984; Life member of the Northern Territory Criminal Lawyers Association, President of the Northern Territory Bar Association – 1997 to 2000, Member of the Executive Committee of the Australian Bar Association – 1997 to 2000, President Northern Territory Branch of the International Commission of Jurists – 2000 to present, Member of the Board of the Australian-Indonesia Institute – 1989 to 1994 in the Hawke and Keating Governments, Member of the Board of Directors to the Cambodian Legal Resource Development Centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia – 1999 to present, Member of the Royal Darwin Hospital Management Board – 2002 – 2003, Chairman of the Royal Darwin Hospital Management Board 2003 to present, Chairman of the Royal Darwin Hospital Ethics Committee 2003 to present, Continuing member of the Advisory Committee of the Asian law Journal, University of Melbourne, Chairman Northern Territory Museums and Art Galleries Board 1997 to 2000 and 2003 to 2006, Chairman of the Visiting Committee of the School of Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences at the Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Member of the Panel of Chairs of the NT Police Promotions Appeals Board 2000 to present, Member of the Panel of Chairs of the NT Police Inability and Disciplinary Appeals Board 2005 and continuing, Member of the Board of the Institute of Legal Studies at the Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, Head of Chambers at William Forster Chambers 1998 to present
Ross Springolo (Secretary & Public Officer)
Ross Springolo is currently the Director, Strategic Services and Governance at Charles Darwin University based in Darwin. In connection with this role, Ross is a member of a number of internal CDU committees, including Corporations Act Company Secretary for the Charles Darwin University Foundation. Ross also belongs to a number of committees for external organisations including Menzies School of Health Research, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, and Melaleuca Refugee Centre Torture and Trauma Survivors Service of the NT. Ross holds a number of tertiary degrees including Master of Commerce and Master of Educational Administration.
Fernanda Camara (Treasurer)
Fernanda Camara is the Director of Finance at Charles Darwin University, and was formerly Chief Financial Officer at Jacana Energy, and Account Director at Deloitte. She is a Certified Internal Auditor and Member of the Institute of Internal Auditors
Karen Brown is the principal of Karen Brown Fine Art, a commercial art gallery specialising in Aboriginal Art.
Robert Welfare
Robert Welfare is a lawyer and the principal of Robert Welfare and Associates lawyers.
Alistair Shields
Alistair Shields is Chair of the Australasia Railway Corporation, Chair of the Racing Commission (NT), and Chief Executive Officer of the Darwin Waterfront Corporation. He is the Northern Territory Government representative on the Joint Management Board for Kakadu National Park, and he also provides specialist consulting services to a number of private sector and Government Clients. In the period 2013 to 2017, Alastair held a number of Chief Executive Officer roles for Northern Territory Government agencies, including the Department of Tourism and Culture (from its establishment in September 2016 until December 2017), the Department of Land Resource Management (from February 2015 until December 2016), the Department of Business (during 2014), and the Department of Children and Families (2013). He is also a member of the board of the Darwin Entertainment Centre, and Darwin Community Legal Service, and is a member of the National Trust of Australia (NT), and was a former Deputy Chair of the Museum and Art Galleries Board of the Northern Territory.
Kaye Strange
Kaye Strange is a practicing visual artist, exhibiting her work in over thirty, group and solo, exhibitions since 1985. Originally from Melbourne, she graduated from RMIT in 1989 having completed a Bachelor in Fine Art majoring in both painting and photography. In 2000 she returned to post-graduate study at the Victorian College of the Arts completing a Masters in Fine Art, under (of only two offered) full scholarship, in 2002. In 2003 she moved to Darwin. Kaye holds positions at Charles Darwin University as accreditation and course development officer and as a visual arts lecturer. Previously she worked in the oil and gas industry as a contract administrator and cost controller. She is a member of the National Association for the Visual Arts.
Neville Pantazis
Neville Pantazis is a Director of Parap Fine Foods. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania, and is a Board Member of the Darwin Entertainment Centre. He is a former gallery owner, and has long been involved in promoting the visual arts in Darwin.
Dr Aggie Wegner
Dr Aggie Wegner is Associate Dean Research and Research Training / Senior Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University. She is a social scientist with a background in environmental science and management, tourism and policy. Her multidisciplinary background provides her with many opportunities to work collaboratively with other academics, government agencies, community groups, non-governmental organisations and industry partners. In addition to her research activities she is actively involved in University governance. In 2010 she received the Ryan Family Award Special Commendation for outstanding contribution to Charles Darwin University. Aggie has published in the policy, environmental management, education, and tourism fields. She has a strong research focus and interest in the management of natural resources, all aspects of policy and decision-making processes as well as human dimensions of interactions with a focus on partnerships.
The Chair and NCCA thanks outgoing board members in 2017: Freda Canaris (Ordinary Member) and Brett Walker (Ordinary Member) for their service on the Board, and Colvin Crowe for his long period as public officer. He also thanks regular
volunteers, Bill Davies and John Waller. We also thank: Neville Pantazis, the Greek Orthodox Community, Charlie Randazzo and Rosanna Spadaccini, The Right Worshipful Kon Vatskalis (Lord Mayor), the Indonesian Consul, Therese Ritchie, Rupert Betheras, Mike Stitfold, Darwin Festival, Charles Darwin University, Jenny Ashby and all members who have participated in exhibitions. A special thank you to our funding bodies, ArtsNT and the Australia Council for their ongoing support. CAOA are also thanked for their support and allience to NCCA.
NCCA is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and the Northern Territory Government through Arts NT. NCCA is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments


What was the hurry to attack Syria?
It should be immediately obvious that the United States, with 700 foreign military bases (compared to Russia's 11), is not exactly isolationist, and won't be any time soon. What follows is an attempt at a longer reassurance that no apocalypse is at hand just because we're not bombing Syria or otherwise being exceptionally American.
Originally, during the late 18th century, American exceptionalism included a determined sense of isolationism (and non-interventionism). At the same time, many of these isolationists also articulated the fight for American freedom as a fight for the freedom of everyone in the world. That exceptional American contradiction remains vividly alive in public discourse more than 200 years later.
Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" (1775), best known for making the case for American freedom from British rule, argued that one benefit of independence would be that America would no longer be forced (as a colony) to support European wars irrelevant to American interests – a benefit to be protected by a policy of isolationism. Even before the United States existed, American revolutionaries were wary of an alliance even with a supportive France. The Second Continental Congress eventually allied the nascent nation with France largely because that seemed to be necessary to win the Revolutionary War.
Besides being emotionally appealing, the ideas of independence and isolation defined an extremely practical, protective policy for a country that was relatively small, poor, and weak. Avoiding entanglements with others was really more about hoping to keep other more powerful states from getting entangled with us, and the tactic was mostly successful. The less powerful were another matter entirely.
But even as American revolutionaries chose a protective isolationism for their state, they promoted their revolution as a universal benefit. The Declaration of Independence (1776) is rooted in the universal right of all people to establish "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."Â From the beginning, the exceptional American "right of one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another" was established as a global entitlement – but not one without internal contradictions.
This almost religious sentiment was already at odds with the American reality of westward expansion, not least in the extra-constitutional purchase of Louisiana from France (1803). Acquiring Louisiana roughly doubled the size of the United States, headed off war with France, and put a territorial wedge between the Spanish holdings in America. The purchase turned the U.S. into one of the largest countries in the world, but it wasn't exactly a boon to the freedom and self-determination the people who lived there, despite their theoretical entitlement by the Laws of Nature and Nature's God. Instead, Louisiana became susceptible to the benign influence of freedom and self-government by being subjected to and by the United States.
The inherent contradictions in America's expansionist isolationism eventually gave way to a dominant policy of expansionism with such highlights as the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 (this is "our" hemisphere, everyone else keep out), the Mexican War of 1846-48 (well, it's our manifest destiny to take what we want, especially California), and the Spanish-American War of 1898 (guaranteeing a free Cuba and establishing our first off-shore empire in Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines – what some call the beginning of the "American Century").
After the Great War, the indispensible nation proclaimed itself dispensible from the world community, resisting further entanglement in European wars until an Asian war came to Hawaii. Since World War II the idea of "American isolationism" has remained an oxymoron – except perhaps to those who wanted the U.S. to attack the Soviet Union then, or Iran or China now. For most of the time since 1945,  governments of both parties have limited American interventionism to relatively limited, stupid, pointless wars like Viet-Nam or to covert attacks on "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" the people of Iran, Guatemala, Peru, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, and so on.
All that Cold War militarism, with its special justification, came before the "New American Century" crowd took power with the 2000 election in the Supreme Court. Once they got their fervently desired "new Pearl Harbor" on 9/11 the following year, the United States entered a period of chronic, useless, bankrupting war unlike anything in our prior history. The indispensable nation's present willingness to put its useless attack on Syria on hold is hardly enough to signal that the world's only superpower has come to its senses.
And it remains unlikely that the people of the world, and especially the people of Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya see us as indispensible to anything but their continued suffering.
The real isolationism with regard to Syria is the American willingness to go it alone, whatever "it" might turn out to be. Virtually isolated in its willingness to commit acts of war, the U.S. has apparently stumbled into a reprieve offered opportunistically by Russia. In his New York Times op ed column September 12, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said, without apparent irony, "We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law." That's a charade Russians and Americans might enjoy equally, even as it serves the public good.
Some are opposed, of course. Invoking their own version of American exceptionalism, the nattering nabobs of national narcissism continue to babble incoherently about toughness and credibility and sending messages – all of which require the nation to kill more people or be seen as isolationist, or even dispensable!
What would be truly exceptional would be for the United States to contemplate a complex crisis thoughtfully and patiently, without reflexively assuming that the best and only response should be military.
Fake intelligence summaries, rhetorical peace offers enliven U.S. war plan in Syria. What would it look like if a government really knew what it was doing?
Lacking a comprehensive, coherent account of rational beings acting in rational ways to work towards peaceful and reliable solutions to difficult questions, we offer here a fragmentary highlight reel of one day in the life of an American government  spinning in all directions toward no known goal in Syria.
"Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration Aug. 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment"¦.
In other words, the political document one might expect from the Director of National Intelligence was replaced by an even more politicized document created in the White House to justify acts of war. This suggests that the phrase "American credibility" is an oxymoron and the political vaudeville that played out publicly early this week is a pretty accurate reflection of an administration doing handstands and backflips to distract the audience from the glaring contradictions of its Syria policy.
Reporters promptly spun this as the U.S. giving Syria a one-week deadline. Reports mostly ignored the possibility that Kerry's assertion ("it can't be done") could mean that it's logistically impossible, or that the U.S. will attack anyway, or anything else.
Also Monday morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called a news conference in Moscow to announce that Russia was urging Syria to put its chemical weapons under international control in order to head off an act of war by the United States.
The Russian and Syrian foreign ministers also call for UN inspections now.
Late Monday morning at 11:47 a.m., Agence France-Presse (AFP) tweeted:  BREAKING Syrian foreign minister welcomes Russia's Syria chemical handover initiative"Â (Reuters had tweeted similarly six minutes earlier).
"Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used.
Syria has a research nuclear reactor in Damascus and the government has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assess the likely consequences if the Americans bomb the reactor. The Russians are pressing the IAEA to make the assessment. According to Reuters, an anonymous U.S. official saying that "requests for comprehensive risk analyses of hypothetical scenarios are beyond the IAEA's statutory authority".
Rice apparently did not talk about the United States helping Iraq to gas Iranian soldiers and civilians during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. She did scoff at any further attempts at a diplomatic solution.
By the end of the day the signs indicated that there was no growing support in Congress for an attack on Syria, and that public opinion remained overwhelmingly opposed to risking another war. But a determined government faction still wants to bomb somebody.
Someone might ask McCain whether his proposed impeachment-for-a-boots-job should take effect in the event of any deployment of American troops as part of an international force to guard Syrian chemical weapons.
On Sunday, the Syrian state news agency reported that al-Queda-affiliated rebels had captured Maaloula, a Christian village 25 miles northeast of Damascus where the 3,000 residents mostly still speak ancient Aramaic. Some 1,500 Syrian rebels forced the Syrian Army to withdraw to the outskirts of the town.
Meanwhile in Yemen over the weekend, American drone strikes killed eleven people, all of whom may not have been innocent civilians.
And in Syria on Monday, another 49 people were killed, 25 of them in Damascus.
After a day or so of the Obama Administration being widely mocked and laughed at for its remarkably incompetent, ever changing foreign policy on Syria, Obama now says he'll probably lob a few missiles at Syria anyway and pretends to assume it was his bumbling that got Syria to agree to give up chemical weapons. Well no, it wasn't. Russia simultaneously saved your bacon, Mr President, and made you and your Secretary of State look like doofuses.
President Barack Obama will tell the nation Tuesday night that he is pursuing a last-minute Russian proposal to remove chemical weapons from Syria, and will argue that military force may be necessary.
That intercepted message of Syria officers talking about the attack was AFTER the attack and showed them in panic that an unauthorized attack had been made. A major where the attack supposedly came from insisted to superiors that all his chemical weapons were accounted for and invited general staff to come and look.
Top chemical weapons expert highly skeptical of U.S. case against Syrian government.
When the president asks Congress for a blank check for war, why does the Congress fret about setting a limit on war powers instead of just saying: "NO" to any check? What happened to checks and balances (as if we all didn't know)?
Already quislings of both parties in the Senate – Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas – are staking out the "compromise" position of a limited war in response to President Obama's proposal for an open-ended war authorization. According to Leahy, Democratic senate staffers are working on an alternative authorization for killing Syrians.
Several Republican senators, including John McCain of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina just want the Obama administration to start killing people, the sooner the better, their only caveat being that the president should have a plan.
McCain wants the US to do more – he hasn't said how much more, or if he would accept any military limitations. "It can't just be, in my view, pinprick cruise missiles," McCain said, describing a weapon that doesn't exist outside of military fantasy.
Conventional wisdom on September 2 predicted that the Senate would endorse whatever the president wants to do, just not as long as he might want to do it. The prediction for the House is generally iffy, but House Minority Leader Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California is cheerleading from the front of the war bandwagon.
If this premise is wrong, as seems quite possible, than the following seven "whereas paragraphs are mostly accurate but irrelevant, with some demagoguery thrown in to persuade or intimidate Congress.
But even if the premise turns out to be correct, the "authorization should be unacceptable for the unlimited scope of action allowed to the president, who still uses the 2001 AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) against terrorism to justify his authority to wage war by whatever means he chooses in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Mali, and elsewhere. That law remains open-ended and unmodified by Congress, allowing the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against pretty much anyone he "determines" deserves to be attacked.
The new authorization gives the president the freedom "to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria," which seems as if it's at least limited to the geography of Syria, and only as long as there's a conflict there. Of course it implicitly leaves it up to the president to determine what a "conflict" is and even, arguably, what "Syria" is.
When protecting against a "threat," nothing is ruled out, no matter how crazy paranoid the threat may be. In post-9/11 United States, threat perceptions don't have much restraint on the paranoid crazy.
In a fundamentally cowardly Congress, members are unlikely to oppose this kind of threat to the national interest, especially now that they getting their egos stroked by the White House.


"Coordinated dynamic gene expression changes in the central nucleus of " by Kate Freeman, Mary M. Staehle et al.
Coordinated dynamic gene expression changes in the central nucleus of the amygdala during alcohol withdrawal.
BACKGROUND: Chronic alcohol use causes widespread changes in the cellular biology of the amygdala's central nucleus (CeA), a GABAergic center that integrates autonomic physiology with the emotional aspects of motivation and learning. While alcohol-induced neurochemical changes play a role in dependence and drinking behavior, little is known about the CeA's dynamic changes during withdrawal, a period of emotional and physiologic disturbance.
METHODS: We used a qRT-PCR platform to measure 139 transcripts in 92 rat CeA samples from control (N = 33), chronically alcohol exposed (N = 26), and withdrawn rats (t = 4, 8, 18, 32, and 48 hours; N = 5, 10, 7, 6, 5). This focused transcript set allowed us to identify significant dynamic expression patterns during the first 48 hours of withdrawal and propose potential regulatory mechanisms.
RESULTS: Chronic alcohol exposure causes a limited number of small magnitude expression changes. In contrast, withdrawal results in a greater number of large changes within 4 hours of removal of the alcohol diet. Sixty-five of the 139 measured transcripts (47%) showed differential regulation during withdrawal. Over the 48-hour period, dynamic changes in the expression of γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABA(A) ), ionotropic glutamate and neuropeptide system-related G-protein-coupled receptor subunits, and the Ras/Raf signaling pathway were seen as well as downstream transcription factors (TFs) and epigenetic regulators. Four temporally correlated gene clusters were identified with shared functional roles including NMDA receptors, MAPKKK and chemokine signaling cascades, and mediators of long-term potentiation, among others. Cluster promoter regions shared overrepresented binding sites for multiple TFs including Cebp, Usf-1, Smad3, Ap-2, and c-Ets, suggesting a potential regulatory role.
CONCLUSIONS: During alcohol withdrawal, the CeA experiences rapid changes in mRNA expression of these functionally related transcripts that were not predicted by measurement during chronic exposure. This study provides new insight into dynamic expression changes during alcohol withdrawal and suggests novel regulatory relationships that potentially impact the aspects of emotional modulation.
Freeman, Kate; Staehle, Mary M.; Vadigepalli, Rajanikanth; Gonye, Gregory E; Ogunnaike, Babatunde A; Hoek, Jan B; and Schwaber, James S, "Coordinated dynamic gene expression changes in the central nucleus of the amygdala during alcohol withdrawal." (2013). Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics. 99.
Freeman, K., Staehle, M.M., Vadigepalli, R., Gonye, G.E., Ogunnaike, B.A., Hoek, J.B. & Schwaber, J.S. (2013) Coordinated Dynamic Gene Expression Changes in the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala During Alcohol Withdrawal, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 37, January; E88-E100.


text:
Art | 21 Nov 2018 | By Charlotte Jansen
Artists' earthly creations take over treehouse gallery Ik Lab in Tulum
Courtesy of Fernando Artigas Architect
A luxury eco-hotel on the Caribbean coast isn't where you'd usually expect to find a contemporary art gallery. But at Azulik – a resort in Tulum comprising 48 wooden villas for 'nature lovers, honeymooners and those looking to reconnect with themselves' (there's no electricity, and no children allowed) – you will find avant-garde artworks in the heart of the Mexican jungle.
Opened in April this year, the multi-functional arts space Ik Lab is the brainchild of architect Eduardo Neira (better known as Roth), with an artistic programme coordinated by Paris-based art advisor Claudia Paetzold. Built sustainably, using local, organic materials – including bejuco (a local brown-hued vine known for its flexibility), chechen (resistant to rotting and termites) and chaca tree wood – Ik Lab's construction was informed by the techniques and craft of the Mayan ancestors who once inhabited the land in the area.
Medicinal practices and cuisine were among the Mayan methods researched extensively by Neira over a decade and seeks to preserve at Azulik. The curving lines, slopes and voluminous forms of the space were also inspired by the topography of the area, and a protective fibreglass canopy protects the structure from rain while letting the natural light through.
Homme II, 2018, by Gabriel Rico. Courtesy of IK LAB
'Configurations' is the current exhibition (running until 31 January 2019) and brings together artists Gabriel Rico, Katinka Bock and Guillaume Leblon, whose practices are intertwined with the ancient metaphysical approach. Sculptures rise from the earth, swing in the air and appear as if from nowhere, moving in a rhythm not unlike the wildlife that still scurries by underfoot. Indeed, the idea of the exhibitions at Ik Lab is to allow the viewer to enter the space 'as if it is a living organism', experiencing the art and nature as if they were one.
At the end of the month, Neira and Paetzold will unveil their latest project, a new centre in the jungle for art, fashion and music: Azulik Uh May. The space will include a school and a state-of-the-art recording studio, as well as an additional exhibition space, all connected by floating bridges and meandering paths, and keeping the anthropomorphous structures seen at Ik Lab. Ernesto Neto, Paulo Nazareth and Oksar Metsavaht have created immersive installations for the grand opening on 30 November. §
Abandoned Window, 2018, by Guillaume Leblon. Courtesy of Ik Lab
Mot (suspendu), 2015, by Katinka Bock. Courtesy of Ik Lab
Fishes in the Vase, 2015, by Guillaume Leblon. Courtesy of Ik Lab
From left, Junimond (triangle) and Junimond, 2017, by Katinka Bock. Courtesy of Ik Lab
'Configurations' is on view until 31 January 2019. For more information, visit the Ik Lab website
Ik Lab
Carretera Tulum-Boca Paila KM 5
Zona Hotelera
77780 Tulum
GALLERIES MEXICO INSTALLATIONS EXHIBITIONS ON INSTAGRAM GALLERY ARCHITECTURE


This entry was posted in Politics Monday and tagged 2016 Presidential Election, Candidates, Election, Freedom, Politics, Responsibilities, Rights. Bookmark the permalink.
Amen and I want to reblog this. Do I have your permission? I agree with you 100%.
Good words. Obviously non-voters do more harm. We have to choose the lesser of evils.


text:
Maria Callahan
Location: Freeland, Michigan
If you are going to be rerouted on a flight to Los Angeles, leaving several hours later than your original flight, and you get one of the last two seats available, you want the other one (for the middle seat in your crammed row) to go to Maria Callahan. We initially bonded over our good fortune and foresight in getting on the flight in the first place, since we kept getting phone alerts that the one we had abandoned was continuing to get delayed. Maria then offered me some of the plumpest, sweetest red cherries and her generosity and open spirit, coupled with her good nature about getting up to let me use the restroom ("It will give me a chance to stretch my legs!") cemented our BFF status.
Maria was meeting up with her grandson, who lives in Virgina, in Los Angeles and they were then going to fly together to Australia. The trip is part of a tradition she started a few years ago, when her oldest grandchild was in her final year of high school. Maria wrote an email to her five children (Todd, 49, Stacy, 44, Kelly, 42 and Tara and Tyler, 37) telling them that she wanted to give each of her grandchildren a special high school graduation gift. "I told them I would love to take each grandchild on a trip of their choice." Maria's seven grandchildren range in age from two to twenty one years old, so she also added a caveat that she would make sure that there would be money set aside for the youngest ones if she was is not able to make it on their trips to, as she put it, "keep it fair."
Maria has always loved to travel. And part of the enjoyment of travel for her is sharing the experiences with her loved ones. When the kids were little, it was financially challenging to indulge in her wanderlust. Both she and her husband were teachers and taking five kids anywhere, let alone on public educator salaries, was a stretch. But they did what they could. They purchased a timeshare and would trade it in each year for whatever location and timeframe fit their family's needs. "We would scrimp and save and give up other things," Maria says, "so that we could travel with the kids." Maria loved showing her children a world beyond their small, rural town in Michigan. "I wanted them to see that there was more out there and to learn about the world that we live in and that we are all connected." She didn't even mind that they sometimes encountered undesirable sights and people on their travels because she wanted her children to know that, as she says, "there is no perfect place."
Each of her grown children received a week's time share as their wedding gift so that they could continue the tradition of traveling and experiencing new places each year. But Maria decided to take it a step further with her grandkids. "Now that the kids are grown," she says, "I have a little more money to play with. I love exploring and I thought it would be fun to do it with each of my grandkids and it would be a unique way of bonding with each of them."
The only parameters for the trips is that the grandchildren have to pick places that were safe. Hope, now 21, was the first grandchild to get to take Grandma up on her generous offer. She opted for Paris as her trip of choice. Maria got to see Hope put her six years of French study to good use and she was also impressed with her granddaughter's savviness about French customs and landmarks. And when Hope got flustered that a day's itinerary did not go according to plan, Maria got to teach her granddaughter about the importance of letting go and that everything can still be great even if it is not perfect. The trip was the bonding experience Maria had hoped it would be, and now Hope is majoring in International Marketing at college.
Grant, who just graduated from high school in Virginia, is the lucky recipient of this year's trip. He chose Australia, but was happy to let Maria plan the itinerary. They have two weeks chock full of hikes, safaris, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Sydney Harbor. They are also traveling a long way to showcase that, says Maria, "there is goodness in other people and other places too."
Maria thinks the trips are a much better use of her money than giving her grandchildren something material as a graduation gift. She would much rather given them an experience. "The older I get," Maria says, "the memories I treasure are the experiences, not the things."
She is planning to go on as many trips as she can, saying she will "keep it up until I can't walk anymore." But, she adds, "I may have to write a check for the three year old!"
She has joked with her children that there may not be a lot of inheritance left over once she is done with all of these trips. "I told them there may not be a big pot of gold at the end," she says. "I am using it to create memories."
I am sure no one is complaining. Reflecting on my dad's death, that is still so raw and painful, I find myself consumed with gratitude for all of the travels and experiences we had together and the opportunities he had to get to know my own kids. Bravo to Maria for creating the memories that will be something her grandchildren will always cherish, and for opening up the world to them at a time when we need folks to realize that we are all citizens of the world. As Maria puts it, "It is so important for them to see how other people live and to realize that we are all one."
4 Responses to Maria Callahan
Kelly Haskill July 10, 2019
Thank you for such a lovely representation of my mother's heart. She is a fantastic mom and an amazing example to her grandchildren and those so fortunate to know her.
Katya Lezin July 11, 2019
I knew instantly that she was a lovely person inside and out and feel fortunate that we were seatmates for our flight to LA. Meeting people like her – and being able to showcase them – is precisely why I started my blog.
What a wonderful thing to do for your grandchildren. It is something that these children will always cherish. As you will cherish those times with your father and his relationship with you and your family, Katya.
Richard Schmidt July 11, 2019
Lovely. Thanks for sharing the story about this wonderful person/mom/gm.