#teen teaching assistant did say it's a thing people do for social media

[sapphosewrites]

Teaching creative writing to 8 to 12 year olds this summer, a demographic whose stories include a shocking amount of murder. The use of "unalive" was so egregious I had to tell them, "if you aren't comfortable using the words death, die, and kill, you aren't mature enough to be writing about them yet". Kiddo asked me if that applies to adults as well, and I told them it very much does, so here's a PSA.

If you aren't comfortable using the words death, die, and kill, you aren't mature enough to be writing about them yet.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hey makenzie I have a question, how did you become a sex educator?

I mean, the dummy simple answer is that I just. started educating people about sex.

the less simple answer is a lot longer, but I’ll try to condense it down and keep it reasonably spaced out for readability:

at age 17 I was learning baby’s first feminism, and for some reason or another latched on pretty hard to the realization that American sex education is overwhelmingly inadequate, misogynistic, and exclusionary to anyone who’s not cis and straight (although I’ll be honest and say that at the time I was far from well-educated in issues pertaining to trans identities). I started going out of my way to educate myself where I could, with a lot of help from youtubers like the since-disgraced Laci Green and the still-excellent Dr. Lindsey Doe.

when I was 18, near the start of my second semester of college, I posted some screenshots of a conversation between myself and my younger sister, who was then enduring our high school’s infamously unhelpful sex education and seeking some better information. I was a nobody with no followers but thought people might like to see it, and boy was I right. overnight I had more asks than I had ever thought possible, asking for info on the clit, pubic hair, masturbation, navigating relationships, and more. 

being an 18 year old virgin, I didn’t have wise personal insight to offer an all - or even most - of those questions. but you’d be amazed how far some basic research skills and a little common sense will get you. here’s a diagram to show you exactly where the clitoris is, here’s a Teen Vogue article explaining several different ways to remove your pubes if you want to, no you probably shouldn’t keep masturbating like that if it hurts, dump him, etc.

so a thing I was interested in started to become a thing I was actively advising other people about, and that started to expand into my real life. when I wasn’t on tumblr I was serving on the executive boards of my campus’ LGBTQ student org and a feminist org that I co-founded with a dear friend, and those were both GREAT platforms to start leading presentations about sex ed and sexuality. so I did! and my public speaking skills fucking flourished.

sex ed also crept into my academics, because academia is really about finding a niche you don’t hate and riding it for everything it’s worth. I spent an entire semester doing independent research under my advisor’s supervision identifying sources of sexual stigma in family, media, and education and how that shame perpetuates cyclically across generations.

I also spent an entire summer depressed out of my mind researching the social construction of virginity and how it fails to adequately encompass the experiences of many queer people, and that turned into a lot of thinking which turned into the very first workshop I ever took to a conference - shout out to the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender and Asexual College Conference 2018!

in my final semester of undergrad, my advisor organized for me to shadow an Our Whole Lives class, an amazingly comprehensive, body-friendly, inclusive sex ed program from kids in grade four through six. it was probably the coolest thing I had ever done, and I knew I had to get certified to lead classes myself - which I did, about a year ago! and I taught my first class last fall. 

anyway, now I’ve graduated with a BA in sociology and gender studies, I work part time as a program assistant in my university’s LGBT student services office and part time in a public library, I’ll teach local OWL classes whenever they’re offered and give workshops whenever I’m able (shout out again to MBLGTACC 2019, that was dope!), and of course I’m still sex educating here on bluehell dot com.

I really hope you weren’t asking for a step-by-step guide to becoming a sex educator yourself, because this is pretty much impossible to replicate.

[bipolarinboston]

Questions about the psych ward you’re afraid to ask

I was inpatient at three different hospitals in the Boston area between 2017 and 2018. Newton Wellesley Hospital (NWH) January 2017, McLean June 2018 and Mass General Hospital (MGH) twice September 2017 and November 2018

What about my phone? In January 2017 NWH did not allow cell phones. I went to the ER (at my hospital, MGH) with my mom in crisis. She had my phone, and kept it with her when they decided to admit me and send me to NWH. If you ended up on this unit with your phone they collected it with your valuables and handed them over to security for the duration of your stay. There were two computers in the OT room that we were allowed to use when the room was staffed. (So beware of logging into sites you had two factor authentication set up for new computers)

The other two places allowed phones with restrictions. At MGH the nurses kept our chargers locked in the laundry closet, all together. I still have my medical id sticker on my charger. If I remember correctly you had to surrender your phone at night. At McLean they supplied their own bank of chargers out in the common areas. We needed to be up and out of bed for vitals before we could use our phones.

You’re encouraged to not be on your phone so much, as you’re there for treatment. It’s hard to strike a balance because I did want to stay on social media, but I didn’t want to say anything about being in the hospital. The first stay at NWH was actually helpful for me as a detox. I do use my phone too much and being psychotic and on social media is not a good mix for me.

What do I wear? I wore my clothes in each unit. But each place had different expectations. At MGH it was perfectly acceptable for you to spend the day in your hospital PJs as long as you kept your hygiene. I hated those PJs, they were too warm and ill fitting so I wore my own clothes during the day.

NWH had an expectation that you were dressed in your own clothes. I remember they had a washer and dryer and staff would assist with laundry. What's important to know is that everything you bring in is screened for contraband and unsafe items. You can't wear clothing with drawstrings and that includes shoelaces. A lot of my sweatpants and hoodies had drawstrings. For one pair of sweats I let them cut the drawstring because I really wanted to wear it.

This is one of the reasons why it's helpful to have family or friends have access to where you live so you can get some creature comforts. And when I heard the laundry machine wasn't the cleanest at MGH I just cycled a few days of clothes with mom.

Do they feed you? Yes and it's hospital food. That means at both NWH and MGH I was given a menu to order each day, like any other patient there. There was also a fridge/cabinet area off the common room for snacks and drinks. Instead at McLean Sodexo had a contract to provide food. There was no menu as they brought meals to the dining room. You didn't have a choice in food but if you had your phone and cash you could call for delivery. There were binders of menus by the entryway. But as someone who has to keep an eye out for crohn's food triggers I did not enjoy having less control over my food.

Where do I sleep? The number of patients on the floor is based on the beds they have. At NWH I had a roommate and we had a room big enough for drawers/shelves, chairs, but shared a desk. We had our own bathroom, but had to be let into a common shower by staff. The unit was pretty old and claustrophobic and the plumbing and heating proved that. At McLean it was similar, except there were common floor bathrooms and showers.

MGH had real adjustable hospital beds and bathrooms with showers attached. Staff will still do their 15 minute checks and will knock on your bathroom door.

Checks? Staff must visually count you every 15 minutes. The person who is assigned that role will usually have a clipboard or list to check everyone off. At night it means opening your room’s door and visually spotting that you’re in bed, alive. After the first couple nights you usually can ignore it.

If you are having a hard time and dealing with suicidal ideation, or intrusive thoughts, you should let staff know. They may put you on a 5 minute list, meaning you’ll see them around more often.

What do I do?   You’ll be assigned a care time to work on a treatment plan. Usually a psychiatrist and nurse will meet with you each morning, sometimes there’s more people like a social worker on your team as well. Whatever brought you to the hospital will be worked on, with the goal to stabilize you. That is their priority. In the meantime between rounds, meds, and meals there are groups scheduled. What’s available depends on the unit you’re in. There could be morning and evening check-ins where you just talk about the day as a group. Could be light exercise or yoga groups. Pet therapy and music therapy break up the day but it's all dependent on staffing levels. The pets are handled by volunteers for example when I saw them at MGH.

Back when I was at NWH I remember there were a lot of groups. From right after breakfast until post dinner check out. At MGH there were far fewer. The big difference was MGH’s visitor policy so the evenings were a lot more open. At NWH there was only a certain time in the evening that family and friends could visit during the week. And yes you’re expected to go to groups. Staff keeps track, and notes will go into your file. It will help, if not right now, then later when your care team sees good progress notes in your file. Even if you’re not into it, it’s a way to pass time and stay out of your room.

Weekends are quiet, sometimes to the point of utter boredom. There’s less activity and you will often just see the doctor on call instead of your assigned team. Depending on staff coverage there might be some structured activity, like open art block but not nearly as much as during the week. They emphasize visitor time.

Can I go outside? Depends on how the unit is set up and staffing. McLean is on a campus and I was there in June so I was lucky to go outside. There was a level of privilege - staff needs to know you're stable enough to go out. NWH had a little enclosed outdoor space that staff worked hard to clear ice from. I was so glad to get out. But unfortunately you can't go outside if you stay at MGH. There's not enough staffing or much of a protocol. Besides, the closest outdoor space to Blake 11 is right at the front entrance where cars do drop off.

What are rounds? All three of the hospitals are teaching hospitals meaning they’re affiliated with a medical school. I didn’t just see a psychiatrist. At the bare minimum I also saw a resident, a doctor who is in training and has picked psychiatry as their specialty. I remember a couple days the doctor let the resident interview me. I am pretty relaxed when it comes to teaching hospitals as I’ve only ever gone to MGH. But they have to ask you for permission. They want you to be involved in your treatment plan and give consent. If you're not comfortable having more bodies in the room then necessary you should speak up. And if you talk to your assigned nurse for the shift they will relay a message to the doctor.

What’s a shift? The floor has to be staffed 24 hours. There are different coverage levels for each shift. Night is the lightest for example as everyone is supposed to be asleep or in their rooms and quiet. Day shift is the busiest, with people running various groups as well as rounds happening. I remember NWH had 3 8 hour shift rotation and MGH had 2 12 hour shift rotation. I remember when I first went to MGH I was so confused because everything was different from NWH. They even called their non nursing staff different terms, probably because of the job requirements.

How long do I stay? Everyone’s treatment plan is different. For example someone who arrived after you may leave before you do. Generally your care team will try to figure out what’s going on and a game plan when you meet them for the first time. I’ve stayed about a week, maybe a little more depending on the stay. I stayed longer at NWH, but it was my first admission and I had a psychotic break while on steroids so it was more complicated. And my last stay at MGH was longer because we were doing a major treatment change, and rediagnosis. I woke up on the unit at MGH again and asked for a sleep study, but the attending had looked through my file of all the other admissions and diagnosed me as bipolar. I switched over to lithium which needed to be monitored and increased slowly.

What's next? For me I went to partial after I was discharged. I remembered as a teen when I was diagnosed with Depression I went to partial after being in the hospital. I found it's helpful to ease the transition. You might have only been hospitalized for a few days but it's a completely different routine. It's like going from 0 miles per hour back to 60 very quickly. Partial is a therapy program set up with structured groups during the day but you sleep at home and commute.

Tips

It is easier staying in the hospital when you can have visitors, especially someone who can bring you things. It is easier to have your phone to coordinate visitors.

Unless your psychiatrist and you agree to prearrange an admission, you will most likely be coming from the ER. Two times of the four I was put into an ambulance and sent to another hospital. The other two times I was sent upstairs to MGH’s unit on Blake 11.

Odds are there is no air conditioning. Don't expect any windows that can open either. Sometimes the temperature in the unit really varies, so you might want to wear layers.

You do not need to make friends. It does help to pass the time if you can talk to people, and you may feel less alone. If there's issues with your roommate you can ask staff for help.

Figure out when the meals should be delivered so you're ready. Sometimes they are late or they forget your tray. Try to be nice no matter what. I've never gotten warm food that was too cold for me but I've heard staff offer to nuke it in the microwave.

If you're at a teaching hospital be prepared for students to visit as well. I saw many nursing students at MGH. I would chat then up. It's a change of pace. I remember a medical student was on my care team and gave me psychological testing.

[cocoanovel9]

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[linnlarsnhansn]

Julie Andem interview in Swedish newspaper

Svenska dagbladet - The skam creator about the secrets behind the success

Julie Andem’s teen drama Skam is celebrating success from China to Argentina. Now she’s telling SvD exclusively about the working method that laid the foundation for the world success.

Many describe their first meeting with Skam as a chock. What you thought would be an ordinary Norwegian tv show about a bunch of high schoolers was something different from everything you had seen before.

Maybe it can best be described with a feeling that it was real. Like a documentary filmed with a hidden camera on the young main characters’ school yard and parties, in their bedrooms, text conversations and deepest thoughts.

Before Skam there had been a common truth that tv shows about 16 year olds were not cool, cliche and not believable. So how had the script writer and director Julie Andem succeeded with creating something so real?

The question didn’t get an answer, because Julie Andem didn’t want to speak to the press. It was known the she had done thorough interviews with teenagers in preparation for the show and she seemed like a researcher rather than a typical narcissistic director. Since then Skam has become known all over the world, but Julie Andem still keeps herself quite secret. She has thus far said no to Skavlan and during the four years that has passes since Skam first aired in Norway she has only allowed herself to be interview by a few newspapers, including The New Yorker. When Svenska Dagbladet meets her it’s the first ever interview with Swedish media.

We have set up a meeting at the legendary Hotel Bristol in Oslo. I’m not really satisfied with the meeting point and had imagined that we would sit at a ”cool in an Oslo way” student café. Maybe close to Hartvig Nissen Videregående skole, where the show is set. This looks more like a fancy city hotel - beautiful, but characterasied by its audience. The guests could all be William’s grandparents, you can almost smell the wealth originating from the oil.

But it turns out to be a true Julie Andem spot. She has lived here, and not only a night, but during a long period of time. It was when the triple work with writing the script, directing and finishing cutting the episodes shut down everything that could be called everyday life. With working days from seven in the morning to one at night and also a water leakage in the apartment there was no more reasonable solution that checking in at a hotel.

The script that she partly wrote right here are now released as four books, one for each season. Julie Andem has not yet seen the Swedish version and wonders how Norwegian sociolect can be translated to other languages. But in Sweden we have already taken in the skam slang - the only thing that’s a bit tricky to translate is ”russebussen”.

[cut out passage where the writer talks about the russebuss and the Swedish equivalent]

”When I talk about Skam abroad, for example in South America where the show has become really big, I always get to a point where I have to explain ”russebuss”. It’s absurd to tell that 20-25 students rent or buy a bus, set it up with all the right equipment and drive around in it for a month, drunk. And the Norwegian society allows that, right before exams” Julie Andem notes and can’t help but laugh at it.

[cut out passage about the other versions of skam and what the writer thinks of the script books]

In the script there are comments directed to different people in the team, suggestions for at which parents you could film a scene and ideas for clothes. That much of herself Julie Andem has never shown before: it’s almost like you get to know her.

But on the other side of the table in the dining hall at Hotel Bristol where we are now eating a shrimp sandwich each she says straight aways that she wants to separate her public persona from her private live. Julie Andem can say that she has a brother, a sister and two bonus sisters, but doesn’t want to mention her parents. And when I ask her about her own time in high school she answers by telling about her russebuss.

”I was on a girls bus with 25 girls. We were very split when we were going to name the bus. The name is crucial, because it gives the identity for the whole bus. One half of us wanted to be called ”Red Hot Chilli Babes” and the other voted for ”The Amateurs”. Because we were very funny, but nobody took any responsibility and we had no control at all”.

You had no Vilde?

”No, there was no Vilde. Luckily it ended up being ” The Amatuers”. But the russebuss-culture has radically changed since I was russ 2001. Now it’s mental how much money they use.

Julie Andem grew up in the west part of Oslo, the fanciest part of the city. She describes her time in school as pretty boring. She didn’t go to Nissen, which is a highly respected high school, where the Norwegian princesses Astrid and Ragnhild has gone. Talking about royals, the crown princess Mette-Marit is a big fan of Skam and has gotten the scripts with a dedication from Julie Andem - and her son is seen on the show.

”I wanted to go to Nissen, but I didn’t have good enough grades, so I had to take the second best, Ullern Vidergående. It’s a typical west side school, which means there was quite a few Williams. Most of my friends wanted to work with economy or become lawyers or paralegals.

So Skam is your dream about how it would have been if you got in to Nissen?

”Haha, yes, you can see it like that.”

Who were you? Are you Noora?

”No, I’m all of them - and non of them. I see myself in all of them, even William, that Sweden hates.”

I firmly say that it’s not true that Sweden hates William, but Julie Andem says that the criticism against the character came from all the Scandinavian countries after the same episode, but it was a lot harsher in Sweden than I Norway and Denmark. And she knows the countries well, because she has had a Swedish boyfriend and lived in Denmark. After high school she moved to Jylland [part of Denmark] where she studied for a year at Den Skandinaviske Designhøjskole.

”It was amazing, because there I got lots of funny friends from Stockholm, Malmö and Copenhagen that I still have. It was like coming home when I realized that not everywhere in the world is like Oslo West. I had a friend that already then was vegan, a strong feminist and refused to shave her legs and armpits. And me, coming from the West side just thought ”WOW”” says Julie Andem and emphasis it with a mixture of fear and excitement.

So she is also a little bit of Noora?

”Yes, absolutely!”

Julie Andem was planning on becoming a graphic designer and continued to study at Westerdals Reklameskole in Oslo (now called Christiania Høyskole), ”It’s like Beckmans in Sweden”. There she studied to become an art director - and thus does not have any education for working on tv. But when Julie Andem got an internship at a tv production she started to write ”instead of just making posters”. 2008 she got a job at NRK’s children’s sector, that just had come up with the new concept ”Sara” - a video diary with a twelve year old girl.

”Everything was fiction, she was an actor and the script was written, but it was presented in a vlog format, like it was real. It wasn’t my idea and I got in as an assistant, but I also got to write the script. After that we created a concept called ”MIA”. Then there was ”Jenter” which went on for ten seasons, was a big success in the ages 10-12 and won an Emmy 2017. The show also had viewers  that were up to 15 years old and that’s why NRK asked if it was possible to make a similar concept for 16 year olds. That was how ”Skam” came about.

NRK used the method NABC (needs/approach/benefit/competition) that builds on finding a need in the target group and poof solve it with a tv show. That’s why Julie Andem had one question in her mind when she did her three our long deep interviews: What does a 16 year old need?

”The most clear thing was that those who are young now has been subjected to pressure from all directions in life. They need to preform in school, during after school activities, on social media and in relation to future careers - it’s pressure from 360 degrees.

More than when you were young? ”Yes, definitely. That’s why the question was if it’s possible to make a tv show that takes away some of that pressure. The conclusion was to give the viewers some Self-deprecating humor as a tool to ease the pressure by laughing at it. We also wanted to teach them to see how human communication mechanisms work. If you are 16 and your boyfriend breaks up it feels like everything about you is wrong, but maybe it has nothing to do with you. We wanted to teach young people to confront the fear and build confidence, to stand for something and not run for others.”

[passage about the nine original characters]

”I knew what I wanted with the nine, but as an example I didn’t know there would be a party in season 3. Eva was going to learn to become independent and put away the shame she was carrying, while Noora needs to learn to let people in.

It sounds like you are very logical when you write, almost like it’s mathematics?

”Yes”

Was that way of working something you had learnt or does it have to do with your personality?

”Both. It’s hard to tell exactly what it is, but I thought ”Jenter”, ”MIA” and ”Sara” were fun to work with because it was something new. We succeeded with getting close to the target group and the interaction between us an the viewers were extremely fascinating. I studied closely what works and doesn’t - and why. Why we would get bad feedback on this video, but not on that and what can we learn from that? That I have a strong fascination for that way of telling stories and has been doing it for almost ten years made me good at it. Many has asked how I could create such a big success despite it being my first tv production, but it didn’t happen over night. I have worked with this for a long time.”

[passage about how the skam concept works and how big it became in the different Scandinavian counties]

”I don’t think it’s healthy to be totally caught up in a tv show, at least not for a longer period of time. But I think those who does that has reasons for it.”

Where do you draw the line?

”Haha, it’s hard to know where it should be drawn. But it’s not all bad, because in the communities that has been created around Skam people have found friends for life. They take care of each other and that’s amazing. So it’s hard for me to dislike it and I also didn’t understand people would get sooo caught up in it.

When did you discover that? When did things start to happen?

It was probably most clear in season two when Noora is waiting for William to reply to an important text. I was told that people sat and refreshed the page again and again to se if William had replied and no one could work.”

In this unbearable wait the hashtag #williammåsvare was created and a phone company made a commercial that said that if William had used their company he would have replied by now. Then a food store said they had ”waiting fish cakes”. Julie Andem let Skam reply to that with Noora throwing tandrum at Eskild because he has eaten her fish cakes and she yells ”JEG TRENGER FISKEKAKER NÅ!”. The interaction with the audience was the foundation of the idea.

How close to filming did you write the script?

”At best two weeks in advance and at worse two hours before filming. I wrote and directed and was editing parallel with constantly having to come up with new scenes. It was at that point I checked in here” says Julie Andem and points vaguely towards the hotel, where we are trying to talk over a pianist that’s now holding a concert right by out table. The strict waiter doesn’t think a interview is a good enough reason to change tables.

But even if you didn’t have the script finished there must have been a main storyline?

Yes, but the storyline changed. It was like a ”it has to be like this, but I will know better after the third episode.”

How has the translating of Skam to other language gone? Did you interfere with the translated versions?

”No, but I have meet those who are making the shows and often talk to the Italian director. He is very dedicated and has a lot of questions. It has been enjoyable.”

The American version ”Skam Austin” you have directed yourself. How was that?

”Super fun, but very different. In Norway we were five on the team - sound, camera, two assistants and me. In Austin there were 50-70 people on set. If you want to get young amateurs to dare to be vulnerable you have to create a safe environment and that doesn’t work with so many adults there. My photographer and me worked a lot with creating a bubble and push everybody else as far away as possible.

Did you adapt the script to the American audience?

”You have seen a lot of high school shows, so I was looking for something that you hadn’t already seen. But there weren’t much to discover - it’s exactly like in all tv shows. The coolest guy at a high school in Texas plays American football, that’s just how it is. We have seen that football team hundreds of times, but we didn’t want to make something up that didn’t exist. It was still new because the themes were new to them.”

I try to direct the conversation towards how the attention around Skam has changed Julie Andem as a human being and first she says she hasn’t had time to think about it.

”But I’m a quite easily embarrassed person and I’ve had to work on that, because a lot of people get in touch with me. Complete strangers dump their whole life story on me and I’ve had to practice receiving it. I got a letter from a 70 years old Swedish man who wrote that season 3 had given him a new life and that he wished he had got to experience that in his youth. I feel thankful to have taken part of that story, but sometimes I have to shut it out. Many stories are so sad that they make me too touched, too upset.”

You are a little strict too, right? ”Yes, if I know what I want and why I’m very clear. I don’t know how much you know about producing drama, but we filmed two episodes in three days and then there’s not really much time to stop and think about what you feel. And I’m pretty strong-willed.”

Julie Andem talks about a scene in the first season where the girls are walking up a hill on their way for a party while ”Dick in the Air” by Peaches is playing.

”That scene becomes fantastic with the sexualizing song, but I was told that we had to remove it because of something with the copyright. It is rarely I show that kind of emotions at work, but I was so upset and angry that I sat by my desk and cried. Then I took the phone and called everybody I know that works with music. I found someone who said they knew Peaches’ manager and then somebody came and said ’We’ve found a solution’. Two years later I was at a club in LA where Peaches were going to sing. I said to somebody that I dig her, so afterwards I got to meet her and told her about the scene and that I used her song. She said: ’I have seen then scene and I love it’ and I screamed back ’I KNEW IT!’”

The music is really fundamental in Skam. Is it based on your own interest in music or did you get help?

I’ve never thought that I have such a big interest in music. Many of my friends have very specific taste in music and I’ve liked everything. But yes, it’s fundamental and often I have written in and listened to the music while writing the scenes.

Had you found out what 16 year olds today listens to?

”Yes, absolutely, but teens today have Spotify, so they listen to everything. I got references from so many music genres that I realized that you could use pretty much anything. But I was important that the song they dance to at a party was a hit at that moment.”

The values that exist in Skam, pro feminism and against racism and homophobia, is pretty Scandinavian. How have they worked in countries like France and Italy?

”I don’t know, but Skam has spread all over the world and has big groups of fans in Argentina, Brazil, Japan and China. Skam is growing in China as we speak” she says and looks pretty cheeky.

”It seems like there are more people in this world that has use of Scandinavian values.”

[alexsfictionaddiction]

12 of the best feel-good books

I think we could all do with a pick-me-up right now. We’ve been in some level of isolation for over a month and we’re perhaps being forced to accept a new normal. However, we’re still seeing frightening and tragic headlines all day every day (ration your news time, if you’re not doing so already), so of course, fear and hopelessness is going to set in. If you’re not used to spending time alone, loneliness is also a huge possibility but we know that books are a great source of solace in times like this. 

Maybe you want to do your own research and discover how far into the realms of science-fiction we’ve got. For you, I have compiled a list of the best books that pandemic fiction has to offer but if you’re looking for something more light-hearted, I’ve got the perfect tonic. Whether you need a laugh, to be comforted or to simply remember what life used to be like, here are some books that will help you escape the current face of reality. Above all, remember that it’s perfectly natural for your mental health to be suffering at the moment. Do whatever you can to look after yourself and stay safe.

1. The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

Remember when you could just move in with a stranger without worrying about keeping two metres apart at all times? Tiffy and Leon share a flat and even a bed but due to entirely opposite work schedules, they manage to not even meet for months after Tiffy moves in, only communicating via texts and notes left on the fridge. But Tiffy’s controlling ex-boyfriend and Leon’s innocent prisoner brother ignite a connection that is fuelled by basic human kindness and a touch of romantic attraction, of course! This quirky rom-com has been a bestseller for over a year now and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a celebration of love, friendship and the unexpected happiness that can come from taking calculated risks. Beth O’Leary’s second novel The Switch has also just been released, so there has never been a better time to read her debut!

2. Wonder by R. J. Palacio

A beautiful story of empathy, kindness and acceptance, Wonder has fast become one of the most popular and widely read contemporary middle-grade novels. Auggie Pullman was born with a facial deformity and he’s attending mainstream school for the first time but of course, kids can be staggeringly cruel to those who are different. Wonder kickstarted a global kindness campaign and spawned a film adaptation, which is one of the best and most faithful I’ve ever seen. It has already given so much to the world and I know you’ll get a lot of joy out of it too.

3. The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Of course, not all sci-fi is doom and gloom. This is the first instalment in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. It follows a misfit crew of space travellers and their wonderful smile-inducing relationships. Celebrating the coming together of a variety of races, sexualities and personalities, it features a lot of loveable memorable characters who begin to read like dear loyal friends. If you’re looking for quirky, light-hearted sci-fi in a similar vein to Star Trek and Firefly, you’d be wise to start here.

4. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Arthur Less is a struggling writer about to turn 50 and the love of his life is engaged to someone else. To say that he’s not feeling too hot right now would be an understatement but he has been invited to a range of literary events around the world, so he does the logical thing and accepts them all. We can’t travel right now but with Arthur, you’ll visit Paris, Berlin, southern India, the Moroccan desert and Japan. You’ll also go on a journey of self-acceptance, learn how to love the life that you have and appreciate the time you have left. 

5. Hot Mess by Lucy Vine

It’s rare that a book makes me guffaw out loud in public but Hot Mess did exactly that, when I read it a couple of years ago. Ellie is a single woman who hates her office job and is absolutely nowhere near having her life together. However, she does have some great friends and a lovely relationship with her dad Alan, whose drafts of a romance novel are truly side-splittingly hilarious. We see Ellie through terrible dates, trauma confrontation and a quest for true happiness that is hugely satisfying. It has been described as a modern-day Bridget Jones but I found it much more relatable and actually quite a lot funnier!

6. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

It’s the first in a trilogy of novels that explore the trials and tribulations of finding romance when you’re genetics professor Don Tillman. Don likes facts, logic and reason and he applies all of these things to his latest endeavour, The Wife Project. He knows exactly the kind of woman he wants to marry but then he meets Rosie, who ticks none of his boxes and he’s forced to accept that perhaps true love doesn’t always follow the rules. Don and Rosie’s relationship is such a heartwarming, mutually beneficial one that will make you laugh and leave you with a big bag of warm fuzzy feels. 

7. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

There is a huge chance that you will have read The Hobbit but what better time to revisit a funny, charming favourite? Re-embark on the quest to retrieve Smaug’s treasure, take back the Lonely Mountain and make a plethora of fantastic friends along the way. As well as relating to Bilbo’s personal growth throughout the novel, I think the idea of facing epic threat and mortal peril in unknown environments and yet still returning safely home to a quiet comfortable life is the reassurance we need that this too shall pass. Of course, it will also be an intoxicating nostalgia trip, so there’s really no reason to not pick it up again!

8. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

I read this over the Valentine’s Day period and was so enchanted by it. Gavin is a top baseball player for the Nashville Legends and he has recently discovered that he has never given his wife Thea a genuine orgasm and it’s threatening the relationship. So he does the logical thing and turns to his team mates, who actually double as a secret romance book club. They suggest taking a leaf out of a smutty Regency paperback to save his marriage -what could possibly go wrong? Funny, heart-warming and touching, it’s a great choice if you’re looking for a rom-com with a difference.

9. My Pear-Shaped Life by Carmel Harrington

If you’ve spent a lot of self-isolation being wholly unproductive and perhaps not looking after yourself too well, you may be feeling that you’re simply not good enough. Especially if your social media is full of happy healthy people doing just about EVERYTHING. Meet Greta, a struggling actress who is used to playing the role of the funny, overweight girl in all areas of her life. That’s ok as long as she laughs with everyone else, right? But things have been pretty rough lately and it’s only when she hits rock bottom that she begins to realise that maybe things need to go a little bit pear-shaped sometimes. With joy and despair in equal measure, this new novel, populated with an array of wonderful characters, will teach you that true happiness comes from simply being you.

10. A Boy Made Of Blocks by Keith Stuart 

Eight-year-old Sam is autistic and struggles to make sense of the world. His dad Alex has also lost himself somewhere along the way and needs to change. Minecraft offers a place where father and son can rediscover their bond and put the family back together, block by block. I reviewed this incredibly moving, uplifting story when it was first released a few years ago. It’s actually inspired by Keith Stuart’s real-life experiences, which I think give it an extra dollop of heart-warmth! 

11. The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

The entire focus of this fantastically written YA novel is on embracing your own personal uniqueness and on not being afraid to let it out. Michael is a mixed-race gay teen who has grappled with his identity for his entire life. On arriving at university, the idea of becoming a drag artist causes everything to begin to slot into place. Told in verse, The Black Flamingo will show you how your boldest brightest colours can shine through the darkest of times. Highlighting the power of words and challenging all forms of homophobia, whether it be external or internal, this is a book that I’m sure will become a staple of LGBT+ literature in years to come. As for now, it will simply inspire you to live your very best life, regardless of who tries to prevent it.

12. Reasons To Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe

As the title may suggest, there is plenty to smile about in Reasons To Be Cheerful. It’s chiefly a coming-of-age novel about a young woman called Lizzie living in 1970s Leicestershire. She has just got a job as an assistant to a work-shy, racist dentist who is desperate to join the freemasons. Navigating this new position alongside a relationship with her alcoholic writer mother, a boyfriend who doesn’t seem terribly interested in her and a few unlikely friends, Lizzie’s life makes for some pretty amusing anecdotes. Whether it’s the simple retro setting or small cast of eccentric caricatures, there is something quite other-worldly yet familiar about it. There is a lot of detail that is relevant to the period it’s set in, including the blatant social prejudices that were so rife at the time. I am too young to have experienced 1970s Britain but it certainly feels authentic to what I know. I have no doubt that those that were there will get even more enjoyment and nostalgia from Lizzie’s life than I did. 

[hellsbellssinclub]

Two-Face as Tim’s dad au. Part 8

Part 1/ Part 2 / Part 3/ Part 4 / Part 5/ Part 6/ Part 7/ Part 8  AO3

Tim wonders if he is doing the right thing or not, following Nyssa’s plan.

The price did not seem that steep, at least on paper that is.

Miss Nyssa has a six-year-old nephew who is in need of a new language teacher for both Spanish and German, two languages that Tim was fluent in. He was to teach the boy over the next several months in return for Nyssa’s resources and help.

Though, his teacher never specified what her resources were nor did she say how they could be used to help him raise awareness or deal with the corruption in Arkham and help his father. Tim wondered if he was going about this the right way and if he was going to get himself into more trouble than he originally thought.

Plan two had originally been for him to start sending certain bits of information to Vicki Vale and Lois Lane. Two of the most dedicated and well written journalist he knew of. Both women were willing to run any story they believe should be known to the world and were always pushing the limit of what should and shouldn’t be published.

He had planned to send them the data he currently had on the Arkham spending as well as the current and former list of doctors in the Asylum and point out that at least eight of them had their own criminal records, most for malpractice. He also had a list of low level criminals who were being forced into wards with high risk patients and the general lack of well being and care given to those in the Asylum.

Tim had hoped that, with a little push, that the women would begin asking questions and drawing attention to what was happening. While there could have easily been draw backs with those questions being asked and there would have been a huge risk to both the women and to the patients in the Asylum, Tim was willing to bet it would have shaken enough people to at least start an investigation.

Nyssa’s plan was a little bit different than what Tim’s, to say the least.

She wanted to push not only the Batman into doing his own investigation, but she also wanted for the people of Gotham to question the Status Quo and how they allow things to go about in their city.

And honestly, Tim was all for that. He wanted people to look beyond their expectations that so long as the ‘bad guys’ were locked away everything was fine. He wanted people to see that there were small time criminals with mental health issues being treated horribly in the Asylum and that instead of giving those who need help the assistance that they need to no longer turn to a life of crime these people were all but being tortured by unethical and illegal medical practices by doctors who should have had their licences revoked.

But this… This seemed a little odd and extreme.

Tim looked up from the sketch he was making and wondered again if this was the right thing to do. Nyssa had told him the best way to push the Batman into doing what they wanted was to remind him that while he grieved for his lost bird there were others who were being hurt, either by the Batman’s own hands or by the crime that he was allowing to come to pass because of his lack of attention.

While this was true, Tim really felt uncomfortable with bringing Bruce’s grief about Jason’s death into all of this. He may be angry and disappointed in the man who he once admired and who was once his father’s best friend, but he was truly unhappy with the idea of bring Jason into all of this.

The image he had sketched was of Batman kneeling on the ground holding the broken and bloodied body of Robin no 2 while a building that looked similar to Arkham Asylum with children trapped inside burned in the background. The symbolism was striking and would paint a vivid and unflattering image of Batman. It would certainly bring attention to Batman’s behaviour and possibly cause mistrust and anger at the vigilante.

And Tim did not want that. Yes, he wanted the older man to take action and to help Tim but Tim was not sure if this was the way to go. Gotham City needs Batman. They need someone who can do what the police can’t and they need someone to be a beacon of hope. Without the Batman, Gotham would descend into chaos.

But, if Tim was to be truly honest with himself, the city was currently descending into chaos as it was. Ever since Jason died and the Joker out right bragged about the murder of the Teen Wonder on live T.V, Batman and Gotham have sunk to new lows.

Arkham was not the only place that was rotting with corruption from what he had heard. From GCPD still being over run with corrupt cops in the pockets of crime lords, despite Commissioner Gordons best efforts to the Mayor’s office being rumoured to have rigged the last election so that there would be no women in a high-ranking position. Gotham was getting worse and worse over the years.

There had been a time when things were looking up for the city. When his father had still been Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne was donating and working on so many charity projects that everyone was amazed that the billionaire still had any money. With Batman, Robin (both no.1 and 2) and Commissioner Gordon taking down crime and the feeling of hope was in with the people of the city. Things had been good while they lasted.

Maybe a wake-up call is what Bruce needs. Maybe it isn’t. One way or another he is going to get one and as much as this sketch turns his stomach and makes him feel like crap, it will defiantly serve its purpose in reminding Batman that while he grieves he leaves the city to burn.

It was not a nice reminder. But it was one that was needed. Bruce could have taken time off after Jason had died. If Batman disappeared for a few months after Robin’s death at the hands of the Joker no one would have minded. Yes, there still would have been crime and things still would have been bad for Gotham but everyone would have more or less understood. Everyone knows that Robin is Batman’s son. A grieving father needs some time to himself after the death of his child.

But Bruce didn’t stop going out after Jason’s death. Three days after the Joker was beaten into a full body cast, Batman was out on the streets. And no criminal was safe. It didn’t matter if you were a purse snatcher or a small-time drug runner or even one of the Rogues, Batman would take you done brutally and without a care.

Five people were badly injured currently in hospital from what Batman did to them. Small time criminals who probably would have only gotten a broken arm or ribs when Jason had still been alive. They were all very lucky to be alive. Tim wondered if Bruce even knew that those men were in hospital at all or if he had gotten to the point where it didn’t matter, that so long as they didn’t out right die by his hands it was okay.

Nyssa’s plan of having this sketch painted against the wall of one of the alleyways where one of the men who had been injured had been found may be a little over the top in Tim’s opinion, but it will drive the message home better than anything else.

The image he had drawn made him sick to his stomach but if it is what it takes to get his father the help that he needs then Tim would force down the bile and disgust that he feels of using a man’s grief of his son’s death to further his goals.

The needs of the many outweighs the needs to the few. He hates that saying. But it is relevant for what he needs to do now. Nyssa will take the sketch and hand it to one of her sources and by dawn tomorrow it will be painted up against the wall for everyone to see. By midday it will be all over social media and the news.

It will be the first of many painting to go up in the city. His teacher has given him the rest of the week to make several other sketches for her to use. It was not exactly what he wanted but Tim was in no position to turn away any help he can get.

He will help his father. One way or another. He just hopes he can still look himself in the mirror when he is done.

[cloudbusterpress]

What it’s like to be a speechwriter

Do you have a gift for knowing what people are trying to say, and how to help them say it so they shine? Do you enjoy researching topics, and have an ability to encapsulate that research into a clear message? Is the persuasive essay your favorite assignment in English class? If so, scroll down to read more about speechwriting from a professional in the field, former speechwriter Rob Costello. And check out all the other cool careers in writing profiled on TIPS FOR TEEN WRITERS!

How did you get started as a speechwriter?

I never set out to become a speechwriter. In fact, when I was a teenager I didn’t really set out to be much of anything. I graduated high school not having a clue what I wanted to do with my life, and for most of my 20s I worked in a series of low-skill, low-wage jobs. I cleaned toilets and flipped burgers. I dealt cards in a casino. I processed trade documents for an international bank.

When I met my future husband, I moved to Ithaca, NY to be with him. There I got a job dispatching police and emergency services for the Cornell University Police Department. What a crazy, intense job that turned out to be! I quickly realized answering 911 calls all day long was way too stressful for me, and so after only a year of doing that, I managed to snag another job at Cornell that was much more my speed: receptionist in the Dean’s Office of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

This is where I spent the next decade, working my way up from receptionist, to the dean’s administrative assistant, and finally to her executive assistant and chief of staff, where I helped her run the college. I enjoyed this experience very much. CALS is one of the leading ag and life sciences research institutions in the world. Working for the dean, I got to learn a great deal about the cutting-edge environmental, biological, and food systems research happening in the college. I also met tons of interesting people, from Nobel prize-winning scientists and Fortune 500 CEOs, to senators and members of Congress, and some of the brightest, most dedicated students in the world. Finally, I learned the ins and outs of what it takes to run a world-class research and academic institution with well over a thousand faculty and employees, and an annual budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was during this period that I first realized I could make a career out of writing. A big part of my job was helping the dean manage the huge volume of correspondence she received, literally hundreds of letters and emails a day. Because she couldn’t possibly answer all of these messages herself, I often drafted responses in “her voice,” which she would then review, edit, and sign. I’d always loved to write, and over time this became my favorite part of the job.

Eventually, I went back to school, earning my bachelors degree in English and an MFA in writing for children and young adults, while still working full-time (something I don’t recommend if you can possibly avoid it). When the position of the dean’s speechwriter became available, my educational background, extensive  knowledge of the college, and deep familiarity with the “dean’s voice” made me uniquely qualified for the job.

What is a typical day like?

It’s hard for me to pin down what a typical day as a speechwriter was like, because speechwriting was only half of my job. At the same time, I was also the college’s social media manager, which meant I ran CALS’ Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube platforms, and wrote articles for various college publications. Depending on the dean’s public speaking schedule, which varied widely throughout the year, I could spend as much as 80% of my time working on speeches or as little as none.

That said, when I left CALS a few years ago to pursue fiction writing and teaching full-time, the dean was giving anywhere from 90 to 120 public addresses a year, which breaks downs to something like two to three speeches a week. Of course, not all speeches are created equal, and many of these were brief remarks that required minimal research and preparation.

On the other hand, some of the major speeches, such as the annual State of the College address, could take weeks to prepare. These involved massive amounts of research and data collection, interviewing faculty about new college initiatives, reviewing financial and budgetary reports with college officers, creating graphs and gathering photographs for slide presentations, familiarizing myself with the venue and A/V equipment that would be used for the speech, and then finally crafting the speech, followed by multiple rounds of revision with the dean.

In general, when I was working on a major address like this, most of my day was spent at my desk in front of my computer, doing research, drafting the text, and preparing the slides.

What training, education or preparation would help someone to be a good speechwriter?

To be honest, the most important training I received came from my high school English teachers, who taught me how to write a persuasive essay. When you reduce them to their essence, most speeches are merely persuasive arguments read aloud. They begin with an introduction that leads to a thesis statement, followed by a series of supporting points that build to a summary conclusion. Since I was also active in speech and debate as a teen, I had experience crafting arguments about complicated issues that were accessible and easy to convey while speaking. Who knew the basic skills I learned in high school would turn out to be so important to my job years later?

In college, I did coursework in speechwriting, presentation making, and rhetoric that was all very valuable, too.

Finally, all those years working in the dean’s office furnished me with a wealth of knowledge and resources that proved invaluable to my speechwriting career. Having a basic understanding of the different kinds of scientific research conducted in the college was crucial, because so many of the dean’s speeches involved promoting that work to alumni, politicians, and other stakeholders. It also really helped that I’d become something of an expert on the institution of CALS itself. This meant I always knew just whom to ask to get my questions answered quickly and accurately. Furthermore, because I was so familiar with the college’s inner workings, I understood many of the complicated subjects the dean spoke about, such as the budget and various policies and initiatives. This enabled me to craft speeches without a lot of coaching that were coherent and authoritative on these complex matters. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been for me had I not spent so many years beforehand getting to know the dean and the college so well.

Of course, this experience was unique to me and my job in CALS. But generally speaking, I think for any aspiring speechwriter the lesson here is to become as much of an expert as you possibly can on the subjects you will be writing about. Do your research. Ask questions. Be curious. Learn as much as you can before you ever sit down to write, because all of that knowledge will lend your speeches clarity and authority.

What skills do you think helped you do the job of speechwriting well?

Writing well persuasively is the most important skill to master. Knowing how to frame an argument and anticipate counterarguments is a big part of this, as well as being able to translate complicated issues or ideas into simple, clear, compelling language. Listening is also an essential skill, as well as being able to take critical feedback. Time management and organizational skills are invaluable, especially when multiple deadlines loom. Basic research, journalism, and interviewing skills are also extremely useful. Being comfortable setting up and troubleshooting A/V equipment is important, as is proficiency with presentation and graphics software like PowerPoint, Prezi, InDesign, and Keynote.

What type of person would be a good fit to be a speechwriter?

Somebody who is tenacious about getting the facts right. Somebody who enjoys writing persuasively and changing people’s minds with words. Somebody who doesn’t seek the spotlight and who doesn’t mind having another person receive the glory for what they’ve written. Somebody who cares passionately about the agenda being pursued by the person or organization they work for. (For example, it’s probably not a great idea if you’re an environmentalist to take a job writing speeches for the President of Exxon!)

What are the down sides of speechwriting?

You spend most of your time alone at a desk! It can be a challenge to find a good speechwriting job. Your job satisfaction is often dependent on whether or not you are able to satisfy one person (the person giving the speeches), so if you have a difficult or demanding boss, it can make your life a real drag.

What are the up sides of speechwriting?

Speechwriting is a great job for an introvert! It’s also tremendously rewarding to be able to work with an influential leader to craft a speech that may change people’s minds and influence lives. In my time at CALS, I worked on several major addresses the dean gave about the environment, education, and the value of scientific research in promoting a better world, all issues I care deeply about. Speechwriting gave me the opportunity to feel that I was contributing to the academic and scientific mission of the college, without actually being an academic or a scientist. Speechwriters can often play an important role in helping to spread the word about important issues and ideas. If you care about things like politics and activism, but aren’t the kind of person who can get up in front of others and lead, being the one behind the scenes who helps those leaders be more effective in communicating their messages can be extremely empowering and satisfying.

What resources, professional journals, organizations or social media sites keep you informed about your industry?

Unfortunately, I’ve been away from speechwriting for a while now, so I haven’t kept up with current resources. However, I do know that the Professional Speechwriters Association was founded in 2013 and offers information and links to non-members on their website.

Any words of advice for people interested in speechwriting?

I think it’s most important to develop a good rapport with the person you’re writing speeches for. After all, you are essentially putting words into their mouth. Words they will be speaking in public. Words they may be judged on and/or criticized for later on. By the very nature of the job, speechwriters are often working for influential public figures, such as politicians and other leaders. It can be a strangely intimate experience to see these powerful people with their guard down, expressing fears, anxieties, and vulnerabilities that don’t always correspond to their well-honed public images. It’s important, therefore, that you earn their trust by doing everything you possibly can to make their job easier. This means listening to how they speak, their unique speech patterns, vocabulary choices, and sentence structure. It means familiarizing yourself with the kinds of jokes and anecdotes they’re comfortable telling, as well as the subjects they wish to avoid. It means being scrupulously well-prepared and always having your facts straight, so that they are not embarrassed by giving out bad information or saying something inadvertently offensive or disrespectful to their audience. Finally, it means understanding what’s most important to them about the speech they are giving, what their goals are for it, and what message(s) they are trying to convey. After all, it isn’t about you and your pretty words. Your number one priority is to make sure they shine!

Rob Costello writes fiction for and about queer youth. He holds an MFA in Writing from the Writing for Children and Young Adults Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. An alumnus of the Millay Colony for the Arts and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, his short fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Stone Canoe, Eclectica, and Narrative, and is forthcoming in Rural Voices: YA Stories of Growing Up in Remote Communities (Candlewick, Fall 2020). He teaches creative writing to teens and adults, and has been on the faculty of the Whole Novel Workshop at the Highlights Foundation since 2014. He recently finished work on his debut young adult novel entitled An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys, and lives with his husband and various four-legged companions on top of a wide and windy hill in upstate NY.

Find out more at www.cloudbusterpress.com.

[firstumcschenectady]

"A New Thing" based on Isaiah 65:17-25  and Luke 24:1-12

Years ago I asked my boss for a computer password. He responded, “You should know this. Its is the most obvious answer. We are a ____ people.” Now, I've had a lot of church related jobs, but I didn't think this was obvious. I thought there were a lot of possible answers. We are a loving people. We are a Jesus-following people. We are a gracious people. We are a beloved people. After a while, I tried “We are a resurrection people” and that got me close enough that I was informed the password was “Easter.”

I've thought about that every since. For my boss, it was SO obvious that “Easter” was the sort of people we are. For me, there are a lot of questions about what that means, and how we live it out. I yearn for the sort of certainty he had in thinking I could guess the password.

Every month I ask a question of the Church Council as a start to our meeting. I'm known for asking difficult questions, and this church is full of thoughtful, intentional, … strong-willed.... opinionated people. (I wouldn't have it any other way.) Thus, I ask a difficult question, people offer a variety of different answers, I have a better sense of what people are thinking and we move on.

For the first time, after nearly 6 years, this month the Church Council found an ANSWER to my question. It started like normal. I asked, “Where are you seeing resurrection?,” and people offered many and varied answers. But then a pattern emerged, and was named. The most profound way people are seeing resurrection is in the restoration of relationships, and as a corollary, in the miracle of life-giving relationships themselves.

I thought this was a profound answer, a good way of knowing what it is to be Easter people, so I ran it by the Confirmation class. You would be delighted to know that our Confirmation class is very reflective of this church. The students are thoughtful, intentional, strong-willed, …. opinionated people. They have no patience for irrationality, and even less for exclusion in any form. Last week I ran this idea by them. We talked about resurrection, what it does and does not mean, and how we make sense of the metaphor for our lives today. I wasn't sure that “restored relationships” would be as meaningful for teens as for those who had experienced brokenness in relationships for decades. It turns out, I was wrong.

They thought that “restored relationships” and “hope where it seems there is no hope” sounded both meaningful and valid as ways of understanding Easter.

Thus, I'm trusting the Church Council and the Confirmation class to be good tests of the pulse of this community, and I'm going to keep on preaching about restored relationships AS resurrection.

For those who aren't quite with me yet though, I want to play with that wonderful line from Luke's first Easter Story, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (v. 5) Within the story it functions to emphasize the empty grave, but it also seems well phrased for metaphorical contemplation. When else have we given up something “for dead” when there is still life in it? When have we discounted a possibility, including of a restored relationship, when God wasn't done with it yet? What does it mean to be people looking for the living among the living, rather than among the dead?

Last week I quoted John Dominic Crossan's assessment of Jesus' teaching, namely that Jesus taught “that God has given all human beings the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God's power, rule, and domination are evidently present to all observers.”1 That left us questioning how to live our lives being guided by that wisdom. Parker Palmer is a wisdom teacher, who teaches people how to find the power of life within themselves. It seems to me that his book his book “A Hidden Wholeness: A Journey Toward an Undivided Life” takes off where John Dominic Crossan off.

Parker Palmer believes in the power and wisdom of the soul, and since the word soul isn't one I find easy to explain either, I'll let him say what he means by that:

“Philosophers haggle about what to call this core of our humanity, but I'm not stickler for precision. Thomas Merton called it the true self. Buddhists call it original nature or big self. Quakers call it the inner teacher or the inner light. Hasidic Jews call it a spark of the divine. Humanists call it identity and integrity. In popular parlance, people often call it soul. … it is the objective, ontological reality of selfhood that keeps us form reducing ourselves, or each other, to biological mechanisms, psychological projections, sociological constructs, or raw material to be manufactured into whatever society needs – diminishments of our humanity that constantly threaten the quality of our lives.”2

I'm going to take it a step further and say that the soul is the source of the wisdom that Dom was talking about, “the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God's power, rule, and domination are evidently present to all observers.” Our souls KNOW, we know, but to know we have to listen to our souls.

Throughout Lent we've been talking about spiritual practices. One might also say we've been talking about practices of listening to the Divine, to our own souls, and to each other's souls. None of this is particularly easy, but Parker Palmer is the teacher who is focused on exactly that. He thinks most of the time we're led by ego and by fear, which leads us to be divided from the wisdom of our own souls, “Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the 'integrity that comes from being who you are.'”3 He calls us to wholeness, but cautions us that, “Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.”4

Isn't THAT an interesting idea to consider on Easter? On this day when we think about resurrection, about restoration, about new hope and the power of life; what does it mean to think about wholeness as requiring acceptance of brokenness? Do we tend to think of resurrection as … perfection? I suspect we do. But that misses the point. God's work in the world towards restoration doesn't require nor create perfection. Perfection isn't a part of life, and resurrection is about restoring LIFE. HOWEVER, God's work in the world is always towards wholeness, and wholeness requires seeing, accepting, and making peace with brokenness.

Parker goes on to explain how we TEND to deal with this, “A divided life is a wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound. Ignore that call, and we find ourselves trying to numb our pain with an anesthetic of choice, be it substance abuse, overwork, consumerism, or mindless media noise. Such anesthetics are easy to come by in a society that wants to keep us divided and unaware of our pain – for the divided life that is pathological for individuals can serve social systems well, especially when it comes to those functions that are morally dubious.”5 Then he explains how to get OUT of that cycle, and the answer is both individual and communal. Palmer is a Quaker, and he believes there is a lot of power in silence, in quiet, and in listening. He encourages people to make space for silence in their lives, but he also says, “But we cannot embrace that challenge all alone, at least not for long; if we are to sustain the journey toward an undivided life. The journey has solitary passages, to be sure, and yet it is simply too arduous to take without the assistance of others. And because we we have such a vast capacity for self-delusion, we will inevitably get lost en route without correctives from outside of ourselves.”6

A few years ago I did an intensive training in the teachings of Parker Palmer. Much of what Palmer offers is based in the Quaker tradition. In living out these ideals in community, I discovered there was A LOT of power in them. We were taught to ask open, honest questions of each other, and to sit in silence especially when it was uncomfortable. We were invited to play with poetry and art, journaling, and conversation. We were taught that the soul is wise as all get out, but also shy and needing time, space, and metaphor to share its wisdom. We were taught to hold space for each other's souls, both because souls are inherently precious, but also because every time a glimpse of a soul is seen, we learn about our own soul too. It is an unspoken part of Palmer's worldview that souls are unique reflections of the Divine.

I have one more of his insights I want to share today: “All of the great spiritual traditions want to awaken us to the fact that we cocreate the reality in which we live. And all of them ask two questions intended to keep us awake: What are we sending form within ourselves out into the world, and what impact is it having 'out there'? What is the world sending back at us, and what impact is it having 'in here'? We are continually engaged in the evolution of self and world – and we have the power to choose, moment by moment, between that which gives life and that which deals death.”7 Isn't that the question of Easter? How do we choose life? How do we work with God who chooses life in choosing life?

How do we live lives that REALLY show “that God has given all human beings the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God's power, rule, and domination are evidently present to all observers.”8 How do we participate in and build community that loves people, and their souls, into a fuller wholeness; under the premise that whole people are a gift to the world? How do we build communities that reflect God's goodness, wholeness, hope, and the power of God's commitment to LIFE rather than death?

How do we allow God's love, life, and wholeness into our lives so that we, and our relationships, can be restored? John Dominic Crossan believes that Jesus taught us we already know what we need to know, we already have the wisdom. Parker Palmer says that wisdom is in our souls, and to access the wisdom we need some quiet, and we need others who also trust in the wisdom of our souls.

This is what we know: God is a God of LIVE, not death; the wisdom you need to lead a transformed life is already with you; there are people who trust in your wisdom and are willing to help you find it; silence is a valuable asset in listening to the soul; metaphor, art, and open-honest questions matter too; AND... this is a community that has been and will continue to love people AS THEY ARE. That love then means that people can safely let their souls out to play, and grow further and further into who God calls us to be. We are a safe place for souls, and that means we are a safe place for LIFE. Maybe, after all, we are an Easter people. May it ALWAYS be so. Amen

1 John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA: HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 47.

2 Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward the Undivided Self(USA: Josey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 2004), 33.

3 Palmer, 4.

4 Palmer, 5.

5 Palmer, 20.

6 Palmer, 10.

7 Palmer, 48.

8 John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA: HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 47.

--

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

April 21, 2019

[rockthecotswolds]

Rocking Day in the Life of... Robin Watkins-Davis

A 20-year-old award-winning artist who’s recently displayed her installation ‘Shift’ in Painswick. Robin splits her time between her art and teaching yoga and works hard to inspire mental wellbeing in under 25s.

So Robin, when did you discover you had artistic talent….and did you know you wanted to move into contemporary art early on?

I have been doing art since I was around four years old and began focusing on developing my artistic skills when I was 10 years old. After my school day, (Croft Primary School in Painswick) I had tutors in fine art painting and sculpture and this began my fascination with art as I found the extra circular lessons stimulating and challenging. I built up a portfolio of work which then got me an art scholarship.

At secondary school and sixth form I focused mainly on fine art painting, developing my technical drawing skills, it was on my art foundation course at Stroud, last year where my mind opened to contemporary art and I pushed my own artistic boundaries like never before.

When did you start practising yoga?  We saw that you were the UK’s youngest yoga instructor not so long ago, so it must have been at a very young age?!

I started meditation first at the age of 12, this was to support me as I was going through a bit of a dark time and connected to the practice as a way of overcoming the challenges, providing me with some hope and control over the way I was feeling.

I got into yoga around the age of 14 and then trained at 16 years old to become the UK’s youngest yoga teacher.

You are keen on promoting mindfulness, particularly with young people around Gloucestershire, what would be your three tips for someone needing more calm in their life?

Ooo… this is a good question!

Tip 1) When in a state of overwhelm or stress, I try and use my body and breath as a way of connecting into the present moment, this doesn’t have to be yoga, it could be walking or another form of exercise. Instead of thinking, I try and connection into sensations and feelings, for example following the breath as it flows in and out through my body. This helps anchor me into the present moment and then things often seem much more manageable!

Tip 2) To step outside of the ‘heat’ of the emotion and instead see the body in a mechanical sense, ie: what you put in, you get out. When I am not feeling well mentally or physically, I apply to perspective and think about how I can change a habit or behaviour so that I then get a different outcome. For example, when I feel stressed instead of delving into that and getting even more stressed out, and then telling everyone how stressed I am, I try my best to step back and say to myself mentally, ‘Okay Robin, you are feeling stressed, that’s okay, that’s just my body telling me that its under a bit too much pressure.’ Then I try and find some small changes, for example sleeping more which will shift that emotion or experience.

Tip 3) To remember there are only so many hours in a day, I often remind students this when I go into schools and do de-stress exam workshops. All we can do is our best, taking moments to pause is just as important as the doing.

You’re originally from Tasmania, how did you come to live in the Cotswolds?

Yes, I was born there, my father is Australian, we came over to the UK after spending a few years in both Australia and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. I think my mum was missing her family back in the UK so we decided to come back here, my mum liked the idea of my brother and I going to a small village primary school which is why we moved to Painswick and I am very grateful for that because I love the the community of the village, the people are very supportive and have encouraged me to dream big and make them come true!

You worked with Zandra Rhodes and Giffords Circus - which sounds amazing - what did you do?

Yes, I lived and worked with Dame Zandra Rhodes, an opportunity which I won through Art Couture Painswick with their wearable art festival. It was an amazing experience as I was 17 and had never stayed in London for that length of time before, I was assisting Zandra with designs for costumes she was making for an opera and drawing her archive collection for her ‘fashion bible.’ In the evenings I enjoyed meals with Zandra, and one highlight was going to look around the David Hockney exhibition with her.

I worked with Giffords Circus for about a month last spring, helping in the art department with set design and prop making, I loved this experience because I have found Gifford circus such a magical and uplifting show since I was a child, so to be able to work behind the scenes was fascinating.

What’s a fairly typical morning and afternoon for you?

Ooo… haha! My days are fairly unstructured, which can sometimes be unsettling as school provided such routine that it can feel odd without one (I only just left college in September) but I also love having a flexible and creative working day. My day typically starts early, before the sun has risen, where I practice yoga and meditation before any of my brothers have woken up, I have three, the youngest is four years old. I then spend a few hours working on art projects, that may be organising an art exhibition/ event or making more work/researching.

I then start working on yoga projects, where I focus on improving education on mental health for young people, sharing tools and techniques.

The afternoon, normally involves a couple of yoga classes or private family classes/ one – to – ones.

What would you say about the work/life balance of being in the Cotswolds?

I personally love it, when I go and visit London for events and conferences, I am always shocked by how much work people do, and how fast the pace of life is. The Cotswolds provides a sense of leisure but there are also plenty of opportunities and ambition, there is lots going on especially in lifestyle, hospitality and creative industries.

I think that balance is important, as I would say I am a driven person so being able to slow down and retreat in nature is essential for me staying positive and enthusiastic with my work and not burning out.

You’ve set up yoga for under 25s - could you tell us more about that?

Yes, Bliss by Robin is the name of my business which focuses on delivering yoga and mindfulness to young people, now that involves me teaching yoga classes in Gloucestershire, both outside and in schools. These are really growing in popularity as I think young people can relate to me, because we are similar in age and so they find the classes supportive and of relevance to what they may be going through

I have recently started a project called bliss-ed which has exciting plans to make yoga more accessible for a wide variety of young people. Bliss-ed is primarily for young people and by young people (I have a small team of young people who are involved in the content making)

Using social media and youtube to share free content, for example in a few weeks’ time I have mental health campaign coming out, especially for young people to help them with mental health.

Bliss-ed ambassadors this is a new idea I have had which empowers young people to share yoga and mindfulness with their peers by running lunchtime clubs, this has already been tried out at Stroud High School, with one of my students, Flo Cross.

You’re a patron for the Teen Yoga Foundation - could you tell us more about that?

The TeenYoga Foundation is a charity with the aim of making yoga more accessible for young people. They do studies with the university of Westminster, and others investigating the effect yoga has on young peoples well-being and they also represent the ‘yoga in schools’ section of the All-Party-Parliamentary-Group (APPG) for yoga in society, where MPs and lords, as-well as health care professionals and yoga teachers meet to raise awareness of yoga and coming up with solutions for the government to put these practices into our healthcare, schools, prisons and businesses. As the Teen Yoga Patron, I support their work by going to the APPG meetings.

Where do you like to go to eat/drink in the area?

Somewhere close: The Painswick Hotel - I just love the interior and the balcony has amazing views, it’s so comfortable and stylish and the food is divine, the veggie options are experimental and tasty.

What’s been the most challenging and rewarding part of your jobs so far?

Juggling art and the yoga as they both have lots of potential opportunity and areas of growth so managing my time between them both can sometimes mean the workload is a bit overwhelming, but I just do my best and try not to rush.

It was exciting to do the ‘shift’ art exhibition as that combined art and yoga together in a powerful synergy.

What are your goals living and working here or have you reached them already?

I have reached some big goals already, my next big one Is to leave something behind which can keep running without me having to be here all the time, the work I do for young people in the are has really started to kick off and I hope with the bliss-ed ambassador scheme other young people can take on some of my work and expand it, so that a suitable and supportive mental health support is offered.

My art goal is to now take my ‘shift’ exhibition on a tour out from Painswick and around the Cotswolds and up to London.

Where’s your favourite place to relax over a weekend?

Walking on Rodborough common or through the Painswick Rococo gardens.

Where would you go in the Cotswolds to be inspired?

There are always lots of interesting, creative events going on in Stroud and Cheltenham, I enjoy going to live music, local festival and art exhibitions to see something new.

Look out for Robin’s videos on ‘Movement for Modern Life’ or the ‘Netflix of Yoga’ as Robin calls it, based in the Cotswolds.  www.mfml.co/robin

In April Robin is releasing a special series called ‘Sharpen your Mind’ to help people through stressful times: 

https://movementformodernlife.com/

For more be sure to follow Robin:

@blissbyrobin - personal yoga account @blissedgeneration - new project @rart.insta - art account

www.rockthecotswolds.com 

[zipgrowth]

Big Tech Needs to Treat Our Children Better

I invest in education technology, but decades before I knew what a venture capitalist was, I was a history teacher in a small town in America’s heartland where I started my school’s first “Internet club.” I’m a believer in the merits of technology and have written about how technology can be used to broaden access to knowledge, connect people and even improve empathy.

But 2018 marked an inflection point for education technology that most investors and developers did not see coming. It surfaced biased algorithms, irresponsible advertising, privacy incursions, fake news and screen-time addiction—all especially concerning for those of us who believe that while technology is no magic elixir, it is an essential element of our education system. While I see technology as a powerful force for good in education, its deep and unchecked infiltration into our kids’ everyday lives may be undermining the work of our teacher—and even the purpose of public education.

Technology is, in fact, already touching nearly every part of our public education system, from assessments to communication to professional learning. Field-trip photos are texted to parents, quiz reminders find their way into students’ chat feeds, and teachers have new tech tools to motivate their students. Technology is helping schools get increasingly better at offering a more tailored approach to education; moving away from the one-size-fits-all model. So much of this progress is welcome and long overdue.

Big Tech now commands more hours of our children’s attention than schools.

But I’m afraid this progress will stall if we do not urgently tend to an issue that is truly fundamental to our education system. Our public schools were designed with a clear purpose: to educate our citizenry so that democracy could thrive. Our schools are inextricably linked to our democracy. It is the reason that our schools emphasize skills like research and how to navigate disparate information and construct logical arguments. National academic standards ask that students demonstrate “cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic.”

In short, a strong democracy is dependent on students’ ability to discern credible sources of information and use evidence-based arguments. In an age where media options have exploded and consumption is at an all-time high, it’s more important than ever that we are nurturing citizens who are intellectually rigorous and independent.

Schools do the best they can while they have our kids. But when the school day ends, kids at increasingly younger ages swipe on their phones and immerse themselves in social media, games, YouTube and other corners of the internet. On average, teens spend 9 hours per day consuming media in enticing online environments where videos default to autoplay, advertisers target kids and recommended content is driven by algorithms. They spend so much time on their phones, even teens themselves are worried.

Much of what they consume runs counter to the very thinking skills that schools are working so hard to build. YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram, where most kids spend their time, are driven by a business model that relies on winning consumers’ attention to secure advertising revenue. These platforms invest heavily in making their products so compelling that users want to use them every day. They build-in features like autoplay, notifications and streaks to make their products sticky in a very intentional way. Some tech executives have gone public with feelings of dissatisfaction. Sean Parker, an early tech entrepreneur left consumer tech for health tech because “you’re spending a lot of time trying to make your products as addictive as possible.”

Business models driven by attention yield content that too often results in the media equivalent of junk food for kids. When we let algorithms make decisions, the results are: views, watch time, completion rate, and subscribers—not positive impact. That may be fine for adults, but for children, maximizing attention consumed is not good enough. When we leave out child-development experts, school leaders, and other quality and expert considerations, we get videos like the one below, recommended by YouTube’s algorithm to a 3-year-old I know. It has almost 9 million views.

Some tech journalists have been the most outspoken. TechCrunch’s John Biggs wrote, “YouTube is a cesspool of garbage kids content created by what seems to be a sentient, angry AI bent on teaching our kids that collectible toys are the road to happiness.” In my own household, I’ve been shocked so many times by inappropriate recommended content and ads served up to my 3 kids including an anti-feminist rant ad embedded in my daughter’s favored YouTube craft videos.

Big Tech is exceptionally effective at optimizing for the results they desire. The features we see now show that safety and better curated content for children has not been a priority.

It’s Time to Act—and We’ve Done So Before

In an age where media options have exploded and consumption is at an all-time high, it’s more important than ever that we are nurturing citizens who are intellectually rigorous and independent.

Skeptics might say that television was no different with its junk food cartoons and over-the-top consumerism. I came of age in the ’80s and ’90s when the average family watched 5 hours of TV every day. It was so central to daily life that it spawned its own genre of food and furniture.

While it’s true that television was built on the same ad-driven business model as Google, there was no real innovation in the underlying passive technology. The tools to target advertising and create addictive products were primitive by comparison. Television’s successor, the internet, has proven much more powerful in this regard.

Like the internet, TV was not made for kids. In the early days, children watched adult westerns and tobacco commercials. Child advocates started to worry about the impact of all this adult programming on children. In 1966, the prescient Joan Ganz Cooney wrote a white paper calling for children’s educational programming, which led to the wildly successful Sesame Street.

Children were watching so much TV that the federal government intervened. Congress passed legislation in 1990 called The Children’s Television Act which required TV stations to develop programming that would “further the positive development of children 16 years of age and under and consider the child’s intellectual/cognitive or social/emotional needs.” It also cut commercial time in half and placed restrictions on what types of products could be advertised to kids. In 1997, the Federal Communication Commission enacted stricter regulations that required a minimum of 3 hours of programming per week to educate and inform children.

It was a smart move by the federal government to see TV as a potential educational tool noting, “TV has the capability to benefit society and assist in education and informing children,” a fact sheet stated. “Studies show that TV can effectively teach children specific skills, assisting in preparing children for formal education.” Realizing the potential synergies, the Children’s Television Act was placed under the purview of the Secretary of Education.

Here we are in 2019, knowing that our children have effectively switched channels over to the internet and consume content at unprecedented levels. Big Tech now commands more hours of our children’s attention than schools. It’s time for the leaders of technology companies to recognize that whether they like it or not, they play a powerful role in our children’s cognitive development and even the strength of our democracy. What if they worked hand-in-hand with our teachers to reinforce the goals of our national learning standards through developmentally sensitive algorithms, self-monitoring tools, and requirements on source visibility?

If our tech leaders won’t step up and do the right thing, I would hope that once again the government intervenes on behalf of children. COPPA protected their privacy, and, based on the state of consumer technology, we’re going to need another act to protect their minds.

Big Tech Needs to Treat Our Children Better published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[mrsbluebertgreggleson]

So often, the conversation is had surrounding mass incarceration as a whole. However, we don't always account for all of the small systems within it that allow it to be the beast that it is. One of those systems is cash bail. Of course, cash bail isn't intended to be a problem, but for low-income folks, that's exactly what it becomes.

Cash bail happens before trial to ensure that defendants come to court to settle their charges, with the alternative being that they’re held in jail until the bail fee is addressed. Unfortunately, if they cannot afford the bail amount, this can force low-income people to miss work, lose time with their children and otherwise have their lives unfairly destabilized.

A prime and heartbreaking example of this system at work is Kalief Browder, the young man from the Bronx who was held on Rikers Island in New York City for three years at only 16 years old for a crime he maintained he did not commit, simply because he couldn’t meet his $3,000 bail. Browder committed suicide in 2015 after his release.

According to Teen Vogue, organizers across the country have begun community bail funds to aid in fixing this problem. Even better, there are now apps which allow you to donate to the cause.

The first app, Bail Bloc,  is a computer app project from The New Inquiry that uses cryptocurrency to convert your computer’s unused energy stores into funding for the Bronx Freedom Fund and eventually a nationwide initiative, the Bail Project. Once downloaded, the app takes advantage of your computer’s unused processing power to “mine” a secure, private and untraceable cryptocurrency called Monero. Cryptocurrency (like Bitcoin) isn’t “real money,” but can be exchanged for real money. At the end of each month, Bail Bloc exchanges the Monero for real money, which it then puts toward bail funds.

The second app, Appolition is also focused on ending cash bail using a different method. This mobile app automatically donates your spare charge to a bail fund. The app is said to allow you to make an encrypted connection with the account you use for your daily purchases (any purchase over $1.80 qualifies); the app will then round all your purchases up to the nearest dollar and then — once you reach at least $2 in accumulated spare change — will donate the money to bail funds. The app is modeled after savings apps that also reallocate your spare change.

While both apps are fresh and new, they are adding a powerful tool to the issue of combating a rigged system. By just allowing people to have the ability to attend their court date, the number of people being convicted drops drastically. With the amazing work they're doing, will you be checking them out?

Linked article published November 27, 2017.

More info on Appolition and its success linked here. Since I ‘d already checked into Appolition, I also wanted to check on Bail Bloc before recommending it. To quote a Quartz article (link here):

Every night, nearly half a million people who have not been convicted of a crime are nevertheless sitting in jail cells across the US. The vast majority of these people in pretrial detention are at risk of losing their jobs, their homes, and even custody of their children because they cannot afford bail. And so, regardless of their innocence, 90% will choose to plead guilty rather than wait the weeks, months, or years necessary for backlogged court systems to hear their cases. It’s just one of the many ways that the US criminal justice system punishes the poor before they ever get to trial.

In an effort to address this injustice, The Bronx Freedom Fund provides bail for the accused who cannot otherwise afford it by collecting donations from the public. And in recent months, the organization has partnered with the online culture magazine The New Inquiry to take a much more experimental approach: building its bail fund with the proceeds from mining cryptocurrency.

Bail Bloc, an app developed by The New Inquiry and launched in November, allocates a small percentage of the operating device’s excess computing power to mine cryptocurrency. Bail Bloc mines Monero, a relatively energy-efficient cryptocurrency, and transfers the rewards it collects to a central pool, which is converted to US dollars and donated to The Bronx Freedom Fund. It can be downloaded for free on the magazine’s website.

The New Inquiry estimates that each Bail Bloc user can generate $3 a month. Although that may not seem like much, the magazine figures that only 5,000 users running the app for one year can produce enough funding to free as many as 1,800 people from pretrial detention. And because 96% of defendants out on philanthropic bail money return for all of their court dates, the vast majority of funds raised will be returned to The Bronx Freedom Fund and used to free people in perpetuity.

“The New Inquiry deserves the credit for this innovation,” says Ezra Ritchin, project director at The Bronx Freedom Fund. “They pitched us the idea of Bail Bloc, and we were thrilled to collaborate.”

Although creating an app that fights mass incarceration is ostensibly outside the wheelhouse of a magazine dedicated to criticism, The New Inquiry doesn’t see it that way. Not only does founder and co-publisher Rachel Rosenfelt view Bail Bloc as part of the magazine’s near decade of work criticizing the US criminal justice system (which The New Inquiryhas conveniently bundled together to accompany the app), but she considers Bail Bloc a piece of criticism itself.

“We think of criticism as a political weapon—that individual pieces can actually help us, and help our readers alongside us, articulate an understanding of something that needs to be made sense of,” she says. In Bail Bloc’s case, the thing that needs to be understood is “criminal justice in the United States as the profound evil that it is.”

In this sense, Bail Bloc follows The New Inquiry’s other “rhetorical software” projects: The Founder, a start-up simulator illustrating the all-consuming aspects of capitalism; and White Collar Crime Risk Zones, which applies real-life predictive policing techniques to financial malfeasance.

As far as its development goes, Rosenfelt describes Bail Bloc as “a true horizontalist, collaborative effort.” The concept of distributively mining cryptocurrency was introduced by Grayson Earle, who teaches emerging media technology at the New York City College of Technology, but its application to bail was suggested by JB Rubinovitz, an artificial intelligence designer. Along with Earle, The New Inquiry’s senior editor Maya Binyam helped lead the project, ensuring it complemented the work being done by bail funds and activists.

The New Inquiry’s conception of Bail Bloc as a form of criticism may seem like intellectual spin on just another social justice project, but the app’s design embodies that principle. Monero became the cryptocurrency of choice over the better known Bitcoin because mining the latter requires significantly more electricity—an issue of practicality for users, but also an environmental concern.

Similarly, bail funds were selected as the beneficiaries of the app because they could recycle the small amounts of money produced by distributive mining in perpetuity, while such little money would be of almost no use to other kinds of organizations. Furthermore, Bail Bloc collects very little information about its user—in keeping with activist concerns over surveillance technology and The New Inquiry’s conception of bail as a form of social surveillance, in which the poor are forced to regularly check in with courts and bail bondsmen, lest they be arrested once more.

The app “only tracks how many people are using it at any given moment, but not the identities of those people,” says Earle. “We can also only estimate the number of installs given how many people visited the download page and currently run the software.”

Based on visits to the app’s page, he estimates that 3,000 people have downloaded Bail Bloc to date. With around 1,000 users running the app daily, Bail Bloc has raised more than $5,000 for The Bronx Freedom Fund in the two months since the software’s launch. As successful as that may be, it falls far short of the ultimate goal shared by both The New Inquiry and The Bronx Freedom Fund: abolishing bail altogether.

“At the end of the day, our goal is to drive ourselves out of business by fueling the momentum for systemic change,” says Ritchin of The Bronx Freedom Fund.

It’s a sentiment that Rosenfelt echoes. Discussing reactions to Bail Bloc, she notes the virality of the project, with its coverage in major publications and its mentions across social media (including the Twitter account of popstar Grimes). Of the criticism the app has received, Rosenfelt points to a trend disparaging it for “wastefulness.” She summarizes the complaints as: “ ‘What a wasteful thing to do! Why shouldn’t we just give money directly to bail funds?’ ” To which she responds: “Please! Oh my god, yes!”

Rosenfelt’s delight reveals Bail Bloc’s true purpose. In developing the software, The New Inquiry’s goal isn’t necessarily to have users passively assist the poor. The hope is that, the sooner users realize that they can do more than just run Bail Bloc in the background, the sooner they can start making moves to abolish bail, period. In other words, it’s only once Bail Bloc is made obsolete that its job will truly be done.

Linked article written by Arvind Dilawar and published January 23, 2018.

[inaneinthenextplane]

American Amnesia: A Case For Why Trump’s Administrative Evils Do Not Make bush Good

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/357109-poll-dems-have-favorable-view-of-george-w-bush

It's come to my attention lately that my fears have been verified, that a bunch of nice celebrity guest appearances and speeches condemning the obvious evils of white supremacy has worn away at American contempt towards one of their most vicious and prolific abusers. The news cycle has noticeably begun to handle this assassin of American moral character with kid gloves and in the ire & fire of public outrage against out current manchild-in-chief, his image has been successfully re-rehabilitated.

This is not okay.

Lets just go over some things this man has done:

The authorization of military force that has been used for years well into the Obama and now Trump administration to 'fight the war on terror' was tasked originally with hunting down Osama Bin Laden and deconstructing Al Quaeda, both of which were adequately accomplished. This same declaration fresh after 9/11 has been used to justify the executive branch occupying the countries of Afghanistan, Niger, Iraq, Libya (during the ousting of Ghaddafi), and many other countries. Normally wars have to be authorized via a congressional declaration of war, but the lawful lawlessness of every executive branch in the use of military force since Could Not have happened without this man.

This man also capitalized on 9/11 to push through the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, an act which has effectively suspended habeus corpus & our fourth amendment rights, allowing the government clearance to access our personal information via a rubber stamp covering large swaths of many millions of Americans or if just suspected to be an enemy of the state.

The deployment of the Cuban naval station Guantanamo Bay as an extra-judicial prison designed to hold (largely foreign) captured enemies of the state in cruel conditions, & often subject to periods of torture during interrogation, began in 2002 not long after this man was elected. Part of Obama's path to the whitehouse was the broken promise of closing this HellHole, which stands in opposition to anything we ever say about human rights on an international stage.

This man was the progenitor of the drone program which left mechanized aerial warfare to what are fundamentally death machines in the sky. A military tactic we've used for taking out targets of interest, & that has resulted in the murder of many thousands of people unrelated to threats to our national security, for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time & they are used to murder doctors, rescuers, and mourners after the job is sloppily done

https://www.salon.com/…/u_s_drones_targeting_rescuers_and_…/

I normally hate a lot about Salon.com, but Glen Greenwalds article & the information presented in it can be corroborated by many sources.

The double-tap drone strike designed to hurt civilians is a war crime, it threatens our safety on the world stage, and it is us allowing our government cannibalize any sense of honor we hold claim to.

Footage of helicopters killing 10 men in a street of Baghdad (including two journalists for Reuters) were leaked by the private Bradley Manning to Wikileaks and published under the title 'collateral murder'. A van stopped to assist the wounded and was fired upon, two children were wounded and their father was murdered. Nothing happened to the people who committed this act.

Private Manning was imprisoned under conditions of solitary confinement, subject to torture & humiliation, and was essentially until the ass end of the Obama administration thrown away for life for bringing to light this and other leaks to inform the American people of a war crime committed by their government.

During the election that 'won' him the presidency, the state of Florida (then governed by Jeb Bush) purged 50,000 black votes in an election that was critically close in terms of delegates. The supreme court would decide the outcome of the lawsuit that would follow, filed by Al Gore, two court judges both having been appointed by this mans father George H.W. Bush. Not to mention, this man attempted to appoint his own personal lawyer as a SC justice.

This man infected the educational system of the United States with curriculum centered around unscientific ideas such as intelligent design in direct opposition to evolutionary biology, abstinence only sex education which resulted in continued upward teen birthrates, and with the institution of No Child Left Behind the emphasis on education was placed upon student performance on standardized testing. This resulted in failing students dropping from public school, low scoring schools being punished in terms of funding, and the general destruction of well rounded educations designed in part to teach critical thinking skills.

This man carpet bagged someone whose primary experience was in the Rodeo Show business to be the head of FEMA who would then oversee a failure to appropriately respond to the disaster of hurricane Katrina. Chaos would ensue in New Orleans & it was a dramatic blow to American confidence in disaster repose.

This man withdrew from the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gasses & undermined American regulation on the environment by defunding enforcement agencies, & disbanding a pledge to tax carbon emissions. This has set the United States back basically a generation in terms of the environment on top of what we now have with Trump.

This man had the audacity to cut funding for veterans he was sending out to war, gutting services to them by billions of dollars.

In fact, this man so skyrocketed the use of mercenaries that at the height of the Iraq war there were more private military contractors in Iraq than actual army soldiers. These mercenary companies like Blackwater would be implicated in various war crimes, where civilians would be, again, slaughtered by men who would face no fucking punishment or trial.

This man used false evidence through then defense secretary Colin Powell to justify an illegal war in the face of UN opposition, implicating Iraq in the events of 9/11 and as having amassed weapons of mass destruction with intent to kill Americans on the US mainland. Also using the testimony of an acrimonious political prisoner of Saddam Hussein code-named 'Curveball' to implicate the regime in Iraq further in falsified WMD claims.

This man had twice as many CIA (not FBI) agents fighting the failed war on drugs than he did tasked with even investigating terrorism.

This man was the first president to initiate 'free speech zones', not content to just monitor our speech but to tell us how we were allowed to protest and where.

This man assaulted abortion rights for women, defunding family planning institutions designed to help those who needed abortions. An actual ban was instituted on stem cell research, which set medical research back for years (they even made a South Park episode about it). He opposed gay marriage and continued DACA, maintaining the homophobic-ally motivated national ban on same sex marriage.

the bright side of his being president was the fact that he decided to leave when he had to.

This man was a national embarrassment, his capacity for constant gaffes even created the popularization of the 'bushism', these brought us humiliation whenever we made the mistake of turning on the news-you could look them up but I'll link here a compilation that demonstrates his capacity to fuck up worse than even Trump https://youtu.be/Be6tunbRcs8

This man is now LIKED BY THE MAJORITY OF DEMOCRATS & I know what this is, this is that Democrats are typically younger and don't remember what went on. And hey, nobody has to agree with me that as far as impact on social/economic/legal/foreign issues his administration is worse than currently is Donald Trumps by miles, & definitely the Obama administration.

But he's not 'good'. If there is a hell, this man is as good as there already. The evil shit that he was up to, I mean, you just aren't informed to me if you have a positive opinion of him at this point. I question your political judgement in all things if you like the shit was doing, or think at all that some bullshit speeches taking swipes at the man that tossed his brother around like a RagDoll compensates for the institutionalized suffering of human lives & the environment committed by him. I don't even think you can have sincerely held liberal or even libertarian principles if you like him, he appeals to a very authoritarian and ultra-conservative side of politics and exercised those tendencies in the ugliest of ways. He is a war criminal who should remain shunned by all media circles, & you should be distrustful of Anyone who gives him a platform in the media.

I don't even capitalize his name when I type it, this man is and will always be george w. bush to me. This borderline illiterate moron with his entire family dynasty has ruined much of what actually made our country great.

I don't normally like to make posts this long and drawn out in details, but I just found out about this & its verified my fears about the re-calcification of positive sentiment towards bush in the mainstream media, & this is just intensely demoralizing for me on a visceral level. I am frustrated with the political amnesia of my countrymen, and also their underlying lack of political principle. I don't want to harp too much on this but let this post be a testament to the fact that I have no tolerance for this man & neither should any of you Even if you have political beliefs aligned with him on some of the social issues or on things like taxes, (which I didn't even mention the bush tax cuts) but there's probably like a thousand ways this guy could have fucked up in a single year I could talk about.

Bottom line: things are ugly right now.

[thecloudlight-blog]

New Post has been published on Cloudlight

New Post has been published on https://cloudlight.biz/awareness-about-internet-safety-very-low-among/

Awareness about internet safety very low among

At a time when the young are being swept over by the net generation, attention approximately the pros and cons of the web global have to be important. A survey performed by way of two studies students of a town based totally institute suggests how while a huge number of faculty going college students use the net for instructional in addition to enjoyment functions, awareness about protection factors whilst on-line could be very low amidst the children.

Over 55% children were no longer aware of the time period “responsible nepotism” whereas an average of sixty-four% changed into no longer positive approximately the time period “hacking”. 29% college students had no longer heard of the term “cyber-crime” and approximately 36% college students didn’t know if “cyber safety” became even wished. What’s even worse is that a chunk of the teenaged respondents additionally notion one could be brought to internet utilization as early as 5-6 years old.

“Looking at the manner in which everybody is hooked on to the internet

Ut’s miles essential in helping kids and the young people by way of creating cognizance to save you abuse and misuse of internet, and promote recommendations for cyber safety and safety,” said Kamini Rege, assistant professor, branch of Human Improvement, Nirmala Niketan University of Domestic Technology. The research has been carried out via two of her Master’s degree students, Soumya Shetty and Virginia Dias, among 2016 and 2017 in two phases.

whilst the first section (known as pre-test) highlighted the awareness amidst college kids unfold across Mumbai and Thane, the second one phase (submit-take a look at) turned into the same survey carried out after engaging in sessions on cyber safety for the same youngsters alongside Shaan Basis, a non-profit corporation operating closer to constructing secure and accountable netizens. The publish-take a look at figures show a massive difference in cognizance stages among the equal respondents.

Best Ways to Create TDV Awareness

A 2011 survey indicates that 23% of women who ever skilled rape first skilled some form of accomplice violence between the age of 11 and 17. A terrific manner to create recognition is by using carrying customized silicone wristbands!

Prevent TDV with Improved recognition

It is of their teenage years that many younger people start a courting. At that young age, they frequently can’t tell the difference among wholesome and bad traits of relationship. some do not even realize they are in a dangerous courting. They frequently emerge as goals of courting violence and abuse. Even if they know something isn’t right, many younger human beings pick out now not to share their emotions with everybody. This Youngster dating Violence cognizance and Prevention Month, it is time to lead them to understand how severe this hassle sincerely is. You could also sell respectful, non-violent relationships amongst youngsters.

TDV Impacts the Conduct of Teenagers

Teenagers in unhealthy, abusive or violent relationships revel in intense psychological conflicts which may also lead to poor modifications in their Conduct like melancholy, drug and/or alcohol dependence, suicidal thoughts and antisocial sports. But, there are matters You can do to Prevent this.

Teach Teenagers

Parents’ position in preventing TDV is crucial. They have to talk with their Teens approximately wholesome relationships and Train them about the social risks and the way to overcome them. Kids need the motivation to do something positive about the situation they’re in. Handiest then they’ll have the mindset to talk about the difficulty with their Dad and mom.

Focus at School

The Board of Management can invite visitor lecturers to talk about relationship violence and prevention. This can certainly create an effect amongst students. Instructors can prepare school room discussions on the issue. Schools should make it perfectly clear that they do now not tolerate violence of any type. They have to be aware of every single record by a scholar and take instantaneous motion (no exceptions). Teens need in order to proportion what’s bothering them without being afraid.

Use To be had Resources of Assist

young humans want to recognize who to turn to in case they experience abused. Violence hotlines are one of the simplest assets for getting Assist. If you observe any suspicious Conductor threats of violence, you have to touch crime and home violence prevention specialists, or some other network agency to get Assist. In case you do not want to speak to someone you do not know, the method a person you accept as true with, as an instance someone from your circle of relatives or a near friend.

Social Media

Update your cover image and profile photograph to support TDV. Publish interesting messages, testimonies, and articles on Facebook or Twitter to have interaction greater human beings. Write a letter to your neighborhood newspaper approximately the difficulty.

Internet Marketing Success Is No Myth

Achievement as an internet marketer isn’t always some mystic artwork. There is no magical incantation required; nor is it vital to promote your soul to the satan to attain it. Necessarily, it’s miles about ‘paintings’; approximately doing the right matters in the right way. it’s far simply top advertising and marketing exercise. By means of following the direction laid out By means of the marketers who have long past earlier than (maximum of whom are nevertheless going sturdy) and By means of making use of ourselves to the approach that has been verified over time, we are able to be triumphant.

My historical past is within the field of classical music.

One query all musicians are ordinarily asked is: “How do you get your palms to move so fast?” The solution is constantly the equal: – “practice!” Net advertising isn’t any specific. Find out what you need to do and then preparation until you can do it. within the international of a track, there had been many authoritative tomes written at the art of training and device. One phrase which regularly crops up is – “smart repetition”. The best way to solve a technical problem is to play it again and again once more. This, of the route, is boring! The way we get spherical it is to maintain playing the difficult observe series, however, we mess around with it. We’d change the rhythm, the articulation, the dynamic, the rate, and so on. and so on. Which continues the work thrilling whilst making use of ourselves to the hassle. There are not any shortcuts; the work need to be finished and the skills practiced to get in which we need to head. Bear that analogy in mind while drawing near the diverse troubles you will meet in going for walks an online commercial enterprise.

There are techniques and techniques which have been advanced for the reason that marketing ability of the Net become first realized, components of the commercial enterprise which paintings just as effectively today as at any degree within the beyond. In this newsletter, I will examine some of those key elements.

Web sites glaringly play a widespread role in our online advertising

Continually go for simplicity in any website. Each internet site has to basically have one single cause. Every services or product you provide should have its own internet site. By no means confuse your traffic With the aid of imparting them with a visual explosion of coloration, pix, and images with links splattered all over Every page. keep the design clean and relevant to the process in hand. In case you are looking to entice subscribers, the opt-in shape has to be the most prominent element on your page. Your website reproduction should direct your visitors to it and encourage them to sign on, which we commonly do with a free offer of a few type. With a product web page, the income cloth must be emotive and crafted to make the sale.

  Importance of Obedience Among Our Children

Disobedience can have a selection of causes. At instances, it’s miles because of unreasonable parental expectancies.The defiance and laziness of unbelieving dad and mom I will understand. I have biblical classes of the behavior of the spiritually blind. However, the forget about of Christian dad and mom perplexes me. What is at the back of the failure to require and acquire obedience? I am no longer sure. As parents, step one closer to supporting our infant change his/her conduct is to realize or decide the motives in the back of his/her frustrations.

Why do not we use opposite psychology?

We can assist them via high-quality reinforcement. Because I was so happy with what he did, I kissed him and said, “Very good. I like you son.” Via doing this, he becomes additionally very glad that he’d like to affect me greater By means of showing his grades other than doing household chores and he is simplest 10 years old. Consider that? From there I found out that those tremendous efforts will continually be more a success than punishment.The key’s early identification and remedy. It’s humorous how that works isn’t always it? Permit me to enumerate the reasons behind our kids’ disobedience.

1. We’re giving them too many chances.

Suggest what you say and say what you Mean. Expect obedience the primary time. Sure, I know that counting gets them transferring but you are missing the point. If you discover which you absolutely experience pressured to provide a few form of reminder with a very young toddler, strive to announce some thing like “I want you to obey.” This will remind them that there is indeed an effect coming in the event that they can not get off the “fence” approximately your command.

2. We supply puzzling, conflicting, or hypocritical instructions.

Make certain your phrases make feel and do not contradict themselves. A stupid one would be “close your mouth and eat.” I’ve been guilty of announcing this one and we always chortle because it’s impossible to try this! We also want to avoid hypocritical instructions.

[attendantdesign-blog]

New Post has been published on Attendantdesign

New Post has been published on http://attendantdesign.com/heres-some-tips-on-keeping-your-kids-safe-online/

Here's some tips on keeping your kids safe online

Again while the internet became first turning into a mainstream, I had a temp job in an internet café. Don’t forget dial-up tones and having to test photographs to send them?

    Clients popped in on quiet mornings to play Solitaire to boost their ‘mouse talents’ — some human beings lifted the mouse up and pointed it on the display screen like an arcade sports gun.

I’m wondering what the satisfactory gentleman who jammed the cash into the disk power is doing now — or even the more tech-savvy ones have been susceptible to clicking on each advert and beginning dozens of pages at a time.

The usage of a mouse turned into a fiddly new ability; we concept a few model of Facetime changed into nevertheless only for Big name Trek group, and we all blundered via and attempted now not to welcome too many viruses or people trying to dispose of inherited hundreds of thousands of our lives.

Now, mainly in case you’ve were given primary college kids, you’ll feel like an out-moded sci-fi display android as you watch their fingers skitter expectantly over the keypads of recent gadgets they in all likelihood were given for Christmas.

It wasn’t too elaborate to keep an eye on them throughout college holidays when we have been all glad to be indoors, but now they’ve advanced exponentially and are looking to skulk off someplace for privacy with new chat and picture apps.

You might assume that opening up a pleasant, safe web page or series of YouTube films is the best way for more youthful youngsters but I’ve found out you’re definitely handiest buying your self a small little bit of time. Pop-up advertisements begging you to ‘click right here to win a vacation’ or fake virus warnings will swoosh your toddler over to ‘lovely women just ready to speak’ or ‘actual murder scenes’ in an instantaneous.

Even Barney’s sidekick is a capability threat on the line in case you haven’t suitable parental controls mounted — he’s called BJ if you didn’t understand.

Today is safe net Day so it’s an excellent time to check out methods of blockading online trouble and boosting your know-how approximately your children’ new tablets and video games.

Avril Ronan is international program director at IT safety organization tips keeping kids from the internet, TrendMicro which has its Irish headquarters on Cork’s Model Farm Road. She spends pretty a piece of time visiting faculties and hosting college visits focusing on internet protection as a part of the organization’s unfastened social responsibility paintings.

“We offer the sensible recommendation to dad and mom on a way to teach them approximately online protection. There are things to recollect when deciding on a baby-friendly smart tool. I would say to analyze collectively approximately privacy. children are in order that smart now at The use of computers and apps and also you, the grownup, brings life enjoy so it’s a perfect match. You don’t recognise all of the answers. Use websites together with commonsensemedia.Org to examine up on a recreation or app.”

Avril, with 3 young youngsters herself, is well aware of how famous and even important technology is to kids and teenagers.

“Sure human beings make mistakes on-line, however, you need them to understand that they could come to you when they do something stupid as so a lot of them will. We tell the students we communicate to that there are options obtainable. If they couldn’t speak to their dad and mom, trainer or another person then there are online helps.

“The Samaritans and ISPCC — you can text, call or email. you may make a nameless call to gardai.”

She recognizes that you may have the high-quality ‘net nanny’ mounted at domestic however then your toddler is going to a chum’s house wherein the equal safety or supervision isn’t in an area.

“The majority of kids will do some thing silly on line so the key is that after they do they are able to come to you and talk approximately the thing they’ve achieved, said, or witnessed.”

Avril receives the teens to examine why a person might send naked pics or motion pictures of themselves.

“It’s all about road cred. You would possibly assume it’s adequate or cool to ship a p.C to a boyfriend or to a female however if they ship it to just one character and that character sends it to just one greater person, what number of human beings will ultimately see?”

“We also provide an explanation for exactly what grooming is,” said Avril, before noting that younger humans may not realize that they are being groomed or have been groomed within the beyond.

Cybersmarties.Com is an Irish agency running a secure social community for youngsters — it’s devoted to schooling kids early in how to behave on-line.

Their loose website consists of capabilities for dad and mom inclusive of commands on how to show on parental controls on one of a kind gadgets in addition to lecture room bullying and cybersafety assets.

Easiest way To Promote it on line Business

To become a success Enterprise man or woman we want to paintings tougher, enticing greater humans and promote your desired Enterprise. On the subject of Commercial enterprise, online advertising and marketing are one of the pleasant manners to apply in recent times. however, did you know that offline marketing may be useful as nicely to your online Business?

You have to admit – the online international is CROWDED with marketing messages.

It is difficult to start out and get observed, and It’s emerging as more tough each day.

Sarcastically, a number of the older methods have once again ended up extra powerful. As each person else vies for attention on a line, keep in mind doing something antique school, consisting of…

1: Sending Postcards

While you ship an e-mail, It’s without problems neglected or deleted. A message on social media includes even less weight.

but a real existence, physical piece of mail that lands in their mailbox are something they may take be aware of. And postcards are cheaper to mail than letters.

here’s what to do: Determine at the aim of your postcard – do you want them to join your list? Attend your webinar event? Go to a sales page?

As soon as you have got your intention, use testing to locate simply the proper slant to your offer. A postcard is a surprisingly small space, so each word and each image have were given to tug its own weight. but after you find the magic mailing piece, you can continue to mail it out for months and even years, as lengthy as it remains powerful.

realize the lifetime price of your client. This can assist you to determine what type of conversion charge you need with your postcard mailers to be in income.

send the postcards yourself, or use a postcard mailing carrier. Truly Google “postcard mailing provider” and you may discover an enterprise to in shape your needs.

2: Sending Lumpy Mail

What is the pleasant way to get your mailing piece to face out? Make it lumpy.

if you’ve ever acquired a non-earnings solicitation for a donation, you in all likelihood know what we’re speaking approximately.They send pennies, pens, calendars, packs of greeting playing cards and all kinds of things to get you to open their envelope. And of path As soon as you’ve got their free present, the regulation of reciprocity kicks in and you want to ship them something Returned.

For our purposes, think of something uncommon and fee effective, inclusive of…

· A pebble (because of the rocky time they have had, or the rocky time ahead in the event that they don’t get your product)

· Seed packets (to ‘develop’ their Business, develop their income, etc.)

· A compass (with a view to locating their manner)

· A thumb pressure loaded with your promotional substances

· Worry stones (due to the fact they’re up at night time, stressful about their Business or the way to pay the payments)

· Poker chips (due to the fact they shouldn’t gamble on other products or providers)

· Aspirin in a packet to ease their pain

· A paper pockets because you will show them the way to fill it with cash

· A sand timer for whilst they may be jogging out of time

Maintaining the Trains running Isn’t always top Enough

whilst I used to be a kid one Christmas I got a Lionel teach set from my parents. It was actually cool. The locomotive had a smoke stack that definitely “smoked” While you placed a drop of oil into it. I will nevertheless Consider the burning oil smell the locomotive would emit as it raced across the tracks. The transformer which ruled the velocity of the teach went all the way as much as “ninety” (I nevertheless trust it changed into in “miles according to the hour!”) and had 3 rail automobiles that had been all unique colors and a cabin car. The educate set also came with Sufficient tune to form a parent-8 that I would push the tracks collectively The use of special pins that match into the ends of the tracks.

As I played with this train, I discovered that I ought to handiest do three track configurations; that of a discern-8, an oval, and a circle. The first time I assembled the track in a circle and attempted out the train, I realized that the most effective excitement I’d get could be when I pegged the transformer at “90” and ran the train off the tracks. got quite dull as I found out the futility of watching a educate cross round and spherical in circles.

As I consider my teach set within the context of our lab as leaders, I cannot help however contemplate how many of us take a “hold the trains walking” method to our careers. The point of interest of the job Isn’t always about doing something better, quicker, or less expensive, it’s miles just about doing the process the equal way as it has been carried out earlier than. Permitting this level of complacency to creep into your process is a dangerous aspect. Without a burning choice to enhance, get better, and be more aggressive you run the hazard of becoming out of date. Undergo the telephone ebook Nowadays and search for “horse and buggy repair”. You might not find it due to the fact innovation ensued to create the auto. Yet many leaders treat their jobs and careers as though they may be there for all time and their price will by no means decrease.

if you’re in the mode of “Maintaining the trains running” together with your task then perform a little critical introspection about how you are going to shake yourself free of the grip of complacency. if you do not you simply may additionally locate that your career has just surpassed you with the aid of and you’ve long past the way of the Do-Do Chook.

Tips On how to Download unfastened Books online

Technological development has rendered conventional books much less popular as more humans embody the benefit that includes the traits. With the assist of an e-reader tool, you could study all the books you could take care of without having problems together with your site, specifically because e-ink does not glow and you can additionally set contrast to at ease levels. There’s even handier due to the fact you may bring as many books with you as you want at the gadgets something that might prove bulky with paper bound books.

free books can be observed on-line so that you get to enjoy your study Without genuinely spending an awful lot on the books which you opt for. however, to have a good more enjoyable time with the unfastened books, you need to be cautious with the book downloads so you grow to be with true deals that match your reading alternatives every manner feasible.

Tip 1 – Select legit and reliable websites to Download your eBooks from. There are so many websites out there supplying free books, but best the nice will comprise all relevant books to your reading possibilities. A very good website online ought to not solely deal with one style, however, need to at the least provide you variety so that you have the freedom to choose the books that you can Download and study without spending a dime in place of being confined to options simply because you are becoming the books free. A terrific site must also provide books which might be written by means of specialists and recognized authors for that reply. It would be even greater convenient to choose a site that sends you updates As soon as new books had been uploaded to the website online. Find out what you could experience from the website before subscribing so you get the higher value.

Tip 2 – pick the Download layout cautiously. unfastened books downloads may be in RTF, TXT, EPUB, PDF and MOBI formats. PDF book format is probably exceptional that you could settle for. it’s far a format that contains texts entire with drawings, formulation and some other graphical facts the ebook may additionally have. Most books virtually appearance very attractive in PDF layout or even the tables are absolutely displayed to give you the Most first-rate time reading your chosen books. You will discover the layout specifically incredible with books that touch on fitness and fitness and come with plenty of portraits to take the message domestic. There are very good sites that provide free eBooks in PDF codecs best.

Tip 3 – Go through any e-book evaluate before downloading. it’s far one of the satisfactory approaches of know-how what the e-book is all about and finding out whether or not it’s far something you will enjoy reading. Evaluations may be from readers who have already read the books or you can also rely upon one book previews that give you a summary of what is in the back of the story. The books can be loose, but that does not imply which you ought to be stuck with a boring ebook Truly due to the fact it’s far unfastened. find a little approximately it earlier than going in advance with the Download.

[mondorock]

The first time I met Leonie Lockwood was when she taught a Yin Yoga class at my local studio. Later that year, she kindly helped me with a blog post about beginner’s styles of yoga by explaining what Yin was, more in-depth.

Leonie has a long-standing passion for Yoga which came from her early years spent doing asana with her mother from age 8. She began her on again, off again love affair with the mat throughout her 20’3 and 30’3 . From there, she developed a 12 year career in remedial massage learning anatomy in-depth, and understanding how the body moves. Her shift to yoga, came gradually after working in another industry that left her anxious, withdrawn and chronically depressed.

  By the time she was 38, Leonie realised her current office job wasn’t for her, and she ventured off solo to India and Nepal where she made the decision to return to study remedial massage upon arriving back to Melbourne. India called her back for another 6 week adventure, and she made a promise to herself to return for a whole YEAR to deepen her understanding of yoga and meditation, learning from some of the worlds best along her path.

After completing her initial yoga teacher training during that year in Asia; she went on to complete a 150 hour mentorship program with Ambika Chadwick of The Yoga Social  and another 350 hours of study in the USA with Yin expert’s Paul and Suzee Grilley. From there, she developed her meditation methods with Sarah Powers and is currently completing studies into clinical Pilates through breath education.  Like any passionate entrepreneur, her learning is never complete and she is always looking for opportunities to grow, and new approaches to bring all of her accumulated knowledge to the mat.

In THIS interview, Leonie agreed to lay her life bare allowing me to open up areas where she has seen struggle; and found strength. Where she has been at her lowest; and used yoga to shift above and beyond to her highest. She is strong, she is brave and she is FULL of loving courage that she fondly shares with her inspiring yoga students on a daily basis.

M.E. “From experience, most great yoga teachers start their journey from a place of pain, looking for a way to escape the demons and devastation of their past, would you say this is true for you?”

L.L “Can I not answer that question? Let’s start with something easier. We’ll come back to that…”

M.E. “O.k., let start with the easier ones. When you were younger, what did you MOST want to be when you grew up?”

L.L “I wanted to be a ballet dancer, or a dancer of some sort. Or an actress. I just liked dancing, and acting, and singing.”

M.E. “At what age did you feel like you were on a different path to your peers – as far as your spirituality goes?”

L.L “I think there were little glimmers through my teen years, and then it dampened down again. I got interested in Buddhism around 19 or 20, and had been interested in yoga, because my Mum was into that. So I had been interested in that as a kid too.” Pauses for a moment, to contemplate “More so as I hit my mid thirties I thought there’s NO WAY this environment is for me. My role and the office work I had just seemed hard to do. And kept getting harder and harder and harder.”

“Eventually I decided that work was getting in the way of yoga“

M.E. “On your website, you said you’ve been dabbling in yoga for over 25 years, what made you turn from having it as a passion, to having it as a full-time career?”

L.L. “It’s probably even more than 25 years to be honest, that was just when I started going to classes. I started with Mum though when I was seven or eight and practicing with her in front of the television to Swami Sarasvati, whom I believe is still alive.”

By the time Leonie was in her mid thirties, she had been working for over a decade in not for profit organisations supporting those experiencing homelessness. She helped at the crisis intervention point and some days she would receive threats, or feel hopeless for not being able to provide shelter for the people who came to her. Working at the front line of crisis meant she often dealt with people experiencing mental health issues and/or drug and alcohol misuse in addition to lack of housing. Some were just exiting prison, and some had managed to escape the clutches of family violence.  Being a caring person, she could not help but be affected by the raft of problems presenting. Most were grateful for assistance, others violent towards themselves, staff or their families; pushing her moral and ethical boundaries.

“When people are homeless, whether you agree with what they’ve done or not [in the content of criminal behavior]; these people all deserve a roof over their heads. It’s stressful. There’s just not enough affordable housing available for people”

“I started going to yoga on the way home from work, just once a week. Then started going a bit more, and a bit more. I had practiced before as I mentioned, I had dropped in and out of classes, but I got to a point where I just started practicing more and more and I realised how much better that was for me, than heading to the pub after work with the rest of the work team and getting drunk as a way of coping with the stress. When I was 38, I desperately needed some time out, and headed to India and Nepal to find some peace.”

M.E. “You’ve obviously been through a lot in your life, but you still manage to have this fierce sense of confidence and enjoy taking risks to keep creating breakthroughs; what fuels this?”

Leonie mentioned that while her career was in turmoil, her mother was slowly dying from Motor Neurone Disease  – to which there is no cure. The year her mother died, she accepted a voluntary redundancy from work and invested herself fully between teaching yoga and massage.

L.L “If I think about my ‘place of pain; I used to drink a lot of alcohol. I did that from my teens until well into my early thirties. Especially while working with those experiencing homelessness. I often used to self-medicate with alcohol because of what I dealt with on an everyday basis. My adrenaline levels were very high, and I was very stressed out by the things I saw and the people I dealt with, like the threats that were made to me as a person when I was ultimately just trying to help others. People were just angry, and very upset. They were frustrated about being shifted around the system and hearing the words ‘no’ more often than not. Back then, my method of coping with stress was to drink, like many others around me. I was chronically depressed and had been for a number of years, and had also been going to therapy to help deal. All of this decreased, the more I immersed myself in yoga. I started finding inner peace. I felt clearer in my head, clearer in my body and just happier overall. It was so much better than using those other things as a crutch.”

M.E. “You teach at a few studios across Melbourne, and teach workshops too; how do you think you BEST connect to your students?”

L.L. “Mmmmm. Good question! I often think the best way to connect with students can sometimes be when they come through the front door and you check them in. You can chat to them, find out if they have injuries or illness, and find out more about them and personalize the experience

The retreats and workshops I host, also give me a chance to connect on a deeper level as we spend more time off the mat together. It forms a bond, and people often open up.”

M.E. “How do you feel about yoga being depicted by overtly flexible, slim yogini’s getting into impossible-asana?”

“It’s not necessarily about getting into perfect alignment in a posture, but allowing yourself to sit into a posture that suits you best”

“I love to encourage people to be themselves. Yoga isn’t about handstands, or scorpion pose, it’s about being you and listening to your body”

Leonie believes that if you can sit and breathe, (in whatever form that might take), you’re forming a deeper connection within yourself and learning how to relieve stress. To self soothe in a HEALTHY way. That connection is what we need to strengthen so we can rely on the foundations of the practice when we need it most. Once you’ve learned that, you can always go back to that place, it will always be open to you.

M.E. “What is your niche in teaching?”

L.L. “Yin yoga and meditation. I teach mainly mindfulness techniques in this space at the moment, and am also very much practicing what I preach. I’m also working more on Chakra meditation techniques create a deeper, single pointed awareness, taking you deeper into your innermost reaches of your body and mind”

M.E. “Do you prefer teaching students that are new to yoga or more experienced?”

L.L “I think I have more to offer beginner and intermediate students. I don’t really teach advanced Astana’s, my body doesn’t really go into those shapes {laughs}. If I’m teaching beginners I try to remember what it was like for me; like learning what the meaning of ‘Om’ was, or what a mantra was… I try and answer questions before I get asked them.”

M.E. “A few of my Personal Training clients are interested in learning yoga, but find the thought of going to a class intimidating. What is the best piece of advice you could offer to get them started?”

L.L “If they are fearful of the class environment, they could do a private one-on-one session, or even get a group of friends together and do their own small group class. This way they can learn the lingo, and feel comfortable with the way their body moves.”

“These days the way social media is dictating yoga is that if you’re not a skinny white chick with your hair up in a bun, clutching a green smoothie, you could feel really intimidated by setting foot in that yoga studio environment”

We both giggle at her last comment, remembering those awkward times where you want to start, and are just SO afraid of fitting in, standing out or doing something wrong. She continues:

“Another option is to try a gym based yoga class if they’re already training at there, which can often be less intimidating. Often there are yoga sessions at local community halls that suit people who might want a more casual environment. The key I guess, is to build slowly over time and listen to your body, noting how it moves and how you feel before and after”

M.E. “In your most recent blog, you said that 2016 was one of your ROUGHEST years with a lot of “first world problems” arising and turning you into an anxious ball of insomnia, how did yoga help you through this?”

L.L “Well I don’t know if it did as much as I would have liked! In the end, I AM a human being and like most, I’m not able to maintain that ‘zen’ all the time. I haven’t quite reached that stage… In 2015 I started to turn away from earning money from yoga, as it started turning into another ‘job’ instead of my passion. I found I had to get back into yoga for myself, and developed a stronger meditation practice. More often than not, I found the physical asana too challenging, and it was my meditation practice that really helped me through the rough times. I hate to think what that year would have been like without it. In hindsight, I’ve probably still got a long way to go in terms of not letting things get to me.

Also during that time, I used to journal after meditation and asana practice and started to recognise my patterns. It gives you insight on how you can change, what you can do differently, and then you just find opportunity to implement things. You can do things differently moving forward and just make that choice to start changing for the better”

M.E. “Being such a soulful person, how do you find living in a city that is so full of pressure to fit into that white-collared work ethic, and be so beautifully – You?”

L.L. “It is a bit tough. {laughs} I used to spend a lot of time in the country and didn’t really feel that pressure. In the past year though, it hasn’t been the case as much, so this year I really want to get back to the country more often. This year I’m running a retreat in June out in the country, and ultimately, I would love to own my own retreat venue in the country.”

M.E. “Leading on from there, what IS the next chapter in your book of life?”

L.L. “I’m focusing my attention on collaborations this year, and really trying to develop more opportunity to work with people who haven’t thought of yoga as an answer. I’m also running some more Yin Yoga Teacher Training [starting this weekend!], and building on the ultimate goal to shift my working life out to the country where both myself, and clients can feel more connected.”

M.E. “Lastly, if you had any advice for a new business owner or venturing into a new direction,  what would it be?”

L.L. “Join a business network so you don’t feel so isolated, so you don’t feel like you’re doing the journey alone.”

“I just knew I didn’t want to die without trying”

“If it’s yoga, then remember always to keep practicing yourself, find a mentor and try not to lose your passion for the industry that you’ve come to love so much” – Leonie Lockwood

As a final note on the interview, I just wanted to thank Leonie again for really opening up old wounds and allowing me to understand how the path of passion isn’t necessarily always easy; but it’s always worth it. I want to thank her for her courage, bravery and honesty in all areas – even answering the questions that I wasn’t sure she would! It takes a lot of guts to become who you really are, and it’s people like Leonie that truly inspire me to be that version of my self.

Lastly, if you’re based in Melbourne and interested to know more about Yin Yoga, and want a chance to practice with the woman herself, check out Leonie’s Facebook Page  or her website Flowing Life. She will also be commencing a 50 hours Yin Yoga Teacher Training from this weekend in St Kilda, hosting everal mini retreats through-out the year, has a weekend retreat in regional Victoria in June and will be leading other workshops through-out the year.

Love & light,

Monique Elouise xx

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: YIN YOGA The first time I met Leonie Lockwood was when she taught a Yin Yoga class at my local studio.