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July 7th Meeting – at Duke’s Bar and Grill

The AKCA will be holding its July meeting on Tuesday the 7th in conjunction with the Copper State Club at Dukes Bar […]

Workshop Demos

2015 AKCA Workshop Demo Schedule June 28th (Sunday) – Knife Sharpening with Japanese Waterstones by Eytan Zias 2015 AKCA Demo Schedule – […]

Welcome to the new and improved AKCA web headquarters. Please excuse the dust as we revamp our website. Feel free to look around and don’t hesitate to ask any questions you may have. Thank you for visiting!

To apply for membership fill out our registration form here!

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Johnny Key

Commissioner of Education

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State Board of Education

The Arkansas State Board of Education is a nine-member board. In keeping with the requirements of Act 885 of 1999, the Board is composed of two members from each of the state's four congressional districts, and the remaining member is selected at-large. The Governor appoints members for seven-year terms.

Mission: The Arkansas Department of Education strives to ensure that all children in the state have access to a quality education by providing educators, administrators and staff with leadership, resources and training.

Composed of business and community leaders, the State Board represents the diverse population of Arkansas. The Board, which meets on the second Thursday and Friday of each month, is the policy making body for public elementary and secondary education in Arkansas.

The commissioner acts as the ex-officio secretary during State Board meetings. He participates, offering the Department's perspective on agenda items and provides a Commissioner's Report each month. He does not vote.   The Arkansas Teacher of the Year participates as a non-voting member.

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text:
Lufa Life helps spread word on abuse prevention

By Emily Van Zandt Originally Published January 20, 2013 at 12:00 a.m.
Updated January 18, 2013 at 12:03 p.m.
0 Comments A A Font Size

Victoria Staton, daughter of Lufa Life founder Cathy Staton, creates a painting with slices of loofah sponge. Cathy sells pre-made sponge-painting kits to raise money for the organization.

— When Cathy Staton looks at a loofah sponge, she sees more than just something to smooth rough feet.

Through her nonprofit, Lufa Life, Staton has turned the fibrous plant product into a symbol for child-abuse prevention. Along with a group of more than 20 volunteer gardeners, Staton grows luffa plants to raise money for charities that help prevent child abuse, and aid and shelter its victims. She also takes the loofah sponges into schools, encouraging students to create sponge paintings while she talks to them about abuse prevention and the “circle of safety” that the round loofah sponge represents.

“We talk to them about friends they can talk to; phone numbers, including hotlines, to call; and a plan of what they were to do if they were in a bad situation,” Staton said.

So far, Staton has given the presentation at Southside Elementary School in Cabot and hopes to visit more classrooms this year.

Staton started the group two years ago with a goal to raise funds by having people make donations in exchange for loofah-sponge products and by selling the loofah sponges at craft fairs and farmers markets. So far, the club has donated more than $2,500 to groups that include the United Methodist Children’s Home and the Open Arms Shelter in Lonoke.

With a lifelong love for gardening and plants, Staton, a Master Gardener, first started growing luffa plants 10 years ago.

“My father-in-law is a Master Gardener as well and knew someone who had the seeds,” Staton said. “I thought it was fascinating and started growing them.”

The luffa plant looks and grows much like an oversized cucumber. Grown on a vine, the fruit of the plant can be eaten if it’s harvested young. When left on the vine to mature, die and dry, the inside of the plant becomes the hardened fibrous material used as loofah sponges.

“You can use it in the kitchen, in the bath,” Staton said. “People say it’s great for getting bugs off cars and tires. It’s a sponge that really lasts.”

Staton said it is best to plant luffa right after the last frost, typically around Tax Day in Arkansas. The plant has a long growing season, taking 140 days from the day the seeds are planted to the day it can be harvested.

“If you plant in April or May, you don’t pick until the first frosts come in October or November,” Staton said.

Each plant can have up to around 10 fruits on it and should be planted 2 or 3 feet apart in direct sunlight.

“They’re good at attracting bees, so they’re great for the garden pollination,” Staten said.

In addition to sponge products, Staton makes sponge-painting kits for kids and bracelets decorated with luffa plant seeds to sell or donate for charity. Drilling holes in tiny seeds to make bracelets was a process of trial and error for Staton, but now she easily paints the seeds to decorate wire-crochet bracelets, necklaces and earrings. Soon, she hopes to come up with a charm to sell.

Since the growing season won’t start for several more months, Staton is working to recruit more gardeners to help the organization this summer. Staten said the plants are fairly low-maintenance, rarely attracting any pests, unless the plant is in the shade.

“A lot of people like to grow luffa plants for the novelty,” Staton said. “But for others, it’s a great way to help and benefit children.”

Staton said many people are surprised to know that loofah sponges start out as a plant on a vine.

Station is married to Shane Staton, a youth pastor at First Methodist in Cabot, and the couple have a 10-year-old daughter, Victoria. Staton is currently in her fourth year of school at the University of Central Arkansas, where she’s working on a doctorate in counseling psychology. Staton said it was her schooling in psychology that made her interested in trying to give back to victims of child abuse and find a way to prevent it.

“One in five children end up being abused in some way,” Staton said. “If kids can be taught about fire

prevention and how to

survive natural disasters … which so rarely occur … children need to be given information about abuse prevention, too.”

For more information, or to get involved with the group, go to

Staff writer Emily Van Zandt can be reached at (501) 399-3688 or

Associate Features Editor Emily Van Zandt can be reached at 501-399-3677 or

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text:
Snapping turtle makes for a delicious dinner

Keith Sutton/Contributing Writer Published August 3, 2014 at 12:00 a.m.
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Keith Sutton/Contributing Photographer

Snapping-turtle soup has been a Southern favorite for generations.

The sun was setting as I eased the johnboat into a cove for a final cast. As the popping bug dropped onto the mirrorlike surface of the pond, the mosquitoes had already begun their ceaseless buzzing, and a chuck-will’s-widow announced the evening’s start.

A scrappy bluegill nailed the lure, and I hoisted him into the boat. He would make a welcome addition to the stringer full of bream. My smile was replaced with a frown, however, as I pulled the stringer up to add my latest catch. Any dreams of a fish dinner were shattered as I lifted the chain and a 30-pound snapping turtle surfaced, his sharp, ugly beak clamped with bulldog fierceness to a hefty bluegill I had landed earlier. One dangling fish head offered testimony to the feast the huge turtle had enjoyed.

Well, if I couldn’t have fish for dinner, I’d have turtle. I heaved the thief over the stern and into the boat, smiling once again as I thought about the delicious meal the reptile would make.

The common snapping turtle is one of the largest reptiles found in Arkansas. Full-grown individuals average 8 to 12 inches long (the length of the shell) and weigh from 10 to 35 pounds. Exceedingly large snappers may measure up to 18 inches long, and if well-fed, may tip the scales up to 85 pounds. The common snapper’s relative, the alligator snapping turtle, grows much larger, but that species is protected in The Natural State and may not be possessed or killed.

Snappers are sometimes called “loggerheads” because the head is enlarged and equipped with a horny, hooked beak. When cornered, they show a vicious temper, hissing and striking with true reptilian speed. They often position themselves with their hind legs elevated and mouth wide open, then lunge forward in attack. If one’s traplike jaws latch onto a living target, it is said to hang on until it thunders. Although this is pure mythology, the human who has a finger or toe in its shearing beak might be inclined to believe it. Snappers are best handled by grasping the hind legs, holding the head down and well away from your legs.

The common snapping turtle is found in almost every freshwater habitat, including ponds, lakes, creeks and rivers. Water with a bottom of mud and aquatic vegetation is preferred. the snapping turtle’s food consists mostly of fish and water plants. Snappers play an important role in maintaining healthy fish populations by reducing numbers of sluggish or diseased individuals. Carrion may compromise as much as 20 percent of the diet. Also eaten are crayfish, clams, snails, worms, leeches, frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, small turtles, birds and small mammals. Snappers are often disliked because in some areas they consume many ducklings.

The flesh of common snapping turtles is excellent and is eaten throughout their range. The meat is both light and dark in color. Southerners will tell you that it has the combined flavors of pork, beef, fish and chicken.

When you’ve caught a snapper, you are faced with the dilemma of dressing it. It’s not as hard as it might seem, but it takes some practice. Here’s how I do it.

First, shoot the turtle in the head. Then carefully

sever the head from the neck; some reflexes may still be present. Hang the neck down in an area protected from insects and allow it to bleed out completely. Next, cut through the junction between upper and lower shell. Crowding the overshell very closely, cut it free, detaching the ribs from the overshell with a heavy knife or hatchet. The legs are then skinned and the meat peeled out of the shell. The meat should be soaked in cold water with baking soda added to firm it and draw out the blood. The yellow fat should be removed, as it adds an undesirable flavor to the meat. Now the turtle is ready for the pot.

Many people prefer turtle merely rolled in flour and browned in hot grease. But since you’ve gone to all that trouble catching and dressing your turtle, why not try something a bit more extravagant and, in my opinion, a lot tastier? Here’s my grandma’s recipe:

Snapper and Vegetable Soup

Put one dressed turtle in a pot with selected herbs and seasonings and cover with water. Cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until the meat is tender. Debone.

Gather the following ingredients:

2 cups chopped leeks

4 cups cubed potatoes

2 cups chopped onions

8 shallots, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 carrots, coarsely chopped

24 green beans, cut in 1-inch lengths

Salt to taste

1 ham bone

1 (10-ounce) package frozen cut okra

3 quarts canned tomatoes

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon paprika

2 sprigs marjoram, chopped

1/2 teaspoon dried savory

1 teaspoon dried sweet basil

5 to 6 quarts turtle broth from cooking

Turtle meat from 1 turtle

Combine all ingredients in a kettle and simmer 1 to 2 hours. This recipe will produce 8 to 12 quarts of the most delicious soup you’ve ever dipped your spoon in.

The snapper has both good and bad points. On the negative side, it destroys large numbers of ducklings in many areas. And many fishermen probably get high blood pressure, like I did, when the snapper robs them of their hard-won fish. On the positive side, snappers are important to the food chain as scavengers, and they probably aid in keeping fish populations at their best by feeding on many individuals that are sluggish or diseased. They’re also darn good eating for country boys like me.

Whether we view them as coldblooded thieves or a hot supper, these fascinating creatures have fulfilled an important role for millions of years, even before man’s earliest ancestors. With some respect and forethought on our part, those ol’ moss-backed loggerheads will be around for a million more.

None Keith Sutton can be reached at .

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Sunday, August 30, 2015, 11:07 a.m.

92 now implicated in Air Force cheating

Top Air Force officials described a persistent culture of “undue stress and fear” that led 92 out of 550 members of the military’s nuclear missile corps to be involved in cheating on a monthly proficiency test on which they felt pressured to get perfect scores to get promoted.

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  • Headline: 92 now implicated in Air Force cheating
  • Publication: Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/31/2014
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Heather (Calluna vulgaris)

Heather plant in flower
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Heather fact file

Heather description

GenusCalluna (1)

Heather is a highly branched evergreen shrub. The numerous stems take root at the base, and there are also a large number of short side shoots (2). The leaves are very small and scale-like, their sides are often curled back so much that they are triangular in cross-section (2). The small reddish-purple flowers are borne on narrow spikes (4). Shrubs typically grow to around 60cm in height, but may occasionally reach 1 m (2).

Also known as
Erica vulgaris.
Leaf length: 1-2 mm (2)
Height: up to 60 cm (2)

Heather biology

Heather flowers from July to September (4); the flowers are pollinated by insects and by the wind (2). This plant has been put to various practical uses; it has been used as fodder, fuel, thatch, bedding for livestock and humans, a packing material, and to make ropes, brooms, an orange dye, and beer. White heather is thought to be lucky, especially in Scotland (5).

Heather range

Found throughout much of the British Isles, but is less widespread in the East Midlands (2). Elsewhere, heather is found in most of western Europe, reaching as far north as Scandinavia, but becomes scarce in parts of the Mediterranean. It also occurs in west Asia and North Africa, and has been introduced to North America and Chile (2).

You can view distribution information for this species at the National Biodiversity Network Gateway.

Heather habitat

This species typically dominates heaths, moors, bogs and grasslands, which are poor in nutrients. It also grows in acidic soils in open woodland, and can tolerate a range of moisture levels, from wet peat bogs to exposed and dry areas (3). It reaches altitudes of 750 m (2).

Heather status

Widespread (3).

Heather threats

The amount of habitat suitable for heather has been reduced drastically since 1950, especially in England. This decline was due to a loss of heathland through forestry, scrub growth, agricultural expansion, and mineral workings (3). Furthermore, in many upland areas, prolonged overgrazing has caused a loss of heather, which cannot survive periods of excessive grazing pressure (3). The greatest losses of heathland have been in the south of England; as much as three-quarters of the original heathlands have been lost in Dorset and the Breckland in the 20th century (5).

Heather conservation

Most remaining heathland/ moorland is in the uplands; these heaths are used for sheep grazing and grouse management; many such areas are now in agri-environment schemes to help maintain heather cover (6).

There may be further information about this species available via the National Biodiversity Network Gateway.

Find out more

For more information on British plants and their conservation see Plantlife- the wild plant conservation charity:
Visit the website of the Botanical Society of the British Isles at:

Information authenticated by Professor Rob Marrs of the University of Liverpool:
with the support of the British Ecological Society:

Agri-environment schemes
These schemes allow the government to compensate farmers for using methods that benefit the environment. The two main initiatives in the UK are the Countryside Stewardship Scheme and Environmentally Sensitive Areas. Since October 2000 these have formed part of the England Rural Development Programme (EDRP), administered by DEFRA, the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs. For more on these initiatives see http://www.defra.gov.uk/erdp/erdphome.htm

  1. National Biodiversity Network Species Dictionary (Feb 2003):. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nbn/
  2. Clapham, A.R., Tutin, T.G. & Moore, D.M. (1987) Flora of the British Isles. 3rd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  3. Preston, C.D., Pearman, D.A. & Dines, T.D. (2002) The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
  4. Press, B. & Gibbons, B (1993) Photographic field guide to wild flowers of Britain and Europe. New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd, London.
  5. Mabey, R. (1996) Flora Britannica. Sinclair-Stevenson, London.
  6. Marrs, R. (2004) Pers. comm.

Image credit

Heather plant in flower
Heather plant in flower

© Roy Anderson

Roy Anderson

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text:
Grab your boarding pass and hop on the choo choo t

By Nikki Henderson |

Published 05/16 2014 12:10PM

Updated 05/16 2014 12:20PM

If you want to take a historical train ride then you have to jump aboard the locomotive in east Texas this weekend.

The 3rd annual Jefferson Train Days includes four destinations and just one boarding pass.

You can tour the business rail car "Atalanta" that belonged to Jay Gould, see the Model Train Show at the Jefferson Transportation Center and ride a narrow-gauge train as you experience the Lonely West Traveling Gun Show.

The adventure takes place between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, May 17 and from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Sunday, May 18 at the Jefferson Historical Society and Museum on 223 W. Austin St.

Boarding passes are  $15 and kids under 6 are free.  For more information you can call (903) 665-2775.

Copyright 2015 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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text:
LIVORNO, Italy - The traditional Camp Darby Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony was held Dec. 5, in an atmosphere filled with enthusiasm, joy and participation.

Annually, since Christmas 2001, following the attacks of Sept. 11, the silver fir Christmas tree is donated by the province of Pistoia as a sign of friendship and solidarity.

"This year's holiday is particularly pleasing for me because it occurs after an epoch-making event, which represents hope for the future not only for your country, but also for the entire world," said Nicola Risaliti, Pistoia Province tourist consular. "I am referring to the recent elections of Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America."

Lt. Col. Stephen Cade, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Livorno, welcomed guests to the ceremony by wishing them happy holidays, and thanking the Pistoia community for the "gracious donation" and for their long-term friendship.

"We in the American community of Camp Darby are truly blessed to be in this beautiful country, surrounded by our good friends and allies," said Cade. "This tree represents goodwill and we are committed to being worthy of it."

Col. Raffaele Iubini, Camp Darby Italian base commander added: "This tradition is the cement of friendship."

"This time during the holidays," Iubini added, "is particularly special and it brings together our two communities, highlighting, through the children's presence, a sense of peaceful living together, of shared welfare, and innocence (that) is typical of the youngsters."

Page last updated Fri July 22nd, 2011 at 12:16


text:
Wounded warrior, WCAP Soldier represents Army athletes at 237th birthday ball
For his hard work, Master Sgt. Edward O'Neil, a volleyball player, will represent other Army World Class Athlete Program athletes at the Army's 237th birthday celebration and ball, in the nation's capital.

WASHINGTON (June 15, 2012) -- This Soldier-athlete believes in hard work, thanks to his father. And after having his leg amputated due to an improvised explosive device in Iraq, that hard work helped him become a member of the Army World Class Athlete Program, or WCAP.

For his hard work, Master Sgt. Edward O'Neil, a volleyball player, will represent other Army WCAP athletes at the Army's 237th birthday celebration and ball, June 16, in the nation's capital. The ball comes at the conclusion of the Army's week-long celebration of it's June 14, 1775 birthday. This year, the Army is 237 years old.

Other WCAP Soldiers attending the event include Spc. Justin Olsen, whose team won the Gold at Vancouver for bobsledding, and Spc. Dennis Bowsher, modern pentathlon competitor.

The Army Ball invitation is exciting, O'Neil said, because he knows he's near the end of his career and he's never been before.

"The one thing I asked, after being invited, was I want to be able to take my wife with me. In my 21 years, we've never been to an Army Ball. For everything my wife has been through, I kind of feel like I owe it to her to step out in a formal environment, so we can enjoy a nice evening," O'Neil said.

O'Neil served first in uniform with the Navy, from 1988 to 1992. After that tour of duty, "I got out and did what a lot of people do: you go to school and figure a few things out, what you want to do with your future," O'Neil said. "I decided to come into the Army in 1995 and I've been in the Army for 17 years."

He and his wife, Shalynn, have a six-year-old daughter, a 13-year-old son, and a 16-year-old son. Originally from Northampton, Mass., O'Neil and his family now live in Edmond, Okla.

At the start of his third tour in Iraq, in May 2008, O'Neil was injured by a more deadly form of improvised explosive device, the explosively formed penetrator, or EFP.

"I was wounded May 2008 in Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, on a convoy," O'Neil said. "I was blown up. My driver was killed. We hit an explosively formed penetrator, a type of improvised explosive device."

The explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, he said, is a very powerful weapon that easily penetrates armor. The Soldiers feel safe in a Bradley or Stryker, until suddenly and EFP enters the vehicle and goes out the other side.

"I was injured with shrapnel wounds, and my left leg was pretty messed up," he said.

O'Neil refers to getting injured as the close of one chapter and then moving on to recovery in the second chapter.

After being hit, O'Neil went first to Balad Air Base in Iraq, before heading up to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. After that, it was on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He did his recovery at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

"After my leg was amputated, I got on my prosthetic," O'Neil said. "I really wanted to get back on my feet. There's a lot of reasons for my motivation. Of course, one of them would be my family."

Another reason for his motivation, he said, was that he did not want to simply lie around and cry about his situation. But he had to work through certain things that were very difficult.

"I would say the whole PTSD aspect for me was very difficult and still is," he said.

The whole recovery process, he said, was very shocking.

"I was not ready for it. I thought I was but I wasn't," O'Neil said. "Your stump goes through different stages. It starts off big and then it gets smaller and then you have to learn how to take care of it. But I wanted to run and get back on my feet."

To appear normal and to not draw attention to himself, he said he worked on his gait -- the way he walks -- so it's not noticeable at all that he has a prosthetic device on one leg. He also wears long pants.

"When people see it, there's always a bunch of questions, although I have no issues answering any of them," O'Neil said.

"I've always been into sports, recreationally, as a child," O'Neil said. He was interested too in baseball, as well as the professional sports teams in Massachusetts, including the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics.

He also played volleyball while attending school at Amherst High School. That's his sport now, as part of the WCAP.

"At 42, I'm a lot older than most in WCAP, and that always has to be taken into consideration," he said. "But it's all about your drive and your initiative, and I like sports."

WCAP, headquartered at Fort Carson, Colo., supports nationally and internationally ranked Soldiers as they work to make U.S. Olympic teams in either the Olympics or the Paralympic Games. Since 1997, 40 Soldier-athletes have participated in the summer and winter Olympic Games winning gold, silver, and bronze medals.

"After high school, I didn't play volleyball for a long time except for some pick-up games or beach volleyball, but not competitively. I shifted to running and cycling; things I could do outdoors with my family," he said.

When an athlete starts playing sitting volleyball at a world-class level, he said, they discover it's a fast-paced sport with no time to think of the next move. It's all muscle memory.

"I'm a defensive player," he said. "I'm the libero for the team, so I never go to the front row. I'm a defensive passing specialist, it's all I do. It's basically my job to enhance the defensive game."

The libero position, a defensive specialist, was added to the game in 1999 along with special rules for play in order to foster more digs and rallies and to make the game more exciting.

"When I was going through my recovery, I really wanted to go back to my unit back in Fort Carson, Colorado," O'Neil said. "I contacted the surgeon in the unit and said I want to go back in the Special Forces group, work through my recovery, and get back out to the war."

He knew he didn't want to be injured or wounded any longer, and wanted to just get back on his feet and keep moving.

To help in his quest, he went to a military sports camp at a place called Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Ala., where he first saw sitting volleyball.

"It's one of these sports camps where they show you all these disabled and adaptive sports for wounded warriors or people that are injured, and that's where I saw sitting volleyball," he said. "We played a quick game, and because of the way I set the ball or moved, or hit, a recruiter for the national team asked me if I wanted to check it out in Edmond, Okla., at the University of Central Oklahoma."

O'Neil went to a national camp in April 2009. He said camp coordinators told him they'd like to have him train with the resident athlete program.

"I was very intrigued by the invitation to do this, because it was never my intent to do this, it's something I kind of fell in to," O'Neil said.

His wife did some research and learned that Fort Carson, Colo., is where the World Class Athlete Program is located. O'Neil was accepted into the WCAP in 2010, and moved his family to Edmond.

"I train five days a week, about four hours each day, and we have a national camp every month or so. On my own, I'll do cardio and things of that nature," O'Neil said.

This July his team will compete in a tournament in Brazil. But in his competitions, he's been around the world. He's been twice to Egypt, to England, and played in Sarajevo, the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He's been more than once to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1998 he was there in the French sector. He said then it was like a war zone with everything torn up. He went back again in 2003 on a mission and said things had really picked up a lot.

"Last May, I went back to that same base that was in the French sector back in 1998, and there were parks, and all the war damage had mostly been picked up and renovated. The building I stayed in was a restaurant and hotel and it was very exciting to see the transformation all the way through," he said.

During last month's Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, he was on the U.S. Special Operations Command team and participated in two running events, the 1,500 and the 4 x100, but he wasn't allowed to play sitting volleyball, because he's on the national team.

"I didn't do that well, because we just showed up there and had a one-week train-up and then competed against other teams, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marine teams," O'Neil said. "A lot of those people train year-round, but I was just happy to be out there and to be around those types of folks."

O'Neil said the experience, for him, is about more than the competition.

"It was about the camaraderie and just sharing stories and information that was really big for me, and my wife and my kids were out there and we had a good time," he said.

"We had three opportunities to make the Paralympics in London this summer," O'Neil said. "The first one was at our world championships back in 2010. The top three teams out of 25 teams would get an automatic Olympic bid and we were not among them."

Then, he said, they went on to probably their best chance, which was at the Parapan American games in Guadalajara, Mexico, last November. There, they beat Brazil in their opening match.

The Parapan American Games is used as a qualifying event for the Paralympics.

"We were like 6 and 0 going into the gold medal match and we lost to Brazil and it was a huge let down, a huge disappointment," O'Neil said. "We got the silver medal; but it's just not enough, it's not good enough. And it's disappointing because we realized that we let that opportunity slip away. We did our best, we played our best, but it just wasn't good enough, so that's disappointing."

In March, the team went to Cairo, Egypt, to compete in the 2012 World Organization Volleyball for Disabled International Cup. Among 20 teams there to compete, there was only one slot that would advance to the Olympic Games.

"We lost to Germany and they won the Olympic bid -- the last one available in the world," O'Neil said.

His team not qualifying for the London games was a huge letdown.

"But disappointment is a part of sport, so we had to regroup and figure out what we're going to do to get on track so we can qualify the women's team is going, the men's team is not, so we have to figure out how we're going to get to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016, even though I might not make it, but I certainly want to," he said.

One of O'Neil's strongest supports was his father.

"My father passed away in March 2002, but he was always a working class man and he enjoyed physical labor, mowing lawns, and got us all involved in taking pride in our work and just the whole realization that life is work," O'Neil said. "I didn't realize it until I was older how hard he actually worked and what effect he had on my life. I admire the heck out of him. He had drive, initiative and leadership values that everybody can admire."

His other inspiration comes from being around other wounded people.

"I would say that one of the main things that helped me move forward with my life would be playing on the national team," O'Neil said. "I'm around people, a lot of them are congenital, people that were born missing a limb, or (people) who were in accidents as young children."

O'Neil said when he's around those people, he sees how they have progressed in their own lives.

"Just being around these types of people, the disability disappears and you get to see the types of people that they really are, and you can look past the disability," O'Neil said. "It's really helped me."

O'Neil said his mission changed a bit when his team didn't qualify in March.

"I go around to places like Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and we go to the rehabilitation centers and talk to service members who might have enough talent to get into a World Class Athlete Program," he said.

There's a push right now to recruit Soldier-athletes, to actively seek out members who were wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who were injured in a car accident, he said.

"So that's my second job and I really enjoy it," O'Neil said. "I'm trying to get people to try certain sports, not just try them, but meet the standards. So for the winter games in 2014 and the summer games of 2016, in Rio, hopefully you'll see some of these folks on the podium. That's the mission."

O'Neil said he hopes that others will be inspired to help wounded warriors realize their sporting potential, because, he said, he'll be retiring soon and "the war will probably still be going on."

"Wounded warriors getting back on their feet is the number one, feel-good story of the last 10 years," O'Neil said. "I know that, and I'm just happy to be a part of it."

Page last updated Fri June 15th, 2012 at 19:30


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Cancelling a License

How do I cancel a License?

FCC will not reassign a call sign that is presently licensed to an individual or club, unless they receive a signed written request to have the license canceled--or until two years have elapsed since the license may have expired. Only one person or club can hold a single call sign at one time.

If the licensee is a silent key, FCC requires that they receive a signed written request indicating that the current licensee is now deceased (include the deceased licensee's name and call sign in the letter). Also, FCC requires that some type of evidence of death accompany the request--something that verifies that the licensee is deceased--such as a newspaper obituary, a death certificate or social-security/death-benefits documentation. Faxed documents are not accepted. Supply this information to:

FCC - Attn: Amateur Section
1270 Fairfield Rd
Gettysburg, PA  17325-7245

Allow FCC one to two weeks to cancel the license. You can verify the FCC has canceled the license by looking up the FCC license call sign data. If the license has been canceled, FCC will show the license STATUS as "CANCELED".

If you have any further questions, please contact ARRL VEC.


text:
June Digital QST "Authentication Error" Resolved

Some users of Applie iOS devices have discovered that they cannot access the June issue of Digital QST. Instead, they are presented with a message stating that there has been an "Authentication Error."

The problem is due to a software issue at the service that creates and provides the digital edition for ARRL. It has now been resolved.

However, you must clear the cache within your Digital QST iOS app, close out the app completely and then re-open. You can clear the cache in the Digital QST app by tapping the "i" (About) icon on the home screen.


text:
Federal Republic

The affairs of state of Nicopolis, formerly USA, were taken over by the regent nvnf in Spring 1990. Observers classify the huge state as progressive social liberal party-democracy, known for its low national debt and the low crime rate.

Most of the adept and egalitarian citizens are rather nerved with the circumstances. They have a reputation to be hedonistic and animal-loving. Further they enjoy a healthy environment. Compared with other countries, the most distinctive difference is the National debt.

Nicopolis is not a member of an alliance.

A nation in progress.

Economy 1% Military 1% Safety 9% Reputation 1%
Health 3% Progress 1% Environment 2% Civil rights -10%
Content Uncontent Extremists

Currency: Amero
Heraldic animal / symbol Lion, Eagle, and Sea-horse
Capital city Fortis
Religion None
Flag (not selectable for world states) Flag
Anthem Aglowing and fair like a houri on high, Full of grace and pure like the Morn that peeps When in the sky the clouds are tinted blue, Of the Fortis, a goddess sleeps. The light foam of the son'rous sea Doth kiss her feet with loving desire; The cultured world adores her smile And the frosty Pole her flow'red attire. With tenderness, stammering, my Muse To her 'midst undines and naiads does sing; I offer her my fortune and bliss: Oh, artists! her brow chaste ring With myrtle green and roses red And lilies, and extol Nicopolis!
Foundation 14.11.2009
Highest Happiness 89.8
Visitors 3748
Link http://www.ars-regendi.com/state/41641

Key data

Indicators Nicopolis Average state (985)
Gross domestic product per capita 120,912 € 126,100 €
Annual average of inflation 1.79 % 2.16 %
Annual average of population growth 0.68 % 0.93 %
Annual average of economy growth 2.42 % 2.16 %
Social benefits ratio 3.53 % 9.32 %
Public spending ratio 16.07 % 28.97 %
Tax rate 27.44 % 28.23 %
Debt rate -2,099.96 % -164.37 %

Happiness .
Duration of regency .

Nicopolis Average state
Currencies 0.00 $ / € 0.70 $ / € Sold currencies: 0 Buy
Ground 0.00 €/m² 31.69 €/m² Sold ground: 0 Buy
Shares 0 7,213 Sold shares: 0 Buy

2 comments | 2 All ratings | Average of ratings: 5.00

ystradband 23.12.2009 13:15 Players rating: 5
Welcome to Evolution! Please visit our alliance forum to get the most out of your membership.
ystradband 15.11.2009 12:37 Players rating: 5
Thanks for applying to join Evolution! We're only allowed 25 members so please be patient and we'll accept your application as quickly as we can. :)

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United States Department of Agriculture

Agricultural Research Service

Research Project: CURATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOYBEAN BREEDER'S TOOLBOX AND ITS INTEGRATION WITH OTHER PLANT GENOME DATABASES Title: SoyBase Soybean Ontologies: Pathways to Soybean Growth and Developmental Description

item Nelson, Rex
item Grant, David
item Cannon, Steven
item Shoemaker, Randy

Submitted to: Plant and Animal Genome Conference
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: January 9, 2009
Publication Date: January 13, 2009
Citation: Nelson, R., Grant, D.M., Cannon, S.B., Shoemaker, R.C. 2009. SoyBase Soybean Ontologies: Pathways to Soybean Growth and Developmental Description [abstract]. Plant and Animal Genome Conference. Poster No. P797.

Technical Abstract: Plant anatomy has been a recognized discipline for many years. As a result, it has a very structured ontology for the anatomical parts of most plants. The same cannot be said for the complicated phenotypic traits of most plants. Listing analogous traits between different plant species is extremely difficult without the assistance of domain experts due to the lack of a standard nomenclature for plant phenotypic variation and traits. This is made more difficult by the use of common-names for traits within a species that differ geographically. In order to provide a resource that would unite geographically distinct terms for the same concepts in soybean we have prepared a number of controlled vocabularies (ontologies) for soybean growth and developmental traits. These ontologies will afford researchers an easy to use web portal that will provide term definitions as well as term synonyms which are fully searchable. This will allow researchers familiar with a geographically distinct term to find all other terms for the same concept and also relate those terms to the larger Plant Ontology Consortium (PO) and Plant Trait Ontology (TO) terms. Mapping soybean common terms to the larger PO and TO terms will greatly facilitate cross-legume and broader plant growth and developmental comparisons by providing a computer or a user an interpretable way to identify analogous structures and traits among plant species. These ontologies are currently available to researchers from the SoyBase homepage ( Representations of the ontologies and use cases will be presented.

Last Modified: 8/27/2015
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Winter Sports Posters and Art Prints

You are looking on ARTFLAKES for of the categories: Winter Sports . Here you find poster, art prints, prints on canvas and greeting cards about . Of course on Winter Sports items we offer customer satisfaction guarantee as well.
Images per page:  24 | 48 | 96


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jpg Emma Ayres and Martin Tighe talk with Richard Morecroft

jpg Another creepy Japanese ghost story

jpg Open until 10pm

  • Slide 1
  • Slide 2
  • Slide 3

Tonight the usual roles of subject and interviewer are being reversed. Normally a popular facilitator of our interviews at Art After Hours, Emma Ayres is our subject this evening. She and Martin Tighe will talk to Richard Morecroft about their experiences as sitter and artist in the Archibald Prize. Be sure not to miss Parisian expat Anne Gerard-Austin as she considers how Dupain negotiated the city of Paris and its monuments in the last of our talks in the photography exhibition Max Dupain: the Paris ‘private’ series and other pictures.

13 August 2014

28 Feb – 29 Sep 2014

Max Dupain
the Paris 'private' series and other pictures

24 May – 31 Aug 2014

Nike Savvas

18 Mar – 21 Sep 2014

Reko Rennie
No sleep till Dreamtime

28 Jun – 30 Nov 2014

The lost prince and the winter queen
royal portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, London

3 Jul – 28 Sep 2014

Theatre of dreams, theatre of play
nō and kyōgen in Japan

14 Jun – 14 Sep 2014
(See exhibition page for exact dates)

Tony Garifalakis
Mob rule

12 Jun – 21 Aug 2014

On Wednesdays the whole Gallery stays open late for Art After Hours

Displays until 10pm

Cafe until 9.30pm

Restaurant until 9pm

Gallery Shop until 9pm

Study Room until 7pm

Library and archive until 6.30pm

Courtesy bus runs every 15 mins from 7pm until closing from the Gallery to surrounding car parks and Martin Place

Art After Hours is supported by Gallery members


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Email updates

Keep up to date with the latest news and content from Arthritis Research & Therapy and BioMed Central.

Genetic studies in osteoporosis – the end of the beginning

Emma L Duncan* and Matthew A Brown

Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008, 10:214  doi:10.1186/ar2479

PubMed Commons is an experimental system of commenting on PubMed abstracts, introduced in October 2013. Comments are displayed on the abstract page, but during the initial closed pilot, only registered users can read or post comments. Any researcher who is listed as an author of an article indexed by PubMed is entitled to participate in the pilot. If you would like to participate and need an invitation, please email, giving the PubMed ID of an article on which you are an author. For more information, see the PubMed Commons FAQ.

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Monday, January 27, 2014

51 Days until Spring

This is definitely one of those winter's to remember !
I know it's not just Michigan but many other places as well are suffering through the brutal cold.
No school here again and that's a good thing. if I still had young children I wouldn't let them walk
or stand outside for a bus.
We haven't had many days that are over 10 degrees this month add the wind and we have 20 to 30
below wind chill. Our normal snowfall is around 90/95 in. and we already have 142.
We are finding it difficult to shovel the snow over the high banks plus few places left to put it.
Because of the cold not much works to melt the icy roads. The plows have a tough time keeping up with
the drifting yet continue to do the best they can.
Even our two Golden's shy away from the door at times looking at me as if to say they've decided it just not necessary at the moment.
Do I hate winter? No just the awful cold and the endless days of white before I get to see green again.It seems to last longer as I grow older.
It is home,it is warm inside and I will wait to see that bright green of spring as I do every year and I will wish as always winter didn't last so long.
Stay warm and safe where ever you are,only 51 days until Spring !

  1. Only 51 more days? Wow! That's not bad ;o) We are getting the same weather!! Snow shoveling twice, if not 3 times a day! Maybe cutting the grass isn't that bad? LOL! Big warm Hugs ;o)

  2. oh,honey..lot's of snow and cold!!!
    a brutal winter for so many.
    be safe and warm.

  3. stay warm, this time will pass! It is supposed to get warmer for us tomorrow, today was brutal.

  4. We're getting the brutal cold, but the snow keeps hopping right over Vermont for the third year in a row. I would gladly take some of that snow! I miss it! :)

  5. Oh my goodness, Amy. It has been a terrible winter. The cold just seems to linger and on and on. We have never had so many days on the single digits. Stay warm sweetie! Mina

  6. I am counting the days too...I have never seen so much snow on the ground.. Way too much. We have 3 feet on the ground and way too cold! I want to see the sun again and flowers too. See my post on my blog.

    Thank you for sharing.

  7. I am so waiting! With a new puppy and now developing eczema because of our extremes I am more than tired of winter! Hope you are well dear one! :)

Do leave a comment, I love hearing from you.


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February is African American History Month!

African American art

This article was excerpted from Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Oxford University Press, April 2005.

By Richard J. Powell

Civil War and Post-Reconstruction Years

The tensions between an art that referred to people’s social conditions and an art that transcended race and class politics are represented by the works of two artists active during the 1860s and 1870s: sculptor Edmonia Lewis and landscape painter Robert Scott Duncanson. Lewis -- who studied art at Oberlin College, independently in Boston, Massachusetts, and among American and British expatriates in Italy -- used the artistic conventions of neoclassicism to create powerful marble statuary on the subjects of black American emancipation, female oppression, and Native Americans. Duncanson -- working mostly in Cincinnati, Ohio, and other locations in the Ohio River Valley -- painted dreamy, pastoral scenes that recalled the aesthetics of the Hudson River school rather than overtly racial and political themes. Yet the racially tinged ordeals that both of these artists grappled with at various points in their careers gave even their most apolitical portrait busts and landscape allegories a social dimension, thus justifying the African American designation of their work.

A similar political/apolitical bifurcation is present in the work and lives of artists working between 1865 and 1900. First against a social backdrop of enfranchisement and hope and later against one of disenfranchisement and despair, landscape painters like Edward Mitchell Bannister and William Harper created moody, Barbizon School-like scenes, bereft of the political jockeying and white-on-black violence that characterized African American lives at the end of the century. For painter Henry Ossawa Tanner the pressures of American racism and the burdens of representing his race were too great. His 1891 move to Paris, France, encouraged his interest in painting mostly biblical scenes in a part academic, part symbolist manner. In contrast, the Athens, Georgia, seamstress Harriet Powers, oblivious to the world of art galleries and exhibitions, created at least two powerful Bible quilts that bore strong similarities to West African textile arts, especially to the cloth appliqués from the Akan and Fon peoples.

Increasingly, heroic and uplifting portrayals of African Americans appeared in paintings and sculpture in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Artist Edwin A. Harleston was renowned for his paintings of distinguished (and affluent) black Americans. Sculptors Isaac Scott Hathaway and May Howard Jackson also dedicated much of their careers to creating portrait busts of African American notables past and present. In the pages of the journal The Voice of the Negro artist John Henry Adams, Jr., created dozens of African American portraits: finely drawn and idealized in the manner of the white illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, but informed by an emerging racial consciousness. In the more symbolic and allegorical works of the sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, a black cultural cognizance manifested itself in important nineteenth-century topics such as emancipation and in pieces that foreshadowed several themes that would be important for artists and intellectuals in subsequent years (the African past, a black cultural rebirth, etc.).

see thumbnail to leftEdmonia Lewis (American, c. 1845 - 1911), Old Arrow Maker, modeled 1866, carved 1872, marble, 21 1/2 x 13 5/8 x 13 3/8 inches (54.5 x cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

see thumbnail to leftEdmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867, marble, 41 1/4 x 22 x 17 inches, Howard University, Washington, DC.

see thumbnail to leftRobert Scott Duncanson (American, 1821-1872), Mount Royal, 1864, watercolor on wove paper, 95.3 x 71.9 cm, National Gallery of Canada. See Hudson River School.

see thumbnail to leftRobert Scott Duncanson, "The Water Nymphs (The Surprise)," 1868, oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 66 1/2 inches, Howard University, Washington, DC.

see thumbnail to leftRobert Scott Duncanson, A Wet Morning on the Chaudière Falls, 1868, oil on canvas, 76.6 x 111.7 cm, National Gallery of Canada.

see thumbnail to leftEdward Mitchell Bannister (American, 1828-1901), Landscape with a Boat, 1898, oil on canvas.

see thumbnail to leftLouis Schultze (American, ), Portrait of Dred Scott, 1882, commissioned by "a group of Negro citizens," painted after the only known photograph of Scott, and presented to the Missouri Historical Society in 1882, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

see thumbnail to leftHenry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859-1937), The Banjo Lesson, 1893, 49 x 35 1/2 inches, oil on canvas, Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Tanner studied under the realist painter Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the 1880s. There he endured abuse from his white colleagues, and continually struggled with his identity as an African-American artist. Tanner only gained recognition in the USA after he settled in Paris in 1894.

see thumbnail to leftHenry Ossawa Tanner, The Two Disciples at the Tomb, c. 1905, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 105.7 cm, Art Institute of Chicago.

see thumbnail to leftHenry Ossawa Tanner, Fishermen at Sea, about 1913, oil, 46 x 35 1/4 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

see thumbnail to leftHenry Ossawa Tanner, Street Scene, Tangiers, 1913, etching on paper.

see thumbnail to leftHenry Ossawa Tanner, The Good Shepherd, about 1918, oil on artist board.

see thumbnail to leftWilliam Harper (American, 1873-1910), Patio, 1908, oil on canvas.

see thumbnail to leftMeta Vaux Warrick Fuller (American, 1877-1968), Ethiopia Awakening, 1914, bronze, New York Public Library. Drawing on Egyptian sculptures and themes, this statue recalls the African heritage of black Americans. Larger image of the second photo.

This is part 3 of ArtLex on African American art

  1. Introduction
  2. Arts and Crafts during the Colonial, Federalist, and Antebellum Years
  3. Civil War and Post-Reconstruction Years
  4. The Harlem Renaissance
  5. Great Depression and World War II Years
  6. Abstraction and Realism during the Postwar Years
  7. Black Arts Movement, Abstraction, and Beyond
  8. African American Art and Postmodernism

The author of this article, Richard J. Powell PhD, is a professor of art and art history at Duke University who specializes in American, African American and African art. His books include Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991), Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance (1997), and Black Art: A Cultural History (2002).

Copyright © 2005 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, second edition. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Thanks to Yolanda Carden for permission to post this excerpt in ArtLex.

Oxford University Press; April 2005; 5 Volumes; 4,500 pp.; 0-19-517055-5; Special introductory price until April 30th, 2005 of US $425.00. After April 30th, 2005, the price will be US $500.00. Please visit the Oxford University Press for ordering information.

Ninety years after W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated the need for “the equivalent of a black Encyclopedia Britannica,” Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., realized his vision by publishing Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience in 1999. This new multi-volume edition of the original work expands on the foundation provided by Africana. More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic.

About the Editors:
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University. Professor Gates is well known as an innovator in the field of African American studies and as the author of numerous works.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Lawrence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

Related Links:

Also see African art, Afrocentrism, bias, discrimination, ethnic, ethnocentrism, multiculturalism, xenophilia, and xenophobia.

ArtLex Art Dictionary

Copyright © 1996-
current year


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30 min of Yoga a Day Keeps Exam Tension Away

By Hetal Mehta

Preparing for exams? Include a few minutes of yoga posture practice and breathing techniques (pranayama) in the daily schedule and reap benefits of a calm and focused mind on the D-Day.

A bright young girl, with sparkling eyes full of enthusiasm, marched up to me and said, “I am appearing for my board exams and seek your blessings. You are my first Art Excel teacher.” It took me a while to recognize her, as we had met after six years. She had grown into a tall, smart, and beautiful teenager. I asked her curiously, “You are appearing for board exams! Don’t you have to study? When are your board exams starting?” Confident and relaxed, she answered, “Yes, exams have already started. I have my second exam tomorrow. You taught me Kriya and yoga in Art Excel Course, which I practice daily. Sometimes I do feel a little nervous, but yoga keeps me calm.”

Yoga can transform negative emotions

For most children, it all starts with a feeling of anxiety, nervousness, or worry before and during exams, especially when one is not fully prepared. This leads to fear and tension. If not attended to, these emotions could transform into depression or dejection, particularly for children in higher classes. When this goes out of hand, some children start contemplating suicide. Most children are not taught how to handle anxiety and eliminate stress, which can be done effectively through simple yoga techniques.

Daily dose of yoga sharpens memoryCurabitur non nulla sit amet nisl tempus

Daily yoga practice makes studying easy as efficiency increases and the memory becomes sharper. Yoga has always proven to be an aid in relaxing the mind and body, for children and adults. I have seen a high percentage of Art Excel and YES Course graduates, who meditate and do yoga daily and are cool about appearing for examinations and public performances. It has been observed that children perform their best when they are cool and relaxed. We can not only prevent children from going into depression, but also boost their confidence and ability to perform. All this can be achieved just by teaching them some easy, yet powerful, yoga and breathing techniques.

Simple yoga and breathing techniques that children can practice daily 10-12 rounds of Sun Salutation, followed by Nadi Shodhan, Bhastrika, Ujjayi breathing, or Concentration pranayama (taught in YES and YES+ courses) Result: A calm and peaceful mind; your best friend during exams

A calm environment helps kids perform better

Till recently, I had not seen younger children feeling anxious or scared of examinations. Research says that in most cases it is the surroundings that enforce feelings of fear, worry, and anxiety in a child. Sometimes, parents or teachers compare their kid's performance or scold him/her, and this crushes their confidence. Most parents and teachers are not aware of this fact as comparison happens unconsciously, which reflects on the child. To help children perform better, parents and teachers, who comprise a child’s surroundings, must also practice yoga to be calm and relaxed.

Add daily dose of yoga to your child's exam preparations and see them say bye-bye to tension and anxiety. All the best for stress-free examinations!

(Hetal Mehta is an Art of Living teacher, specializing in teaching children and teens. Often mistaken for a little girl herself, Hetal is passionate about teaching children essential life skills.)


text:
6 Function Adventure Knife

Item #: HF22

View Product Details

Sample Price: 11.74
The cost of the sample will be credited when you place your next order with us.

Item Specs

  • Anodized Aluminum Finish
  • 6 Function Adventure Knife with Carabiner Hook
  • Includes Small/Large Blade, Can Opener, Bottle Opener with Slotted Screwdriver, Philips Screwdriver, Wood Saw
  • PLEASE NOTE: Available blank stock for this item has been exhausted.
  • Replacement stock on order is offered at the updated price grid.
  • Packaging: Nylon Pouch
  • Color: Black
  • Size: 1"h x 4 1/4"w

Item Info

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text: BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:1.0 BEGIN:VEVENT CATEGORIES: SPECIAL OCCASION;TRAVEL;APPOINTMENT STATUS:NEEDS ACTION DTSTART:20130608T000000 DTEND:20130608T000000 SUMMARY:The Love Dogs DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Event Name: The Love Dogs=0D=0AEvent Url: Date Begin: 2013-06-08=0D=0AEvent Date End: 2013-06-08=0D=0A=0D=0A Take one red-hot horn section - we're talkin' alto, tenor, baritone saxes and trombone - down and dirty. Add liberal amounts of barrelhouse boogie-woogie piano and stinging Fender guitar. Pour over a funky and swinging rhythm section that Blues Review magazine called 'the best in the business', and top it all off with a crazy and charismatic front man with one of the biggest blues voices around. Season with a few years on the road tearing up juke joints, festivals and concert halls across the U.S. and Canada and on both sides of the Atlantic. Sound tasty? It's a recipe for music and mayhem, for intensity and irreverence; it's THE LOVE DOGS. CLASS:PRIVATE PRIORITY:3 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR


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"Egg" still bank

Banthrico, Inc.

mid 20th century

Institution Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Location Not on view.
'Egg' still bank, Banthrico, Inc.
Text not available.
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Medium: Dolls, Toys and Games | Zinc alloy
Size: 2 1/2 x 3 x 2 3/4 in. (6.35 x 7.62 x 6.99 cm)
Creation Place: North America, United States, Illinois, Chicago
Culture: North America, United States, Illinois
Style: 20th century
Inscriptions: Inscriptionon stopper: [BANTHRICO/ CHICAGO/ ILL/ USA]
Physical Description: egg shape lavishly decorated with vines and flowers; female figures on either side of top coin slot; face on front
Credit: Collection Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Gift of Katherine Kierland Herberger
Accession Number: 2003.236.848
Artist: Banthrico, Inc., Chicago, 1931-1985
Role: Manufacturer
Life Dates: Chicago, 1931-1985
Added to Site: March 1, 2009


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A Cognoscenti Contemplating the Beauties of the Antique: Gallery Label - Current

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Institution Minneapolis Institute of Arts
As the dedication states, Gillray was poking fun at William Hamilton, a former British ambassador to Naples. The picture of the erupting volcano alludes both to Hamilton's embassy and his research into Mount Vesuvius. After a 36-year sojourn to Italy, the elderly Hamilton returned to London in 1800 with his young second wife, Lady Hamilton, and her lover, Lord Horatio Nelson, the legendary naval hero. Nelson and the Hamiltons were the subject of much public gossip, as the three lived openly together in England, and Lady Hamilton gave birth to Nelson's child in 1801. In the print, Lady Hamilton is depicted in the guise of Cleopatra, and Nelson is portrayed as Mark Antony. The portrait of Claudius, whose wife was also famously unfaithful, represents Hamilton; the antlers on the frame symbolize cuckoldry.Hamilton's activities as a connoisseur were as renowned as his personal life. He amassed two major collections of antiquities, the first had been sold to the British Museum in 1772. He also collected paintings, selling 334 pictures at auction in 1801, the year of this print. Gillray implies that it was Hamilton's absorption in connoisseurship that distracted him from his wife's affair.
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Source: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Rights: Copyright Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Added to Site: March 10, 2009


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Blind Man's Buff: Gallery Label - Current

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Institution Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Blind Man's Buff is the most important of the five triptychs created by Max Beckmann while exiled in Holland between 1937-1947 - an exile necessitated by the Nazi's inclusion of ten of his works in their exhibition of "degenerate art" in 1937. Like much of his art, Blind Man's Buff is allusive and symbolic, inviting explication yet resisting explicit interpretation. Yet, the artist's use of the three-paneled format that was traditional to Medieval and Renaissance altarpieces evokes religious associations. Beckmann also drew upon classical sources, calling the figures at center "the gods" and the animal-headed man the "minotaur." Throughout the triptych, figures engage in sensual pleasures in a place where time, represented by a clock without XII or I, has no beginning or end. In sharp contrast on each wing are the blindfolded man and kneeling woman who, like prayerful donors in a Renaissance altarpiece, turn their backs to the confusion behind them.
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Source: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Rights: Copyright Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Added to Site: March 13, 2009


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Warmed by their Fire
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Warmed by their Fire

Intimate Glimpses of Inspiring Leaders
By Rabbi Yisroel Besser (Author)
List Price: $24.99
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Product Description

This book depicts the personalities of our great Torah sages of the last generation in a unique new way!

Warmed by Their Fire brings you into the inner circle of more than a score of inspiring leaders. You'll come to know the personality and warmth of these Torah leaders through the lens of first hand recollections by people who knew them well.

The subjects of these of these interviews span the gamut from Chassidic leaders to Lithuanian roshei yeshivah, and from Europe to Israel and America. Yisroel Besser brings them to life, based on the vivid memories and reminices of many of the disciples and peers of these venerated scholars.

Their public legacies continue to influence the Torah living and learning of Jews across the globe, but Warmed By Their Fire captures these remarkable men in a deeply personal way, as they were perceived and remembered by people who knew them close up. Readers of these accounts will picture themselves in the very rooms where these great people lived, taught, prayed, guided, and labored to preserve and transmit the glories of the Torah to a new generation of torch bearers.

Gather round and be warmed!

Hear an exclusive interview with Rabbi Yisroel Besser discussing the fascinating background to the creation of this unique book!
Click here to listen now
Click here to download

View Sample Pages
Table Of Contents
This book has 11 pages. See all pages

Product Details

Catalog # WBFH
ISBN-10: 142260523X
ISBN #: 9781422605233
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Dimensions: 6 x 9 inches /
 Weight: 1.45 LBS
Published By: ArtScroll Mesorah Publications
Release Date: 03/19/2007
Size: Standard

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Amsterdam | Berlin | Brussels | London | Paris | São Paulo | Toronto | China | India | Worldwide
Ian Wallace
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam, Netherlands
November 8, 2008 - February 8, 2009

Wallace at Witte de With
by E-Slant Team

Along with Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham and Ken Lum, Ian Wallace is one of the main contributors to the development of conceptual art in Vancouver, an art scene which has drawn world-wide attention since the early 1970s. Wallace's career began in the mid '60s when he took up a professorship at The University of British Columbia, where Jeff Wall was among his students. He continued to teach until the late '90s whilst simultaneously working on his art practice. Wallace is an artist with a strong interest in avant-garde strategies and has developed a picture idiom that combines monochrome painting and documentary photography. Even though his work is part of many North American museums and private collections, until now his practice has remained underexposed in Europe.

Instead of adopting the format of a chronological display, each institution takes a constellation of key works as a point of departure. Designed as a trilogy, the three institutions each present a unique exhibition thematically linked to a public program. At the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, the twelve-part panorama Lookout (1979) offers a focus on considerations of the construction of imagery. In Kunsthalle Zurich, Attack on Literature (1975) will focus the inquiry on questioning poetics and the tensions between image and text.

In Witte de With, the photo-murals The Summerscript (1974), The Idea of the University (1990), Clayoquot Protest (1993) will be central next to the installation At Work (2008) in which the combination of video and photographs intensifies the artists' self-referential research. Together the three seminal works lay bare formal relations between avant-garde painting and photography, and test the communicative and ideological limits of art production. For example, The Summerscript is based on an unfinished film, which was originally intended to be a collaboration between Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham and Jeff Wall. In Clayoquot Protest, the focus is on the role of the individual within a collective action. These photo/painting images are set against the background of Canadian wilderness that protestors are trying to protect from exploitation. Finally The Idea of the University links art practice and the intellectual milieu.

Ian Wallace's interest in the position of the art institution as a place for reflection and production of meaning is visible in the design of this intensive collaboration, initiated by Witte de With. The broadening of the international dialogue and the (art) historical depth that the project entails illustrates and emphasizes crucial aspects of Wallace's art practice.

Clayoquot Protest (August 9, 1993) IX, 1993 - 1995,
chromogenic print and acrylic on canvas, 152.5 x 122.5 x 3.0 cm,
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Artist, VAG 99.15.9
Photo's: Robert Keziere

Posted by E-Slant Team on 1/15/09 | tags: photography conceptual

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New York

Susie Rosmarin

Mg A tribute in abstraction
Steven Charles, Max Cole, Peggy Cyphers, Steven Day, Max Gimblett, David Lasry, Markus Linnenbrink, Tim Litzmann, Emil Lukas, Maureen McQuillan, Aaron Parazette, Bruce Robbins, Susie Rosmarin, Carole Seborovski, James Siena, David Simpson at Haines Gallery May 22nd, 2008 - July 12th, 2008
Posted 6/6/08

While the main gallery featured a group show of abstract work dedicated to Kim Wauson, a New York based independent curator who recently passed away. Max Gimblett's Song of the Painter - for Kim Wauson: Emil Lukas' work is made of thread over a wooden frame: --Natalie Stanchfield [more]

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New York

Tony Delap

Delap Tony Delap: modern times
Tony Delap at Royale Projects March 6th, 2009 - April 4th, 2009
Posted 6/1/09

Modern Times Tony Delap, The Eye in the Sky, 2005, acrylic on canvas over wood and aluminum Tony Delap's show, including works from various points in his half-century career, had an anthro-dynamic quality to it that expanded issues of design and craftsmanship into a veritable morality of personal accomplishment. Early on Delap challenged the rigid separation between what constituted painting and what constituted sculpture. By effecting this slippage between genres he devised the colored for... [more]

5_delap_visibleinvisible A Look at Tony Delap   Pick-button-0f29c6c075c514ef3a12253f1d60018e
Tony Delap at Samuel Freeman December 15th, 2007 - January 19th, 2008
Posted 1/13/08

If one is into trends, a major trend in Los Angeles at the moment is the re-discovering of older artists that seem slighted or at least never made it to national or international renown. A big proponent of this trend is the critic Dave Hickey, who for sometime has returned focus to Los Angeles’ hard-edge painters like Karl Benjamin, Fred Hammersley, and John McLaughlin. Another older artist in need of further recognition and re-appraisal is Tony Delap, who currently has new work at Patricia Fau... [more]

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Teresa Forsch

Recent Exhibits

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O Cinema
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David J. Fraher Future Leaders' Fund Award 2011

Aug. 15, 2011

Congratulations to Jennie Germain—this year’s recipient of the David J. Fraher Future Leaders Fund Award.

In January 2009, David Fraher marked 25 years as Executive Director of Arts Midwest. Arts Midwest’s Board of Directors and staff, along with many friends and colleagues, established the David J. Fraher Future Leaders’ Fund to honor David’s contributions and commitment to the field and his vision for the future. The Future Leaders’ Fund provides the next generation of arts administration leaders with the opportunity to participate in educational programming, networking opportunities, and real-life learning experiences within the industry, as well as helping these “next gen” leaders to build a strong network of mentors early in their careers.

Now in its third year, the Fund has supported three accomplished young leaders, allowing them to attend the Midwest Arts Conference and benefit from the essential professional development experiences it affords. These scholarship recipients—Megan Vetsch, Anne O’Brien, and Maarten Bout—have, in turn, used their new skills and knowledge to make an impact on the performing arts field.

This year, we are pleased to announce that the Fund will be used to provide a full scholarship for Jennie Germain to attend the 24th annual Midwest Arts Conference, held in Minneapolis, MN from September 7-10, 2011. Jennie is the Executive Director of the Austin Area Commission for the Arts, and has already begun to make an impact on the field.

We are looking forward to introducing Jennie to the Conference. If you see her at the Conference, please greet her and welcome her to the field.

If you are interested in contributing to the fund, you may donate online. Please indicate on your donation that you would like to designate the gift to the David J. Fraher Future Leaders Fund.


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Supporting Celldance could give you far reaching impact! In his “NIH Director’s Blog,” Francis Collins singled out an ASCB 2014 Celldance video as a “microscopic blockbuster” and urged readers to check out “the spectacular scientific flicks that Celldance has to offer.”ASCB gave three member labs $1,000 each to “Tell Your Own Cell Story” while providing post-production support and an original sound track by Hollywood composer Ted Masur. Collins was enthralled by Ritter’s video showing cytotoxic T-cells, “roving, specialized components of our immune system” closing in and destroying cancer cells. The dramatic climax came, wrote Collins, when “These T-cells literally convince a problem cell to commit suicide.”One of the videos logged over 16,000 hits and ranks third-highest all-time total views for the blog. (By comparison the average blog post gets 2,500 views). Support Celldance in 2015 and viewers will see your company promotion as the video starts to roll. Support will be acknowledged in the Annual Meeting Program and ASCB Newsletter, and on the website and mobile app.

ASCB members interested in submitting a Celldance 2015 proposal by August 14 should click here.


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SIG 12 Perspectives Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2014

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SIG 12 Perspectives Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2014

This issue of Perspectives focuses primarily on AAC assessments from a variety of perspectives, ranging from assessment for apps to assessing language development in people who use AAC. The selection of papers provides the readers with information on analysis of AAC assessment in school-age children, application of assessment strategies to evaluation of language development of individuals using AAC, the role of an occupational therapist in the AAC assessment process, and the assessment of AAC within long-term acute care medical facilities.

Learning Outcomes
You will be able to:

  • discuss critical issues related to language sample collection and analysis as applied to children and adults who use AAC devices
  • evaluate the DATE assessment plan
  • identify inherent challenges in the provision of AAC assessment services for children with physical disabilities, and describe components that an SLP may consider in approaching this type of AAC assessment within a holistic framework
  • identify a framework to describe the continuum of expressive communication behaviors
  • describe why individuals in LTACH settings may require AAC
  • identify five critical features of mobile technology and dedicated speech-generating devices to consider during the AAC assessment process

Take advantage of the $5 dollar pricing when you become a SIG affiliate. Learn how to join a Special Interest Group (SIG) today.

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: 0.3 PDHs: 3.0
: 5/24/2014 to 4/24/2017
: Intermediate

Product Information

Item #(s): WEBS1221201
Client Age: All Ages
Format(s): SIG Perspectives and Exam
Language: English
Author: A Collaborative Project of ASHA Professional Development and SIG 12, Augmentative and Alternative Communication

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Sidney Hoffmann

Sidney Hoffmann

Bachelor of Arts in Human Resources Management, 2013

“For me, being in the military is a full-time job, but my goals didn't take a back seat.”

Since she is deployed in Afghanistan, Sidney Hoffmann's father Tom Hoffmann accepted her degree on her behalf.

Recent Ashford graduate Sidney Hoffmann finished her degree at age 29 while serving in the military on an agricultural mission in Afghanistan. Because of this commitment, she was unable to attend her commencement ceremony – but that didn’t stop her father from participating. He traveled with Sidney’s grandfather from Waxahachie, TX to Moline, IL to accept Sidney’s diploma in Human Resources Management on her behalf.

“Having a child complete a major milestone like getting their college degree is exciting and important,” her father Tom told us on the big day. “The only sad thing is that she’s not here to get it…but I have the honor to be able to do that in her absence.” He did so to a rousing standing ovation that moved many audience members to tears.

Sidney was deployed in November 2012, just after Thanksgiving, and she is set to return in October 2013. Once her military commitment is over, she aims to use her Bachelor of Arts in Human Resources Management degree to help launch a career in cyber security, melding her interests in human resources and information technology.

“I really enjoyed Ashford for many reasons,” she told us via email. “For me, being in the military is a full-time job, but my goals didn't take a back seat. Ashford has so much to offer, from the Yellow Ribbon program to the extremely helpful faculty and staff members. The class lay out was very flexible, and I was able to participate even with just my smartphone at times! With the advancement in technology, I think Ashford's edge has been the ability to make school available to everyone.

“There are no excuses not to try it!” she continued. “My education was my responsibility. I had to read and learn the material in order to participate. I came out with a 3.84 GPA because I was dedicated to my goal. If there is any advice I can pass on it is this: Everyone has excuses, but only you are in charge of your success. If you want it, you have to make the effort. No one else can do that for you.”

While visiting Ashford’s campus in Clinton, IA during commencement weekend, Ashford University President Dr. Richard Pattenaude presented Tom with a traditional military-style challenge coin to giving to Sidney upon her return. “Ashford’s been just unbelievably great, and the people are just super,” Tom raved. “The opportunity that she’s been able to have to finish her degree while she’s away has really made a huge difference. It’s through the abilities of Ashford and her being able to do this online that created her ultimate goal of getting a college degree.”


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Volunteer Center

Online Volunteer Interest FormWithout a doubt, ASHHRA volunteers play an important role in fulfilling the needs of our members. We encourage you to explore the many ways in which you can contribute to making a difference within ASHHRA.

Opportunities for Leadership
From chapter officers to task force roles to board positions, ASHHRA offers members key decision-making and strategic planning roles for the organization, giving members an opportunity to accelerate their leadership potential.

Giving Back to Your Organization
ASHHRA members have an abundance of professional experience as practitioners, leaders, and volunteers on other boards. Members who contribute time and talent to ASHHRA believe in the power of a professional membership group because they’ve experienced its benefits. They also realize that ASHHRA—like any thriving organization—needs to keep growing and developing to respond to the challenges of the health care HR profession. Only members—practitioners in the field—have the knowledge to make that happen.

Volunteer opportunities in five areas:

  1. National Committees
  2. National Task Forces
  3. Speaking Opportunities
  4. Publishing Opportunites
  5. Subject Matter Expert Opportunities

For more information on these opportunities, please contact the ASHHRA staff at (312) 422-3720, or complete the Online Volunteer Interest Application.

Interested in submitting an article for HR Pulse magazine, a White Paper or other resource for publication with ASHHRA? visit the Publications page for instructions on how to do so.


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» Views

Bangladesh at crossroads

Publication Date : 07-05-2012

Winning against odds perhaps best expresses the essence of the Bangladesh story. But it has never been a foregone conclusion. Indeed, every crisis since independence whether natural or man-made had at the time seemed like the end of the road.

Only the concerted efforts of a myriad range of actors helped to turn the corners. While leaders repeatedly showed feet of clay, the man and woman on the ground quietly soldiered on with determination and ingenuity. And produced outcomes that have rightly earned the marvel of the world be it in economic resilience or social progress. But a new danger is afoot that of premature and ill-served complacency.

Even as Bangladesh's economic potential and strategic significance is gaining newer audiences in the global arena, the odds against realising such potentials are also piling up. Sycophantic rhetoric is triumphing over substance in the corridors of power.

Authoritarian mindsets are casting ever-darkening shadows over the initiative space of society threatening to break down the very social compact by which Bangladesh has come thus far. A spoils without standards approach to manning the state is worsening a capacity crisis at the very moment when the challenge of strategic engagement on emerging opportunities is at a peak. Bangladesh has been at crossroads before. But the odds now loom larger than ever.

Ever since 1991 when a new era of competitive electoral politics began, the economic balance-sheet has consistently been brighter than the political balance-sheet.

The entrepreneurial energy of a broad swath of economic actors including women, targeted reforms and relative tolerance of social initiatives played a large role in ensuring the brighter economic record. But after twenty odd years of "progressive economics, flawed politics," this particular dynamic appears to be reaching its limit.

Every electoral cycle has witnessed a worsening partisan spirit in running the state that coupled with rampant sycophancy has now reached levels that is impinging upon the very functioning capacity of the state.

The "low hanging fruits" on the economic frontier have been plucked but the larger challenge of engaging on big-ticket reforms such as energy and infrastructure as well as decisive action against corruption needed for the next advances has become hostage to the quality of politics being practiced. These trends have been compounded by qualitatively new insecurities in hitherto uncontested areas such as freedom of speech and social entrepreneurship.

Some trends are truly eye-openers. The state has always had a coercive face but there appears to be a new sense of impunity with which norms are being disregarded. The concern is not only about the statistics of human rights violations but more poignantly about a rapidly eroding confidence in the possibility of redress. The sense of disempowerment by ordinary citizens, not in their aspirations which remain robust but rather in front of the power realities of politics and state, is truly a new phenomenon and a direct indictment on all who espouse the cause of a democratic and humane society.

Some other trends too bear scrutiny. The economic success of Bangladesh has generally been based on a broad-based growth process with participation by many rather than only favoured few. But we may now be witnessing the determined entry of a new paradigm. Crony capitalism, where corrupt links to power serves as the primary capital, where efficiency is the least concern and where norms are casually dispensable, is fast becoming the mainstream economic story. Such trends had been there earlier too but the new phenomenon is the brazenness of such clout and their seeming operation beyond any accountability.

Bangladesh had been at crossroads before. But this time it is so at a time of great strategic transformations in its neighbourhood. China and India are the emerging drivers of the global economy. Myanmar is poised to emerge as a key regional player. USA has signaled an Asian pivot in its foreign policy. The Bay of Bengal has the potential to emerge as a potent driver of regional cooperation. The importance of being a more capable player in such transformational strategic environment is thus far more acute for Bangladesh than in any of its earlier crossroads moments. That is why it is so frustrating that the political class remains myopically glued to its zero-sum electoral contest.

The incumbent has gone for overreach and the ground reality is that overreach is not sustainable. The competitor has the sympathy due to any underdog but has not demonstrated any decisive change in its political culture than can inspire more enduring support. The familiarity of the political impasse is one facet of the crossroads Bangladesh faces. Few imagined that the impasse would re-assert itself so decisively in so short a time since the last election. But re-assert it has and our reservoirs of optimism are being tested anew as to the road ahead.

The political impasse is not the only crossroads we face. A vocabulary of intolerance has seeped into our body politic making it ever harder to find the crucial middle ground that alone sustains a vibrant and healthy society.

The poisonous brew is continually finding new breeding grounds in the professions, in the communities, in the business worlds. This in the longer run is a crisis even bigger than the political impasse.

Bangladesh has won against odds before. I am confident it will do so again. But my confidence is tempered with the hard realisation that only active and sustained initiatives from within society can create the momentum to forge the way out. Let the political actors deal with the political impasse. Let us, individual citizens, retrieve and consolidate the vanishing middle ground and raise the voice accordingly. There are many entry points. It is important to begin now.

The writer is an economist and a former adviser to caretaker government.

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» News

China plans to enlarge talent pool to 180m by 2020

Publication Date : 15-05-2012

China is witnessing an increase in better-educated labourers and a booming talent pool, official figures show.

The country was home to 120 million managerial, professional and skilled workers at the end of 2010, up by 7.8 million from 2008. They accounted for 11.1 per cent of the country's labour force, according to statistics released yesterday.

among the talent pool are nearly 30 million business management personnel, 55.5 million technical professionals, 28.6 million highly skilled personnel and around 10.5 million rural staff with practical skills.

The investment in human capital was equivalent to 12 per cent of GDP in 2010.

Such investment includes spending in education, health, and research and development, according to the latest figures.

One-eighth of the working-age population has received higher education, up from less than one in 10 in 2008.

China plans to enlarge its talent pool to 180 million by 2020, which would account for 16 per cent of the labour force, according to the country's talent development plan for 2010-2020.

The plan also forecasts that one-fifth of its population of working age would have received higher education by that time.

Liu Xin, a professor at the institute of organisation and human resources under Renmin University of China, said the increases show that the country is shifting its focus from an investment-led growth model to one led by skills and education.

Liu said China's fast development in the past three decades was based on massive investment but was actually driven by inexpensive labour.

"The government has realised that it's wiser to adjust the development model and sustain growth through creating and using talent. It's in line with the country's goal of building an innovative country," he said.

Liu said China has the largest number of scientific research staff in the world but still lags behind many countries in its ability to innovate and invent.

He suggested that talented researchers and developers in the private sector should be given a bigger role to help innovation.

In many other countries, not all key innovations are made by government think tanks, as the private sector plays an important role in this regard, he said.

"China should create a more favourable environment for talent to grow and function, rather than simply rely on imported technologies," he said.

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Ledelle Moe

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