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Finances and families don't always mix
WASHINGTON – Lots of the questions I get from readers involve their friends, families and finances.
Here are some topics that came up during my online chats from folks seeking advice about money situations close to home.
Q: My daughter has found herself in a situation where she has to move. Her credit is bad and she is having difficulty getting approved for an apartment. Should I co-sign? Moving back home is not an option.
Singletary: Do not co-sign.
I know you want to help. However, unless you are truly prepared to make her monthly rent payments, don't do it. If her credit is bad, this is an indication that some financial issues are there already. Maybe it's because she was irresponsible, maybe not (like she's lost a job). But in either case, don't link your finances with hers. Instead, help her explore various living options. Perhaps she can move in with a friend temporarily.
Q: Our 28-year-old daughter is entering a master's program this fall and we anticipate she will require education loans. My wife and I are in our early 60s and expect to retire in three to five years. Should we co-sign an educational loan for our daughter if we are asked?
Singletary: Do not co-sign if you're asked and certainly don't offer.
Co-signing means you are borrowing, too. You are not a backup borrower. And I would definitely not recommend it since you are so close to retiring – unless you have the money to pay the loans. And if you have the money to pay the loans, then just give it to her. (I don't believe in loaning money. It can get complicated and/or ugly.) It's not too late to encourage your daughter to work and save up to pay the cost of the program.
Q: Do you tell or have you told anyone in your family about your net worth? Until my spouse let it slip to a sibling (I am a very private person about money), only our broker knew how healthy our assets were. Am I being silly to like to keep the information private?
Singletary: You are not being silly. And absolutely no, I do not tell folks what my net worth is, certainly not family. It's none of their business. Besides, in some families the more they know, the more they may press you for money.
Q: I have a 3-year-old daughter with my ex-boyfriend. He did not want to be involved, but his mom does. We see my daughter's grandmother about once a month. One of my daughter's favorite dishes is green bean casserole. During a holiday meal, the grandmother insisted on giving it a whirl. Little did I know that she had put bacon in it (she knows my daughter and I are allergic to pork). My daughter ate about half of it before her face and lips started to swell. Fortunately I had her medication with me. She was rushed to the hospital where they administered more medication. I received a hospital bill for $3,000. I think my daughter's grandmother should pay the bill, but she refuses. Her excuse was that it was only a few slices of bacon in the recipe, and she didn't believe me when I said we were allergic because in the past I served bacon to her. But it was turkey bacon. How do I go about this? I'll just pay it with a credit card, but now I'll have that debt to work off. Any suggestions? I'm so mad.
Singletary: The fact that the grandmother knew about the food allergy and still put bacon in the dish leaves me stunned. I would be mad too. Even if she thought you were overstating the issue, why take the risk? She is absolutely responsible and should pay any part of the bill not covered by insurance.
But you know what? You asked. And you were in the right to ask. However, since she refuses unless you take her to small claims court, you are stuck with the bill.
Q: I have a friend who regularly gives my husband, me and our daughter very expensive gifts (Mother's Day, birthdays, Christmas, baby shower, etc.). We cannot afford to come even close to her generosity in return, though I wish we could. Should I say something about our budget and inability to do so or just continue to thank her profusely?
Singletary: Give sincere and heartfelt thanks and say nothing more.
You don't have to feel guilty. The friend gives what he or she can. You give what you can afford.
Contact Michelle Singletary by email at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Mitt Romney's Question-Mark Economy
This post originally ran on Robert Reich's Web page, www.robertreich.org.
As we close in on Election Day, the questions about what Mitt Romney would do if elected grow even larger. Rarely before in American history has a candidate for president campaigned on such a blank slate.
Yet, paradoxically, not a day goes by that we don't hear Romney, or some other exponent of the GOP, claim that businesses aren't creating more jobs because they're uncertain about the future. And the source of that uncertainty, they say, is President Obama — especially his Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Dodd-Frank Act, and uncertainties surrounding Obama's plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.
In fact, Romney has created far more uncertainty. He offers a virtual question mark of an economy
For example, Romney says if elected he'll repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else. He promises he'll provide health coverage to people with pre-existing medical problems but he doesn't give a hint how he'd manage it.
Insurance companies won't pay the higher costs of insuring these people unless they have extra funds — which is why Obamacare requires that everyone, including healthy young people, buy insurance. Yet Romney doesn't say where the extra money to fund insurers would come from. From taxpayers? Businesses?
Talk about uncertainty.
Romney also promises to repeal Dodd-Frank, but here again he's mum on what he'd replace with. Yet without some sort of new regulation of Wall Street we're back to where we were before 2008 when Wall Street crashed and brought most of the rest of us down with it.
Romney hasn't provided a clue how he proposes to oversee the biggest banks absent Dodd-Frank, what kind of capital requirements he'd require of them, and what mechanism he'd use to put them through an orderly bankruptcy that wouldn't risk the rest of the Street. All we get is a big question mark.
When it comes to how Romney would pay for the giant $5 trillion tax cut he proposes, mostly for the rich, he takes uncertainty to a new level of abject wonderment. "We'll work with Congress," is his response.
He says he'll limit loopholes and deductions that could be used by the wealthy, but refuses to be specific. Several weeks ago Romney said he'd cap total deductions at $17,000 a year. Days later, the figure became $25,000. Now it's up in the air. "Pick a figure," he now says.
Make no mistake. Wall Street traders and corporate CEOs are supporting Romney not because of the new level of certainty he promises but because Romney promises to lower their taxes.
Meanwhile, many of Romney's allies who are attacking Obama for creating uncertainty are themselves responsible for the uncertainty. They're the ones who have delayed and obfuscated Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and any semblance of a federal budget.
"Continued uncertainty is the greatest threat to small businesses and our country's economic recovery," says Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been funneled tens of millions of dollars into ads blaming Obama for the nation's economic woes.
That's the same Chamber of Commerce that's been using every legal tool imaginable to challenge regulations emerging from Obamacare and Dodd-Frank — keeping the future of both laws as uncertain as possible for as long as they can. The Chamber even brought Obamacare to the Supreme Court.
At the same time, congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to scotch any agreement on how to reduce the budget deficit. Because they've pledged their fiscal souls to Grover Norquist, they won't consider raising even a dollar of new taxes. Yet it's impossible to balance the budget without some combination of spending cuts and tax increases — unless, that is, we do away with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or the military.
Business executives justifiably worry about January's so-called "fiscal cliff", requiring sudden and sharp tax increases and spending cuts. But they have no one to blame but Norquist's Republican acolytes in Congress, including Paul Ryan, all of whom agreed to the fiscal cliff when they couldn't agree to anything else.
Average Americans, meanwhile, face more economic uncertainty from the possibility of a Romney-Ryan administration than they have had in their lifetimes. Not only has Romney thrown the future of Obamacare into doubt, but Americans have no idea what would happen under his administration to Medicare, Medicaid, college aid, Pell grants, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and many other programs Americans rely on. All would have to be sliced or diced, but Romney won't tell us how or by how much.
Romney is casting a pall of uncertainty in every direction — even toward young immigrants. He vows if elected he'll end Obama's reprieve from deportation of young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children. As a result, some young people who might qualify are holding back for fear the information they offer could be used against them at later date if Romney is elected.
Conservative economists such as John Taylor of the Hoover Institution, one of Romney's key economic advisors, continue to attribute the slow recovery and high unemployment to Obama's "unpredictable economic policy."
In truth, Romney and the GOP have put a giant question mark over the future of the economy and of all Americans. The only way the future becomes more certain is if Obama wins on Election Day.
Robert B. Reich, chancellor's professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including the best-sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest, "Beyond Outrage," is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.Wait, before you go…
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subset: commoncrawl


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By James Kwak
Back in the heady days of the financial crisis, I used to recommend Planet Money as a good way for non-specialists to learn about some of the basic economic and financial issues involved. Over the years, I've become less thrilled with the show, for reasons that will become obvious below. In particular, whenever Ira Glass dedicates a full This American Life episode to a Planet Money story, I cringe nervously, but I listen to it anyway, since, well, I've listened to just about every TAL episode ever, and I'm not about to stop now.
But I can't let this weekend's episode, on Social Security disability benefits, pass without comment. In it, Chana Joffe-Walt "investigates" the Social Security disability program, first by visiting Hale County in Alabama, where 25% of all working age adults are receiving disability benefits, and then by talking to different types of people (lawyers and public sector contractors) who help people apply for benefits.
The worst part of the episode comes at the end, where Joffe-Walt claims that the Supplemental Security Income program, by paying benefits to poor families with disabled children, discourages children from doing well in school and from seeking work as adults, because either would cause them to lose their benefits. ("One mother told me her teenage son wanted to work, but she didn't want him to get a job because if he did, the family would lose its disability check.") On that topic, I'll just outsource the rebuttal to Media Matters, citing the National Academy for Social Insurance and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, among others.
But the story as a whole suffers from the same kind of facile extrapolation from the individual story to national policy. The first half (on Hale County) winds up to the following punch line: There are lots and lots of people receiving disability benefits, and they receive lots and lots of money in aggregate, because there aren't enough jobs where you can sit down. Or, rather, that's Joffe-Walt's conclusion from talking to people in Alabama: the reason they can't even imagine working with back pain, and she can, is that they don't see any jobs around where you can sit down.
Only then, as she pulls back the camera, the problem becomes the decline of American manufacturing, lost jobs, and newly unemployed factory workers without the skills they need to find new jobs. But which one is it? Is it too many jobs where people stand up (the problem in Hale County) or not enough (the decline of manufacturing)? Probably the latter: the story makes more sense as one where one set of jobs goes away, leaving people unable to get the jobs that are now available, and they turn to disability insurance instead. But that doesn't explain Hale County, where there are no sit-down jobs.
Then there's the weird way the whole episode treats welfare reform. "Ending welfare as we know it" comes up in a couple of places: first as a positive example of what we should be doing (moving people from passively receiving benefits to working), and later as a cause of the rise in disability claimants. On the latter point, Joffe-Walt cites the fact that federal welfare funding declined, shifting the burden to the states, which gave the states the incentive to push people off welfare and onto disability. True enough. But she overlooks the big story. Federal welfare reform set lifetime benefit limits, meaning that, after a few years, you get completely cut off. After some welfare recipients got jobs, this was the factor that ensured that welfare rolls would go down. Many people who couldn't work and got welfare now can't work and get disability. That's a good thing—especially if the alternative is pushing them onto the streets.
Leaving all that aside, though, the story boils down to the idea that disability benefits are valuable, so people are trying to get them, framed as some sort of epiphany. "Holy cow, Batman, incentives matter!" But this is just social insurance 101. When designing programs that help poor and disadvantaged people, we already try not to reduce their incentives to work too much. That's why programs phase out over income ranges, that's why we have the Earned Income Tax Credit, that's why we have a debate every time long-term unemployment benefits have to be reauthorized, and so on. Is this some sort of national scandal? No. There are people who are disabled and can't work, they are entitled to a decent existence, the rest of us who can work should pay for it, and there is going to be a gray area where some people will be motivated to try to get into the program. That's life.
And is the existence of disabled people some sort of huge new insight into the evolution of the American economy? Again, no. Joffe-Walt claims that the 14 million people receiving benefits outnumber the people who are unemployed and are completely invisible to economists. It's true the newspapers don't publish monthly disability figures like they do unemployment statistics. But look at this:
That's the employment-to-population ratio, from the incredibly useful Calculated Risk. Since the denominator is all working-age people, this chart reflects any growth of disability recipients. And do you see some huge invisible force that is pushing down the employment ratio? I don't think so. This chart tells the usual story we all know. The economy was very strong in the late 1990s, probably unsustainably so (with unemployment below the long-term sustainable rate, according to the macro guys). We had a recession, and then employment recovered to roughly the sustainable rate. Then we had the financial crisis and a huge fall in employment. Sure, a rise in disability rates could mean the employment-to-population ratio is lower than it otherwise would have been. But it's not a new way of thinking about the economy. And if we're getting better at diagnosing mental illness and providing benefits to people with mental illness, that's a good thing.
I was going to end by trying to explain why I love This American Life and used to like Planet Money (see, for example, the episode where they talked to a chemist about why gold ends up becoming the basis for money in many developing societies) but don't like episodes like this one. But Ira Glass is one of the savviest people in radio or any medium, so he can figure out what's going on with the show he co-owns.


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Painkiller Cocktail
The Painkiller Cocktail is the obvious choice for Pusser's Rum, in fact this cocktail has been trademarked and a true Painkiller may only be made with Pusser's Rum.
The Painkiller
2 oz Pusser's Rum (some recipes call for 95 proof)
4 oz Pineapple Juice
1 oz orange juice
1 ounce coconut cream
crushed ice
Cinnamon and Ground nutmeg
Mix in a tall glass filled with crushed ice
Sprinkle the top with Cinnamon and Nutmeg
Garnish with a cinnamon stick.
And remember, the aim is not to drink more, it is to drink better!
Note: If you are interested in more of my original cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!


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Geoffrey Parker
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How do you play skittles?
Skittles includes a wide variety of bowling games popular in Europe but dating back as far as ancient Egypt. The object is to bowl the ball and knock down up to nine pins, often aiming for particular ones.
How do you play boulé?
Descended from ancient Rome and most popular in France, boulé involves competing teams tossing balls at a target from 6-10 meters away.
"Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris."
Oscar Wilde, Irish Poet and Novelist


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DLI applications for Spring 2023 are now live! Apply below.
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it's more than just a phase!
The Dynamic Leadership Institute, known to many as DLI, is designed to teach students the interpersonal skills and knowledge needed to engage in various leadership roles on campus, within the community, and in their futures. Each of the four phases allows the student to view leadership from different perspectives and provides opportunities to examine and enhance their skills. DLI is not for academic credit, but rather for self-exploration and personal development. DLI is a 6-week, 1-hour per week commitment per semester.
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DLI Phase I is designed to enhance participants' basic leadership skills and abilities. The participants represent diverse ages, interests, and levels of leadership abilities. The Institute's program includes leadership seminars designed to address a wide array of topics such as problem solving, diversity, leadership & management, personality and visual explorer .
DLI Phase II focuses on each individual's self-exploration as a leader. In Phase II participants will have the opportunity to discover their strengths and areas for improvement in regards to their personal leadership styles. Participants will begin to better understand themselves as leaders and how they work with others throughout this phase. This will be done by working with such instruments as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Kraybill Conflict Management, Consensus Building, StrengthQuest and power and authority ..
DLI Phase III gives participants the opportunity to use the knowledge and skills learned in the first two phases and put them into action. Students will complete the LPI assessment to start off their Phase III experience. From there they will be tasked with developing a program or event. Groups will be responsible for all steps from creation to implementation of the event. This program or event could include, but is not limited to, a service project or educational presentation. An understanding of Emotional Intelligence is also developed into the program .
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Attack sub standard deployments might be extended beyond six months
GROTON, Conn. -- The Navy is considering lengthening the standard deployment of attack submarines beyond six months as it faces rising demands with a fleet that has been shrinking since the end of the Cold War, the commander of American submarine...
GROTON, Conn. -- The Navy is considering lengthening the standard deployment of attack submarines beyond six months as it faces rising demands with a fleet that has been shrinking since the end of the Cold War, the commander of American submarine forces told The Associated Press in an interview.
Already, attack submarines are at times asked to stay out longer than six months -- extensions that can be trying for sailors who serve in tightly confined spaces with limited outside communication as members of the "silent service."
Vice Adm. John Richardson told the AP this week that keeping subs out longer is one of several options the Navy is considering as the number of attack subs is projected to continue dropping in the next decade and beyond.
"I think we're looking at all the options," he said. "As you try and maintain the same presence with fewer hulls, there are all sorts of variables in that equation. One would be extending deployment lengths. So that's certainly on the table."
Submariners are not alone in seeing deployments extended periodically, as two wars and evolving threats strain the entire U.S. military. A spokeswoman for the admiral, Navy Cmdr. Monica Rousselow, said it is impossible to say how long sub deployments might become because so many factors are involved.
Extending deployments permanently would save resources because the Navy could complete more missions with the nuclear-powered submarines that it has available. The fast-attack subs travel to far-flung corners of the globe for missions including intelligence gathering and firing missiles, but they can maintain a presence only for so long before making the time-consuming journey back to U.S. bases.
Navy contractors began stepping up submarine production this year, but pressure on the defense budget has raised uncertainty about future procurement. While some critics describe the multibillion-dollar vessels as costly relics of a different era, Richardson says submarines remain integral to America's nuclear deterrence strategy and the security of a nation that conducts the vast majority of its trade by maritime channels.
Enlisted crew members on the attack subs sleep six to a room, stacked in bunks areas barely larger than a closet, and navigate corridors so narrow only one person can pass at a time. The deployments are typically broken up by port calls, but they can remain at sea for weeks or months at a time. The bigger, roomier ballistic missile subs generally stay closer to their home ports and have shorter deployments.
Sailors in the elite, all-volunteer submarine force go through psychological screening to make sure they can cope with the tight quarters and extended time beneath the ocean's surface. Nobody with claustrophobic tendencies is allowed on board.
But retired submariners say the time at sea does take a physical and emotional toll, particularly when a mission is suddenly extended.
"You establish a battle rhythm in your mind where 'Six months is how long I'll be' and then, if it becomes seven months, you have to shift your mind a bit," said retired Rear Adm. John Padgett III, who remembers a particularly grueling 7 1/2-month submarine deployment during the Vietnam War. "You get a little tired of it."
Deployments longer than six months are unlikely to cause problems for specially trained sailors, but they would probably entail challenges for their families, said Army Col. Tom Kolditz, a psychologist at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
"You can probably find business decisions in the community based on that six-month cycle. You can find various kinds of financial planning done on that six-month cycle. If you take something like that that people are used to and change it, it can create problems," said Kolditz, director of the military academy's Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership.
At Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, support services are available to help sailors' families deal with prolonged deployments, said Beth Darius, a services facilitator for the base's Fleet and Family Support Center.
"We honestly try to tell them, 'Yes, you have a fixed date, but remember that date can always change,'" she said. "We try to help them not cement that date, but I personally know how easy it is to get that date and count down, and then have it change on you."
Richardson said in the interview Wednesday that constraints on communication are part of the nature of submarining, but that the Navy is working to improve bandwidth on the vessels. He said sailors will be able to communicate with family members more than ever, although e-mail will remain available only when it can be sent without the risk of giving up the sub's location.
Beyond the strain on sailors and their families, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney said, the longer deployments reflect an increasingly acute security problem. Although Navy contractors received approval this year to double production of Virginia-class attack subs to two a year, he said that will only slow the decline in the size of the fleet and will not fully replace older ships as they are taken out of commission.
The number of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the U.S. force has fallen from a peak of 98 in the late 1980s to 53 at the end of fiscal year 2010, a decline that roughly matches a drop in the overall size of the Navy since the end of the Cold War. Each Virginia-class attack submarine costs about $2.6 billion and carries a crew of roughly 135 officers and sailors.
Courtney, who is pushing for an increase in attack sub procurement, said they are unmatched in their ability to deliver firepower and do surveillance without being detected.
"Look at Libya. When President Obama said 'unique capabilities,' what he was really referring to was the USS Scranton, the Providence and the Florida, which in a matter of an hour obliterated Gadhafi's air defenses," said Courtney, a Democrat whose eastern Connecticut district includes the sub base and the Groton headquarters of the Navy's primary submarine contractor, General Dynamics' Electric Boat.
Currently, the submarine force can accommodate only about half the support requests from combatant commanders, according to Richardson, who said sub deployments are currently extended a month or more to meet demands on a case-by-case basis. He noted that surface ships also face extended deployments, as all branches of the military contend with increased demands.
As the Navy deals with rising security demands and budget pressures, he said, the force is also looking into repositioning submarines around the globe to reduce transit times and pressing builders to reduce maintenance periods and wring more deployments from aging vessels.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.


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In an age in which internet fabrications travel half-way around the world before truth has had a chance to put its boots on, the apostle Paul's words ring through the centuries with added urgency: "Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist" (Ephesians 6:14). As the waist is the center of your body, so truth is central to the full armor of God. Without the belt of truth, the covering that protects you from the devil's schemes simply crumbles to the ground and leaves you naked and vulnerable. Truth, like all other pieces of the armor of God, is in actuality an aspect of the very nature of God himself. Thus, to put on the belt of truth is to put on Christ—for Christ is "truth" (John 14:6). And Christians are called to be bearers of truth.
As Os Guinness has so wonderfully explained, Christianity is not true because it works (pragmatism); it is not true because it feels right (subjectivism). It is not true because it's 'my truth' (relativism). It is true because it is anchored in the person of Christ. Thus, "The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. It is not true because we experience it; we experience it—deeply and gloriously—because it is true. It is not simply 'true for us'; it is true for any who seek in order to find, because truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it."
Unfortunately, I've recently encountered further personal examples of how the internet can be used as a means of propagating falsehood.
FALSE ACCUSATION: Hank Hanegraaff joins Occupy Wall Street and Muslims in anti-Israel conference in Tehran, Iran.
TRUTH: First, I have never joined or, for that matter, endorsed Occupy Wall Street (OWS). I have simply defined it as spontaneous activism fueled by social media. Instead of blaming the government for social ills, OWS is bent on blaming the prosperous. Instead of awakening the political right, as the Tea Party did, OWS appeals to the political left who want equal distribution of wealth. I communicated my doubts that the OWS movement would have staying power. Although the Tea Party's message is codified in two words, "smaller government," which is comprehensible and can serve to galvanize a following, by contrast OWS's message seems unclear: Are the banks to blame? Is it Wall Street? Is it Failed bureaucracies? Is it Capitalism? As former President Bill Clinton said when interviewed by Time magazine managing editor Richard Stengel, "They knew what they were against, but they didn't quite know what they were for….They had a vision. They had no program and they had no organized political party. That's the problem that the Occupy Wall Street people have."
Furthermore, rather than joining Muslims at what is being characterized on the Internet as an anti-Israel conference, at both the University of Tehran and Allameh Tabatabai University I publicly opposed the radical socialist views of Imam Abdul Alim Musa of The Islamic Institute for Counter Zionist American Psychological Warfare.
Finally, I should also note that I engaged in spirited debate with Rabbi Weiss, whose calling card contains the moniker, "Pray for the speedy, peaceful dismantlement of the State of Israel." From his perspective, the Jews were exiled for covenant unfaithfulness and therefore the notion of Zion prospering is reserved for the coming of a future messianic figure. While I strongly disagreed with the rabbi's anti-Israel stance, I think he would readily agree that I engaged him with gentleness and with respect, in both public and private communications.
FALSE ACCUSATION: Hank Hanegraaff is a "Jew-hater."
TRUTH: This is a patently false and slanderous accusation. I am against racism in any form. Far from facilitating race-based discrimination on the basis of eschatological presuppositions, Christians must be equipped to communicate that Christianity knows nothing of dividing people on the basis of race. Just as evangelicalism now universally repudiates the once-common appeal to Genesis 9:27 in support of slavery of blacks, we must thoroughly and finally put to rest any thought that the Bible supports the horrors of racial discrimination wherever and in whatever form we encounter it, whether within the borders of the United States or in the hallowed regions of the Middle East. Indeed, during WWII, my family was devoted heart and soul to the Dutch Resistance Movement, refusing to give in to either racial discrimination against Jews or the Nazification of the populous.
Furthermore, as delineated in my book The Apocalypse Code, I am anything but anti-Israel and consistently oppose anti-Semitism: "There is no precedent for supposing that God favors Jews over Palestinians or vice versa. At the end of the day, our heavenly Father is not pro-Jew—he is pro-justice; He is not pro-Palestinian, he is pro-peace. In fact, the priceless material with which our feet are fitted for readiness in battle 'against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms' (Ephesians 6:12) is nothing less than a gospel of peace that works inexorably toward justice and equity. Only a gospel of peace and justice through faith in Jesus Christ is potent enough to break the stranglehold of anti-Semitism and racism fueled in part by bad theology. This is made explicit through a vision to unclean food that Peter experienced in Joppa. Only after he encountered the gentile centurion Cornelius did Peter fully comprehend the import of the vision. 'I now realize how true it is' said Peter 'that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all' (Acts 10:34–35)."
Finally, I am not anti-Israel; I am anti-Christian Zionism. Christian Zionism supposes that the Jews are going to be herded back in the Holy Land where two-thirds will be killed. Christian Zionism is not only anti-Semitic with respect to the Palestinians, it is detrimental in that the Jews are going to suffer for the sins of their fore-fathers.
As I pointed out in The Apocalypse Code,
The Dispensationalists' theory of two peoples of God has had chilling consequences not only for Jews, but for Palestinian Arabs as well. Unlike early dispensationalists, who believed that the Jews would be regathered in Palestine because of belief in their Redeemer, Many contemporary Dispensationalists hold to the theory that Jews must initially be regathered in unbelief solely on the basis of race. Such unbiblical notions put Christian Zionists in the untenable position of condoning the displacement of Palestinian Christians from their homeland in order to facilitate an occupation based on unbelief and racial affiliation.
The tragic consequence is that Palestinians today form the largest displaced people group in the world. As Dr. Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, explains, "Israeli historians now talk about the mass and planned expulsion of the Palestinians, an early form of 'ethnic cleansing.' The most troubling national confession has been the destruction of at least four hundred Palestinian villages, the ruin of dozens of Arab urban neighborhoods, and several massacres that would motivate the Arab population to flee." If America required people of African descent to carry special ID cards or to leave the country to make way for people of European ancestry, we would be condemned as a nation that promoted racism and apartheid. Attempting to justify our actions on the basis of biblical proscriptions is even more unthinkable. Says Burge, "Any country that de facto excludes a segment of its society from its national benefits on the basis of race can hardly qualify as democratic."
This is precisely why Zionism has been labeled a racist political philosophy. As Burge notes, "In 1998, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel accused the government of race-based discrimination and 'creating a threatening atmosphere that makes violations of human rights more acceptable.'"
As a closing thought, may I simply say that while the lack of discernment and civility displayed on the internet is astonishing, it becomes all the more appalling when those who claim Christianity propagate that which is untrue in an unloving fashion.
—Hank Hanegraaff


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No parentplans Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhDSmart Parenting for Smart Kids.
to yell at her children. But then the milk gets spilled, the backpack gets forgotten or the dog remains un-walked. Before you raise your voice again, think: Why do we resort to yelling? "Because we don't feel heard," says , coauthor of The key to reducing the volume, she says, is realizing that the more we shout to be heard, the less kids actually listen. Here, 10 ways to short-circuit yelling in your house.
1. Plan ahead. Can you set your clock by the yelling you do when no one's ready for school yet? It's worth strategizing for any trigger, from school mornings to sports practices to weekly trips to Grandma's. "Usually, the problem is that everyone needs more time," says Dr. Kennedy-Moore. Some tips: Get yourself ready before your kids, so you're not trying to put on mascara or find your car keys while also directing your children. And post lists of what each child needs and when near their bedroom doors for quick reference ("Tuesday: James needs gym clothes and flute").
2. Adjust expectations. You can tell a preschooler to clean up the playroom five days running, and on the sixth day he'll "forget." That's because he's three, not because he's defiant, says Dr. Kennedy-Moore, so yelling won't do any good. You're better aware than anyone of what your child can handle, so keep expectations at or just above his ability. For example, you know your five-year-old isn't yet capable of neatly stacking his books on the shelf, but he can at least get them off the floor. Baby steps!
3. Be a role model. The first time you hear your 10-year-old yell at his little sister (especially if he's using the same words and phrases you often employ), you'll have confirmation: Your kids learn how to communicate first and foremost from you, says Vicki Hoefle, parenting expert and author of Duct Tape Parenting. "One day, your children will talk to you the way you talk to them," so remind yourself to model a respectful tone and words. Try silently repeating what you say ("What is wrong with you?!") and then imagine how you'd feel if your child said the same to you. Ouch.
4. Give fair warning. Sometimes you can't suppress the urge to yell, but if you know you're about to let loose, "tell your kids, and give them permission to leave the room first," suggests Hoefle. (They'd have to be older than preschoolers). "This teaches personal responsibility for words and actions," she says, because it tells them that we all have strong emotions from time to time, but that we still have to respect others' feelings.
5. Refocus. Feeling yourself heating up, say, when you enter the kitchen and see sneakers strewn across the floor and an un-emptied dishwasher? Before you scream for your M.I.A. kids, distract yourself, says Hoefle. "Have some strategies and items on hand that calm you down, like squeezing a tension ball, popping a mint or looking at your favorite family photo." Doing so should quell the immediate urge to yell, helping you regain control.
6. Remember your role. When you resort to screaming, you're forfeiting a piece of your authority. "A yelling parent lowers herself to the level of a sibling or peer," says Dr. Kennedy-Moore. You can't demand respect from your children by shouting at them, but you can command respect by acting as a responsible figure in charge with a calm, in-control manner.
7. Keep the volume low at all times. Even when you're not angry, you may find yourself yelling ("dinner's ready!"). If you make a softer voice a habit (one that, with any luck, everyone picks up!), you'll be less prone to yell at other times too, says Dr. Kennedy-Moore. One trick to try: Speak to your family members only when you're in the same room whenever possible.
8. Think like a teacher. "The best teachers don't take children's misbehavior personally, but instead look at it as a learning opportunity," says Dr. Kennedy-Moore. So if your kid leaves the empty ice cream container in the freezer or the load of laundry moldering in the washer, ask yourself: What does he need to learn and how can I teach him that? For instance, maybe he needs a note posted on the refrigerator door, or a consequence of un-done laundry, such as not having his soccer uniform ready for Saturday's game.
9. Get close. Find yourself shouting up the stairs and across the yard? That's too easy for your child to ignore, which sets up a cycle of you yelling, your kids dismissing and you yelling more loudly. "Parents often tell me, 'I say the same thing 14 times and he doesn't listen!'" says Dr. Kennedy-Moore. "That's because he's tuned out the yelling." If your kid doesn't comply the first time you make a request, she says, "walk over to him, get his attention, make eye contact and speak firmly but gently."
10. Imagine an audience. If you're shouting with the windows open, chances are people can hear you, but think about this: What if your boss, best friend or grandmother were in the room with you, says Hoefle. Would you yell then? Adds Dr. Kennedy-Moore, "We often treat loved ones worse than we do our acquaintances," so try to listen to how you sound to others, and project your best self instead.


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1941: SS Patrick Henry, the first Liberty ship, is launched at the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyard near Baltimore.
Originally referred to as "emergency vessels," these cargo ships were among the first to be mass-produced. Numbers were critical as the Allies hustled to recover from the staggering losses wrought by German submarines during the Battle of the Atlantic. The vessels became known as Liberty ships after President Franklin D. Roosevelt, christening the Patrick Henry, quoted the ship's namesake: "Give me liberty, or give me death."
Liberty ships represented the assembly line fully realized. The keel was laid in traditional fashion but the ship was then constructed from prefabricated sections welded together in the graving dock.
Although it took 244 days to build the Patrick Henry, the average dropped to a mere 42 days per ship by the middle of the war. One Liberty, the SS Robert E. Peary, was built in an astounding four days at the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond, California. This was largely a publicity and morale stunt, however, and the feat was not repeated.
Although the Patrick Henry slid down the ways nearly 10 weeks before the United States came fully into the war, the U.S. Navy was already engaged, helping to escort merchant convoys through the U-boat–infested waters of the North Atlantic.
Around 2,700 Liberty ships were built during World War II, and many survivors found their way into merchant fleets after the war. Two fully operational Liberty ships remain afloat: SS Jeremiah O'Brien is tied up in San Francisco, and SS John W. Brown is home-ported in Baltimore. The O'Brien has the distinction of being the sole surviving merchant vessel of the vast armada that took part in the Normandy invasion.
The Patrick Henry, meanwhile, survived the war and was scrapped in 1960.
Source: Various
Photo: The SS Patrick Henry was the first Liberty ship launched.
This article first appeared on Wired.com Sept. 27, 2007.
See Also:- April 16, 1947: Ship Explosion Ignites 3-Day Rain of Fire and Death
- Compare Aerial Images of World War II Destruction With Today in Google Earth
- New Captain America Stills Show Off World War II Epic
- Secret Strobelight Weapons of World War II
- Revealed: World War II's Secret Sewing Needle Bomb
- RIP Frank W. Lewis: World War II Codecracker, Ingenious Puzzle Designer
- Feb. 23, 1941: One Step Closer
- March 29, 1941: Radio Stations Shuffle Frequencies on 'Moving Day'
- May 9, 1941: German Sub Caught With the Goods
- May 12, 1941: Fog of War Shrouds Computer Advance
- May 27, 1941: Sink the Bismarck!
- Sept. 10, 1941: Stephen Jay Gould Born
- Oct. 19, 1941: Electric Turbines Get First Wind
- Dec. 7, 1941: Attack at Pearl Harbor a Bold, Desperate Gamble
- Sept. 27, 1822: Deciphering the Rosetta Stone Unlocks Egyptian History


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Just about a month ago I picked up LotRO again. As I related then I wasn't really into it the time previous and the wife was suggesting we simply cancel my account. But I wanted to see what she saw in it, and surely Middle Earth should be a fascinating place to visit and adventure in. I was simply going to focus on one character. Perhaps diluting things like I was, too many alts, no "main," and otherwise still fully engaged with WoW, wasn't helping.
So I created a Warden, Geirmund, and the wife a Rune Keeper, Culedhel. He's level 25 now, she's 24. He's a pretty solid fighter. He's got ranged attacks from day one, he can tank, aoe tank too, his class is a "tank" class, and he can DPS well enough that I can go farm mats with him.
Since the crafts are so interdependent, and I wanted one each of weaponsmith, armorsmith, tailor, and the ability to gather what I wanted at will, my Champion is back in play, level 20 now, and my Burglar is nearly there, level 19.
I'm still figuring out how the craft mastery works. You can do enough of a trade to advance it to the next level, and then start things on that new level. But you have to do the previous level once through again, in order to achieve mastery in it. That's to say I can smelt enough bronze to advance it to the next level, where I can mine and smelt barrow iron. In prospecting, at the initial level, I've got a bronze anvil icon. If, however, I want to get "critical successes" while smelting bronze I need to have mastered it. I can't do that with barrow iron, so I need to work with more bronze until I get the gold anvil icon. Then that level of things is truly done.
A new character, Skjoldr, a Dwarf Guardian, has been getting some recent play time. In addition to getting him to 15 so I can see what dwarven heavy armor looks like on a dwarf (not half bad) he took a lot of detours while running quest to quest to gather wood, copper and tin, and collect hides. He boils the hides and smelts the metal in order to advance his Forestry and Prospecting to the next level, and then master it as well. The boiled leathers, though low level, went to Geirmund, my main tailor, now, so he can achieve his mastery there in Tailoring. That's happening slowly since he's only crafting one leather component that he sends to Angthir, my metalsmith. Skjoldr sends Angthir the bronze, and he, with the leather components from Giermund, is mastering his metalsmithing. And the completionist in me is just loving it!
And, if you're out collecting medium leathers off bears, it's kind of a zen experience where you simply get in a zone and cycle through an area. It's like a lottery because there's chances at random purple items to drop in addition to the hides that you expect. Like they say, "Wasted time is not time wasted."
So the month with LotRO has been really good. I've finally gotten into it enough that it's found a place in my gaming interests right alongside WoW.
I will say, though, that if both games came out with expansions next month, I'd probably head to WoW and take it all in. Blizzard's expansions are over the top NEW. TBC brought new races, new starter areas, and a new world with out-of-this-world looks. WotLK brought a new class, a new and improved starter area concept, and a new continent with looks that have matured from what we had earlier like a fine wine.
WoW's next expansion I'm predicting will offer either the Emerald Dream and/or the Maelstrom. And I'm predicting it'll be the Maelstrom, and then the Emerald Dream as the last and final expansion. The Maelstrom will bring in the last of the earthly bad guys (Azshara, and a reawakened Sargeras), new underwater zones, the islands and the southern continent. (See the Explorers tabard.) And then, for the grand finale, the last expansion, the Emerald Dream, in which the Druids, who were the first in battle against the Burning Legion, and those other classes, defeat the Nathrezim, whose works corrupted Sargeras in the first place. It'll be Nature versus the Twisting Nether, and it'll culminate with players reaching level 100. The new lands could be any number of planets as we march across the universe like Paul Maudib's Freman setting things in line for a better future.
We'll be ditching all of our Northrend somber rust, earth, and metal toned gear for the Maelstrom and I predict the gear palette will be bright, fishy, and tropical for the Maelstrom expansion. (Just look to the Naga for inspiration. Nevermind all the hand-me-downs they wore in Zangarmarsh.) The Emerald Dream will revert to something somber again, earthy and woody. Anyway, that's what I think.
LotRO, you already know what's coming. You know the land already, you'll just have more and more access to it. So it doesn't have that same level of improvement about it's expansion like WoW's will undoubtedly have.
LotRO is offering porterhouse steak versus WoW's magic mushroom. Munchies anyone?


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text: Animal patterns, camo prints and earthy tones are making a big roar this year, and now Nike (an old hand at the jungle boogie) has answered the call of the wild. This Fall they're releasing two leopard print inspired women's Air Max 1s, one black/gold with a hot-salmon lining and the other charcoal/white with a fierce-red lining. Both feature a white midsole with red Air Max units subtly resembling a ferocious feline flashing its fangs. The Nike WMNS Air Max 1 'Leopard Pack will be available this August from retailers including Titolo.


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You'll hear me talk a lot about perseverance in my posts and videos. I think more than any other personality trait you can have, sticking with something and seeing it through to the end is what makes people successful in life. Luck is random. Tenacity is not.
In PvP, perseverance is vital. You get killed, you get back into it. You get owned, you get back into it. You figure out what went wrong, you make changes, you adapt, you get back into it.
But it's not just for PvP. You want something? Go after it. Embrace your constraints, set the biggest, most audacious goal you can think of and go for it.
That said, may I introduce Ambassador Cynderblock, level 19 Ambassador of the Alliance.
It took 394 Horde quests and 259 Alliance quests to complete this reputation grind. It's only possible with a faction change, and a lot of help from friends. You should consider how the races will transfer over when doing it.
At level 19, you will pretty much need to do approach it like Loremaster – do every quest you can find, no matter how hard or obscure. I'll have full details of how I did it on Green Tinted Goggles soon.
But it is possible. Just stick with it.
Update: the how-to post is now up on GTG.


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Jonathan Odell has written extensively about his native state of Mississippi and is the author of the novel, The View From Delphi. The following post was adapted from comments Jon made on Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory blog.
After interviewing many of the "Black Knight" descendants, one thing I've learned that concerns them is how easily whites are convinced to idealize the "romantic" relationship between Newt Knight and the ex-slave Rachel. I don't think they would agree with a commenter who, as quoted on Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory blog, wrote that "it's less problematic" that Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, authors of State of Jones, "sexed up a romantic relationship for the sake of a film" then if they generally misread the meaning of Newt Knight and the Free State of Jones.
Black women in the days following the Civil War were at the bottom of the heap power-wise. Whether Knight's assumed romantic feelings for Rachel were reciprocated is missing the point. We will never know, because in the context of that era, it was irrelevant. Good for her if she did, but for black mothers in those days, romantic love was not the driving motivation. Who they loved was immaterial to surviving. She had to find the least worst choice that would keep her and her children alive. Sexing up the relationship for a more satisfying (and modern) ending, further obscures the wrenching sacrifices made and amazing courage displayed by black women of that era.
Just another thought. I was raised in Jones County and have been fascinated to find that the Knights were not the only family line that diverged down two paths after the Civil War. Several former slave owners sired black offspring, and in this part of the country, many thought that even your black children were to be cared for. Many acres of land are still owned by descendants of slaves who were bequeathed the parcel by a white father. But in none of these incidents do the direct black descendants assume that anything like romantic love played a part. According to them black women after the War were as much sexual slaves to white men as they were before the war. And interestingly enough, neither do they call it rape. "Taking somebody to the barn," as they commonly refer to the occurrence, was just the nature of things. I guess that's why context is everything. Projecting 21st century notions of romantic love onto 19th century southern interracial relations, as Jenkins and Stauffer have done, won't take us far toward understanding the lives of black, multiracial, or for that matter white women.
Jonathan Odell
Categories: The Free State of Jones


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I'm a freelance designer and Illustrator from Croatia. I enjoy working with logo design, all types of illustrations, custom & hand drawn lettering and typography.
Feel free to contact me for 1-to-1 Projects. Looking forward to working with you.
国: クロアチア. メンバー歴: 2012年05月27日(日)
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin completed the annexation of Crimea on Friday, signing the peninsula into Russia at nearly the same time his Ukrainian counterpart sealed a deal pulling his country closer into Europe's orbit.
Putin said he saw no need to further retaliate against U.S. sanctions, a newly conciliatory tone reflecting an apparent attempt to contain one of the worst crises in Russia's relations with the West since the Cold War.
Putin hailed the incorporation of Crimea into Russia as a "remarkable event" before he signed the parliament bills into law in the Kremlin on Friday. He ordered fireworks in Moscow and Crimea.
At nearly the same time, in a ceremony in Brussels, Ukraine's new prime minister pulled his nation closer to Europe by signing a political association agreement with the European Union — the same deal that touched off the political crisis that drove President Viktor Yanukovych from office and sent him fleeing to Russia.
Russia rushed the annexation of the strategic Black Sea peninsula after Sunday's hastily called referendum, in which its residents overwhelmingly backed breaking off from Ukraine and joining Russia. Ukraine and the West have rejected the vote, held two weeks after Russian troops had taken over Crimea.
At Ukrainian bases on the peninsula, troops hesitated, besieged by Russian forces and awaiting orders. Russia claimed some had switched sides and agreed to join the Russian military.
The U.S. and EU have responded to the crisis by slapping sanctions on Russia.
U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered a second round of sanctions against nearly two dozen members of Putin's inner circle and a major bank supporting them.
Moscow retaliated on Thursday by banning nine U.S. officials and lawmakers from entering Russia, but Putin indicated that Russia would likely refrain from curtailing cooperation in areas such as Afghanistan. Moscow appears to hope to limit the damage from the latest U.S. and EU sanctions and avoid further Western blows.
The latest U.S. sanctions, which targeted Putin's chief of staff along with other senior Kremlin aides and four businessmen considered to be his lifelong friends, dealt a painful blow to Russia. Obama also warned that more sweeping penalties against Russia's economy, including its robust energy sector, could follow.
International rating agencies downgraded Russia's outlook, and Russian stocks tumbled Friday.
Putin tried to play down the sanctions' toll on Russia in televised remarks at Friday's session of the presidential Security Council, saying that "we should keep our distance from those people who compromise us," a jocular reference to the officials on the sanctions list, some of whom attended the meeting.
He added sardonically that he would open an account to keep his salary in the targeted Bank Rossiya, a private bank that is owned by Yuri Kovalchuk, who is considered to be Putin's longtime friend and banker. With about $10 billion in assets, Rossiya ranks as the 17th largest bank in Russia and maintains numerous ties to banks in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
At the same time, Putin said that that he sees no immediate need for further Russian retaliation to the U.S. sanctions, a stance that reflected an apparent hope to limit further damage to ties with the West that have plummeted to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
"We must refrain from retaliatory steps for now," Putin said.
Russia is expected to play a major role in the planned withdrawal of U.S. and other NATO forces from Afghanistan later this year by providing transit corridors via its territory, and Putin seemed to indicate that the Kremlin at this stage has no intention to shut the route in response to U.S. and EU sanctions.
Moscow also appeared to be warming to the deployment of monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the top trans-Atlantic security and rights group which it has blocked so far.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia would welcome sending the OSCE observers to Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine on condition that their number and locations are clearly set, but he made it clear that they wouldn't be let into Crimea.
In Crimea, heavily armed Russian forces and pro-Russia militia have blocked Ukrainian military at their bases for weeks. Following Sunday's referendum they have moved aggressively to flush the Ukrainians out, storming some ships and military facilities.
The Ukrainian government said it was drawing up plans to evacuate its outnumbered troops from Crimea, but many soldiers remained at their bases awaiting orders.
At the Ukrainian military air base in Belbek, outside Sevastopol, Col. Yuly Mamchur told reporters Friday that he was still waiting for orders from his commanders on whether to vacate.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin Friday that 72 Ukrainian military units in Crimea have decided to join the Russian military. His claim couldn't be independently confirmed.
Meanwhile in Brussels, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and EU leaders signed an association agreement that was part of the pact that former President Yanukovych backed out of in November in favor of a $15 billion bailout from Russia. That decision sparked the protests that ultimately led to his downfall and flight last month, setting off one of Europe's worst political crises since the Cold War.
"Russia decided to actually impose a new post-Cold War order and revise the results of the Second World War," Yatsenyuk said. "The best way to contain Russia is to impose real economic leverage over them."
The U.S. and the European Union have pledged to quickly offer a bailout to Ukraine, which is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, struggling to pay off billions of dollars in debts in the coming months.
It owes Russia $2 billion in overdue payments for natural gas supplies. Putin made it clear that Russia will further raise the heat on Ukraine by urging it to pay back a $3 billion bailout loan granted to Yanukovych in December.
In addition to that, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Russia should reclaim $11 billion in gas rebates it provided to Ukraine in exchange for a deal that extended Russia's lease on its navy base in Crimea until 2042.
Medvedev argued that since Crimea is part of Russia now, the deal is void and Russia should demand the money. Putin backed the proposal.
Mike Corder and Raf Casert in Brussels, Belgium and John-Thor Dahlburg in Sevastopol, Crimea, contributed to this report.


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Hi everyone,
I'm just here wondering what happened to the last five months… Are we really already in June???
I'm not even going to apologise to you guys (again) for me being absent, I feel like you're getting tired of my apologies – but 'em, real life tends to get in the way sometimes.
Anyway, I'm here now and that's what matter right????
By the way, I hope you all had a fantastic bank holiday! We all love a good long weekend.
I spent some time last week clearing up and I stumbled on a few poems I wrote between 2010 and 2012. It's just made me realise I've really been through some weird and sad times, and writing was (and will always be) my outlet.
Over the coming months, I may or may not be sharing some of those poems with you. I guess I'll decide how much I want to share as time goes by….
Today, she cried
She hadn't cried alone in a long time
But today she cried
She craved what wasn't there
But what wasn't there was right there
Just far enough so she could stretch
But too far for her to touch
But it was there
Right there
She could feel its presence
She could hear its heart beat
Its warmth
Oh that warmth she misses
And the tears
They flowed
Flowed endlessly
Just like the village river
And the people
They fetched
Fetched from that river
Feeding off her sorrow
Her sorrow provided them joy
And slowly
Slowly she withered
As she watched
Watched her life
In the spoils of war
** Photo credit – imaginature


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How to Rebuild a Garage Door OpenerUpdated: Feb. 22, 2023
Replace the gears and save the cost of a new opener
You might also like: TBD
If you press the garage door opener button and hear either a humming or a grinding sound, but the door won't open, you may think you need a new opener. And you might. But before you give up on the old unit, pop off the cover and check for stripped gears. That's a common problem and there is a garage door opener repair that you can do yourself for way less than the cost of a new opener.
You'll have to get a replacement gear kit (two new gears, grease and washers), which may take some running around. But once you have the kit in hand, you can do the repair in about two hours. You'll need a 2×4, a small drift punch, a standard 1/4-in. drive socket set, hex wrenches, a circular saw, a drill and a hammer. I'll show you how to remove and replace the gears without damaging the shafts.
Start by unplugging the opener. Then remove the retaining screws for the metal cover and put it aside. Shine a flashlight directly at the gear set. If you see chewed-up teeth, you've nailed the problem. If the gears are in good shape, you've got a more serious problem and your best bet may be to just replace the entire unit. To find a replacement gear kit, write down the make, model and serial number of your opener (you'll find it on a label on the back of the opener). Then call a garage door opener repair company. It'll probably charge a bit more than an Internet site, but at least you'll have the parts right away and be up and running the same day.
Getting out the gear shafts
Photo 1: Remove the chain
Unscrew the outer nut on the chain tensioning rod. If necessary, use pliers to prevent the chain from turning. Then slip on a pair of gloves and remove the greasy chain from the sprocket at the top of the opener.
Use a combination wrench to loosen and remove the chain (Photo 1). Next, use a 1/4-in. drive socket, extension and ratchet to remove the helical gear assembly retaining screws (Photo 2). Take a digital photo of the wiring connections from the motor or label them with masking tape. Disconnect the motor wires and remove the entire motor assembly. Move the helical gear assembly and the motor assembly to your workbench.
Remove the helical and worm gears
Photo 3: Remove the helical gear from the shaft
Support both ends of the helical gear assembly with the two jigs. Hold a small drift punch over the roll pin and tap the pin out of the shaft with a small hammer.
Cut a shallow groove into a 2×4 with a circular saw. Then slice off about a 3-in. section to make a jig to hold the helical gear assembly circular plate (Photo 3). Place the plate in the groove, hold the gear assembly level and mark the end of the shaft on another 2×4. Drill a hole in the wood and insert the end of the shaft. Then remove the roll pin (Photo 3). Slide the old gear off the shaft and replace it with the new gear. Reinstall the roll pin using the same jigs.
Next, remove the retaining collar and thrust washers on the end of the motor shaft (Photo 4). Pull the motor out of the chassis and slide the worm gear off the shaft (the roll pin stays in place on this shaft). Slide on the new worm gear with the notched end facing the roll pin.
Reassemble the motor assembly and place it back in the opener. Then install the helical gear assembly. Coat the gear teeth with new grease. Reattach the chain and tighten it to the proper tension (see your owner's manual). Test your repair with the garage door disconnected from the opener trolley.
Required Tools for this Project
Have the necessary tools for this DIY project lined up before you start—you'll save time and frustration.
- 4-in-1 screwdriver
- Adjustable wrench
- Allen wrench
- Circular saw
- Cordless drill
- Flashlight
- Hammer
- Rags
- Socket/ratchet set
- Wrench set
Required Materials for this Project
Avoid last-minute shopping trips by having all your materials ready ahead of time. Here's a list.
- 2x4 x 2'
- Chain grease
- Replacement gear kit


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Four men from Allegan and VanBuren Counties and another from Ontonagon County were all arrested last week for hunting waterfowl with the aid of bait.
According Lt. Timothy Robson, a DNR Law Enforcement officer, Conservation Officers from four counties investigated an anonymous tip that corn was being placed to hunt geese prior to the September 1 early goose season opener at a golf course located in Cheshire Township in Allegan County. Conservation Officers verified the corn was at the location and then observed five men take eight geese over the baited area on the morning of September 1. The five subjects were issued appearance citations for hunting with the aid of bait. One subject was additionally cited for using toxic shot while waterfowl hunting and a second subject was additionally cited for using a shotgun capable of firing more than three shotgun shells.
The men ranged in age from 44 to 73.
If convicted, the state statute provides for fines of $100 to $500 (plus court costs), and restitution of $100 to $500 to the State of Michigan for each illegally taken goose, with the restitution being paid to the Fish and Game Protection Fund. Forfeiture of the firearms involved will be determined by the district court judge after the criminal proceedings are completed.
The DNR reminds you that you can call the Report All Poaching Hotline at 800-292-7800 to report any natural resources violations, including hunting and fishing violations.


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#40 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet.
Love these necklaces created by collage illustrator Laura Tarrish of Bridgetown Papers in Portland, Oregon. The little bottle is filled with tiny custom letters cut from silver card stock.
Buyers can specify which words they'd like inside — names of loved ones, special places, even secret messages!
You can also include a gold icon (cut from metallic card stock) with your letters.
Too Cool!
Click here to order.
♥ More alphabetica here.
Certified authentic alphabetica. Handmade for you with love and snips.
Copyright © 2012 Jama Rattigan of Jama's Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.


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Tappan, Lewis
Tappan, Lewis, 1788–1873, American abolitionist, b. Northampton, Mass. He became a partner in his brother Arthur's New York mercantile house in 1828 and in 1841 founded the first agency for rating commercial credit in the United States. Lewis held important offices in several antislavery societies and was a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1843. He retired from business in 1849 to devote himself exclusively to humanitarian work, mostly for the abolitionist cause. He wrote a biography of his brother (1870).
See study by B. Wyatt-Brown (1968).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Social Reformers


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Story highlights
Two disciplined for leaving silo blast doors open
Air Force says security was not compromised
Disclosure follows firing of two-star general
In another public embarrassment for the Air Force's nuclear missile program, two crew members were disciplined earlier this year for leaving silo blast doors open while they were on duty in an underground facility housing nuclear missiles.
The incidents, first reported by the Associated Press, were confirmed Wednesday by the Air Force.
Under Air Force regulations, a two-man missile launch crew is required to keep the underground blast door shut when one crew member is asleep during the 24-hour shift.
In April a crew member was found "derelict in his duties in that he left the blast door open in order to receive a food delivery from the onsite chef" while the other crew member was on an authorized sleep break, Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. John Sheets said in a statement.
The crew member who was found "derelict" received a punishment of forfeiting $2,246 in pay for each of two months. The other crew member admitted to similar misconduct "on a few occasions" and received a letter of admonishment. The April incident occurred at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota
In May, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, a maintenance team was allowed into an underground launch control center while one crew member was sleeping, in violation of rules. In this case, the commander of the crew, when questioned about the incident, told the deputy to lie about being asleep, which she initially did, according to officials.
The incident was investigated, and both crew members were disciplined. The commander is forfeiting $3,045 in pay for each of two months and facing a discharge board.
The silo blast doors are at the bottom of a shaft that leads to the launch control center. The heavy-duty blast doors are meant to protect the launch control center in event of a nuclear blast. That center controls up to 10 missile silos.
Air Force officials insist security was not compromised in these incidents because there are multiple layers of security above ground that would keep unauthorized personnel from gaining access to a launch control center. The centers are generally 40 feet to 100 feet underground, and the two-man crew controls as many as 10 missile silos.
There also are multiple layers of security surrounding nuclear launch codes.
But the disclosures come on the heels of the firing of the two-star general in charge of the Air Force's three nuclear wings. Earlier this month, Maj. Gen. Michael Carey was "relieved" of command "due to a loss of trust and confidence in his leadership and judgment," the Air Force said at the time. Carey's removal had to do with reports of alleged misbehavior on a business trip.
In August, one of the Air Force's nuclear wings failed a safety and security inspection and a separate wing did poorly in an inspection earlier in the year, which resulted in 17 military personnel being decertified from their jobs. They have since undergone retraining and are back at work.


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Exploring the tragic events in the former Yugoslavia, "Vukovar Poste Restante" sears the eye with images of mindless ethnic conflict, as it ranges from an idyllic rose garden to the concluding panoramas of a devastated land.
Just as the Berlin Wall falls and hopes for peace arise, a wedding takes place between a Croat woman and a Serbian man in Vukovar; once this would have been unexceptional. The marriage becomes a Capulet-Montague combat even before the wedding party reaches the reception, with marching columns of Croats and Serbs sending the celebrants running.
The neighbors write nasty graffiti on the walls of the bride's family's home, as Serbs and Croats reject those they had always lived with. The newlyweds are divided when the Serbian husband goes off to the army, and the conflict succeeds in destroying home, city and nation.
The subject of the film is "What's true at one time is false at another," and its depiction of a beautiful country's loss of its moral compass is a terrifying , dazzling achievement. Director Boro Draskovic has an acute eye, open to sudden and stark imagery. There are unforgettable images of the once beautiful Vukovar area turned into a land of skeletons. Helmer manages to establish a sense of family among his well-to-do, sophisticated principals, and the ensuing barbarous events show the thin line between civilization and chaos.
Poignant and meaningful images stay with the viewer. A white pet bird symbolizes peace, and from its perch in the rose garden it flies with increasing desperation, ending up amidst the smoke and flame of a destroyed city. A tank crashes through the garden wall; three crones stir a hellish broth in a replay of the witches in "Macbeth." Anna, whose husband is a Serb, is the victim of a savage rape by Serbians.
There is blame enough for all parties to the conflict in a final aerial sweep over a tortured landscape. Draskovic says to his people, look at what you have done.
A viewer can be excused for feeling futility.


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Kanye West And Kim Kardashian Music Video Mocked During SNL's 'Waking Up With Kimye'
A brash Kanye West and nasally Kim Kardashian were mocked once again on this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" in another installment of the "Waking Up With Kimye" sketch.
During the Christmas-themed skit, West talks about how Kardashian got her post-baby body back through exercise, diet and "photoshop."
The bit also featured her family performing as the "Kardashian Kristmas Karolers," or as she calls them, the "KKK," and West praising Kim as "the Armenian Frank Gehry" for constructing a nightclub gingerbread house.
The couple then unveil their video Christmas card, a parody of the now infamous "Bound 2" music video. Watch the segment below:
See Also:
- Mayor Bloomberg Makes 'Weekend Update' Cameo To Joke About His Future Job Prospects
- Paul McCartney Makes Surprise 'SNL' Appearance To Duet With Jimmy Fallon During Monologue
- Jimmy Fallon And Justin Timberlake's 8 Best Comedy Collaborations Ahead Of 'SNL'
SEE ALSO: Kanye West And Kim Kardashian Slam Apple 'Genius' In 'SNL' Skit
SEE ALSO: Mayor Bloomberg Makes 'Weekend Update' Cameo To Joke About His Future Job Prospects


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or 100 Jackhammers for the Poet with Writer's Block;
or 100 Ways to Jumpstart the Engine;
or 100 Pencil Exercises;
or 100 Ways to Stimulate Your Next Wine, Cheese, & Poetry Night
Table of Contents
- Finding the First, Discovering the Middle, & Chasing the End
- Imaginary Worlds
- Science, the Universe, Time, & Other Evolutions
- Fun with Letters, Words, Language, & Languages
- Forms: Obscure, Updated, & Invented
- New School; or Double Vision; or WWI (Writing While Intoxicated) & Its Repercussions
- Miscellany; Trying to Relate the Unrelated; or These Gotta Go Some Place . . . So Here
- Stupid Money, Dumb Politicians, & Celebrating America
- Responses; or Calling All Poets (Dead & Alive); or Talking to Eternity
- It's All About You
It's All About You
a: What a Baby You Are; or The Medium of Time Travel; or The Poetry of Casey Kasem
This idea comes from Karen Head, author of Shadow Boxes (All Nations Press, 2003), though I don't know if this idea appears in her book, but . . .
This is what Karen did, if I have it correct, or some part of it. She went back to the year of her birth & used songs from that year as starting points for poems. For instance, she has a poem titled "Light My Fire," in which she weaves in certain events from the time period of her birth & the song. She then talks to those events & to the song & wraps them all together in a poem that talks back to her existence & to the reader.
So we are going to try something similar. You will use song titles from songs that were on the top 40 chart during the week of your birth (well, for those of you born in 1970 or after). Or you can use titles of songs that came out in the year of your birth, or the titles of albums, or the titles of books, or whatever else you can think of.
The point is to discover the immediate effects of your surroundings when you were born, by using the title of something as the lense through which you will perceive those surroundings.
I'd been interested in hearing from someone born in 1973 & who has used Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light" as their song title. Man, I want to know how that got woven into your life.
b: Conceptual Music; or How the Solipsist Applied Loop Quantum Gravity to His Existence
Ok. We will be doing a similar thing in this assignment, but now we will do it using the time period of when you were conceived.
If you don't understand the second title to this assignment, it will be explained, in part, in an upcoming poetry assignment, "Break on Through to the Other Side; or T+3, T+2, T+1, T=0, T-1, T-2, T-3, T-2006 AD; or The Big Crunch as Big Bang in Reverse; or Neo Takes the Red Pill of Negative Eternity." Look for it soon. [See Science, the Universe, Time, & Other Evolutions.]
Happy New Year! A Time to Reflect. A Prose Assignment!
This was inspired by Christopher Howell, who at the end of one of his semester-long creative writing classes would have students write a paper on what they have achieved with their poetry in the semester. This assignment will be similar.
You are to respond to the following questions. The response can be in journal entry form, essay, or however you want. The questions are:
What are you doing with your poetry?
In what ways has the poetry you have written this year been successful/unsuccessful?
Where would you like to go with your poetry? or what would you like to see/hear happen to your poetry?
What's going on in contemporary poetry?
What do you like &/or dislike about the current happenings in poetry?
What would you like to see happen to contemporary poetry?
Oh, be honest with yourself!
(9-16-06 addendum) Below is an example in verse, instead of prose. It's from William Heyen's book The Confessions of Doc Williams & Other Poems (Etruscan Press, 2006.) After reading it, read Pound's "A Pact," which you can find in Personæ: The Shorter Poems. A revised edition prepared by Lea Baechler & A. Walton Litz (New Directions, 1990).
The New American Poetry It is the poetry of the privileged class. It inherits portfolios. It was born in the Ivy League, & inbred there. Its parents filled its homes with bubbling Bach, silver & crystal brightnesses for its surfaces. It does not hear the cheap & natural music of the cow. Its vases hold gold-stemmed roses, not ponds with logs from which turtles descend at our approach, neckfold leeches shining like black droplets of blood. It swallows Paris & Athens, tracks its genes to the Armory Show. It waits by parlor coffins, applies rouge to Poe & Beau Brummell. Its father is Gertrude Stein, not Whitman, who despises it, though it will not admit it. Old women with children do live in it. It does not harvest thought, or associate with farmers. It does not serve in the army, or follow a story. Inviolate, buttressed by its own skyhook aesthetics, it revels in skewed cubes, elliptical appositions. Ultramarine critics praise it, wash their hands of subject matter. It is tar-baby minus the baby, minus the tar. Its city is not the city of pavement or taxis, business or bums. It dwells on absence & illusion, mirrors refulgent flames. Deer that browse beneath its branches starve. Its emotions do not arise from sensible objects. It passes rocks as though they were clouds. It does not flood out is muskrats. It sustains itself on paperweight petals. It does not define, catalog, testify, or witness. It holds models before the young of skillful evasion, withering heartlessness. It lifts only its own weight for exercise, does not body-block, or break up double plays, or countenance scar tissue. It flails in the foam, but has no body & cannot drown, or swim. In his afterlife, Rimbaud smuggles it along infected rivers. (1984) "The New American Poetry" from The Confessions of Doc Williams & Other Poems. Used by permission of Etruscan Press.
a: Won't You Give Me Three Steps / Gimme Three Steps, Mister, / Gimme Three Steps Towards My Core? / Gimme Three Steps / Gimme Three Steps, Mister, / So My Poems Won't be a Bore
With the end of the year near, it's time to reflect on your poetry, dear. So here are some questions you can ask yourself about your poetic tasks. What are the three most important things you do to make your poems sing.
Bustin' the rhyme here. Reflect on what are the three most important aspects of your poetry right now?
For instance, for me:
- Clarity. Trying to create poems with visual, syntactic, & thinking clarity.
- Music. Well, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Doo wop doo wop doo waa.
- Gleaming the other. Creating the poem that extends beyond itself. (For instance, in a poem about a compass that is about how the compass works & how it gets me home, is it also on another level about, for example, love, politics, justice, or is it an ars poetica. Can the poem convert lead to gold, etc? And why or why not?)
b: Three is a Gesture, Ten is Gaining Depth; or Three . . . That Ain't No List, Now, Ten, Well, There's a List for You; or Rounding Out the Top Ten – the Next Seven
What will complete the top ten list of what you are doing with your poems? And why? What will you try to improve or make more significant?
You will probably have to meditate on these aspects, & you will probably have to explain to yourself & your poems why.
For example, waiting to make my list:
- Imagination – or longer starings.
- Pivots – unique turns or shifts, wonderful seamless leaps.
- Tone – to see how tone affects meaning.
- Voice – to see if it is necessary for voice to match content.
- Image – is this connecting? Is there a better way to present it?
- Square look on page – to see how shape & poem interact.
- Ambiguity – as an experiment to encourage gleaming.
The David Lehman Experiment; or The Best Poetry According to You
That's right. Each year you will compile your own anthology of the best poems you read that year, but the poems could have first appeared in a year other than the one you are reading. So for instance, if you happen to read Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder's poem "Whoso List to Hunt" (ca. 1526) and you think it is one of the best poems you read during the year, then include it in your anthology.
This activity is continual. But you will start a new anthology at the beginning of each year.
The Ed Hirsch Experiment; or Keeping Track So You Don't Forget; or The Reading Journal
Ed Hirsch has a fine new book out: Poet's Choice (Harcourt, 2006). This book, basically, is filled with two- or three-page essays about a poet and the poet's poetry. The first part is about individual non-American poets (and it's quite impressive the number of poets he mentions that I've never heard of, but after reading Hirsch's essay, they become poets I want to read – there are, of course, poets I have heard of and read). And the second part is about American poets.
Each essay talks about something wonderful the poet did or how wonderful a poet is/was. Each essay is filled with enthusiasm and love and a deep understanding of the poet and the poet's poetry. Hirsch has been able to turn his head enough to find something in each of the poets he writes about.
So this is what we are going to do. We are going to keep a reading journal. We are going to write about every book of poetry we read. We are going to put into written words why we like, or dislike, a certain book, or poet. You will be able to record your early responses to each book. Later, you can add to the responses. Or later, way later, you can see where you were at this point in your poetry life. I think, in part, it will help us understand how a book of poems works, or will help us understand a particular poet with more depth and clarity – and probably our own poetry.
You can also couple this poetry assignment with the previous assignment. You can write about each poem in your anthology.
Yeah, we are going to learn why we really like something. And through the writing of it, we will aid our memory about a poet. You can even rewrite poems in your journal. That's always a good idea.
The next assignment or two will get us back to writing poetry, but in the meantime, it's good to reflect through prose.
Go forth!
Making Closure; or Getting to Know You / Getting to Know Every Word About You [use a high, squeaky, out-of-key voice to sing that]; or Damn, Is My Vocabulary that Small? And After All of that Highfalutin Schoolin', too, Sheesh; or I'm Gonna Make You Smoke All Them Ceegars Until You Learn to Hate Them; or The Old Possum's Book of Practical Remedies; or How to Avoid the T. S. Eliot (Old Possum) Syndrome; or Shaking Off the Funk; or Getting Rid of Your Wouby (Mr. Mom anyone?); or Keeping it Fresh; or How Boring Am I?; or Mama Needs a New Pair of Words (and how to avoid making your point)
You are gonna need all of your poems for this one. Go through all of your poems and find the most frequent word(s), image(s), idea(s) that appear in your poems. Well, maybe not all of your poems, but over the last year or two or three.
Now use those words, images, ideas, in at least every other line of the next poem you write. And then do it again with the next poem. And the next. Keep doing it until those words, images, and ideas are out of your system. Or until you at least understand how to use them with significance, and not as an easy fall back.
For instance, my common words and images are: shadows, the moon, and mountains. And I need to purify myself of them so I can grow and move on. Right now they are so easy to use. I know they are inexhaustible material, but, dude, I need to break free for awhile, ya know? I need to learn how to use them with power, again, as I did when I first discovered/used them. Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but if it does, you will find out and cure yourself.
Go refresh!
[11-11-16 Note: To make this easy, copy and paste your poems into a Word Cloud generator.]
Self Parody; or She Who Laughs Bests, Laughs at Herself; or Popping the Ego; or How to Make Nelson Muntz "Ha Ha" at You
Now that you've been examining your poetry, it's time to make fun of it. Hyperbolize yourself. Generalize yourself. Write a self parody of your poems' tendencies. Shake it up.
Ask yourself, "Am I still being original? Am I still being fresh? Am I making it new?"
You should do this assignment every couple of years. Starting now. Then every two or three or five years (five might be too long), consider where you're. If, for example, your voice tends to be the same, make fun of it, so you can explore other voices. If it's your tone that tends to be the same, bust it up. Check your syntax: are you following the same techniques because they create a cool effect? If so, make it laugh for you, and then go explore other syntactical arrangements.
Stay fresh my friends. Make it New!
I tend to say "Go forth!" at this point, as if you are a noble knight on a gallant steed, and you are about to go on an exciting journey or heading for battle. But this time I will put on a fool's cap with a little bell dangling from the top, spin once, twice, thrice, and with a giggling cackle, a "Ha Ha," and a jocoserious tone announce to you, . . . "Go Jest!"
Go Forth!


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Our night at the Myrtles Plantation
(***A true paranormal encounter experienced by paranormal investigators, Lori and Brian Davies of NWA Ghost Connection.***)
John Winters Room
3 p.m. check in, we arrived at 2 p.m. anxious to get there and excited about crossing off a bucket list item. Brian bought me a night at the Myrtles for my 50th birthday gift. He knew it was on a list of things I wanted to do since I was nineteen. We purchased some things in the gift shop and checked in. We were taken to the house to see our room and my gift kicks in as the door opens. At the top of the stairs I was greeted by a woman who appeared to be in mourning. She was in a black dress with a veil coming down over her face. I was taken a back by her but proceeded up the large staircase that led into the house to our room. The young lady who showed us to our room politely stated all the rules of the house and then opened our door and handed Brian the keys. Our night began.
We walked in and acquainted ourselves with the room, all the while this woman standing in our doorway. I asked Brian if he had seen or sensed anything. He said how weird it was, the water started dripping in the tub and he tried to turn the water off, but it was tightly off (weird). We had a quick, odd moment and he left to go get our luggage for the night. I sat in the chair in the corner watching her and when alone I asked her what her name was and she replied, "Sara M Bradford", and then walked in a little girl who stood along side her in a pretty, little blue dress and blondish-brown hair. I assumed had some relation to her, but the child wouldn't speak to me.
I heard a commotion in the hall and stuck my head out when I encountered another employee of the Myrtles and I asked her if I could ask her a question, she replied sure and came into the room. I then asked her if she had heard of this Sara or knew of her or was my being a medium allowing everyone to come through. She took two steps back and asked me, Sara? I replied, yes, she is standing right there pointing towards the door, she said her name was Sara M Bradford. The lady looked at me and smiled and said you are the first one who has called her that. I responded, called her what, Sara? She said no, calling her by her maiden name, Bradford. The employee then said her name was Sara Matilda Bradford Woodruff and her father built the Myrtles.
After some light conversation she invited me to do a private tour, with me being a physical medium she wanted me to walk the home and tell them what I could see and hear along with feel. I agreed because I was curious about her story and why she was so sad. As the night went on I ended up hurting my knee and had a difficult time walking, so of course I couldn't walk the house and I wonder to this very day if that was the plan the whole time. During the night in our room the curtain continuously moved on just one side, the chandelier rotated back and forth and then my fan got knocked over against the wall which created a level of uneasiness. At this time I pulled out our infrared camera and began to take pictures and, what do you know, there she was in all her glory. My husband ran downstairs to talk to the tour guide and showed her the photo and, what do you know, she identified her as Sara.
They were so excited to see this photo and sad I could not do my private walk and as they were all looking at this photo I took I was settling in to sleep because I was in pain from my knee. Brian came back up and we took several videos of the excitement in our room and then decided to sleep so I could rest before the long drive home. Well, the night was crazy as around 2 a.m. I saw a man at the foot of our bed dressed in confederate attire and just starring at me. I was unnerved and asked him what he wanted, which was when I began to taste blood and have stomach issues and he pointed at the wall and disappeared, well…..that was interesting, and the footsteps and humming I heard all night made it difficult to sleep.
As day break rose, I was seriously done at this point and Brian woke up and I needed to leave, with all the energies in that home, lack of sleep, hurt knee, I think I had seen enough of the house for this trip. I have since promised to go back to walk the house for the woman and send them a copy of my photo so they can share my night with Sara. All I could gather from her was how sad she was for all her loss of children, father, and husband. She just did not get to live how she wanted. The humming was from the room we stayed in which was the old nursery, go figure… all in all, it was a sleepless night, but I do recommend the stay just for the interaction with the spirit world. The John Winters room was definitely a hit on my night.
Lori Davies – Founder NWA Ghost Connection