At the age of 14, Trajean Jadorette, confessed his sins to the Lord and accepted Him as his savior. Twenty-five years later, that young man is now the new senior pastor at New Covenant Baptist Church. But his path to the pulpit has been one in which he admits he's had his fair share of challenges — like most people, but he said he was able to overcome those challenges because he never wavered in his belief in God.
The biggest of his challenges through the years he believes was when he was not married.
"I never had the time to really invest in a relationship at that stage of my life," said the pastor at the church on the East-West Highway, in a recent interview with The Nassau Guardian.
Like most young men, he was more interested in ensuring that he had a car to drive, making certain he looked good and being single, dating — but without marriage as the end result uppermost in his mind.
The good thing he said was the fact that he never had to battle with gambling, alcohol or drugs.
"My problem was I wasn't married as yet and if you are faithful to your faith, then you have to maintain that not just by word, but by deed as well. Getting married was my challenge. I never had the time to really invest in a relationship at that stage of my life."
Pastor Jadorette said he came to the realization that in order to be faithful to his faith, that he had to maintain his faith not just by word, but by deed as well. He said that the challenge first had to be recognized, and then he associated himself with people who could lead him in the right direction.
Pastor Jadorette admits that overcoming challenges is not something that a person can do overnight.
"It's not something that you're going to wake up and say I'm going to fly straight. It is things that you start to practice that eventually become habit. Looking at your company (friends) is important and critical in my opinion. Developing a strong prayer life and just being real with yourself helps. When you become real, you start to look at life differently. When you look at life differently, your choices in many ways you start to change them. But as long as you're not realistic, whatever you're doing is fine," he said.
Pastor Jadorette changed the way he looked at relationships when he found the woman of his dreams. They are three years into their marriage during a time when he was elected to serve as the new senior pastor at New Covenant. He assumed the post at the retirement of Bishop Simeon Hall, who retired after 30 years as senior pastor.
Like most people he has made his fair share of mistakes in life. But he believes the journey that brought him to the pulpit at New Covenant Baptist Church was God-orchestrated.
Pastor Jadorette accepted the Lord as a tenth grade student while working as a busboy at a restaurant on Grand Bahama, after he was witnessed to by one of the waiters on staff — even though he had been a member of Faith Temple Church of God in Freeport all of his life.
"Delano Williams witnessed to me one evening and I confessed to Christ at the age of 14. That journey was not a straight journey. I hung out ... some of my friends were not the most savory of characters — they were not saved, and I hung out with them quite a bit. Luckily for me though I never used drugs, and never drank and to this day I don't smoke or drink," he said.
The young Jadorette had one driving passion — he yearned for education and to attend college. And he believes that God stepped in to assist him when things looked bleak.
"I was a young lad, 19-20, had a car, traveled quite a bit, but I knew God had some other things in store for me. But I just got tired doing the same thing over and over so I started really seeking God and would go by the beach by myself sometimes until the wee hours of the night talking to God and listening to Him talk to me. One day He said, 'You have the access granted, you're going to go off to school.'"
Jadorette did not know where the money was going to come from to make it happen. But he believes that because of his altruism to others it was returned to him when Pastor Reno Smith told him about American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee. Jadorette packed his bags and the rest is history as they say.
The pastor said an extremely kind God helped him to graduate in three years. He then used the remainder of his visa time to obtain a master's degree at Fisk University. And at the same time get his first taste of life in the pulpit.
"While at Fisk, (at) the church I attended, the pastor resigned and by this time I was an ordained, trained minister. I came in as acting pastor for a year and after that year they voted me in as the senior pastor of First Community Church in Nashville, Tennessee, where I spent five years."
It's that wealth of knowledge that Pastor Jadorette, 39, took with him to New Covenant. He was elected to serve in an event-free process by the 359 persons in a process that took less than 15 minutes.
He has taken a hands-on leadership style to New Covenant. He believes in autonomy when people are given tasks, but Pastor Jadorette said he still likes to be hands-on.
"Not necessarily to micro-manage, but I like to be hands-on. I?like to be a hands-on leader who is very practical,"?he said.
And while a number of churches encounter friction when it's time to elect a new leader, the pastor said the event-free process that gave him the senior role showed that the membership had confidence in him. It's his goal to have that confidence strengthened over the years.
"I?think they have quite a bit of confidence in me and I pray that I continue to lean on God as I?would have in all my years in ministry since I've given my life to Christ, so that that confidence can be strengthened over the years as well,"?he said.
"I?think our young people strayed quite a bit and even some of our older people... society has really become overly materialistic. My hope is that we can make church exciting again, a?place where folks can come and get closer to God. If we can do that, and that spreads like a virus in society, we can get the kind of spiritual underpinning that we once enjoyed in this country,"?he said.
"My vision for the next 30 years if it be that long, is to once again point people back to Christ. And we're going to do that using several mediums — the different ministries that we have in the church, it is my goal and vision to strengthen those different arms of the church so we can bring folks in to bring them closer to Christ,"?he said.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Discrimination with builders of nation continues
When it comes to teachers, there is different policy. In almost all the policies devised and implemented for the government officials of other ministries, the teaching fraternity face discrimination.
There is nothing for teachers as far as rental ceiling, timely promotion, and other perks and privileges are concerned.
Government quarters have already been alarmed by media reports that bureaucrats of BPS-20 and above have been misusing this policy and there is no check and balance. They have been drawing transport monetisation allowance and keeping government vehicles in their possession simultaneously. On the other hand teachers are still deprived of this facility.
After the upgradation of teachers, over 200 associate professors, principals, headmasters and headmistresses were promoted to grade 20 who, earlier, used to retire in the grades 18 and 19 because of lack of any promotion formula. Like other government officers in BPS-20 and above, they should have been entitled to avail the allowances under monetisation policy of the government but it needs a clarification whether they are allowed to avail the allowance or not because they are teachers.
The policy requires that for the grant of the transport monetisation allowance, the concerned officers should provide a certificate signed by the Principal Accounting Officer i.e. secretary of the concerned ministry that they are not using government vehicles. On the demand of Accountant General Pakistan Revenues (AGPR), the grade 20 teachers and principals wrote to the ministry of capital administration and development (CAD) that they should be given in writing that they have not been using any officials vehicles so they should be allowed to avail the monetisation transport facility. But the ministry instead of giving no objection certificate to the teachers wrote a letter to the Cabinet Division in October to clarify whether the teachers are allowed to avail the facility or not.
And the Cabinet Division after sitting over the letter for over two months has written back to the ministry and raised five objections and queries including whether the teachers are civil servants or not. It seems that exercise may take a long time to reach a decision whether the teachers be allowed to avail the allowance or not.
Though the teachers till grade 19 have been receiving conveyance allowance according to their grades, those who have been upgraded to grade 20 neither have been getting any conveyance allowance nor monetisation transport facility due absence of any policy for them.
“The principals and teachers in BPS-20 sent a written request, in this regard, to secretary CAD in September 2012. Instead of giving them the required certificate, CAD wrote to Cabinet Division for clarification, in order to put the issue in pipeline. It means nobody wants to give the benefit of monetisation to the teachers. Teachers are being given the same treatment in the civil sector as the low ranking army men receive at the hands of their bosses,” complained a teacher.
An associate professor in BPS-20 of H-8 college while commenting on this discrimination said, “Teaching is perhaps universally glorified profession in terms of clichés and moral speeches but financially least lucrative among all the modern fields of life. Becoming a teacher in the third world counties is like opting a career of life-long suffering and depravities. There is nothing for teachers, no rental ceiling, no timely promotion and no perks enjoyed by other officials. How can a teacher deliver in a classroom if he is not mentally free?”
Another associate professor of H-9 college wishing anonymity said, ‘Teachers in Pakistan are silent spectators of bureaucrats both civil and military, and officials who work in the centers of power, plundering the public money. It seems relevant to look back in the ancient history when slaves were used for teaching. The monetisation policy has brought the slaves and the lords at the same pedestal, let’s see how this dichotomy is settled.”
President of Federal Government College Teachers Association (FGCTA) Tahir Mahmood demanded that ‘the teachers should not be treated as stepchildren. The benefit of the policy should also be extended to those teachers who are in BPS-20 and above as they are government officers too’.
When Cuadra moved with his mother from Vancouver to Ottawa at age 11, his troubles began. At Queen Elizabeth in Grade 7 and 8, he fumbled words when asked to read aloud in class, and despite a quick mind he would regularly flub math equations. A specialist eventually concluded he had dyslexia, and he was dispatched to a downtown Ottawa school's "special education" class.
When kids asked him why he arrived midterm, he brashly and dishonestly told them he had knifed a kid in his previous school. When mocked for being in a "special" class, he responded with his fists.
"I remember feeling bad. 'Why did I just punch that guy?' I had remorse. I wasn't a bad person, but I needed to be bad in order not to look dumb. And the second I punched them they stopped teasing."
At around age 15, Cuadra hit rock bottom. He was thrown out of Rideau high school after the desk-throwing incident, and was forced to leave his mother's East End apartment after a booze-and drug-laced party he hosted while she was in El Salvador. He said he lived with a succession of friends and then for a time on the streets, panhandling and dealing drugs. He had several brushes with the law on minor property offences, and remembers standing up in court - with a shaved head, earrings and tattoos, and clothes resembling what he'd soon be selling at his hip-hop fashion stores - proudly admitting his guilt while his mother wept behind him.
But when they returned, they sold out the entire stock in two days. Working 18-hour days and sleeping at the store, the two young men continued that pattern for six months before moving into a much more visible storefront on nearby Rideau Street, just a couple of blocks from the Rideau Mall in downtown Ottawa that is a popular hangout for young Ottawans.
Cuadra knew he was onto something, and knew competition would soon arrive, so he launched a rapid expansion. Many of the people he sold franchises to were friends with similar socio-economic backgrounds.
When urbanwear fell out of fashion, Cuadra sold off parts of the operation and finally closed the Rideau Street location in 2011.
He is now a branding and marketing specialist for his company, High Impact Media. He has also launched a company called SolveProProperties Inc. that helps homeowners in Ontario and Quebec sell their properties without incurring hefty commissions. He plans to expand to Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver in 2013.
Cuadra, a friend of this reporter since shortly after his arrival in Vancouver at age nine, has also become a professional motivational speaker and often addresses youth groups.
There is nothing for teachers as far as rental ceiling, timely promotion, and other perks and privileges are concerned.
Government quarters have already been alarmed by media reports that bureaucrats of BPS-20 and above have been misusing this policy and there is no check and balance. They have been drawing transport monetisation allowance and keeping government vehicles in their possession simultaneously. On the other hand teachers are still deprived of this facility.
After the upgradation of teachers, over 200 associate professors, principals, headmasters and headmistresses were promoted to grade 20 who, earlier, used to retire in the grades 18 and 19 because of lack of any promotion formula. Like other government officers in BPS-20 and above, they should have been entitled to avail the allowances under monetisation policy of the government but it needs a clarification whether they are allowed to avail the allowance or not because they are teachers.
The policy requires that for the grant of the transport monetisation allowance, the concerned officers should provide a certificate signed by the Principal Accounting Officer i.e. secretary of the concerned ministry that they are not using government vehicles. On the demand of Accountant General Pakistan Revenues (AGPR), the grade 20 teachers and principals wrote to the ministry of capital administration and development (CAD) that they should be given in writing that they have not been using any officials vehicles so they should be allowed to avail the monetisation transport facility. But the ministry instead of giving no objection certificate to the teachers wrote a letter to the Cabinet Division in October to clarify whether the teachers are allowed to avail the facility or not.
And the Cabinet Division after sitting over the letter for over two months has written back to the ministry and raised five objections and queries including whether the teachers are civil servants or not. It seems that exercise may take a long time to reach a decision whether the teachers be allowed to avail the allowance or not.
Though the teachers till grade 19 have been receiving conveyance allowance according to their grades, those who have been upgraded to grade 20 neither have been getting any conveyance allowance nor monetisation transport facility due absence of any policy for them.
“The principals and teachers in BPS-20 sent a written request, in this regard, to secretary CAD in September 2012. Instead of giving them the required certificate, CAD wrote to Cabinet Division for clarification, in order to put the issue in pipeline. It means nobody wants to give the benefit of monetisation to the teachers. Teachers are being given the same treatment in the civil sector as the low ranking army men receive at the hands of their bosses,” complained a teacher.
An associate professor in BPS-20 of H-8 college while commenting on this discrimination said, “Teaching is perhaps universally glorified profession in terms of clichés and moral speeches but financially least lucrative among all the modern fields of life. Becoming a teacher in the third world counties is like opting a career of life-long suffering and depravities. There is nothing for teachers, no rental ceiling, no timely promotion and no perks enjoyed by other officials. How can a teacher deliver in a classroom if he is not mentally free?”
Another associate professor of H-9 college wishing anonymity said, ‘Teachers in Pakistan are silent spectators of bureaucrats both civil and military, and officials who work in the centers of power, plundering the public money. It seems relevant to look back in the ancient history when slaves were used for teaching. The monetisation policy has brought the slaves and the lords at the same pedestal, let’s see how this dichotomy is settled.”
President of Federal Government College Teachers Association (FGCTA) Tahir Mahmood demanded that ‘the teachers should not be treated as stepchildren. The benefit of the policy should also be extended to those teachers who are in BPS-20 and above as they are government officers too’.
When Cuadra moved with his mother from Vancouver to Ottawa at age 11, his troubles began. At Queen Elizabeth in Grade 7 and 8, he fumbled words when asked to read aloud in class, and despite a quick mind he would regularly flub math equations. A specialist eventually concluded he had dyslexia, and he was dispatched to a downtown Ottawa school's "special education" class.
When kids asked him why he arrived midterm, he brashly and dishonestly told them he had knifed a kid in his previous school. When mocked for being in a "special" class, he responded with his fists.
"I remember feeling bad. 'Why did I just punch that guy?' I had remorse. I wasn't a bad person, but I needed to be bad in order not to look dumb. And the second I punched them they stopped teasing."
At around age 15, Cuadra hit rock bottom. He was thrown out of Rideau high school after the desk-throwing incident, and was forced to leave his mother's East End apartment after a booze-and drug-laced party he hosted while she was in El Salvador. He said he lived with a succession of friends and then for a time on the streets, panhandling and dealing drugs. He had several brushes with the law on minor property offences, and remembers standing up in court - with a shaved head, earrings and tattoos, and clothes resembling what he'd soon be selling at his hip-hop fashion stores - proudly admitting his guilt while his mother wept behind him.
But when they returned, they sold out the entire stock in two days. Working 18-hour days and sleeping at the store, the two young men continued that pattern for six months before moving into a much more visible storefront on nearby Rideau Street, just a couple of blocks from the Rideau Mall in downtown Ottawa that is a popular hangout for young Ottawans.
Cuadra knew he was onto something, and knew competition would soon arrive, so he launched a rapid expansion. Many of the people he sold franchises to were friends with similar socio-economic backgrounds.
When urbanwear fell out of fashion, Cuadra sold off parts of the operation and finally closed the Rideau Street location in 2011.
He is now a branding and marketing specialist for his company, High Impact Media. He has also launched a company called SolveProProperties Inc. that helps homeowners in Ontario and Quebec sell their properties without incurring hefty commissions. He plans to expand to Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver in 2013.
Cuadra, a friend of this reporter since shortly after his arrival in Vancouver at age nine, has also become a professional motivational speaker and often addresses youth groups.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Open online classes transform Georgia colleges
Cameras filmed Emory University professor Steve Everett as he recorded a lesson for a digital sound design class.
He teaches a popular music class on campus, but it can only accommodate 15 students. Yet, more than 20,000 people are expected to take his class in January when it is offered as a massive open online course, or MOOC.
These online courses are revolutionizing higher education as they give students free access worldwide to content and faculty offered by elite colleges. About 2 million students have signed up for the classes this year, and two Georgia colleges — Emory and Georgia Tech — are among those participating. Georgia Tech started this fall, and Emory begins in January.
Colleges are on the cusp of a major transformation as they test what they can provide through advanced technology and how they can operate more efficiently. They are discussing how to provide a richer learning experience online and in traditional classrooms.
“The model of higher education is changing,” said Lynn Zimmerman, Emory’s senior vice provost. “We are at the forefront of the experiment, and I don’t think anyone can predict where it will go.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded millions in grants to support and expand this movement. National groups are working to assess quality and award credit for these classes so they would count just as they do when students transfer from one school to another.
The foundation tapped Georgia Tech and other schools to design quality remedial and introductory-level courses. These classes stump many students, and this work unites MOOCs with the national push to help more adults acquire a college education.
Some question whether the free MOOCs can defray the cost of a college education. Others wonder whether these classes, taught by the country’s most respected colleges, will replace those offered at less prestigious schools.
“What does it mean to be a quality university in this age of explosive innovation?” asked Richard DeMillo, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Center Universities. “Colleges can’t convince themselves that things will be the same in five years.”
Colleges offering massive online courses say this is not that different from public lectures offered on campus, except this is happening on a larger scale. While colleges are giving content for free, leaders stress this is not the same as giving away a free degree.
“We are providing an opportunity for people to learn, and that should be one of our fundamental values,” Tech Provost Rafael Bras said. “But this won’t be free forever.”
There are other motivations, such as expanding one’s global reach.
“Georgia Tech is and should always be a leader in education,” Bras said. “I’m not going to wait for others to tell us what to do or for others to figure out what the future of higher education is going to look like.”
Tech and Emory are part of Coursera, a for-profit company that offers more than 200 courses from more than 30 universities. Two other large players are Udacity, also a private company, and edX, a nonprofit started by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Other partnerships have sprung up in recent months. Emory and nine other colleges formed Semester Online, which charges students to take online courses offered by the school and receive credit.
Some educators and critics wonder whether colleges are moving too fast. They question the quality of these online courses and fear the focus on them will weaken traditional classroom courses. Some worry financially struggling states may force public colleges to eliminate some classes and faculty and instead rely on free online offerings.
The University System of Maryland is working with a research group to study how these open online courses could be used at different campuses. Part of the work will look at whether colleges can maintain and improve quality while reducing costs.
Others have voiced concerns about cheating, but those who teach these courses say this can be easily solved. Students could go to a location for a proctored exam. Or, when students take tests on their computers they must show ID and keep the system’s video camera running.
A larger concern is how this will play out in the marketplace. Moody’s Investors Service predicted that as more elite colleges work together, it could harm smaller schools and for-profit colleges “that may be left out.”
MOOCs differ from the free video lectures already online. Each lesson lasts five to 12 minutes because studies show that is the optimal time for people to watch videos, said Fatimah Wirth, an instructional designer at Tech who is also teaching an open online course.
She won’t be able to provide online students with one-on-one help, but she will poll them on what questions they have and respond to their top 10 through videos posted online.
Students can also participate in online discussions and learn in forums with other students.
James Park, an investment adviser in California, was among the more than 40,000 students who took a computational investing MOOC taught by Georgia Tech.
While the class started a bit slow, Park said the assignments became tougher and he learned practical information and skills.
“More hands-on help would have been appreciated,” he said, “but I know that the professor’s first priority must be with actual Georgia Tech students.”
Professors plan to apply online lessons in traditional classes. Everett may tell students in his traditional class to take the video lessons online. That will give him more time in class for creative and technical hands-on activities, he said.
He teaches a popular music class on campus, but it can only accommodate 15 students. Yet, more than 20,000 people are expected to take his class in January when it is offered as a massive open online course, or MOOC.
These online courses are revolutionizing higher education as they give students free access worldwide to content and faculty offered by elite colleges. About 2 million students have signed up for the classes this year, and two Georgia colleges — Emory and Georgia Tech — are among those participating. Georgia Tech started this fall, and Emory begins in January.
Colleges are on the cusp of a major transformation as they test what they can provide through advanced technology and how they can operate more efficiently. They are discussing how to provide a richer learning experience online and in traditional classrooms.
“The model of higher education is changing,” said Lynn Zimmerman, Emory’s senior vice provost. “We are at the forefront of the experiment, and I don’t think anyone can predict where it will go.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded millions in grants to support and expand this movement. National groups are working to assess quality and award credit for these classes so they would count just as they do when students transfer from one school to another.
The foundation tapped Georgia Tech and other schools to design quality remedial and introductory-level courses. These classes stump many students, and this work unites MOOCs with the national push to help more adults acquire a college education.
Some question whether the free MOOCs can defray the cost of a college education. Others wonder whether these classes, taught by the country’s most respected colleges, will replace those offered at less prestigious schools.
“What does it mean to be a quality university in this age of explosive innovation?” asked Richard DeMillo, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Center Universities. “Colleges can’t convince themselves that things will be the same in five years.”
Colleges offering massive online courses say this is not that different from public lectures offered on campus, except this is happening on a larger scale. While colleges are giving content for free, leaders stress this is not the same as giving away a free degree.
“We are providing an opportunity for people to learn, and that should be one of our fundamental values,” Tech Provost Rafael Bras said. “But this won’t be free forever.”
There are other motivations, such as expanding one’s global reach.
“Georgia Tech is and should always be a leader in education,” Bras said. “I’m not going to wait for others to tell us what to do or for others to figure out what the future of higher education is going to look like.”
Tech and Emory are part of Coursera, a for-profit company that offers more than 200 courses from more than 30 universities. Two other large players are Udacity, also a private company, and edX, a nonprofit started by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Other partnerships have sprung up in recent months. Emory and nine other colleges formed Semester Online, which charges students to take online courses offered by the school and receive credit.
Some educators and critics wonder whether colleges are moving too fast. They question the quality of these online courses and fear the focus on them will weaken traditional classroom courses. Some worry financially struggling states may force public colleges to eliminate some classes and faculty and instead rely on free online offerings.
The University System of Maryland is working with a research group to study how these open online courses could be used at different campuses. Part of the work will look at whether colleges can maintain and improve quality while reducing costs.
Others have voiced concerns about cheating, but those who teach these courses say this can be easily solved. Students could go to a location for a proctored exam. Or, when students take tests on their computers they must show ID and keep the system’s video camera running.
A larger concern is how this will play out in the marketplace. Moody’s Investors Service predicted that as more elite colleges work together, it could harm smaller schools and for-profit colleges “that may be left out.”
MOOCs differ from the free video lectures already online. Each lesson lasts five to 12 minutes because studies show that is the optimal time for people to watch videos, said Fatimah Wirth, an instructional designer at Tech who is also teaching an open online course.
She won’t be able to provide online students with one-on-one help, but she will poll them on what questions they have and respond to their top 10 through videos posted online.
Students can also participate in online discussions and learn in forums with other students.
James Park, an investment adviser in California, was among the more than 40,000 students who took a computational investing MOOC taught by Georgia Tech.
While the class started a bit slow, Park said the assignments became tougher and he learned practical information and skills.
“More hands-on help would have been appreciated,” he said, “but I know that the professor’s first priority must be with actual Georgia Tech students.”
Professors plan to apply online lessons in traditional classes. Everett may tell students in his traditional class to take the video lessons online. That will give him more time in class for creative and technical hands-on activities, he said.
As the NPP knocks on the doors of the Supreme Court
Interesting case afoot, right? We are so much invested in it as to wish the NPP Godspeed to the chambers of the Supreme Court to test the legal waters against its fate.
If the matter goes to court, it will become “subjudice,” and we can’t comment on it anymore without committing contempt of court and be held liable for any comment regarded as prejudicial to it. Thus, while we have the chance to comment on it before it enters the judicial labyrinth, we will do so.
We have already beaten this case to a pulp and are virtually left with little new to say about it; but we can still hazard the guess that it won’t be determined soon because of it is meaty and highly charged, being the first of its kind in our country’s history to have excited so much public interest.
As we wait for it to be filed and determined by the Supreme Court, we can only hope that those thumping their chests for a “landslide victory” don’t turn round to do anything to heighten tension. Once the matter is in court, one expects that those aggrieved elements of the NPP will allow the law to run its course and the judges to do their work in peace. However long it may take, the verdict will surely be delivered to tell us what at all it is that this court case can add to our democracy.
I have very serious doubts that anything productive will come out of it to enhance our democratic culture because in one way or the other, if the court agrees with the NPP, many more problems will emerge. For sure, it is to be guessed that the incumbent will not step down, which will worsen the situation. Again, the Electoral Commission may not have the resources to re-run the elections minus the Parliamentary ones as such.
Will it be reasonable for the Supreme Court to isolate only the Presidential elections for re-running? If it does, then, we will have much to contend with. I’ll shelve this aspect for now.
But essentially, our democracy stands to gain very little from a court case of this sort because the matter is already skewed insofar as the substance of the suit doesn’t cover the Parliamentary elections when there is talk of switching of figures there too. Too technical for me to worry my head over.
All in all, though, what we can’t miss is the likelihood of this case dragging on for ages, knowing very well how difficult it will be for the Supreme Court to quickly determine it just because the NPP will produce figures that it has collected to fight its claims that the elections were rigged. Determining the case will go beyond the basis of those figures.
Several other issues will be factored into the proceedings that will make the case a painfully protracted one. The Court can’t miss its constitutional responsibility of interpreting the electoral laws to determine what went wrong as the NPP is alleging. In other words, the constitutional provisions are clear on what can cause an election to be invalidated beyond the mere production of figures from anywhere that a litigant may produce. These are very intricate technicalities that mere figures don’t stand up to.
I have already asked questions to the effect that it is difficult to know why of all the contestants and election monitors—not to mention the Electoral Commission and the NPP’s own agents at the various polling stations throughout the country—it is only the NPP leaders who will have access to what they have quickly tagged as “incontrovertible evidence” with which they are going to pester the Supreme Court to overturn the will of the voters that didn’t favour Akufo-Addo.
Again, the Court can’t determine this case without reference to the reports of the Electoral Commission itself and the various local and international election monitors who saw what happened and concluded that the elections were free, fair, and transparent, not only in the atmosphere surrounding the balloting but also in the tabulation and release of the results.
This is where the CODEO and the ECOWAS Election Monitoring Group will come in. I don’t think that the Supreme Court will be so na?ve as not to broaden the case to go beyond the NPP’s claim of “incontrovertible evidence.”
Submissions will be made by others to suggest that the 2012 Elections passed the test and that the NPP’s figures don’t reflect reality. Is the NPP ready for the fallout? Or does it already have a Plan “C” ready to implement? So far, it has implemented two of such plans:
Plan “A”—street demonstrations to cause mayhem in Accra, Kumasi, and elsewhere that have led to physical assaults on political opponents and the maiming and murder of some.
Plan “B”—gathering whatever evidence it might lay hands on to proceed to the Supreme Court to fight its case while using the mass media and the bar of public opinion to judge itself as the likely victor in the court case. All this is part of the psychological warfare that it has launched against its political opponent, hoping that by so doing, it would condition its followers’ minds for anything else that might be put into action after the court case.
At this stage, I may be speculating as a way of reading deeper meanings into possibilities, but I am quite sure that the NPP will not end matters at the premises of the Supreme Court. Otherwise, it won’t precede the filing of that case with a press conference tomorrow at the Alisa Hotel in Accra. We don’t yet know what will be said at that press conference but we can’t rule out any over-extension of this agenda of protestation.
Having already stood firm against all odds to fight the case at court, the NPP leaders have an onerous duty to sustain the rhythm and continue massaging their supporters’ feeling until the case is dealt with. That’s a tall order.
Meantime, life will not grind to a standstill in the country. The incumbent will continue to function and prepare for January 7, 2013 to be installed in office. The installation will complicate the matter for the NPP and strengthen the administration’s hands on the management of national affairs to such an extent that it could be more than ready to pit itself against the Supreme Court if its verdict is skewed in favour of the NPP.
We will definitely have more constitutional problems to handle at this stage than the NPP’s suit might initially be conceived to solve. I can’t wait for that moment to see how Ghanaians will handle the situation. In effect, if the Supreme Court favours Akufo-Addo, many new developments will make the country ungovernable. The majority that voted for the President will definitely react vigorously in ways that are too frightening to imagine now. In effect, a huge fire will be lit by any such decision.
Will the Court declare Akufo-Addo elected because he would have been deemed to have garnered 50%+1 votes in the court’s estimation? Or that the EC should re-run the Presidential elections for all the candidates? Or that President Mahama should just step down for Akufo-Addo to take his place?
Undeniably, with what majority support in Parliament or even in the 8 regions that voted against him? The country will definitely become ungovernable in that event. I don’t think that’s what anybody wants.
If the matter goes to court, it will become “subjudice,” and we can’t comment on it anymore without committing contempt of court and be held liable for any comment regarded as prejudicial to it. Thus, while we have the chance to comment on it before it enters the judicial labyrinth, we will do so.
We have already beaten this case to a pulp and are virtually left with little new to say about it; but we can still hazard the guess that it won’t be determined soon because of it is meaty and highly charged, being the first of its kind in our country’s history to have excited so much public interest.
As we wait for it to be filed and determined by the Supreme Court, we can only hope that those thumping their chests for a “landslide victory” don’t turn round to do anything to heighten tension. Once the matter is in court, one expects that those aggrieved elements of the NPP will allow the law to run its course and the judges to do their work in peace. However long it may take, the verdict will surely be delivered to tell us what at all it is that this court case can add to our democracy.
I have very serious doubts that anything productive will come out of it to enhance our democratic culture because in one way or the other, if the court agrees with the NPP, many more problems will emerge. For sure, it is to be guessed that the incumbent will not step down, which will worsen the situation. Again, the Electoral Commission may not have the resources to re-run the elections minus the Parliamentary ones as such.
Will it be reasonable for the Supreme Court to isolate only the Presidential elections for re-running? If it does, then, we will have much to contend with. I’ll shelve this aspect for now.
But essentially, our democracy stands to gain very little from a court case of this sort because the matter is already skewed insofar as the substance of the suit doesn’t cover the Parliamentary elections when there is talk of switching of figures there too. Too technical for me to worry my head over.
All in all, though, what we can’t miss is the likelihood of this case dragging on for ages, knowing very well how difficult it will be for the Supreme Court to quickly determine it just because the NPP will produce figures that it has collected to fight its claims that the elections were rigged. Determining the case will go beyond the basis of those figures.
Several other issues will be factored into the proceedings that will make the case a painfully protracted one. The Court can’t miss its constitutional responsibility of interpreting the electoral laws to determine what went wrong as the NPP is alleging. In other words, the constitutional provisions are clear on what can cause an election to be invalidated beyond the mere production of figures from anywhere that a litigant may produce. These are very intricate technicalities that mere figures don’t stand up to.
I have already asked questions to the effect that it is difficult to know why of all the contestants and election monitors—not to mention the Electoral Commission and the NPP’s own agents at the various polling stations throughout the country—it is only the NPP leaders who will have access to what they have quickly tagged as “incontrovertible evidence” with which they are going to pester the Supreme Court to overturn the will of the voters that didn’t favour Akufo-Addo.
Again, the Court can’t determine this case without reference to the reports of the Electoral Commission itself and the various local and international election monitors who saw what happened and concluded that the elections were free, fair, and transparent, not only in the atmosphere surrounding the balloting but also in the tabulation and release of the results.
This is where the CODEO and the ECOWAS Election Monitoring Group will come in. I don’t think that the Supreme Court will be so na?ve as not to broaden the case to go beyond the NPP’s claim of “incontrovertible evidence.”
Submissions will be made by others to suggest that the 2012 Elections passed the test and that the NPP’s figures don’t reflect reality. Is the NPP ready for the fallout? Or does it already have a Plan “C” ready to implement? So far, it has implemented two of such plans:
Plan “A”—street demonstrations to cause mayhem in Accra, Kumasi, and elsewhere that have led to physical assaults on political opponents and the maiming and murder of some.
Plan “B”—gathering whatever evidence it might lay hands on to proceed to the Supreme Court to fight its case while using the mass media and the bar of public opinion to judge itself as the likely victor in the court case. All this is part of the psychological warfare that it has launched against its political opponent, hoping that by so doing, it would condition its followers’ minds for anything else that might be put into action after the court case.
At this stage, I may be speculating as a way of reading deeper meanings into possibilities, but I am quite sure that the NPP will not end matters at the premises of the Supreme Court. Otherwise, it won’t precede the filing of that case with a press conference tomorrow at the Alisa Hotel in Accra. We don’t yet know what will be said at that press conference but we can’t rule out any over-extension of this agenda of protestation.
Having already stood firm against all odds to fight the case at court, the NPP leaders have an onerous duty to sustain the rhythm and continue massaging their supporters’ feeling until the case is dealt with. That’s a tall order.
Meantime, life will not grind to a standstill in the country. The incumbent will continue to function and prepare for January 7, 2013 to be installed in office. The installation will complicate the matter for the NPP and strengthen the administration’s hands on the management of national affairs to such an extent that it could be more than ready to pit itself against the Supreme Court if its verdict is skewed in favour of the NPP.
We will definitely have more constitutional problems to handle at this stage than the NPP’s suit might initially be conceived to solve. I can’t wait for that moment to see how Ghanaians will handle the situation. In effect, if the Supreme Court favours Akufo-Addo, many new developments will make the country ungovernable. The majority that voted for the President will definitely react vigorously in ways that are too frightening to imagine now. In effect, a huge fire will be lit by any such decision.
Will the Court declare Akufo-Addo elected because he would have been deemed to have garnered 50%+1 votes in the court’s estimation? Or that the EC should re-run the Presidential elections for all the candidates? Or that President Mahama should just step down for Akufo-Addo to take his place?
Undeniably, with what majority support in Parliament or even in the 8 regions that voted against him? The country will definitely become ungovernable in that event. I don’t think that’s what anybody wants.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
A somber Christmas in Newtown
On the night of December 14, just hours after a mass shooting at the local elementary school ripped comfort and security away from the wealthy residents of Newtown, Connecticut, Elizabeth Cleary found herself alone in this small town’s Catholic church at 1 a.m. The teacher of 26 years clasped her hands and wept as she sat in her pew.
That evening, she found solace in a presence that she swears she could physically feel – and very nearly see.
“When I was here that night, there were these tiny candles,” she says. “There was no wind at all, and no breeze – but their flames were dancing. You can tell that their presence lingers for a while. And you can feel it when they let go.”
Since 2005, Pope Benedict XVI has called on Americans to resist materialism and reclaim the true meaning of Christmas: the celebration of the birth of Jesus, brought into the world ultimately to die for man’s sins.
That message is reverberating throughout Newtown’s churches, town halls and households this holiday season, challenging residents in their search for unattainable answers to why 20 of their children and six adults were brutally slain two weeks ago.
Their efforts to resolve the existence of evil in their perfectly manicured town through prayer, spirituality and stock symbolism have highlighted a uniquely American trend – that as the frequency of such mass killings has increased, reliance on religiously charged vigils has become predictably commonplace.
Reid Hettich, a pastor for 27 years at the Mosaic Church of Aurora, Colorado, had the unfortunate task of organizing a vigil in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting in a local movie theater that killed 12 people and wounded 59. He noticed that people only nominally affiliated with a religion turned to faith in his town after its people came under attack.
“Certainly, I think there’s an immediate spike in faith, and that goes away to some degree,” Hettich says. “But there’s a greater awareness that there just aren’t good answers, apart from belief.”
Just after the shooting in Aurora, he was surprised to hear from local government officials that they specifically wanted a prayer vigil, and not a non-denominational, candlelight ceremony – one still representative of America’s diverse faiths, but fundamentally religious at its core.
“There seems to be this recurrent trend in American politics that government and the social order rely on religious agreement,” says David Sehat, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom. “And when there are tears in that social order, they turn to religion proper for the restoration of those fixtures.”
In Tucson, Arizona, where six people were killed and US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely wounded in a 2011 shooting rampage, religious leaders from across the spectrum came together to hold a prayer vigil – and found themselves gathering for yet another vigil this month to honor Newtown’s fallen.
“The frequency is going up, there’s no doubt about it,” says Dana Yentzer, pastor at Tucson Church International. “And I do wonder if the vigils themselves will lose their impact if that continues. But from a pastoral standpoint, I try to provide hope again, no matter what the circumstance.”
At root of concerns over the frequency of these vigils is a confounding theodical question: whether a benevolent, all-powerful, omniscient God should be listening in on all these calls for the killing to stop. One widely known expert on the role of religion in America notes that while this problem rarely bubbles into public debate, any country as wedded to rituals as the United States is must bear the consequences of defending them – namely facing tough questions.
“The central question is, if you keep having rituals like this, don’t you learn eventually that God isn’t stopping what’s happening? That evoking God is not getting the job done?” says Sarah Barringer Gordon, a history scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “And it may be the simple answer is that people just don’t think that’s God’s job.”
But this shooting feels different – at least to President Barack Obama, who wept at word of the news out of Newtown. Brushing away tears, he quoted scripture when ending remarks on the shooting at the White House; he opened with words from the Bible at a vigil two days later in Connecticut.
Returning to St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church on Christmas Eve, Cleary shed tears once more, genuflecting before turning to leave the Newtown refuge (though shooting rampages have not spared houses of worship; a Sikh temple in Wisconsin was targeted only five months prior). She leaves behind a manger empty of the baby Jesus – a potent polysemic image speaking to an absence of youth, or perhaps adequate faith, in Newtown, a place already saturated with symbolism.
In the wintered garden of the church, surrounded by teddy bears and toy angels endowed with all the suffering of their past owners, she calls herself disenfranchised with her religion, while still a compulsory participant.
“I don’t think you have to have faith to enjoy these vigils,” says Marleen Cafarelli, a resident of Newtown for over 30 years. “It’s about the community coming together to distribute the pain. It’s what we need right now.”
Indeed, if there were any one thing, it may just be community that separates this place – along with Tucson, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Oak Creek and Columbine – from the many other American neighborhoods that see similar crimes on a much more frequent basis.
At the firehouse down the street from Sandy Hook Elementary – where parents stood for hours waiting for their children, only to pierce the thin December air with echoing wails as they heard the worst – one fireman, Michael Reyen, looks wearily toward the door after a trying two weeks.
“Most everybody has gone to the vigils because it’s just part of the healing process, myself included,” he says. “But at this point, I just want to spend Christmas at home with my family.”
That evening, she found solace in a presence that she swears she could physically feel – and very nearly see.
“When I was here that night, there were these tiny candles,” she says. “There was no wind at all, and no breeze – but their flames were dancing. You can tell that their presence lingers for a while. And you can feel it when they let go.”
Since 2005, Pope Benedict XVI has called on Americans to resist materialism and reclaim the true meaning of Christmas: the celebration of the birth of Jesus, brought into the world ultimately to die for man’s sins.
That message is reverberating throughout Newtown’s churches, town halls and households this holiday season, challenging residents in their search for unattainable answers to why 20 of their children and six adults were brutally slain two weeks ago.
Their efforts to resolve the existence of evil in their perfectly manicured town through prayer, spirituality and stock symbolism have highlighted a uniquely American trend – that as the frequency of such mass killings has increased, reliance on religiously charged vigils has become predictably commonplace.
Reid Hettich, a pastor for 27 years at the Mosaic Church of Aurora, Colorado, had the unfortunate task of organizing a vigil in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting in a local movie theater that killed 12 people and wounded 59. He noticed that people only nominally affiliated with a religion turned to faith in his town after its people came under attack.
“Certainly, I think there’s an immediate spike in faith, and that goes away to some degree,” Hettich says. “But there’s a greater awareness that there just aren’t good answers, apart from belief.”
Just after the shooting in Aurora, he was surprised to hear from local government officials that they specifically wanted a prayer vigil, and not a non-denominational, candlelight ceremony – one still representative of America’s diverse faiths, but fundamentally religious at its core.
“There seems to be this recurrent trend in American politics that government and the social order rely on religious agreement,” says David Sehat, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom. “And when there are tears in that social order, they turn to religion proper for the restoration of those fixtures.”
In Tucson, Arizona, where six people were killed and US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely wounded in a 2011 shooting rampage, religious leaders from across the spectrum came together to hold a prayer vigil – and found themselves gathering for yet another vigil this month to honor Newtown’s fallen.
“The frequency is going up, there’s no doubt about it,” says Dana Yentzer, pastor at Tucson Church International. “And I do wonder if the vigils themselves will lose their impact if that continues. But from a pastoral standpoint, I try to provide hope again, no matter what the circumstance.”
At root of concerns over the frequency of these vigils is a confounding theodical question: whether a benevolent, all-powerful, omniscient God should be listening in on all these calls for the killing to stop. One widely known expert on the role of religion in America notes that while this problem rarely bubbles into public debate, any country as wedded to rituals as the United States is must bear the consequences of defending them – namely facing tough questions.
“The central question is, if you keep having rituals like this, don’t you learn eventually that God isn’t stopping what’s happening? That evoking God is not getting the job done?” says Sarah Barringer Gordon, a history scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “And it may be the simple answer is that people just don’t think that’s God’s job.”
But this shooting feels different – at least to President Barack Obama, who wept at word of the news out of Newtown. Brushing away tears, he quoted scripture when ending remarks on the shooting at the White House; he opened with words from the Bible at a vigil two days later in Connecticut.
Returning to St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church on Christmas Eve, Cleary shed tears once more, genuflecting before turning to leave the Newtown refuge (though shooting rampages have not spared houses of worship; a Sikh temple in Wisconsin was targeted only five months prior). She leaves behind a manger empty of the baby Jesus – a potent polysemic image speaking to an absence of youth, or perhaps adequate faith, in Newtown, a place already saturated with symbolism.
In the wintered garden of the church, surrounded by teddy bears and toy angels endowed with all the suffering of their past owners, she calls herself disenfranchised with her religion, while still a compulsory participant.
“I don’t think you have to have faith to enjoy these vigils,” says Marleen Cafarelli, a resident of Newtown for over 30 years. “It’s about the community coming together to distribute the pain. It’s what we need right now.”
Indeed, if there were any one thing, it may just be community that separates this place – along with Tucson, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Oak Creek and Columbine – from the many other American neighborhoods that see similar crimes on a much more frequent basis.
At the firehouse down the street from Sandy Hook Elementary – where parents stood for hours waiting for their children, only to pierce the thin December air with echoing wails as they heard the worst – one fireman, Michael Reyen, looks wearily toward the door after a trying two weeks.
“Most everybody has gone to the vigils because it’s just part of the healing process, myself included,” he says. “But at this point, I just want to spend Christmas at home with my family.”
The True Heir Of Indus Valley Civilization
The vision of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in the 1940s did not only constitute creation of a Muslim political entity at the expense of India’s Hindu domination. It was also embedded in thousands of years of historical and geographical realities. These aspects clearly emerge from Jinnah’s interviews given to foreign correspondents where he described the geopolitical importance of Pakistan. The two nation reality also did not emerge only because of the differences between Hindu and Muslim peoples. It was an outcome of thousands of years of historical, geographical and genetic distinction between the peoples of Indus Valley Civilization and those occupying the Gangetic plains.
The existence of Indus Valley Civilization emerged though the ruins at Harappa in Punjab, Pakistan which were first described by Charles Masson in 1842, in his “Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab.” Though the site was visited by General Alexander Cunningham in 1856, who later headed the archeological survey of northern India, it was in 1921-22 that the excavations began which unearthed the great civilization buried under the sand for thousands of years.
The irony of it all was that it was General Alexander Cunningham who allowed East Indian Railways which was constructing railway line between the cities of Lahore and Karachi, to use the ancient bricks recovered from these sites as track ballast for the 150 kilometers of nearby stretch and thus destroyed much of the city of Harappa. Mohenjodaro in Sindh, Pakistan was excavated by 1931. Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan was discovered in 1974 and the excavations continued from 1974-86 and again from 1997-2000. Rehman Dheri in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was excavated from 1976-1980. Based on recent evidence and analyses, archeologists and historians have proclaimed that Indus Valley Civilization is over 9000 years old, making it one of the oldest civilizations of the world.
The South Asian subcontinent is principally divided into two major geographical regions; the Indus Valley and its westerly inclined tributaries, and the Ganges Valley with its easterly inclined tributaries. In his book, “The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan,” Aitzaz Ahsan identifies the geographical divide between these two regions as the Gurdaspur-Kathiawar salient, a watershed which is southwesterly inclined down to the Arabian Sea. This watershed also depicted the dividing line between the peoples of Indus Valley Civilization and those of Gangetic plains and also corresponds almost exactly with the current day Pakistan-India border.
Historically, only the Mauryas, Muslims and the British amalgamated these two regions as a unified state. For most of the remaining history, when one empire did not rule both the regions as a unified state, the Indus Valley Civilizational domain was always governed as one separate political entity.
Rather than an unnatural creation as propounded by many, Pakistan much more than the Gangetic plains, is an appropriate and modern embodiment of thousands of years old Indus Valley Civilization. The historical, geographical and its people’s organic linkages with Arab, Persian, Turkic and South Central Asian populace also clearly differentiates it as a distinct and definite independent identity as compared to the rest of India.
The discovery of Indus Valley Civilization in the run up to 1947 independence of Pakistan and India provided Indian nationalist Hindus an opportunity, to embed their Vedic Hindu cultural identity in a civilization, which was one of the oldest civilizations on earth and also predated emergence of Islam. However, the later identification of emergence of Vedic Hindu cultural traditions between 1500 – 600 BC, discounted such linkages. Also, the fact that Indus Valley Civilization’s cultural moorings were discovered mainly in the Indus River Valley, and partly in Ghaggar-Hakra basin and in the Doab, these cultural moorings did not find an extension into the central and lower Ganges Valley in the eastern and central Indian plains. The presence of fortified cities, town planning and drainage system, depiction of specialized epic art form and the architecture of burnt bricks, sea trade, use of seals, weights, measures and script and the custom of burying the dead in cemeteries, presented clear differentiation because of the absence of such depiction in Vedic Hindu literature and culture.
Many adherents of Indian Hindu nationalist ideology believed that India was and is a primarily Hindu nation and has Hindu religious culture in continuity from Vedic Aryans. The mosaic of cultures of the past evolving into composite Indian Hindu culture through the process of history was not based on archeological evidence but what they essentially believed in. In many cases distorting and manipulating or even forging the mute archaeological evidence through depiction of fire places as fire altars, waste pits as sacrificial pits in Harappan era sites and the imaginary reading of Sanskrit legends, was quoted in order to suit their pseudo-ideological and opportunistic interests.
Between 1900-1300 BC the civilization declined and there were no more references to Meluhha (Mesopotamian name for Indus Valley Civilization landmass) in Mesopotamian finds. However, the people who made up this great civilization continued living in places like Mehrgarh, Harappa, Mohenjodaro and other settlements long after that.
The legacy of Indus Valley Civilization lives on in present day Pakistan. Amongst some of the aspects that can still be traced to this legacy are the trade and commerce routes developed by the mentors of this great civilization. Ships from Meluhha regularly sailed from locations near modern day city of Karachi for the ports of Babylon. And they evidently made stops all along the way, as indicated through discovery of seals found in Oman, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain as well.
The city of Peshawar lies on what is thought to have been one of their main overland trade routes. That route is now a major highway that constitutes the eastern approach to the Khyber Pass and links the northwestern Indus River Plain to the highlands of Afghanistan and Central Asia. An old branch of the route runs from Peshawar, south into rugged tribal territory, through the Pakistani cities of Kohat and Bannu and the foothills of the Suleiman Mountains down across the Gomal Plain to the early historical site of Rehman Dheri.
After the decline of this civilization, the religion and language of which has still not been deciphered, at different times these people followed Vedic Hindu culture and traditions, also adopted Buddhism and in the end embraced Islam and are now overwhelmingly Muslim.
The core spread of Indus Valley Civilization primarily lay in Pakistan. The three major cities and many other sites which represent the core of Indus Valley Civilization are all located in Pakistan. However, the Indians still refer to India as the “Home of Indus Valley Civilization,” which is surprising and indeed a misnomer. India needs to realign its history and should seek its identity in its own legacy instead of claiming something to which they do not belong to.
At first it was in Egypt and then in Libya, Al Qaeda today has found yet another haven in the Arab world. Syria now offers the global terror network a perfect sanctuary to re-establish itself and re-launch its jihad. Therefore, it was no surprise that the United States faced perceptible opposition and criticism at a recent meeting of the Friends of Syria in Marrakech when it classified Al Nusra, one of the armed resistance groups operating in the country, as a "foreign terrorist organisation".
"The chairman of the Syrian National Coalition called for the US to reconsider its decision; the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamad Tayfur condemned it as wrong and hastily made. Many other statements of support for Al Nusra followed. The British and French remained silent, as did the EU, this year's Nobel peace prize winner. This was met with horror by many Syrians, the vast majority of whom reject Al Nusra."
It is no secret today that Al Nusra, a ruthless foreign sectarian jihadi organisation, is a despised outfit today in Syria though it remains the most effective fighting force against the Syrian army. Haytham Manna says, its fighters, contrary to those of Al Tawhid brigade, are mainly foreigners and its emir (leader) is appointed from outside Syria.
It is not only the US who believes Al Nusra to be an Al Qaida front, both Syria's armed opposition and the opposition in exile expressed concern about this mysterious new organisation. The Syrian National Council had earlier claimed Al Nusra was formed by Syrian intelligence to tarnish the image of the Free Army. Syrian human rights defenders speak out, too, warning of Al Qaida links. The organisation, many fear, is fast becoming the most attractive group for foreign jihadists in a sectarian war against Alawites, Shias and secular Syrians.
The existence of Indus Valley Civilization emerged though the ruins at Harappa in Punjab, Pakistan which were first described by Charles Masson in 1842, in his “Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab.” Though the site was visited by General Alexander Cunningham in 1856, who later headed the archeological survey of northern India, it was in 1921-22 that the excavations began which unearthed the great civilization buried under the sand for thousands of years.
The irony of it all was that it was General Alexander Cunningham who allowed East Indian Railways which was constructing railway line between the cities of Lahore and Karachi, to use the ancient bricks recovered from these sites as track ballast for the 150 kilometers of nearby stretch and thus destroyed much of the city of Harappa. Mohenjodaro in Sindh, Pakistan was excavated by 1931. Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan was discovered in 1974 and the excavations continued from 1974-86 and again from 1997-2000. Rehman Dheri in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was excavated from 1976-1980. Based on recent evidence and analyses, archeologists and historians have proclaimed that Indus Valley Civilization is over 9000 years old, making it one of the oldest civilizations of the world.
The South Asian subcontinent is principally divided into two major geographical regions; the Indus Valley and its westerly inclined tributaries, and the Ganges Valley with its easterly inclined tributaries. In his book, “The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan,” Aitzaz Ahsan identifies the geographical divide between these two regions as the Gurdaspur-Kathiawar salient, a watershed which is southwesterly inclined down to the Arabian Sea. This watershed also depicted the dividing line between the peoples of Indus Valley Civilization and those of Gangetic plains and also corresponds almost exactly with the current day Pakistan-India border.
Historically, only the Mauryas, Muslims and the British amalgamated these two regions as a unified state. For most of the remaining history, when one empire did not rule both the regions as a unified state, the Indus Valley Civilizational domain was always governed as one separate political entity.
Rather than an unnatural creation as propounded by many, Pakistan much more than the Gangetic plains, is an appropriate and modern embodiment of thousands of years old Indus Valley Civilization. The historical, geographical and its people’s organic linkages with Arab, Persian, Turkic and South Central Asian populace also clearly differentiates it as a distinct and definite independent identity as compared to the rest of India.
The discovery of Indus Valley Civilization in the run up to 1947 independence of Pakistan and India provided Indian nationalist Hindus an opportunity, to embed their Vedic Hindu cultural identity in a civilization, which was one of the oldest civilizations on earth and also predated emergence of Islam. However, the later identification of emergence of Vedic Hindu cultural traditions between 1500 – 600 BC, discounted such linkages. Also, the fact that Indus Valley Civilization’s cultural moorings were discovered mainly in the Indus River Valley, and partly in Ghaggar-Hakra basin and in the Doab, these cultural moorings did not find an extension into the central and lower Ganges Valley in the eastern and central Indian plains. The presence of fortified cities, town planning and drainage system, depiction of specialized epic art form and the architecture of burnt bricks, sea trade, use of seals, weights, measures and script and the custom of burying the dead in cemeteries, presented clear differentiation because of the absence of such depiction in Vedic Hindu literature and culture.
Many adherents of Indian Hindu nationalist ideology believed that India was and is a primarily Hindu nation and has Hindu religious culture in continuity from Vedic Aryans. The mosaic of cultures of the past evolving into composite Indian Hindu culture through the process of history was not based on archeological evidence but what they essentially believed in. In many cases distorting and manipulating or even forging the mute archaeological evidence through depiction of fire places as fire altars, waste pits as sacrificial pits in Harappan era sites and the imaginary reading of Sanskrit legends, was quoted in order to suit their pseudo-ideological and opportunistic interests.
Between 1900-1300 BC the civilization declined and there were no more references to Meluhha (Mesopotamian name for Indus Valley Civilization landmass) in Mesopotamian finds. However, the people who made up this great civilization continued living in places like Mehrgarh, Harappa, Mohenjodaro and other settlements long after that.
The legacy of Indus Valley Civilization lives on in present day Pakistan. Amongst some of the aspects that can still be traced to this legacy are the trade and commerce routes developed by the mentors of this great civilization. Ships from Meluhha regularly sailed from locations near modern day city of Karachi for the ports of Babylon. And they evidently made stops all along the way, as indicated through discovery of seals found in Oman, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain as well.
The city of Peshawar lies on what is thought to have been one of their main overland trade routes. That route is now a major highway that constitutes the eastern approach to the Khyber Pass and links the northwestern Indus River Plain to the highlands of Afghanistan and Central Asia. An old branch of the route runs from Peshawar, south into rugged tribal territory, through the Pakistani cities of Kohat and Bannu and the foothills of the Suleiman Mountains down across the Gomal Plain to the early historical site of Rehman Dheri.
After the decline of this civilization, the religion and language of which has still not been deciphered, at different times these people followed Vedic Hindu culture and traditions, also adopted Buddhism and in the end embraced Islam and are now overwhelmingly Muslim.
The core spread of Indus Valley Civilization primarily lay in Pakistan. The three major cities and many other sites which represent the core of Indus Valley Civilization are all located in Pakistan. However, the Indians still refer to India as the “Home of Indus Valley Civilization,” which is surprising and indeed a misnomer. India needs to realign its history and should seek its identity in its own legacy instead of claiming something to which they do not belong to.
At first it was in Egypt and then in Libya, Al Qaeda today has found yet another haven in the Arab world. Syria now offers the global terror network a perfect sanctuary to re-establish itself and re-launch its jihad. Therefore, it was no surprise that the United States faced perceptible opposition and criticism at a recent meeting of the Friends of Syria in Marrakech when it classified Al Nusra, one of the armed resistance groups operating in the country, as a "foreign terrorist organisation".
"The chairman of the Syrian National Coalition called for the US to reconsider its decision; the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamad Tayfur condemned it as wrong and hastily made. Many other statements of support for Al Nusra followed. The British and French remained silent, as did the EU, this year's Nobel peace prize winner. This was met with horror by many Syrians, the vast majority of whom reject Al Nusra."
It is no secret today that Al Nusra, a ruthless foreign sectarian jihadi organisation, is a despised outfit today in Syria though it remains the most effective fighting force against the Syrian army. Haytham Manna says, its fighters, contrary to those of Al Tawhid brigade, are mainly foreigners and its emir (leader) is appointed from outside Syria.
It is not only the US who believes Al Nusra to be an Al Qaida front, both Syria's armed opposition and the opposition in exile expressed concern about this mysterious new organisation. The Syrian National Council had earlier claimed Al Nusra was formed by Syrian intelligence to tarnish the image of the Free Army. Syrian human rights defenders speak out, too, warning of Al Qaida links. The organisation, many fear, is fast becoming the most attractive group for foreign jihadists in a sectarian war against Alawites, Shias and secular Syrians.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Coveting a Children’s Garden of Z’s
Few preschoolers who watch the Sprout channel’s brilliant “Snooze-a-Thon” on Christmas Eve are likely to appreciate its startling genius as a piece of filmmaking. This is neo-neo-neorealism at its finest, boldly pushing the envelope to places where even radical iconoclasts rarely go.
The most ardent minimalists wouldn’t dare demonstrate the contempt for dialogue embodied here, a choice that can be read as a statement about the modern age, so full of communication devices yet so devoid of real communication. Plenty of filmmakers spurn slam-bang action sequences, but none would champion the outright inaction of “Snooze-a-Thon,” clearly a metaphor for our lazy, indulgent times. And the numbing sameness of every single scene is nothing short of courageous, standing as an indictment of empty consumerism, political gridlock, spiritual vacuity and the general stagnation of our age.
Yes, as cinema the “Snooze-a-Thon,” a string of clips in which favorite kiddie characters are seen dozing, is a triumph. But never mind that. Will it really cause your little rotter to fall asleep?
Sprout, a channel that aims for the 5-and-under demographic with shows like “Pajanimals” and “The Berenstain Bears,” has made the “Snooze-a-Thon” an annual event, the idea being that many young children will be unable to sleep because they are too excited about the impending Christmas morning.
Beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday and continuing till 6 a.m. on Tuesday, those pint-size insomniacs, should they stir and glance at the television, will see a loop of sleeping puppets and human characters. This presumably will prompt them to realize that they too should be asleep, activate some sort of imitation reflex and cause them to conk out.
First let it be said from the parental perspective that any gimmick that gets Wibbly the pig, Olive the ostrich and especially Barney the dinosaur to shut their pie holes for an evening is deserving of an Emmy Award. But a lifetime of tossing and turning leads to a basic, premise-undermining question: Since when does watching someone else sleep make a person sleepy?
Many sleep-deprived grown-ups may find that the opposite is true. Seeing another person snooze when you can’t only enrages you, which makes it even less likely that you’ll fall asleep. Who among you hasn’t smacked a partner with a pillow because that partner was enjoying a blissful trip to dreamland while you were denied admission?
Give the people at Sprout credit for at least making an effort at a public service. And perhaps the “Snooze-a-Thon” will work on undeveloped preschool brains. For a grown-up, though, watching one Wiggle sleeping is infuriating; watching all four do it may induce apoplexy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site says that nearly 10 percent of Americans have chronic insomnia and that more than a quarter occasionally don’t get enough sleep. If you’re a TV programmer, that ought to scream, “Opportunity!” These days a network drawing 25 percent of the television audience would be considered a ratings juggernaut.
Clearly a full-time channel devoted to making adults fall asleep is what the grown-up viewing public needs and demands. Some wiseacre will say that C-Span already serves this function, but sleep is too important to be entrusted to politicians. What we want is a “Snooze-a-Thon” for the 18-and-older crowd, one based not on the misguided premise that seeing sleep induces sleep but on real-world experience.
As tensions between Beijing and Hanoi escalate over the South China Sea, Vietnamese anti-China protesters who face repeated police crackdowns are finding a new form of political expression: soccer.
"People don't feel scared playing soccer," said Phuong, the team captain, after a practice match in the capital, Hanoi.
They call themselves "No U FC" -- a reference to the U-shaped line China has drawn around almost the entire South China Sea, passing close to Vietnam, then around Malaysia and north to the Philippines, an area where potential oil deposits, strategic shipping routes and fishing rights converge in one of Asia's most combustible territorial disputes.
"FC" stands for Football Club. Or, as some players say, "Fuck China".
The team illustrates mounting resentment of China whose sovereignty claims over the stretch of water off its south coast and to the east of mainland Southeast Asia set it directly against U.S. allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also lay claim to parts.
The club was formed after police arrested dozens of anti-China protesters who had gathered peacefully almost every weekend from June to August last year. They were at first tolerated in the tightly controlled Communist country where public dissent is rare. But the authorities feared they could evolve into a wider, harder-to-control anti-government movement, said several diplomats with high-level government contacts.
Some of those arrested were accused of turning against the state. Among the protesters were intellectuals and bloggers whose anger extended well beyond Beijing to sensitive domestic issues — from a widening rich-poor divide to land evictions, police brutality and restrictions on freedom of expression.
After the crackdown, Phuong and other protest leaders met at Thuy Ta, a popular cafe near Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake, to plot their next move. Police ordered the cafe's owners not to serve them. They went to another cafe, and soon that was shut down.
No U FC engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities for several months, gathering at various fields in Hanoi often only to be shooed away. They wore black-and-white soccer jerseys with a crossed-out U-shaped crest on the front. Emblazoned on the back: "Hoàng Sa", the Vietnamese name for disputed islands also known as the Paracels.
Since September, they have gathered twice a week at an artificial-turf field owned by the military, an institution the protesters say appears sympathetic to their cause. But undercover police usually keep watch.
On a recent Sunday, nearly 100 No U FC members showed up. They take pride in their diversity: one is a poet, another a banker. Their ages range from 10 to 60. Some play barefoot.
Beyond their common beliefs, they are united by something else: nearly all have been detained at some point, along with supporters such as Ta Tri Hai, a violinist in a straw cowboy hat who played folk music on the sidelines.
"We're getting stronger because of social media," said Nguyen Van Dung, a goalkeeper and protest organizer. The club has swelled to about 120 members who communicate closely on Facebook.
He criticized the government for what he sees as a weak response to assertions of Chinese sovereignty, including last month when Chinese fishing boats were accused of cutting a seismic cable attached to a PetroVietnam vessel exploring near the Gulf of Tonkin.
The most ardent minimalists wouldn’t dare demonstrate the contempt for dialogue embodied here, a choice that can be read as a statement about the modern age, so full of communication devices yet so devoid of real communication. Plenty of filmmakers spurn slam-bang action sequences, but none would champion the outright inaction of “Snooze-a-Thon,” clearly a metaphor for our lazy, indulgent times. And the numbing sameness of every single scene is nothing short of courageous, standing as an indictment of empty consumerism, political gridlock, spiritual vacuity and the general stagnation of our age.
Yes, as cinema the “Snooze-a-Thon,” a string of clips in which favorite kiddie characters are seen dozing, is a triumph. But never mind that. Will it really cause your little rotter to fall asleep?
Sprout, a channel that aims for the 5-and-under demographic with shows like “Pajanimals” and “The Berenstain Bears,” has made the “Snooze-a-Thon” an annual event, the idea being that many young children will be unable to sleep because they are too excited about the impending Christmas morning.
Beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday and continuing till 6 a.m. on Tuesday, those pint-size insomniacs, should they stir and glance at the television, will see a loop of sleeping puppets and human characters. This presumably will prompt them to realize that they too should be asleep, activate some sort of imitation reflex and cause them to conk out.
First let it be said from the parental perspective that any gimmick that gets Wibbly the pig, Olive the ostrich and especially Barney the dinosaur to shut their pie holes for an evening is deserving of an Emmy Award. But a lifetime of tossing and turning leads to a basic, premise-undermining question: Since when does watching someone else sleep make a person sleepy?
Many sleep-deprived grown-ups may find that the opposite is true. Seeing another person snooze when you can’t only enrages you, which makes it even less likely that you’ll fall asleep. Who among you hasn’t smacked a partner with a pillow because that partner was enjoying a blissful trip to dreamland while you were denied admission?
Give the people at Sprout credit for at least making an effort at a public service. And perhaps the “Snooze-a-Thon” will work on undeveloped preschool brains. For a grown-up, though, watching one Wiggle sleeping is infuriating; watching all four do it may induce apoplexy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site says that nearly 10 percent of Americans have chronic insomnia and that more than a quarter occasionally don’t get enough sleep. If you’re a TV programmer, that ought to scream, “Opportunity!” These days a network drawing 25 percent of the television audience would be considered a ratings juggernaut.
Clearly a full-time channel devoted to making adults fall asleep is what the grown-up viewing public needs and demands. Some wiseacre will say that C-Span already serves this function, but sleep is too important to be entrusted to politicians. What we want is a “Snooze-a-Thon” for the 18-and-older crowd, one based not on the misguided premise that seeing sleep induces sleep but on real-world experience.
As tensions between Beijing and Hanoi escalate over the South China Sea, Vietnamese anti-China protesters who face repeated police crackdowns are finding a new form of political expression: soccer.
"People don't feel scared playing soccer," said Phuong, the team captain, after a practice match in the capital, Hanoi.
They call themselves "No U FC" -- a reference to the U-shaped line China has drawn around almost the entire South China Sea, passing close to Vietnam, then around Malaysia and north to the Philippines, an area where potential oil deposits, strategic shipping routes and fishing rights converge in one of Asia's most combustible territorial disputes.
"FC" stands for Football Club. Or, as some players say, "Fuck China".
The team illustrates mounting resentment of China whose sovereignty claims over the stretch of water off its south coast and to the east of mainland Southeast Asia set it directly against U.S. allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also lay claim to parts.
The club was formed after police arrested dozens of anti-China protesters who had gathered peacefully almost every weekend from June to August last year. They were at first tolerated in the tightly controlled Communist country where public dissent is rare. But the authorities feared they could evolve into a wider, harder-to-control anti-government movement, said several diplomats with high-level government contacts.
Some of those arrested were accused of turning against the state. Among the protesters were intellectuals and bloggers whose anger extended well beyond Beijing to sensitive domestic issues — from a widening rich-poor divide to land evictions, police brutality and restrictions on freedom of expression.
After the crackdown, Phuong and other protest leaders met at Thuy Ta, a popular cafe near Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake, to plot their next move. Police ordered the cafe's owners not to serve them. They went to another cafe, and soon that was shut down.
No U FC engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities for several months, gathering at various fields in Hanoi often only to be shooed away. They wore black-and-white soccer jerseys with a crossed-out U-shaped crest on the front. Emblazoned on the back: "Hoàng Sa", the Vietnamese name for disputed islands also known as the Paracels.
Since September, they have gathered twice a week at an artificial-turf field owned by the military, an institution the protesters say appears sympathetic to their cause. But undercover police usually keep watch.
On a recent Sunday, nearly 100 No U FC members showed up. They take pride in their diversity: one is a poet, another a banker. Their ages range from 10 to 60. Some play barefoot.
Beyond their common beliefs, they are united by something else: nearly all have been detained at some point, along with supporters such as Ta Tri Hai, a violinist in a straw cowboy hat who played folk music on the sidelines.
"We're getting stronger because of social media," said Nguyen Van Dung, a goalkeeper and protest organizer. The club has swelled to about 120 members who communicate closely on Facebook.
He criticized the government for what he sees as a weak response to assertions of Chinese sovereignty, including last month when Chinese fishing boats were accused of cutting a seismic cable attached to a PetroVietnam vessel exploring near the Gulf of Tonkin.
The value of true beauty
George and Janet Fox didn’t have children. They were atheists. And due to their own chilly upbringings, they tended to poke fun at feelings they deemed sentimental.
Even though Uncle George and Aunt Janet were liked by friends and family in British Columbia, they regularly disappeared at Christmas, heading to California to be alone over the holidays.
Elaborate tree ornaments. Christmas cards galore. Stacks of holly-covered napkins. Bright red and green candles. And even a tall ruby angel with a golden halo, gently holding in her hand a sparkling star.
In their rather sneaky way, my beloved uncle and aunt had been into Christmas after all; they caught the spirit of the season by embracing things they considered beautiful.
Beauty can have that power. When a person feels transfixed by beauty, through nature, art, music or even the “beautiful” game of soccer, it can evoke a kind of spiritual feeling.
The experience of beauty can offer relief from numbness and despair, says spiritual writer Jay McDaniel, who frequently speaks in Vancouver. As such, he says, beauty often evokes gratitude.
In that way I sense my uncle and aunt’s hidden appreciation of Christmas beauty might point to something universal about this time of year.
Beauty has a way of grabbing hold of almost everyone, even those who are a bit crusty. Indeed, a case could be made that the Christmas season is, ultimately, a celebration of beauty.
Defying the season’s long nights and melancholy, Metro Vancouverities queue to be bedazzled.
The eyes of the young widen with the magic of “two million twinkling lights” on the Stanley Park miniature train ride. VanDusen Gardens’ Festival of Lights features gnomes and carols in a fantasia.
Thousands immerse themselves in Capilano Canyon’s forest lights while crossing the precarious suspension bridge. Young and old gather in lines at the Hyatt to witness amazing gingerbread houses.
People rush for tickets for everything from school winter concerts to the Marcus Mosely Chorale Christmas.
The West Coast air is filled with splendour, as carols spill out to the streets, from trendy clothing stores and historic churches.
Sanctuaries, bursting with their stained-glass windows, uplifting arches and warm candles, are suddenly packed.
Many who dress in their finest for spiritual services yearn for a realm of wonder and awe.
And millions of objets d’art come out of storage.
Objects like my uncle and aunt’s half-metre-high ruby angel, which seemed, despite their atheism, to convey an almost explicit religiousness.
Along with Santa, reindeer and chocolate trees, such Christmas paraphernalia are beautiful to some, schmaltzy to others. It’s often hard to make the distinction.
A glowing seasonal candle symbolizes the elusive nature of beauty. So does the strange calming trance induced by crackling fireplaces, even those on cable television screens.
The appeal of the Christian manger scene, featuring the guiding stars and baby Jesus, also depends on the eye of the beholder. It is an image of eternal hope, based on one Middle Eastern man’s short life; captured through the centuries in sculptures and icons.
Although beauty has, in recent decades, caught the attention of scientists and experimental psychologists, it has long been the obsession of artists, novelists and poets.
Far-reaching philosophers and theologians, from Aristotle to Hans Urs von Balthasar, also seize on the subject of beauty – injecting the crucial caveat that it has much to do with goodness.
Their important insight helps explains why movies such as A Christmas Carol and A Wonderful Life have become seasonal classics.
They are beautiful stories about troubled characters, Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey, who, through wondrous happenings, overcome greed, cynicism and despair.
Such transformative stories help illustrate why, when most of us talk of “beautiful” people, we are often not speaking of eyes, hips or hair. Sometimes beautiful people look rather ordinary.
And the Bible, from which the Christmas story springs, speaks a great deal of beauty. It describes the beauty of women, men, children, old people, nature, houses, flocks, temples and good actions.
But the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery notes beauty is also put in perspective in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures; they describe beauty as dangerous when used to deceive or seduce.
And, as the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast also spells out, the Bible makes clear that outer beauty does not entail inner beauty. And that physical beauty fades.
Nevertheless, Balthasar, a major Catholic theologian, made beauty a central part of his vision.
“God is one, good, true and beautiful,” said Balthasar, considered the premier theologian of both Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI.
The 20th century-Swiss thinker, who endured the horror of two world wars, suggested the best way to spiritually appeal to non-religious people is to ask them to ponder their experience of beauty. He called it “the esthetical encounter.”
“Though people may glaze over when one makes claims of truth and goodness, their ears seem to perk up at the mention of beauty: The flash of lightning across the sky, the dramatic auburn colours of a late summer sunset, a sublime snatch of music whether it be Mozart’s Requiem or a David Gilmour guitar solo,” writes Monsignor John Cihak of the Catholic archdiocese of Portland, Ore.
“Since most non-believers like to consider themselves open-minded, Balthasar capitalized on that desire by helping them see the mystery of Being as revealed in beauty.”
Balthasar not only believed churches should be elegant, and the celebration of ritual passionate, but that most of all the lives of Christians must be beautiful, radiating divine love.
For Christians, Balthasar took an extra step. He linked beauty with the incarnation of God in human form, which is what is marked each year at the birth of Jesus, the Messiah.
Which raises a hard question surrounding celebrating a baby who would end up suffering a horrible death: How can beauty be associated with a crucifixion?
Balthasar’s answer was Jesus’s death on the cross was the “supreme moment of transcending beauty, a revelation of love visible in the world, yet pointing to a love beyond this world.”
Even though Uncle George and Aunt Janet were liked by friends and family in British Columbia, they regularly disappeared at Christmas, heading to California to be alone over the holidays.
Elaborate tree ornaments. Christmas cards galore. Stacks of holly-covered napkins. Bright red and green candles. And even a tall ruby angel with a golden halo, gently holding in her hand a sparkling star.
In their rather sneaky way, my beloved uncle and aunt had been into Christmas after all; they caught the spirit of the season by embracing things they considered beautiful.
Beauty can have that power. When a person feels transfixed by beauty, through nature, art, music or even the “beautiful” game of soccer, it can evoke a kind of spiritual feeling.
The experience of beauty can offer relief from numbness and despair, says spiritual writer Jay McDaniel, who frequently speaks in Vancouver. As such, he says, beauty often evokes gratitude.
In that way I sense my uncle and aunt’s hidden appreciation of Christmas beauty might point to something universal about this time of year.
Beauty has a way of grabbing hold of almost everyone, even those who are a bit crusty. Indeed, a case could be made that the Christmas season is, ultimately, a celebration of beauty.
Defying the season’s long nights and melancholy, Metro Vancouverities queue to be bedazzled.
The eyes of the young widen with the magic of “two million twinkling lights” on the Stanley Park miniature train ride. VanDusen Gardens’ Festival of Lights features gnomes and carols in a fantasia.
Thousands immerse themselves in Capilano Canyon’s forest lights while crossing the precarious suspension bridge. Young and old gather in lines at the Hyatt to witness amazing gingerbread houses.
People rush for tickets for everything from school winter concerts to the Marcus Mosely Chorale Christmas.
The West Coast air is filled with splendour, as carols spill out to the streets, from trendy clothing stores and historic churches.
Sanctuaries, bursting with their stained-glass windows, uplifting arches and warm candles, are suddenly packed.
Many who dress in their finest for spiritual services yearn for a realm of wonder and awe.
And millions of objets d’art come out of storage.
Objects like my uncle and aunt’s half-metre-high ruby angel, which seemed, despite their atheism, to convey an almost explicit religiousness.
Along with Santa, reindeer and chocolate trees, such Christmas paraphernalia are beautiful to some, schmaltzy to others. It’s often hard to make the distinction.
A glowing seasonal candle symbolizes the elusive nature of beauty. So does the strange calming trance induced by crackling fireplaces, even those on cable television screens.
The appeal of the Christian manger scene, featuring the guiding stars and baby Jesus, also depends on the eye of the beholder. It is an image of eternal hope, based on one Middle Eastern man’s short life; captured through the centuries in sculptures and icons.
Although beauty has, in recent decades, caught the attention of scientists and experimental psychologists, it has long been the obsession of artists, novelists and poets.
Far-reaching philosophers and theologians, from Aristotle to Hans Urs von Balthasar, also seize on the subject of beauty – injecting the crucial caveat that it has much to do with goodness.
Their important insight helps explains why movies such as A Christmas Carol and A Wonderful Life have become seasonal classics.
They are beautiful stories about troubled characters, Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey, who, through wondrous happenings, overcome greed, cynicism and despair.
Such transformative stories help illustrate why, when most of us talk of “beautiful” people, we are often not speaking of eyes, hips or hair. Sometimes beautiful people look rather ordinary.
And the Bible, from which the Christmas story springs, speaks a great deal of beauty. It describes the beauty of women, men, children, old people, nature, houses, flocks, temples and good actions.
But the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery notes beauty is also put in perspective in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures; they describe beauty as dangerous when used to deceive or seduce.
And, as the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast also spells out, the Bible makes clear that outer beauty does not entail inner beauty. And that physical beauty fades.
Nevertheless, Balthasar, a major Catholic theologian, made beauty a central part of his vision.
“God is one, good, true and beautiful,” said Balthasar, considered the premier theologian of both Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI.
The 20th century-Swiss thinker, who endured the horror of two world wars, suggested the best way to spiritually appeal to non-religious people is to ask them to ponder their experience of beauty. He called it “the esthetical encounter.”
“Though people may glaze over when one makes claims of truth and goodness, their ears seem to perk up at the mention of beauty: The flash of lightning across the sky, the dramatic auburn colours of a late summer sunset, a sublime snatch of music whether it be Mozart’s Requiem or a David Gilmour guitar solo,” writes Monsignor John Cihak of the Catholic archdiocese of Portland, Ore.
“Since most non-believers like to consider themselves open-minded, Balthasar capitalized on that desire by helping them see the mystery of Being as revealed in beauty.”
Balthasar not only believed churches should be elegant, and the celebration of ritual passionate, but that most of all the lives of Christians must be beautiful, radiating divine love.
For Christians, Balthasar took an extra step. He linked beauty with the incarnation of God in human form, which is what is marked each year at the birth of Jesus, the Messiah.
Which raises a hard question surrounding celebrating a baby who would end up suffering a horrible death: How can beauty be associated with a crucifixion?
Balthasar’s answer was Jesus’s death on the cross was the “supreme moment of transcending beauty, a revelation of love visible in the world, yet pointing to a love beyond this world.”
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
United States Attorneys Standardize
Panzura, a leading provider of global cloud storage solutions, today announced that the Executive Office for United States Attorneys has awarded a contract to standardize globally on Panzura for its next-generation Storage-as-a-Service platform serving all United States Attorneys' Office locations nationwide. The solution will consolidate storage from approximately 265 USAOs, across all U.S. judicial districts, to an internal storage cloud. The Panzura Global Cloud Storage System will replace some legacy distributed storage infrastructure with a centralized repository to improve data access, meet stringent security and performance standards and dramatically increase operational efficiency.
The Panzura Global Cloud Storage System provides globally-distributed organizations with a consolidated storage infrastructure that offers cross-site LAN access to all files, integrated file locking, global deduplication, military-grade encryption, continuous snapshots, fast replication and DR, advanced access management and massive scalability in capacity. In addition, Panzura meets critical federal compliance requirements for FIPS 140-2, FISMA Moderate and USGCB certifications.
Government agencies and commercial organizations commonly store data on their own filers, incurring large costs associated with their purchase and maintenance and those for upgrades, facilities and personnel.
With electronic discovery pushing decades-old storage architectures and capacity to their limits, the widespread adoption of cloud computing amongst all U.S. federal agencies is an ongoing initiative by the U.S. General Services Administration to streamline the creation of sustainable, cost-effective IT services for the federal government. Addressing increasing storage costs and sprawl is one goal of this initiative.
The use of Panzura by EOUSA exemplifies the push to move mission-critical applications and data to the cloud to avoid spiraling CapEx, manual IT intervention and data retrieval delays, while providing encryption features to support a public cloud option with all necessary security compliance.
With approximately 265 geographically dispersed USAOs and two existing data centers, United States Attorney locations share common characteristics, yet each district also features unique business mandates and varied storage footprints. The amount of storage ranges from approximately 3TB for smaller offices and up to 17TB for larger offices. Panzura storage replaces a siloed, dispersed infrastructure with a seamless, fast and centralized storage platform that is interconnected by a global file system and drastically reduces system-wide duplication of data.
With ubiquitous real-time access to all data globally, the Panzura solution allows EOUSA to leverage efficient cloud object storage to reduce CapEx significantly, while making users much more self-sufficient in finding and obtaining data whenever and wherever needed. Panzura's award-winning Global Cloud Storage System leverages cloud storage at the back end and presents a seamless NAS-like interface at the front end, which, along with all standard NAS features and controls, makes data feel local regardless of location. Data is securely accessed on a need-to-see basis, and chargeback capability allows IT to allocate internal costs according to usage.
"Panzura is proud to play a central role in the efforts of EOUSA to centralize data access across all United States Attorneys Offices, reduce costs, and meet stringent security requirements," said Randy Chou, CEO of Panzura. "EOUSA is leading the way to tap into the benefits of the cloud for a globally-distributed organization while meeting compliance and SLA requirements. Panzura will fill a vital need for highly-secure access to the efficiencies of the cloud with a tightly-integrated NAS solution to meet these aggressive storage goals of EOUSA, all while reducing costs across the board."
You might not think the state’s most powerful politician would take the time to show up for Town Meeting, but John Lynch isn’t your ordinary Governor.
People in town say it’s not unusual to see Lynch show up to the annual session wearing blue jeans a sweatshirt. And you won’t hear any long-winded speeches in front of the other residents in town, they say. Lynch keeps to himself and leaves the town’s business to selectmen.
“It’s kind of nice to see him at Town Meeting, everybody just lets him be a citizen,” said Hopkinton resident Sharon Rivard. “He’s just like everybody else when he’s there.”
Similar to his approval record, residents of the 5,500-person town smile and speak fondly about their popular leader and neighbor.
Lynch drives himself to the Colonial Village Pharmacy-Supermarket to shop for groceries, and is an active athlete, playing in neighborhood hockey games at Kimball Pond in the winter and cycling Hopkinton’s hilly landscape in warmer months.
“Sometimes you’ll see him out with his wife, walking his dog,” said Susan Hencke, a potter and Gould Hill neighbor of Lynch’s who has lived in Hopkinton for 18 years. “He’s just a regular guy in the community.”
Still, for other Hopkinton residents, Lynch’s iconic house on Gould Hill is the first thing that comes to mind when asked about their neighbor.
Lynch built his 11,000 square foot home atop Gould Hill, which sits 850 feet above sea level and offers the best views in town, some say one of the best views in the Granite State.
“Nobody here has a more beautiful view of the mountains,” said one resident who declined to give his name at Everyday Cafe in Contoocook on Saturday. “And he enjoys it. That’s all I know.”
The multi-million-dollar home was built with a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool, a tennis court, a cabana, and a detached three car garage, among other luxuries.
People in town took notice of the construction in part because of the owner, and also because of its location on the former Gould Hill apple orchard.
Some neighbors recall the troop of trucks that rumbled through Hopkinton to build on the magnificent, nearly eighty-acre property, with breathtaking views of Mount Washington.
Others bemoaned the loss of a small section of the orchard – which dates back to the 1700s – when the Lynches started construction back in 2006.
“It’s a big house, but there’s a lot of those around this state,” said Erick Leadbeater, who owned and operated the orchard and sold the land to the Lynches through a revocable trust called “Gould Hill ‘B’” when Leadbeater planned to retire. “Some people criticized him for that.
“I think it was more the other party, the typical political sniping. But it’s a well thought-out place and can be very entertaining.”
Lynch built on a part of the Gould Hill Orchards that produced Macintosh apples, Leadbeater said, which were losing favor at the time.
Cutting-Edge Public Sector Work Keeps Technicians Busy
Integrating electronics into mechanical systems has been - and will increasingly continue to be – a bittersweet trend in the industry. The benefits are infinite, but the challenges are daunting if dealers aren’t making an effort to grow with the technology.
As system and component efficiencies hike skyward, controls become more comprehensive and remote location access becomes the standard; technicians need more specialized training. This holds true in the residential market, but is especially important in the commercial sector. For commercial and industrial mechanical contractors, moving across the fast-paced, higher-tech terrain will mean: adapt or perish.
One firm that’s gone far beyond adaptation is ECI (Energy Control, Inc) in Rio Rancho, NM. The company has not only embraced this shift in mechanical systems, but has entirely structured around it. They’ve proven that board room thinking can translate into substantive, profitable, real-world problem-solving and growth.
As one of New Mexico’s foremost intelligent building leaders, ECI combines routinely-honed technical expertise and training with cutting-edge technology and energy efficient equipment to deliver environmental comfort, security, access, and control. They’ve made it their charter to stay on top of the newest technologies since the mid-1970s and are poised to adapt going forward as the presence and influence of electronics in the HVAC industry grow exponentially.
According to Randall, the conservation program — which started in 2010 — is a speedy approach to retrofitting and updating most of the district’s 60 buildings. Facilities are undergoing renovation, new controls are going in, boilers are being replaced and solar arrays are being planned. All the while, energy and water use decreases.
Two laars Rheos boilers are the primary source of heat at Santa Fe High School.
But the service Santa Fe School District gets from ECI extends beyond shaving energy bills. ECI provides district-wide equipment assessment, HVAC service, a preventative maintenance program and remote water metering. “If you’re not from Santa Fe or the Southwest, you might not understand how important water metering can be,” Randall says. “Our water expense is almost double our natural gas bill.”
ECI installed water smart meters at all high-use facilities to help curb the District’s $750,000 annual expense. The meters identified a few large leaks and other problem areas immediately. After those were handled, maintenance prevented further challenges, and a variety of low-flow fixtures went in next.
One of the first facilities to go under ECI scrutiny for the Energy Conservation Program was Aspen School. The old school accounts for 80,000 of the district’s 2.3 million square feet of conditioned space. An all-out renovation took place over the summer of 2010. To ensure completion by the strict deadline, ECI kept 10-15 employees on-site for the duration of the project. The nearly-windowless, circa-1970 middle school was completely gutted and rebuilt, and turned into a K-5 school. A second phase took place a year later, when an addition was constructed to house a 6th, 7th and 8th grade academy.
“Our portion of the Aspen retrofit consisted of removing the old boilers and air handlers, installing new equipment and a new building automation system” Frederick says. “With the retrofit project and the addition going on simultaneously, it was a real challenge at times.” With a combined capacity of 4.8 million BTUs, two Laars Rheos boilers heat the renovated portion of the school with VAV (variable air volume) boxes. The modulating, condensing boilers boast up to 98% efficiency; more than enough to appease even the stingiest of Energy Conservation Program staff. Seven, 15-ton, and two 30-ton AAON rooftop units cool the structure.
“People hear ‘New Mexico’ and automatically think it’s always 100 degrees here,” Randall says. “Not the case. We’re at about 7,000 feet above sea level here. Although it’s dry, we’re more of a mountain city than a desert city, from a heating standpoint.” Average annual lows in Santa Fe range from 18 to 55F, and the highs are between 43 and 86F.
“All the buildings in the district use a 72F target,” Swick says. “There’s a three-degree ‘dead-zone,’ meaning that in the summer, indoor temperature will reach 75F before the AC turns on, and 69F in winter before the system calls for heat.”
In the Santa Fe Historic District, the Carlos Gilbert School faced its own set of challenges. The 83,000 sq.ft. building was entirely gutted and rebuilt, but every change to the facility needed to be approved by the Historic Review Board.
Six ECI technicians pulled out old cast-iron boilers and pneumatic controls. The old boilers came out in pieces, but there was no simple way to bring the new units into the basement mechanical room. After careful consideration, a portion of a block wall was removed so that the boilers could be craned in. Luckily, the building remodel happened to call for the removal of the same wall.
Most ECI hydronic installations have a supply temp between 130-180F, with a reset schedule. Carlos Gilbert is no exception; two, 750 MBH Laars Pennant boilers supply 180F water to a four-pipe unit vent system. “We’ve standardized on Laars boilers,” said Frederick. “The quality of the product and unparalleled support from Boyd Engineering Supply, made the decision easy. I don’t know why more dealers don’t do it; we can be much more proficient in service and maintenance utilizing only one line.”
The district’s new flagship facility —the Amy Biehl Community School — is in a class of its own. Named after the American social activist who, in 1993, was murdered in South Africa while working to eliminate racial segregation and apartheid in that country. Her family went on to start the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in an effort to reduce violence there. Biehl attended Santa Fe High, so the district found it appropriate to honor her with the building’s dedication. LEED Gold status is currently being sought.
The school acts as the beta test site for the water monitoring equipment that the district seeks to install in all facilities. Live water and natural gas usage data is posted online for students and community members to view. On the same website, real-time photovoltaic electric production data will be accessible, once the school’s photovoltaic is complete, which will provide up to 65 kW. Solar panels weren’t the only green technology to make list during the design phase. What’s a super-green school without geothermal HVAC? ECI drilled and fused the large exchange field needed to serve 160 tons of geothermal heat pump equipment.
“The Amy Biehl project does a good job of showcasing our specialty,” Frederick says. “We’re strictly commercial and industrial, and energy efficiency is always our main design criterion.” The school also puts ECI’s other talents to good use, like security and high-tech building automation controls. “When the economy downturned, we saw the private sector projects taper off, so we’re glad to have the work that comes from Santa Fe School District,” he continues. “Hopefully, the savings from renovation projects like Santa Fe’s are going to gain more recognition, validating the expense for quality installations.”
As system and component efficiencies hike skyward, controls become more comprehensive and remote location access becomes the standard; technicians need more specialized training. This holds true in the residential market, but is especially important in the commercial sector. For commercial and industrial mechanical contractors, moving across the fast-paced, higher-tech terrain will mean: adapt or perish.
One firm that’s gone far beyond adaptation is ECI (Energy Control, Inc) in Rio Rancho, NM. The company has not only embraced this shift in mechanical systems, but has entirely structured around it. They’ve proven that board room thinking can translate into substantive, profitable, real-world problem-solving and growth.
As one of New Mexico’s foremost intelligent building leaders, ECI combines routinely-honed technical expertise and training with cutting-edge technology and energy efficient equipment to deliver environmental comfort, security, access, and control. They’ve made it their charter to stay on top of the newest technologies since the mid-1970s and are poised to adapt going forward as the presence and influence of electronics in the HVAC industry grow exponentially.
According to Randall, the conservation program — which started in 2010 — is a speedy approach to retrofitting and updating most of the district’s 60 buildings. Facilities are undergoing renovation, new controls are going in, boilers are being replaced and solar arrays are being planned. All the while, energy and water use decreases.
Two laars Rheos boilers are the primary source of heat at Santa Fe High School.
But the service Santa Fe School District gets from ECI extends beyond shaving energy bills. ECI provides district-wide equipment assessment, HVAC service, a preventative maintenance program and remote water metering. “If you’re not from Santa Fe or the Southwest, you might not understand how important water metering can be,” Randall says. “Our water expense is almost double our natural gas bill.”
ECI installed water smart meters at all high-use facilities to help curb the District’s $750,000 annual expense. The meters identified a few large leaks and other problem areas immediately. After those were handled, maintenance prevented further challenges, and a variety of low-flow fixtures went in next.
One of the first facilities to go under ECI scrutiny for the Energy Conservation Program was Aspen School. The old school accounts for 80,000 of the district’s 2.3 million square feet of conditioned space. An all-out renovation took place over the summer of 2010. To ensure completion by the strict deadline, ECI kept 10-15 employees on-site for the duration of the project. The nearly-windowless, circa-1970 middle school was completely gutted and rebuilt, and turned into a K-5 school. A second phase took place a year later, when an addition was constructed to house a 6th, 7th and 8th grade academy.
“Our portion of the Aspen retrofit consisted of removing the old boilers and air handlers, installing new equipment and a new building automation system” Frederick says. “With the retrofit project and the addition going on simultaneously, it was a real challenge at times.” With a combined capacity of 4.8 million BTUs, two Laars Rheos boilers heat the renovated portion of the school with VAV (variable air volume) boxes. The modulating, condensing boilers boast up to 98% efficiency; more than enough to appease even the stingiest of Energy Conservation Program staff. Seven, 15-ton, and two 30-ton AAON rooftop units cool the structure.
“People hear ‘New Mexico’ and automatically think it’s always 100 degrees here,” Randall says. “Not the case. We’re at about 7,000 feet above sea level here. Although it’s dry, we’re more of a mountain city than a desert city, from a heating standpoint.” Average annual lows in Santa Fe range from 18 to 55F, and the highs are between 43 and 86F.
“All the buildings in the district use a 72F target,” Swick says. “There’s a three-degree ‘dead-zone,’ meaning that in the summer, indoor temperature will reach 75F before the AC turns on, and 69F in winter before the system calls for heat.”
In the Santa Fe Historic District, the Carlos Gilbert School faced its own set of challenges. The 83,000 sq.ft. building was entirely gutted and rebuilt, but every change to the facility needed to be approved by the Historic Review Board.
Six ECI technicians pulled out old cast-iron boilers and pneumatic controls. The old boilers came out in pieces, but there was no simple way to bring the new units into the basement mechanical room. After careful consideration, a portion of a block wall was removed so that the boilers could be craned in. Luckily, the building remodel happened to call for the removal of the same wall.
Most ECI hydronic installations have a supply temp between 130-180F, with a reset schedule. Carlos Gilbert is no exception; two, 750 MBH Laars Pennant boilers supply 180F water to a four-pipe unit vent system. “We’ve standardized on Laars boilers,” said Frederick. “The quality of the product and unparalleled support from Boyd Engineering Supply, made the decision easy. I don’t know why more dealers don’t do it; we can be much more proficient in service and maintenance utilizing only one line.”
The district’s new flagship facility —the Amy Biehl Community School — is in a class of its own. Named after the American social activist who, in 1993, was murdered in South Africa while working to eliminate racial segregation and apartheid in that country. Her family went on to start the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in an effort to reduce violence there. Biehl attended Santa Fe High, so the district found it appropriate to honor her with the building’s dedication. LEED Gold status is currently being sought.
The school acts as the beta test site for the water monitoring equipment that the district seeks to install in all facilities. Live water and natural gas usage data is posted online for students and community members to view. On the same website, real-time photovoltaic electric production data will be accessible, once the school’s photovoltaic is complete, which will provide up to 65 kW. Solar panels weren’t the only green technology to make list during the design phase. What’s a super-green school without geothermal HVAC? ECI drilled and fused the large exchange field needed to serve 160 tons of geothermal heat pump equipment.
“The Amy Biehl project does a good job of showcasing our specialty,” Frederick says. “We’re strictly commercial and industrial, and energy efficiency is always our main design criterion.” The school also puts ECI’s other talents to good use, like security and high-tech building automation controls. “When the economy downturned, we saw the private sector projects taper off, so we’re glad to have the work that comes from Santa Fe School District,” he continues. “Hopefully, the savings from renovation projects like Santa Fe’s are going to gain more recognition, validating the expense for quality installations.”
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Dwight Hicks transforms from football to movie star
The walls on both floors of an old Camden row house were given a fresh coat of white paint, so Anna Hicks, the mother of a large family that wasn’t done growing, issued a warning to her little ones.
This was circa 1962, a time when Anna had three children in grade school, one in diapers and a truck-driver husband who kept moving in and out.
It also was a time when common punishment for an “or else” was a spanking, and Anna, who had a tough father growing up on a farm near Montgomery, Ala., believed in using a switch to teach right from wrong.
Well, kids will be kids, and Anna wasn’t happy the day she noticed a star had been scribbled onto a second-floor hallway wall near the stairs. The guilty party used a pencil, then traced over the star again and again to make it distinct.
With switch in hand and her three children out of diapers in front of her, Anna demanded a confession. When no one spoke up, she started with the oldest. Albert cried and pleaded that he was innocent during his licking. Then Jackie, the only girl, did the same.
Thinking back all those years, Anna Hicks, 75, and still living in Pennsauken, let out a laugh. Her son, Dwight, who moved from Camden to Pennsauken in the fourth grade, lived up to his prediction.
Dwight Hicks, 56, did it as a young man by becoming a four-time Pro Bowl defensive back and two-time Super Bowl champion for the Joe Montana-era San Francisco 49ers, and now, post-football, he’s doing it again as an actor.
Ironically, the football star-turned-movie star played FBI Agent Star in one of first pictures, 1996 action movie “The Rock.”
Hicks isn’t stealing parts from the likes of Bruce Willis, Sean Connery or Ben Affleck, but he’s landed small roles in movies with all three while appearing in many other show-business projects — independent films, plays, television series, commercials.
“I have a passion for the arts I never knew I had,” said Hicks, a 1974 Pennsauken High School graduate. “That was very important to me to find another passion in my life, football being the first.”
Because he’d never become filthy rich playing defensive back — “I was grossly underpaid,” he says — Hicks needed a second career after retiring from football in 1986 following seven NFL seasons in San Francisco and one in Indianapolis.
Single with two daughters at the time, Hicks remained in the Bay Area hoping to use his ties to the 49ers for opportunities. He landed a good job in sales, but hated it and quit. For almost a decade, he did a lot of motivational speaking to pay bills, and for two football seasons, held his first job in television co-anchoring a 49ers’ post-game show for San Francisco’s FOX affiliate.
All the while, Hicks thought back to one of his Pro Bowl trips to Hawaii when he did a Public Service Announcement. He never forgot finishing his lines and hearing an impressed director say: “Have you done this before? Man, you can make a lot of money reading a script.”
Years later, Hicks decided in 1995 to seek out a San Francisco-based talent agent who maybe could get him work doing television commercials. He ended up being taken in by Stars, the Agency, founded and run by a woman named Lynn Claxon.
“I told my agent I’d like to do commercials, then I opened my big mouth and said, ‘If any films come up, I’d like to audition,'” Hicks said. “She says, ‘Oh, you’re an actor.’ I said, ‘No, I just feel like I have the confidence to do it.”’
Claxon normally would have laughed off Hicks’ ambitious thoughts, but she noticed right away that he appeared different from other former professional athletes she’d encountered. She liked that he was soft-spoken, well-spoken and professional. And even though he had no acting experience, she guessed Hicks might be able to charm his way into small television or movie roles, then over time, possibly work his way into earning better parts.
“A lot of people say, ‘I want to be an actor,’” Hicks said. “They want to go to Hollywood or New York and be discovered, but there hardly is any overnight success. It takes years to hone that skill.”
Incredibly, just a week after finding an agent, Hicks was on his way to his first audition, trying out for a role in a film loaded with Hollywood megastars. “Jack” was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starred Robin Williams and co-starred Bill Cosby, Fran Drescher and Diane Lane.
The part Hicks went for was one line in one scene — a bartender correcting the way Williams’ character, Jack, pronounced “maraschino” cherry. It was just one line, but Hicks made an impression.
Coppola gave Hicks the part, then during filming switched him to a bigger one in which he played a high school principal.
Excited to see himself in his first movie, Hicks went to a theater alone on opening night ... then was crushed after discovering the editing process left his character seen but not heard.
No matter, the entire process was a learning experience because Hicks hung around the set for hours closely watching how a bunch of seasoned pros worked.
“I didn’t go back to my trailer,” Hicks said. “I just stayed and watched. Everything fascinated me and I was learning.”
Following “Jack,” Hicks was sent to more auditions and he kept getting parts. He played an FBI agent in “Armageddon” and a bouncer “In the Mix.” He made television appearances on “How I Met Your Mother,” “Nash Bridges,” “The Practice,” “The X-Files” and “ER,” among others.
This was circa 1962, a time when Anna had three children in grade school, one in diapers and a truck-driver husband who kept moving in and out.
It also was a time when common punishment for an “or else” was a spanking, and Anna, who had a tough father growing up on a farm near Montgomery, Ala., believed in using a switch to teach right from wrong.
Well, kids will be kids, and Anna wasn’t happy the day she noticed a star had been scribbled onto a second-floor hallway wall near the stairs. The guilty party used a pencil, then traced over the star again and again to make it distinct.
With switch in hand and her three children out of diapers in front of her, Anna demanded a confession. When no one spoke up, she started with the oldest. Albert cried and pleaded that he was innocent during his licking. Then Jackie, the only girl, did the same.
Thinking back all those years, Anna Hicks, 75, and still living in Pennsauken, let out a laugh. Her son, Dwight, who moved from Camden to Pennsauken in the fourth grade, lived up to his prediction.
Dwight Hicks, 56, did it as a young man by becoming a four-time Pro Bowl defensive back and two-time Super Bowl champion for the Joe Montana-era San Francisco 49ers, and now, post-football, he’s doing it again as an actor.
Ironically, the football star-turned-movie star played FBI Agent Star in one of first pictures, 1996 action movie “The Rock.”
Hicks isn’t stealing parts from the likes of Bruce Willis, Sean Connery or Ben Affleck, but he’s landed small roles in movies with all three while appearing in many other show-business projects — independent films, plays, television series, commercials.
“I have a passion for the arts I never knew I had,” said Hicks, a 1974 Pennsauken High School graduate. “That was very important to me to find another passion in my life, football being the first.”
Because he’d never become filthy rich playing defensive back — “I was grossly underpaid,” he says — Hicks needed a second career after retiring from football in 1986 following seven NFL seasons in San Francisco and one in Indianapolis.
Single with two daughters at the time, Hicks remained in the Bay Area hoping to use his ties to the 49ers for opportunities. He landed a good job in sales, but hated it and quit. For almost a decade, he did a lot of motivational speaking to pay bills, and for two football seasons, held his first job in television co-anchoring a 49ers’ post-game show for San Francisco’s FOX affiliate.
All the while, Hicks thought back to one of his Pro Bowl trips to Hawaii when he did a Public Service Announcement. He never forgot finishing his lines and hearing an impressed director say: “Have you done this before? Man, you can make a lot of money reading a script.”
Years later, Hicks decided in 1995 to seek out a San Francisco-based talent agent who maybe could get him work doing television commercials. He ended up being taken in by Stars, the Agency, founded and run by a woman named Lynn Claxon.
“I told my agent I’d like to do commercials, then I opened my big mouth and said, ‘If any films come up, I’d like to audition,'” Hicks said. “She says, ‘Oh, you’re an actor.’ I said, ‘No, I just feel like I have the confidence to do it.”’
Claxon normally would have laughed off Hicks’ ambitious thoughts, but she noticed right away that he appeared different from other former professional athletes she’d encountered. She liked that he was soft-spoken, well-spoken and professional. And even though he had no acting experience, she guessed Hicks might be able to charm his way into small television or movie roles, then over time, possibly work his way into earning better parts.
“A lot of people say, ‘I want to be an actor,’” Hicks said. “They want to go to Hollywood or New York and be discovered, but there hardly is any overnight success. It takes years to hone that skill.”
Incredibly, just a week after finding an agent, Hicks was on his way to his first audition, trying out for a role in a film loaded with Hollywood megastars. “Jack” was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starred Robin Williams and co-starred Bill Cosby, Fran Drescher and Diane Lane.
The part Hicks went for was one line in one scene — a bartender correcting the way Williams’ character, Jack, pronounced “maraschino” cherry. It was just one line, but Hicks made an impression.
Coppola gave Hicks the part, then during filming switched him to a bigger one in which he played a high school principal.
Excited to see himself in his first movie, Hicks went to a theater alone on opening night ... then was crushed after discovering the editing process left his character seen but not heard.
No matter, the entire process was a learning experience because Hicks hung around the set for hours closely watching how a bunch of seasoned pros worked.
“I didn’t go back to my trailer,” Hicks said. “I just stayed and watched. Everything fascinated me and I was learning.”
Following “Jack,” Hicks was sent to more auditions and he kept getting parts. He played an FBI agent in “Armageddon” and a bouncer “In the Mix.” He made television appearances on “How I Met Your Mother,” “Nash Bridges,” “The Practice,” “The X-Files” and “ER,” among others.
The Gongs
He was a home recordist with hereditary heart issues. He often felt that pursuing a career in housebound music-making would be beneficial to his health – though not completely stress-free, it was a career that encouraged contemplation, solitude and plenty of reclining. His wife was an understanding woman. She was currently the sole breadwinner of the household, keeping their suburban stack well-stocked with food and flowing electricity thanks to her skill with numbers. She worked an accountancy job towards the centre of town and, not only did the job pay handsomely, her eagerness for overtime granted her man more time Monday to Friday to work on what she endearingly called ‘his symphonies’.
He had originally been a metal spinner specialising in kitchenware, until finally accepting he could not compete with the superstores pedalling dirt cheap, dentable alternatives. His pans were perhaps so well-made that his customers never had to return to have them replaced. And so, unable to find a suitable buyer, he sold his lathe off for scrap and terminated the lease of his workshop.
Thrust into the static rat race of a fresh economic slump, his endeavours for reemployment felt like seeking work as a clown in a town of coulrophobes. He would not succumb to menial work in the gently blossoming service industries. He didn’t feel he had the appropriate people skills – his sales in the workshop were clinched by a young, loose-tongued nephew. He felt his shyness made him unemployable and yet he had a bold – perhaps even blind – ambition to reinvent himself as a master music-maker, albeit one who would release records reclusively rather than rambunctiously, without touring and press and the like.
His cardiac issues stemmed from an optic abnormality. His eyesight never bothered him while metal spinning – his work was a goggled, close-quartered manipulation of high-speed aluminium. However, now he had more time for window-shopping – from the inside looking out, searching for inspiration in the sky, or in his neighbours’ dwellings – he realised he might be myopic. His optician disagreed – perhaps he just needed binoculars. Nevertheless, his visit to the opticians was not completely in vain as the kindly, insistent eye doctor noted he had unusually wavy blood vessels in the back of one of his eyeballs – a possible indication of high blood pressure.
The mere insinuation that he had dirty arteries gave him palpitations. He was an anxious man, even at rest, though he wasn’t sure what he had to worry about – he was enjoying his time off, despite the financial strains. Nevertheless, his GP confirmed the optician’s suspicions – he gave a blood pressure reading of 150/85mmHg (though it could have been white coat hypertension), and he was referred to a phlebotomist for further, bloodcurdling analysis. He hated injections, but was buoyed slightly by the invitation to place his upturned fist on a stranger’s knee as she listlessly slid the needle into his vein. After surrendering three vials of crimson cocktail, he returned home with a strange feeling in his soul, strung halfway between enlightenment and foreboding. The fact of his own mortality hung heavily around his shoulders, like a lead apron. He didn’t feel his waist was plump enough to suggest diabetes, or that cholesterol could be a contributing factor. His wife often compared him to a bird at mealtimes, the way he picked at portions which had been gradually shrinking over the years. He could exercise more, though he did love long walks – or at least accepted them, seeing as his wife always had the car.
He woke the morning after his blood test with an overwhelming desire to choose a song for his funeral. Even for a music lover, it was a decision he felt no urgency in making before. He had always imagined a time much further from now – a time of will-writing and medication and perhaps even a death bed – when he would impart to whoever was nearest or dearest the choice of song for his closing credits.
He remained in his pyjamas as he waddled to the box room he called his music library. He span cumbersome and compact discs for more than two hours, weighing up each song in terms of its tunefulness, its dolefulness, its lyrical significance to his own life, its certainty of tear manufacture, its potential for popularity amongst a possibly philistine audience, and so on. The songs sounded different that morning, soundtracking an imaginary cremation in which he was the starring stiff. Ultimately though, none of the songs seemed to fit the occasion. Lyrics involving angels or new beginnings or departed loved ones seemed too twee, and the instrumentals felt almost like elevator music, no matter how upbeat or elegiac, as if chosen only to drown out awkward silence in a carpet showroom.
He decided to get dressed and have some breakfast. For all he knew, his blood test might come back clean. He choked down some bran cereal in front of the TV and thumbed the newspaper until he felt guilty enough to head upstairs to work.
Setting up his musical equipment was like a modern form of snake-charming: he uncoiled countless cables, made daisy chains of power adaptors and extension leads, raised faders and lowered the blinds. Once settled, he rubbed the cold from his hands across his trousers, and rested his fingers on the plastic ebony and ivory of his CASIO keyboard. His fingers naturally landed on A7: a chord that usually reminded him of the pop songs of his childhood, only today he was far too preoccupied with his ill health to indulge in any nostalgia. He played the chord, but it was an electric jeer that trilled around the former guest room. In that instant, he felt as though his whole musical output (admittedly, only half an album’s worth of half-finished songs) was an embarrassment. He wondered if he focused too much on the major keys rather than the more elegant minors. He thought to himself: if he was to die today and his wife picked one of his existing compositions for his farewell party, he would be laughed out of the crematorium. He played a glissando on the keyboard with his fist, then his forehead, and unplugged all the wires again.
Though he had never been further afield than western Europe, he had travelled the globe in his armchair. Documentaries were his access-all-areas pass to places he would never visit due to monetary strains, fear of injections and/or disease, and his struggle to communicate even in his mother tongue. It was the traditional music of these territories which interested him more than the landscape, the cuisine or the religious curiosities: he had a fondness for the crisp hum of a Tibetan singing prayer bowl, the gulping rhythm of the tabla, the dawn chorus of a Chinese guzheng – but there was nothing that bewildered and gladdened him more than the gamelan ensembles of Java and Bali.
Creating a sound akin to a celestial foundry, a gamelan ensemble is made up of various gongs, drums, metallophones and chimes, often beaten to accompany a dance or shadow puppet show, but also found at Indonesian births, marriages and funerals. While not recommended listening material to ease a hangover, the repetitive atonal God-clang gamelan has the power to catapult the listener to the higher realms, like witnessing the Gates of Heaven being broken down by soft-headed beaters as opposed to sledgehammers.
He remembered watching a Javanese gamelan years back on the BBC, and being as close to rapture as is possible on a weeknight with his wife in the other room bleating and searching for some stray item of stationery. And now, as he turned the aluminium saucepan over in his hands and struck it again, this time on the back with more gusto, he realised he might be able to create his own gamelan ensemble using just his kitchenware and analogue four-track.
After referring to Gamelan: Traditional Sounds of Indonesia and experimenting for an hour or so with microphone positioning and reverb levels, he put down the first layer of gongs on TRACK I of his four-track. Since a gamelan traditionally consists of no less than ten players (and he had only two hands and four tracks available to record each instrument), he would need to combine (‘bounce’) many tracks together to create enough space to fit the full ensemble. For instance, he could record the gongs onto TRACK I, the drums onto TRACK II, and the chimes onto TRACK III, and then bounce these together over to TRACK IV, thus freeing up TRACKS I, II and III again. This process can continue ad infinitum, so technically a hundred-piece orchestra could be recorded by one musician, bit by bit, using just a four-track. However, the major downside of this process is with each bounce, the sound quality deteriorates, but he felt this was a necessary sacrifice to achieve the perfect pot-and-pan pandemonium.
After laying down the gongs, he recorded a simple rhythm onto TRACK II using upturned Tupperware in place of the traditional kendhong drums of the gamelan: tak tak dhung dah, tok tok dhung dah. Then, he recorded a layer of beaten saucepan lids onto TRACK III, mimicking the deadened cymbal sounds of the kenong, kethuk and kempyang. Finally, he set the faders to mix these layers together and bounced them over to TRACK IV, remembering to increase the treble in anticipation of the high frequency squeeze.
There was still an hour or so before his wife was due home, so he headed back to the kitchen to gather more crockery. However, as he dismounted the stairs, he was rapidly overcome by an abominable headache. The pain seared through his cranium as if someone had poured molten metal through his earholes. He ignored the door to the kitchen and instead went through to the living room, to bury his head in the cushions in the foetal position. And this was how his wife found him an hour and a half later, seemingly asleep but in fact wide-eyed and petrified. Perhaps he had had enough gongs for one day, he reasoned.
After painkillers, pasta in a destrung saucepan, and ample sleep, he awoke the next morning in a sprightly mood, ready to continue his composition. He and his wife had three matching sets of drinking vessels – some egg-shaped tumblers, four Boddingtons pint glasses, and six crystal champagne flutes, for best – which, when filled with differing levels of water and struck, faithfully recreated the peking, saron and demung metallophones. Once these tinkling treasures had been added to the mix, each playback lubricated his eyelashes with tears. He bounced the champagne flutes and Boddingtons glasses along with the pans, lids and Tupperware over to TRACK III, then added egg-shaped tumblers to the free TRACK I. Loaded with information, the magnetic tape hummed and groaned with wow and flutter, but he was pleased with his efforts. In fact, he was convinced he was shaking Chopin’s pedestal. He lost himself in reverie, imagining his composition soundtracking funerals of the future, perhaps even the homecoming of broken soldiers, the television coverage of the death of an icon, the…
His heart lurched in his chest as he was overcome again by searing cranium pain. This time the pain was accompanied by a nausea that flooded his cheeks with saliva – he had to grasp the edge of his reclining chair to stop himself from keeling over. The first vaguely rational thought that came to him was to not throw up over his musical equipment, so he crawled out of his studio and laid prostate across the unhoovered carpet, breathing heavily. He held this position for almost an hour, at which point the letterbox roused him, flapping and clattering downstairs. This was the fourth morning since his blood test. He made his way to the staircase and descended it gingerly, with both hands on the banister, only to find a few lurid circulars awaiting him on the meat-coloured doormat. He perched on the bottom step with his chin in his hands, trying to compose himself but his heart continued to race, unable to keep time with the gently progressing suburban scenes behind the frosted glass. He could not fathom what was wrong with him.
He had originally been a metal spinner specialising in kitchenware, until finally accepting he could not compete with the superstores pedalling dirt cheap, dentable alternatives. His pans were perhaps so well-made that his customers never had to return to have them replaced. And so, unable to find a suitable buyer, he sold his lathe off for scrap and terminated the lease of his workshop.
Thrust into the static rat race of a fresh economic slump, his endeavours for reemployment felt like seeking work as a clown in a town of coulrophobes. He would not succumb to menial work in the gently blossoming service industries. He didn’t feel he had the appropriate people skills – his sales in the workshop were clinched by a young, loose-tongued nephew. He felt his shyness made him unemployable and yet he had a bold – perhaps even blind – ambition to reinvent himself as a master music-maker, albeit one who would release records reclusively rather than rambunctiously, without touring and press and the like.
His cardiac issues stemmed from an optic abnormality. His eyesight never bothered him while metal spinning – his work was a goggled, close-quartered manipulation of high-speed aluminium. However, now he had more time for window-shopping – from the inside looking out, searching for inspiration in the sky, or in his neighbours’ dwellings – he realised he might be myopic. His optician disagreed – perhaps he just needed binoculars. Nevertheless, his visit to the opticians was not completely in vain as the kindly, insistent eye doctor noted he had unusually wavy blood vessels in the back of one of his eyeballs – a possible indication of high blood pressure.
The mere insinuation that he had dirty arteries gave him palpitations. He was an anxious man, even at rest, though he wasn’t sure what he had to worry about – he was enjoying his time off, despite the financial strains. Nevertheless, his GP confirmed the optician’s suspicions – he gave a blood pressure reading of 150/85mmHg (though it could have been white coat hypertension), and he was referred to a phlebotomist for further, bloodcurdling analysis. He hated injections, but was buoyed slightly by the invitation to place his upturned fist on a stranger’s knee as she listlessly slid the needle into his vein. After surrendering three vials of crimson cocktail, he returned home with a strange feeling in his soul, strung halfway between enlightenment and foreboding. The fact of his own mortality hung heavily around his shoulders, like a lead apron. He didn’t feel his waist was plump enough to suggest diabetes, or that cholesterol could be a contributing factor. His wife often compared him to a bird at mealtimes, the way he picked at portions which had been gradually shrinking over the years. He could exercise more, though he did love long walks – or at least accepted them, seeing as his wife always had the car.
He woke the morning after his blood test with an overwhelming desire to choose a song for his funeral. Even for a music lover, it was a decision he felt no urgency in making before. He had always imagined a time much further from now – a time of will-writing and medication and perhaps even a death bed – when he would impart to whoever was nearest or dearest the choice of song for his closing credits.
He remained in his pyjamas as he waddled to the box room he called his music library. He span cumbersome and compact discs for more than two hours, weighing up each song in terms of its tunefulness, its dolefulness, its lyrical significance to his own life, its certainty of tear manufacture, its potential for popularity amongst a possibly philistine audience, and so on. The songs sounded different that morning, soundtracking an imaginary cremation in which he was the starring stiff. Ultimately though, none of the songs seemed to fit the occasion. Lyrics involving angels or new beginnings or departed loved ones seemed too twee, and the instrumentals felt almost like elevator music, no matter how upbeat or elegiac, as if chosen only to drown out awkward silence in a carpet showroom.
He decided to get dressed and have some breakfast. For all he knew, his blood test might come back clean. He choked down some bran cereal in front of the TV and thumbed the newspaper until he felt guilty enough to head upstairs to work.
Setting up his musical equipment was like a modern form of snake-charming: he uncoiled countless cables, made daisy chains of power adaptors and extension leads, raised faders and lowered the blinds. Once settled, he rubbed the cold from his hands across his trousers, and rested his fingers on the plastic ebony and ivory of his CASIO keyboard. His fingers naturally landed on A7: a chord that usually reminded him of the pop songs of his childhood, only today he was far too preoccupied with his ill health to indulge in any nostalgia. He played the chord, but it was an electric jeer that trilled around the former guest room. In that instant, he felt as though his whole musical output (admittedly, only half an album’s worth of half-finished songs) was an embarrassment. He wondered if he focused too much on the major keys rather than the more elegant minors. He thought to himself: if he was to die today and his wife picked one of his existing compositions for his farewell party, he would be laughed out of the crematorium. He played a glissando on the keyboard with his fist, then his forehead, and unplugged all the wires again.
Though he had never been further afield than western Europe, he had travelled the globe in his armchair. Documentaries were his access-all-areas pass to places he would never visit due to monetary strains, fear of injections and/or disease, and his struggle to communicate even in his mother tongue. It was the traditional music of these territories which interested him more than the landscape, the cuisine or the religious curiosities: he had a fondness for the crisp hum of a Tibetan singing prayer bowl, the gulping rhythm of the tabla, the dawn chorus of a Chinese guzheng – but there was nothing that bewildered and gladdened him more than the gamelan ensembles of Java and Bali.
Creating a sound akin to a celestial foundry, a gamelan ensemble is made up of various gongs, drums, metallophones and chimes, often beaten to accompany a dance or shadow puppet show, but also found at Indonesian births, marriages and funerals. While not recommended listening material to ease a hangover, the repetitive atonal God-clang gamelan has the power to catapult the listener to the higher realms, like witnessing the Gates of Heaven being broken down by soft-headed beaters as opposed to sledgehammers.
He remembered watching a Javanese gamelan years back on the BBC, and being as close to rapture as is possible on a weeknight with his wife in the other room bleating and searching for some stray item of stationery. And now, as he turned the aluminium saucepan over in his hands and struck it again, this time on the back with more gusto, he realised he might be able to create his own gamelan ensemble using just his kitchenware and analogue four-track.
After referring to Gamelan: Traditional Sounds of Indonesia and experimenting for an hour or so with microphone positioning and reverb levels, he put down the first layer of gongs on TRACK I of his four-track. Since a gamelan traditionally consists of no less than ten players (and he had only two hands and four tracks available to record each instrument), he would need to combine (‘bounce’) many tracks together to create enough space to fit the full ensemble. For instance, he could record the gongs onto TRACK I, the drums onto TRACK II, and the chimes onto TRACK III, and then bounce these together over to TRACK IV, thus freeing up TRACKS I, II and III again. This process can continue ad infinitum, so technically a hundred-piece orchestra could be recorded by one musician, bit by bit, using just a four-track. However, the major downside of this process is with each bounce, the sound quality deteriorates, but he felt this was a necessary sacrifice to achieve the perfect pot-and-pan pandemonium.
After laying down the gongs, he recorded a simple rhythm onto TRACK II using upturned Tupperware in place of the traditional kendhong drums of the gamelan: tak tak dhung dah, tok tok dhung dah. Then, he recorded a layer of beaten saucepan lids onto TRACK III, mimicking the deadened cymbal sounds of the kenong, kethuk and kempyang. Finally, he set the faders to mix these layers together and bounced them over to TRACK IV, remembering to increase the treble in anticipation of the high frequency squeeze.
There was still an hour or so before his wife was due home, so he headed back to the kitchen to gather more crockery. However, as he dismounted the stairs, he was rapidly overcome by an abominable headache. The pain seared through his cranium as if someone had poured molten metal through his earholes. He ignored the door to the kitchen and instead went through to the living room, to bury his head in the cushions in the foetal position. And this was how his wife found him an hour and a half later, seemingly asleep but in fact wide-eyed and petrified. Perhaps he had had enough gongs for one day, he reasoned.
After painkillers, pasta in a destrung saucepan, and ample sleep, he awoke the next morning in a sprightly mood, ready to continue his composition. He and his wife had three matching sets of drinking vessels – some egg-shaped tumblers, four Boddingtons pint glasses, and six crystal champagne flutes, for best – which, when filled with differing levels of water and struck, faithfully recreated the peking, saron and demung metallophones. Once these tinkling treasures had been added to the mix, each playback lubricated his eyelashes with tears. He bounced the champagne flutes and Boddingtons glasses along with the pans, lids and Tupperware over to TRACK III, then added egg-shaped tumblers to the free TRACK I. Loaded with information, the magnetic tape hummed and groaned with wow and flutter, but he was pleased with his efforts. In fact, he was convinced he was shaking Chopin’s pedestal. He lost himself in reverie, imagining his composition soundtracking funerals of the future, perhaps even the homecoming of broken soldiers, the television coverage of the death of an icon, the…
His heart lurched in his chest as he was overcome again by searing cranium pain. This time the pain was accompanied by a nausea that flooded his cheeks with saliva – he had to grasp the edge of his reclining chair to stop himself from keeling over. The first vaguely rational thought that came to him was to not throw up over his musical equipment, so he crawled out of his studio and laid prostate across the unhoovered carpet, breathing heavily. He held this position for almost an hour, at which point the letterbox roused him, flapping and clattering downstairs. This was the fourth morning since his blood test. He made his way to the staircase and descended it gingerly, with both hands on the banister, only to find a few lurid circulars awaiting him on the meat-coloured doormat. He perched on the bottom step with his chin in his hands, trying to compose himself but his heart continued to race, unable to keep time with the gently progressing suburban scenes behind the frosted glass. He could not fathom what was wrong with him.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Sixty percent of British Columbians oppose Enbridge pipeline
A Forum Research poll released today shows that 60 per cent of British Columbians are opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. The poll, the third by Forum Research conducted in 2012, shows that opposition to the pipeline has increased eight per cent since April’s poll and 14 per cent since January. Thirty one per cent of those polled were in favour and nine per cent were unsure. The poll was conducted on December 10 and surveyed 1051 British Columbians 18 years of age and older
The council of the Gitga’at First Nation commissioned the poll in response to Enbridge’s 'disappearing islands' ads depicting a map of the tanker route through the Douglas Channel that was missing many of the waterway’s islands.
Gitga’at councillor Marven Robinson said the results indicate to him that people throughout the province are starting to better understand the risks involved in the project, adding that Enbridge should have known better than to try to mislead the public.
“Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline cut its own throat,” he said. “It didn’t do (Enbridge) any good for sure, because anybody that knows the coast knows it’s not a clear path to the outer coast from Kitimat. They did that to themselves.”
The poll shows 40 per cent of British Columbians were previously aware of the Douglas Channel ad campaign, and of that group, 64 per cent thought the map was misleading. Fifty-eight per cent said the ad lowered their opinion of the project, while nine per cent said it improved their opinion and 32 per cent said it had no effect.
The Douglas Channel is part of the Gitga’at First Nation’s territorial waters. The ocean supplies roughly 40 per cent of the traditional diet, including salmon, crab, clams, seaweed and oysters.
Robinson said the more information that comes to light about the project, the more frightening it becomes, adding that one of his greatest concerns about having tankers in the channel has yet to be adequately addressed. After hearing a rumour last year that boats would have to keep a set speed to maintain steerage of the tankers, he questioned Enbridge officials about it at a meeting in Prince Rupert last year. He said he was told that not only was the rumour true, but that boats would be required to pick up speed around turns, instead of slowing down.
“Just right in front of us, I could look at a chart and say ok, there are three turns right in front of own community that are more than 90 degrees,” he said. “If you have to maintain a certain speed how are you going to do that if you have turns of more than 90 degrees?” Like with any vehicle, he said, the first thing to do in risky situations such as sharp turns or low visibility is to slow down.
“With the Gitga’at First Nation, there’s no benefit with the project running through our territory. It’s all risk to us.”
Gitga’at medias spokesperson Andrew Frank, meanwhile, said he thinks the BC government will have no choice but to pay attention to these numbers.
“BC Liberals are notorious for following polls closely, as are all political parties, and public opinion is pretty clear here.”
The poll also asked participants whom they voted for in the last provincial election, and answers were spread across the board, with 32 per cent voting Liberal, 29 per cent voting NDP and 12 per cent voting Conservative.
Frank credits First Nations groups and environmental organizations with raising public consciousness about the dangers of the pipeline, particularly with regard to the Douglas Channel ads.
“I think people see those sunny, water colour ads and go, something doesn’t quite add up, and that has certainly rubbed people the wrong way.”
He said incidents like this undoubtedly take a toll on public confidence, and that this poll shows public opinion is fairly settled on the opposition side, in spite of Enbridge’s $5M ad campaign.
“[Enbridge] has been trying to hone their message, but it looks like none of them have been sticking yet, at least as far as British Columbians are concerned.”
He also said that the company's oil spill record and the US Transportation Safety report" following their 2010 oil spill in Michigan may have had an impact on public opinion.
After months of closed sessions and exclusive negotiations with a single developer, the city is set to reveal a plan for the razed 0.78-acre property. The city and the Jeffrey A. Morris Group entered into a 120-day Exclusive Right to Negotiate Agreement Feb. 23, extended it by 60 days June 22 and by another 30 days Aug. 24. As reported at the time by the Town Crier, several residents, business owners and community groups disapprove of the seemingly secretive manner in which negotiations have been conducted. The city's decision to engage with a single developer behind closed doors for the property does not align with its intention to solicit citizen input, residents said.
Cranston files a lawsuit against the city of Los Altos seeking the release of city staff communication records regarding discussions over the sale of city-owned land at First and Main streets to Jeffrey A. Morris. The lawsuit alleges that the city violated the California Public Records Act when it denied Cranston's public records request to view a February 2010 memorandum from former Los Altos Economic Development Coordinator Anne Stedler to former City Manager Doug Schmitz and current Assistant City Manager James Walgren.
The council of the Gitga’at First Nation commissioned the poll in response to Enbridge’s 'disappearing islands' ads depicting a map of the tanker route through the Douglas Channel that was missing many of the waterway’s islands.
Gitga’at councillor Marven Robinson said the results indicate to him that people throughout the province are starting to better understand the risks involved in the project, adding that Enbridge should have known better than to try to mislead the public.
“Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline cut its own throat,” he said. “It didn’t do (Enbridge) any good for sure, because anybody that knows the coast knows it’s not a clear path to the outer coast from Kitimat. They did that to themselves.”
The poll shows 40 per cent of British Columbians were previously aware of the Douglas Channel ad campaign, and of that group, 64 per cent thought the map was misleading. Fifty-eight per cent said the ad lowered their opinion of the project, while nine per cent said it improved their opinion and 32 per cent said it had no effect.
The Douglas Channel is part of the Gitga’at First Nation’s territorial waters. The ocean supplies roughly 40 per cent of the traditional diet, including salmon, crab, clams, seaweed and oysters.
Robinson said the more information that comes to light about the project, the more frightening it becomes, adding that one of his greatest concerns about having tankers in the channel has yet to be adequately addressed. After hearing a rumour last year that boats would have to keep a set speed to maintain steerage of the tankers, he questioned Enbridge officials about it at a meeting in Prince Rupert last year. He said he was told that not only was the rumour true, but that boats would be required to pick up speed around turns, instead of slowing down.
“Just right in front of us, I could look at a chart and say ok, there are three turns right in front of own community that are more than 90 degrees,” he said. “If you have to maintain a certain speed how are you going to do that if you have turns of more than 90 degrees?” Like with any vehicle, he said, the first thing to do in risky situations such as sharp turns or low visibility is to slow down.
“With the Gitga’at First Nation, there’s no benefit with the project running through our territory. It’s all risk to us.”
Gitga’at medias spokesperson Andrew Frank, meanwhile, said he thinks the BC government will have no choice but to pay attention to these numbers.
“BC Liberals are notorious for following polls closely, as are all political parties, and public opinion is pretty clear here.”
The poll also asked participants whom they voted for in the last provincial election, and answers were spread across the board, with 32 per cent voting Liberal, 29 per cent voting NDP and 12 per cent voting Conservative.
Frank credits First Nations groups and environmental organizations with raising public consciousness about the dangers of the pipeline, particularly with regard to the Douglas Channel ads.
“I think people see those sunny, water colour ads and go, something doesn’t quite add up, and that has certainly rubbed people the wrong way.”
He said incidents like this undoubtedly take a toll on public confidence, and that this poll shows public opinion is fairly settled on the opposition side, in spite of Enbridge’s $5M ad campaign.
“[Enbridge] has been trying to hone their message, but it looks like none of them have been sticking yet, at least as far as British Columbians are concerned.”
He also said that the company's oil spill record and the US Transportation Safety report" following their 2010 oil spill in Michigan may have had an impact on public opinion.
After months of closed sessions and exclusive negotiations with a single developer, the city is set to reveal a plan for the razed 0.78-acre property. The city and the Jeffrey A. Morris Group entered into a 120-day Exclusive Right to Negotiate Agreement Feb. 23, extended it by 60 days June 22 and by another 30 days Aug. 24. As reported at the time by the Town Crier, several residents, business owners and community groups disapprove of the seemingly secretive manner in which negotiations have been conducted. The city's decision to engage with a single developer behind closed doors for the property does not align with its intention to solicit citizen input, residents said.
Cranston files a lawsuit against the city of Los Altos seeking the release of city staff communication records regarding discussions over the sale of city-owned land at First and Main streets to Jeffrey A. Morris. The lawsuit alleges that the city violated the California Public Records Act when it denied Cranston's public records request to view a February 2010 memorandum from former Los Altos Economic Development Coordinator Anne Stedler to former City Manager Doug Schmitz and current Assistant City Manager James Walgren.
Union Violence in the Age of Obama
Not so many moons ago, President Obama urged us all to "make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds." He Who Heals advocated "a more civil and honest public discourse" in the wake of the January 2011 Tucson massacre. As usual, though, the White House has granted Big Labor bullies a permanent waiver from the lofty edicts it issues to everyone else.
This week, menacing union goons unleashed threats, profanity and punches in Michigan, which is now poised to become a "right-to-work" state. Obama met the initial outbreak of violence with the same response he's given to every other union outbreak of violence under his reign: dead silence.
On the floor of the Michigan legislature on Tuesday, Democratic state Rep. Douglas Geiss thundered: "We're going to pass something that will undo 100 years of labor relations, and there will be blood. There will be repercussions!" Geiss referenced the Battle of the Overpass, a violent 1937 incident between the United Auto Workers and corporate security officers for the Ford Motor Company. Dozens of union activists were beaten.
But Geiss wasn't crying victim. This was clearly a signal to the brass-knuckled Big Labor bosses, whom Obama egged on during his Monday visit to the state. Obama inveighed against right to work with his usual class warfare dog-whistle. The thugs heard it loud and clear.
As the Michigan House voted inside to approve right-to-work legislation allowing workers to choose whether or not to join/fund unions as a condition of employment, protesters outside the state Capitol ambushed a tented information booth sponsored by the pro-right-to-work state chapter of Americans for Prosperity. Angry union mobsters were filmed cursing and screaming just before the attack.
One hurled an unidentified object at police officers. Another screamed at a citizen journalist filming the chaos: "Freedom of speech this, you f'n fascist a**hole!" Several peaceful AFP members and supporters were stomped on and punched while trapped under the tent as the labor operatives chanted: "This is what democracy looks like." Young Michigan conservative activist and YouTube entrepreneur Steven Crowder was beaten by at least two union assailants while trying to protect the tent and those inside.
Of course, this is just more of the same twisted "civil and honest public discourse" of the administration's union protection squad:
May 2010: The Service Employees International Union buses in 700 workers from 20 states to storm Bank of America deputy general counsel Gregory Baer's neighborhood and terrorize his youngest son while at home alone in Chevy Chase, Md. The tactic is straight from an SEIU intimidation manual on using community groups to "damage an employer's public image and ties with community leaders and organizations."
September 2010: AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka praises Nancy Pelosi for taking Obamacare and driving "it down the Republicans' throats and out their backsides."
August 2011: Striking Communications Workers of America declare "open season" on Verizon. Dozens of cases of sabotaged cable lines are reported.
September 2011: ILWU bosses lead a "Days of Rage" protest at Port of Longview, Wash., taking a half-dozen guards hostage, sabotaging railroad cars, dumping grain, smashing windows, cutting brake lines, threatening a local TV station and blocking trains in violation of a judicial restraining order.
February 2011: A Communications Workers of America union thug is caught on tape striking a young female FreedomWorks activist in Washington, D.C.
February 2011: A Providence, R.I., union supporter says to a cameraman: "I'll f**k you in the ass, you faggot."
February 2011: Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano of Massachusetts revs up Big Labor goons by urging them to "get a little bloody."
March 2011: Racist SEIU supporters in Denver, Colo., taunt gay black tea party activist and entrepreneur Leland Robinson, who criticized teachers unions at a Capitol rally, by calling him "son," telling him to "get behind that fence where you belong," and jeering, "Do you have any children? That you claim?"
March 2011: In Madison, Wis., an unhinged crowd of AFSCME, UFCW and SEIU union protesters corner a Wisconsin GOP senator shouting, "F**k you!" and "Shame!"
August 2011: In Boston, local IBEW 827 storms Verizon Senior Vice President Bill Foshay's neighborhood. Union members scream, "We're here to fight" in front of his private residence on a weekend afternoon.
September 2011: Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa screams: "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out..."
December 2011: Union-endorsed port protests in Oakland, Calif., Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and Houston cause massive commerce disruptions, lost wages, property destruction and untold injuries. A year later, ports are shut down on the West Coast during the busy holiday season, and another set of union port strikes spearheaded by the violence-prone ILWU and ILA threaten the East and Gulf coasts at the end of the month.
We should "do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations," Obama lectured just over a year ago from his politeness pulpit. In the age of Obama, it's Opposite Day 365 days a year.
This week, menacing union goons unleashed threats, profanity and punches in Michigan, which is now poised to become a "right-to-work" state. Obama met the initial outbreak of violence with the same response he's given to every other union outbreak of violence under his reign: dead silence.
On the floor of the Michigan legislature on Tuesday, Democratic state Rep. Douglas Geiss thundered: "We're going to pass something that will undo 100 years of labor relations, and there will be blood. There will be repercussions!" Geiss referenced the Battle of the Overpass, a violent 1937 incident between the United Auto Workers and corporate security officers for the Ford Motor Company. Dozens of union activists were beaten.
But Geiss wasn't crying victim. This was clearly a signal to the brass-knuckled Big Labor bosses, whom Obama egged on during his Monday visit to the state. Obama inveighed against right to work with his usual class warfare dog-whistle. The thugs heard it loud and clear.
As the Michigan House voted inside to approve right-to-work legislation allowing workers to choose whether or not to join/fund unions as a condition of employment, protesters outside the state Capitol ambushed a tented information booth sponsored by the pro-right-to-work state chapter of Americans for Prosperity. Angry union mobsters were filmed cursing and screaming just before the attack.
One hurled an unidentified object at police officers. Another screamed at a citizen journalist filming the chaos: "Freedom of speech this, you f'n fascist a**hole!" Several peaceful AFP members and supporters were stomped on and punched while trapped under the tent as the labor operatives chanted: "This is what democracy looks like." Young Michigan conservative activist and YouTube entrepreneur Steven Crowder was beaten by at least two union assailants while trying to protect the tent and those inside.
Of course, this is just more of the same twisted "civil and honest public discourse" of the administration's union protection squad:
May 2010: The Service Employees International Union buses in 700 workers from 20 states to storm Bank of America deputy general counsel Gregory Baer's neighborhood and terrorize his youngest son while at home alone in Chevy Chase, Md. The tactic is straight from an SEIU intimidation manual on using community groups to "damage an employer's public image and ties with community leaders and organizations."
September 2010: AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka praises Nancy Pelosi for taking Obamacare and driving "it down the Republicans' throats and out their backsides."
August 2011: Striking Communications Workers of America declare "open season" on Verizon. Dozens of cases of sabotaged cable lines are reported.
September 2011: ILWU bosses lead a "Days of Rage" protest at Port of Longview, Wash., taking a half-dozen guards hostage, sabotaging railroad cars, dumping grain, smashing windows, cutting brake lines, threatening a local TV station and blocking trains in violation of a judicial restraining order.
February 2011: A Communications Workers of America union thug is caught on tape striking a young female FreedomWorks activist in Washington, D.C.
February 2011: A Providence, R.I., union supporter says to a cameraman: "I'll f**k you in the ass, you faggot."
February 2011: Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano of Massachusetts revs up Big Labor goons by urging them to "get a little bloody."
March 2011: Racist SEIU supporters in Denver, Colo., taunt gay black tea party activist and entrepreneur Leland Robinson, who criticized teachers unions at a Capitol rally, by calling him "son," telling him to "get behind that fence where you belong," and jeering, "Do you have any children? That you claim?"
March 2011: In Madison, Wis., an unhinged crowd of AFSCME, UFCW and SEIU union protesters corner a Wisconsin GOP senator shouting, "F**k you!" and "Shame!"
August 2011: In Boston, local IBEW 827 storms Verizon Senior Vice President Bill Foshay's neighborhood. Union members scream, "We're here to fight" in front of his private residence on a weekend afternoon.
September 2011: Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa screams: "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out..."
December 2011: Union-endorsed port protests in Oakland, Calif., Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and Houston cause massive commerce disruptions, lost wages, property destruction and untold injuries. A year later, ports are shut down on the West Coast during the busy holiday season, and another set of union port strikes spearheaded by the violence-prone ILWU and ILA threaten the East and Gulf coasts at the end of the month.
We should "do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations," Obama lectured just over a year ago from his politeness pulpit. In the age of Obama, it's Opposite Day 365 days a year.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Poet laureate paid to spread the good word
NOT that it's of earthshaking importance in these parlous days, but . . . wait. All days are parlous. All days - by which is meant all eras - are rough and tumble, and they are also fancy free. We think a little economic uncertainty is nightmarish, compared to what? World War? Cold War? The world immediately before this one, that 99.99percent of human history without lights, plentiful food, warmth, that cellphone savant with all human knowledge sitting in your pocket?
So what I was going to say was that the naming by a city of its poet laureate is not a matter of life and death - except you will recall what William Carlos Williams said: "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." Williams was a revered physician in Paterson, N.J., the kind who made housecalls in the middle of the night, that most practical man, a man of life and death. And yet what is he remembered for? Writing great poems. If you haven't read them, turn from this now and do so. They might save your life.
As I was saying: When I heard last week that Eloise Klein Healy was named the first poet laureate of the city of Los Angeles, I breathed two sighs of relief.
The first was that a poet was named poet laureate. When city muckamucks announced that they would search for one, all kinds of non-poets came out of the Encino woods and announced that they should be the laureate of the City of Angels, even if they weren't,well, exactly poets themselves. But they were the bard of something-or-another, or they write really swell prose, or they spin a fine ghost story, or they make excellent movies or video games.
That they weren't actually poets was small beer so far as they were concerned.
This is the kind of thing that happens to poets all the time, and I am mystified as to why. No one who is, I don't know, a newspaper columnist would, when the time comes to name that year's Nobel Prize in physics, claim that it is he instead of those fellows writing the equations who should be feted by the king at the banquet in Stockholm. So why should poetry - which I assure you is precisely as complex an art as physics - be considered a craft in which every Jasper with a mildly creative streak is a candidate for the post the same as those who have actually written, and published, poems?
Second sigh of relief: Eloise is a wonderful choice. Man alive, is she a real poet. You can look her up - she is an ardent practitioner of the craft, which is a life's work. The non-poet could no more write her poems than I could paint a Picasso. But here's a fun one, a stanza from "Entries: LA Log": I never owned a map / to the stars' homes / but I sent to JPL / for 8x10 glossies of Mars / to stick up around my mirror.
Of course there's a Pasadena connection. There always is. While Healy lives in Sherman Oaks, her publisher is Kate Gale and Mark Cull's Red Hen Press, headquartered right here in town, the biggest small press on the West Coast. Red Hen has published a number of her books; she even runs a special imprint of poetry books by others through the press; and it will publish her next, which is not only a volume, but comes with what poetry started out as, sound. "A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings" will be released in March.
So congratulations to Eloise, and to Los Angeles, for picking a real poet as its laureate. Every town should have one - Altadena does, for instance, and she is dynamite: Linda Dove, who we at LitFest Pasadena got to hear reading at that finest versifying location, the Altadena Ale House. What's more, every town should pay its laureate, as Los Angeles will: $10,000 a year. There will not be any money from the municipal treasury better spent next year than the bucks engaged in spreading the good word.
The person responsible for Harry Delmolino’s ghost bike is reportedly a close friend who protects his identity. Those who work nearby often see the man bringing fresh flowers.
Susan Delmolino, Harry’s mother, has seen the ghost bike but finds it too painful to return there.
“It gives me some comfort,” she said. “It’s so respectful and, in some ways, so tender.”
John Delmolino, Harry’s father, says he is pleasantly surprised the city has allowed the memorial to remain in place so long.
Susan Delmolino, 60, and John Delmolino, 64, live in Hadley, close to the Sunderland town line. The location of their home made it a long ride for Harry to go anywhere on his bike. Still, it was his transportation of choice, and he bicycled back and forth to his information technology job at Smith College and his day job at an Amherst bike shop called Laughing Dog and often rode the bike paths of Northampton and Easthampton just for the fun of it.
“He’d do 40 miles a day as a lark,” his mother recalled recently.
Harry and his sister, Grace, were home-schooled from an early age and were in and out of college by the time their peers were graduating from high school, but their parents are reluctant to talk about this. The Delmolinos haven't viewed their kids as prodigies but as their children, as people, breathtakingly normal, though endlessly fascinating and burdened by the usual growing pains which young people have.
Susan Delmolino worked as a child-abuse investigator for the state, but left that job years ago to be home with her children. Because Harry and Grace were so self-directed, her biggest task as their mother, she said, was to get out of their way. It was time she would otherwise not have spent with them, and she treasures it.
Harry Delmolino started taking classes at Greenfield Community College when he was just 13. Grace, now 20, is working on a doctorate in medieval Italian literature at Columbia University. That might sound impressive, but being precocious is not the highest priority in the Delmolino household.
“It’s not how smart you are,” said Susan Delmolino. “It’s what you do.”
John Delmolino, a retired state trooper who is in his second career as an interior house painter, has a more concise way of putting it.
“The jails are full of smart people,” he said.
Fortunately, the Delmolinos didn’t have to worry about their kids on that count.
Harry Delmolino joined the Boy Scouts and worked his way up to Eagle Scout. He went on an 11-day hiking trip to New Mexico with Boy Scout Troop 504 of Amherst. He climbed Mount Monadnock in the snow. He had a girlfriend. He fell in love with bicycling.
John Delmolino says he was taken aback by his son’s need to take things apart and amazed by his ability to put them back together.
Harry’s bike, for instance, his father explained, was in a hundred pieces soon after he bought it. Then, like magic, it was a bike again. He disassembled many household appliances. At 12 he asked for a welder for Christmas. He had barely learned to walk when he threw a hissy-fit over some kind of digging contraption he wanted. His parents gave in. Harry spent hours with it in the dirt pile.
As he got older, Harry Delmolino was drawn more and more to computer science. He won a temporary job at Smith by essentially convincing the college he could fix anything, his parents said. He was planning to take classes at the University of Massachusetts to get a degree in computer science.
The young man bought a $1,000 bike, took it apart, put it together and then got a job at Laughing Dog where he worked on repairing other people’s bikes.
Parker Ramspott, who owns the Amherst bike shop, said it was not uncommon for Harry Delmolino to work on $6,000 bicycles. “He loved bikes,” Ramspott said. “It got him real fit.”
On the morning of his accident, Harry and his mother made a couple of trips to the house next door with Harry’s belongings. The family had bought the house as a place for him to spend the summer before he went to UMass.
For the Delmolinos, it was the best of both worlds. Harry would be close by, but he would have the privacy a young man craves.
“You’re spreading your wings,” said Susan Delmolino. “You want to have the freedom.”
Then, Harry rode off to work at Laughing Dog and later biked to Northampton.
The office of Northwestern district attorney David Sullivan announced this week that its investigation found no basis upon to bring criminal charges against the driver of the car that struck Harry Delmolino, Cesar Avelar. The investigation determined the incident was an accident. Delmolino was not wearing a helmet.
The city of Northampton will use some of the state funds it receives for road and bridge repair to study the intersection of Main and Pleasant streets with an eye towards installing a dedicated left-turn signal for motorists entering from the east along Main from Hadley and Amherst, as Avelar was. It is the only one of the four entry points to the major downtown intersection where Route 9 meets Route 5 that lacks such a signal.
So what I was going to say was that the naming by a city of its poet laureate is not a matter of life and death - except you will recall what William Carlos Williams said: "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." Williams was a revered physician in Paterson, N.J., the kind who made housecalls in the middle of the night, that most practical man, a man of life and death. And yet what is he remembered for? Writing great poems. If you haven't read them, turn from this now and do so. They might save your life.
As I was saying: When I heard last week that Eloise Klein Healy was named the first poet laureate of the city of Los Angeles, I breathed two sighs of relief.
The first was that a poet was named poet laureate. When city muckamucks announced that they would search for one, all kinds of non-poets came out of the Encino woods and announced that they should be the laureate of the City of Angels, even if they weren't,well, exactly poets themselves. But they were the bard of something-or-another, or they write really swell prose, or they spin a fine ghost story, or they make excellent movies or video games.
That they weren't actually poets was small beer so far as they were concerned.
This is the kind of thing that happens to poets all the time, and I am mystified as to why. No one who is, I don't know, a newspaper columnist would, when the time comes to name that year's Nobel Prize in physics, claim that it is he instead of those fellows writing the equations who should be feted by the king at the banquet in Stockholm. So why should poetry - which I assure you is precisely as complex an art as physics - be considered a craft in which every Jasper with a mildly creative streak is a candidate for the post the same as those who have actually written, and published, poems?
Second sigh of relief: Eloise is a wonderful choice. Man alive, is she a real poet. You can look her up - she is an ardent practitioner of the craft, which is a life's work. The non-poet could no more write her poems than I could paint a Picasso. But here's a fun one, a stanza from "Entries: LA Log": I never owned a map / to the stars' homes / but I sent to JPL / for 8x10 glossies of Mars / to stick up around my mirror.
Of course there's a Pasadena connection. There always is. While Healy lives in Sherman Oaks, her publisher is Kate Gale and Mark Cull's Red Hen Press, headquartered right here in town, the biggest small press on the West Coast. Red Hen has published a number of her books; she even runs a special imprint of poetry books by others through the press; and it will publish her next, which is not only a volume, but comes with what poetry started out as, sound. "A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings" will be released in March.
So congratulations to Eloise, and to Los Angeles, for picking a real poet as its laureate. Every town should have one - Altadena does, for instance, and she is dynamite: Linda Dove, who we at LitFest Pasadena got to hear reading at that finest versifying location, the Altadena Ale House. What's more, every town should pay its laureate, as Los Angeles will: $10,000 a year. There will not be any money from the municipal treasury better spent next year than the bucks engaged in spreading the good word.
The person responsible for Harry Delmolino’s ghost bike is reportedly a close friend who protects his identity. Those who work nearby often see the man bringing fresh flowers.
Susan Delmolino, Harry’s mother, has seen the ghost bike but finds it too painful to return there.
“It gives me some comfort,” she said. “It’s so respectful and, in some ways, so tender.”
John Delmolino, Harry’s father, says he is pleasantly surprised the city has allowed the memorial to remain in place so long.
Susan Delmolino, 60, and John Delmolino, 64, live in Hadley, close to the Sunderland town line. The location of their home made it a long ride for Harry to go anywhere on his bike. Still, it was his transportation of choice, and he bicycled back and forth to his information technology job at Smith College and his day job at an Amherst bike shop called Laughing Dog and often rode the bike paths of Northampton and Easthampton just for the fun of it.
“He’d do 40 miles a day as a lark,” his mother recalled recently.
Harry and his sister, Grace, were home-schooled from an early age and were in and out of college by the time their peers were graduating from high school, but their parents are reluctant to talk about this. The Delmolinos haven't viewed their kids as prodigies but as their children, as people, breathtakingly normal, though endlessly fascinating and burdened by the usual growing pains which young people have.
Susan Delmolino worked as a child-abuse investigator for the state, but left that job years ago to be home with her children. Because Harry and Grace were so self-directed, her biggest task as their mother, she said, was to get out of their way. It was time she would otherwise not have spent with them, and she treasures it.
Harry Delmolino started taking classes at Greenfield Community College when he was just 13. Grace, now 20, is working on a doctorate in medieval Italian literature at Columbia University. That might sound impressive, but being precocious is not the highest priority in the Delmolino household.
“It’s not how smart you are,” said Susan Delmolino. “It’s what you do.”
John Delmolino, a retired state trooper who is in his second career as an interior house painter, has a more concise way of putting it.
“The jails are full of smart people,” he said.
Fortunately, the Delmolinos didn’t have to worry about their kids on that count.
Harry Delmolino joined the Boy Scouts and worked his way up to Eagle Scout. He went on an 11-day hiking trip to New Mexico with Boy Scout Troop 504 of Amherst. He climbed Mount Monadnock in the snow. He had a girlfriend. He fell in love with bicycling.
John Delmolino says he was taken aback by his son’s need to take things apart and amazed by his ability to put them back together.
Harry’s bike, for instance, his father explained, was in a hundred pieces soon after he bought it. Then, like magic, it was a bike again. He disassembled many household appliances. At 12 he asked for a welder for Christmas. He had barely learned to walk when he threw a hissy-fit over some kind of digging contraption he wanted. His parents gave in. Harry spent hours with it in the dirt pile.
As he got older, Harry Delmolino was drawn more and more to computer science. He won a temporary job at Smith by essentially convincing the college he could fix anything, his parents said. He was planning to take classes at the University of Massachusetts to get a degree in computer science.
The young man bought a $1,000 bike, took it apart, put it together and then got a job at Laughing Dog where he worked on repairing other people’s bikes.
Parker Ramspott, who owns the Amherst bike shop, said it was not uncommon for Harry Delmolino to work on $6,000 bicycles. “He loved bikes,” Ramspott said. “It got him real fit.”
On the morning of his accident, Harry and his mother made a couple of trips to the house next door with Harry’s belongings. The family had bought the house as a place for him to spend the summer before he went to UMass.
For the Delmolinos, it was the best of both worlds. Harry would be close by, but he would have the privacy a young man craves.
“You’re spreading your wings,” said Susan Delmolino. “You want to have the freedom.”
Then, Harry rode off to work at Laughing Dog and later biked to Northampton.
The office of Northwestern district attorney David Sullivan announced this week that its investigation found no basis upon to bring criminal charges against the driver of the car that struck Harry Delmolino, Cesar Avelar. The investigation determined the incident was an accident. Delmolino was not wearing a helmet.
The city of Northampton will use some of the state funds it receives for road and bridge repair to study the intersection of Main and Pleasant streets with an eye towards installing a dedicated left-turn signal for motorists entering from the east along Main from Hadley and Amherst, as Avelar was. It is the only one of the four entry points to the major downtown intersection where Route 9 meets Route 5 that lacks such a signal.
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