text:
Kiddie Class Struggle
One mom's breast-milk-curdling tour of lower education's higher end
Because, like many American mothers with children at home, I am a juggling, multi-tasking, somewhat less than full-time freelance employee, the hours I spent reading Camille Peri and Kate Moses's Because I Said So, Judith Warner's Perfect Madness, and Miriam Peskowitz's The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars also involved a lot of weeping in parking lots. In the spirit of motherly sharing, let me rush to explain why. It began with the—I thought simple—wish that our daughter attend kindergarten. In the strange voodoo that is California, although houses in our neighborhood have shot up to $500,000, the corner school's demographics are 95 percent Hispanic; 76 percent of the students are learning English as a second language, and 92 percent qualify for a free lunch. Like most families just one year into the crowded magnet system, we've been waitlisted for schools with more English-speakers; any openings materializing locally will be assigned by lottery, the odds notoriously poor.
So, we figured, the simplest solution was to move. The shining beacons of L.A. public education are La Cañada and Calabasas, lovely bedroom neighborhoods where single-family homes run from $850,000 to $1.5 million (giving rise to my new favorite real-estate phrase: "$1.1 million and it's on septic!"). One Sunday I saw a La Cañada listing at the Ikea-like Impossibly Low Price! of $830,000. The house was small, but checking on the Internet revealed that it had a surprisingly big lot. Surely no one else had seen this, had done the research … As we pulled up in our ever-so-slightly-pockmarked 1998 Toyota, my hopes crumbled upon seeing a mob of sleek-sunglassed parents, all business, plus their children, piling like vermin out of gleaming black Mercedes and Lexus SUV Horror-Mobiles, tossing ever-escalating sealed bids—like jaunty paper airplanes—over the squat house's peeling windowsills.
"If it weren't for all these Asians!" I hissed, crumpling the Los Angeles Times real-estate section in my fist. I confess that even more flew out, to the tune of "Asians—they overfetishize education, drive up the real-estate market, and P.S., I hate their tile!" It concerned my husband that in our quest to secure our daughter a quality education, to forge her into a forward-looking citizen of the world, I—myself of Asian descent—was becoming a frothing, snarling racist. Wasn't there another way?
Fortunately, yes. In our darkest hour we turned to religion. Upon learning that tuition at parochial schools is half that at name L.A. private schools (where it runs from $14,000 to $26,000 a year), my husband and I—recalling that we have two kids to spring for—dropped our Left Coast Democratic leanings and immediately found God. Any God would do. We weren't picky. Here was a glossy Baptist flyer showing happy children: "Picture your child attending a school where every subject is taught from a Biblical perspective!" Here was a Catholic one, with a photo of the pope—for whom I experienced a stab of affection, thinking, "People put down the pope, but he has actually made some pretty good points. Can't remember what they are, but look at the tuition—$4,500!"
We eventually settled on the middlebrow Lutherans and their middlebrow Luther Hall, considered not top-tier but certainly decent, with no recent shootings. Which I like to think describes our middlebrow 1998 minivan family as well—"Not top-tier but certainly decent, with no recent shootings." Comparing Luther Hall's $6,500 a year with the $10,000 property tax on the La Cañada tear-down, I felt the pressure releasing. The kindergarten had openings; we were applying in time; and the only thing standing between us and an acceptance letter was a twenty-minute evaluation. Said evaluation was a sleepy one-on-one with a teacher, involving simple questions ("What's your favorite ice cream?"), the replicating of some block arrangements, pencil work ("Can you write your name?" Yes), and the copying of shapes of increasing difficulty, culminating in a grid I can only describe as "the British flag"—which, with almost pencil-breaking effort, my daughter actually did. When asked to name some animals, she opened with "Lion, tiger, hippopotamus …" I thought this showed style.
Indeed, I was just going through my address book, phoning everyone with news of my daughter's genius ("She said her favorite ice cream was mango!"), when word came that Luther Hall felt my daughter had failed the test, that she was not developmentally ready for kindergarten and would actually have to be held back a year. This is the 2001: A Space Odyssey moment when lights and colors around you smear into tunnels. My gut turned to ice, and I vaulted into the minivan, bouncing crazily down the rainy boulevard like a wild-eyed mother tiger, through stoplights flaring orange, my knuckles turning white, to Luther Hall, to … well, apparently to go question by question through my daughter's awful pink Gesell readiness assessment. At the top was her age, 4.4; below was a sea of ADD-type phrases: "intermittent eye contact," "not focused," "attention seemed to wander." Next to "Conversation," "Blocks," and "Pencilwork" was an age-appropriate spray of 4.0s and 4.5s, "but by February," the administrator said, "we want to see more 4.5s moving into 5.0s." The British flag was a 6.0. But because she did not then want to try the much simpler diamond: a 4.0. The animal naming was timed—twenty seconds, forty, sixty. You're not supposed to peak at hippopotamus, or wait for praise. You're supposed to press on and on and on …
In the parking lot, in the rain, in my white Toyota minibarge of failure, I cried, because I now saw the error of my relaxed, irreverent ways. All those hysterical Los Angeles über-moms I used to mock (call them the Suzanne Vandenburg-Kiplings), with their shining yoga faces, Mozart in the womb, natural birth, Baby Einstein, scary brain-stimulating black-and-white baby mobiles, getting on extended waiting lists for super preschools, piano lessons at two … They were actually right! Any one of these tricks would have gotten us over the hump of 4.3s to probably more like 4.7s and 4.8s at age 4.4. If her mother had been paying any attention, I thought, my daughter would not be sitting alone come September with no kindergarten to go to, One Child Left Behind.
W hich is a long way of saying that I begin Peri and Moses's essay anthology Because I Said So in a foul mood. I actually crack its spine while at Under the Sea, the hideous neon Chuck E. Cheese—like indoor playground my daughters and I prefer to the vastly more educational Kidspace Children's Museum across town, whose tasteful décor is nicer than that of my house. Because, unlike at an open-air playground, the children can't actually escape, Under the Sea is my office away from home. (And you've seen the results.)
Co-founders of the popular Salon feature "Mothers Who Think," which itself grew into an eponymous best-selling anthology, Peri and Moses, in their chatty introduction, describe formulating early ideas while very much caught up in motherhood's jumble—on outings at the zoo, in the bleachers at soccer practice, and, yes, "while waiting at the pharmacy for amoxicillin prescriptions." But just as I'm settling in to my own jumble, hunching over the pizza counter, spine relaxing, the Mothers start Thinking—unfortunately, much too hard for me.
In the United States as we know it now, the one-size-fits-all how-tos still being recycled in the parenting literature are not only useless, they are laughable, even irresponsible, as the subjects of some of the stories in this book make clear. What's a black mother to do when people assume she's the hired nanny of her biracial child? What's a modern Muslim mother to do when her American mosque tries to banish her for having a child but no husband? What's a widow to do when her son asks why his father was killed by terrorists? What's a husband to do in the waiting room while his wife's eggs are being transferred to the uterus of the woman who may carry their child to term?
Mothers Who Think celebrated "the emphatic telling of mothers' truths," and in that spirit I declare my truth in 2005 to be that I am suffering from Women's Anthology Fatigue. The subtitle of Because I Said So is "33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves," which alone exhausted me. I recalled reading Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild's anthology Global Woman, a sociologically important book, and thinking helplessly at one point, "But what can I do if a young Filipina fell in love and moved in with an abusive unemployed alcoholic—and yet somehow managed, between the weepings and beatings, to create four children? Yes, it's horrible that the only way to support her kids is to nanny for a hideous Manhattan socialite in a disturbing pattern of global Third World female exploitation, but …" All I can do, really, is to send up a spiritual thought balloon of my sincerest condolences. I would march on Washington, but hey, I can't even get my kid into kindergarten! Because the scope of my motherhood has shrunk to the size of a panic room, I've got nothing left for news outside it. (Which also explains why I go blank any time I hear a sentence that begins with that passionate feminist catchphrase "But in Denmark … !")
It's gloomy to feel so negative about global sisterhood, because there are individual essays in Because I Said So that I really enjoy. Margaret Talbot's "Material Girls"—relating her guilty pleasure in, and her apt deconstruction of, American Girl dolls—is hilarious. In "On Giving Hope," Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane, writes with fierce optimism of her dreams for their son, born after Pearl's murder. Jean Hanff Korelitz's "Why I Can Never Go Back to the French Laundry" terrifically captures the sensation of maternal guilt: as Korelitz settles down to an exquisite dinner and then realizes that she has not in fact actually met the children's baby-sitter, "I had the strangest sensation of an egg breaking over my head, but the egg was full of acid, and the acid swept instantly through my skin and rampaged through my bloodstream." Mary Morris's "Chaos Theory" describes a neatnik mother's gradual acceptance of a messy house. I particularly love this humanizing detail: Morris's teenage daughter, while showering, pulls out strands of her unruly mane and sticks them to the wall so they won't clog the drain.
Kate Moses's "Mother of the World" weaves together losing a baby to miscarriage, losing friends to cancer, and traveling to Egypt to find Fayum portraits of a centuries-dead young mother and child. It's quite moving to read at forty-three, while at the same delicate balancing point between fertility and cronedom that Moses describes. I also experience catharsis—healing, even—upon seeing fine prose used in a maternal tale of real poignance. (While reading Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions, on the other hand, I had only sour thoughts: "Never mind the cesareans—you had two healthy babies!" I imagine her response: "But in Africa … !")
Because I am in a crabbed state of mind, however, the essay that sticks with me is Andrea Gray's "Survivor." Gray writes about losing her business, her home, and her husband, and living on food stamps. Her one source of pride is that by cutting corners and making deals, she was able to keep her kids in their exclusive Marin school.
And all I can think is "What is she complaining about? She got them in!"
Good news on the kindergarten front! The cavalry's here. My friend Leah is outraged at our rejection—and by a school she has never even heard of! "Lutherans?" she rails. "Since when are they exclusive? How dare they? Don't they know who you are? You're a celebrity mom!"
"I'm a public-radio celebrity," I remind her, "which in L.A. is like being the genteel poor." I'm ashamed to admit that while tearfully arguing my daughter's case—"But look at this British-flag thing; it's a 6.0!"—I indeed tried, between sobs, to utter a few sentences in "public-radio voice" to gain a little stature; but the dour administrator just looked at me blankly.
"Nonsense—everyone knows you!" Leah sings out. "And believe me, private-school admission is not about the kids but the parents." She places a call to her friend Jacqueline—a "huge fan" who teaches French at The Learning Project, a very first-rate, very educationally progressive L.A. private school. "Mais non!" Jacqueline cries, upon hearing of our tragedie—we must send our kids to TLP. (Editorial note: The identities of all schools and administrators mentioned in this article have been disguised, if poorly.)
By day's end Jacqueline has called back with news of a somewhat mixed nature that yet offers some hope if approached opportunistically. The admissions coordinator, Dee, is a "huge fan," but the all-powerful headmistress, a lady named Mrs. Feninger, while not exactly a non-fan, has never heard of me. The good news is that Mrs. Feninger has recently developed a mania for fundraising, because of a new computer center. An excitable description ensues ("Très Pixar! …"), the Franco-technological import of which is hard to follow—all I can tell you is that I have a vague, slightly vibrating feeling about the new computer center. Dee has convinced Mrs. Feninger that a public-radio celeb—albeit one she has never heard of—will be a crack fundraiser. Formidable, Jacqueline suggests to me, would be if I put together a gift basket of signed books with a letter introducing myself and my husband and our own mania for fundraising, which we are burning to share.
While there are roadblocks yet to cross—not the least being that The Learning Project is $14,000 a year (Leah waves her hands dismissively: "Financial aid! Repeat after me: 'I am a celebrity mom!'")—we have won a slot in the last Learning Project "play encounter." Yes, the whole wobbly enterprise is making me feel a little like Sean Young in a Catwoman suit, rattling the gates of Warner Bros. ("Here's a video we shot of me in Donna Karan and an Easter bonnet, pretending to emcee your annual Spring Fling auction!") But, we all agree, there's nothing you mustn't stoop to for your children.
Upon moving from France to America, Judith Warner writes in Perfect Madness, she experienced culture shock. France was a parent's "paradise," rich with mother/family benefits, while America … (Cue Axl Rose screaming, "Welcome to the Jungle!") America was full of relatively privileged mothers suffering a "choking cocktail of guilt and anxiety and resentment and regret."
So what has brought us to what one mom calls "this, this, this … this mess"? "It's not the 'fault' of the media," Warner says (quelling any doubts that her real subtitle should be "But in France … !").
Or the Christian Right. Or George W. Bush. Or Phyllis Schlafly. Or Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Or Mrs. Doubtfire. It's
us—this generation of mothers. And it's the way our culture has groomed and greeted us. Mixing promise with politics, feminism with "family values," science and sound bites and religion and, above all, fearinto a combustible combination that is nothing less than perfect madness.
Warner dubs today's Problem That Has No Name "The Mommy Mystique," a gauzy tissue of beliefs that tell us "we are the luckiest women in the world—the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth." Further,
It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers—from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. Because to point fingers out at society, to look beyond ourselves, is to shirk "personal responsibility." To admit that we cannot do everything ourselves, that indeed we need help—and help on a large, systematic scale—is tantamount to admitting personal failure.
Comforted by the Mommy Mystique, we are convinced that every decision we make, every detail we control, is
incredibly important.
Just as I'm giddily trimming celadon-colored Japanese ribbon for my Mrs. Feninger gift basket, this sentence gives me pause.
Warner says that our generation of post—Baby Boomers, born from 1958 to the early 1970s, is ripe for Mommy Mystique—dom. Our evolution, in an eerily accurate nutshell?
In the 1980s, you couldn't invite a friend over for dinner without her opening the oven door and doing a quick calorie count before she mentally committed herself to eating.
In the 1990s, she brought her
owndinner—because she was, inevitably, allergic to whatever you served.
We have long been a generation of control freaks.
For decades now, we have had a tendency to act as though contagion—the contagion of out-of-controlness—lay behind every corner. Behind every pot lid, every menu, every play date.
Warner is not the first to note that feminism's ascension on college campuses paralleled the rise of anorexia nervosa. But her connection between hyper food freaks and hyper mom freaks fascinates me. As weight-consciousness is an obsession with numbers, I think of the school APIs (Academic Performance Indexes) I'm always punching up on the Internet and comparing. There are other means by which to measure academic performance, and other descriptors for the likely educational experience, and if all else fails and you have the time (yeah, right), you can break down and actually go visit a school under consideration. But for the record, the La Cañada school has a Harvard-class-of-2021 API: 953 out of a possible 1,000. Our local Van Nuys school scores a McDonald's-fryer-bound 673. When a Berkeley friend called and complained about her daughter's third-grade teacher, I logged on, called back angrily, and exclaimed, "Count your blessings, baby! Your school's API is a UCLA-on-scholarship-ready 810!"
Just driving over to The Learning Project for our "play encounter," I'm already feeling queasy. Gnawing at me is Judith Warner's assertion that I am probably crazy. Have I indeed been traveling through this entire kindergarten journey/"mess" in a state of perfect madness? That would make me vastly less confident about the "choices" I've made to get us here. In the past week my Grrrrl Power—like battle cry of "I am a celebrity mom!" has devolved to the far less glamorous "I am a celebrity mom who needs financial aid." Leah has pointed out that since at one elite L.A. middle school they actually—ironically enough—teach my essay-writing style, I may eventually be able to barter the teaching of writing for a break in my kids' private-school tuition.
I always planned to teach again, but I never thought I'd be instructing only eighth-graders of the greatest wealth, attending schools I could never afford. The vision of endlessly spiraling privilege is positively Escher-like.
Another problem is TLP's location. If such a metaphor had been tried in Global Woman, I would have dinged the writer for lachrymosity—but yes, to get to yon Isle of White, we pass taquerias, a check-cashing joint, a group of weary-looking Hispanic women standing at the bus stop. Then we come upon the TLP security gate, which swings open onto a painted castle compound in the middle of which is a leafy glade abuzz with English, math, Mozart, and, weirdly enough, Spanish! "And global citizenship," our guide enthuses. "The kids voted and decided they wanted to send money to Asia this year for the tsunami!" (I lean over to my husband and murmur, "Throw a stone over the wall and you've got a tsunami! A tsunami of Latinos! Forty to a class!")
The tour goes on, describing TLP's psychologist-developed kindergarten math games, linguistic puzzles, off-the-chart test scores, almost-guaranteed admission into top secondary schools. And then, of course, there it is: the new computer center. A hive of white children pecking, learning faster faster faster. And I find myself hysterically thinking, "This is where the hatchlings live, the hatchlings who will become the corporate lawyers of tomorrow!" And then I think, "Who are these $14,000-a-year-for-kindergarten parents? Why do their kids need to be Baby Einsteins in an era when our president is a guy who says 'nu-cu-lar'?"
She's a tempting image, that über-mom, my very own dreamscape Suzanne Vandenburg-Kipling. Blonde ponytail, dark sunglasses, yoga pants, roaring by in her black SUV, hurtling toward junior's violin lesson, Whole Foods chai in her cupholder, chairwoman of her school's celebrity tsunami-relief auction—partly to build her kids' self-esteem, partly so they can accrue Yale-friendly extracurricular credit. Compare her with the older, squarer, fatter lady at our neighborhood church, who said recently, "We teach the children we're part of the global community … sometimes against our will." That morning she'd led a group to the boulevard in front of the church to pick up trash.
Miriam Peskowitz describes the demographic categorization of American mothers in her book The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars. She notes that Euro RSCG, the world's fifth largest advertising agency and popularizer of the term "metrosexual," has broken down American mothers into the following "hot" advertising categories: Domestic Divas (employ nannies to raise flawless kids and housekeepers to keep the home gorgeous), Boomerang Moms (worked when kids were small, left work when kids were teens, à la Karen Hughes and Maria Shriver), Yummy Mummies (staying fabulous at the gym—Catherine Zeta-Jones), Mini-Me Moms (kids are fashion accessories—Madonna, Anna Wintour, Kathie Lee Gifford). The final category, the Rage Brigade, is the least interesting marketing niche, because "rage women don't have expendable income or lots of time and desire to shop."
The Mommy Wars of which Peskowitz writes break things down much more simply, pitting working moms against stay-at-homes. But Peskowitz argues that this is a false division. According to data she cites, only 37 percent of working mothers actually work full time; most of us are on a "carousel" of full-time to part-time to no work that we're continually stepping on and off. We have more in common than not, but—bombarded by Mommy Wars media stories—we don't see it that way. Peskowitz describes a mom she met on a Manhattan playground. Depressed about the transition from seventy-hour weeks to full-time momhood, the mother was complaining—vaguely—about the Mommy Wars, even while staunchly defending the brokerage firm that had just let her go. She argued like a good dead soldier that there couldn't be part-time jobs on Wall Street.
Here is the problem, Peskowitz contends, with the now infamous Lisa Belkin New York Times Magazine article "The Opt-Out Revolution" (which one letter writer described as "a feel-good piece for the Muffy set"). High-achieving women always describe opting out as a "choice," whereas their high-intensity workplaces are typically the ones that give little choice—it's seventy hours a week or nothing.
But what about the daddies? Where are they in all this putative warring, all this worrying? Is insane parental fretting just a chick thing? Hardly. At one point during the tour at TLP the administrators—partly as an ice-breaker, partly to demonstrate a favorite learning exercise at TLP—actually broke us parents out into pairs to discuss our aspirations for our children's kindergarten. My husband's partner was the wife of a famous movie actor (a well-known starship captain), whereas I paired off with a surgeon in scrubs. As we babbled on, and our responses were logged onto a whiteboard, making us the ultimate focus group, it became clear that in order to calm the parental beast that lives within, a school has to look friendly and its classes have to be small, its toys new, its art pretty, its children happy, and, above all, its lawns green.
A lawyer, in a suit, said he wanted his son "never to be bored" at school. "He's a bright kid who needs constant stimulation in order to remain engaged—I want him to be excited to go to school!" And at $14,000 a year for kindergarten, I know he will be. In order to provide that kind of value, the friendly staff will literally have to scrape our children's bows across their violin strings. In a soothing, self-esteem-enhancing motion. While the children are being visually stimulated. And their pelts brushed like ponies'. Before all star in a play. About global citizenship. In exotic faraway places. Well beyond the castle gates and all those global citizens in the surrounding neighborhood.
In capturing the hopes and fears of this privileged, self-obsessed generation of parents, Judith Warner tellingly writes,
Our baby boomer elders often call us selfish, but in doing so they miss a larger point: that what our obsessive looking-inward hides is at base a kind of despair. A lack of faith that change can come to the outside world … The desperate, grasping, and controlling way so many women go about the job of motherhood, turning energy that used to demand social change inward into control-freakishness, is our hallmark as a generation. We have taken it upon ourselves as super mothers to be everything to our children that society refuses to be: not just loving nurturers but educators, entertainers, guardians of environmental purity, protectors of a stable and prosperous future.
Thus does weltschmerz improbably drive a generation of overweening parents.
When I was young, my family traveled a lot and lacked money, so my education was dotted with many crappy schools. And looking back, I realize that bad schools were where I had some of the peak educational experiences of my life. The boredom of a bad teacher can be character-building: while your attention is wandering, you may discover who you truly are. These days, for such extraordinary prices and clearly extraordinary value (a guarantee that privileged children will never become bored), we may be breeding a generation of trembling terriers, totally unprepared to fail a test, to move to a new city, to get their own apartments.
Reassured by past crappiness, I decide to unbolt the door to my panic room. I give up on guaranteeing my children admission to Harvard by the age of five. It's a relief, actually. I just couldn't have lived under the zodiac sign Mother Tiger any longer. My breast milk was curdling; my fangs were losing their edge. Here, then, are my cheerful new mantras: "We're saving $14,000 a year!" "It's just kindergarten!" "What with the 95 percent Latino population, it's like my daughter's having her year abroad right here in town!" If I can't be a Global Woman, I can at least, for one year, be Local, if not actually Loca. Maybe my scraggly 673 API corner elementary school needs someone to teach essay writing, or just to pick up basura.
I drive up for a look. There's a little bungalow, with a green awning that says COLLEGE BEGINS IN KINDERGARTEN. There's a hopeful cartoon wolf with a mortarboard. Who won't … stop … thinking about tomorrow. Really? Okay, off we go.
When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.


text:
Euro Shield gets revamp
The format has been announced for an expanded and more meaningful Rugby League European Federation European Shield in 2012-3.
The competition will now take place over two years with the four selected nations playing each other home and away. The side finishing bottom of the league will be relegated to the European Bowl, with the winner from that tournament taking their place in 2014-5.
Pending RLIF confirmation of the format for the 2017 RLWC, the RLEF has proposed that the 2014-15 Shield acts as a qualifying tournament.
The dates for the opening six matches in 2012 have been formally agreed among the competing nations; holders Germany, 2013 World Cup Qualifiers Italy, Russia and Serbia and it will effectively be a 'Champions League', bringing together the countries who have previously won the tournament – Serbia in 2007, 2010 (West); Italy 2008, 2009; Russia 2010 (East) and Germany 2011.
Interestingly, none of those nations went on to defend their titles because of the changing formats of the competition.
Dan Stocks Head Coach of the current champions Germany, who begin the competition on the 12th May at home to Serbia, commented, "We are very much looking forward to playing in the new look European Shield over the next two years."
"We are well aware that our opponents have all had the experience of the world cup qualifiers recently, however, we are pleased with the steps we are taking and believe it's only right that we test ourselves against the strongest teams possible."
"The lads that played in the win against Malta in the summer all valued their experience massively and are desperate for the new year so they can get back into rugby league training, improve and stake a place in the squad for 2012″.
For Carlo Napolitano, Head Coach & Technical Director of the likely favourites, Italy, there is a different imperative.
"The European Shield is a very important cog in our lead up to the World Cup in 2013," he said. "It will be an opportunity for us to ensure our domestic development structure is working and allow those players to represent Italy at a higher standard."
Serbia supremo Marko Janković added, "This is the first time since we competed internationally that we have known our schedule this much in advance. It is great to have our fixture list confirmed and now it is easier to plan both our domestic and representative activities."
"The opposition is now better known because we played against all three last year. Each team will host and tour the other nations over the next two years which gives us equal opportunities. "
Edgard Taturyan, President of the Russian Association of Rugby League Clubs concurred. "We were missing such a tournament with a transparent, understandable schedule which permits long-term planning and training for the Russian national team," he noted.
12th May 2012 – Germany v Serbia
19th May – Germany v Russia
9th June – Serbia v Italy
7th July – Italy v Germany
8th September – Russia v Italy
22nd September – Russia v Serbia
These fixtures will be reversed in 2013, dates to be confirmed.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I absolutely LOVE these croissants!!
They are light and delicious and not very difficult to make. Get creative with fillings-Ham & Cheese, Fig & Gorgonzola, Chocolate, Raspberry & Cream Cheese.
It is very important you do not try to halve the recipe.
Instead, divide the dough and use them for different fillings.
1 1/2 cups whole milk, heated to warm (105°F–110°F/40°C-43°C)
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast (from two 1/4-oz packages)
3 3/4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) cold unsalted butter
Make Dough:
Stir together warm milk, brown sugar, and yeast in bowl of standing mixer and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If it doesn't foam, discard and start over.) Add 3 3/4 cups flour and salt and mix with dough hook at low speed until dough is smooth and very soft, about 7 minutes.
Transfer dough to a work surface and knead by hand 2 minutes, adding more flour as necessary, a little at a time, to make a soft, slightly sticky dough. Form dough into a roughly 1 1/2-inch-thick rectangle and chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until cold, about 1 hour.
Prepare and Shape Butter:
After dough has chilled, arrange sticks of butter horizontally, their sides touching, on a work surface. Pound butter with a rolling pin to soften slightly (butter should be malleable but still cold). Scrape butter into a block and put on a kitchen towel, then cover with other towel. Pound and roll out on both sides until butter forms a uniform 8- by 5-inch rectangle. Chill, wrapped in towels, while rolling out dough.
Roll Out Dough:
Unwrap dough and roll out on a lightly floured surface, dusting with flour as necessary and lifting and stretching dough (especially in corners), into a 16- by 10-inch rectangle. Arrange dough with a short side nearest you. Put butter in center of dough so that long sides of butter are parallel to short sides of dough. Fold as you would a letter: bottom third of dough over butter, then top third down over dough. Brush off excess flour with pastry brush.
Roll Out Dough:
Turn dough so a short side is nearest you, then flatten dough slightly by pressing down horizontally with rolling pin across dough at regular intervals, making uniform impressions. Roll out dough into a 15- by 10-inch rectangle, rolling just to but not over ends.
Brush off any excess flour. Fold in thirds like a letter, as above, stretching corners to square off dough, forming a 10- by 5-inch rectangle. (You have completed the first "fold.") Chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, 1 hour.
Make remaining "folds": Make 3 more folds in same manner, chilling dough 1 hour after each fold, for a total of 4 folds. (If any butter oozes out while rolling, sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking.) Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and chill at least 8 hours but no more than 18 (after 18 hours, dough may not rise sufficiently when baked).
Makes about 2 3/4 lb./24 croissants.


text:
Commitment 2014: Race for governor is on
And they're off! The 2014 Maryland governor's race is in full swing as a candidate from each party has made his formal declaration, with one going so far as to name a running mate.
Last month Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown told Marylanders why he wanted to be their next governor. This week, he solidified his ticket with the addition of County Executive Ken Ulmen for lieutenant governor.
On the Republican side, Harford County Executive David Craig is seeking his party's nomination.
The field is bound to get even more crowded as Attorney General Doug Gansler all but made a formal declaration of his intention to run exclusively to WBAL-TV 11 News during our Preakness coverage.
Not since 2002 has the primary process not featured an incumbent governor, so this race will be long and no doubt expensive. WBAL-TV 11 News will continue its commitment to political discourse and will be your guide through this process.


text:
Surrounding areas of Signal Hill, CA are in desperate need of a caring, compassionate, and qualified Speech Language Pathologist. Below are details concerning the positions requirements and schedule:
Middle school
Onsite for now
40 on the case load
Speech-language pathologist will be working with students who have problems with speech and language, including related cognitive or social communication problems. Problems may range from being unable to speak at all, to having difficulties with rhythm and fluency problems, such as stuttering.
You will be expected to foster and facilitate means of communication, including oral speech production, sign language and augmentative/alternative communication (AAC). The main objective is to provide a means for individuals to communicate their wants, needs, thoughts, concerns, or opinions.
If this sounds like an employment opportunity that interests you, please contact me directly at 678-837-1249 or email me at [email protected] with your updated resume and the best time to speak.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Andrew Wiggins
Account Executive, Soliant
Direct Line:678-837-1249 | Email: [email protected]
Equal Opportunity Employer Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled
- Competitive Salary
- Weekly Paycheck
- Matching 401(k) Plan
- Extensive Medical Coverage
- Licensing Assistance
- Custom Housing
- Travel Assistance
- Professional Development Reimbursement


text:
As the saying goes, elections have consequences
(The Hill) President Obama said in his weekly address Saturday that his reelection shows Americans want Congress to pass a tax cut for the middle class.
This is what Conservatives mean when we talk about "bias." In the first paragraph, we get a lie. Obama doesn't want to reduce taxes for the middle class: he wants to keep the same Bush era rates for those under $250k. Anyhow
Obama said he would work with Democrats and Republicans, along with industry, labor and civic groups, to find a solution for cutting the deficit. But he said the plan he outlined on the campaign trail is the one the nation chose.
I didn't realize Obama was such a joker. Of course, what he says and what he does are two entirely different things. And we've seen the way he "works" with those who have other ideas over the past 4 years.
"I'm open to compromise and new ideas. But I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced. I will not ask students or seniors or middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people making over $250,000 aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes. This was a central question in the election. And on Tuesday, we found out that the majority of Americans agree with my approach — that includes Democrats, Independents, and Republicans,†Obama said.
On one hand, hey, he won. Personally, I moved straight to stage 5, acceptance, before I even went to bed on Tuesday (the minute they called Ohio I turned on a movie). There were more people who vote for getting Someone Else's money to pay for their own lives then people who voted for personal responsibility. But, on the other hand, let's look at some interesting exit poll data
(NY Sun….I thought they were out of business? Guess not) To the question "Should taxes be raised to help cut the budget deficit?†only 33% answered "yes†while 63% responded "no.†Isn't that interesting? Nobody's talking about this exit-poll nugget.
Now, it is true that when the question is asked only about income-tax rates, 13% are okay with an increase for all, 47% want an increase only on incomes over $250,000, and 35% don't want increases for anyone. That's not so surprising. Most people make less than $250,000 a year, and would therefore say, "Well, heck, just tax the rich people.â€
Hey, there's that "47%" number that Romney talked about. And they want Someone Else to bear the burden. When 48% have zero net federal income tax liability.
Even on that point, though, the margin is only 37 to 45. It's below 50%, and not a massive mandate. When one combines that with the earlier question, where nearly two-thirds don't want to raise taxes at all, you have to ask whether the country isn't a whole lot more divided on these and other questions than President Obama would have us believe.
Raising income taxes will not help, and isn't quite the mandate Obama thinks it is. First, it won't raise the revenue needed. At baseline projections, it'll only pay for 8 days of current government expenditures. Second, history shows that there is no way in hell the Central Government will do anything other than spend the increased revenue. Third, people with big money will find ways to shelter it from taxation. They'll also reduce capital investment and spending, which means less money entering the private economy, circulating around, and increasing the coffers of the states, counties, and municipalities. When tax rates are raised, tax collection goes down.
The problem is not one of tax collection, it's one of spending. Giving government more money simply means they will spend more, and waste more. And those elected to federal office never seem to have skin in the game themselves. What say that every member of Congress, the President, the Vice President and their direct staff, including political appointees and czars, take a 10% pay cut for every $100 billion in deficit spending? All these people, both Democrats and Republicans, are irresponsible with the money that is forcibly taken from the People.
There are many ways to handle this. We can eliminate deductions. Create incentives for the money makers to invest, spend, and bring capital back to the US. We need to reform the way federal agencies are allocated money (wish I could find that post on did on this).
Anyhow, Obama wants a deal? How about we go with the number $500,000? That will make darned sure that the small business owners (those with 50 or fewer employees) aren't hit? Joe Biden was throwing out $1 million. Republicans say none. Let's compromise. And, hey, Ace provides a good idea
New tax: Any fee of $1 million or more, the performance for which is substantially completed over the course of six months or less, is hit with a 20% surtax above and beyond normal tax rates. If the work for fee is completed in five months or less, 30%; if the work for fee is completed in four months or less, 40%; if three months or less, 50%.
Let's take Glenn Reynolds' proposals seriously– let's start making Hollywood and the Leisure Class pay its fair share.
Surely you liberals who want people to pay their fair share will agree on this, right?
Oh, and let's not forget that Obama's previous plan would raise taxes, or, as he calls them "fees" on way more than those evil rich people.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.


text:
Staying the Course
Arnold Palmer has done just that for 83 years because of his dad, who always stood beside him—and in many ways still does.
The old dog barks a greeting from down the hallway and Janet Hulcher confirms what everybody already knows. "Mr. Palmer is here," announces the golf legend's executive assistant, sitting at her desk. Mulligan, a lumbering yellow Labrador whose age nobody seems to know anymore, appears first, the metronome of his tail wagging slowly. Mulligan's master, Arnold Palmer, is moving even slower, his body contorted with pain, his gait forced. "I'm not having a good morning," he states as he shuffles gingerly to his office on the second floor above the pro shop at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge. He had played golf the day before on the course he owns, and his creaky body is what's barking at him.
Palmer is 83, and in golf parlance he has played life's 18 holes and has had the good fortune to be able to go back onto the course for perhaps another nine. Twenty-seven holes would be nice. It would also provide a sense of symmetry, for it was 27 holes that his father got—not in figurative years, but literally. On a picture-postcard Florida afternoon on February 6, 1976, Milfred Jerome "Deacon" Palmer, 71, played 27 holes of golf at Bay Hill, returned to his room at the lodge, had a massive heart attack and died.
All these years later, Arnold Palmer's eyes moisten and his voice chokes several times during an hourlong conversation about his father. It takes only seconds until his first failed attempt to fight back tears. I ask about the story of when Arnold was only 3, his father, or Pap as he called him, put his son's hands into his and then placed them around the shaft of a cut-down women's golf club in the classic Vardon grip.
"Now boy, don't you ever change that," the elder Palmer ordered his son. "Just keep it that way the rest of your life."
It is a life that saw Arnold Palmer win 62 PGA Tour titles, seven major championships and bring the sport to the masses, becoming its most beloved figure, with his legion of fans known as Arnie's Army. It is a life that saw him pioneer the athlete as a product endorser, doing so innovatively and lucratively, becoming the highest-grossing athlete in endorsement income from 1961 to 1991, when Michael Jordan supplanted him.
It is a life that has extended beyond his father's by a dozen years. But even now, into his ninth decade and metaphorically playing another nine holes, Palmer's memory of his father teaching him the Vardon grip is still fresh. So are his emotions.
"I would guess," I say to him, "that just about every time you grip a golf club, you think of your father."
"Oh…," Palmer says, then stops. His voice cracks and raises an octave. "I… I think of him all the time. In everything I look at and think about, it reminds me of him."
There are other lessons—those that pertain to golf and, more importantly, to life. Arnold Palmer wasn't the perfect son, nor was Deacon Palmer the perfect father. They had their differences. Deacon was a staunch Democrat who revered Franklin Roosevelt, while Arnold became a Republican and a close friend of Dwight Eisenhower. But Deacon and Arnold Palmer, imperfect as they were, were a perfect match: the demanding, disciplined father and the son who wanted nothing more than to win his approval. Tellingly, at the end of his 1999 autobiography, A Golfer's Life, Palmer ruminates about his father, "wondering what my Pap would make of this golfer's life. Some things never change. I still hope he'd be pleased."
Had his father not been so demanding, Palmer doubts he'd have been so successful. To win a golf tournament was one thing, but to win even the slightest commendation from his Pap was quite another, and harder to come by. "The approvals were very limited," Palmer recalls, "and the compliments were very slow and slim."
I ask him to think of one special time when he got his father's approval, and what was it like for him.
Palmer pauses, remembering the U.S. National Amateur Championship he won in 1954, shortly before turning pro. His mother, Doris, was the first to reach him afterward, her pride and tears overflowing. "Where's Pap?" Arnold asked her. He soon found his father in the crowd, wearing a contented smile. It was the first time he'd seen him smile all week. But that wasn't all, although that smile would've been enough. While posing for photographers, Deacon put his hand
on his son's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "You did pretty good, boy," he said.
"I was always trying to please him, trying to get his approval," Palmer says now, smiling at the memory, sitting at his desk. "I don't think I would've driven myself as hard if not for that."
To this day, nobody knows how Milfred Jerome Palmer got the nickname that stuck—Deacon. "Milfred Jerome wasn't his thing," Arnold says. "What are you going to do with a name like that? He wasn't a Milfred or a Jerome. He was Deacon. That fit." Deacon, or Deke as he was also called, named his firstborn son Arnold Daniel Palmer after two of his friends.
Deacon Palmer had a lot of friends, from bankers and businessmen to bartenders and bricklayers. Like his son, he liked people. At 15, he quit school and went to work for the company that is now Standard Steel in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Though he had a club foot and walked with a limp due to infantile paralysis, Deacon Palmer was a strong, robust man who could pump one-handed chin-ups with either arm. He loathed working indoors so when he heard about a local golf course being built, he applied and was hired as a laborer. It was 1920, and Deacon Palmer never left Latrobe Country Club, eventually becoming the grounds superintendent and then club pro. Many of the trees he planted with his own hands still dot the golf course today.
It was there that young Arnold learned most of his life lessons, not to mention how to play golf. He often says that everything he knows about golf, he learned from his father. Deacon was his first and only swing coach. Shortly after teaching his boy the Vardon grip he still employs today, the father gave another bit of golf advice that Arnold never abandoned.
"Hit it hard, boy," Deacon told him. "Hit it hard. Then go find it, and hit it hard again."
The classic Arnold Palmer swing has never been described as a classic golf swing. In his prime, it was violent in its power, efficient but not effortless. His shots were clothesline low, seemingly launched from a cannon instead of lofted from a tee. That he inherited his father's strong hands and upper body helped. Because he tried to hit the ball so hard, Palmer created tremendous natural torque from his rotating hips, an instinctive motion that served him well as a pro. But as a boy, sometimes he'd swing so hard his feet would leave the ground.
One time he even toppled over. Seeing that, one of Latrobe's prominent members, J.R. Larson, told Palmer's father, "Deacon, you better do something about that kid's swing. He swings so hard he can't even stay on his feet." With piercing eyes Deacon glared at the member and growled, "J.R., you let me worry about the kid and you take care of your own game, all right?!"
It was an exchange that gave young Arnold insight into a caring and fiercely protective side of his father that he didn't fully appreciate until years later. So did another incident when Arnold was a teenager working in the pro shop. One hot afternoon nobody was around, so the boy locked up and headed onto the course to practice. When Larson came by and couldn't get to his clubs, he found Deacon, who found Arnold and promptly lit into his son in front of Larson, telling him how unreliable and undependable he was. At one point, Larson chimed in, "Tell you what, Deacon. Send him down to the steel mill to work. We'll straighten him out fast."
Once again, Arnold recalls, his father's reaction was shockingly swift.
"Don't tell me what to do with my kid!" he snapped. "You take care of your business, Mr. Larson, and I'll take care of mine!"
For a father who wasn't much for displaying affection and who was penurious with his compliments, the two J.R. Larson anecdotes are telling.
"Your dad was protective of you," I say.
"Yeah, but he never let me know it."
"But in those two instances you did see it," I say. "He wasn't going to let anyone mess with you."
"Well, he didn't want me to work in the steel mill."
"But it was more than that," I say. "He loved you dearly.''
Palmer's face flushes.
"Right," he says, nodding, his eyes watering, his voice a whisper. "That's true."
Although Palmer practically grew up on a golf course (the family's small wood-frame home was just off the 6th fairway), he didn't enjoy the privileges that being the club pro's son might bring today. The Palmer kids weren't allowed on the course or even in the club pool. Instead, they swam in a nearby stream and played in the road in front of their house. Deacon Palmer was fastidious about the golf course, loathing divots or any other blemishes. This meant no practicing your short game around the holes. Not surprisingly, throughout his pro career, Arnold Palmer's short game was his weak link.
But working at the golf course during summers certainly had its advantages. Young Arnold learned and constantly practiced; and when he caddied, he could play the course on Mondays. He was also always around his Pap, absorbing whatever his father taught him about the game.
There also were other advantages to having a country club essentially in his backyard. Deacon Palmer had not come from privilege; he was the son of a painter. But he observed and learned from the upper-crust club members he befriended and then passed those lessons on to his children.
Manners and etiquette were paramount to Deacon Palmer, and he tutored his children in them, with zero tolerance for any breaches. If Arnold left his hat on in the presence of a woman or when entering a room, Deacon would remind his boy of his shameful transgression by snatching the cap off his head—and if some of his scalp came with it, so be it.
These days at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge, hats on men's heads are not allowed in the dining area. And no matter where he might be dining, Palmer can't eat with a group of people without escaping from the lessons his father taught him.
"When I was a little boy, and my sister and I were growing up, my Pap taught us how to eat and how to be mannerly and how to hold a knife and fork," Palmer says. "How many kids today know how to hold a knife and fork properly?" He pauses for several seconds, shakes his head and adds, "Not many. I have meetings with business executives all the time, and I watch famous people eat, and they don't know how to hold a knife and fork. Many of them are remiss, and they look like they're going to butcher something."
He shakes his head again.
"It wasn't just everything I know about golf that my father taught me. It was simply everything. How to eat, how to drink, how to act, how to sit, how to talk … he gave it all to me."
He didn't grow up in fear of his father. Instead, it was a lifelong fear of displeasing him, and it still lingers with Arnold today, 37 years after his Pap's death. One of his earliest memories is from when he was 5 and was fascinated by building model airplanes. One day at the local drugstore, he took a packet of glue, slid it into his pocket and walked out the door. He got away cleanly, but not with a clean conscience. He began worrying about what his Pap might think of his theft. All these years later, he still thinks about it. "It has haunted me my entire life," he says.
All in all, his was a happy childhood. Arnold's mother, Doris, was bubbly and nurturing, and she filled in all the tangible gaps—the expressions of affection—that Deacon withheld. Latrobe had a communal feel, even with all the different strata of income. Among the members of Latrobe Country Club members was the Rogers family, who owned a die-casting business. Their son, Fred, was a year older than Arnold. Years later, Fred created a children's TV show, modeling much of it after the Latrobe that he and Arnold Palmer grew up in. He called it Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
Arnold thought he would never leave Latrobe, and he never really has. He winters in Orlando, where he not only has an office at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge but has also become intricately involved in the community, most notably with the hospitals for women and children that bear his name and that of his late first wife, Winnie. His main home, though, has always been in Latrobe. At 18, Palmer did leave for college, heading to North Carolina's Wake Forest University to play golf on a full scholarship. At the time, he knew nothing about Wake Forest, much less its athletic nickname—the Demon Deacons—the second word of which was another reminder of his father.
There is another story Palmer relates whose roots perhaps delve into the subconscious. He was maybe 9 when he got into a fight with another boy, whom he soon had on the ground. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder, that of a local man known as Fat Rusnak. "He wanted me to stop, and I told him, 'Up yours.'" Rusnak wouldn't turn him loose, so Arnold grabbed a peach from a nearby fruit stand and smeared it all over Rusnak's shirt. The man disappeared into a nearby bar and emerged several minutes later accompanied by a scowling Deacon.
"It had been raining, and my Pap had an umbrella," Palmer recalls. "He spanked me with that umbrella all the way home."
Today, the logo at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge is an umbrella. Coincidence? Palmer thinks about it, before answering, "I don't think so. Not really."
But who really knows?
What he does know is that the umbrella spanking is one of only a couple of times his Pap laid a hand on him. The other time was the most dramatic and traumatic event of his childhood.
Deacon Palmer was a drinker, and sometimes an over-drinker. Latrobe produced Rolling Rock beer, but Pap preferred bourbon. When Arnold was an adult and affluent and could afford any kind of alcoholic beverage imaginable, father and son had a teasing routine they'd enjoy. "He used to kid me," Arnold says.
"I'd say, 'How about a beer, Pap?' And he'd say, 'Why do you drink that belly wash?' He liked the beer. But he really liked whiskey. He wanted to get to the good stuff."
Sometimes, though, the good stuff got to Deacon, and it could be bad. One of those times was Arnold's 16th birthday, when Deacon came home for dinner after having too many drinks and promptly started picking on Arnold's mother, his words insensitive and mean-spirited. Arnold had seen this play out before, and this time he'd seen enough. He told Pap he didn't like the way he was talking to his mother. The look he received was one of shock and rage. Deacon grabbed Arnold's shirt, lifted him off the ground, and threw him against a galvanized stovepipe, flattening it. Later that evening, Arnold gathered some belongings and slipped out of his house, planning to run away. Soon, he found himself in the middle of the night wandering the most peaceful place he knew of on earth—the Latrobe golf course. Before the sun rose, he eased back into the house and into bed. The incident was never mentioned again, nor did Deacon ever again lay a hand on Arnold.
"He was … the whiskey part … he was a drinker," Palmer says. "He handled that sometimes poorly. He was a guy that … he smoked for a little while. But then somebody said something to him about smoking, and he quit. He never smoked again in his life, and this was in his early 20s. Later, he would come to my house, and I'd be smoking. He hated my smoking. He'd say, 'Arn, you've gotta quit smoking.' Then he'd say, 'Give me one of those.' And he'd smoke a cigarette right there in front of me, and then throw it away and not smoke another.
"He wanted to show me he could quit, that he could smoke a cigarette and throw it away and never have another one. He did it to show me he could smoke if he wanted to, but he just didn't choose to. He was strong in that department. He had a lot of willpower. And when he drank a little too much once in a while, he'd quit drinking. He wouldn't drink any at all. Just stop. He knew when he needed to stop, and he would. He took great pride in his willpower—in being able to do things, and also not do them."
Even when Arnold Palmer became the biggest name in golf, he was still Deacon's boy, and not above counsel from his old man. When Palmer was busy revolutionizing the image of an athlete as an endorser, making more from that than he did on the PGA Tour, Deacon would tell him the same thing that he heard from a lot of critics during the 1960s—that he should scale back on business ventures and focus more on golf. Palmer, who also became a golf course designer, was what that era called a tycoon. He had a pilot's license and his own plane and would fly himself to tournaments and business meetings.
"Pap used to tell me, 'Why don't you just stick to your golf?' He was just that kind of guy. We'd talk about golf and my business and how I was doing a lot of traveling, and like a lot of people he thought I should focus more on my game. But there were a lot of aspects of it that he enjoyed, like the airplane; that I'd take him in the airplane to play golf somewhere. And he enjoyed my mother going with us. That was always fun."
In addition to designing and building golf courses, Palmer decided in 1971 to buy an existing one—Latrobe Country Club. By then, the half-century-old course was showing its age, and Deacon implored his son not to buy it. "Are you crazy?" he asked more than once. But Arnold did buy it, and then promptly renovated the course until it once again became an emerald on western Pennsylvania's hilly landscape. "Now you have to work for me, Pap," Arnold teased his father.
The one decision Deacon was immediately on board with was Arnold buying the Bay Hill Club & Lodge. Palmer had liked Orlando the first time he ever visited, when he was a college golfer and Wake Forest played a match against Rollins College (where, coincidentally, Fred Rogers earned a bachelor's degree in 1951). Palmer, though, really fell in love with Orlando in 1965, when he shot a course-record 66 in an exhibition at Bay Hill to beat his nearest competitor, Jack Nicklaus. Later, he excitedly told his wife Winnie, "Babe, I just played the best golf course in Florida, and I want to own it."
Back then, similar to now, if people from the North wanted to buy in Florida, they sought somewhere along the coastline, not inland. And certainly not in Orlando, and definitely not Orlando before Walt Disney established any roots. But Palmer saw something he instantly loved. "I saw the lakes, the fresh water, and the environment here was fantastic," he says. "It was so natural. Everything. The orange groves. I loved the orange groves and the grapefruit, and all the natural farming area here. It was just a natural. And I thought, 'Gee, what a great place for a private resort-type of club.' "
And Deacon?
"He loved it. Oh, he loved it. He wasn't familiar with all my financial arrangements and things that I needed to do to buy Bay Hill (it took him better than five years to finally purchase it). But he loved it."
After working at Latrobe Country Club for 55 years, Deacon Palmer finally retired in 1975. Early in February of 1976, he and his son's longtime personal assistant, Doc Giffin, took a winter trip to Bay Hill.
"Deacon was a lovable guy but crusty at the same time," Giffin says. "Like his son, he liked people. And there was a sensitive side to him, too. I'd just had a very emotional month. One of my closest friends from childhood was killed in a plane crash. When we got ready to go to Bay Hill, Deacon said to me, 'Doc, I know you lost your good buddy. I'll try to be your good buddy this week.' Two days later, Deacon was gone."
Arnold was playing in California at the Bob Hope Desert Classic, a PGA tournament he won five times. He'd just shot an opening-round 64 and was ebullient. Then his world came crashing down. Back home at Bay Hill, after playing 27 holes of golf, his Pap suffered a heart attack in his lodge room and died. Giffin saw his door ajar, and then found Deacon lying on the floor.
Distraught when he heard the news—"I just lost it," he says—Palmer flew to Latrobe. He then had his father's body flown there on his plane. Deacon was cremated, and after a small, private ceremony, his ashes were spread along a knoll just above the 18th green at Latrobe Country Club.
It's the same spot where Arnold Palmer wants his own ashes spread one day.
Palmer thought that day might have arrived last year, with perhaps the end also coming for him at Bay Hill, just like his Pap.
Since 1979, Bay Hill has hosted the PGA Tour stop now known as the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and every year Palmer is there on the final-round Sunday, waiting for the winner at the 18th green for the awards ceremony. But he wasn't there last year. His blood pressure had skyrocketed, so much so that he visited the medical tent on the tournament grounds. The doctor there wanted him hospitalized. Since Palmer's personal physician, Dr. Fernando Hernandez, lives at Bay Hill, he went to his house for a second opinion. Unable to get Palmer's blood pressure under control, Dr. Hernandez drove him to the hospital and admitted him.
As the events of that day unfolded, it provided Palmer with a sense of symmetry. Just as his father resides in his earliest sentient memories, teaching him the Vardon grip, they surfaced there again for an octogenarian Arnold Palmer during those disconcerting medical moments.
"I did connect the whole thing to my father, and how he died at Bay Hill," Palmer says, his voice softening as he slowly nods. "I definitely was thinking about that, about my Pap. Seems like I'm always thinking about him."
In the Name of Healing
Through his contributions to two hospitals, Arnold Palmer has given children a fighting chance.
It looks like an amusement park, with Disney characters and children's play areas, bright colors and cheery architecture. But inside, children aren't fighting for a seat on the next ride. They are fighting for their health, and all too often for their life.
Arnold Palmer stands in the lobby and looks around, absorbed by his surroundings. He also becomes absorbed in his thoughts, his mind rewinding to a time when the building that bears his name didn't exist, and children in dire medical need were cramped in a tiny area at Orlando Regional Medical Center. In the early 1980s, Palmer was asked to help raise funds for the children housed in the hospital, and he toured it to see why there was a need.
Palmer says cleanliness was a major issue. And that didn't just sadden him. It moved him.
"I thought I could have a part in bringing a hospital to Orlando that would smell nice, that would be clean and that would give people, especially children, a different perspective so they wouldn't be afraid,'' he says. Today, that hospital is the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, which opened in 1989. Across the street is the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies, which opened in 2006 and is named after Palmer's late wife.
Lest anyone think that all Palmer has done is lend his name and checkbook to the cause, Dr. Gregor Alexander has a much different take. A neonatologist, Alexander was with Arnold and Winnie Palmer when they first toured Orlando Regional Medical Center, and he's been a key figure at the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. "I remember him saying, 'We can do better, and we will do better.' He has been the inspiration and driving force for all of us to continue to do our labor of love."
And it is a labor of love—and compassion. Every child admitted to the Arnold Palmer Hospital receives a Bill of Rights stating that they can expect:
• Time to play each day.
• People to knock on my door before coming in my room.
• Doctors and nurses to tell me their names.
• People to understand that sometimes I need to cry when I'm afraid or hurt.
• My parents to help take care of me.
• People to laugh with me.
• Safe, quiet times during each day.
• People to tell me what's going on and why.
• My room and my bed to be safe places.
• People to let me choose what I want when it's OK.
• My favorite toy from home to be with me and to go along to surgery and different places in the hospital.
• A hug when I need one.
Of all Palmer's accomplishments—his 62 PGA Tour wins and seven major tournament victories, and various successful business ventures, like his ownership of the Bay Hill Club & Lodge, which houses a PGA Tour stop that bears his name—it is these two hospitals that he thinks of most.
"Every day," he says. "If I don't think about it, I'm reminded of it when I'm listening to the news or reading the newspaper."
It's comforting, humbling even, when he hears that someone in need of medical help was "taken to Arnold Palmer," the implication being that they are in good hands now—in Arnold Palmer's hands. As he talks about how special those words are every time he hears them, a woman passes by in the hospital lobby, recognizes Palmer, and says, "You do such nice work here. Thank you, and God bless you."
Not only is the hospital doing nice work, but great work. U.S. News & World Report just named Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children one of the nation's Best Children's Hospitals, an honor it has achieved four times in the past five years.
Michael Thomas doesn't need to be convinced. The 18-year-old Merritt Island resident has spent most of his teenage years in and out of Arnold Palmer Hospital, battling hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH, a rare and potentially fatal disease. He also suffers from twisted intestines and pancreatitis.
"I can get sick really easy," Thomas says from his hospital bed, moments after meeting Arnold Palmer. "The last time I was here I was supposed to die. I don't want to be gross, but I puked up a pint of blood, my lung collapsed, I had multiple infections, and I went through two rounds of chemo. I've been coming here a lot the last five years. They've saved my life. If Arnold Palmer had not made a hospital for children, a lot of kids like me wouldn't be here today."


text:
About 319 NetWorks
319 NetWorks is a Charleston, SC based web solutions provider to companies across the globe. Our organization is built on the foundation that the digital tools used in business must be purposeful, dynamic, reconfigurable, scalable and secure.
Throughout the 10+ year history of the company, we have invested millions in the development of Platform319 - a suite of solutions that empower the rapid design, layout, configuration, development, and management of advanced websites, portals, interactive communications, and file collaboration.
Our mission is to gain a thorough understanding of our clients' business, their needs, goals, & desires, and deliver world-class solutions that empower growth, scalability, and ROI. We specialize in solving unique business challenges with rich, value-added applications. Our "no-coding" environment enables businesses to easily manage all aspects of web assets.
We invite you to discover the possibilities of working with us by exploring our web site, and please don't hesitate to contact us today. Our commitment to your success is unmatched!


text:
After nearly forty years of research, scientists have finally proven that plate tectonics exist on Mars. A recently published paper by An Yin in the journal Lithosophere reveals that the origin of Valles Marineris on Mars — the longest trough system in the solar system — was formed by rifting, strike-slip faulting, and subsurface mass removal. Yin's research now shows that Earth's surface is not the only one in the solar system subject to the forces of plate tectonics.
The above image of Valles Marineris was composed by Robert L. Hurt.
Yin, who works out of UCLA, made the discovery by analyzing a hundred satellite images taken from NASA's THEMIS spacecraft. He was able to confirm his discovery by comparing the images to geological examples he had previously uncovered in the Himalayas, Tibet, and California — unique locations in which the Earth's major plates divide.
A good example is California's Death Valley, an area featuring a series of cliffs that were formed by a fault. Yin was able to compare these structures to a very smooth, flat side of a canyon wall on Mars which he believes could only be generated by a fault. Speaking through a release, Yin noted that, "You don't see these features anywhere else on other planets in our solar system, other than Earth and Mars."
Yin's analysis also solves the mystery about how Valles Marineris was formed. It's the longest and deepest system of canyons in our solar system — nearly 2,500 miles long and about nine times longer than the Earth's Grand Canyon. The trough is like a gaping wound on the Red Planet, and given that scientists had previously doubted the presence of tectonic activity on Mars, they were completely stumped about how it got there.
Some had merely suggested that it was a "big crack" that had just opened up. But Yin's work shows that Valles Marineris is in fact part of a plate boundary, one that's subject to slow, but persistent horizontal motion; the two plates have moved about 93 miles relative to each other. He compares it to Earth's Dead Sea fault system, a trough-like structure that is also moving horizontally. The finding indicates that Mars may be subject to earthquakes, or what should be more appropriately referred to as marsquakes.
The analysis also suggests that Mars's tectonic activities are excruciatingly slow, with major tectonic shifts occurring about every million years or so. Yin suspects that Mars is subject to a different kind of plate tectonics — one that may be the result of the planet just having two plates, as contrasted with Earth's seven. Yin's study can be found at the journal Lithosophere.
Inset image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS.


text:
Member of the National Council for the Social Democratic Party & Spokesperson for Eenergy and 2017 European Young Leader (EYL40)
A lawyer by training, Muna is passionate about politics. During her studies, she was the international secretary of Socialist Youth Austria and worked for the French Socialist Party. After graduation, she became a local councillor in the Vienna-Donaustadt district at the age of 23. In 2010, she joined the Austrian Federal Council where she became the Social Democrat spokesperson on foreign policy. Six years later, she was nominated as Secretary of State in the Office of the Federal Chancellery. Muna is also the President of the Palestinian-Austrian Society, a group that aims to deepen exchanges between Austrians and Palestinians and play an active part in Austrian society by promoting anti-racist, democratic and transnational programmes.


text:
- Detalji
- Prof. Dr Dragana Popović
Department of Physics & Biophysics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia
In this paper we have tried to follow the careers of women - physicists in Yugoslavia in two periods that differed nearly in every aspect of political, economical and social life. It was the period of the seventies and the eighties, a period of relative political and economical stability, and the period of the nineties, when the country disintegrated, wars and economic sanctions brought social and economic chaos, and a great number of young mostly highly educated people left the country. Were the careers of women - physicists affected by these events more than the careers of their male colleagues, do women - physicists generally act more passively in answering to the new economic and social demands or maybe, they got a new chance?
Women In Physics: Overcoming The Obstacles
It was only after the II World War that women shyly opened the doors of physics. The few women - founders of modern Atomic and Nuclear Physics, Maria and Irene Curie, Lisa Meitner, seemed to be nothing but exceptions of the general truth that physics is a task for men (Miller, 1996). Therefore, in the early fifties, among the sixty students of physics in the Cavendish Laboratory, there were only three young women. Two would leave their research careers after the marriage and only one, Joan Freeman would stay till the end (Freeman, 1993).
However, the number of women that enrolled and graduated in natural and technical sciences and made their professional careers in research laboratories and universities over the world was increasing from the early seventies till the nineties, when the general world wide trend of decreased interest for natural sciences changed the situation. In spite of the differences among the countries and specific scientific research areas, there are some common indicators reflecting the situation on the global level. The numbers of male and female students in biology, chemistry, applied and interdisciplinary sciences as biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology and chemical technology are nearly equal, and women even dominate in some of the areas, biology for instance (AIPS Report, 1997). But hard sciences as mathematics and physics appear still to be closed for women, even for those educated in science. The development in computing and information technology opened new perspectives for those women educated in mathematics, but they are still employed mainly as technical stuff, for routine jobs like data input and processing, while analysis and data proceeding are still reserved for their male colleagues, as it was the case in astronomy till the middle of the 20th century (Langford, 1990).
As for physics, it even more emphasises the gendered relations between education, science and society, especially in some research areas Quantum Mechanics, Relativity Theory or High Energy Particles Physics. Therefore, even women that have passed all the obstacles of the traditional rules within their families, schools and society in general, and entered the space of the masculine scientific domination, are still out of the reach of the heights of pure science these areas represent. These are the facts that came into the focus of interest of the feminist and education theoreticians and psychologists only recently, mainly in the USA and the Western European countries (S.Harding, 1991; EUPEN Report, 1997). But the results of the studies on this matter are often controversial.
The claims that gender differences for interest in natural sciences could be recognised even at the age of nine, when boys gain the advantages girls can not overcome afterwards (J.Harding, 1998), could lead to dangerous implications that boys arebiologically (whatever it does mean) more skilled in abstract thought, and girls in love and care. However, some kind of gender relatedscience anxiety seems to exist and not to be correlated with social background and/or nationality (Mallow, 1994). It is rather interesting that in economically less developed parts of Europe and in South America, the percentage of women studying physics is higher than in USA or in Western Europe (Table 1), but the question remains what happens to them after the studies. Do they generally go in for teaching at secondary and high schools or for research, as at that point their traditional roles start to conflict with their personal interests. Generally, in the economically highly developed European countries, for years the percentage of women at universities and research institutes has been between 8-12% (Svenska Institute Fact Sheets, 1997).
Table 1.
Women Enrolling In Physics (Harding, J.,1998)
England, Swiss, Germany, Austria, USA, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, India
France, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Russia, Israel
Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary, Philippine
Those and similar results from different studies dealing with justification and enrolment in physics and mathematics opened a debate on the need for introducing single sex classes in the age of 11-16 as a tool for promoting girls interest in sciences (McDonald, 1998), but this question is out of the scope of this paper.The question of what determines and encourages the scientific curiosity, in general and concerning the gender differences, still remains open. Some psychologists and physicist involved in education research claim that the higher degree of scientific curiosity is found among emotionally more mature girls and less emotionally developed boys as girls take science as a serious job, and boys as a game. Putting science within the social context makes the girls more interested, while boys just do not care (Mallow, 1994; Harding,J, 1998).In general, the differences in the interest for different subjects among girls and boys on high school level are mirror symmetrical. The data on the choice of majors in high schools in USA and Denmark (Mallow, 1994) show that girls interest in majors is decreasing from languages (80%), biology, chemistry and history (45-50%) down to physics and computers (20%), while it is quite the opposite for the boys: they are poorly interested in languages (20%), moderately in biology, chemistry and history (45-50%) and highly in physics and computers (80%).
In high schools in Yugoslavia (gymnasiums), due to the specific organisational structure - the departments for mathematics and sciences and the departments for humanities and languages are separated, the differences are even more emphasised: in some classes in humanities department there are only 2-4 boys among 40 scholars, while in the department for sciences and maths, the percentage of girls goes up to 25%. Professionaly oriented high school are highly gendered: girls generally enrol in medical schools, boys in technical schools. That is the pattern they continue to follow afterwards, on university too. Even more, boys often go for science and technology even if they were not successful in those subjects at secondary or high school, while girls enrol in physics and mathematics and other natural sciences only if they were highly successful in those subjects during secondary education. It is probably due to the messages coming from the social and family environment, sharply separating male and female professions. During studies, girls seem to find it more difficult to follow the social codes of the scientific community (Hernion, 1997). Some anthropological studies (Hasse, 1998) indicate that the female students rarely manage to get the proper position to actively participate into the transfer of knowledge and often remain only passive observers outside the groups that will create professional and scientific carriers afterwards. To gain the proper positions boys have only to use talent or skill, while girls are often forced to act aggressively or to give up. According to the percentage of women in physics, it seems that they generally give up.
Women - Physicists In Former Yugoslavia: Reality Comes After Graduation
Former Yugoslavia had a relatively high percentage of women enrolling in physics and other natural sciences, as it was generally the case in all ex-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union. The social, institutional and political equality between women and man was officially proclaimed and women were encouraged to take the active part in social life, although it strongly conflicted their traditional role in the society, and that role is in many aspects still unchanged. The climax was reached during the seventies and the eighties, in the period of relative social, political and economic stability and prosperity. There was a strong institutional and governmental support to women education and active participation in professional life. Girls were largely encouraged to study technical and natural sciences. For years the percentage of girls enrolling and graduating at the University of Belgrade, including those graduating in pure mathematics and other natural sciences was equal to the percentage of boys. Actually, the number of girls graduating in natural sciences was slowly but steadily increasing from 52% in the early sixties to 60% in the late eighties (Blagojevic, 1991). But, contrary to molecular biology and biochemistry, the number of girls enrolling in physics in the period from the sixties to the early nineties was rather constant, not exceeding 30-35 % (Popovic, 1998).
The situation after the graduation was rather different. The study on the careers of educated women in the eighties (Blagojevic, 1991; 1992) showed a clear delay in their professional life: women, even those with significantly higher scores during the studies, usually obtained their MA, MSc or PhD degree one to three years later than their male colleagues. But, thanks to biology, chemistry and medicine, in that period women still represented about a third of the scientific population in the country (Table 2).
Table 2.
Women MSc & PhD degree graduates,1989 (Blagojevic, 1991)
|MSc,MA degree
|PhD degree
According to some studies concerned with the same period of time, women in Western Europe relatively more easily made their careers within academic institutions, universities, etc. than within research institutes, industry, management or government institutions (Harding, 1986; 1991). It seemed to be the true for women - scientists in Yugoslavia, too, (Blagojevic, 1991, 1992), but it was hardly true for physics. Since the 2nd World War there was no woman Master of the Faculty of Physics, no woman Dean of the Belgrade University, no woman within the Department of Natural Sciences at the Serbian Academy of Science and Art. Only one woman Director General of the Institute for Nuclear Sciences Vinca, hardly made the difference.
Once a part of the University staff, women still encountered obstacles, specially if not willing to give up marriage and children. As it can be seen from the Table 3, only a half of women that started their career as university assistants managed to obtain their PhD degree and get a position of a full professorship, while the percentage of their male colleagues was generally above 80% (Popovic, 1998).
Table 3.
Women at Belgrade University 1986/87 (Blagojevic,1991)
|maths&natural sci
The closer view of the physicists community gives an even gloomiee picture. In the seventies, the percentage of women assistants on the Faculty of Physics was less than 10%, and there was only one women full professor. Women were much less involved in publishing scientific papers and managing scientific projects in physics and related disciplines (5-10%): generally, women participated in projects on experimental and applied physics, biophysics, medical physics or radiology, while only 1-2% of them participated in projects on theoretical or quantum physics. Women physicists obtained scholarships far less often than their male colleagues (and still do), they were only seldom members of international scientific associations, presidents of national scientific associations or editors-in-chief of scientific journals. The mechanism of gender inequalities and male majorization if not before, was definitely switched on after the graduation. Therefore, contrary to general social climate that was rather inclining to women active participation in professional life, physics remained male science.
The Chaos Of The Nineties: A New Chance For Women In Physics?
A general decrease in the enrolment in natural sciences and technology at the end of the eighties, was an echo of the world wide trend of the decreased interest in natural and technical sciences, coming from the West with a certain delay (Milic,1992). It has alarmed scientific, administrative and educational community in the West World and forced it to consider the problem within the projects on both national and international level, proposing different solutions (Musilek, 1998; EUPEN Report, 1997), but mainly within the two general concepts: putting physics in a broader social context and introducing new interdisciplinary courses into the physics university curricula.In Yugoslavia, that trend coincidental with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, war and dramatic changes in the political, social and economic situation in the country. Due to the war and large unemployment, a high percentage of university graduates left the country. They were mainly professionals in technical and natural sciences, engineers and physicians, and mainly man. That considerably changed gender relations in some of the highly specialised professions and within some of the university departments and research institutes. Some professions that has been dominated by men for years suddenly seemed to become open for women. Although there are still no systematic studies and reliable official data on the matter, some facts are evident. At the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Belgrade,for example, in 1975 only two women were the head of department among the 30 departments and women made less than 25% of the educational stuff. In 2000, women make 40-45% of the educational stuff of the Faculty, ten of them (40%) head the departments, but not the clinics. The Master is also a woman, second in the history of the Faculty.
From 1994-1997 nearly 60% of the students enrolling in physics at the University of Belgrade were girls, and 47 girls were also among the 97 post-graduates that obtained the MSc degree in physics. Still, 22 of them got MSc degree in experimental physics, 10 in physics education and 15 in theoretical physics, among them there were only two degrees in quantum physics. It was quite the opposite with the MSc degrees obtained by the male post-graduate students in the same period: their scientific interest was generally in theoretical physics, definitely not in physics education or methodology (Popovic, 1998).
The gender relation among the researchers in the institutes of physics changed, too (Table 4). Does it mean that women physicists got a new chance, or that the traditional mechanisms of gender discrimination lost power? Unfortunately not. Women in physics in Yugoslavia today only entered the empty space their male colleagues left for different and numerous reasons (Blagojevic, 1992; Finch, 1983; Polity Reader, 1992). And, it is very unlikely that the situation will change in the near future. Sciences, especially physics has lost their prestige: marketing, trade, management and information technology are in the focus of interest of the young people nowadays over the world. Why should anyone bother to study physics? It is hard, demanding and poorly paid. In the countries in transition, and Yugoslavia is in the very beginning of the process, science is on the edge of the social interest and care and it will continue to be so for some time. As schools and education system only amplify the values of the society, women are obviously once again going in for poorly paid and socially poorly valued professions.
Table 4.
Staff in Institute of Nuclear Sciences "Vinca",1997 (Popovic, 1998)
|research assist.
|senior research.
|research chancellors
"Boys In The Lab": Women In Physics In Yugoslavia Today
Our study included a hundred women researchers, assistants and professors working at the University and in the scientific institutes in Belgrade. They all have MSc or PhD degrees in physics . Due to the age and the title, the group was divided in the three sub-groups: group I - professors and seniors scientists born in 1940/50 ; group II researchers and assistant professors, born in 1954/65; and group III research assistants, born in 1965/75. In fact, only two groups were planned, the I and the III group, while the II group formed by itself during the study.
Those women were educated and entered into their profession in different periods and work/ed in different social and political environment. Besides interviews, the study was performed through the analysis of the scientific structure of the papers the interviewers have published in scientific publications on the national and international level (Popovic, 1998; YRPA Bibliography, 1994).
Women in the I group (34) were university professors and senior scientists. Majority of them were born in Belgrade, they are married and have children (90%). About 25% among their parents, mainly fathers made their careers in the same profession or even in the same research area; 50% among their husbands are in the same profession, too. Only 20% of them work in pure physics, other find their research interest in multidisciplinary areas of biochemistry, biophysics, and biomedicine.
The II group (30) included women - assistant professors, PhD applicants and scientific assistants in the institutes. About 50% of them are born in Belgrade, about 50% are married and with children, about 30% of their husbands or life partners are in the same profession. Women from this group mainly work in the institutes (70%), due to the generation change that happened at one moment within the scientific community. Nearly 70% of them got their PhD degree in theoretical physics, but their scientific work is now within the framework of the experimental physics and other related applied or interdisciplinary areas.
In the III group (28) there were women working as research and teaching assistants. Less than 40% of them are born in Belgrade, about 65% is not yet married and have no children. About 30% of them have a mother within the interviewers in the I group, working in the same or close scientific area of research. As for the scientific work, majority of them are engaged in theoretical work.
The interviews showed the differences in the social background and in the apparent interest for theoretical or experimental research among the groups. The interest for theoretical work among women in the III group is in fact due to the economic situation (lack of instrumentation) and not to the true scientific motivation. Still, only a small percentage of these women, less than 10%, chose or plan to change institution, laboratory, position or even country in order to follow their personal scientific interest, while their male colleagues from the control group (30) under the same economic conditions, seem to be far more active, searching for better working environment and fulfilling their scientific interest.
It is also highly interesting that, in spite of the fact that women from the III group generally had higher marks during the studies than those from the I and the II group, and in spite of their claims that they have chosen science only due to their personal interest, more than 60% of them are highly unsatisfied by their professional choice and would be only happy to change it. On the other hand, women from the I and from the II group, although also generally unsatisfied with the present state in science in the country, all firmly claimed they would make the same professional choice today.
Universities appeared not to be more friendly surrounding for women than research institutes or other scientific institutions: the percentage of women scientists, from research assistants to seniors scientists, is in fact higher in the institutes than on the Belgrade University (Table 5), and women scientists are more often head of departments or projects managers in the institutes than on the Belgrade University. Still, in the latest publication of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art dealing with the lives and work of the 150 Serbian natural scientists in the 19th and 20th century, there is not a single women (SANU Report, 1998).
Table 5.
Women Scientists (%) on the Belgrade University and in the Institute Vinca, 1998 (Popovic,1998)
Generally, women scientists in Yugoslavia still publish less,:only 16-25% of scientific papers are published by women in different research areas and only 4 -6% among single authors and invited lecturers on scientific meeting are women (Popovic, 1998). Women are seldom members of scientific boards and committees of scientific meetings, even more seldom members of organising committees, but among the technical staff at the desk, one usually finds only women, doing technical and administration work. Do they consider themselves professionally equal? Generally, they seem not to care. Perhaps they should?
Although a number of women within the scientific community in former Yugoslavia was significant, women were actually as far away from the real centres of power as their female colleagues elsewhere. Natural sciences as science in general, appeared to be inhibited by the values divisioned by gender and traditional power structure that function continuously during education, but especially after the graduation. The increase in the number of women in natural sciences, including physics, in the last decade is not the result of the new opening of science for female scientists, but it is unfortunately due to the world wide decreasement in the interest for natural sciences, with some specificity due to the political and social context in our country. Women are once again only allowed to go in for the professions men had left as poorly paid and unperspective.
- AIP Report (1997): American Institute of Physics Report. New York: US Education Department.
- Bibliography of the Yugoslav Radiation Protection Association 1963-1993 (1994): Belgrade: YRPA Press.
- Blagojevic, Marina. (1991): Women Outside The Circle: Profession and Family. Belgrade: Institute for Social Studies, University of Belgrade.
- Blagojevic, Marina. (1991): Science and Gender: The Inhibition of the Institutionalised Environment. In: Sociology 34(1). pp. 23-37.
- Ferdinande, H. Petit, A. (1997): Inquiries into European Higher Education in Physics. EUPEN General Forum Report. Gent: University Press.
- Finch, Janet. (1983): Married to the Job: Wives Incorporated in Mens Work. London::.Allen Publ.Ltd.
- Freeman, Joan (1993): A Passion For Physics: The Story of A Women Physicist. Bristol: Institute of Physics Publ.Ltd.
- Harding, Sandra. (1986): The Science Question in Feminism. London: Open University Press.
- Harding, Sandra. (1991): Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? New York: Cornwall University Press.
- Harding, Jan. (1998): Insights Through Gender Lens. In: Justification and Enrolment Problems in Education Involving Mathematics and Physics. Eds. J.Jensen / M.Niss. Wedege, Tina: Roskilde University Press. pp. 130-148.
- Hasse, Cathrine. (1997): Learning to pattern Physics Virtues: Male and Female Dissimilarities. Project Report. Copenhagen: University Press.
- Henrion, Claudia (1997) : Women in Mathematics : The Addition of Differences. New York: Indiana University Press.
- Lankford, J/ R.L.Slaving (1990): Gender and Science:Women in American Astronomy. In: Physics Today 43(3). pp. 106-122.
- Lives and Works of Serbian Scientists (1998): Serbian Academy of Science and Art. Belgrade: SANU Press.
- McDonald, A. (1999): Is Science For Girls Being Sacrified To Political Correctness? In: Science Education Newsletters 144. pp. 1-2.
- Mackinnon, Alison. Saltzman, Inge. Prentice, Alison (1998): Education into 21st Century: Dangerous Terrain for Women?London: Falmer Press.
- Mallow, J.V. (1994): Gender-related Science Anxiety: A First Binational Study. In: Journal of Science Education 3(4). pp. :227-238.
- Milic, Andjelka (1992): New Technologies and Gender Inter-relations: An Inside View. In: Sociology 34(1). pp. 5-22.
- Miller, D./J.Miller/ I.Miller/ Margaret Miller (1996): Dictionary of Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Popovic, Dragana. (1998): Women Scientists in Natural Sciences: Research As A Free Choice. A Report. Belgrade: Belgrade Womens Studies Centre.
- SANU Report (1998): The Lives and Work of Serbian Scientists. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Science and Art Press
- Svenska Institute Sheets on Sweden: Equality Between Women and Men: (1997). Stockholm: SI Press.
- The Polity Reader in Gender Studies: (1994). London: Polity Press Cambridge.
Preuzmite tekst u PDF formatu:


text: The Love of animals and the county life has always been in my blood should I say. I have been a professional photographer for years. I'm also a pastel artist. I see my life through photography or a painting. What helps my art is the fact that we are blessed that we own a ranch, so i surrounded by animals all the time which I love!