#How generous of President Snow to fix the problem he created

[thyhauntedmansion]

[im-not-a-joke]

Mmh... All the field

the whole- the whole field....

thank you for asking, this is going to be one long post

Alisons: Sexuality?

asexual, unlabeled/queer romantic

Amaranth: Pronouns/Gender?

they/them or he/him, nonbinary

Amaryllis: Birthday?

february 4th

Anemone: Favorite flower?

bleeding heart

Angelonia: Favorite t.v. show?

steven universe

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger?

probably offer a place to sleep overnight

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes?

“Do you think God stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he’s created?”

Aubrieta: Favorite drink?

strawberry lemonade

Baby’s Breath: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

my gf? yes, absolutely.

Balsam Fir: Have you ever been in love?

i’d like to think so, yes

Baneberries: Favorite song?

currently “better than me” by the brobecks

Basket of Gold: Describe your family.

a mess, i have three siblings, and two of them are currently living at home, we also have two large dogs

Beebalm: Do you have a best friend? Who is it?

yes! my best friend anna, and her brother bryan!

Begonia: Favorite color?

purple

Bellflower: Favorite animal?

mantis shrimp

Bergenia: Are you a morning or night person?

night person

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be?

dog, i want the constant love and affection

Bloodroots: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

first a botanist, then a geologist

Bluemink: What are your thoughts on children?

i want to adopt some someday! sometimes they suck, but i want to be there for someone who doesn’t have a family to lean on.

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why?

abandonment, because i’m annoying

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood.

i shared a room with my little brother until i was like 12.

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth?  

visiting all the people i love most, all of my friends, my gf, i’d call my sister

Buttercup: Relationship Status?

taken!

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go?

france

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved?

when people take the time out of their day to talk to me

Canna: Do you have any tattoos?  

nope, i do want some someday, though

Canterbury Bells: Do you have any piercings?  

yes! i got my ears pierced twice because it ripped my earlobe the first time

California Poppy: Height?  

~5′8″

Cardinal Flower: Do you believe in ghosts?

yes, and if i die before any of my friends, i’m coming back to haunt them

Carnation: What are you currently wearing?  

a floral tank top, my favorite sleeveless cardigan, and jean shorts

Catnip: Have you ever slept with a nightlight?

yes, my little brother was afraid of the dark and insisted on having a nightlight on

Chives: Who was the last person you hugged?  

my mom

Chrysanthemum: Who’s the last person you kissed?

my gf

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font?

architect’s daughter

Columbine: Are you tired?

yes, very

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to?

tomorrow i get to leave the house all day to drive across the state and it’s going to be a lot of fun

Coneflower: Dream job?

language teacher! either english to people who don’t speak it or german/french to english speakers

Crane’s-Bill: Introvert or extrovert?

introvert. i’m on tumblr all day

Crocus: Have you ever been in love?

yeah, i think so

Crown Imperial: What’s the farthest you would go for someone you care about?

i’d actually die for multiple people in my life

Cyclamen: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? What was it?

yes! a stuffed white dog with a plaid scarf and matching antlers! my friend got it for me because it reminded her of my big white dog.

Daffodil: What’s your zodiac sign?

aquarius

Dahlia: Have you done anything worth remembering?

once i came 3rd in my age group for a 5k i ran

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?

i successfully kept a frail axolotl alive for an entire summer

Daylily: What would you do if your parents didn’t like your partner(s)?  

i dont care what my parents think about stuff like that, they cant tell my who i am or am not allowed to date

Dendrobium: Who is the last person that you said “I love you” to?

@byler-obsessed literally like, maybe 15 minutes ago as of writing this

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at?

i’d like to think i’m decent at singing

Foxgloves: What’s something you’re bad at?

staying awake during the day

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month?

i saw my gf for the first time in months! i came out to the girls team for xc! i spent a lot of time with one of my closest irl friends!

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today?

decent, i had coach practice, which was nice

Gardenia: Are you happy with where you’re at in your life?

yeah, i’d say i’m pretty happy where i am

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two?

learn guitar

Glory-of-the-Snow: What are ten things that make you happy/you’re grateful to have in your life?

my best friends anna and bryan, my older brother, the girls on the team, my ukulele, my therapist, my dogs, the creek in my back yard, my grandma’s amish apple dumpling recipe, random internet memes, books

Heliotropium: What helps you calm down when you feel stressed?  

listening to my spotify playlist

Hellebore: How do you show affection?

reassurance and/or talking about things that i enjoy, i’m really insecure so if i’m talking about something i like, that’s me trusting you. 

Hoary Stock: What are you proudest of?

the mental health progress i’ve made

Hollyhock: Describe your ideal day.

i lay in bed until like 11, then, i spend the rest of the day out with my friends, we get sushi for dinner and stay up until like 3am

Hyacinth: What do you like to do in your free time?  

be on tumblr

Hydrangea: How long have you known your best friend? How did you meet them?

i met them both in 6th grade, anna nad i were in the same science class and i met bryan at lunch, he didn’t talk to me for at least the first half of the year.

Irises: Who can you talk to about (almost) everything?

bryan, he always knows just what to say, and knows that he doesn’t have to fix my problems to be a good friend.

Laceleaf: How many friends do you have?

like, 13?

Lantanas: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?

my friend once told me that they couldn’t tell if i was a boy or girl upon first meeting me and it made my day.

Larkspur: What do you think of yourself?

i’m a mess, an anxious, depressed, gay mess

Lavender: What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

my hair, it’s really fluffy and soft, and just about light enough to dye bright colors

Leather Flower: What’s your least favorite thing about yourself?  

my chest, it’s always been a huge part of my dysphoria and i want it gone please

Lilac: What’s something you liked to do as a child?

i would play dress up with my dog, he had to suffer through wearing all my old dresses, but he got treats so it was ok

Lily: Who was your best friend when you were a kid?

my friend ry, we met in second grade, we’re still on and off friends, currently off

Lily of the Incas: What is something you still feel guilty for?

in 5th grade i used the word “suck” in class and got yelled at

Lily of the Nile: What is something you feel guilty for that you shouldn’t feel guilty about?  

see above answer

Lupine: What does your name mean? Why is that your name?

carson: christian. it’s my name because i like how it sounds, and anna really liked it too, she picked it for me.

Marigold: Where did you grow up? Tell us about it.

white, suburban ohio. all the kids had cliques by the second day of kindergarten, and if you were knew, you generally had a pretty good chance of being picked up by the popular kids.

Morning Glory: What was your bedroom like growing up?

i had bunkbeds with my little brother, i slept on the bottom.

Mugworts: What was it like for you as a teenager? Did you enjoy your teenage years?  

so far, not really. i’m just mentally ill and closeted, it’s not great

Norwegian Angelica: Tell us about your mom.

she likes to dye her hair crazy colors, and she used to be a beekeeper, even though she’s allergic to bee stings.

Onions: Tell about your dad.  

he rides his bike almost every day, and supports my mom in whatever she does

Orchid: Tell about your grandparents.

on my mom’s side, the kindest boomers i’ve ever met, my grandpa used to take us on “adventures” to the park and just watch us play

on my dad’s side: my grandpa loves seeing us but doesn’t get out much, my grandma laughs hysterically at every family gathering, and has all the best amish recipes

Pansy: What was your most memorable birthday? What made it be so memorable?

when i turned 13, i went ice skating for the first time and fell and sprained my wrist

Peony: What was your first job?

mowing lawns

Petunia: If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your partner(s)? If you’re not in a relationship, how did you meet your crush/how do you hope to meet your future partner(s), if you want any?

we had mutual friends and slowly ended up being close, we were in school plays and track together.

Pincushion: How do you deal with pain?

i bite down on my finger to simultaneously distract myself, focus on something else, and hold myself back

Pink: Where is home?

my best friends’ living room at 1 am, with the golden girls playing in the background

Plantain Lilies: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would stop/change?

i’d go back and stop current president from becoming president

Prairie Gentian: Who is someone you look up to? Describe them.

my sister, she has always been driven and passionate and talented, and she makes everything seem effortless and still gives it her all.

Primrose: Describe your ideal life.

me and my spouse and my kids amd my dogs all live in a decently spacious house in europe, my job is stable and i love my work, my students think i’m cool and come to me if they need help, i am doing well.

Rhodendron: What is something you used to believe in as a child?

i used to believe that the smoke from fireworks was where clouds came from

Ricinus: Who’s the most important in your life?

my best friends

Rose: What’s your favorite sound?

the sound of rain on my roof at night

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory?

when my sister, dad, and i all climbed to the top of a mountain in california

Sage: What’s your least favorite memory?

throwing up in the car on the way home for visiting my sister in new york

Snapdragon: At this moment, what do you want?  

a hug from anna

St. John’s Wort: Is it easy or difficult for you to express how you feel about things?

it’s hard because i don’t trust people

Sunflower: What is something you don’t want to imagine life without?

the internet

Sweet Pea: How much sleep did you get last night?

like 5.5 hours

Tickseed: What’s your main reason to get up every morning?

to run, it makes me feel better and i love cross country

Touch-Me-Not: How do you feel about your current job?

lmao i dont have one

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing?

my binder!

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic.  

the record player song but a boy

Tulip: What would be the best present to get you?

a list of reasons why you deal with me/things you like about me

Vervain: What’s stressing you out most right now?

the fact that this is taking a lot longer than anticipated and i don’t want people to think i’m ignoring their asks

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called?

actual books? only 2, Catcher in the Rye and the Night Circus

Wolf’s Bane: Where do you want to be in life this time next year?

out with my friends

Yarrow: Do you know what vore is?

yes, and i regret it

Zinnia: Give a random fact about yourself.

i’m double jointed in my left pinky

[shmosnet2]

10 Insanely Popular Companies That Nearly Went Bankrupt

10 Insanely Popular Companies That Nearly Went Bankrupt

From toy makers to airlines, many companies have dealt with financial troubles at some point in time. Included in this list are 10 companies that are so popular that you would not have expected them to have once been on the brink of bankruptcy. See Also: 10 Fascinating Histories of Iconic Products 10Fed Ex

The Founder and CEO of Fed Ex once saved the company with nothing but luck. Frederick Smith created the company with a combination of loans, inheritance money and funding. With the money, he purchased eight planes with which he shipped packages across the United States. No other business was operating this way at the time. Instead, their method of transportation was mostly trucks. This worked out for Smith, until jet fuel charges began to rise. Unable to cover the cost of fuel whilst maintaining the pricing strategy, Fed Ex was down millions of dollars. Smith had two choices: either he could file for bankruptcy, or he could take the final $5,000 in the company’s budget and use it to gamble in a Las Vegas casino. I’m sure you guessed which option he chose. Within a week, he had $32,000, which was enough to refuel the planes and complete the deliveries. $24,000 was the amount needed to pay the oil companies for the jet fuel. Whilst Smith’s gamble had prevented the company from collapsing for only a week, the limited time allowed him to seek out additional funding and eventually grow the company into what it is today.[1] 9 Lego

One of the most popular toy companies in recent years has not went without its troubles. It experienced a series of problems between 1998 and 2003. After the drop in profits and the threat of bankruptcy, a new CEO took over and paired up with George Lucas and his production company. This allowed them to produce Lego sets based on Indiana Jones and Star Wars. This decision likely saved the company. Instead of generic ‘pirate ship’ or ‘construction site’ sets, they moved on to make movie themed products. It is difficult to imagine that a toy company that went on to earn millions through their movie franchise alone was once on the brink of collapse. The company is now more successful than ever, meaning that we can all continue to accidentally stand on those tiny bricks and be in pain for years to come.[2] 8 Sega

When Sega was in threat of bankruptcy in 2002, the then-President Isao Okawa donated all of his stock to the company, in order to save it. He was towards the end of his battle with cancer, which killed him shortly after his donation. Their troubles had been caused by the decision to end production on Dreamcast, their latest console. The release had been underwhelming, leaving them at a loss of 80 billion Yen. Okawa’s personal fortune of 85 billion yen made up for the hit that the company was about to take. If only Sega could convert Sonic coins to Yen – they would have solved their issues a lot sooner![3] 7 Apple

1997 was a terrible year for Apple. The iPod, which went on to become the company’s flagship product, had not been invented yet. Had an unexpected company not decided to invest in Apple, then we may never have had a convenient way to carry our music around with us. We may have had to do something else to distract ourselves on the commute. When Apple ran into some financial issues, Microsoft invested $150 million to save it from having to declare bankruptcy. Microsoft is the last company you would expect to save Apple, as they are their biggest competitor. It ultimately turned out to be a great business decision, as Microsoft made a huge profit off this investment.[4] 6BMW

In 1948, BMW began to create luxury cars. This was a move away from their usual affordable automobiles, a huge risk for the company. After all, Mercedes-Benz dominated the luxury car market. In 1951, the BMW 501 was released and it was priced at 4 times the average wage of a citizen. Very few cars sold, leaving the company close to bankruptcy. The Quandt family, most notably Herbert Werner and Harald Quandt, German industrialists and the sons of members of the Nazi party, made a large investment in the company which saved it. This investment did not come free, however, as the family demanded a restructuring of the company, with new managers put in charge. Now, BMW is well known for making luxury cars, but had it not been for the job-losing decision to change the company’s focus, then they would not have the same great reputation.[5] 5 Six Flags

Despite having a reputation for being a place of joy, Six Flags has went through some dark times. In June 2009, it filed for bankruptcy, after falling $2.4 billion in debt. On top of this, it had to pay $300 million to its stockholders in August of that year. With less than two months left to make up the money for these payments, Six Flags had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. It had had a relatively good year besides the debt, as it profited $275 million from the 25 million visitors so far that year. A few months later, the company returned thanks to its lawyers arranging a restructuring of the debt. It now continues business, with a series of theme parks and water parks across America. It sure was a “rollercoaster” of a journey.[6] 4The Walt Disney Company

The early years of The Walt Disney Company was by no means a perfect fairy tale. Disney was at the brink of bankruptcy twice, once in 1920, when their financial backer went bankrupt himself and again in 1937. The creation of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was a huge financial burden for the company. It was their first feature length film, but it required a $1.5 million investment from Walt Disney and a bank loan in order for it to be completed. Looking back, it was a huge risk, because had it failed, then Disney would not have become the household name that it is today. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ went on to make $8 million at the box office, which is especially good considering how it was released during the Great Depression.[7] 3 American Airlines

American Airlines once found its self in such a bad situation that it was removed from the New York Stock Exchange. The stock had fallen to 20 cents per share and in its entirety, the company was worth $90 million. It may seem like a lot of money, but ‘The Wall Street Journal’ put this into context by appropriately comparing it to “less than the typical list price of a new passenger jet.” The company has since returned to the New York Stock Exchange, with a value of $300 million. Had it not been for a large amount of investors buying the stock cheap, American Airlines may have went the same way as Eastern Airlines and Pan American World Airways. A partner for Pinnacle Investment Advisors purchased roughly $50,000 of shares in the airline, which resulted in a huge profit for him, after the company returned strong.[8] 2 Tesla and SpaceX

It is incredibly difficult to believe that the company that once sent a car into space was once bankrupt. In the beginning, Elon Musk feared that his companies would fail. He was so sure of this, in fact, that he did not take money from investors. Instead, he opted to fund the company with his own money, which he had a substantial amount of due to the sale of his company PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002. He continue to fund it until 2008, when the financial crisis almost destroyed Tesla and SpaceX. Without any other options, Musk shut down operations, being essentially bankrupt for a few hours. That is when, at the last minute, he secured a $50 million investment in time to save the company. Daimler invested in Tesla and SpaceX, despite themselves being in financial trouble. Whilst this money saved the companies from being closed down, it was not a permanent fix. He still had to work hard to ensure their continued existence. Musk is quoted as having said “we only narrowly survived … we actually closed the financing round on Christmas Eve 2008. It was the last hour of the last day that it was possible.” Only 10 years later, he had sent a car into orbit to the tune of ‘Starman’ by David Bowie.[9] 1 Etch a Sketch

This children’s toy would not have been as iconic as it is today, had it not featured in a popular Pixar movie. Etch a Sketch was on the brink of bankruptcy in 1999, when the creators of Toy Story 2 approached them. The scene in question featured an Etch a Sketch for only 12 seconds, but this appearance revived the popularity of the product. It allowed the company time to seek financing, with which they moved production of the toy from Ohio to China. This cut down production costs and prolonged the life of the company. They were not the only product which appeared in Toy Story 2 (obviously, a movie about toys would be pretty dull without toys in it.) Barbie and Mr Potato Head were also written into the script, but neither of them were as reliant on this appearance as Etch a Sketch. Thanks to Toy Story 2, it was named one of the top toys of the century in 2008. Who knew that an appearance in third highest grossing movie of 1999 could make you so popular? Etch a Sketch belongs at the top of this list because unlike the other companies featured, they produced something which was a typical household item. It did not need batteries or make any noise, so it became a popular gift for parents to buy. Had the business went bankrupt and the toy disappeared from shelves, it would still be remembered as a part of many people’s childhood memories. Few people would remember one of many airlines disappearing, or a production company who had only made one movie in the late 1930s. The escape from the brink of bankruptcy allowed Etch a Sketch to be exposed to many more generations of children, brightening their childhood with two dials and a hundred little lines.[10]

https://ift.tt/2RtgAuv . Foreign Articles December 06, 2019 at 10:14AM

[20qs20somethings]

Emily, 24

1. Can you use three to five words to describe our generation? Obsessed with technology, motivated.

2. Talk about a person or an experience that has helped shape you into the person you are today? Honestly, it was when my mom passed away when I was 10, which is why I say that I grew up really fast. I was only 10 and something clicked where you sort of just grow up immediately from that. She had cancer and it made my family really close, my dad, my sister and I. I think without that experience, I would not be the same person. I’m extremely independent, I’m a huge hard worker, my dad is a hard worker and I think all of that was because of that moment in my life. It’s sad and upsetting and no one wants to lose a parent, but I also feel like it made me the woman I am today, and I wouldn’t want to be any other woman. I like my life, where I am, how close my family is, and the people that I’ve met because of that. 

3. Selfies: Thoughts? I think they’re okay. My boyfriend and I take selfies all the time. I like sending selfies on Snapchat because it’s fun but I wouldn’t take a selfie and make that my profile picture.

4. Who or what is your biggest motivator in life? My dad. He has a hundred degrees, he does a hundred things a day. He’s a doctor, he works at the hospital, he works at NYU, he makes movies, he takes photographs, he loves learning, and so that makes me want to work hard if not harder than he does. Not just so that he’s proud of me, because he is. But I feel very lazy when I have nothing to do and he’s running around. He’s a big believer in there’s something you can learn, no matter what it is. So if I have a day off, he’ll be like, “Why don’t you google how to learn a new program about video editing so you have a new skill? Go read a book, take a class, come to the hospital so you can watch what I do.” He really pushes me and I think that’s great too because the more independent you can be from your parents, the better. Especially at our age, there are a lot of things you need to become independent about and I think my dad is my biggest motivator.

5. Do you believe in love? Yes! I do! I think it’s not as like fairy tale as everyone says, but I think when you find the person where everyday is easy, it’s easy.  I don’t like fighting, I think everyone can have a calm conversation when something is wrong. I’ve been in a couple relationships and when you’re worried about how the other person is feeling, thinking or how they feel in a situation and you don’t know how to ask what’s wrong. When you find someone you love, it’s easy and comfortable. You’re never bored of that person or want to get rid of that person, all you ever want to do is see that person and have date night on the couch, see a show or go exploring, you just want to be with them all the time. 

6. Fill in the blank: “Happiness is _______” Happiness is being with the people you love.

7. What are your thoughts on race? I grew up in Edison, NJ and went to a high school that was very diverse, where white people were the minority basically. I never thought that I was ignorant, but I never thought that the rest of the world wasn’t like our town. Then I went to college and it was a culture shock because it was extremely white, which was fine. But I sort of then understood where everyone was coming from when they talked about race, because I never thought I had white privilege from where I came from. My father was a big advocate of working hard for what you do and earning everything. So when I went to college, race was talked about all the time where high school, it wasn’t. It turned me onto this idea that this country is still racist and there’s a lot of issues regarding race, and I don’t think those issues will go away, but I think it’s great because of social media that it’s talked about all the time. Same thing with being in New York, I didn’t really think race was an issue because you see all different kinds of people and I love that. It’s hard and I completely understand where my friends are coming from. I do think it’s a big issue in this country and I don’t think it’ll go away, but I hope that we can change people’s minds.

8. Who or what brings you the greatest joy in your life? My family.

9. How did you feel after November 8th? A little shocked, I was in New York waiting to get on the train when it clicked he was going to win. For a majority of the year, I kept thinking he was going to pull out or this wasn’t going to happen. I think this election changed the game completely. Not just because of him but in all sense of the word politics, something has changed. A lot of people are hoping he does a good job and proves us all wrong. As a woman, it’s hard to listen to all the things he says because 10-15 years ago, anything he would’ve said would’ve taken him out of the race immediately. I think the problem is he’s not respecting the office. If you’re going to be our President, you need to respect the office and learn how to be a politician, you can’t just do whatever you want. I don’t agree with his ideology. It’s a respect issue, he lies a lot, flip flops, contradicts, and I don’t think he’s respecting us. Your job is to protect us and serve us and make the country better for the people who live in it. 

10. Is college overrated? No, I think it’s very important, I think you learn a lot going to school no matter what you go for. I think you learn how to grow up and be an adult. I love education and learning, I don’t think it’s overrated at all. 

11. Would you rather have security or fulfillment in your work? That’s a current battle because being a non union actor, there’s no money and I’m getting the most wonderful fulfillment out of it. But there are days when I say, “I don’t have any money, help!” Then I get a show and it’s the best feeling ever so definitely fulfillment, but I would also like to get paid more. 

12. What do you want out of this life? I want to be happy, surrounded by the people I love and no stress. I don’t want to ever be that person who goes to work and hates their life. I think happiness is my big thing. If I’m 30 or 40 and I wake up in the morning and I’m not motivated. I don’t want to be afraid to switch.

13. What’s the most annoying thing about you? I’ve been told I’m very loud sometimes. I think I’m loud.

14. How do you want to be remembered? As a nice girl, a nice person to be friends with. 

15. What are qualities that you value? Independence, Drive, Being fun, Focused, Intelligence, Humor

16. What do you hope 30 will look like? I have a couple of goals, hopefully broadway, I want to live in the city, I want to have a puppy. I want to have a sort of stable career so that I’m working all year instead of having the choppy months. 

17. Do you consider yourself a hopeful person? Yeah, that’s like the number one thing they teach you in acting school. You can’t play a character that doesn’t have any hope. A lot of the times, my wonderful acting teacher, Larry Singer, whenever we would be stuck in a scene or don’t have motivation, he would say that “you don’t have any hope." Just that phrase, even if it’s the worst scene, you need that essence of hope and just that hope will flip your brain. A life without hope is sad. 

18. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far? Don’t rush your life, don’t look towards the goal. It’s good to have goals, but it’s not about the endgame, it’s about enjoying the journey and the ups and downs. I’m a big believer that when you’re having a breakdown and you’re stuck, that’s when you’re on the cusp of something happening. Whenever I’m down and I’m not booking shows or not being seen, it’s that week later that everything clicks. You have to enjoy the down and are allowed to be down. I’m also a big believer in if something happens and I get really upset for a day, I allow myself to be upset for a day, cry, do whatever I need to do and the next day I go to the gym, make a video, create my own art, take a class. I think you can’t sink into that, you need to fuel all those negative emotions, release them, and go do something that makes you happy the next day and that’s all about the journey, it’s up and down and you have to ride it. 

19. What’s the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn? It relates to theatre, but some people book Broadway and some people don’t. You can’t compare your life to anybody else’s and that’s a very hard thing to do especially in theatre. That my journey is not someone else’s journey.

20. What is the best piece of advice you want to leave the world with? Life is too short. Find your friends, find happiness in whatever you want to do. If you want to travel the world, do it. I think a lot of people don’t enjoy the day to day and you have to. Find your people, travel the world, go dancing, follow your dreams, follow your heart. If you make a mistake, cool, fix it. Play in the snow, drink your coffee. Nobody can tell you how to live your life. Go live it.

[jacewilliams1]

How many second chances do you get?

It was day six of a seven-day VFR cross-country trip over 2800 miles and nine states. We could make it home, but it was going to be late. It was February 2017, and this was the longest trip I had ever flown in my 39 years of flying: 15,500 feet MSL and yet only 1500 feet above the ground at times, many snow-covered mountain peaks that came up to greet us the first few days.

We thought our most exciting memories were behind us. Everything was going great; the sun was about to set and, in an instant, we lost everything but the motor. No radios. No lights. No electrical instruments. And no ideas – yet. We got through the checklist and decided we had lost our alternator. We could make it home, but the smart money was on getting to an airport that could fix our problem and get us back in the air safely again.

We both had no place to be for a week and no reason to push it or take any chances. My copilot was an Air Force vet, and he was missing his wife, but feared an onboard fire so he wanted to be on the ground now.

It was cold and dark in Salina, Kansas, but it felt good to be on the ground.

We saw Salina, Kansas, ahead to the left, an old military base. We had ForeFlight on my iPad so we had all we needed to get to the airport. By the time we reached Salina, it was still VFR, but a dark, cold, moonless night. We were there first, but we had no way to inform anyone of our location or our problem. My first thought was, we lost power so we have the right-of-way as we lined up for a straight in shot to runway 35.

My copilot had a strong flashlight and was trying to signal the twin on base leg to the same runway. It was clear he didn’t see us so we peeled off to the left, clear of his flight path. We then saw two other single-engine planes about to enter the pattern. We created our own holding pattern waiting for everyone to land.

I felt I needed to let the tower know we were there, but the only way I knew how to do that was to buzz the tower in the dark. We did and it got his attention – but not in a good way. We landed in the dark – no landing light, no lights for gauges, and no electric gyro – so just basic seat-of-your-pants flying. However, this was one of my better night landings.

One important point: a strong flashlight in the cockpit is of no help as it takes time for your eyes to adjust back to the darkness and you are going to need your eyes to land in the dark.

We taxied right under the tower to the FBO, and out came the lineman asking us if we’d seen the idiot out there flying with no lights and buzzing the tower as they wanted his N-number to turn the fool into the FAA.

I turned and pointed to my plane and read him my N-number. “This is that plane, and I’m that idiot,” I told him. He instructed me to call the tower and explain my actions at once.

This was the coldest night in recorded history for Salina – well, at least it felt like that to us. One of the linemen was a linewoman, and she had on two pairs of insulated coveralls and a coat and a lot more under that so she could hardly put her arms down. She also had on two pair of gloves and two stocking hats. All I could see was her face – she looked like the female version of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

She was sure we were in big trouble and wanted to be there when I called the tower. She was sure they had caught their man and I was going to spend the night in jail, or at least be grounded. She had already found me guilty before hearing all the facts so I made sure she was close by as I phoned the tower with my explanation.

The tower told me the Paul Harvey version of a few college students who were buzzing the tower at night with no lights on. So, he never gave me any light gun signals, and I don’t remember many of them anyway so I was glad he didn’t. At that point, he felt bad for assuming I was part of their problem, not someone with a problem.

When he said he was sorry, I made sure the two-pair-of-everything linewoman could hear him. He then told me who to call and they would get to work on my airplane first thing in the morning. I was glad to hear that.

After hanging up the phone, I heard, “Oh my God, you were in real danger not just big trouble.”

“No,” I said. “We were never in danger or trouble. We just lost our alternator and landed here to get it fixed. We need to spend the night somewhere, but I prefer a nice warm motel if you can help us get a car, and you can fuel my plane tonight or in the morning.”

The Mooney, during happier times.

When I looked outside, my airplane was fueled and already being towed to the shop. The linewoman wanted to know more and offered to drive us to a motel and even picked us up in the morning. She was very kind and very helpful.

“How do you know your airplane will be fixed in the morning?” she asked.

“All we need is the battery charged, and we can make it home in the daylight,” I said. She was not so sure.

That night, my copilot and I started doing all the “what ifs” we could think of from renting a car to drive home to flying back on a good battery. I had been to many flight safety meetings and heard a number of times that it is not the first thing that goes wrong that kills you, but what happens next, so getting on the ground to get the bird looked at was the wise choice.

Salina was very friendly – a few days here could not be all bad, but my copilot was missing his wife even if it did take her three days to notice he wasn’t home. She called me to ask if I knew where he was three days ago, as his phone was dead. I wasn’t sure what to say at first, and I thought she knew our plans and saw a golden opportunity to play a trick on both of them.

However, it was now bitter cold outside, and these two were like teenagers: every minute apart was like a year. I had one love-sick puppy on my hands. We were one vote away from renting a car that night and driving four hours, 180 miles on icy roads, to get him home so she could kill him for not telling her where he went or how long he was going to be gone.

The next morning, we went to the shop where they were working on my plane. Of course, the double-everything linewoman wanted to go along. She was on top of everything. What she didn’t know, she wanted to know. I was very impressed even if she did think I was either wrong or guilty from the moment we met.

When I talked to the shop foreman, he had a small brass bushing in his hand. He said that fell out of my airplane and didn’t advise flying it till it was fixed. I own a boat repair shop so I knew what he was trying to do. A little fear and visual aid can go a long way to opening a pocketbook. I asked where he found the part, and he showed me under my starter.

It was the nose bushing to my starter, and I asked for a hammer. I now had everyone’s attention. My copilot said, “You can’t just pound it back in.”

I said, “No, I’m going to tap it back in as it only has to work one more time. It is not a vital moving part of the plane once it starts and, if it won’t start, then I’m not flying anyway so it is worth a try.”

For some reason, it went right in, like I had done it a million times before. When I turned around, everyone was looking at me like I just shot the president. The linewoman looked at me and said, “You are not going to fly that now, are you? I would never fly in that plane till it was fixed right.”

At this point, my love-sick copilot was ready to fly, drive, or walk home. Everyone looked at the shop foreman for his OK. “If it starts, he can make it home,” he said.

They had the battery charged up overnight and we had a good plan. I called my friend in the tower. It was a different guy, but he knew the entire story. We may have even made the local news. For sure, we made the coffee shop grapevine.

I told the tower if the plane started, I was going to Squawk 7600 and fly home with everything shut off but my transponder. I called home to inform the FBO if I had no radios, I would buzz the office and make LH traffic for Runway 31 so they could inform any planes in the area we had no radio or lights.

The “first second chance” happened before the author was even three.

Cozad, Nebraska, is my homebase. I consider everyone there a good friend, and they need to know ahead of time what is going on. They are like family: when I first landed my “new to me” Mooney there, the FBO owner’s wife called me the moment I landed. I hadn’t even got to the hangar yet. She asked me to call or text her every time I landed just to be sure I was safe.

It was a very clear VFR flight and we did not have one problem all the way home. We had plenty of power for the radio when we entered the Cozad airspace. I was impressed when we landed, as Flight Service called the FBO to make sure we landed safely.

Allison is the second-generation manager of the FBO at my homebase of Cozad. Flying is in her blood. I like to tease her by saying I have been flying longer than she has been alive. She was a huge help in getting my second bird, and getting me back into flying. I have told her many times what a positive effect she has made on an old man’s life, giving me a second chance at my love of flying. Thank you, Allison!

A postscript about second chances:

One of my first memories in life was my first second chance. It was the day before my third birthday when my mother stopped the car on a railroad track and we were hit by a freight train that dragged us for almost a city block. By the time I learned to drive I had already been in 12 car accidents. I added a few more in my bulletproof years. I have no idea why some of us get so many second chances and some never get even one. I feel every second chance makes it likely you will get another second chance because of the knowledge you were just given. Second chances are a massive gift; don’t take them lightly.

You still have a lot of living to do and a second chance to follow your dreams.

The post How many second chances do you get? appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2019/10/how-many-second-chances-do-you-get/

[flauntpage]

Why the Flyers Might be Ready to Give up the Ghost

There are a few story lines many fans will be watching for when the Flyers and Red Wings reconvene tonight at 6 p.m. in Detroit:

Can this white hot Flyers team (12-2-1 in their last 15 games) continue an unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented run toward a playoff berth?

Will Carter Hart bounce back from a mediocre performance against the first team to play against him for a third time and playing in back-to-back games for the first time, no less? (I am going out on a limb and assuming coach Scott Gordon won’t be putting an important game in the playoff race on the shoulders of Mike McKenna, who will likely be waived Monday. McKenna will still back up Hart as newly acquired goalie Cam Talbot isn’t available today).

Will there be retribution on Detroit’s Anthony Mantha for his cross-check to Claude Giroux’s head while Giroux was on his knees against the boards in the third period of yesterday’s game? (There was no penalty called, although there should have been).

These are all interesting plots to follow as tonight’s game progresses. But it’s not the one I’m going to be watching the most closely.

Yes, they all have varying degrees of interest for me, and yes, they are all good water cooler topics for Monday – for those of you who don’t get the President’s Day holiday.

But there is one more that I want to follow even closer. And actually, it’s a plot line that, until post game yesterday, has simply gone unnoticed by many observers of the team.

It involves Shayne Gostisbehere.

It’s a story that has been brewing for a while now. One that goes back to before Dave Hakstol was fired. To before Ron Hextall was fired. To before there was any talk of considering moving on from the uber-talented but sometimes disconnected defenseman.

Let’s put together a quick timeline after the jump:

1. Gostisbehere’s relationship with the former coaches

This story has to start here. Ghost had two really good offensive seasons in his first three with the Flyers. His rookie campaign was one that energized an entire city. He burst onto the scene with a style of play from a defenseman that has never before been seen in Philadelphia. He was always on the go. Great speed, a wicked slap shot, a willingness to gamble to generate offense, a flair for the dramatic – it was a combination of skills and chutzpah that no other Flyers defenseman has ever had.

No, we weren’t elevating him to the level of a Mark Howe or even an Eric Desjardins, but at the same time, what Ghost was doing was bewitching. Sure, there were some rookie mistakes. Yes, he needed to improve the defensive side of his game, but those flaws would eventually be ironed out because there was no rivaling the impact he had offensively.

Not to mention, he had a bit of a fiery attitude. It was infectious. His energy and drive wore off on not just his teammates, but the fans too. He was the epitome of instant success story before Gritty broke the instant success story mold.

Then came his sophomore campaign and things weren’t quite as rosy. Sophomore slumps suck, but most athletes go through them. Gostisbehere’s was compounded with injuries, including a core muscle injury that required offseason surgery after his inconsistent sequel to his hit movie the season before.

And although a lot of his setbacks were injury-related, Gostitsbehere also didn’t take kindly to being a healthy scratch at one point as Hakstol tried to send a message to his young defenseman.

The message initially worked, as Gostisbehere came off that scratch and played well for a stint, but that’s when the injuries started to nag. Gostisbehere, being the gamer that he is, didn’t want to let the injuries get in the way of him playing, so he gutted his way through them, all the while being coached up by Hakstol and former assistant coach Gord Murphy, who was in charge of the defense before he too was fired last November.

Ghost limped through the rest of the season and after surgery insisted he was going to be back better than ever.

And he was. He came into training camp last season feeling fit and ready to have a resurgence. He was the first interview I conducted last year after starting writing for Crossing Broad and he told me during the 2017-18 training camp that the season was going to be different.

“I’m just going to go out there and play my game,” he told me. “I’m a guy who needs to create and be aggressive and try and be productive for my team. I won’t worry about all the other things that make you think to much out there. I’m just going to do what I do best and take it from there.”

And he did what he did best – finishing with 65 points, fourth-most among defensemen in the NHL, and second-best in the Eastern Conference.

And while it was a wildly successful season for Gostisbehere on the score sheet, there was a little more brewing beneath the surface.

The coaches were frustrated with Gostisbehere’s unwillingness to conform to what they wanted for more than just snippets of time. In turn, Gostisbehere was growing more and more frustrated with the coaches for really harping on him. After all, here was a guy who was producing at an elite level for the team and playing better than every other defenseman on the team not named Ivan Provorov and yet he was taking more internal criticism than most.

It’s understandable that Ghost would feel that way.

But, communication wasn’t always the greatest strong suit for the former coaching staff. And by communication, I mean the way in which a message was delivered. Sure, the coaches could bark out orders, but often, context was lacking.

Murphy was especially difficult to deal with for the Flyers defensemen. And once the 2018-19 season started off so poorly and Murphy was fired for along with Hextall for being a mole for the former G.M., there was a sigh of relief among the defensive corps, especially those on the younger side of things.

2. A second chance with new coaches and a new G.M.

In came Rick Wilson as an assistant coach to replace Murphy, a defensive whisperer of sorts, Wilson had been retired and came out of retirement to fix the Flyers defensive woes. The Flyers really wanted to get their top, young defensemen right. Provorov had been terrible for the first two months of the season. Travis Sanheim couldn’t take that next step and his inconsistencies were starting to show. And Gostisbehere needed to get back to being the force he was the season prior.

Since Wilson’s arrival and subsequently Gordon replacing Hakstol, Provorov and Sanheim have had that renaissance. Take yesterday’s game against Detroit out of the equation (Provorov had two bad turnovers that directly led to two Detroit goals and Sanheim found himself out of position on another of Detroit’s tallies) and those two former first round picks have been excellent for the better part of two months.

Since being paired together, they are logging huge minutes, playing against the opposition’s top players and doing a fine job of limiting chances.

However Gostisbehere was still in a funk. He wasn’t generating enough shots on goal. He wasn’t scoring. He wasn’t setting up enough teammates. And without that aspect of his game – where he can be incredibly productive – he was becoming less valuable.

That’s because his defensive game, now in his fourth season in the league, is still lacking as it was when he burst on the scene in 2015-16.

And it’s not just how he plays defensive hockey. The Flyers are actually OK with him just being an average player without the puck if he’s producing at his elite level with it.

However, it’s been his decision-making with the puck or around the puck that has left the Flyers scratching their heads.

Knowing Ghost is one of those players who doesn’t like to be barked at but rather talked to about perceived problems, Gordon has taken a different approach with him.

It’s actually something Gordon has learned about speaking to today’s generation in general. He talks about this at great length on the next edition of our Snow the Goalie podcast, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

In brief, Gordon has learned that today’s generation of player doesn’t just want to know what to do and how to do it, but also wants to know why he’s being asked to do something a certain way.

Gordon finds that without the why, getting the message across or having a strategy applied is a lot harder.

So, Gordon has taken to sitting down with players for lengthy conversations about their game and explaining to them what the expectation is, how it’s going to be reached and why it is what it is.

Gordon had the conversation recently with Gostisbehere, but before we get to that, for the sake of chronology, let’s go here next:

3. Rumblings

The first time I heard about Gostisbehere and not being on the same page as his coaches was on Black Friday. This was a few days before Hextall and Murphy were fired.

I was told by multiple team sources that there was internal concern about where Gostisbehere’s game was at this point in his career and that Gostisbehere (and others) were tuning out the coaches who were trying to get him to improve.

It was in that next week or so where I was reporting a lot of the inside stuff about the Flyers regime as it was being guided by Hextall and was being fed more information about the next GM and the players.

Once Chuck Fletcher took over as GM, I was told there was going to be an evaluation period and everyone was going to be under the microscope. Players. Coaches. Everyone.

During that evaluation period, I was told further that Gostisbehere wasn’t checking off all the boxes that Fletcher needed to see.

His play was too inconsistent. Some of the unexpected offensive struggles were still there and the play in his own end was getting more and more shoddy.

That’s when I was told by someone in the organization, “Don’t be surprised if he’s not part of Chuck’s long-term plan here.”

What do you do with that information? It isn’t specific enough to say he’s definitely being shopped for the trade deadline, but it’s also worth speculating that since the Flyers have depth at defense and goaltending that as they try to move forward to find players to improve their scoring, they could look to trade from those areas of surplus.

So, it became worth speculating on social media and on the Press Row Show and Snow the Goalie. Is Gostisbehere a candidate to be moved? Yeah. Maybe so. It might not be at the deadline. It might be in the offseason. But how does a reliable source of information – one of the same people who told me about Hextall and Hakstol’s firing – tell me that Ghost may not be part of the long-term plan here and then you see he’s signed for four more years at a very palatable $4.5 million cap hit and take that information and NOT assume he’s a trade candidate?

It’s certainly fair speculation.

Follow that up with a Fletcher press availability last week in which he found a way to praise the play of Provorov, Sanheim, Radko Gudas, Andrew MacDonald and Robert Hagg and conveniently forgot the one other defenseman on the team who is playing.

So, I put it out there publicly.

Since then, there has been a lot of talk about Ghost’s future. Many published stories writings or conversations have indicated that it would be silly to move on from him or that it wasn’t even worth discussing. Then Saturday happened.

4. Is there a disconnect?

Here’s a partial transcript of what Ghost had to say following the Flyers crazy 6-5 win against Detroit Saturday, a game in which he scored a goal, snapping an 18-game drought, and then was part of his team’s third period collapse in which they blew a four-goal lead only to survive and win in overtime on a goal by Travis Konecny.

Q: Snapping the goal drought, how much more confidence did you have with the puck on your stick?

“It was good. It was huge. Especially getting it early. I felt good out there… I think the best defense is a good offense. For us to be able to control the puck all the time, it really helps.”

Q: Has confidence been affecting you?

“Not really. I think it’s opportunity. I think being put in the right situations really helps for me.Obviously I can pick up my game a bunch, take care of pucks and be the player I’m supposed to be. I felt like I did that.”

Q: You were the No. 1 topic on Flyers twitter this week. There were think pieces that were pro/con. It’s only human to know when things are being said or things are being written. Do you use that as some kind of extrinsic motivation to continue to try to fuel the fire?

“I really don’t care what anyone says. I know what kind of player I am. I’m going to go out there and play my game. It’s not an easy game to play – the way I play. I’m an offensive guy and I need to be put in the right offensive situations. I got that tonight and I think it really showed.“

The emphasis in his answers is mine and is being used to identify what could be a philosophical difference between Gostisbehere and his coaches.

Ghost thinks he needs to be put in better offensive situations to flourish. This from a guy who plays defense. And also he’s hinting that prior to Saturday he wasn’t being put in those situations.

He played a season low 11:24 against Minnesota Tuesday. Some of that was because the Flyers were shorthanded five times and Ghost doesn’t kill penalties, but even with that, he should be more than 11:24. His season low before that was 13:47 in Montreal and that was a game he got hurt and missed time. Aside from that, he’s had five games this season with between 15 and 18 minutes and 48 games with 18 minutes or more.

So don’t be fooled by that penalty kill excuse – the coaches were sending a message to Gostisbehere.

That’s further evidenced by Gordon saying he had talked to Ghost Friday about what he needs to do better. He explained on our podcast about what he does with players in one-on-one sessions to talk about their game. He dove into specifics about his conversation with Ghost after Saturday’s game, and it sure doesn’t sound like Gordon and Gostisbehere are of the same mindset:

Here’s Gordon:

Q. What have you been saying or doing with Shayne to get him playing more like he did today or to get his confidence back up?

“I think he’s been good once the puck has left our zone. He got into the attack and made plays. But what we talked about [Friday] is getting better on the breakout – making better plays, better reads and not passing off his troubles to someone else when he can possibly do more. It’s one of those things where it just doesn’t happen for you offensively from the offensive blue line in. It doesn’t just start from the neutral zone on an attack. It starts from our goal line and from our net. He’s got to do more to help himself. He actually did that today. There were a few breakouts where I was pleased to see how he went about it and where it took us.”

Q. He said he considers himself an offensive player and needs to be put in advantageous offensive situations. Is that something going forward that schematically or systematically you are going to look to do to maximize his talent in that end, or was it just the way the game broke today?

“To get into more offensive situations you have to play less defense. A lot of that defense he was having to play – not all of it, but some of it – had to do with his decisions and how he was going back for pucks and breaking out. So, when you make that less complicated and you do more to help yourself, you’re going to give yourself more opportunities to go on the attack. I thought he did that today.”

Q. What did he do to make it better for himself and not pass of his problems to others?

“If you go back to the puck and you don’t want it or you don’t want to be the guy making the play,  you’re not going to do the work to hustle back and get it. You’re not going to do the work to shield the puck. Do things that are deceptive – make the forechecker think you are doing one thing when you do another – if you are not going to do that work that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, you’re going to make it easy for the forecheckers. So, you have a team that’s coming with two guys on the forecheck and you’ve got time to go back and get the puck and you just throw the puck to your partner that has somebody breathing right sown his back and he can’t make a play but you had an opportunity to make a play – it’s those situations that he can be better at.”

Again, the emphasis is mine. And that last answer is the winner – which is why the whole thing is emphasized. Gordon is basically saying Ghost doesn’t try hard enough to make plays in his own end and often puts his defensive partner in a bad position by passing him the puck when he shouldn’t.

Really, all three of Gordon’s answers are pretty damning to Gostisbehere. You wanted to know why the Flyers are frustrated with him? Here’s a good chunk of it publicly, from the coach and not being whispered through me.

So, that’s why I’m going to be watching Ghost specifically in today’s game more than anything else. I want to see if this public message hits home. I want to see if Ghost gets it, or if he still falls into the same old habits that have frustrated the organization.

And if he does the latter, then that’s a real world indication of why the Flyers would consider moving on from him, as I was told a while ago, and no complex statistical analysis can say otherwise.

For more Flyers coverage, be sure to check out The Press Row Show pregame and intermission shows before and during home games via Facebook Live on the Crossing Broad Facebook page and Periscope via Anthony and Russ’ Twitter accounts. Also, listen to our Flyers podcast Snow the Goalie ([iTunes] [Google Play] [Stitcher] [RSS]), leave a 5 star review, and follow us on Twitter:@AntSanPhilly @JoyOnBroad

The post Why the Flyers Might be Ready to Give up the Ghost appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Why the Flyers Might be Ready to Give up the Ghost published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[megan0013]

hunger games

clato, peeta/katniss, general - 522 words - adventure, romance

the idea was for panem’s power grids to fail, leading to a social experiment conducted by snow. basically, hunger games but everyone is trying to work together instead of killing each other. probably.

Seventy-four years after the Great War and the fall of District 13, the power grids fail. It takes twelve hours for the backup generators to lurch back to life in the Capitol and another forty-two before the power to the outlaying districts is restored on the most basic levels. The generators hold steady until the best and brightest of District 5’s engineers are able to isolate the problem and provide a temporary solution. The power comes back, but it’s too late.

The Peacekeepers in 11, unable to call for reinforcements, are overrun by rioters within hours. Thousands of people in District 3, completely reliant on technology, are locked in their homes and vehicles and businesses for days without running water or proper food. Coal miners in District 12 become trapped in the inky darkness of underground tunnels and halted elevators. The dam in 7 gives way and the resulting flood waters decimate whole towns. Even in District 2, where The Blackout is mostly an inconvenience not a death sentence, masonry equipment backfires and Peacekeepers are attacked by looters.

The initial damage report is staggering and President Snow himself has a hard time wrapping his brain around the havoc reaped in less than 72 hours of darkness. Days later he receives word the power grid is beyond repair and it will possibly take a decade to rebuild in its entirety (at least, without the aid of District 13’s power reserves). Engineers estimate they have two years before pockets of power will begin to fail. After that, the whole grid could collapse without warning and the generators, they tell him, are only built to last a week or so at most.

But President Snow doesn’t panic. He immediately pulls workers from all over Panem to begin construction on a newer, sturdier grid and then begins working with researchers to determine how they can avoid another societal breakdown should the grid fail again. In the weeks following he becomes discouraged with the data he’s presented and realizes there’s no way around it – if technology fails, society crumbles. He then retreats to his office to ponder this newfound quandary and when he finally emerges two days later, he has a plan.

If he can’t fix society, he’ll create a new one.

He calls together a small team of sociologists, anthropologists, engineers, consultants and historians to help him determine the parameters of his experiment. They first determine where the experiment will take place (a large arena twenty miles in diameter), how they will collect data (thousands of hidden cameras), and who will participate (twenty-four unsuspecting, yet strategically chosen, teenagers, ages 12 to 18, from the twelve districts). With the overall structure of the experiment in place, Seneca Crane is brought in to hammer out the specifics and the plan is put into action six short weeks after the initial power outage.

If the power grids are rebuilt in time, the idea will be deemed one of the most intriguing and significant social experiments to be conducted in hundreds of years. But if the power grids fail completely, civilization will be annihilated and Snow’s experiment will become reality.

[blackpjensen]

Steps To Prepare For The Next Winter

The old expression “hope for the best, and prepare for the worst” only partially applies to snow and ice management. In the summer and fall months, and in some cases before the snow stops flying from the previous season, snow management professionals are preparing for everything. They’re preparing for the good (a great snow year with lots of business) and the bad (the truck that goes down, the employees that don’t show up, etc.), and every conceivable situation in between.

Ippolito Snow Services serves the Boston metro area as a snow-only business. “Everyone thinks I’m sitting around in the summer, but I’m not! We’re working hard every day to get ready for the season,” says owner Frankie Ippolito. That process begins when the previous season winds down. The first order of business is to get all equipment back to the company’s shop from the various commercial sites it was operated at and go through everything, both in terms of preventative maintenance as well as fixing anything that might need repairs.

“That leads us into a work stream of what equipment we’re going to keep and what we’re going to divest — what’s seen its better days,” explains Ippolito. “We’re also doing prep work to the equipment, so that when we pull it out in November it doesn’t need a lot of work.”

He says he’s found it helpful to work through all of the equipment right after a season ends, while everything (what works, what needs fixing, etc.) is fresh in the minds of the operators who have been using it. “Realistically, does it happen for every piece of equipment? No. But for the newer stuff, and the things that you want to keep newer, I think it’s important because you’ve got all of your operators there and everyone loves to tell you what doesn’t work, because they want you to buy new equipment!”

At DMC Commercial Snow Management in Philadelphia, owner David McWeeney says mechanics have the time in the summer to breathe a little bit and permanently fix equipment that may have received temporary repairs during the busy season. “And during the summer we like to run the trucks and equipment to make sure it’s not just sitting idle,” he explains. “When you’re dealing with salt, if you don’t look at equipment often, it may freeze up on you and you’ll discover in September that everything is rusted.”

Gearing up

In some cases, new equipment is needed for the coming season. Early in the off-season, McWeeney touches base with the local truck dealers he works with about what his needs for the coming season might be. “Then, over the summer, we focus on exactly what the needs are and try to take ownership around September on any new equipment, just so there’s enough time for it to be outfitted and the advertising decals can be added so that everything is ready to go for October and November,” he explains.

Ippolito makes it a point to attend the Snow and Ice Management Association (SIMA) annual conference in late June in order to keep up on industry trends, and to have a chance to check out new equipment displayed by manufacturers. “We talk to the vendors and see what’s new and what’s coming — and then we come back and put a plan together based on our renewals and the state of our current equipment,” says Ippolito. “For example, we might need one more truck depending on how much business we pick up, or maybe we’ve been having too many problems with our power brooms so we’re going to switch to a new vendor, and we’ll schedule them to come out and show us their equipment.”

At Steel City Landscape in Pittsburgh, president Mark Purcell has to oversee preparations for snow season while the landscape season is still going strong. “We start dealing with snow equipment and ordering salt in mid-September,” he says. “That’s when we start gearing up.” Especially with landscape work still going on, and some of the trucks and equipment still in use, it can take a couple of months to get everything ready for winter. “We try to have everything ready by the beginning of November,” says Purcell.

Sales strategies

When building a customer portfolio for the coming season, Purcell says it makes sense to begin by focusing on existing clients. “We try to renew larger contracts during the summer, and we send out other contracts for renewal in August,” he explains.

Time is also spent to analyze the profitability of each account the prior year in order to correctly set pricing, Purcell says. And the priority, when possible, is to renew contracts for multiple years. Sometimes a little personal attention goes a long way. “You want the client to have a face with a name,” he explains. It might be as simple as personally delivering a bottle of wine at the end of the season to help build relationships, Purcell says.

Another tip is to try to capitalize on any early sales opportunities. “Right after the season is over, we get a lot of calls from customers looking for bids because they were unhappy with their previous provider,” McWeeney says.

In addition to following up with these types of inquiries, “we’re always shopping for new clients,” he notes. “We’re active on social media, keeping up with that in order to capture people who are looking for bids.”

In some cases, that means visiting individual sites and meeting with potential clients; in other cases, the information can be prepared electronically. “If it’s just a simple site, where there’s a parking lot and a sidewalk, everything might be able to be done using the internet and Google Maps. If it’s something like a hospital that’s more involved, they will want to point out where the snow needs to go, where it can’t go, high-priority areas, high-risk areas, etc.,” he explains. From this information, he can sit down and prepare bids; this happens mostly in September, October and November, says McWeeney. “That’s our busiest time … At that point, it’s getting colder out and everyone is saying: ‘We need to start looking for a provider.'”

During the summer, Ippolito Snow Services goes down to a skeleton crew, with employees able to take a little time off. But for Ippolito, the summer is a busy time. The company has a booth at a local trade show and he spends the time there making contacts. “We try to generate some early-bird commercial leads,” he explains. In addition to leads from the show, Ippolito really begins to target new business in August. “We’ll ramp up our advertising efforts on Yelp and the Better Business Bureau and really focus during August and September to cast the net to see what is out there,” he says.

McWeeney says one key part of preparing for snow season is recognizing that there’s such a thing as too many customers, and the sales process needs to be curtailed at a certain point.

“We only have so many trucks, and we can only do so much work in a short amount of time,” he emphasizes. With longer lead times, like landing a big new account in May, it may be possible to add crews and equipment, but when clients call in November, with snow on i ts way, it can be too late. “It all comes down to timing,” he says.

Staffing up

As challenging as sales and equipment management is, the next step, says Ippolito, “is where things get more difficult: starting to think ahead about getting seasonal help.” As challenging as it is to deal with equipment and sales and marketing, labor issues are the most daunting, he’s found. “One of the challenges of the snow business is that you don’t need these employees year-round. So it really helps to have a large contingent of folks who come back each year.” To help ensure that this is the case, Ippolito Snow Services has built relationships with those working in alternate-season industries, like commercial fishermen, people working in car washes, roofers, etc., who typically don’t work in the winter.

He says it takes some luck (“being in the right place at the right time”) and a lot of early legwork to find these people and sign them up. “But you can’t start too early,” he cautions. “If you start in August, I’ve learned, by the time November comes around, they’ve either gotten another seasonal job, or it just doesn’t seem to work out. So you need to find a balance — Sept. 15 is about the time we put our feelers out.”

As a contingency, Ippolito has found success the last two years in fostering a relationship with a temp agency. “So if I need to pull the emergency rip cord, and we need shovelers or feet on the street — not drivers — we have someone to go to,” he explains. “I’ve found that if you make that connection in the summer and invite [the temp agency] to your shop, versus calling them the night before a snowstorm, they’re more likely to hook you up.”

Steel City Landscape uses the H-2B program for 22 employees during the landscape season, but that program is designed to be temporary rather than year-round, so the company needs to find employees for its winter snow work. “That’s the biggest challenge,” stresses Purcell. In any given year, about half of the crew is completely new, so there’s a lot of recruiting to do. He says Craigslist ads have proven as successful as anything else he’s tried for this.

McWeeney says that while DMC Commercial Snow Management has a good network of employees who are in opposite industries, such as roofing or concrete, there’s always more recruiting to be done. And because some employees will be new, and the same driver may not work on the same site from one winter to the next, DMC Commercial Snow Management brings employees in around October to talk about the season ahead. “We give them site maps of all the properties, they go out to the properties to walk them and get an idea of speed bumps, curbs, drains, where the snow has to go and what the site looks like, so that their first visit isn’t when everything is snow-covered,” explains McWeeney.

Creating contingencies

As the season draws closer, McWeeney is busy making contingency plans in the event that something goes wrong. “You need to know what the steps are to split a route, or add a route, or add a property, for example,” McWeeney advises. One way he’s found to gain flexibility is through the use of six or seven supervisor trucks, which are fully outfitted with plows and spreaders. “Their main objective during the season is just to go around and check on sites, but they can also lend a hand during a storm; if a truck goes down they can take over the route,” he explains. “You have to do as much planning as you can when you can, because once the season starts, it’s pretty much like a chicken running around with its head cut off…. Everything needs to be working and up and running and you have to have plans in place.”

This is the phase that Ippolito calls “enablement and operational planning.” For him, it includes setting up routes, figuring out how many employees and teams are needed at particular sites, creating a materials list and ordering supplies, etc. It also involves training operators on the equipment they’ll be using. Ippolito has a background in human resources and says training is particularly challenging in the snow management industry, simply because employees are typically hired to start just before the snow starts. “For those that are hired earlier, we like to have an orientation,” he says, since it’s a chance to talk about their assignment and safety. Then, for those who will be leading crews, it’s an on-site visit to talk about particular locations, answer questions, take “before” photos, and so on.

Ippolito has found a few ways to build in contingencies in the event of equipment problems or shortages during the season. For example, when he adds new equipment, he tries to purchase the same standardized equipment (Fisher-mount plows, for example), and keeps an extra or two in the shop, so that items can be quickly swapped out in the event of a mechanical problem.

He also builds relationships during the off-season with mobile vendors that can handle things like hydraulic hose replacement on-site, if needed. “You shake their hand in the summer to make sure you don’t go to the bottom of the list during a snowstorm. We really use the summer to forge some good relationships,” explains Ippolito.

He plans for the worst by establishing an account with a major equipment rental chain. “So, if in the middle of a storm something goes wrong and I need a Bobcat, my crews can just sign and go. It’s expensive, but it helps make sure that you can deliver if all things go wrong.”

Basically, prepare for everything.

The post Steps To Prepare For The Next Winter appeared first on Turf.

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[buycoursework-us-uk-blog]

Ideal equality and Reality of Life

'The more(prenominal)(prenominal) Perfect sum of m sensationy is a language by press Obama which he talked intimately how Americans could ca-ca unitedly as one regardless of their pass differences.This was to cooperate and minify the gap amongst the rich and poor, speci every(prenominal)y the African Americans who were seen as an inferior motion as comp atomic number 18d to the exsanguine Americans an make it one of his agendas if elected as the President of the U.S. Mr. Obama made this deliverance by to a fault giving an example of his life story, where he was born, brought up, attained his fosterage and also the variant lot he lived with (in terms of their races and religion), and also makes it clear to critics virtu eithery his relationship with clergyman Jeremiah Wright; the detractors had asked if Obama supported Rev. Wrights political views. Had Obama considered the exalteds remarks get or contentious? empy true Wright is Obamas former pastor, and h e officiated at breathe in and Michelles wedlock ceremony, as head as their childrens baptism. He emphasise a fix against racism as he has lived in different continents in the world, and he still the power of all races works together to make a better place.\nIn President Obamas 2008 speech A much Perfect unification he refers to the telephone circuit between the elevated of equality as put frontward in the lands open docu handsts and reality of life in this country. opposite instances in which he uses comp ar and logical argument include the references to elevated Wright and his forbidding-and-blue nan, the snow- discolour and murky fussiness and his wife and his origin.\nReverend Wright expressed views that were against sensed injustice and had the potential drop to create gain ground constituent among the races, along with criticizing the greatness and approximateness of the U.S. His statements, according to Obamas speech, were divisive, in that it was the season Americans came together and unite irrespective of their races and creed, working together to skeletal system the country and catch its development. Obamas white nan delight ind and brought up Obama despite the event that he was a sick American; she was a truster of white racism. His grandmother was a black racist ...a cleaning lady who once confessed her devotion of black men who passed by her on the street, and who has uttered racial or honourable stereotypes that made me cringe..., though she sacrificed a batch to raise Obama. Obama compared Rev. Wright ...met more than twenty years ago is a man who introduced me to Christianity life, a man who r to me about obligations to love one other; ..care for the sick and bringing up up the poor..., despite his short flood tides, to his white grandmother , regarding him as small-arm of his family just desire his white grandmother, he says ...these people are split of me. And they are a part of America, this c ountry that I love.... Obama shows the need for all Americans to be truehearted to heir nation and also shows that severally and every American has a obligation in ensuring that the American dream is achieved.\n filthy temper was at heart the blacks, among whom it became a husbandry to dislike the whites collectable to the past events that utilize to happen to the African Americans. The blacks were discriminated against since they were not allowed to aver property and heart unions like the guard force. They were not given loans to advance their businesses and it was a tough labour for blacks to get meaning(prenominal) wealth to at least lift other coming generations. ...A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and defeat that came from not existence able to declare oneself for ones family, contributed to the erosion of black families- a problem that welfare policies for legion(predicate) years whitethorn assimilate worsened...\nThe white Am ericans also had vexation, oddly the working and mettle manakin Americans. When they hear that an African American got an employment or vacancy in a well-grounded college, or when they became aware, in a disfavor manner, of the crime patterns in urban neighborhoods, they unquestionable acrimony over time. In the same way anger by African Americans did not pay positive results, resentment of whites resulted to distraction in addressing the core challenges in the middledle class. Obama wherefore understands that when both the white and black people come together and put aside their anger and work together to move beyond the senior racial wounds, the U.S pull up stakes move a mile in terms of addressing ethnicity and its problems. ...Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments flurry attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze...\nMr. Obama compares government in the ancient measure and the current time, obser ve that he wants to rigid a good example for the complete Americans. He portrays how politics in the mid 20th ampere-second were based on racism, religious beliefs, and the division of Americans based on socioeconomic and ethnic conflicts.'

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/latest-trump-wants-tell-davos-elite-how-great-us/73912/

The Latest: Trump wants to tell Davos elite how great US is

DAVOS, Switzerland/January 24, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —The Latest on the World Economic Forum in Davos (all times local):

2 a.m.

President Donald Trump says he’s going to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “to tell the world how great America is and is doing.”

“Our economy is now booming and with all I am doing, will only get better…Our country is finally WINNING again!” the president adds in a tweet before departing the White House for the summit.

The annual gathering convening many of the world’s business and political elites in the Swiss Alps is a surprising destination for Trump, who ran for office promoting an “America First” agenda.

___

8:50 p.m.

One global leader is skipping Davos this year.

The U.N. says Secretary-General Antonio Guterres decided not to go to the World Economic Forum’s annual global gabfest in the Swiss ski resort this year because “there was a scheduling issue.”

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters at U.N. headquarters on Wednesday that Guterres will be leaving Thursday for the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

He said “often we get criticized for going to Davos, and we get criticized for not going to Davos.”

Dujarric said sometimes doing business at the Swiss ski resort is “a little complicated.”

But he said it’s an important place for the United Nations to be, especially to interact with the private sector, and that’s why the U.N. will be represented by General Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak and the heads of several U.N. agencies.

___

7:35 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for acting in “a multilateral way” to better fight against extremism around the world.

In an implicit reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy toward North Korea and Iran, Macron said “the fight against criminal organizations shouldn’t be a justification leading to the fragmentation of our responses.”

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he called for “acting in a multilateral way” to put pressure on countries such as North Korea and Iran “without leading to the fracturing of the region.”

He also said a multilateral political and diplomatic approach will help achieve peace, especially in the Middle East and in Africa’s Sahel region.

He said “we’ve got not only to win the war against terrorism but we’ve got to create conditions for durable peace.”

___

7:15 p.m.

David Cameron, the former British prime minister who called and lost the referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union, says Brexit is a “mistake, not a disaster.”

In unguarded comments to Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal that was captured in-house at the World Economic Forum, Cameron conceded that Brexit has turned out “less badly” than feared but that “it’s still going to be difficult.”

Cameron called the June 2016 referendum in hopes of finally quelling questions over Britain’s membership of the EU for a generation. Instead, he lost, with 52 percent in favor of leaving to 48 percent for staying. Cameron announced his resignation on the day after the vote.

Since the referendum, Britain’s economy has slowed down but has not sunk into recession as many economic forecasters, such as the International Monetary Fund and Britain’s Treasury itself, had been predicting.

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7:10 p.m.

Greece’s prime minister says he’s hoping to lift a veto on Macedonia’s membership of NATO and integration with the European Union, by resolving a longstanding name dispute between the two Balkan neighbors.

Alexis Tsipras held talks with Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev for nearly three hours on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. It was the first meeting between leaders of the two countries in more than seven years.

Greece wants its neighbor to change or modify its name, arguing that it implies a claim to the territory and ancient heritage of its own province of Macedonia.

The two leaders said they would start implementing a series of confidence building measures, and Zaev promised to rename Alexander the Great international airport in the capital Skopje.

___

7:00 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for greater European and international cooperation to make internet companies pay taxes in countries where they earn profits.

Macron said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that high tech and internet giants “don’t pay taxes” in France when “startups do.”

He added: “It is an unfair system, that is obvious.”

Macron stressed that innovative technologies are likely going to lead to the destruction of “millions of jobs” across the world.

Speaking in front of CEOs of the world’s biggest companies, he asked: “If those who destroy the jobs don’t help — as to finance the re-training of people— how am I going to explain this to the working and middle classes?”

Macron called on the European Union to find a “framework for tax cooperation” this year.

___

6:25 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron says the European Union needs to reform itself this year to be able to compete with big powers like China and the United States.

Macron said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that “more ambitious” EU countries must be able to move toward more European integration, even if other European countries don’t want to join in.

He said: “The less ambitious should not block the more ambitious in the room.”

He added that countries sharing the euro currency must be able to agree on a “much stronger” and “much fair” system. He said EU countries need to coordinate their tax policies “because otherwise talents will disappear.”

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6:05 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron says France will set up a 10 billion euro ($12.4 billion) fund to finance innovation and research.

Macron said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he wants to make innovation the “centerpiece” of his economic policy.

He said the fund will focus on disruptive innovation.

Macron also promoted his tax cuts for businesses and says France’s labor rules need to “be much more adapted to business environment” to make the country more competitive.

Macron ironized on the presence of U.S. President Donald Trump at Davos this year. Referring to the huge amount of snow, he said it “could be hard to believe in global warming … Fortunately you didn’t invite somebody skeptical with global warming this year.”

___

5:40 p.m.

Setting the stage for President Donald Trump’s visit to the World Economic Forum, U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao says Davos “should feel very flattered” that he’s coming.

She also had sharp words Wednesday for any possible opponents during Trump’s much-anticipated speech in two days: “Those that don’t want to listen, you can — they can — leave.”

Amid questions about Trump’s nationalist streak, Chao insisted “it’s not as though America is going to withdraw” from its role in the world, and alleged that the United States was a “key player” in ensuring peace and security in the world.

“And yet, America bears a disproportionate amount of the cost. In fact, we pay for everybody else.”

___

5:10 p.m.

Israel’s prime minister has urged the German chancellor to support altering the Iran nuclear deal.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Angela Merkel met Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. A statement from Netanyahu’s office says he told Merkel that “the only existing option at the moment is to put in real and not cosmetic changes” to the deal that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, “which would otherwise be assured by the agreement as it stands.”

The statement says Merkel told Netanyahu she understands Israel’s concerns over the agreement but “doesn’t necessarily agree with the way we want to deal with it.”

Netanyahu vehemently opposes the deal signed between Iran and world powers, including Germany, meant to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon the deal this spring unless it is fixed to his liking.

___

4:50 p.m.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not expect to discuss Jerusalem’s status as his nation’s capital with U.S. President Donald Trump when they meet Thursday, as the issue has “already been resolved.”

Last month, Trump recognized the city as Israel’s capital, infuriating the Palestinians, who seek the Israeli-annexed eastern sector of the city as a future capital of their own. They accused the U.S. of siding with Israel and said Washington can no longer serve as a mediator.

The move also prompted condemnation around the world — an international consensus has long held that the city’s status should be decided through negotiations.

Netanyahu also told The Associated Press at the World Economic Forum that he looks to achieve “progress, security, prosperity and peace” in his meeting with Trump.

The White House said Trump is looking to reiterate the U.S.’s “strong commitment to Israel and efforts to reduce Iran’s influence in the Middle East, and ways to achieve lasting peace.”

___

3:15 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says right-wing populism in Europe is a “poison” that is driven by unresolved problems.

In Germany, the nationalist, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party won seats in parliament for the first time in September, and similar populist parties have also grown strong in France, Netherlands and elsewhere.

Merkel said Wednesday that she hoped support would not rise further for such parties, and that her government is trying to get right-wing populism “under control, but it is a poison.”

She said some Germans were attracted to the right first during the Greek financial crisis when Germany was paying a large share of the bailouts to Athens, and then again in 2015 during the flood of migrants into Europe.

___

3:00 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that with Britain’s decision to leave the European Union the remaining countries in the bloc need to speak with one voice on the world stage.

She said Wednesday that the EU’s remaining 27 member states need one voice on foreign policy “if we Europeans want to be taken seriously.”

She added the so-called Brexit decision has invigorated the EU, and that only as a bloc can it tackle big challenges like that posed by China’s growing influence.

She said, however, that Europe “regrets” the British decision to leave and is looking forward to keeping close ties.

She says “we are available for any form of partnership.”

She reiterated that access to the bloc’s common market is tied to freedom of movement. “We can’t make any compromises there,” she said.

___

2:50 p.m.

Spain’s King Felipe VI says the recent Catalan push for independence was an attack on the country’s democratic system and should serve as a lesson for democracies around the world on the need to preserve the rule of law and national sovereignty.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the king said Wednesday that what happened in Catalonia was “an attempt to undermine the basic rules of our democratic system.”

Spain experienced its worst political crisis in a decade late last year, when the Catalan parliament declared independence. Spain fired the regional government, dissolved Catalonia’s parliament and called regional elections in December.

___

2:45 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is lobbying for multilateral solutions to global problems, telling leaders in Davos that there is too much “national egoism” at the moment.

Merkel said Wednesday that the meeting’s motto of “creating a shared future in a fractured world” was “exactly right” for 2018.

She says “we believe that isolationism won’t take us forward. We believe that we must cooperate, that protectionism is not the correct answer.”

On climate change, for example, she says efforts are going on “sadly without the United States” after Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

___

2:25 p.m.

Like countless others this winter, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has fallen victim to a bug, and as a result he won’t be attending this year’s World Economic Forum.

EU Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said in Brussels that the head of the bloc’s executive arm “has a stomach flu that will not allow him to travel to Davos.”

Juncker was due to be one of the main speakers on Thursday, ahead of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Delegates were looking forward to hearing their respective assessments of Brexit.

Britain is due to leave the EU in March 2019 and is about to begin thorny trade discussions with the bloc. Juncker’s Commission plays a key role in the discussions.

___

2:15 p.m.

Italy’s prime minister says he understands U.S. President Donald Trump‘s “America First” mindset. But he insists it shouldn’t come at the expense of free trade.

Paolo Gentiloni told reporters Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: “I consider legitimate for each country to say, ‘My country first’. I could say ‘Italy first,’ why not?”

But, he added, if economic growth is the goal, then that means trade — and protectionism runs counter to that.

He said: “It is legitimate that each and every single one of us thinks of protecting some sectors for their own markets, but these choices across all sectors can never translate into protectionism.”

Gentiloni said he believed the improving global economy stems from free trade, international treaties and the “free-market union formula we have in Europe.”

___

12:00 p.m.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross thinks Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used his speech at the World Economic Forum to put pressure on the U.S. in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In an address to the forum Tuesday, Trudeau said his country and the 10 remaining members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership had revised their trade deal in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. He said he is “working very hard” to convince U.S. President Donald Trump about the merits of NAFTA.

Ross said Wednesday that Trudeau’s speech was designed “to put a little pressure on the U.S. in the NAFTA talks.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted the Trump administration believes in “bilateral trading agreements” but that it wants to make sure “U.S. opportunities are equal to other people’s opportunities in the U.S.”

___

10:45 a.m.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has brushed off concerns about a tough reception from globalist critics at the elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He said Wednesday that “we don’t have to worry about this crowd.”

Mnuchin spoke in the wake of scattered protests and concerns that Trump’s “America First” message could clash with the internationalist throngs in Davos.

President Donald Trump is coming with an unusually large delegation to this year’s Davos event. Mnuchin said it was “very important” for the U.S. to communicate with its counterparts.

Mnuchin, flanked by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at a press briefing, said: “This is an important forum. There are world leaders here from all over the world, there are important ministers from all over the world, there are important CEOs and private investors.”

“Our objective is to be here to interact with important counterparts.”

___

10:15 a.m.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has conceded that China could slap retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products following President Donald Trump’s decision this week to impose tariffs on imported solar-energy components and large washing machines.

At a press conference at the World Economic Forum, Ross said Wednesday that there’s “always potential for retribution and retaliation and that’s up to the Chinese to decide.”

Ross is part of one of the biggest U.S. delegations to ever come to the WEF, the highlight of which will be Trump’s speech on Friday. Many participants at the forum are concerned about Trump’s “America First” program and whether that augurs a new era of protectionism.

Ross also said trade wars are “fought every single day” and that every day, someone is trying to violate rules and “take advantage” of things.

___

9:45 a.m.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says his country is “absolutely” committed to free and fair trade, two days after President Donald Trump signed off on new tariffs on imported solar-energy components and large washing machines.

At a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mnuchin said Wednesday that strong U.S. growth was good for the world economy and that there is no inconsistency with Trump’s “America First” agenda and his belief in working with others on trade.

Mnuchin also said he’s not “particularly concerned” by reports China is preparing to wind down its purchases of U.S. Treasuries, in part because of the U.S.’s stance on free trade.

___

6 a.m.

It’s day two at the World Economic Forum and there’ll be no escaping Europe.

The leaders of France and Germany, President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are set to headline the roll-call of leaders Wednesday, two days before President Donald Trump is due to give his own speech in the heavily snow-covered Swiss town of Davos.

Europe’s economic revival is one of the main reasons why the global economy is powering ahead and both Macron — who will make his first appearance at the WEF since being elected president — and Merkel will trumpet how the region has turned the corner after years of crisis.

King Felipe VI of Spain is also due to address delegates and anything he says about the restive region of Catalonia is likely to be of interest.

___

by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

____

[anitacarpenterbn]

The dangers of Arizona's highways, what can we do about it?

While traveling on Interstate 17 for a landscaping job, one of Hugh Pressman’s trailer axles broke after hitting a pothole on the freeway. Pressman, the owner of Kaibab Landscaping, commutes into Flagstaff from Munds Park and dispatches members of his team throughout the region for projects. Lately, Pressman said, he fears for his employees’ safety when traveling to job sites because of rough conditions on the interstates.  “The road conditions are dire,” Pressman said of interstates 40 and 17. “Those roads are extremely dangerous and covered in potholes.” CONDITIONS Deferred maintenance on freeways in northern Arizona has contributed to rough conditions on some of the most heavily used infrastructure, said Mark Woodson, the owner of Woodson Engineering. Regular maintenance can keep roads functioning longer and help prevent more costly projects when roads deteriorate too much, he said. “We’ve gone beyond that point,” Woodson said. “We already have to spend more on maintenance than we would if the roads had been maintained regularly.”  The Arizona Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over both interstates as well as some roads within the city, must “prioritize maintenance and construction projects because there is only so much funding available at one time,” ADOT spokesman Ryan Harding said in an email. The biggest problem today is the financing mechanism for roads. The engineering solution is the easy part. We know how to fix it and we know how to maintain it, but we are not given the money to do it. But, the cost is the State’s problem.  The fact is that potholes and other road hazards have presented a danger on the highways.  Delay is not acceptable. There are safety issues from just plain hitting a pothole, and between Flagstaff and Williams, people drive in the left hand lane instead of the right lane and makes passing less safe. Woodson says “I’ve seen trailers flip and truckers repairing tires on the side.” Woodson served as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which issues a report card for infrastructure nationwide and at the state level. The most recent report card for Arizona was issued in 2015, and rated roads throughout the state at a “D plus” level.  Motor vehicle crashes cost Arizona $4 billion per year, $833 for each resident, in medical costs, lost productivity, travel delays, workplace costs, insurance costs and legal costs.  The report also states that roadway conditions contribute to about one-third of traffic fatalities. There were 849 traffic fatalities in 2013 in Arizona. A total of 4,068 people died on Arizona’s highways from 2009 through 2013. A FLAGSTAFF PROBLEM “I-17 and I-40 are critical for the health and well-being of our city,” Flagstaff Mayor Coral Evans said. “The bulk of rural Arizona depends on goods, services and people travelling along the I-17 and I-40 corridors.”  The city council hosted the ADOT board over the summer to discuss issues for the Flagstaff area, and Evans said the city, and other cities that depend on the freeways, to have people at the capital when the budget is being crafted to advocate for more funding. The city does not have jurisdiction over ADOT-controlled freeways, but Copley said the city considers ADOT a “good partner and collaborator.” Copley said the freeze-thaw cycles of the Flagstaff area create more road problems than in areas where it does not freeze as often. “As you’re experiencing a change in altitude, you will see a distinct difference in the road conditions,” Copley said. Potholes on the freeways can grow exponentially within a few days, Copley said, especially when water freezes inside overnight and thaws during the day. At the most recent meeting with the department’s board, Copley said he and the city council wanted to focus on the Fourth Street bridges, which need to be widened and lengthened. The city is funding part of the improvements to the bridge. But Copley said he would like to see more capital improvements from ADOT in the Flagstaff area, and said he and his staff will “continue to bring local concerns” before department representatives and leadership. The department’s 2018 through 2022 5-year plan, which is still in the review period, does not include capital improvements solely in Coconino County, but does include widening I-17 between Stoneman Lake to Rocky Park road, which is mostly in Yavapai County but extends into Coconino. However, maintenance for existing infrastructure is not listed in the plan. FUNDING ADOT does not break down funding allocations by county, and instead uses districts specific to the department. Flagstaff is part of the Northcentral district, which includes most of Coconino County and parts of Yavapai, Mohave and Navajo counties. For the last six years, the Northcentral district has received the second highest allotment for maintenance, second to the Central district that includes the greater Phoenix area. In the 2017 fiscal year, the department allotted $12.8 million to maintenance in the Northcentral district, which Harding said includes “roadway maintenance… repairs to fencing and guardrail, as well as snow removal, emergency responses to crashes or natural disasters such as highway flooding, vehicle maintenance and even worker training costs.” The American Society of Civil Engineers, Woodson’s organization, advocates for a higher tax on gasoline to fund road repair and maintenance, he said. Evans said she would like the state to consider increasing the gas tax, or look at a transportation tax that could fund projects and maintenance. “If you aren’t allocating funds for transportation solutions the roads are only going to get worse,” she said. “As long as we are afraid to talk about raising the gas tax, the repairs are not going to get done.” WHAT IS THE LAW ON THIS SUBJECT? Generally, if there are issues that the State is not addressing, and an accident occurs, the State may be liable for the dangerous roadway. These are difficult and complicated cases, because the State has the benefit of some legal immunities that no one else gets. Not enough money to fix—is that really a defense to one of these?  The truth is, it may be. If you or a loved one is a victim of a dangerous roadway case, call us.  We have been handling these cases for many years and have had great success against the State and the Highway Department. The dangers of Arizona's highways, what can we do about it? published first on http://lawpallp.tumblr.com

[sherristockman]

Who Makes It Rain? Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola The artificial manipulation of the weather, known as weather modification, seems like something out of a science fiction novel, but more than 50 countries worldwide already participate in one type of weather modification known as cloud seeding.1 The U.S. Government Accountability Office predicts that in just the next decade, 40 U.S. states will experience some type of water shortage, which stems, in part, from droughts.2 The prospect of using cloud seeding to increase rainfall — its most popular usage — is an enticing one, but it comes along with a fair share of controversy as well. In the U.S., about $15 million is spent on cloud-seeding projects annually, which pales in comparison to the $100 million a year spent in China. Still, in the U.S., cloud seeding has grown by one-third in the last 10 years.3 It’s used in North Dakota, for instance, not only to promote rain but also to inhibit hail (and thereby reduce hail damage to crops). Cloud seeding is also sometimes used to clear fog. In California, meanwhile, a mountain-top “cloud seeder” has been used to enhance rain and snow in efforts to fight drought. As its popularity grows, however, some are asking whether the practice is cost effective and whether it could end up having some negative effects on the weather, the latter of which is why some farmers in North Dakota are asking for the area’s cloud-seeding programs to end. How Does Cloud Seeding Work? There are a number of different ways that cloud seeding can work, but typically dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) pellets or silver iodide are applied to certain clouds to modify their output. Seeding agents may be applied to clouds from the ground but, most often, aircraft are used to apply the materials to the clouds. This occurs either by releasing the seeding agent below the cloud into its updrafts or by dropping the seeds directly into the upper regions of the clouds. According to NDCMP — the North Dakota Cloud Modification Project:4 “In North Dakota, all seeding is done by aircraft. Base-seeding aircraft release seeding agent into updrafts from below the developing storm using a combination of wing-mounted ice nucleus generators and burn-in-place flares. Cloud-top seeding aircraft use ejectable flares and dry ice released directly into the supercooled cloud.” There are several considerations as to which method is used. Direct injection works quicker, with results occurring almost immediately. However, NDCMP notes that this is costlier because it requires higher-performance aircraft capable of flying at higher altitudes and directly in-cloud. Updraft treatment, which is done at the cloud base, is an easier and less expensive method, but the results may take up to 30 minutes. As for who’s in charge of deciding when to seed clouds, in North Dakota the program falls under the direction of the radar meteorologist. “In addition to weather conditions, a number of factors play a part in the decision-making process including safety criteria, radar information, pilot observations and aircraft instrument data,” according to NDCMP.5 North Dakota Reports Up to 10 Percent Increase in Rainfall Due to Cloud Seeding Determining whether cloud seeding is effective poses a challenge, in part because many areas using the technology want all of the seedable clouds treated in order to reap the most potential benefits. In Wyoming, however, the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program (WWMPP) conducted a randomized cloud-seeding program, which found the seeding increased snowfall by 5 percent to 15 percent under ideal seeding conditions.6 In North Dakota, meanwhile, NDCMP reports that cloud seeding produces an estimated 5 percent to 10 percent additional rainfall annually in the project area while reducing crop hail losses by 45 percent. As for costs, they say it only costs 16 cents per acre to enhance rain and suppress hail.7 The environmental effects are also reported as minimal, with NDCMP stating, “Cloud seeding agents, including silver iodide and dry ice, meet all National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations and are safe for the environment.” They further note that no environmentally harmful effects have been detected from cloud seeding with silver iodide, explaining:8 “The silver concentration in rainwater from a seeded storm is well below the acceptable environmental concentration of 50 micrograms per liter as set by the U.S. Public Health Service. Also, the concentration of iodine in iodized salt used for human consumption is far above the concentration found in rainwater from seeded clouds. Because silver iodide is such an effective ice nucleus, it is used in very small quantities. Based on the average rate of silver iodide use in North Dakota each summer, it would take nearly 500 years for 1 gram of silver iodide (1/28th of an ounce) to be evenly spread out over an area equal to a full-sized basketball court!” North Dakota Farmers Ask for End to Weather Modification Not everyone believes cloud seeding is a win-win proposition. In Ward County, North Dakota, farmers have asked the county commission to halt cloud-seeding programs for the remainder of 2017 amidst a drought, with some opponents suggesting the practice may be making dry conditions worse. The commission voted 4-0 to ask the Atmospheric Resource Board to suspend operations. Spokesperson Roger Neshem told the commission, "We are not asking for a radical thing here. We are asking to join the other 47 counties in the state who do not try to modify their weather.” In The Dickinson Press, he noted:9 "I was asking, 'What are we getting for spending this money?' The only fact in this whole situation is hail insurance rates in Ward County are higher than area counties … I think there are some people … who think they may be doing some accomplishing of the negative sort for the weather patterns here." Did Cloud Seeding Cause the Rapid City Flood of 1972? June 9, 1972, is a date etched in the memories of many Rapid City, South Dakota, residents. During a period of just six hours, 10 inches of rain fell on the city, adding up to 14 inches overnight. Area streams overflowed and a dam at Canyon Lake failed, leading to massive flooding in the city that killed 238 people and injured 3,000 more.10 Before the flood, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology was conducting a cloud-seeding research study in the area, leading some to suggest that cloud seeding could have been responsible for the catastrophic flooding. An investigation prompted by the governor reportedly came to the conclusion that the seeding project was not responsible, however. Darin Langerud, director of the North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board, told The Green Sheet Farm Forum:11 “There were some people that wanted to blame cloud seeding on that event … There was a study that was done at the governor’s request after that event to look into all the details, and the conclusion was that the seeding was not the cause of the flood that occurred in Rapid City in 1972, but it did have some negative impact on interest in cloud seeding.” California Resorts to Cloud Seeding to Fight Against Drought California is among the U.S. states that have turned to cloud seeding to try to enhance rainfall in the drought-stricken area. In 2002, and again in 2016, Los Angeles and other municipalities used “flare trees” installed on the hilltops to send silver iodide into the clouds. The problem, as is the case in other areas utilizing the technology, is that its effectiveness is dependent on getting the conditions just right. “Part of the trick,” Scientific American reported, “is finding the right geographical and meteorological situation as well as getting the silver iodide into the right spot in a cloud — while not seeding monster storms or inducing rainfall over places susceptible to dangerous flooding, landslides or other ill effects.”12 The news outlet even quoted William Cotton, an atmospheric scientist and Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University, who noted that cloud seeding may be more of a political move than anything. “In terms of water agencies,” he said, “a lot of it is just getting out there and doing something.” Another less-than-stellar vote of confidence came from Don Griffith, president of North American Weather Consultants, who has been seeding clouds for more than 50 years. When asked if California’s cloud-seeding efforts worked, he told Scientific American, “That's a very difficult question to answer … We think so, we hope so, but there's no way you can demonstrate that.”13 In fact, there is some misconception that cloud seeding can end droughts. In reality, this isn’t possible because droughts are characterized by a lack of clouds that produce precipitation, and such clouds are necessary for cloud seeding opportunities. During droughts, there are therefore few opportunities for successful cloud seeding. As Roelof Bruintjes, an atmospheric scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, said to Scientific American, “Nobody can create a cloud.”14 That being said, there is an attitude that doing something is better than doing nothing, but whether that is the case or not remains to be seen. There is also a chance that cloud seeding can be used to help increase rainfall before and after a drought to “temper the reduction of rainfall during the drought period,” according to NDCMP.15 It is not a quick fix that can suddenly make rain fall from the sky in the middle of a long drought, however. "Cloud seeding is more a long-term water resource management tool,” Bruintjes said.16 What Are the Risks and Ethical Issues of Cloud Seeding? Modifying the weather should not come lightly and neither should cloud seeding. Though such techniques have been in use for more than 70 years, including during the Vietnam War, there are still many questions about whether the practice is beneficial or results in unintended consequences. The latter, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) noted, cannot be ruled out:17 “Unintended consequences of cloud seeding, such as changes in precipitation or other environmental impacts downwind of a target area have not been clearly demonstrated, but neither can they be ruled out. In addition, cloud seeding materials may not be always successfully targeted and may cause their intended effects in an area different than the desired target area. This brings us to the ethical concern that activities conducted for the benefit of some may have an undesirable impact on others. At times unintended effects may cross political boundaries. Weather modification programs should be designed to minimize negative impacts. International cooperation may be needed in some regions.” In addition, weather modification doesn’t end with cloud seeding. Programs have been attempted to reduce the intensity and/or direction of tornadoes and tropical storms, for instance, while other methods have been used aside from cloud seeding to enhance rainfall. “Much less is known about the effects of these other techniques, and their scientific basis is even further from being demonstrated, either statistically or physically, than it is for cloud seeding,” AMS reported. In order to minimize risks and ethical issues from what is an inherently unpredictable science, they recommended well-designed and well-supported research programs that “improve the predictability of the undisturbed weather and the magnitude of weather modification effects.” In short, in the spirt of the precautionary principle, perhaps we should learn more about the immediate and long-term effects of weather modification techniques before unleashing them onto the planet.

[flauntpage]

Why the Flyers Might be Ready to Give up the Ghost

There are a few story lines many fans will be watching for when the Flyers and Red Wings reconvene tonight at 6 p.m. in Detroit:

Can this white hot Flyers team (12-2-1 in their last 15 games) continue an unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented run toward a playoff berth?

Will Carter Hart bounce back from a mediocre performance against the first team to play against him for a third time and playing in back-to-back games for the first time, no less? (I am going out on a limb and assuming coach Scott Gordon won’t be putting an important game in the playoff race on the shoulders of Mike McKenna, who will likely be waived Monday. McKenna will still back up Hart as newly acquired goalie Cam Talbot isn’t available today).

Will there be retribution on Detroit’s Anthony Mantha for his cross-check to Claude Giroux’s head while Giroux was on his knees against the boards in the third period of yesterday’s game? (There was no penalty called, although there should have been).

These are all interesting plots to follow as tonight’s game progresses. But it’s not the one I’m going to be watching the most closely.

Yes, they all have varying degrees of interest for me, and yes, they are all good water cooler topics for Monday – for those of you who don’t get the President’s Day holiday.

But there is one more that I want to follow even closer. And actually, it’s a plot line that, until post game yesterday, has simply gone unnoticed by many observers of the team.

It involves Shayne Gostisbehere.

It’s a story that has been brewing for a while now. One that goes back to before Dave Hakstol was fired. To before Ron Hextall was fired. To before there was any talk of considering moving on from the uber-talented but sometimes disconnected defenseman.

Let’s put together a quick timeline after the jump:

1. Gostisbehere’s relationship with the former coaches

This story has to start here. Ghost had two really good offensive seasons in his first three with the Flyers. His rookie campaign was one that energized an entire city. He burst onto the scene with a style of play from a defenseman that has never before been seen in Philadelphia. He was always on the go. Great speed, a wicked slap shot, a willingness to gamble to generate offense, a flair for the dramatic – it was a combination of skills and chutzpah that no other Flyers defenseman has ever had.

No, we weren’t elevating him to the level of a Mark Howe or even an Eric Desjardins, but at the same time, what Ghost was doing was bewitching. Sure, there were some rookie mistakes. Yes, he needed to improve the defensive side of his game, but those flaws would eventually be ironed out because there was no rivaling the impact he had offensively.

Not to mention, he had a bit of a fiery attitude. It was infectious. His energy and drive wore off on not just his teammates, but the fans too. He was the epitome of instant success story before Gritty broke the instant success story mold.

Then came his sophomore campaign and things weren’t quite as rosy. Sophomore slumps suck, but most athletes go through them. Gostisbehere’s was compounded with injuries, including a core muscle injury that required offseason surgery after his inconsistent sequel to his hit movie the season before.

And although a lot of his setbacks were injury-related, Gostitsbehere also didn’t take kindly to being a healthy scratch at one point as Hakstol tried to send a message to his young defenseman.

The message initially worked, as Gostisbehere came off that scratch and played well for a stint, but that’s when the injuries started to nag. Gostisbehere, being the gamer that he is, didn’t want to let the injuries get in the way of him playing, so he gutted his way through them, all the while being coached up by Hakstol and former assistant coach Gord Murphy, who was in charge of the defense before he too was fired last November.

Ghost limped through the rest of the season and after surgery insisted he was going to be back better than ever.

And he was. He came into training camp last season feeling fit and ready to have a resurgence. He was the first interview I conducted last year after starting writing for Crossing Broad and he told me during the 2017-18 training camp that the season was going to be different.

“I’m just going to go out there and play my game,” he told me. “I’m a guy who needs to create and be aggressive and try and be productive for my team. I won’t worry about all the other things that make you think to much out there. I’m just going to do what I do best and take it from there.”

And he did what he did best – finishing with 65 points, fourth-most among defensemen in the NHL, and second-best in the Eastern Conference.

And while it was a wildly successful season for Gostisbehere on the score sheet, there was a little more brewing beneath the surface.

The coaches were frustrated with Gostisbehere’s unwillingness to conform to what they wanted for more than just snippets of time. In turn, Gostisbehere was growing more and more frustrated with the coaches for really harping on him. After all, here was a guy who was producing at an elite level for the team and playing better than every other defenseman on the team not named Ivan Provorov and yet he was taking more internal criticism than most.

It’s understandable that Ghost would feel that way.

But, communication wasn’t always the greatest strong suit for the former coaching staff. And by communication, I mean the way in which a message was delivered. Sure, the coaches could bark out orders, but often, context was lacking.

Murphy was especially difficult to deal with for the Flyers defensemen. And once the 2018-19 season started off so poorly and Murphy was fired for along with Hextall for being a mole for the former G.M., there was a sigh of relief among the defensive corps, especially those on the younger side of things.

2. A second chance with new coaches and a new G.M.

In came Rick Wilson as an assistant coach to replace Murphy, a defensive whisperer of sorts, Wilson had been retired and came out of retirement to fix the Flyers defensive woes. The Flyers really wanted to get their top, young defensemen right. Provorov had been terrible for the first two months of the season. Travis Sanheim couldn’t take that next step and his inconsistencies were starting to show. And Gostisbehere needed to get back to being the force he was the season prior.

Since Wilson’s arrival and subsequently Gordon replacing Hakstol, Provorov and Sanheim have had that renaissance. Take yesterday’s game against Detroit out of the equation (Provorov had two bad turnovers that directly led to two Detroit goals and Sanheim found himself out of position on another of Detroit’s tallies) and those two former first round picks have been excellent for the better part of two months.

Since being paired together, they are logging huge minutes, playing against the opposition’s top players and doing a fine job of limiting chances.

However Gostisbehere was still in a funk. He wasn’t generating enough shots on goal. He wasn’t scoring. He wasn’t setting up enough teammates. And without that aspect of his game – where he can be incredibly productive – he was becoming less valuable.

That’s because his defensive game, now in his fourth season in the league, is still lacking as it was when he burst on the scene in 2015-16.

And it’s not just how he plays defensive hockey. The Flyers are actually OK with him just being an average player without the puck if he’s producing at his elite level with it.

However, it’s been his decision-making with the puck or around the puck that has left the Flyers scratching their heads.

Knowing Ghost is one of those players who doesn’t like to be barked at but rather talked to about perceived problems, Gordon has taken a different approach with him.

It’s actually something Gordon has learned about speaking to today’s generation in general. He talks about this at great length on the next edition of our Snow the Goalie podcast, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

In brief, Gordon has learned that today’s generation of player doesn’t just want to know what to do and how to do it, but also wants to know why he’s being asked to do something a certain way.

Gordon finds that without the why, getting the message across or having a strategy applied is a lot harder.

So, Gordon has taken to sitting down with players for lengthy conversations about their game and explaining to them what the expectation is, how it’s going to be reached and why it is what it is.

Gordon had the conversation recently with Gostisbehere, but before we get to that, for the sake of chronology, let’s go here next:

3. Rumblings

The first time I heard about Gostisbehere and not being on the same page as his coaches was on Black Friday. This was a few days before Hextall and Murphy were fired.

I was told by multiple team sources that there was internal concern about where Gostisbehere’s game was at this point in his career and that Gostisbehere (and others) were tuning out the coaches who were trying to get him to improve.

It was in that next week or so where I was reporting a lot of the inside stuff about the Flyers regime as it was being guided by Hextall and was being fed more information about the next GM and the players.

Once Chuck Fletcher took over as GM, I was told there was going to be an evaluation period and everyone was going to be under the microscope. Players. Coaches. Everyone.

During that evaluation period, I was told further that Gostisbehere wasn’t checking off all the boxes that Fletcher needed to see.

His play was too inconsistent. Some of the unexpected offensive struggles were still there and the play in his own end was getting more and more shoddy.

That’s when I was told by someone in the organization, “Don’t be surprised if he’s not part of Chuck’s long-term plan here.”

What do you do with that information? It isn’t specific enough to say he’s definitely being shopped for the trade deadline, but it’s also worth speculating that since the Flyers have depth at defense and goaltending that as they try to move forward to find players to improve their scoring, they could look to trade from those areas of surplus.

So, it became worth speculating on social media and on the Press Row Show and Snow the Goalie. Is Gostisbehere a candidate to be moved? Yeah. Maybe so. It might not be at the deadline. It might be in the offseason. But how does a reliable source of information – one of the same people who told me about Hextall and Hakstol’s firing – tell me that Ghost may not be part of the long-term plan here and then you see he’s signed for four more years at a very palatable $4.5 million cap hit and take that information and NOT assume he’s a trade candidate?

It’s certainly fair speculation.

Follow that up with a Fletcher press availability last week in which he found a way to praise the play of Provorov, Sanheim, Radko Gudas, Andrew MacDonald and Robert Hagg and conveniently forgot the one other defenseman on the team who is playing.

So, I put it out there publicly.

Since then, there has been a lot of talk about Ghost’s future. Many published stories writings or conversations have indicated that it would be silly to move on from him or that it wasn’t even worth discussing. Then Saturday happened.

4. Is there a disconnect?

Here’s a partial transcript of what Ghost had to say following the Flyers crazy 6-5 win against Detroit Saturday, a game in which he scored a goal, snapping an 18-game drought, and then was part of his team’s third period collapse in which they blew a four-goal lead only to survive and win in overtime on a goal by Travis Konecny.

Q: Snapping the goal drought, how much more confidence did you have with the puck on your stick?

“It was good. It was huge. Especially getting it early. I felt good out there… I think the best defense is a good offense. For us to be able to control the puck all the time, it really helps.”

Q: Has confidence been affecting you?

“Not really. I think it’s opportunity. I think being put in the right situations really helps for me.Obviously I can pick up my game a bunch, take care of pucks and be the player I’m supposed to be. I felt like I did that.”

Q: You were the No. 1 topic on Flyers twitter this week. There were think pieces that were pro/con. It’s only human to know when things are being said or things are being written. Do you use that as some kind of extrinsic motivation to continue to try to fuel the fire?

“I really don’t care what anyone says. I know what kind of player I am. I’m going to go out there and play my game. It’s not an easy game to play – the way I play. I’m an offensive guy and I need to be put in the right offensive situations. I got that tonight and I think it really showed.“

The emphasis in his answers is mine and is being used to identify what could be a philosophical difference between Gostisbehere and his coaches.

Ghost thinks he needs to be put in better offensive situations to flourish. This from a guy who plays defense. And also he’s hinting that prior to Saturday he wasn’t being put in those situations.

He played a season low 11:24 against Minnesota Tuesday. Some of that was because the Flyers were shorthanded five times and Ghost doesn’t kill penalties, but even with that, he should be more than 11:24. His season low before that was 13:47 in Montreal and that was a game he got hurt and missed time. Aside from that, he’s had five games this season with between 15 and 18 minutes and 48 games with 18 minutes or more.

So don’t be fooled by that penalty kill excuse – the coaches were sending a message to Gostisbehere.

That’s further evidenced by Gordon saying he had talked to Ghost Friday about what he needs to do better. He explained on our podcast about what he does with players in one-on-one sessions to talk about their game. He dove into specifics about his conversation with Ghost after Saturday’s game, and it sure doesn’t sound like Gordon and Gostisbehere are of the same mindset:

Here’s Gordon:

Q. What have you been saying or doing with Shayne to get him playing more like he did today or to get his confidence back up?

“I think he’s been good once the puck has left our zone. He got into the attack and made plays. But what we talked about [Friday] is getting better on the breakout – making better plays, better reads and not passing off his troubles to someone else when he can possibly do more. It’s one of those things where it just doesn’t happen for you offensively from the offensive blue line in. It doesn’t just start from the neutral zone on an attack. It starts from our goal line and from our net. He’s got to do more to help himself. He actually did that today. There were a few breakouts where I was pleased to see how he went about it and where it took us.”

Q. He said he considers himself an offensive player and needs to be put in advantageous offensive situations. Is that something going forward that schematically or systematically you are going to look to do to maximize his talent in that end, or was it just the way the game broke today?

“To get into more offensive situations you have to play less defense. A lot of that defense he was having to play – not all of it, but some of it – had to do with his decisions and how he was going back for pucks and breaking out. So, when you make that less complicated and you do more to help yourself, you’re going to give yourself more opportunities to go on the attack. I thought he did that today.”

Q. What did he do to make it better for himself and not pass of his problems to others?

“If you go back to the puck and you don’t want it or you don’t want to be the guy making the play,  you’re not going to do the work to hustle back and get it. You’re not going to do the work to shield the puck. Do things that are deceptive – make the forechecker think you are doing one thing when you do another – if you are not going to do that work that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, you’re going to make it easy for the forecheckers. So, you have a team that’s coming with two guys on the forecheck and you’ve got time to go back and get the puck and you just throw the puck to your partner that has somebody breathing right sown his back and he can’t make a play but you had an opportunity to make a play – it’s those situations that he can be better at.”

Again, the emphasis is mine. And that last answer is the winner – which is why the whole thing is emphasized. Gordon is basically saying Ghost doesn’t try hard enough to make plays in his own end and often puts his defensive partner in a bad position by passing him the puck when he shouldn’t.

Really, all three of Gordon’s answers are pretty damning to Gostisbehere. You wanted to know why the Flyers are frustrated with him? Here’s a good chunk of it publicly, from the coach and not being whispered through me.

So, that’s why I’m going to be watching Ghost specifically in today’s game more than anything else. I want to see if this public message hits home. I want to see if Ghost gets it, or if he still falls into the same old habits that have frustrated the organization.

And if he does the latter, then that’s a real world indication of why the Flyers would consider moving on from him, as I was told a while ago, and no complex statistical analysis can say otherwise.

For more Flyers coverage, be sure to check out The Press Row Show pregame and intermission shows before and during home games via Facebook Live on the Crossing Broad Facebook page and Periscope via Anthony and Russ’ Twitter accounts. Also, listen to our Flyers podcast Snow the Goalie ([iTunes] [Google Play] [Stitcher] [RSS]), leave a 5 star review, and follow us on Twitter:@AntSanPhilly @JoyOnBroad

The post Why the Flyers Might be Ready to Give up the Ghost appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Why the Flyers Might be Ready to Give up the Ghost published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[itsworn]

A Hot Rodding Hero: The Legacy of Vic Edelbrock Jr.

When 26-year-old Vic Edelbrock Jr. took over aftermarket manufacturer Edelbrock Equipment in 1962 after the untimely death of his father, Vic Sr., many in the performance industry were skeptical Vic had the chops to carry the company forward. Sure, he had worked under his father’s tutelage, graduated from the prestigious University of Southern California in business, and even flew T-33 trainers while in the ROTC, but running a company like Edelbrock—always on the leading edge of performance technology and racing—into the future would take a truly gifted person. Vic’s mother told him if the business started to slide, she would sell Edelbrock to preserve the company and her husband’s legacy.

With many of Vic Sr.’s core group staying on to help maintain the company’s development and manufacturing, Vic Jr. had to organize how the company would move forward. He chose to focus on drag racing and street performance, and that decision, combined with the flood of new engine platforms and the popularity of the small-block Chevy, sent the company on a trajectory that lasted for decades. The Edelbrock company is the lasting legacy of Vic Sr. and Vic Jr.

But there was a time in the early 1970s when it seemed that not only Edelbrock but also the whole performance aftermarket industry might go away. The one-two punches of environmental concerns and gas shortages of the late-1960s and early 1970s put performance on the verge of being outlawed by the federal government. Car manufacturers buckled under pressure from the feds, instituting quick-fix environmental controls on new cars that compromised almost everything. Starting, economy, performance, durability, and dependability flew out the window. Cars were viewed as bad, and muscle cars and performance even worse. This is one reason why the muscle-car era ended. Edelbrock needed a dramatic shift in what it manufactured, who and how it benefitted customers, and how to deal with the state and federal government dictating what they could and couldn’t make.

Here’s how Vic put it: “We looked at what was coming down and decided that instead of ignoring the California Air Resources Board [CARB], we would get to know them. When they mandated the emissions levels, the OEs only had time to lean down carburetors and put a 230-degree thermostat in it. The cars would lurch and surge—they were terrible. We came up with the Streetmaster intake—it had good distribution and eliminated the surge, plus mileage went up. You could bolt it in with the stock carb. We had to do emissions testing, so we installed an emissions lab and CARB accepted our data, and we’d get an EO [Executive Order] number.” (The EO number meant any aftermarket component carrying it was certified for use in all cars with environmental controls in all 50 states.) So this pivot meant aftermarket performance changed from being of value only to racers, to being valuable for economy and the environment, plus it helped the car run better.

But Vic’s concern and drive to help the whole aftermarket went further. Vic was also instrumental, along with HOT ROD’s founder, Robert Petersen, Dean Moon, Roy Richter, Phil Weiand and others, in creating the Specialty Equipment Manufacturing Association, later changed to Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). The industry needed a voice, and there was safety in numbers. Speed and performance was thought to represent a bad element of society in the eyes of bureaucrats and the media. With the formation of SEMA, represented by professionals, it helped change that image into a legitimate group of businessmen catering to a respectable customer base. Beginning in 1971, Vic would become both president and chairman of the organization for two terms.

In the late-1960s, Edelbrock was on the verge of participating in the many forms of evolving motorsports at that time: NHRA Super Stock, which itself evolved into Pro Stock; open wheel racing, including Indy, which was encouraging stock-block engines as a way to lessen costs and attract more teams; NASCAR; off-road racing like SCORE (Short Course Off-Road Events), and road racing’s exciting new Can-Am and Trans-Am series. Edelbrock attracted some of the key figures in these fields like Mickey Thompson, Parnelli Jones, Smokey Yunick, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Sox & Martin, “Dyno” Don Nicholson, and so many others.

Into the 1970s, the company expanded its performance offerings; Edelbrock was no longer an “intake manifold” manufacturer, but instead became a performance powerhouse that offered packages of components to help take the guesswork out of performance upgrades for the enthusiast who wanted to do it himself. From the racing side, Edelbrock was still leading the field by offering components for the exploding segments of racing throughout the world. And the company grew to encompass six manufacturing buildings and an in-house foundry, employing more than 700 people, and offering a product line that numbered in the thousands by the end of the 1980s.

From the company’s perspective, we spoke with Eric Blakely, director of advertising, and Bob “Smitty” Smith, technical sales coordinator, both Edelbrock veterans. Blakely was quick to mention early profit sharing that Vic set up for employees. “This was in the early 1970s, way before this type of company benefit was common,” Blakely says. “But he would put money into your plan even if you didn’t; he was always doing things for his employees like that.” He also personally paid for a yearly scholarship to the Kansas high school his father graduated from in Augusta, Kansas.

He was also known to take criticism personally, to the extent that he’d sometimes call a customer who was experiencing trouble with an Edelbrock product. Vic welcomed racers to come to the El Segundo, California, facility, which reads like a who’s who of racing: Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Benny Parsons, Richard Petty, Larry Torres, Bob Glidden, Herb McCandles, and too many to remember. Says Smitty, “A lot of those racers would come out because it was snowing in the east, and we let them use our dynos and helped them, and Vic loved it.”

Vic’s enthusiasm for racing, fast cars, and continuing to offer the best components available extended to his family, with wife Nancy by his side at many events. Both went to nearly every NHRA Nationals and Daytona 500, including this year. His three girls—Camee, Christi, and Carey—were all involved in sports like horseback riding and jumping competitions, and water skiing. Vic, along with Camee and Christi, were participants in vintage road-racing events. Vic also amassed a healthy collection of historic race cars and boats, which were housed in a separate building not too far from Edelbrock’s corporate headquarters in Torrance, California, called Vic’s Garage. And he was like a kid for personal car projects, which he also used to test and promote Edelbrock products. Brizio Street Rods in South San Francisco built many personal cars, including a reproduction and then the original 1932 highboy roadster his father used to develop all of his early Ford flathead equipment in the 1930s, racing on the dry lakes of California. Vic and Nancy drove many of those hot rods on numerous HOT ROD Power Tours, which Edelbrock supported and obviously enjoyed from a pure participant perspective.

Vic and the Edelbrock family have placed a high priority on “giving back” to the industry and participants in that industry in all forms by creating the Edelbrock Foundation. Their main goal is to bring groups and individuals together to help educate and train youth to continue America’s passion and innovation in automobiles and racing. They also award donations to education groups like the Center for Learning Unlimited, which has a robotics program for middle- and high-school students.

More recently, to keep pace with OE electronic fuel-management like direct injection and more refined ignition systems, Edelbrock developed bolt-in supercharger conversions and upgrade packages, and also sells complete late-model engines with increased horsepower and dependability. Recently, when Edelbrock began to have some problems with the EPA again, Vic took up the challenge once more to educate them on the advantages of performance. Says Blakely, “He told us we did it before and we’ll do it again. He always took these issues with the feds getting into our space as a challenge, and he loved solving problems.” As Vic told HOT ROD just last year, “Edelbrock products have to do what we say they will do. We’ve always been passionate enthusiasts and a lot of our employees are car enthusiasts—it’s our lifestyle. We want to continue that forward and integrate what the next generation of enthusiast wants.”

Vic Sr. and Vic Jr.

The No. 27 1959 aluminum Lister Corvette. Vic was an avid vintage road-race fan, along with his daughters, Camee and Christi, with a stable that included the Smokey Yunick–built 1967 Camaro, a pair of 1966 Mustangs, the former George Follmer Trans Am Mustang, and his No. 614 Z06 Corvette.

In the late-1980s, Vic began racing his No. 614 1963 Z06 Corvette, a former Zora Arkus-Duntov development car for Chevrolet. A veteran of Bonneville and many road courses, it was also used as Chevy’s weapon to go after Shelby’s Cobras in 1962 and 1963.

Offshore boat racing was another of Vic’s pursuits, as seen here in his 38-foot Scarab in the mid-1980s. The team included Camee as driver, Curt Hooker navigating, and Vic as the throttle man.

HOT ROD Magazine founder Robert Petersen was given the Person of the Year award from the SEMA association in 1972, with SEMA President Vic Edelbrock on the right and National Transportation Safety Board Head Doug Thoms on the left. Vic was President of SEMA for two terms beginning in 1971.

Into the 1980s, Edelbrock paired components it tested that produced optimal performance to make it easier for customers to get the most bang for their buck.

Longtime Edelbrock engineer Bobby Meeks with a fiberglass prototype of the TM-1 Chevy “Tarantula” intake manifold. Going from wooden masters to fiberglass, which could be used for dyno testing, increased Edelbrock’s ability to fine-tune their intakes in the late-1960s.

A young Vic Jr. on the Edelbrock dyno in 1956.

Nancy and Vic receiving an award from the NHRA for their involvement with professional and sportsman drag racing. Until recently, both Nancy and Vic had attended every NHRA Nationals and Daytona 500 events.

C-4B 1962: First single four-barrel, dual-plane intake manifold for the small-block Chevy. Friend Bob Joehnck suggested Vic produce this intake, but he was hesitant since Chevy already offered one. He ultimately chose to do a better one. Says Bill “Smitty” Smith, “This became a home run for us, a real milestone, because prior to that we were making intakes for racing, but this was a street manifold.”

X-C8 1962: Small-block Chevy cross-ram.

C-3B 1969: For small-block Chevys, sold as a package that included a Holley 950 carburetor Holley adapted for Edelbrock for the street. When tested at Irwindale Raceway in the 350ci-equipped HOT ROD 1967 Camaro, it did a 10.82 e.t. at almost 130 mph in the quarter-mile.

Small-block Pro Stock tunnel ram (Chevy shown), favored by both Chevy and Mopar Pro Stock competitors in the early 1970s.

Smokey Yunick SY-1 Smokey Ram two-piece intake manifold from 1974. Conceived by Smokey, Edelbrock testing indicated problems, with Vic agreeing to produce it if Smokey would include his phone number for technical assistance. Buyers ignored the “For Racing Only” warnings, which created headaches for Smokey once the avalanche of calls began.

Chrysler Hemi “Rat Roaster” intake manifold. The rat to be roasted was Chevy’s big-block, known as a rat motor.

Edelbrock’s first component manufactured for an OE, the three-two-barrel “Six Pack” for 440ci Mopars from 1970. Says Edelbrock publicist Eric Blakely, “To be doing a manifold for an OE was a point of pride and accomplishment for Vic. It’s hard to do, they don’t just go to any company—you really have to have your stuff together.”

The 1973 “Streetmaster” for small-block Chevys was developed by Edelbrock for the emissions era.

The post A Hot Rodding Hero: The Legacy of Vic Edelbrock Jr. appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[westernmanews]

BOSTON (STATE HOUSE) – Wanted: A turnaround CEO for a fixer-up transit agency.

At a business breakfast Thursday, Gov. Charlie Baker said Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack will undertake a search to find a long-term general manager of the MBTA, something the agency has lacked for years.

Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve has been serving as the acting general manager since the 2016 departure of Frank DePaola. It has been about five years since the MBTA embarked on a search for a new general manager, hiring Beverly Scott, who left the post two years ago.

“This needs to be a turnaround CEO,” Baker told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Baker said he also hopes the Fiscal and Management Control Board, which oversees the T, will extend its term. After relentless snow and cold devastated Greater Boston’s transit system, lawmakers in 2015 created and empowered the five-member control board appointed by the governor to oversee the MBTA.

In almost weekly meetings, the Fiscal and Management Control Board has put on display the system’s $7 billion maintenance backlog and other structural problems while embarking on controversial moves to privatize aspects of the service, cut extended weekend hours and raise fares.

The 2015 law establishing the control board allowed it to continue in existence until June 30, 2020 upon written recommendation by the board. Otherwise the control board dissolves June 30, 2018. The board’s recommendation to remain in place must be “based upon specific findings that such 2-year period is in the best interest of the public and necessary to achieve operational stability and establish performance metrics for the authority.”

In its year-and-a-half of existence, the control board has prompted protests by hiking fares and outsourcing its cash handling operations. James O’Brien, the president of the Boston Carmen’s Union who was singled out for praise by the governor on Thursday, was among seven union officials arrested in October protesting privatization of cash handling. O’Brien’s union more recently reached a multi-year contract agreement with T.

One major challenge that a new chief of the T will face is building up the agency’s capacity to move capital projects and manage multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments. The T is moving ahead on the Green Line trolley extension into Medford, after cost overruns put that on hold, and the agency in recent years failed to spend all of the capital dollars available to it.

“This needs to be a turnaround CEO, and not a traditional transit general manager,” Baker said. “The new GM needs to have strong business experience in industries that provide direct service to customers and that deliver large-scale capital projects, because the T among other things is a large scale capital operation.”

Shortsleeve, who worked with Baker at General Catalyst, will remain chief administrator, which has more of a focus on the financial and business operations.

DePaola, a former highway administrator who resigned to focus on his health after a cancer diagnosis, stepped in after Scott’s abrupt resignation amid the historic snows of 2015. Scott was hired in 2012 replacing interim General Manager Jonathan Davis, who replaced Rich Davey after Gov. Deval Patrick appointed Davey his transportation secretary.

“I think any organization is going to be benefit from stable leadership and while both Frank DePaola and more recently Brian Shortsleeve have done a great job, we’re at the stage in turning the MBTA around where having a general manager and an extended control board for a period of years we think is really going to allow us to complete the next phase of fixing both the T and its infrastructure,” Pollack told the News Service.

She said she wants the next general manager to stay “at least three years and five would be even better.”

Shortsleeve and MBTA Chief Operations Officer Jeff Gonneville will serve on the search panel, and Pollack told reporters she has begun interviewing search firms.

“We’re going to start the search pretty much immediately,” Pollack said.

In his speech, Baker also touted the improvements in the MBTA’s approach to snow, including snow-clearing equipment, modernized third rail, structured shifts to prevent burnout among employees, and an emergency operation center.

“I can’t believe how much I know about this,” Baker told the audience dining on eggs at the InterContinental Hotel, going on to describe how subway cars’ traction motors will suck in snow from the tracks, shorting them out and disabling trains. The governor said that with new snow-fighting protocols he did not think the T had lost a single traction motor this season.

The need for coordination between city and state during the bitter cold and snow of late January and February of 2015 also helped form a friendship between the Republican governor and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat.

“The mayor and I became best friends as a result of the many conversations we had,” Baker said.

Copyright 2017 State House News Service

[inerginc]

GTM Smart Grid http://ift.tt/2eJlQnQ

Pulling a cohesive narrative out of the DistribuTech conference’s thousands of participants and menagerie of electrical doohickeys is like synopsizing James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Among the cacophany, though, a few trends emerged. The sophistication of software to manage an increasingly decentralized grid continues to grow, as Jeff St. John observed. Meanwhile, utility representatives expressed caution about the dislocations stemming from that decentralization.

"Our main charge is to make sure our customers have reliable power," said James Boston, manager of market intelligence at San Antonio utility CPS Energy, which recently deployed a demonstration microgrid. "Utilities are generally cautious to make sure these things are tested, are proven, before we put customers’ reliability in any type of jeopardy."

A spot of optimism from both utilities and grid edge enthusiasts appeared in the form of microgrids.

In the last few years, the drop in prices for solar photovoltaics and energy storage, the arrival of advanced grid-forming inverters, and the impacts of solar penetration on the flow of electrons through the grid have made microgrids more cost effective and attractive.

“Ten years ago, resiliency was the only reason you would buy a microgrid, because the energy would cost too much to create -- it would never be cheaper than a grid,” said Mark Feasel, vice president of smart grid at Schneider Electric. “Now with PV and CHP with natural gas, in many states you can generate energy cheaper than you can buy it.”

Cheap technology, though, is not sufficient to usher in the age of the microgrid.

“The challenge is on the commercial side,” said Ken Horne, director for smart grid at Navigant, in a panel at DistribuTech. “Not all value streams from these investments are readily monetizable.”

Now, more than ever before, utilities and other energy companies are experimenting with those business models. Many models are emerging, but three distinct concepts stood out at the conference: microgrids to defer transmission and distribution costs, microgrids as a service to a customer, and microgrids developed for both customer and grid-wide benefit. 

Not surprisingly, utilities tend to like microgrids when they can own them, control them and recover their costs through the rate base. If the commercial microgrid-as-service model takes off, though, it could usher in a broad deployment of this technology without asking ratepayers to put their money on the line.

Utility-owned distribution microgrids

San Diego Gas and Electric delivers power to the town of Borrego Springs via a single radial transmission line running through the desert. Lightning strikes and desert flash floods threaten that line, resulting in historically poor reliability, Chief Engineer Thomas Bialek explained at the DistribuTech panel.

The utility needed to maintain or improve reliability for the nearly 2,800 Borrego Springs customers, but the traditional fix, building out a parallel transmission line, was pricey. A microgrid would be three or four times cheaper, Bialek said. So that’s what they did.

The system, paid for by SDG&E, the Department of Energy and other partners, combines diesel generators, large and small batteries and rooftop solar PV.

SDG&E's microgrid kept the desert town of Borrego Springs powered during a flash flood-induced outage. (SDG&E)

The microgrid has already proven itself in the face of adversity. When a flash flood in September 2013 downed transmission poles and lines leading to the town, the microgrid fired up and restored power to 1,056 customers while the grid repairs unfolded. That covered the core city center, so that those residents who didn't have power yet could move to central facilities for shelter from the heat.

In this use case, the microgrid doesn’t challenge or complicate the utility’s role -- it helps achieve the core mission of reliability for all customers, however remote.

“If they were redoing from scratch all the rural electric cooperatives, I doubt they would build all those miles and miles of lines,” Bialek said.

Up in metropolitan Toronto, distribution utility PowerStream had a similar conundrum. It powers a remote town called Penetanguishene well north of Toronto, fed by very long transmission lines under threat from storms and snow.

“When we tried to improve reliability in this town where reliability was historically poor, we thought, ‘We could put out more conventional assets to solve the problem or we could do something more innovative,’” said Shuvo Chowdhury, smart grid project lead at the utility.

They decided to test whether a microgrid really could defer a traditional grid investment. The installation took a year from detailed design to deployment and commissioning, and includes a 500 kilowatt-hour lithiuim-ion battery from Samsung SDI with an advanced microgrid controller and 750 kilovolt-ampere inverter.

The microgrid can island and run the town for 42 minutes, considerably longer than the usual outage of 10 minutes. When an outage is not expected, the battery can earn some revenue by arbitraging from cheap to expensive generation.

“The major play is for resiliency, but most of time you don’t use it for that,” Chowdhury said. “We’ve had a very mild winter, so we haven’t had as many outages. Not that I’m asking for some…”

There is still work to be done, then, to optimize the design of such a system for return on investment. It’s one thing to prove a microgrid is cheaper than wires upgrades, and it’s another to design and operate it in a way that pays for itself most quickly.

Microgrid-as-a-service

A different model is emerging to give customers access to microgrid service while shielding them from risk. This approach adopts the power purchase agreement model from the solar industry to sell microgrids as a service.

Schneider Electric will be supplying one of these microgrids at the public safety headquarters and correctional facility in Montgomery County, Maryland, the company announced Wednesday.

Under this structure, Duke Energy’s renewables arm will own and operate the microgrid. Montgomery County will pay a 25-year PPA for the energy created onsite as well as the secure power for the critical facilities in the event of an outage. Schneider connected the customer with the investor and supplies about half of the equipment that Duke will purchase to construct the setup.

Duke has plenty of experience developing renewable energy and maintaining electrical infrastructure, and a big enough balance sheet to absorb a large up-front investment.

“For the past 10 years, Duke Energy Renewables has been successful selling wind and solar power through power purchase agreements, so we extended that model to the Montgomery County microgrid project, meeting the customer’s need for reliability, security and affordability,” said spokesperson Tammie McGee.

Montgomery County has a triple-A credit rating, but limited expertise in the construction of microgrids, not to mention limited budget for capital investment and maintenance.

Thus, Duke can trust the county to pay incrementally over the next 25 years for resilience, energy cost stability and expanded renewables. The structure avoids the risk of using taxpayer dollars to buy the emerging technology itself.

“Not only are we preparing for outages, but these facilities are in a better condition for day-to-day operations,” said Eric Coffman, Montgomery County chief of energy and sustainability, tuning in virtually to a launch event at the conference.

In this case, the local government is the customer, but ratepayers themselves don’t bear the cost or risk of the installation. Duke owns the assets as a private investor, the county pays for service. It’s easy to see how this model would work for commercial and industrial applications.

It also carries implications for the equitable improvement of the grid.

“If this works out in some commercial arrangement, why should we put that in the rate base and hope the business model works?” said Feasel, Schneider’s smart grid leader. “Because eventually, if it doesn't work, poor grandma in public housing is going to pay more, and that's not fair.”

In the pay-for-service model, he continued, the customer pays the agreed upon amount, the developer makes sure everything works, and if something breaks the suppliers have to replace it. Ratepayers are not on the hook for any of that.

Serve one customer and many

Elsewhere, though, utilities are exploring ways to build out microgrids with partial ratepayer support.

The general model derives from the dual nature of most microgrids as both a local, independent service and a grid-tied resource. In the partially rate-based model, the utility builds a customer-sited microgrid in a place where resilience is in high demand, but uses some of the assets for broader grid services when the customer doesn’t need backup.

The customer pays for its expected use of the facility, and the utility asks its public utilities commission for permission to recover costs from the grid-serving portion of the project.

Arizona Public Service has undertaken two such projects, using diesel generators rather than solar and storage. One is at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, the other is at Aligned Data Center, going up in Phoenix. Data centers place a premium on uninterrupted power, so APS used the microgrid as a way to attract the center to its territory. 

The host customers contribute based on their expected usage of the facility, said Scott Bordenkircher, APS director of transmission and distribution technology innovation and integration. When those facilities don't need backup power, though,the microgrids can serve the broader grid with peaking energy, frequency response, voltage regulation and spinning reserve. The utility is asking for cost recovery based on the stacked values the microgrids provide for ratepayers at large.

"I've got to do these certain things anyways, now I can do them with this, what's that look like from a cost comparison standpoint?" Bordenkircher said of the decision making process. "In fact, it's far cheaper using the microgrid generation than it is through other means."

This is one of those calculations that makes sense in principle but could get tricky when it comes to divvying up the costs in real world situations. The microgrids are up and running, but APS is still waiting to hear back from regulators on the rate case that would reimburse the grid side of the projects.

A rendering depicts the futuristic aerotropolis development Peña Station Next, where Panasonic's new office will host a microgrid (City and County of Denver).

Over in Colorado, utility Xcel Energy has partnered with the city Denver and Panasonic to create a $10.3 million microgrid in Peña Station Next, a “smart city” development under construction near the airport.

Panasonic is anchoring the new development with an office to house the operations center for its nationwide network of utility-scale solar installations. Such a facility needs to run at all times. Meanwhile, Xcel was looking to improve grid reliability in the area and brace for a feeder heading toward 30 percent solar penetration. The company had received permission from the public utility commission to recover costs for testing energy storage on the grid, making the deal even more attractive.

Peter Bronski with Panasonic's marketing and content strategy team described the project as “a microgrid with fuzzy boundaries,” because the components don’t all live within the fence the way one might expect.

The microgrid includes 1.6 megawatts of solar owned and operated by Xcel but installed on a carport at Denver International Airport. Panasonic is footing the bill for 259 kilowatts of solar PV on its own roof and will host the 1 megawatt/ 2 megawatt-hour lithium-ion battery from Younicos. That battery is located in front of the meter, but on Panasonic's side of the islanding switch.

The partnership, then, leverages private land and funding to deploy equipment with the potential to help the broader grid. Panasonic will enjoy an estimated four hours of backup for its critical facilities. The utility gets solar integration, grid peak demand reduction, energy price arbitrage and frequency regulation.

The partners will watch and learn how the batteries work for two years, testing the ability of the battery to stack different jobs in real life. After that study period, Xcel and Panasonic will finalize a more formal agreement for use and payment for the rest of the battery’s life.

It's also possible to do this sort of project without a rate case. CPS used company funds to construct a demonstration microgrid at Fort Sam Houston in Joint Base San Antonio, to operate with analytics funded by a National Renewable Energy Laboratory grant. The company chose a library as the project site, to gain experience with real usage patterns without putting any critical operations on the line just yet.

That approach doesn't constitute a business model per se, but it's a way to develop early microgrids and figure out sustainable business models down the road.

Where next?

Several microgrids have arrived, then, but microgrids as a class are still in a state of arriving. This class of project has entered the grid and started carrying real loads, but the examples discussed here still serve an exploratory purpose, gathering data for a better understanding of how they can work in the future.

Given the diversity of markets and customers, it's reasonable to expect no one model will win out. The sources interviewed for this story agreed that the microgrid market is still in its infancy, and a thriving market for this asset won't arrive for perhaps five or 10 years.

In some cases, regulatory policies will impose constraints, particularly where utilities are barred from owning distribution and generation, and where storage is classified as the latter. The precedent set by the Arizona Corporation Commission in the APS rate case will also be a sign of the viability of the hybrid model for leveraging private and public capital.

It is noteworthy that utilities are not shying away from this type of grid experiment. Utility representatives repeatedly dismissed the idea that a proliferation of microgrids could catalyze a death spiral like the one once expected from distributed solar generation. They're not worried about grid defection from customers who can run their own miniature grids.

Part of that is logistical. For secure, nonstop power, localized generators would run into air permit issues, and solar-plus-storage still requires a big upfront expenditure, said APS's Bordenkircher.

"I don't see [a microgrid] as becoming my 24/7 power source of choice," he said. "It's going to provide a secondary service that I need, not a primary service."

It's cost effective to run a microgrid on grid power most of the time, and island it in an emergency; to achieve full independence drives the costs up fast.

Additionally, microgrids offer utilities a new source of revenue, especially welcome as traditional utility business models face changes in the years ahead.

The skills required to design and operate a microgrid -- electrical engineering, grid balancing and the like -- are already areas where utilities specialize, noted David Chiesa, who watches over S&C Electric Company's microgrid market segment as senior director of business development.

Meanwhile, distributed solar and energy storage are spreading on their own steam and complicating the business of grid operation, as seen on the feeder where Xcel is building the microgrid. Microgrids offer a way to compartmentalize these distributed resources and mitigate their effects on the grid at large, before things get out of hand.

"Why do you think they’re experimenting with it now?" Chiesa said. 

To really enable a utility-driven microgrid market to flourish, microgrid design will need to become more standardized, he added. 

"If you look at microgrids today, they're all perfect little snowflakes," Chiesa said. "That's anathema to fleetwide management... Utilities are going to want their microgrids to look more like a fleet."

Several pathways forward have become clear. Microgrid developers need to log more hours of run time and shave the costs of designing and building. But they've got an essential crowd pleaser on their hands: A product that combines the safety and reliability of traditional grid architecture with the control and flexibility of distributed energy.