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Notes on the Dropback passing game in the West Coast Offense
From a 49ers coaches meeting:
(A) Three Step Drop
-Takes advantage of a bad defensive adjustment.
-Receivers = five steps.
1. Hitch and Quick Out:
- Adjust splits to break in or out.
- Don't lead receiver - throw at his hip.
- Throw outs to LEFT and ins to the RIGHT (from all drops).
- When throwing to the right, step towards the receiver on the 3rd step.
- 3 quick steps when throwing out. (WR 8 yrd split).
- Best place to throw quick out is from SLOT formation. (to SE).
- 3 big steps when throwing hitch. Throw to middle of the receiver. When receiver catches the ball, he pivots to the sideline and runs to goalline. (WR 12 yrd split).
2. Slant:
[Ed. Note: QB reads the flat defender -- if he retreats for the slant throw the flat/shoot route; if he takes the shoot throw the slant in the window]
- Slant pass is a big chunk play.
- 12 yrd split - 5 to 7 steps and break.
- Slant is best weak.
- Throwing strongside you should use dropback and weak flow.
- Throw ball to middle of receiver and above his waist - if anything slow him up to catch it.
- Receiver should always be aware of relationship between corner and safety.
- Hop inside and come under control in hole.
- Ball should be caught 1 ft. in front of receivers numbers.
- Vs corner inside - go full speed and break across his face.
- Always practice 1/2 as many throws to outlet as primary.
(B) Five Step Drop
- Ball control, timed passes; good on 1st and 10, 2 and 6, 3 and 4.
- Receivers run 10 - 12 yrd routes.
3. Square-out:
- WR 8 yd split.
- Square out = 5 quick steps - don't lead WR.
- 9 out of 10 square outs are thrown to the LEFT.
- Throw square out into short field and away from rotation.
- If LB crosses throwing lane - throw the outlet route. (Practice with coach catching primary and anyone catching outlet - hands up indicate who to throw to.)
4. Square-in:
- Prefer to throw square in to the RIGHT.
-5 Steps and hitch step.
-WR sells GO pattern. Inside release, outside push, plant outside foot and start in.
-WR 12 yd split.
-QB 5 BIG STEPS - HITCH and throw on time. WR does NOT keep running. Catch ball no more than 3 steps inside original position. (keep ball in middle)
-WR catches ball and runs straight upfield.
-"Square-in, wide Flare, wall off."
[Ed. Note: The square-in is addressed in the video below by Ron Jenkins.]
5. Flanker Post:
- Prefer Big, smooth WR.
- WR 12 yd split.
- QB 5 BIG steps and Hitch.
- ALWAYS throw RIGHT.
- WR break into hole in the zone.
- Attract FS weak to create hole - throw ball inside corner and past SS
- TECHNIQUE is outside.
6. Curl: -5 step timed.
-Throw to middle of WR.
-GREAT vs middle LBer defender - if WR is not open go to outlet immediately.
-WR 12 yd split.
[Ed. Note: Video below.]
(C) Seven-Step Drop -Bread and Butter BIG chunk offense.
7. Go pattern: -- Only to fastest WR.
-Practice 4 to 1 to fastest WR over other WR's.
-WR 12 yrd split.
-DON'T THROW AGAINST THEIR BEST DB! (Scout their personnel)
-Throw GO in conjunction with plat action.
-Keep the length of the throw consistent.
-7 step hitch and throw.
-Practice throwing to a spot with WR standing there.
-Don't throw if DB is deeper than WR when you hitch step.
-Measure distance with WR full speed than practice stationary.
-WR: release inside than out - chase DB step on his toes and run by him - keep DB in his backpeddle - look DB in the eyes NOT past him.
-At 8 yds, be 1 yd inside, next 8 yds be 1 yd outside.
-When thrown inside the 25 yd line change to 5 step drop.
-Throw GO RIGHT more often than left.
-Vs Cloud throw in hole (only vs stationary DB) 5 Step drop.
8. Deep Comeback:
-Only when DB is turing and running away.
-WR 12 yrd split.
-20 yds full speed - plant and come back.
-7 step and hitch step and throw to spot.
-Ball should be released as WR is planting foot.
-WR always keep elbows and arms in running position. Just before you break, drop head and dig (pump hands).


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Albert Almora Leaves Game with Possible Leg/Knee Injury (UPDATE: Back in Dugout)
Hopefully this proves to be one of those things where it was much ado about nothing.
A little while ago, my @ stream on Twitter blew up with the same message from a dozen people (who were presumably at today's Kane County game): Albert Almora just left the game in the third inning after appearing to injure his left leg in the outfield. The eyewitness descriptions of the injury were basically the same, involving Almora misreading a ball, trying to change directions, and appearing to tweak his leg/knee in the process. He stayed in the game for a little bit, but left soon thereafter with a limp. He appeared angry about having to leave the game (presumably, he was angry about the injury).
Obviously we're way early in the game here, as guys tweak things and leave games all the time without any serious, long-term ramifications. Given Almora's hot start, his time missed with broken hamate bone, and his stature in the Cubs' organization (he's a consensus top three prospect), some extra attention/nervousness when he leaves a game is understandable.
But try to keep it together until we hear something firm from the Cubs. Hopefully it's just a little ouchy and the Cougars were being abundantly cautious with Almora.
UPDATE: You folks are awesome. A new set of @ updates from folks on the ground there at the game say that Almora has returned to the dugout and appears to be walking around all right. Obviously that doesn't rule out a serious injury, but it isn't a bad sign. Fingers remain crossed.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tag Archives: Kevin Burnout Kim
League of Sharpies: Season 1 END
League of Sharpies is over and done with, and I escaped relegation to D league by the skin of my chinny-chin chin. Overall I went 3-4. 2-3 with DQs. Beat: Spoony 7-2, Allen 7-2 (Allen got DQed from the league … Continue reading
Posted in Ultra SFIV Tagged Alex Canale, Cammy, Carnage, CCH, Hakan Dorter, I suck, James Hershell, Kevin Burnout Kim, League of Sharpies, Muzztekk, Oni, Poison, Ryu 2 Comments


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MLB salaries: Yankees, A-Rod reign as cash changes hands
- Thanks to a late acquisition%2C the Yankees maintain MLB%27s top payroll
- The Dodgers became the second MLB team to top %24200 million
- More than %2472 million in 2013 salaries are being paid by teams no longer employing that player
HOUSTON - The New York Yankees insist they're in cost-cutting mode, but for the 15th consecutive year they will have Major League Baseball's top opening-day payroll at a record $228.8 million, according to USA TODAY Sports' annual salary survey.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, with a $215 million payroll, were poised to end the Yankees' salary reign, but the Yankees vaulted them when they acquired outfielder Vernon Wells last week from the Los Angeles Angels.
Even factoring in money received from the Angels — the Yankees will pay $11.5 million of Wells' $21 million 2013 salary — they're still baseball's biggest spenders. In fact, the Dodgers are receiving $3.9 million from the Boston Red Sox as part of August's trade that netted them high-priced stars Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett.
Welcome to the new age of baseball, where a player's oversized, underperforming contract is an albatross to one team but a window of opportunity to another.
"We're becoming like the NBA," Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin says. "Instead of old-fashioned baseball trades, we're trading contracts. I can see more of these in the future. And that's concerning."
Some clubs swear off long-term, high-priced deals, heeding lessons of bad contracts given to the likes of Alex Rodriguez ($275 million), Mike Hampton ($121 million), and Wells and Barry Zito (each $126 million).
Yet in a 48-hour period last week, $482 million was handed out in contract extensions. If Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers, Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants, Adam Wainwright of the St. Louis Cardinals and Paul Goldschmidt of the Arizona Diamondbacks don't live up to their deals, teams now have alternatives.
There will be $72.27 million this year in teams subsidizing contracts of players no longer with their clubs, according to salary information obtained by USA TODAY Sports. The Pittsburgh Pirates benefited the most, receiving $13.26 million from the Yankees and Houston Astros to help pay for pitchers A.J. Burnett and Wandy Rodriguez, while the Miami Marlins are paying $6 million to players traded in their fire sale.
"When you're getting to the point you're talking about moving a big salary, especially when you're subsidizing a salary," Chicago Cubs President Theo Epstein says, "that means something has gone dramatically wrong.
"When you have a press conference, and you're holding up that jersey, you're kind of hoping it works out.''
Yes, just ask the Marlins, who were celebrating their revival with their $191 million free-agent spending spree exactly a year ago, opening the season with a $101 million payroll. They dumped the same free-agent trio - Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell - over the winter, and will start another rebuilding process with a $34.7 million payroll.
Years ago, teams believed they had no way out, and were stuck with high-priced, underperforming players. These days, there's a growing marketplace for them, particularly considering the thinning free-agent market.
"Fewer and fewer elite players make it into free agency,'' Epstein said, "so the natural next step is to look at the trade market, and spend money,. There just aren't that many ways to spend your money anymore with the way the new CBA [collective bargaining agreement] impacts what you can spend on the draft and internationally.
"So, you're either extending your own players into free agency, or maybe taking on money on someone else's player.''
Even the Astros, who have a major-league low payroll of $22 million, are paying an extra $4.5 million simply from last year's Wandy Rodriguez trade to the Pirates. There are eight major-league players, led by the Yankees' Rodriguez, who will earn at least as much as the Astros' entire payroll this year.
"It's just different than it was in the past,'' Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said. "You're trading for someone else's contract now, and I think we'll see more of it in the future. I think any contract can be moved these days, as long as it's subsidized on the other side. So if you don't think a player is worth what they signed him for, then make an offer, and see if you can get a discount.
"It's kind of like buying or selling a house. You're either under water, or making a profit.''
Said Melvin: "It's a different world out there now.''
Baseball's average salary rose to $3.6 million, a 5.9% increase over 2012, and 14 teams have payrolls of at least $100 million.


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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (May 12, 2009) - Just days after leading the ETSU women's tennis team to its second NCAA Tournament appearance senior Tara Byrne (Johnson City) received the prestigious Southeast Region ITA/NCAA Arthur Ashe Leadership and Sportsmanship Award the ITA announced Tuesday.
The ITA/NCAA Arthur Ashe Leadership and Sportsmanship award goes to the women's tennis player who displays dedication and commitment to her team, which has enhanced her team's performance and exemplified the spirit of college tennis.
With the honor Byrne joins former Lady Buc players Olya Batsula (Southeast and National winner of the ITA Cissie Leary Award) and Masha Illina (Southeast ITA Cissie Leary Award) as ETSU award winners from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
This past season Byrne led the Lady Bucs to its third Atlantic Sun Conference title in school history and second NCAA appearance during her career. The First-Team All-A-Sun member and tournament MVP also became the second player in program history to surpass 100 career wins. Back on April 13, the local
Off the court Byrne excelled even more earning a spot as a 2008 ITA Scholar Athlete and a three-time member of the A-Sun All-Academic team. Byrne also spend numerous hours volunteering her time in community service with such organizations as Toys for Tots, Locks for Love, the Special Olympics and Relay for Life.
"From the first day
Below is a list of all the 2009 regional winners of the ITA/NCAA Arthur Ashe Leadership and Sportsmanship Award.
East Pamela Duran
Southeast Tara Byrne ETSU
South Shelley Godwin
Midwest Dunja Antunovic
Central Mackenzie White
Southwest Macall Harkins TCU
West Danielle Steinberg


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This whole home call concept takes some getting used to. One of the major lessons I learned last year was how to be on the spot: if a patient's sick, you don't wait to get called, you keep walking by. If you do get called, you give some preliminary orders (oxygen, fluid, ekg) on the phone, and then get over there so you can see for yourself. And you don't leave in five minutes; if there's nothing else urgent, you stay around to see how things go; work on the computer, make some calls, but stay handy for a little bit. And of course the cardinal lesson in medicine: trust no one, neither those junior to you nor those senior. Everyone lies; verify it for yourself.
Now I have to reverse that. I'm getting a little better at jumping wide awake in the middle of the night, so the intern calling doesn't have to repeat himself ten times. But you have to have all the answers – maneuvers, tests, medications and doses – completely memorized; that's the only way they'll come out coherently at (ahem) 3am. (How about my attending for president? He's really good with the 3am phone calls. And I'm sure he'd come up with a more practical healthcare policy than the politicians have.)
The worst part is not being there. I have to trust the intern (fortunately the ones I'm working with are quite competent) to assess the situation correctly; without seeing things for myself, I have to figure out the key information, and think of things to ask about that the intern may not have considered. Then we come up with a plan, he hangs up to go do it – and I'm supposed to go back to sleep, instead of lying there worrying about whether either of us missed something, whether the patient is going to get worse before our treatments take effect, whether I misjudged the significance of a piece of information, whether I told him the wrong dosage on a medication. If I were in the hospital, I'd keep looking over the labs, ekg, chest xray, till I felt more confident. But I can't keep calling the intern to go over things again.
(A bonus last week: in desperation, I dredged up a treatment I'd read about as of historical value only, but it was the only thing available or applicable for this patient. Not fun to play that card from long distance, but next morning the patient was nearly all better. I don't know whether that old-fashioned trick did it, or whether he wasn't as sick as we thought. Remind me not to read the historical section of the textbooks, it leads to unsettling decisions.)
Going back to sleep is also tricky. After getting called, I spend the next couple hours unable to sort out whether the phone ringing and the patient deteriorating are happening in my dreams or in real life, and I can't shake the feeling that it's really high time to get up and go to work, no matter what the clock says. I used to react the same way to pages at night on call, so hopefully this will get better with time.


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The Art of the Self-Mocking Hashtag
How the Twitter hashtag became a vehicle for self-deprecation.
It's fair to say that when it comes to online discourse we live in the Golden Age of Snark. (That's snark as in "snide commentary," not the imaginary animal of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark.") When every statement you make is open to sarcastic rebuttals, sometimes the best policy is to ridicule yourself before someone else has the chance. Nowhere is this more true than Twitter, where the convention of the "hashtag" has been pressed into the service of self-mockery.
A hashtag, for the non-Twitterati, is a word or smashed-together phrase preceded by the hash symbol (#), originally devised as a way to keep track of the flow of subject matter in the Twittersphere. But the function of the hashtag has morphed significantly since Chris Messina and his colleagues began using it in 2007 as a method of indexing topics of interest. (Even the word hashtag has moved in unexpected directions: whereas it has typically referred to a string of characters prefixed by the hash symbol, now it often gets used for the symbol itself, including in Twitter's own help documentation.)
In this Sunday's Boston Globe, I take a look at how hashtagging has become the perfect vehicle for self-directed sarcasm, used by celebrities and common folk alike. Take a look at how a pro does it: the tech-savvy actor Wil Wheaton (who began earning geek cred back when he played Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation) recently tried to link to pictures of himself on the set of The Big Bang Theory. After he gave the wrong link, he tweeted, "I love that I'm trying to be all clever, and then I epic fail at basic linking. #lessonsinhumility #facepalm #hashtag." (If his use of "epic fail" seems unusual, check out my On Language column and Word Routes followup on recent transformations of fail.) Wheaton uses the self-effacing "#lessonsinhumility" hashtag, followed by "#facepalm" ("the act of bringing one's palm to one's face to indicate embarrassment, exasperation, or despair," says Wordspy), capped off by a meta-ironic touch, a "#hashtag" hashtag.
By the way, though Wheaton here is properly abashed in the face of a blunder, note that his purpose is to draw attention to his guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory. Thus his tweet could be characterized as a humblebrag, a wonderful neologism that has gained currency this year thanks to the comedian Harris Wittels, who created the Humblebrag Twitter feed to compile flagrant examples of "bragging that masks the brag in a faux-humble guise." Wheaton has been singled out by Wittles for humblebragging twice already.
Or consider the Twitter auteur (and humblebragger extraordinaire) Kanye West, who last year tweeted, "You have to balance ignorance with intellect! Can't have school with out recess! #Greatesttweetofalltime." To an outsider, the hashtag might seem like pure arrogance, but anyone following the rap star's career would have recognized it as a tongue-in-cheek callback to his interruption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards with the message that Beyonce had made "one of the best videos of all time!" Thus in a single hashtag Kanye managed to poke fun at his own foibles with his typical mixture of bravado and self-skewering.
One ironic hashtag that has been particularly successful is "#firstworldproblems," appended to a complaint that is obviously frivolous in the grand scheme of things. The hashtag has played a big role in popularizing the "First World Problems" Internet meme, which has generated its own Tumblr blog, a section on the user-generated site Reddit, and not one but two rap parodies: one by the Brooklyn "nerdcore" hiphop artist MC Frontalot and one more recently by Zach Katz, a.k.a. "Funnyz," a 17-year-old YouTube sensation from Virginia. A typical line from Katz's rap: "My fridge is so full I have to reach way back, and my sports car doesn't have an audio jack." Meanwhile, on the blog "White Whine," the comedian Streeter Seidell mines this vein of humor one silly grievance at a time. And then there's the "#whitegirlproblems" hashtag, which has its own following; the creators of the "White Girl Problems" Twitter feed will soon publish a pseudo-memoir from the perspective of their laughably privileged protagonist, Babe Walker.
Not everyone is a fan of such race- and class-based self-mocking hashtags. Marcus Hunter, a sociology major at Columbia University, recently said in a Tumblr post that while he often finds hashtags like "#whitegirlproblems" funny, he is troubled that "calling attention to the privileged mindsets and behaviors of whites is only able to happen in a jokingly meta or ironic way." Hunter hopes that such privileges can be critiqued and analyzed with "the same verve and enthusiasm" as when they are ridiculed. Self-mockery might then make way for a deeper self-examination, all with the help of those little hashtags.
I leave you with Zach Katz's "The First World Problems Rap" (1.35 million YouTube views and counting).
Update: My Boston Globe column is online here.
Ben Zimmer is language columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former language columnist for The Boston Globe and The New York Times Magazine. He has worked as editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and as a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to his regular "Word Routes" column here, he contributes to the group weblog Language Log. He is also the chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society.Click here to read other articles by Ben Zimmer


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With today's temperatures in the Midwest and East lower than most of Antarctica's (and in some places, Mars!) it's tempting to consider relocating. But no need to look as far as the South Pole—the makers of Honeywell Infrared Heaters tapped consultants at Environmental Health & Engineering for a study on the coziest cities in America. The scientists pored through city data on all things warm and fuzzy, from fireplace and portable heater usage to coffee shop proximity. (Stressful lifestyle scores and historical ambience also played a role).
Their results may surprise you: Sunny Los Angeles is absent (what's not cozy about an 82-degree Christmas?) as is Portland Maine (home of L.L. Bean and their ever-warm blankets), and Burlington (rolling hills and a brick Main street—shouldn't that be enough to bring it to the top 10?). The list has inspired some office debate at ELLE DECOR HQ about what really makes a city cozy and after you look through the list we hope you'll share your thoughts in the comments:
10. Savannah, GA
9. New Orleans, LA
8. Providence, RI
7. Baltimore, MD
6. Seattle, WA
5. Portland, OR
4. Washington, DC
3. Santa Fe, NM
2. San Francisco, CA
1. Boston/Cambridge, MA


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3D Blu-Ray Specs Finalized, But What About Your Gear?
Today the Blu-Ray Disc Association announced that the codec for creating full 1080p 3D Blu-Ray content has been set, but will you need to upgrade your gear to experience the benefits? Not necessarily.
The 3D specification will use Multiview Video Coding, a variant of the ubiquitous H.264 HD codec, for the enhanced visuals. MVC will present seperate 1080p pictures to each eye, yet it will only take up 50% more space on the disc. You will still need to use polarized 3D glasses to see the effect, but the experience should be quite close to your typical theatrical 3D release (minus the popcorn in your hair).
For those of you ready to take a sledgehammer to your living room in shame of its newfound obsolescence, you may be surprised to know that not all your gear needs upgrading. First off, the 3D discs will be able to display in 2D, meaning you won't have to choose between a 2D or 3D version at retail. Your current HDTV and Blu-Ray player will be able to handle the new discs fine and still give you room to upgrade your viewing experience in the future.
On top of that, Gizmodo notes that the Playstation 3 is expected to be able to play full 3D content pending future software upgrades. The PS3 has a great deal of horsepower under the hood that gives it an extra boost in terms of processing the two 1080p signals used by the spec. Other dedicated Blu-Ray players may be able to display in 3D with a firmware update, but no such announcements have yet been made.
Finally, your current HDTV...it's going to have to go. Unless you futureproofed your purchase and bought an expensive stereoscopic set, your current TV will not have the display properties necessary for the 3D Blu-Ray spec. However, when you do choose to upgrade your TV, you will be able to choose any display type you want (LCD, Plasma, OLED) since the 3D video encoding is not tied to any particular display technology.
[via Gizmodo]
Follow @ geektech on Twitter for more news on hardware, hacks, and cutting-edge tech.
More from IDG:
- AMD to show 3D Blu-ray playback at CES
- Toshiba to produce and sell Blu-ray player this year ...
- Sony's 3D TV Plans Become a Little Clearer


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Never say never.
For years, I've been shaking my head whenever the topic of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) came up. I couldn't fathom the idea of writing 50,000 words in one month.
Madness…undue stress…why on earth would I subject myself to that kind of torture?
In a podcast with Stephen Campbell, I listed several reasons for not participating and assured him I would take my time writing any future novels. All that changed when I started imagining the plot for A Different Kind of Reunion, Book 3 in the Gilda Greco Mystery Series. Determined to release the book within a year of Book 2, I knew I had to change my m.o. If I continued to work at my present speed, it would take at least two years to write, edit, and release the novel.
And so I decided to participate in the boot camp that has inspired and motivated hundreds of thousands of participants since the event began in 1999.
Here are some statistics from 2015:
- 431,626 participants started and completed the challenge.
- 926 volunteer Municipal Liaisons (leaders) guided 633 regions on six continents.
- 1,012 libraries, bookstores, and community centers opened their doors to novelists through the Come Write In program.
- 87% of survey respondents said that NaNoWriMo helped them learn what they can accomplish when determined.
Having made the decision to participate in September of this year, I spent October in prep mode. I signed up for romance author Catherine Chant's two-week course at the beginning of October: "Prep for NaNoWriMo the Bare Bones Way." In mid-month, I attended a presentation by award-winning Canadian author, Terry Fallis at the Kitchener Public Library. Terry discussed his chapter-by-chapter outlines and shared other tips that have enabled him to write and release five best-selling novels since 2005.
By the end of October, I had a plot, a rough outline of 28 chapters, and brief descriptions of the twenty-three characters that populate the novel. Find out more here.
I also visited the NaNoWriMo website and read several articles about the process. Knowing myself and my energy levels, I concluded that some of the suggestions wouldn't work. To keep myself sane and healthy, I have decided to focus on the following practical and doable tips:
- Announce your plans. At first, I wanted to keep my involvement secret, but after reading about the positive reinforcement that a support group can provide, I decided to share the news with everyone in my circle. In addition to other writers—online and offline—I also told the non-writers. I'm looking for encouragement, not advice. Simply asking: "How's that novel coming along?" will help keep me on track.
- Write at peak times. To find a routine that works consistently, I need to write when the muse strikes. Since starting my writing practice in 2008, I have discovered that the following times yield the most creative results: 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
- Work ahead. Sneaking in an extra 300 words (or more) early in the month can build up word counts and compensate for missed days when illness and other commitments affect the quality and quantity of the writing.
- Turn off the television and all electronic gadgets during peak creative times to ensure there are no distractions.
- Embrace both linear and non-linear paths. While I prefer to write linearly—one chapter at a time—skipping over to a more interesting scene will help stimulate right-brain thinking.
- Relax and TELL. For years, I've heard editors and workshop facilitators repeat the mantra: SHOW DON'T TELL. What a relief to focus on getting the scene on paper in any form and then prettying it up later.
- Leave notes in the text. Plot and dialogue are my strengths while descriptive detail is one of my weaknesses. Instead of belaboring the setting and other details, leave notes about what's missing. i.e. Description of waterfront or restaurant. Don't stop to check the internet for anything.
- Journal when stuck. Throughout her course, Catherine Chant recommended journaling about our character's feelings to elicit more details and move the storyline along. The character could write her response stream-of-conscious style or write a letter describing a problem. Even if the journal entry is edited out of the story, the words still count.
- Stop before the ideas run out. At the end of each day's stint, write a sentence or two about what happens next. This will provide a starting point for the following day.
- Turn off the internal editor. I need to keep in mind Anne Lamott's advice and "write a crappy first draft." Forget about spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Don't delete anything. In short, give myself permission to write badly.
Where to find Joanne Guidoccio…
Website | Amazon | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Goodreads | Pinterest


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CHICAGO — At a time when most investment professionals are preoccupied with the fiscal peril in Washington, Liz Ann Sonders envisions an economic recovery that will be built, literally, with four walls.
Just as it helped trigger the Great Recession, housing also is serving as the lynchpin to growth ahead, said Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab.
"People are still underestimating the impact that this is going to have," she said at the Schwab Impact 2012 conference, where thousands of investment professionals are gathering to chart an uncertain future in financial markets. "What people are underestimating is the ripple effect of confidence."
While its growth has been far from parabolic, housing has survived what Sonders described as "the third consecutive growth scare" this summer that centered not only on the European debt crisis but also on the slew of fiscal issues facing the U.S. (Read More: Housing Still Precarious in Obama's Second Term )
The country is wallowing through another year of budget deficits in excess of $1 trillion and national debt that has exceeded the $16 trillion mark.
What's more, if Congress and President Barack Obama fail to reach deficit-reduction targets, the nation faces going over what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has labeled the "fiscal cliff."
That entails a round of tax hikes and spending cuts that automatically goes into effect in 2013 and, if not averted, likely would send the U.S. back into recession .
Sonders said it's vital to avoid the cliff, particularly at a time when housing is improving and as the U.S. can't rely on developing economies for its growth. (Read More: 'Fiscal Cliff' Mess Is a 'Grand Canyon': Bill Gross )
"We are the cleanest shirt in a pile of dirty laundry," she said in describing the state of the U.S. economy. "It's not stellar growth, but certainly the trajectory has improved relative to the rest of the world."
Sonders points to a slew of indicators — builder confidence , home prices and household formation among them — to show that the real estate market is showing steady progress, albeit gradual.
The Census Bureau recently reported that 1.12 million new households were formed over the past year, a turnaround from the post-recession years though not yet fast enough to make up for the households lost during the downturn.
Household formation fell during the recession as many young adults moved back in with their parents, a trend that has begun to turn.
As for builder confidence, a popular index measuring sentiment is still at levels indicating a weak market, but on the other hand is at its highest level in more than six years.
"Just about every metric in housing is starting to turn here," she said. "We're finally having a surge in household formation. We have the right kind of supply and demand balance."
Still, Sonders knows the economy faces a number of other challenges — the fiscal cliff and all the rest.
"I still see some concerns in the long term," she said. "We have a lot of traction we have to get in the near term."


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Zack Snyder's Superman might be exploring how Clark Kent really became Superman... plus another possible actor for Lois Lane. Darren Aronofsky says Wolverine will still be a Darren Aronofsky movie. Plus Tim Burton talks Dark Shadows, and more! Spoiler rampage!
Superman Reboot
Reports of a basic plot synopsis have surfaced, supposedly based at least in part on a character breakdown for Clark Kent that was just sent to casting agencies. The story reportedly focuses more on Clark Kent than Superman, and it sounds more than a little similar to the structure of Batman Begins:
"[Kent is] a young journalist, traveling for the globe, who would rather solve problems and help people without resorting to using his special powers. When he is compelled to use his secret powers to intervene in a crisis in West Africa, Clark returns to Smallville to learn more about his origins and the hero he was born to be."
We don't know for a fact whether this breakdown is real, and, even if it is, whether it's a completely accurate representation of the actual movie. So, take this with a grain of salt. The same report also mentions Anne Hathaway is a contender to play Lois Lane, but there's no source at all for that, so take that with more heapings of salt. [What's Playing]
The Wolverine
Director Darren Aronofsky says his movie really will be a complete break from the other X-Men movies, it won't have a lot of explosions, and he's working under an assumption of complete autonomy from Fox: [Badass Digest]
Cowboys & Aliens
Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzmann say one of the biggest challenges was convincing Harrison Ford he could wear a hat that wouldn't immediately remind everyone of Indiana Jones, and that Steven Spielberg was crucial to getting him to agree to wear a cowboy hat. Despite that, they praise both the actors and creative team for taking the movie completely seriously and working hard to get it right, even if people were initially skeptical the movie would work with the current title, as Orci explains:
"In terms of our approach, there was a debate early on and suggestions from some quarters that the title should be changed. But we decided the title was too much of its own log line and too much of what made us love the property in the first place. We didn't want to lose it. At the same time, we knew that the title could be misleading. We wanted to make sure that this trailer made it clear that there was a certain tone to this movie that you might not be able to discern from the title. So aside from people liking the trailer, I think we accomplished the goal of demonstrating that this is a real movie."
[LA Times]
Dark Shadows
Tim Burton confirmed they're making progress on the adaptation of the horror soap cult classic, which he's making with Johnny Depp:
It sounds like you'll be shooting "Dark Shadows" with Johnny [Depp] soon?
Yeah, I'm working on the script, and, you know, it's been kind of a long time coming, but I think I'm getting a script that I like. I don't really like talking because I'm not really sure what's happening yet but I'm excited about it. I think, yes, finally for me, it's getting to be the right tone.
Have you and Johnny talked specifically about his take on Barnabas [Collins]?
Burton: Yeah, we've been talking about it. I mean, He's finishing up another movie, but we've had a couple of really good meetings. Yeah, you know, I'm excited.
[<a href="http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2010/11/23/tim-burton-dark-shadows-frankenweenie-maleficent-addams-family/]
Sherlock Holmes 2
Here's a first look at Girl with the Dragon Tattoo star Noomi Rapace alongside Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. [Cinemablend]
Fox exec Kevin Reilly offers an interesting take on why the network moved the show to Friday, essentially arguing that such a huge percentage of the audience doesn't watch the show live anyway, so the slot doesn't matter:
"We are not killing the show. Over the last week, over 45 percent of the audience time-shifted the show. That's almost half of the dedicated audience watching it on their DVRs. It's been such a loyal fanbase. I will be really disheartened if the viewer base decides to not watch because it shifted one night. I hope they go with it, and if not they have the option of picking it up on their DVRs. If it does anywhere near what it did on Thursdays, we can glue that show to the schedule because it can be a big win for us."
True Blood
The show has reportedly added three new regular characters as well as promoted a recurring character to a full-time gig. L Word actress Janina Gavankar will play Luna, a shapeshifter public school teacher, Life Unexpected's Alexandra Breckenridge will play a wiccan named Daisy, and soap opera actress Vedette Lim will play cage-fighter Naomi. Jessica Tuck, who plays the vampire mouthpiece Nan Flannigan, is now a regular. [Deadline]
The Walking Dead
Check out this video of Jeffrey DeMunn explaining his character, Dale: [Fangoria]
And, because why the hell not, here's an Italian language promo for episode 5, "Wildfire": [SpoilerTV]
A few promo photos for "Chuck vs. the Leftovers": [SpoilerTV]
The Event
A promo is out for episode 10, "Everything Will Change": [SpoilerTV]
Taking the show's proclivity for absurd titles to dizzying new heights, episode 14 will reportedly be called "Mannequin 3: The Reckoning." [SpoilerTV]
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome
Former Caprica co-executive producer Jonas Pate will reportedly be directing the pilot of the latest BSG spinoff. [Deadline]
Another promo for season 2: [SpoilerTV]
Here's a bunch more set photos of the cast: [The V-Files]
Lucas Grabeel, who played a Lex Luthor clone in season six, says he's heading off to Vancouver to shoot a return appearance, presumably as another older version of this season's Luthor clone. [KSiteTV]
Being Human
Syfy has set the premiere date for Monday, January 17. [TV Guide]
Additional reporting by Katharine Trendacosta and Charlie Jane Anders.


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Introduction Sewing machines are a kind of machines that are used for the purpose of stitching clothes.There are various types of sewing machines that are available in the market.They are mechanical sewing machine, electronic sewing machine, computerized sewing machine and overlocker sewing machines.These are used for the purpose of dressmaking,home furnishings, repairs and alterations, upholstery and crafts.During the initial days of stitching clothes it is better to buy a cheap machine. There are various companies that are into the manufacturing of Sewing Machines. Few among them are craft master, Yamata Ricoma family sew, sears Kenmore by Janome, Reliable, Renaissance, Toyotaand a lot more. Singer is also one of the companies that are into the manufacturing of machines used for the purpose of stitching.
Brief description on Singer
Singer Corporation, often known as Singer is a world class machine company that is into the manufacturing of sewing machines.This company was first established in the year 1851 by its founder Isaac Merritt Singer accompanied by Edward Clark. This was initially established as I.M.Singer and Co and later was renamed as Singer Manufacturing Company in the year 1865.It was again renamed as Singer Company in the year 1963.The different types of singer sewing machinesare the basic models, electronic models, embroidery and sewing models, sergers, garment care, scholastic machines and industrial products.
Singer ZIG ZAG 8280 reviews
This model of Singer has been liked by many people and is very famous for its design and style.The appearance of this model is very elegant.This is a computerized sewing machine that includes 48 stitches.It is featured with a carry handle, presser feet and auto bobbin thread winder.The various accessories include zipper foot,feed cover plate,buttonhole foot, button sewing foot,needles, bobbins and dust cover.It is also featured with free arm for circular stitching and max stitch width 5mm.
Price of Singer ZIG ZAG 8280
The price of this model of singer sewing machine is Rs.7000 making it the most economical sewing machine when compared to its features.
Conclusion This model of sewing machine can be used for professional purpose as well as for domestic use.This is considered ideal for domestic use.It is famous for its portability and durability. It can be easily bought through any of the famous sewing machine shops and in all Singer showrooms.These can also be easily bought through online shopping as online shopping in India has become very famous these days.The service provided by the professionals at Singer has been very great these years. This is a fantastic machine and this is the reason it is a favourite among its users.


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There is no shortage of abandoned schools in Gary, Indiana; the declining population over the decades has left the school district scrambling to close and reorganize schools. Annually decreasing budgets complicate attempts to maintain or repair the crumbling structures.
The Emerson School was Gary's first high school, built in 1909. It was the proud work of a confident new superintendent and would be at the forefront of racial integration decades later. When depopulation starved the school of students in the early 1980s, the district re-organized Emerson into a Visual & Performing Arts magnet school to keep it open.
The school would last another quarter-century before mother nature would close it in 2008, one year shy of its 100th birthday.
photos courtesy the Idiot Photographer
The Ralph Waldo Emerson School
When William A. Wirt became the superintendent of the Gary school system in 1907, it offered him an opportunity to employ his concepts under the Gary Plan.
Wirt expanded the school curriculum by adding music classes, physical activities, science labs, art classes, and recreation. He lengthened the school day, initiated teacher hiring standards, and even played a part in designing the schools.
Jefferson was the first school of Gary, opened in 1907. The school was housed in a 3-story building and built by the Gary Land Company, but it did not fit Wirt's ideal.
Plans were quickly drawn for a second school to be built in Gary, one that would be better equipped to employ Wirt's new education system.
St. Louis architect William Ittner was commissioned to design the school. Wirt's requirements called for thirty classrooms, seven laboratories, separate band and orchestra rooms, art studios, and rooms for industrial and household arts. Ground-breaking began soon after.
In September of 1909 the Ralph Waldo Emerson School opened in Gary. It was Wirt's masterstroke, a grand structure which featured all the latest amenities. Emerson was the first high school in Gary and was very avant-garde, even incorporating a student-run bank and a zoo.
The new learning center was the first school to have an indoor swimming pool, and combined with the double-deck gym with upstairs running track, they were among the most advanced of their kind in the world.
Top: Emerson postcards 1910, 1914, 1946. Bottom: Emerson Pool, 1910
The Emerson school was the flagship learning institution for Gary superintendent William Wirt, who would later be considered an innovator of education.
Wirt used the Ralph Waldo Emerson School to be the first to employ his revolutionary new Work-Study-Play system of education.
Work-Study-Play called for students to be separated into two platoons, the first utilizing academic facilities while the second used the non-academic facilities (gym, workshop, auditorium, and track).
The constant movement would be efficient in keeping all facilities in use at all times, thus reducing cost – and it was thought the continuous change would stimulate student creativity.
These concepts, which might seem straightforward today, were revolutionary to education 100 years ago.
The Work-Study-Play concept would sweep across the United States, which was largely still utilizing the old schoolhouse method of learning at the time.
The method was controversial for its time, but it would eventually earn Wirt international fame in the 1920s.
Even in present day, schools around the world still employ concepts from Wirt's original platoon-style system of Work-Study-Play.
Integration Attempts & Failures
Emerson was originally a white school, but overcrowding in 1920s Gary saw the introduction of black students to white schools.
To alleviate crowding issues, superintendent Wirt approved the transfer of black students to select white schools in Gary.
Six black students would attend Emerson in 1926, and another eighteen were allowed to attend in 1927. Many in the white community did not stand for it, and large numbers of students staged a walk-out which eventually grew into a strike.
Over 1,300 students, parents, and other protesters stood in front of Emerson School, refusing to go back inside or disperse until the school was returned to "all-white" status.
With the standoff, Wirt was forced to act.
He agreed to establish another school for black students and transferred black Emerson students to then-new Theodore Roosevelt High School.
Pressure to de-segregate Emerson would return in 1945 but the white students would march out in protest once again.
The cultural clash in Gary was large enough to even draw the attention of Frank Sinatra, who came to the Gary Memorial Auditorium as part of a benefit to ease area tensions.
Frank used his podium to speak of acceptance and equality but his calls fell on deaf ears as most of the crowd were there to see Ol' Blue Eyes and had no interest in the protest.
By 1948, change in Gary leadership had finally brought the walls of integration in Emerson down.
Re-organization: Visual and Performing Arts Center
The Emerson School flourished for decades, but it experienced a steady decline in enrollment with the shrinking tax base of Gary.
By 1981 enrollment was so low the district was forced to transition the facility. A magnet school for the arts would draw additional subsidies to the beleaguered school district, so the financial decision for the board wasn't difficult.
Emerson closed as a high school in 1981. It would re-open as a magnet school for the arts a year later with 120 students from grades 5 through 7. Over the years Emerson would expand its enrollment until it eventually included grades 6 through 12.
One catch: the magnet program meant no more athletics for Emerson. But what the school lost in sports, it gained in culture. Students could now major in art, dance, drama, band, piano, strings, or voice.
Confusion over the school's mission and name persisted throughout the 1980s as the school fought to stay funded.
Students called the institution the Gary School, Gary High School, Gary-Emerson, Emerson High, or Emerson VPA. The lack of a singular name or identity forced the school board to address the issue.
[ In 1987 the starting salary for Gary teachers was $16,900 ]
In February of 1987 the school board made the name official when they finally announced the school as Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts – five years after it was re-opened.
In 1998, the Gary school board planned a $950,000 renovation for the Emerson School.
The work included a stage drapery and rigging project as well as renovations to several interior offices.
A computer lab was added, and the indoor swimming pool–which had not been used for some time–was filled and turned into a shower and dressing area.
Defeated by Mold
By 2007 Emerson was just two years away from its 100th birthday, and the building looked its age. Untended structural issues plagued the complex for years, and the school district could no longer work around them.
When students started getting sick, environmentalists were brought in.
It was soon discovered Emerson had a serious mold problem, although the extent of which was initially understated. A deteriorated roof and the antiquated plumbing had sprung leaks above classrooms and behind walls; by this time the mold had infiltrated most of the school.
The school board acted quickly with the limited funds available. In March of 2008 major clean-up efforts took place at Emerson; contractors replaced drywall, ceiling tiles, moldy window shades, and plumbers took care of leaking pipes. Parts of the school's roof were patched. Several classrooms received new carpet and the hallways fresh paint.
In April a hasty evaluation of the school's air quality convinced the board the cleanup had been a success. The Gary school board announced mold levels were reported to be within "acceptable levels."
However a more-thorough inspection revealed the mold issues were not only still present, but more severe than originally thought.
With funds depleted, the school board had little choice. During the last week of the 2008 school year, the board announced for the next year they would shift students from Emerson to the former Kennedy-King Elementary School in Miller, on the city's far east side (today the Benjamin Banneker Achievement Center – map).
When the bell rung to introduce summer in 2008, the Ralph Waldo Emerson School closed its doors for the final time. When the school closed, little was removed before it was abandoned. Instruments and student files had been kept and stored, but equipment, furniture, and books were left behind.
Ultimately it was a fungus that would shut down Emerson, but not before it served the Gary community for nearly 100 years.
Emerson Continues in Spirit
The magnet program would continue on in the remodeled Kennedy-King Elementary building.
Gary's school district would spend nearly $500,000 during the summer of 2008 to convert the former elementary school into a Visual and Performing Arts high school.
The school would not be converted in time for the 2009 school year, leaving the Emerson students with a partial school facility.
The school board's financial woes would continue to worsen, and by October of 2008 they were facing a massive budget shortfall for the coming year. The board had to find a way to trim $23 million from next year's budget.
With most buildings in the district crumbling and at half occupancy, the board unanimously voted to restructure the entire school district. Plans would call for the closure of 12 schools over the next two years.
photos courtesy the idiot photographer
One of the schools to close in 2009 was Wirt High School, not far from the old Kennedy-King Elementary building in Miller. Even though Wirt was not in good condition, it was better-suited as a high school than the partially-converted Kennedy-King Elementary building.
Once again, the school board decided to relocate the Emerson VPA students.
For the 2010 student year, the old Wirt High School was re-opened as Wirt-Emerson Visual and Performing Arts High Ability Academy (map).
The students, who had been moved twice in three years, affectionately referred to the locations as "E-1, E-2 and E-3." They also shortened the new school name to the simpler "WE."
The situation is easier to understand if one appreciates the challenges faced by Gary's school district.
Property tax caps, the city's low tax collection rates, and significant depopulation have decimated the district's finances, forcing the school board to make deep cuts. Losing millions from the budget every year presents an annual re-organizational nightmare.
The Future
Whatever fate unfolds for the old Emerson School, it has already earned its place in history.
The now-decrepit building changed education worldwide, was an epicenter of racial tensions during the mid-twentieth century in the United States, and it witnessed everything from integration to the computer age.
Fortunately, others have recognized the historic importance of Emerson; the school was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, preventing it from being demolished by man.
Unfortunately, nobody is preventing Emerson from being demolished by nature.
pictures courtesy the Idiot Photographer
Sometimes Interesting has teamed up with the Idiot Photographer to bring the reader a rare and unique insight to the history of Gary, Indiana. Over the course of this month we will feature various structures around Gary and share their history.


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Help us protect Louisiana's children. Report Child Abuse & Neglect: 1-855-4LA-KIDS (1-855-452-5437) toll-free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week
DCFS in Need of Additional Foster Families
May Proclaimed Foster Care Awareness Month
"The heart of our foster care program is truly with the families and children," said DCFS Secretary Suzy Sonnier. "Foster parents play a special role in the life of a child who has had to leave their family, either permanently or temporarily because of abuse or neglect."
Governor Jindal's proclamation declares that "foster, kinship and adoptive families play a vital role in helping children and families heal and reconnect, thereby launching young people into successful adult lives." During state fiscal year 2012, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) served more than 7,500 children in foster care.
DCFS recruits year-round for foster families who can provide a home and care for a child or children. "We are in particular seeking families willing to take larger sibling groups or children with special needs," said Sonnier. "It's also important that we have foster families in all parts of the state, so children can stay close to home and experience minimal movements from schools and other activities."
Foster care orientation meetings are held each month across the state. You can find out more about when orientations are scheduled at www.dcfs.la.gov/foster, as well as information on qualifications, the certification process and what to expect as a foster family that cares for a child or children temporarily.
In State Fiscal Year 2012, nearly three quarters of children removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect were eventually reunited with their birth parents, relatives or other family members. About 18 percent of children exiting foster care in that time were adopted.
In March, DCFS launched a new initiative, Faith in Families, designed to safely reduce the number of children in foster care, reduce the amount of time children spend in foster care, and ensure that all children exiting foster care do so with a permanent family connection.
In 2012, DCFS began implementing Advanced Safety training in several regions. The Advanced Safety model helps DCFS assess safety, risk and family functioning and to develop a case plan that reduces safety threats and improve how a caregiver protects children in their care. Full statewide implementation is expected by January 2014.
Other foster care and child welfare program improvements implemented over the past two years include Centralized Intake, which ensures more consistent screening and decision making of child abuse and neglect reports statewide. It also allows local child protection investigation workers with DCFS more time in the field completing investigations. The result has been earlier interventions for families that need help and fewer placements into foster care. The child abuse hotline has received more than 189,000 calls since its July 2011 launch.
During May, DCFS offices statewide are taking part in activities promoting foster care, honoring current foster families and celebrating children in care. "I want to thank all of our foster families for opening up their homes to assist and for providing a safe and nurturing environment for these children," said Sonnier. "Strong, supportive foster homes have allowed us to reduce the number of kids placed in residential facilities."
A year-round initiative hopes to link foster children who are available to be adopted with families. Each month, DCFS highlights foster children who are available for adoption on its web site, www.dcfs.louisiana.gov. There are currently more than 250 foster children available for adoption in Louisiana who do not have an identified adoptive placement.


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Here's an activity where I'm guessing you won't have to spend one dime, just use what you already have! Plastic eggs, crayons, and paper. This was a great activity I found online that I prepared and stored away for after the baby was born. I first gathered the plastic eggs from the basement so that I knew which colors I had to work with. I then colored some mix and match eggs on cardstock.
I gave J both the cards and the plastic eggs and told him his job was to create eggs to match the cards.
This activity offered practice with color recognition, size recognition and fine motor skills.
For younger toddlers/preschoolers: They might need help clicking the egg pieces together, but they can find the correct colors themselves. Some might not yet be able to recognize the size difference in the top/bottom of the egg.
For older toddlers/preschoolers: They can practice placing the eggs together themselves. To add a level of difficulty, be sure to make it clear in your drawing which part of the egg is on top and which is on bottom. This way they not only have to match the correct colors but also the correct part of the egg.
Age attempted: 3 years


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Pavelski has 3 goals, 4 points in Sharks win
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — The San Jose Sharks were sluggish in the first period while playing on back-to-back nights.
That all changed in the second.
After the Sharks fell behind by a goal in the opening frame, Joe Pavelski scored three times and set up another goal as the Sharks snapped a two-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory over the struggling Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday.
Patrick Marleau and Marty Havlat also scored for the Sharks (47-18-9) who moved four points up on idle Anaheim for the Pacific Division lead and remained two points behind St. Louis for first in the Western Conference.
"I think after back-to-back nights and not having a morning skate and things like that, you're probably going to be a little sluggish," said Sharks captain Joe Thornton, who had two assists. "We continued to get better and better and it was a good way to end the night."
San Jose clinched a playoff spot in a shootout loss to Calgary on Monday.
The Sharks' power play came in ranked 23rd in the NHL and had gone just three-for-35 in its last 10 games.
They were 3-for-3 against the Oilers.
"The numbers aren't that important, it's when they come and how they come," Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. "We've had nights like this, and it just hasn't gone in. When you look at the power play standings and the numbers and that type of stuff, you panic over it outside the room, but not inside the room.
"We finally got a reward for playing basically the same way that we have."
David Perron and Taylor Hall scored for the second-to-last place Oilers (25-39-9), who have lost three in a row. Edmonton was beaten 8-1 by the Calgary Flames on Sunday after a 3-1 defeat to the last-place Buffalo Sabres.
"We wanted to come back and play solid after our last couple games and get back to the stuff that we had been having some success with," Oilers captain Andrew Ference said. "The power play chances they got, they jumped on and put us behind the eight ball. I think our five-on-five hockey was light years better than our last game. That wasn't too tough to beat, though."
The Oilers started the scoring just over four minutes in when Perron went around Tyler Kennedy before putting a shot past Antti Niemi. It was Perron's team-leading 26th goal.
San Jose tied it 6:28 into the second on Pavelski's first goal of the night. Ben Scrivens made the initial stop on a shot from the slot by Marleau, but the rebound angled to Pavelski at the side of the net for his 35th goal.
Another power-play goal midway through the period gave San Jose a 2-1 lead. Pavelski chopped a puck to Marleau at the top of the opposite circle, and he scored before Scrivens could get across. It was Marleau's 31st goal.
"I think we've been bad for a long time and in the last few games we've created a little bit of momentum on it," Pavelski said of the power play. "It hasn't been one game and then take a couple of games off, we've been consistent on our opportunities, and tonight it just finally went in for us."
The Sharks took a two-goal lead with 30 seconds left in the middle period after Jeff Petry overskated a puck at his blue line, allowing Havlat to come in and put a wrist shot past Scrivens stickside.
San Jose scored their third man-advantage goal of the game at 1:17 of the third period. Pavelski got the puck with space in front, waited for defender Andrew Ference to go down, and then beat Scrivens to make it 4-1.
Pavelski finished his third hat trick of the season with seven minutes left in the third. Pavelski's four-point night gave him 71 points on the season.
Hall brought the Oilers within 5-2 when he got to a rebound in front and hooked in a diving backhand shot for his 25th goal.
The Oilers have been outscored 16-4 in their last three home games.
NOTES: It was the fourth of five games this season between the teams. The Sharks won the first two games before the Oilers won on Jan. 29. ... Laurent Brossoit was called up from the AHL to serve as the Oilers backup goalie after Viktor Fasth was injured in a collision in practice on Wednesday. ... Oilers forward Nail Yakupov missed his fourth straight game with an ankle injury. ... Sharks forward Logan Couture was unable to play after he sustained a lower-body injury while blocking a shot Wednesday against Calgary. Also out for the Sharks were forwards Tomas Hertl (knee) and Raffi Torres. ... San Jose D Brad Stuart played in his second game back since missing 13 because of an upper-body injury. ... Sharks RW Adam Burish left the game in the second period after taking a hard shot to the hand.


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Getting Started: 5 Quick Ways to Personalize Your Forms
We show you 5 ways you can quickly personalize the look and feel of your Forms experience for your users. These essential tools are a part of the foundations of many existing Forms but this is a perfect refresher for anyone looking to brush up on the basics or for anyone new to Forms looking to elevate their process.
This webinar is a part of our Getting Started Series with Formstack. Want a more comprehensive introduction to Forms? Check out our recent webinar, Formstack Forms: A Quickstart Guide.
A copy of the slide deck presentation for 5 Quick Ways to Personalize Your Forms is available here.


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This page was last updated on: 2021-09-27
There are many different patterns, but commonly-recognised patterns are operating in the open as bullies, or in secret, behind closed doors.
Bullies: Sometimes sexual harassers are very blunt and outspoken, and will use jokes, pictures, or sexual anecdotes quite openly to embarrass or intimidate their victims. They may touch or stroke a colleague or employee in an inappropriate way, but turn it into a joke so that the victim feels silly or shy to report the incident. They may circulate lewd sexual emails, in the full knowledge that such content could be embarrassing and upsetting. They may pass comments on a person's figure, including their breasts or buttocks, in a loud and disrespectful way.
In secret: Others operate on the quiet. Their methods may include manipulating one-on-one situations behind closed doors, where a staff member may be asked for sex in exchange for a salary raise or promotion. There may also be threats of violence if the victim does not go along with such requests. It also includes sending private emails or messages of a sexual nature. It can also include being repeatedly invited out on a date, when one has constantly refused.
Why does sexual harassment occur?
The roots of sexual harassment lie in the abuse of power. Women are much more likely to be victims of sexual harassment precisely because they, more often than men, lack power, are in more vulnerable and insecure positions, lack self confidence, or have been socialised to suffer in silence. There are suggestions that male hostility toward women in the workplace is closely connected to male attitudes about the "proper" role of a man in society (ie being a "good provider"). When men feel threatened by women in the workplace, they see it as a threat to this traditional role.
In some societies, sexual harassment of women is directly linked to their social position in general. If women are regarded as second-class citizens, or as sexual objects, if their contributions are not seen as worthwhile, and if they are relegated to rigid roles such as wives, mothers and lowly-paid workers, then the incidence of sexual harassment becomes higher.
Sexual harassment is also a form of discrimination. If a person is singled out on the basis of their sex, and if their performance and progress in the workplace is held back or even destroyed due to sexual harassment, this counts as discrimination.
To put it simply: sexual harassment has been and is used as a tool to perpetuate the subordination of women. Although men can also be harassed, the majority of victims are women. It is, in most cases, a means by which men assert power over women through the threat of or acts of violence, the perpetuation of gender stereotypes, and economic control.
Click here to find out more about the Global Gender Pay Gap: Link to Global Gender Pay Gap
Click here to compare your salary with others in the same work position: Link to Salary Check


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Welcome to the new Italian Easy on Serious Eats! I'm Deborah Mele, and I'm thrilled to have been asked to be a regular contributor here at Serious Eats. I created my Italian recipe blog Italian Food Forever twelve years ago after my family returned from living in Milan, Italy for almost a decade. It was during our years in Italy that I became extremely passionate about Italian cuisine and learned to keep "an Italian kitchen". I focus on casual, home-style Italian cooking, and I love teaching cooks at every level that superb Italian food needn't be time consuming or overly complex. The essence of Italian cooking is simplicity. Use the freshest seasonal ingredients possible, then use basic cooking techniques only to enhance the natural flavor of the food.
I am now fortunate enough to live in North America six months a year, and Umbria, Italy, the other six months where we run a vacation house for guests, Il Casale di Mele, I cater meals, and give Umbrian cooking classes in my farmhouse kitchen. Whether I am in North America, or Italy, I find it exceptionally easy to continue these basic principles of creating honest, full flavored Italian dishes with minimal effort simply by using good quality, seasonal ingredients.
I will be sharing my favorite Italian Easy recipes with you twice a month, choosing recipes that I personally love and make in my own kitchen. Many recipes will be seasonal, others will be regional specialties, and some will simply be traditional Italian favorites, but my goal is to choose appetizing recipes that do not require hours in the kitchen and include easy to find ingredients. I hope you join me here with each installment of Italian Easy and learn to love Italian cuisine as much as I do!
"But for me, baked pasta is true Italian comfort food."
I've never met a bowl of pasta I didn't like. I love pasta of every shape and description, and enjoy the endless combinations of recipes you can create with different sauces and types of pasta. But for me, baked pasta is true Italian comfort food. Whether it is a dish of lasagna combining layers of tender sheets of homemade egg noodles and a rich meaty sauce, or a simple, easy to assemble casserole like this one, there isn't anything more pleasing to the palate than a bowl of rustic baked pasta.
Baked pasta is also a terrific idea for busy families or for entertaining as well, because you can get all the preparation completed ahead of time, and simply pop the dish into the oven just before dining. When making a baked pasta casserole dish such as this one, I always cook the pasta two to three minutes less than the recommended cooking time before assembling the ingredients for the oven as the pasta will continue to cook as it bakes, and you do not want mushy pasta.
You've probably seen mascarpone most commonly used in Tiramisu, but it works just as well in pasta sauces. It has an amazingly creamy texture that stays silky smooth when you heat it. Mascarpone is an Italian cheese quite similar to ricotta cheese. While ricotta is made by coagulating whey with acid and collecting the curds, mascarpone does the same with heavy cream in place of the whey, which creates a luscious, rich, creamy cheese.
Although not light in calories, a little mascarpone goes a long way in some of my savory dishes. It doesn't break down very easily in the cooking process, which makes it easy to create a creamy sauce without fear of greasiness or curdling.
This hearty dish, made with sausage and mushrooms bound with mascarpone and baked under a cheesy, crisp bread crumb crust is elegant enough for guests, but is so easy to prepare that it would also be a terrific option for a mid-week family meal. Add some crusty Italian bread and a mixed green salad and dinner is complete.


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Aaron Hicks wins center field job with Twins, goes 4 for 4 in 14-5 win over Blue Jays
FORT MYERS, Fla. – Aaron Hicks left the Minnesota Twins with little to debate: He's their starting center fielder and leadoff hitter.
"I think it's a pretty simple decision," manager Ron Gardenhire said after Sunday's 14-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. "Hicks is going to be our center fielder. I don't think it's a shocking announcement by any means."
Hicks, who played at Double-A New Britain last year, went 4 for 4 and scored three runs while raising his batting average to .350.
Gardenhire told reporters in his office before breaking the news to Hicks. When did the manager plan to tell the 23-year-old Hicks?
"Maybe on the airplane," Gardenhire joked, referring to the flight home for opening day.
In reality, Gardenhire pulled Hicks aside a few minutes later and gave him the news.
"It feels great to be named center fielder," said Hicks, a first-round draft choice in 2008.
Hicks outplayed Joe Benson and Darin Mastroianni for the job. Hicks said he received advice from players such as former Twins outfielder Denard Span.
"Denard told me to relax and be yourself," he said.
Hicks, who hit .271 in five minor league seasons, so impressed Gardenhire that the manager envisions him as a No. 3 hitter in the future.
"I'm just thankful to be the leadoff hitter," said Hicks, who was in his first big league camp.
Gardenhire praised Hicks for his patience at the plate.
"He showed that he has the approach to be a leadoff hitter," teammate Justin Morneau said.
Joe Mauer had a three-run homer and six RBIs, and Morneau hit a two-run drive that caromed off a palm tree behind the right-field wall.
Mauer homered to center in a four-run first off Dave Bush and hit a three-run double in the fourth that chased Guillermo Moscoso, who also allowed Morneau's homer during the seven-run inning.
"We know what they mean to our lineup," Gardenhire said.
Luis Jimenez homered twice and drove in four runs for the Blue Jays.
Twins starter P.J. Walters gave up three runs and four hits in three innings.
NOTES: Bush entered 3-0 with a 2.45 ERA and allowed four runs, four hits and a walk in the first inning, then gave up a two-run homer in the second to Brian Dozier. ... Twins RHP Tim Wood has a right shoulder strain, according to GM Terry Ryan. ... Wilkin Ramirez, Brandon Boggs and Jeff Clement remain in contention for Minnesota's final roster spot.


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With the revolving-door slate of deals making it tough to keep track of what's coming and going to Netflix each month, we're here to help you catch some movies and shows you may have had on your list before they leave the service and become a lot harder to find.
Oliver Stone's impactful Vietnam War drama "Platoon" is getting its honorable discharge 1, and the iconic Julia Roberts-Richard Gere rom-com "Runaway Bride" is also galloping off the service that day. The underappreciated Ryan Reynolds-Anna Faris comedy "Waiting" is also clocking out.
Here are the shows and films leaving Netflix in May, courtesy of What's on Netflix:
May 1
- 17 Again (2009)
- Atomic Puppet (Season 1)
- Blackfish (2013)
- Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
- Den of Thieves (2018)
- The Green Hornet (2011)
- How to Be a Latin Lover (2017)
- I Am Legend (2007)
- The Indian in the Cupboard (1995)
- Japanese Style Originator (Season 1)
- Jumping the Broom (2011)
- Kingdom (Seasons 1-3)
- Knock Knock (2015)
- Palm Trees in the Snow (2015)
- Platoon (1986)
- Runaway Bride (1999)
- Snowpiercer (2013)
- Waiting (2015)
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Phil Villarreal Facebook
Phil Villarreal Amazon Author Page
Phil Villarreal Rotten Tomatoes


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At a time when traditional news organizations are struggling to reinvent themselves in a new world, the century-old library is emerging as a digital leader.
NEW YORK -- Two massive lions flank the steps of the New York Public Library's flagship building on Fifth Avenue. Crafted out of pink Tennessee marble, Patience and Fortitude, as they became known in the 1930s, are the library's tangible link to the ancient history of libraries. Across the world, sculptures of lions had stood watch over sacred spaces for thousands of years. During the library's construction, people including Teddy Roosevelt suggested using a bison because the new-world animal had "the advantage of being our own." But he and everyone else was rebuffed. These lions, and this library, were part of the long tradition of knowledge, passed down from one elite to the next from Alexandria to Rome to London and finally to New York. Information was not just an idea, but the set of physical objects that contained it. And that stuff had to be protected by the powerful, lest their precious atoms be lost and the wisdom into which they could be distilled lost as well.
The lions guarded the doors when the main branch of the New York Public Library was dedicated in May of 1911 and they watch over it still, rather haughtily looking over the heads of visitors to one of the world's great libraries. Yet over the last 100 years, and particularly over the last 10, everything about the storage and dissemination of knowledge has changed. The lions still guard the building, but the information's gone out the back door, metastasizing in the new chemistry of the Internet.
With all this change -- not to mention a possible $40 million budget cut looming -- it would be no surprise if the library was floundering like the music industry, newspapers, or travel agents. (Hey, man, we all get disintermediated sooner or later.) But that's the wild thing. The library isn't floundering. Rather, it's flourishing, putting out some of the most innovative online projects in the country. On the stuff you can measure -- library visitors, website visitors, digital gallery images viewed -- the numbers are up across the board compared with five years ago. On the stuff you can't, like conceptual leadership, the NYPL is killing it.
The library clearly has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities. Let's start from here: One, the New York Public Library is a social network with three million active users and two, the New York Public Library is a media outfit.
The library still lends books, but over the past year, the NYPL has established itself as a beacon in the carcass-strewn content landscape with smart e-publications, crowdsourcing projects, and an overall digital strategy that shows a far greater understanding of the power of the Internet than most traditional media companies show.
Biblion, a storytelling app whose iPad icon features the lion head, is the flashiest of these efforts. It presents a slice of the library's 1939 World Fair Collection in a format that, while controversial, pushes the traditional boundaries of the e-publication. Moving around the app doesn't feel like flipping through the pages of a museum catalog or crawling around a website. To me, it feels like a native application for the tablet era, a new form for the more spatial experience afforded by the tablet's touchiness. Even for those who don't like the interface, the question has to be asked: this thing came out of a library?
Then there is the library's slick crowdsourcing projects, which allow users to digitize beautiful old menus from New York's restaurants and plot historical maps of the city onto the GPS-enabled digital maps of today. Both projects are useful and feature user interfaces that best most commercial crowdsourcing applications.
The library is even improving its basic infrastructure to keep pace with the big social networks, announcing this week that they are launching a new log-in system through Bibliocommons that will bring simplified and more powerful catalog and account services to the library's users.
Everywhere you look within the New York Public Library, it's clear that the institution has realized that its mission has changed. It's no longer only a place where people take out books and scholars dig through archives. The library has become a social network with physical and digital nodes.
How did this happen? An institution as old and august as the NYPL is not supposed to react nimbly to new developments, let alone lead the media companies producing the books and magazines it preserves.
The NYPL has 50 million items in its collections spread out over 90 research libraries and branches. It's quite unusual in that it serves as both a world-class research institution for scholars and a regular-old city library system kids use to check out Harry Potter books. The system's got $1.2 billion in assets. In 2010, the library pulled in about $245 million in operating revenue and spent about $255 million. Outside operations, the NYPL brought in an extra $80 million in donations, "capital appropriations" from various government entities, and investment income from the library's $680 million worth of investments in hedge funds and the like. In a very real sense, that is to say, the library made money last year. However, while there is a lot of money floating around, it turns out that donors restrict various amounts of it, as do the government entities, so the whole situation is more complex than the average media company's. The main point to take from all this: The people working at the library are working with many of the restraints that would be familiar to anyone running a magazine or website.
And yet there they are, launching an alternate reality game with Jane McGonigal played in the stacks of the library. Or getting 100 of their curators and employees to start blogs. Or posting a painstakingly reconstructed digital version of the pathbreaking proto-musicals, "The Black Crook."
I visited the library to see who was behind the excellent work there to see how they thought about what they were doing. And maybe I was hoping to pinch some lessons for my own work on how to teach old animals new tricks. The Atlantic was founded in 1857, after all, making it 54 years older than Patience and Fortitude.
I'm going to give you the conclusion to his article here to solve the tl;dr problem. There are two things the library has done to create such cool projects. First, I'm convinced the NYPL is succeeding online because of desire. The library's employees care about the digital aspects of their institution, and the institution supports their innovation. I mean this in the most fundamental way possible and as a damning critique of media companies. Second, the library sees its users as collaborators in improving the collections the library already has. While serving them online costs the library some money, they are creating value, too, by opening up conduits into the library for superusers.
The logic of protecting offline revenue pushed most media companies away from aggressively reevaluating their role in the information ecosystem. Something you hear a lot in the magazine business, for example, is that you "can't trade print dollars for digital pennies." That's kept many of us (The Atlantic excepted, I would say) from innovating online. No such pressure exists at the NYPL. The whole point of the library is to be used by the various people who do so. And the logic of delivering what users want leads inexorably to trying to give them the best digital experiences in the world.
My first stop was the Communications department, which produced Biblion. It is not at the main library location but rather at 34th Street at the Science, Industry, and Business Library. Entering via a side door, I signed in with the security guard and took the elevator to the fifth floor. I emerged into the familiar territory of fluorescent-lit cubicles and shared bathrooms that I trust you're familiar with too. These places are like the landscapes of the Western. The setting, though it technically changes each movie, looks and functions precisely the same in the areas of fundamental importance. There will be red rocks; there will be beige carpet. It's the office.
This is the domain of Deanna Lee, an energetic and playfully aggressive former television news producer (below). She's justifiably proud that her small team put together Biblion in just five months working with a CMS that consisted of a few pieces of paper taped to her wall. "I was sick of hearing people saying e-readers are killing libraries," Lee said, and she set about creating an app to put the lie to the idea.
She maybe wanted to prove something else, too. "PR and content are all tied together now," she maintained. Everyone is just telling stories on the Internet, so if you want to succeed in PR, you need to be a storyteller. Take a look at the NYPL's Tumblr. Conversant with current memeology and drawing on common news hooks (Father's Day, Bloomsday, the library's budget woes), the Tumblr provides a flow of tiny stories from and about their collections. Press releases are no longer where the communications action is.
Lee proudly notes that the Tumblr's run by her head of PR, Angela Montefinise, who used to work for the New York Post. And who, I note with appreciation, has an office that looks just like a daily reporter's, her desk and shelves covered with every kind of paper, and topped with a mock Post page one showing her inside Oscar the Grouch's trash can. If you are familiar with most public relations firms, this is not exactly how they are set up.
Lee, especially, seems to enjoy all the blurring of the lines. She left network news in a huff after having an enterprise report on China canned in favor of a story about the guy who faked killing Jon Benet Ramsey. After a stint at the Asia Society, she landed at the library, where she's been pushing to create new things that are not press releases. "We can all do this," Lee said. "We are all storytellers."
Biblion is quite obviously her baby, perhaps because she had to push it past many skeptical people before it came out. "This was a nightmare for the curators, essentially," she said. They had to give up control of the collections to outsiders, outsiders who would put something out in months, not the years that they themselves might spend creating a similar project.
On the other hand, the curators had already left quite a trail to follow in the form of a nearly 700-page "finding aid," which described the 1,183 linear feet of documents scattered across 2,508 boxes. In other words, she did not exactly pull the first Biblion release out of thin air, but rather carved it from the archival materials already assembled. Next, she hired the design firm Potion, staffed by former MIT Media Lab types who wanted to make a splash, and they were off to the races.
Internally, Biblion has been a hit. What began as a curator's nightmare has become a hot date. Now, everyone wants their collection to be the next to get the Biblion treatment. Lee, for her part, isn't content to just cut-and-paste together another finding aid. She wants to explore her notion of building "living archives" in a couple of different ways.
First, she wants the next Biblion collection to be drawn from an unconventional source. Something like Paul Holdengraber's Live from the NYPL series will be transformed into a Biblion collection, Lee said. He's interviewed everyone from Jay-Z to Harold Bloom and the videos are all available online. "I want to show that anything can be a collection," she said.
Lee's team's also hard at work on another initiative to create a living archive of the avant garde musician John Cage's sheet music. His collection is particularly in need of innovative digital treatment because the notation that he used for his work doesn't fit into the standards we have for such things. How would one know that certain seeming doodles mean, "play the cactus like this"? Lee imagines making Cage's sheet music available on the Internet, but pairing it with video master's classes from people like Kronos Quartet and Sonic Youth, extending the information available in the New York Public Library's collection with knowledge from its users.
I left Lee's office thinking about how the library uses its assets to drive, in the argot of my industry, user engagement. This was the specialty of my next stop, a meeting with the heads of NYPL Labs and the digital team.
Take What's On the Menu?, a slick project to crowdsource the transcription of tens of thousands of menus that, by virtue of their fonts and designs, are resistant to OCR, the way computers turned scans into text. Both the front end transcription and the back end output of the system are impressive. The New York Public Library's director of strategy, Micah May, told me within a year, all 40,000 menus in their collection will probably be done. Such a task would not have been possible without the help of thousands of networked volunteers.
The project, like Lee's vision for the Cage archive, highlights they key change in the way the library thinks about itself.
"A library is not just a place that collects information and processes information," May said. "We create the tools and structure the information so that others can enhance the collections." Another NYPLer, Doug Reside, Digital Curator of Performing Arts, put it even more simply, "The public library can be used to organize people to organize information."
That is to say, the NYPL's collections can become more valuable to all of its users by tapping into the energy and expertise of some of its users. The role of the library is to create the right kinds of conduits for superusers to get involved. That job falls to Michael Lascarides, senior manager for web initiatives for the New York Public Library, and Ben Vershbow, manager of NYPL Labs, which Vershbow calls "more an idea than a real unit" but that is tasked with connecting curators and collections with digital experts.
If my reporter self felt right at home with Lee and her fist-banging love for narrative, my inner technologist swoons around Lascarides and Vershbow. Lascarides is an artist and Vershbow directs plays, but that's just the New York in them; both are tech nerds deep down. I can feel it, even if Vershbow is wearing a plunging v-neck and has an uncanny ability to present the same look to my camera, no matter how many photos I snap.
The first thing Lascarides says to me is, "Digital is becoming the horseless of our age." He's referring to the late nineteenth century time that produced publications like, "Horseless Age," the Wired of the early automobile era. His point is that the word "digital" is becoming unnecessary because "digital is woven into everything." You add the adjective when you need to differentiate it from the world's general expectations. After automobiles dominated the landscape, horselessness was assumed. Indeed, we all live in the horseless age, but very few of us feel the need to draw attention to that fact.
I dwell on this point not only because I like saying horseless age, but also because it's a key element of how the NYPL encourages its staff to think. As May puts it, "Our strategy starts and ends with users." They simply provide what the people want, and increasingly, that means combining brick-and-mortar offerings with digital collections and front-ends.
Vershbow describes the library as a "massive collection of niches," not unlike the web itself. Getting collections online and weaving them into the extant communities is "a very natural place for us to be in the knowledge commons," he said. Take the menu project. When you click on a menu item, say, "rum punch," it brings up a fact sheet about that dish. On the page, there are links within the menu collection -- to other menus that have rum punch -- as well as off-the-site to Epicurious, Google Images, Hathi Trust, Flickr, Twitter, and others. The original menu has become another node on the living web. It leaves the realm of the archival and becomes something you can make, maybe even from this 2001 recipe in Bon Appetit for Rum Punch Granita. Or another example: you can see "Tutti Frutti" on a menu from 1900 and then make it with a recipe from 1906 or 1962.
I think that's brilliant, but not because it's digital. Digital is merely the precondition. The web and search algorithms and crowdsourcing and all that make it possible, but to focus on them would miss the point. The point is: this project changes our relationship with time. When we weave history into the web, we weave the past into the present. And that is awesome and important. The archive takes on a life in our own, just as Lee hopes the Cage archives will.
Every magazine, television network, or radio station with an archive is sitting on gold. Get that stuff out of the basement and put it online for free, where people can link to, remix, and use it. But don't just dump it there. Take advantage of what the web can do. Structure the work, as NYPL's strategy head says, so that people can improve on your collection.
People love the texture of old stories and the odd solidity of old photos. If you let them use those things for their own purposes, they love them even more. Take the New York Public Library's stereogram collection. Stereograms were actually publicized by a key member of The Atlantic's staff at the end of the 19th century, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Two images were taken from nearly the same angle that, when inserted into the proper viewer, gave something of a three-dimensional aspect to the scene. Most people have never looked through a stereoscope and in many respects, they are mostly just another indication that fake 3-D sucks. However, Joshua Heineman of the blog Cursive Buildings, struck on a brilliant idea a couple of years ago. He took the available stereograms, which are usually by archives and libraries side-by-side, and transformed them into animated GIFs. These flickering images do, in fact, give you the 3-D feel but within the web's vernacular.
That might not be the kind of collection improvement that a curator would imagine, but that's exactly the point. When you put information in the hands of people, they come up with all kinds of stuff that people within an institution might not think about.
Now, the grand lions that once guarded the building, keeping knowledge in, and to a lesser extent, the rabble out, will serve a different role. The lion's head has become the New York Public Library's brand on the Internet. More people will see the library's logo than will ever see the sculptures themselves. The good news is that Patience and Fortitude do still mean something in the Internet age. But they are not the only values the library will need to cultivate to keep its title as the best social network that is also a library and a media company. Speed, openness, and adaptability may be as important as the more phlegmatic aspirations of the past.
Balancing between the library's old and new values will be the challenge for incoming library president Anthony Marx, who takes over for Paul LeClerc, the library's head for more than 17 years. Marx starts in a couple of weeks, moving to the library from Amherst, where he was a champion of socioeconomic diversity, who had an "out-sized impact on the national conversation about diversity in higher education." He seems like the kind of guy who will bless the library's push to serve more people through innovation online.
Of course, the thick library buildings will remain rooted in the streets of New York. Many collections, mostly because of copyright issues, will remain locked in basements and available only to pro researchers. But that probably won't be the only use for these beautiful, expensive buildings. Rather, the library would like to see them become hubs of conversation and collection improvement. Some of the Internet-sparked thinking about community building and the value of users is rubbing off on the physical space of the library. The New York Public Library is getting webbier by the day. Institutions famous for wanting people to be quiet now want you to speak up.
"I think we can become places of conversation," the curator Reside said, "Places where information is not only pulled off the shelf, but conversations can also happen around the contents of the library."
Users, even in a library, can no longer be shushed.
Images: New York Public Library/Alexis Madrigal.
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After graduating magna cum laude from Hiram College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history, Michelle began grant research, inventory, and cataloging the collection of the Akron Art Museum. She was hired as Curatorial Assistant upon completion of the grant project.
During her tenure at the Akron Art Museum she had the privilege of doing in-depth research which led to updates on provenance and related history of pieces within the collection and preparing reevaluation and organization of the collection for its impending move to a new building. She also did extensive work and installation on many exhibitions. Personal exhibit favorites include: Milk and Eggs: The American Revival of Tempera Painting 1930-1950; My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation; Flowers in Glass: Paperweights and Sculpture by Paul Stankard; and As Seen on TV! – Art and Consumer Culture.